Check Out Corrine Champigny’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Corrine Champigny.

Hi Corrine, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I broke my foot falling off a rooftop in India after running from the tsunami trying to save some orphans. At least that was the rumor going around back home in Nashville after the tsunami in December 2004. Granted, all of these things did happen, just not all at once. We don’t always recognize when an experience or decision is an actual turning point that will affect us for the rest of our lives. I would never have ended up in India running from the waters of the tsunami, marrying an Indian man and starting an orphanage, had I not been fired from the Chopra Center.

Freedom has always been important to me. When I was young, this manifested as the freedom to quit university to play music for a living, move to Australia for a year, and even leave Canada to live as an illegal alien to pursue my dreams in Nashville. Yet in Music City USA, I was struck by the desperation I saw around me in the musicians, singers, and songwriters who were all waiting for their big break. I didn’t feel much joy in them as they were pursuing their dreams. I decided that I didn’t want my happiness to depend on whether I would or would not get a record deal. This was a major turning point in my thinking. I didn’t know yet that unlimited peace and happiness were inherently within me and that search would become a running theme for the rest of my life.

In 1993, I served as President of the Transcendental Meditation Siddhi Program held in Washington, D.C..  I found the truth inside myself during this 30-day silent meditation retreat. I recall hundreds of mattresses placed on the floor of an empty office building, taking up the entire 21st floor so that 500 of us could sit comfortably to meditate all day. One day, after meditating eight hours a day for three weeks, the Ramada Inn elevator bell dinged as it reached my floor, signaling me to step off. I felt floaty walking down the hallway to my hotel room. There was a massive silence within me as I stepped forward to look in the mirror at the end of my bed in my small room. I looked at my reflection and into my eyes and saw myself looking at myself. That sounds strange, but those were the only words that came as there seemed to be no personal me as I looked in the mirror. Looking back at the image in the mirror was the vastness of the universe looking through my eyes, but there was no personal me. I didn’t yet have an understanding of what I was experiencing. I knew that nothing I could ever do, be or accomplish in my life could ever come close to this bliss I was feeling inside. I knew going forward that all of the answers in my life would come from this vast stillness. This was an important turning point since, up until that time, I was sure music was my path, yet all of that changed after 30 days of silence.

That turning point would seem like the end of my spiritual-seeking, but I realized that the experience of life is an infinite spiral with no beginning and no end. The next thirty years have been an integration of this knowingness with many turning points and painful escapades. My life could read like a good Indiana Jones action adventure because I never did buy into what society would call success. Maybe it was because of the spiritual knowingness coupled with my gypsy-like childhood, but I said yes to where ever my heart took me. I am not saying I did not have pain and heartache, but once I found the truth inside myself, I was no longer cut to the core with pain. Once a chapter was over, I cried it out with tears and pillow bashing. The pillow bashing and yelling at the Universe was always a turning point. Each time my heart broke from disappointment, failed businesses, friendships ending, lovers leaving, you know, life, I was able to recover with some great songs to tell the story of my pain. I was determined, never deterred, and also an eternal optimist. I never got stuck in belief systems, relationships, jobs, or regret. I never held onto grief or sorrow, and once I said goodbye to something, I was done. You could say my letting go muscle was strong and fully flexed. I kept moving forward, creating and recreating how I walked in the world. .

A few years after the 30 days of silence, I started studying with Deepak Chopra, and he became my first spiritual teacher. The first time I traveled to India was with Deepak, and in due course, I moved from Nashville to San Diego and started working at the Chopra Center.

After three years, my free spirit was ready to leave the Chopra Center but getting fired made it easy to change my plane ticket to India and depart with an open-ended trip, let go of my condo, and put my things in storage (for the next eight years!). A few years later, I had a full-blown three-day Hindu marriage ceremony in India. My Indian husband Satya and I had a wonderful marriage for ten years, and we never fought before, during, or after our divorce. Still, the strain of living on two different continents and spending only half the year together took a toll on us. We continue to be the Mommy and Daddy to 33 children at our Orphanage in South India.

In 2005 my various interests, talents, and spiritual awakening started to merge as I began touring and performing at New Thought Churches, yoga studios, and spiritual seminars. I would simultaneously lead workshops on chanting, meditation, and finding happiness within. Playing music at events for Deepak Chopra, Denise Linn, Gary Zukav, and Jean Houston, I found a niche market that combined my depth of knowledge in spirituality with my musical talents. Eventually, I led spiritual destination retreats in Europe, Canada, and India.

I recorded and released five albums, including Love Joy featuring Bhagavan Das. Performing worldwide, I have made many television appearances and can be found on Spotify, YouTube, and iTunes. With over thirty years of experience in the healing arts, I am known as the ‘stress relief guru to the stars of Nashville. It was a natural progression for me to work with the music industry people in Nashville and Los Angeles since I traveled the world playing music until the turning point when I found meditation and my life mission changed. Specializing in helping people find the happiness inherent within themselves through my signature Awareness Yoga, Mantra Meditation, heart-opening music, and balanced living, I eventually co-founded The Ivy House in Nashville in 2011 as a community gathering space for like-minded individuals. I am passionate about helping people find balance in their lives, and I continue hosting gatherings, training, retreats, and seminars at The Ivy House and many other locations in the USA, Canada, and India. As the co-founder of Global Watch Foundation, I am the Mommy of 33 orphaned children in South India, where my former partner Sathyan Gopalan and I have been operating a Children’s Home since 2009. My life is one of service as I connect with my heart and aspire to offer hope and inspiration to everyone I encounter.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
An important turning point is when it took a journey to Peru and six ayahuasca ceremonies in my fifties to figure out ‘why’ a propensity for painkillers while being on such a deeply spiritual journey. Laying in bed for four months with adrenal fatigue caused by complications of detoxing off Suboxone, a ‘special’ prescription medication to get me off painkillers, I watched a documentary called DMT, The Spiritual Molecule. After the movie finished, I knew I needed to travel to Peru. I found the retreat center and the shaman from that documentary and was there throwing my guts up six months later. We were deep in the rainforest without cell phone service, internet, or minimal power. The ayahuasca medicine showed me that I was born an empath on the first night in the ceremony. Because I had the memory of before I was born, I had made a childish decision to take on my family’s karma/pain. The painkillers allowed me to continue to ‘wrongly’ take on the pain of others.

One has to have the tenacity to succeed at anything in this world. I didn’t have staying power for much of anything, including my studies, music, relationships, money, and careers, but I have always been committed to my spiritual journey. They say it’s best to dig one large deep hole in life rather than many shallow ones. My pathless path has been digging many shallow holes, and fortunately for me, they finally collapsed into one big hole to the center of my being. This being-ness that is the real me, has not changed, it is unborn and will never die. Water cannot wet it; wind cannot dry it.

I carried on seeking until I found the truth within myself. Even though the seeking has stopped, that doesn’t mean my spiritual journey is over. In a way, it has been a new beginning. The great traditions say it is important to know yourself. It seems strange that we need to know ourselves as we live with ourselves from the day we are born until we leave the planet. However, most people do not know themselves. I now know myself clearly, and in that knowing, I have found infinite, a ground of being that is shared with everyone and everything. I have a deep peace, contentment, and joy that I get to relax into every single moment of every day. I longed for it, I searched for it, and I finally found it. Once the seeking stopped, there was an ease in my approach to everything in my life. This understanding continues to unfold in beautiful ways that seem to be infinite. That was a turning point of becoming a human being rather than a human doing.

I could never have imagined all the twists and turns my life would take. I can only see now, in hindsight, that it has all been divinely orchestrated with the exact amount of pain and suffering needed to push me, bend me, stretch me and crack me open at just the right times. Thank goodness I didn’t get what I wanted, but I got what I needed.  Life never really turns out the way we think it will and I am ever so grateful for that.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am somewhat of a well-being and stress relief expert. I am known as the stress relief guru to the stars. I help people find the happiness that already resides within them.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
I was able to spend more time to going inward during Covid and it was a period of deep self-contemplation and meditation for me. Many of my childhood and social conditioning began falling away with all of my quiet time. I am usually quite busy helping others, so it was time for me to go even more inward than I had before. I feel like belief systems are BS, so even if they work for a while, there comes a time when even the conditioning that has previously worked for us needs to fall away. At least it did for me. What I am noticing in the world now is so much incredible unhappiness that I believe is a direct result of the downtime from Covid. During quarantine, people realized they did not like the rat race; however, now that they are back in the rat race, they don’t know how to get out of it or how to create balance. I am now busier than ever with helping people find inner peace and happiness.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://corrinechampigny.com,
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/corrine_champigny/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/corrineblissed
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1ve5EvxAVMH5btsItYpJsA
• Other: http://globalwatchfoundationchildrenshome.org, http://theivyhouse.org