How Meditation Transformed The Life Of Diana Mirs

Meet Diana! She is a mind and body connection coach, a psychosomatic specialist and a meditation teacher.
Diana sure has had an interesting ride! A lifelong and passionate relationship to meditation, a one way ticket from home to go on a journey of finding herself- a deep desire to see others connect with their mind and body, to get free of health problems by connecting to their body.
The phrase that resonated the most with me would be to have an embodied experience. We talked about a lof of things, some of them being the cultural problems of expressing emotion, collective lonliness and lack of connection, neutrality, manifestation, reiki, and working with the future self! What a neat conversation!

Music is from Manuel Portillo – released under CC-BY 4.0. as well as Penni Jo Blatterman

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Epic Kate podcast.

Not too long ago I met a bunch of really wonderful people from the Insight Timer website or app and I've been uploading my conversations over there as well and I connected with Diana through there and we just had a really neat conversation about her journey,

Her spiritual journey that put her on her path,

Her experience with meditation really transforming her life.

Heartfelt conversations can change the world.

Here's the Epic Kate podcast.

Hello,

Welcome Diana.

I'm so glad to have you here.

Could you give us a brief introduction of yourself please?

Hi Katie,

Thanks a lot for your invitation.

I'm really happy to be here.

My name is Diana.

I am a Mind Body Connection coach,

A psychosomatic specialist and a meditation teacher.

I have been a digital nomad for the past 10 years and now I'm in Colombia,

One of my favorite countries in Bogota.

Very cool.

I love to talk to other international people because we have this in common that no place can really feel like home once you've left.

It's all,

You just get a little piece of your heart in all these different countries.

Absolutely,

It is so.

Yeah,

So the thing that jumped out at me when I was reading a little like your description is psychosomatic coach?

What is that?

Yeah,

All right.

So psychosomatics,

It is a field of studies,

Scientifically proven that connects mind and body.

It is absolutely my topic and when I discovered it myself,

I was just fascinated.

So it is basically an approach that connects everything inside of us and sees a human being as whole.

How our emotions can influence our physical body can cause some health conditions or diseases and also vice versa,

How our body can influence our emotional states,

Mental states and in all how we can work with that,

How we can improve our quality of life and probably free ourselves from any health conditions that bother us.

Yeah,

I started to grin because I immediately thought of that Snickers commercial,

You know,

The one where the person's acting really strange and like they turn into Jackie Chan or fighting and stuff.

They were fighting really well and then they're fighting really badly and then they give them a Snickers and they eat this.

You're not yourself when you're hungry.

Okay,

Well,

Of course,

I know this motto,

But I haven't seen that exact advertisement.

Yeah,

It's like,

Oh yeah,

When we're hungry,

When we're tired.

So would you say this is also a spiritual thing as well,

The realm that you work in?

Well,

Definitely,

Of course,

Because our spirit and our inner world is something that,

In my opinion,

Cannot be described just with some theories or with some very practical language.

But on the other hand,

I'm trying and I think I'm successful in doing that balancing the science and the spiritual side of my work.

And of course,

It depends on each client,

On their preferences,

How spiritual they are or what side of themselves they want to discover during our work together.

That's right.

Yeah,

It's like you got to meet people where they're at and kind of be a chameleon to what they will respond to.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Sure.

So have you always been interested in this kind of thing or did you have a big moment in your life that led you to it?

Well,

I think it all started with meditation and that is why a big part of my professional work now is being a meditation teacher.

When I was a teenager,

It may sound lame,

But I watched the secret movie and back then it was something very new to me because no one in my field and around me in the society ever talked about the power of mind and that everything depends on us,

That we are in charge of our lives and this kind of stuff.

So it really inspired me and I started to practice meditation just by myself discovering it,

Exploring what I can do in my mind kind of visualizations and back then I didn't know any meditation teachers and the internet wasn't so developed yet.

So that is how it started to me and it was a fascinating journey and I could see how well it serves me and how it changes my life for the better.

And I would say the second turning point was during COVID times,

As for many of us I'm sure,

When I think it was the darkest moment of my life and I realized that I definitely have to take better care of myself and I first need to ask for help.

I went to therapy and then step by step I started to build myself kind of from the beginning and this is where I discovered the tools and techniques to work also with the physical body not only with the mind and that really gave me so much more support and confidence as never before.

So that is when I started to blend my mind-body work and I became with the time a mind-body connection coach which I'm so grateful to myself first for choosing this path and for all of the teachers and mentors that taught me.

So I didn't quite catch that which movie was it that inspired you?

I think it is called The Secret.

So how were your experiences with meditating?

Was it hard for you?

Do you remember or did it kind of come naturally?

Yeah,

I think it was very natural.

It was just my thing from the very beginning.

I always had a very good imagination and it was always colorful inside of my world.

So when I just started to sort of enhance it and experiment and what else can I do with my mind.

How can I envision my future for example because I never got such questions before in my head.

So that's where the journey started I would say.

Wow,

So are you like one of those super visualizers where I say imagine on my hand here there's an apple.

Can you immediately like see all the details?

Oh yes,

It can be any kind of apple and that is also kind of brings a few difficulties into my life because when considering that I'm also an empathetic person when somebody tells a horror story for example or a difficult moment of their life right or just joking in a very dark way.

I'm like oh no please stop I have a very good imagination.

It will just hurt me in the end.

Do you also like feel it in your body like something can happen to someone and like their shoulder hurts and your shoulder hurts too kind of thing?

Yeah,

I mean I can control it to which degree I allow it influence me and happen to my body of course.

It really helps with the psychosomatic sessions that I have with my clients to feel them better,

To guide them better,

To find the solution better together.

So it has both both sides.

I'm very still grateful for having that.

So like if they are having a hard time because of course as many of us know but many of us still have yet to learn in order to get through your pain you have to feel it.

You have to let yourself sit in the discomfort and in the poop before you can move past that so you can kind of maybe help them to feel it.

I wouldn't say I help them to feel it but I am always there with them providing my support.

I'm telling them,

Reassuring them that I have been there.

I know how it feels.

I can imagine how it feels for you now and this confidence that they feel in me helps them to go deeper and to be in this pain because sooner or later this pain will transform into something different.

It will pass and that is the very transformational point of course.

Did you see in your life people who didn't deal with their pain and it got made them sick or worse?

Yeah that's very very sad to think about that because not everything of course depends on me and it's personal people's choice and it's my dad.

Yeah I'm very lucky to have him in my life and I'm very grateful because he was probably the first one who taught me to listen to my body but I see how his probably past traumas or experiences are holding him back and influencing them right now but again it is his path and I just provide support whenever I can and whenever he asks for help and another very bright example in my life is one of my ex-partners.

I understand now better what happened in his life and with him and in our relationship as well so again kind of sad story but I always when seeing such people and when having such people close to me I'm always very admiring them,

Their strengths because no matter what has happened to them they are here,

They are living,

They are trying their best.

So did those people in your heart kind of give you like the goal like you hold them in your heart as you help other people?

Yeah of course I would say every person no matter whether it is a client just a person that I have known for a few hours or someone very special to me have a place in my heart big or small and of course they people are in general are big inspiration to me and big motivation to continue what I'm doing.

So I'm curious about this like culture plays such a role in how we relate to the world and how we deal or don't deal with pain and then it festers and then we get sick.

Is that is like the culture that you grew up in was it a people talk about their feelings and air their conflicts out or is it a hold everything in kind of culture?

Yeah I absolutely agree with you and thanks for mentioning this point about the culture.

I think you also may have some examples and I'm curious about your opinion.

Well definitely I'm coming from the Slavic culture.

I was born in Uzbekistan and also raised in Russia and because of the history I believe of the USSR and ex-USSR countries yeah especially the older generations they hold everything inside of themselves and not only it I can say directly hurts them and influences their minds and bodies their lifestyle but also the younger generations right.

I'm very happy to see now that it is changing for the better because of I would say globalization because of people having more chances to communicate with other cultures to know other ways of thinking of living and yeah I think it is changing slowly but it definitely depends on the culture.

For example in Colombia where I am right now people are much more open and passionate and emotional.

When I first came here it was just wild to me yeah everyone wanted to hug me to give me a kiss just because we just met and it didn't mean anything romantic as it would in my culture and I was like my god what is happening but yeah what I mean is that here I'm sure that people are capable of processing their emotions much better probably not in healthier ways but I'm not here to compare but just expressing themselves and feeling what is happening inside of them being more connected to their inner world which is very very important.

So how did you overcome that cultural setting that you were just immersed in?

Yeah I think the only and the biggest reason is traveling because I always wanted to explore the world and I had no idea when I was in high school or even at university when I already started to grow up and mature a little bit and I moved to Moscow like one of the biggest cities in the world and I didn't know how I could travel how I can go abroad and or what kind of life I can have but I remember after graduation I just decided okay I'm gonna buy a one-way ticket and I will go I don't know what will happen I don't know if I'll feel good or bad I can always come back home but I'm sure that it will change my life somehow and only change by changing the environment by meeting new people by expanding my horizons my vision I could change myself so that's my advice to everyone if you guys have a chance or even if you don't even if you feel that you want to go somewhere just do that.

Oh that's amazing like that is some serious guts right there how old were you when you did that?

I was 21.

And how did your family feel about that?

Well they were scared I remember we had a big fight with my parents about that because they of course they saw my future close to them in Russia like having corporate job stable and probably continuing education at university PhD and stuff but I'm very grateful to them that they always gave me a lot of freedom they always allowed me to choose what I wanted to study where I wanted to live and where I wanted to go yeah we had this fight we tried to understand each other they helped me to buy this one-way ticket and since then they always just support my freedom my lifestyle they never ask questions that would wouldn't be suitable to ask I'm really happy with them yeah.

That's awesome what supportive parents.

Yeah well I feel so much worse than gratitude now we're speaking about them because we haven't seen each other for two years and oh I hope it will happen this year yeah I really miss them.

Oh I feel that do you think that your parents saw that you were on this journey of just meditation and learning about yourself and they could see that it was helping you do you think that's something that helped them to kind of let you go and spread your wings?

Well actually I don't think that my parents were really aware of what I was interested in or what I was actually doing because it is so far from their world and again we just didn't have points of contact to discuss it or for me to share with them I don't know my aspirations regarding this topic but I'm sure that they noticed that I was changing and that I became was becoming happier and more free and probably more confident or rebellious in the world probably they just hoped that it would be better for me I'm not sure I will go back home and I'll ask them this question I'd love to hear what they say but the word rebellious the word rebellious just jumped out at me because the the rebellion of like our generation or whatever is to be like no I don't want to work 900 hours a week and barely scrape by and exist and be so exhausted I have no time for art or meaning that's my rebellion because the the thing that you are selling me I see that it is poop huh yeah I guess it depends on the culture on perception on examples sorry I'm just gonna say yeah because that's the American dream you know working working work and your bosses will get another yacht you know yeah yeah I can definitely imagine that what were you gonna say yeah for me I guess rebellious is again just changing everything starting from scratch choosing my path no matter how many hours I have to work or how I'm gonna leave or what's gonna happen being in the unknown but just pursuing what is inside because that's not how most people live in my country in my culture again yeah and you broke free um something I wrote I've been writing down notes and something that I wrote down was that people are lonely people are like realizing that this way that they grew up culturally just doesn't work that being closed off from everyone and they don't even know how to connect it's just is that something that you see a lot of in your work people be lonely and feeling lonely yes yes unfortunately and I would say it is like a curse of the modern world and most people are feeling lonely and I think it is all right in the sense that it is natural it because we are humans and we shouldn't fight that even if it becomes too much if it starts to hurt you or to influence your life negatively of course that is the point when you have to change something or ask for help but generally the feeling of being lonely again as any other feeling of emotion it tries to tell you something probably that you have to change or adjust and that's just a good indicator that will help you to improve the quality of life eventually so would you say that a big thing that you are helping people with is to kind of come to a place of neutrality about their emotions first of all accepting their emotions no I would say first of all feeling their emotion experiencing them being in touch with them because for so many people and they they were and me myself in the past shutting down the emotions and avoiding negative emotions any sort of negativity discomfort so the first step would be just to feel it and the second to accept it of course and that is that creates a ground from where you can start changing you it must have been a lot of discomfort and a lot of feelings all over the place when you did that that trip how long did your journey last um which one the one-way ticket when you were 21 yeah it lasted for two years I arrived here in Colombia I was planning to stay only three months I had a professional project here professional internship but I fell in love with the country with the people and I it wasn't enough three months so I stayed much longer yeah after that I went home back to Russia where my parents live now I visited them and I realized that I've changed so much that I cannot stay there I just cannot it doesn't feel right and since then the trip never ended that's awesome so are you have you written or are you writing a book about your experiences oh well that is such a big project in my head but I haven't started yet I'm taking notes um yeah I'm saving it for the future I think when I will probably be retired and I'll delve into these memories and into all of these notes I will definitely because I have a lot to say and I'm sure that many people could relate to that and probably just find it entertaining one day one day how do you so you got this education you learned how to help because it was something that you needed um so how do you how do you help people what's like I know you're also an insight timer so you're doing meditations there yeah um it was my dream for many years to create meditations to share them with the world with other people because when I accumulated I would say enough experience to start creating I just didn't know where to implement that and one day I thought all right I've been using insight timer for about five years myself just as a user why not to become a teacher and yes I just created a few meditations I uploaded them and it was three years ago in September this month so that's how my journey started there and I'm extremely grateful for the community for the platform because I feel it is always so supportive it is a very safe space for me to express myself to share to connect with other like-minded people and to other teachers that was just a blessing for me oh that's so neat so what kind of meditations do you do uh well I do not uh try to fit myself into any kind of frame or only one uh direction um I usually create what feels right for me at the moment or something that I want to share something that I probably experienced or overcame myself because everything I do comes from everything I do comes from the depths of me of my experience and I would say mainly my meditations are focusing on the mind-body connection working with emotions emotional experiences and implementing variety of tools that I possess such as psychosomatics again or visualization or manifestation embodiment and so on so what was do you remember a specific time that you had a really amazing experience with manifesting something or just a really memorable time doesn't have to be a big it was forty thousand dollars but um yeah one of the recent ones uh I just can mention that um well my path with manifestation is kind of curvy I would say in the beginning when I just heard this word many years back and I started watching youtube videos about that or educating myself listening to other meditation teachers but again as I didn't have such experience myself before I was just trying and learning it didn't work or I came to that again but right now what I can say is that manifestation is about your state is about embodying what you want to be or what you want to have in your life so about two months ago I was really it was a big stretch of time when I was traveling constantly changing places and I was exhausted of it so I wanted just to settle down that is why I came to Bogota one of my homes and just to have a peaceful life for a few months and I was thinking that all right I want to upgrade my life sort of I want to have more like-minded people in my life I want to meet amazing friends and I want to grow financially and I was like yeah I'm ready for that it's time why not let's try and I was meditating manifesting embodying working with the body and I don't know how it happened I didn't do anything special I mean I didn't apply for any kind of jobs or I didn't ask my friends for help or anything I wasn't looking for it for that but one night I received a call from my friends saying that oh my god Diana they are looking for a Russian translator in Bogota please contact them and that is how I got into the work project here and I met incredible people and the team of Russian-speaking people with whom I was working it was everything I was dreaming about the last couple of months and I was like wow thank you so much Diana for practicing and yeah after every manifestation being realized after when you get something you really wanted I feel I need at least a kind of a plateau just a part of life a couple of weeks or a month when I'm just being and not working not growing just enjoying what is at this moment so that is what I'm doing the last couple of weeks that's that sounds really that makes sense because I think it could probably pretty get pretty easy to get a little bit greedy huh well now I want this now I want this could be of course but it is also very I cannot say maybe tiring but it demands a lot of your work and time and energy of course and it cannot always go up and grow we need different periods in our life to to solidify the experience so it will not just pass you through and you will not be at the previous point again so you will have a stable ground you will construct something new for yourself you'll grow confidence at this level of your life and then you can already have new energy to invest into something new well that makes sense nice so what kind of community have you built do you also do live streams on inside timer yeah right I'm not constant with that not regular unfortunately because of my lifestyle but two three times a year I have the stretches of time when I go weekly online with various topics and last year it was mind-body connection we were discussing various aspects of it this year I am concentrating on the topic of connection and exploring various aspects of it and why I chose this topic just because I feel I I want that I want to connect to more people online and offline and I know that many people are striving for that too and I have had a positive feedback that it is necessary for the listeners for the ones who join and participate in life events so yeah right now I am in this part of my series awesome yeah because connection is the answer to loneliness that we don't have like we aren't meant to do it all ourselves like yeah it's good to learn how to be alone with yourself and not have to have influences in your mind all the time but to be able to be quiet with yourself and be content but there's like but when you do when you're ready to pursue your dream then you're gonna manifest and vibrate in the people that are going to help you with your dream the people that are going to call you with the job the dream job like absolutely right I totally agree with you of course it is very important to feel comfortable with yourself for anyone whether it's introvert or extrovert but we are social beings and it is okay it is good it is something really special something to be cherished that we want the connection with others that we want to feel a part of something bigger of a community to feel the connection with other people and it is great if we have the opportunity to to be a part of the like-minded community and to have the deeper conversations and to feel understood and seen that is all part of being human and that's very important absolutely like I have a friend named Albin he's a rainbow magician so it's been doing a lot of the same thing that you're doing but with much more spiritual chakra energy healing stuff so like the other not too long ago he could he feels the pain in his body like he felt a pain in his elbow so he knew that there was something some energy stored in my elbow that was an energy of me not liking myself and he's like he like does this thing I don't I don't know how it works he doesn't know how it works he just has this this this thing and he could like shifting like working that out he's like okay let it release that out let it go down the floor and into Gaia and let it and so that it can alchemize into the the truth and it's like ah but he he has a hard time doing this rainbow magic on himself like it's like doing surgery on yourself so even when you have a powerful spiritual gift you still need someone else to help facilitate your healing absolutely well first of all that sounds amazing what he described he's doing at first I was like rainbow okay but now I get it it's probably because of chakras work yeah he's like let's see these what does it send some I'm gonna send some green over to that issue like yeah of course and here are two moments that I want to to speak about we do not know how everything works and we cannot explain everything in our world with physics or with mathematics with any kind of laws but if it works if it works for you or for some people for many people in the world let it work do not question how just enjoy just share it with the world if you have such a gift yes and the second moment of course every therapist needs their own therapist of course because our subconscious mind will not let us dive deeper than than it wants we cannot control our subconscious mind just ourselves and me including myself I need a therapist as well because whenever I feel stuck and I I know that I cannot just go through that I I do not see I always how I describe it to my clients as well it's like I'm in a maze and there is just a wall in front of me and I don't know where to go I don't see anything around me I don't see the doors but the therapist somebody from a side can help you with that they will guide you and you will see you will find that yeah the same example we we all need another one yeah because it's also very heavy to take in the stories and and hurts and needs and to carry that all around all the time that just break a person yeah of course so to burn out yeah it might happen definitely and to me meditations work perfectly for self-cleansing for working with my energy yeah one of the tools that I'm using regularly so how do you see your cell body like when you're meditating do you like visualize yourself and like what's going on in your in your head wow interesting I I think I rarely described it to someone else well first I need to tune into my physical body to feel the my pose the everything that surrounds me the temperature then to sort of imagine in my mind with the eyes closed how I see myself being right now and after that I just probably start seeing energy going through me my own energy the paths of it where the parts of which parts of my body are the brightest or which ones are probably the darkest where I have to send the energy or work there a little bit or if I'm working with the universal energy as I love a lot I don't know why but I feel a lot of connection with the universe like with a space and probably I have no idea but probably it's because I'm Libra by sign and it's the air sign so maybe it's an explanation but again I don't know why or how but I when I work with the universal energy I just also envision it and see it being here right now either if I'm in my space envisioning myself being in my room or I'm out there in this space so a lot of different variants oh that's so interesting so have you ever while you're flying through space and and meditating and and stuff have you ever like met beings or your higher self or had conversations I have never met other beings and I think it might be because I set an intention not to do so because I'm not sure how I would feel probably I would be scared but the most important I don't know I don't have the why why I would like that or why this experience would be beneficial to me let's say but sometimes I meditate on meeting my higher self I would say that is still a little bit challenging for me and I say higher self is different from my future self I work a lot with my future self and it feels very comfortable and very familiar already yes yes it's so interesting so I've heard of that work with future self like okay the future version of me that's already successful what what decisions do I make now to become that is is that kind of how it is for you yeah absolutely it is not only seeing the pictures of the picture you in your mind but also sort of traveling in time letting your imagination run so wild that you are either in a movie for different people it works differently but for me that I am in an ideal space in an ideal world and anything I want can happen there and I let myself see it I let myself be there and the key moment in manifestation in being in the future is feeling how it feels to be in the future in that scenario that you choose for yourself and letting your mind let go of control let go of the known this is what a lot Dr.

George Spencer talks about I really love his works and meditations and there is a gift that you can give yourself of allowing yourself to experience something very different very beautiful something that you want you truly want to experience in your life and yeah the next part will be just getting back to this embodied experience as often as you can and trying to as I mentioned making new decisions or seeing the world and your life through the lens of this future let's say ideal you that is where the changes will come from and to me again it is not something very metaphorical or extremely spiritual it is how our brain works it is how our how we literally can change the patterns that we use and follow in our daily life and this is how we can change ourselves yeah I mean like you changed the pattern of the cult this cultural conditioning that you were made in yeah absolutely and you're making your conscious choices new choices that are based on what you want on what you want to have in your life but not what society does or tells you not what you've been doing in the past or how your family lived and so on this is where you have to take accountability for your life to actually not only understand but but be confident that everything depends only on you not to blame others not to blame your past or how you were raised not to say that oh I have traumas and I cannot do anything about that but saying that yes I do have it it was my past it is my reality now but it's me it's only me who can change that and you can nice ah it's so interesting it's it's I love to hear your passion for what you're doing and oh thank you so much it's so wonderful how you're using this passion and these experiences to make the world a better place oh I really hope that I I make a difference in the world because because uh as I have such experience in my life and I know that it works I want more people to know about that more people to experience it to be happier to build healthier relationships to build a better world for ourselves yeah I wish I wish one day I I will have bigger influence just because of that thing to see um the world more beautiful around myself because of course I'm partly doing it for myself I want to live in a uh in a very transformative and very passionate and very positive and optimistic world yeah and I love that there's so many different gifts and so many different paths out there and that people just go with what resonates with them and they're like oh that's that's gonna be the thing that's gonna help me go forward is there any last thing that you'd like to say before we close well I want to say big thanks to you for all of your questions for your energy you definitely inspired me to open up and I felt very understood seen and very comfortable sharing here so thank you so much Katie oh thank you it's a pleasure to talk to you so the way that I end my conversations is I give hugs oh I love that thank you thank you so much I'm curious about your journey with with meditation and how you experience it I would love to hear about how it has affected your life and what what you've gotten out of it but I know that this theme of wanting to upgrade our lives wanting to connect with our bodies and wanting to break out of the old patterns that we were raised in that are damaging the patterns of not dealing with stress of not communicating and not knowing what's going on in our bodies and how our bodies are reacting to the stress inside of it something that was said that I wrote down that stuck out to me was embodied experience I don't know that just feels like a meaningful combination of two words