153: Manifestation, Health Transformation, and Vibrations: Insights from Juan Steigerwald

In this episode, I’m doing something a little different than what you usually hear on the Clean Food Dirty Girl podcast. I’m sitting down with Juan Eduardo Steigerwald, an accomplished international business excellence expert, a fellow plant-based eater, and host of several podcasts, one of which I recently had the pleasure of being a guest on.

While we both share a love for plant-based living, this conversation goes beyond food. We dive into manifestation, emotional alignment, and the science behind personal transformation. Juan shares how he’s used curiosity, data-driven self-experimentation, and vibrational awareness to create meaningful shifts in his life.

If you’ve ever wondered how mindset, emotion, and intention influence real-world results— this conversation will get you thinking.

Helpful links

• My appearance on Juan’s podcast
• Juan’s Health, Happiness, Planet podcast
• Juan’s business website
• Clean Food Dirty Girl Meal Plan Club

About Juan
Juan Eduardo Steigerwald is an international Business Excellence expert, executive coach, and entrepreneur with more than two decades of global experience in performance improvement, leadership development, and organizational transformation.

After many years as a senior advisor at a well-known global consulting firm, Juan joined one of the world’s largest banks, where he served as Chief Quality Officer. In this role, he built and led multiple international teams and successfully deployed more than a dozen Business Excellence and Lean Six Sigma programs across the organization.

More than 20 years into his corporate career, Juan founded WAVE – Business Excellence Footprint, S.L., a digital training and coaching company. Together with his international team of experts based around the world, Juan and WAVE support professionals and organizations on their career and transformation journeys—regardless of location, seniority, or industry.

WAVE offers a robust portfolio of 22 digital courses, along with coaching and certification programs tailored for corporate environments.

#Manifestation #SelfGrowth #PersonalTransformation  #Business

Transcript, auto-generated, may have errors

Molly Patrick (00:01)
Hey there, this is Molly and you’re listening to the Clean Food Dirty Girl podcast. Thank you for tuning in today. I have a special treat for all of you. This is going to be an episode unlike any episodes that I have done so far. My guest today is Juan Segerwald. I was on one of your podcasts a while back, Juan, and we had a great connection. We had a great conversation and at the end I was like, “Hey…”

Juan (00:24)
Yeah.

Molly Patrick (00:29)
“Can you come on my podcast?” And so you kindly said yes, and here we are. So before we dive into the topic, before we start things out, Juan, welcome to the show. And if you could just introduce yourself, that would be awesome.

Juan (00:29)
Yeah, thank you so much, Molly, for the invitation. It’s great to be here. And also big thanks from my side for you being on my podcast a couple of weeks ago. That was so amazing. I could say that whoever’s listening to this one could definitely listen to ours as well, because that conversation was also quite amazing, which I’m sure we can extend with this one as well.

Molly Patrick (01:04)
Yes, and we will put the link to that episode in the show notes of this one too, so it’s easy to find.

Juan (01:11)
Fantastic. And well, so to my side, to put it in a nutshell, I know a lot of people wonder how come that combination of a Spanish-looking name with a very German-looking name exists. Yeah, so my background is quite international. I was born in South America, in Venezuela. I grew up with my grandfather who’s from Germany and with my grandmother who’s from Hong Kong. I went to an international school, so I just grew up with all these different cultures.

It was quite amazing because it really helped me later throughout my life when I started going into the corporate world to understand how different cultures work and how to make myself understood. If I’m speaking to somebody from Asia compared to somebody from South America or Europe, it was somehow much easier to communicate with them, to get my point across, and to find a consensus in the work that we were doing.

So that’s a bit of my background. I worked a few years for American Express. During my time there, I went into project management, lean management, Six Sigma—all that kind of stuff that has to do with improving business excellence in a company. After that, I worked as a consultant for four years, and then I went to a French bank. I was there for 13 years as their Chief Quality Officer, where I had teams in different parts of the world rolling out business excellence programs. Now, for the last six years, I have had my own company based in Spain.

I am still doing process and project management for my clients, but what I am very proud of is our portfolio for helping companies with their sustainability projects. Many times they know they have to achieve a certain target by the year 2030, but they have no clue how to get there. I usually help them reach that target.

We also do other projects that have to do with health for employees and people outside the corporate world—how to be happier in their life and how to be more sustainable for our planet. Therefore, I have a lot of different directions where I try to help individuals. If somebody asked me to put it in a nutshell, I would say I support people in their transformation. It could be a transformation at work—becoming the leaders of tomorrow—or if they want to be healthier, we transform to be healthier. If they want to be more abundant, we define what abundance means to them and move toward that target. I just help you transform in different directions toward the goals you like in your life.

Molly Patrick (04:30)
I really wanted to talk with you more because I was very intrigued by your background. It’s very global. You have a lot of experience in different worlds, and it seems like right now those worlds have almost merged a little bit, as they tend to do when we’re on a path for ourselves. I know that you went through transformations yourself. Did the transformations that took place in your life lead to some of the work that you’re doing right now?

Juan (05:00)
Yeah. Well, one could usually do a transformation from a place where you start getting signs from the outside world or from your body saying, “Ooh, something has to change. If you continue this path, it’s not going to look good.” Or you could do a transformation from a place where you’re doing really well. People have the decision to say, “Hey, I’m doing pretty well with my life, and I would still like to transform because I have that continuous improvement mindset.”

We could have that as a starting point, or we have a starting point where things start going downhill. That was my path. That’s what I experienced when I was in my thirties. That’s where it first came up that the doctor said, “You need to take medicine for blood pressure. You need to take medicine to reduce your cholesterol. Oh, you have acid reflux, you’ve got to take that.” Then you have side effects from that, so you have to take another medicine to reduce the side effects of the first medicine.

I was starting to get into this vicious loop and I was thinking, “Wait a minute, I’m just in my thirties. Why am I taking so many different types of medicine? How is it going to look when I’m 60, 70, or 80?” I always had the perception that I was eating healthy and living a healthy lifestyle because I was going to the gym three or four times a week. I was working out and having what I thought was healthy—some chicken and potatoes and maybe one little leaf of salad somewhere in the corner. That salad leaf was probably lucky if I even looked at it.

Then I said, “Let me change something.” Somehow it always revolved around the same type of eating. Instead of chicken, I thought turkey was healthier. Instead of eating beef three times a week, I’ll just eat a little more chicken. I tried to get a level more healthy according to my definition of healthy eating habits. Then at some point, I did another blood test. All the values were horrible. I said, “I need to do something really drastic.”

I started checking what was out there and I came across Dr. Michael Greger. I saw one of his YouTube videos where he did a summary of the year to see the top things that lead to death in the world and what the root causes are. As someone who always worked with projects, I thought that was quite interesting because I love data-driven decisions. If I make a decision to change the way I eat, it has to be backed up with real-life data. Dr. Greger delivered the data.

I looked into the website and more videos. I was the kind of person who would eat meat probably three times a day. If the meal didn’t have meat in it, I wouldn’t categorize it as a meal. I thought my body was just going to start dissolving like sugar if I didn’t have the protein from the meat. That was the way I was programmed because I was reading magazines for bodybuilding and fitness. It was all about “eat your protein, eat your meat.” If you want to be like a bull, you’ve got to eat a bull.

Suddenly I had another priority. Instead of focusing on muscle, I should focus on my health targets—my KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). I told my wife, “I’m going to try going plant-based. We’re going to do a pilot phase for three months, and then I’ll do a blood test just to see what happens.” She said, “Okay, when are we going to start?” I said, “I’ll start tonight.” She said, “Tonight? But we still have meat in the fridge!” I said, “No, I’m just going to go cold turkey. I’m going to do it from one day to the next. If you want, we can give the stuff in the fridge to the neighbor, but I’m starting today.”

I wanted to collect data and see the before and after results. I saw it like a project. I didn’t see it as being deprived; I saw it as a scientist wanting to figure out what happens when I twitch certain things. My wife was like, “My gosh, that’s amazing. What are we going to do now?” She is usually the person who cooks at home, and I’m the one who cleans up. She started looking into the internet and books to see how to cook a healthy plant-based diet. We didn’t want to do it the wrong way.

To make a long story short, three months later, I did the blood test. My doctor was like, “Wow, what type of medication are you taking now?” I said, “At the moment, I’m not taking anything.” He said, “Wow, your blood values are amazing. They’ve never been this good.” He said it was like a teenager’s. He told me, “Whatever you’re doing, continue doing that.”

I was still really scared of getting a deficiency. I decided to extend my pilot phase and do a blood test every three months just to be on the safe side. Every three months, everything was just as good or getting even better. Even my allergies disappeared. I used to have seasonal allergies in the spring and summer—sneezing, watering eyes—and I had to take medicine for that. I even had a nut allergy. All of that just disappeared. When springtime came, I was probably 50 to 60% better than before.

Fast forward, I extended the pilot phase again. I didn’t need medicine for blood pressure or cholesterol anymore. The next summer, 80% of my allergies were gone. Another year later, 95% were gone. Today, I don’t have any allergies—not to nuts, flowers, or pollen. I don’t do blood tests every three months anymore; now I just do it once a year. Just like in projects, if you know everything is running in a controlled way, you can extend your control points.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be turning 50. I have to say that I feel as energetic and as good as I did as a teenager. The mental focus and sharpness I feel when I work throughout the day is amazing. I don’t have those tipping points where I feel tired in the middle of the day. My body recuperates much faster after a workout. Even the way I sleep is better.

The other thing is that I love to eat. I eat six times a day. The cool thing is that before and after becoming plant-based, I’m still eating six times a day and having a large plate—like a big pizza plate of food. Within a couple of months, all the excess weight I had was just going down. I went from about 92 or 93 kilos down to 80 kilos six months later. A year later, I went down another 10 kilos to 72, and it stayed there. I got my ideal body weight for my height while still eating huge portions. That was the summary of my pilot phase that just became part of my lifestyle.

Molly Patrick (15:43)
Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. What I love about this is that you really went into it with curiosity. You’re a business person, you like projects, and you thought, “Okay, this is going to be a project where I’m experimenting on myself.” Anytime we go into something with curiosity, it’s really helpful because you can look at it objectively.

A lot of what you experienced, I hear from our community all the time—the allergy stuff, the mental clarity, and releasing weight to the point where your body says, “Okay, I’m good,” and then it stays there. It’s fantastic that you found this and that 10 years later, you’re still at it.

Juan (17:05)
You’re welcome. I even had two data points on that. My wife was the second data point because she said, “I’m going to do whatever you’re going to do.” Having a partner who supports you in that experiment helps a lot. She had exactly the same results. She lost weight and has so much more energy. She also had a condition called Hashimoto’s, which is thyroid under-function. The doctors said she would have to take hormones for the rest of her life. She was actually able to overcome that by being plant-based as well. She didn’t have to take hormones in the end. It was an amazing experiment and outcome for both of us.

Molly Patrick (17:58)
Fabulous. I love it. So many people don’t realize the power of what you put on the plate and how that can change your whole life and your health. If we’re not healthy and feeling good, we’re going to miss out on life.

I want to go in a different direction now. I’m glad you set the stage with that story so people can understand you better. I want to talk about manifestation. I’ve never covered this on the podcast before, and I would love to dive in with you because I know you have some experience in that world. I want to give you that word and let you run with it.

Juan (19:00)
Fantastic. Thank you so much for that question. It’s really funny because I never really knew there was a word “manifestation.” I was just doing things very intuitively. Later in life, I found out, “Okay, that’s called manifestation.” I thought it was just a coincidence that certain things were happening, but I figured out I was actually the creator of that manifestation.

To give you an example, when I started as an employee in the bank, I was a very good observer. I observed the middle managers and senior managers and thought, “What do I see as my trajectory? How do I see my roadmap in this organization?” I decided I didn’t want to do my current task for longer than one year because I wanted to become a team head, then a department head, and then a senior manager.

I decided this in my first few months without reading any books on manifestation. I said to myself, “If I want to be a senior manager, I should be observing how they work. How do they pick up the phone? How do they act in meetings? How do they breathe, walk, and answer requests?” I wanted to absorb all of that and find a role model to emulate. I thought if I reacted in similar ways, it would get me closer to that goal.

I wanted to be really clear on how that end scenario would look. I would go into a very nice, easy resting state at home and contemplate my future. What I didn’t know then was that I was lowering my brainwaves. Usually, you have beta, alpha, theta, and delta. I was going from beta into a relaxed alpha state where my attention was more on my inner world than the outer world. I was thinking, “This is me in 10 years as a senior manager.” I thought about how I would be dressed, how I would walk, and how I would think.

I would review that over and over in my mind. I didn’t only see the vision; I associated the feeling with it. I would feel what I would be feeling in that moment. I would start having those sensations in my body. I’d visualize leading a team meeting and think, “How does it feel to lead this team?” I started feeling those emotions in my heart. It felt pretty exciting.

When I came out of that resting state, I felt closer to my future. I didn’t feel like there was a 10-year gap anymore; I felt like I was already there. Later, when I read books about quantum physics, neuroscience, and epigenetics, they confirmed that if you use those techniques, it will bring you much faster to that desired vision.

Within four years at American Express in Germany, I went through all the levels of Lean Six Sigma. I also thought, “A senior manager earns a lot of money.” I had to find out how much they earned—this was before Google—and I realized it was four times what I was earning. It seemed impossible, but I visualized it. I asked myself open questions: “How would it be like to be a great leader? How would it be like to have a salary four times higher? How would it be like to be a great parent or friend?”

If you ask the right questions, you start getting answers. Your neocortex starts putting together associations from everything you’ve learned. Sometimes the answer comes from your experiences, and sometimes it comes from “source”—some call it the Divine or God. I would read a book about management and then try to apply that information in real life. I practiced leading meetings until I became an expert.

Four years later, I was in meetings where people asked, “What are you doing here? Aren’t you super young?” I didn’t know how it happened; it felt like a coincidence. But in reality, it was manifestation. I was visualizing, and the universe was reconstructing things to reach that vision. You don’t need to know exactly what the path is. You don’t need to know how many hours to study. You just need to know your end goal and feel it in your heart. Then serendipity happens.

That’s what happened with my career. I became a Chief Quality Officer very fast. I didn’t even study banking, yet suddenly I was on the Board of Directors. I also envisioned having an amazing team, and I started living that reality. Now I live in Spain. A few years ago, I thought about how to improve my life. I don’t like winter or cold weather. I started visualizing palm trees, a beach, sunshine, and an exciting job. Two years later, I’m living in Valencia with my own successful business.

I found out the real trick to manifesting. Everything in this world is vibration. You don’t have to be spiritual to know that; it’s quantum physics. Solid things have a low vibration, and we vibrate as well. My vibration when I was eating a lot of meat and “fear” from the industry did not allow me to manifest as much as I could after becoming plant-based.

After turning plant-based, my manifestations were in a “boost” form. They happened much quicker. I was vibrating at a higher level. I wasn’t causing damage to the planet; I was being kind to animals and people. My body was in a frequency that aligned better with quick manifestations.

Every emotion has a specific frequency. If you want to tune into love, you have to tune into that frequency, like a radio station. Do you want to tune into fear and anger, or love, gratitude, and abundance? I was able to tune into joy and abundance much quicker after being plant-based. My ego dismantled. I didn’t need a car with 600 horsepower or an expensive watch. I became more compassionate.

The emotions we cause in others also raise their frequency. If I’m kind, we both vibrate higher. If I’m arrogant, both our vibrations go down. In that state, you can’t attract good things because of the Law of Attraction. I realized that every animal that died to land on my plate went through a process of fear. I was sponsoring that low frequency with my money. I can feel the emotional states of others and animals. I realized I couldn’t have a high vibration while eating that fear and pain. Today, I feel I can vibrate at a much higher level. Meditating is easy because I’m not causing that sadness in the world anymore.

Molly Patrick (39:34)
That is very powerful. Tracing a piece of meat back to its origin and the journey it took is a hard reality to look at. I appreciate you bringing that up. You’re very data-driven and curious, which balances this conversation. Some people might write this off as “woo-woo,” but you pair it with quantum physics and science.

I have a few questions. What if people don’t know exactly what they want? Or they have an idea but don’t believe it’s possible for them, so they can’t visualize it?

Juan (41:31)
Yeah, absolutely. When I ask a person what they want and they don’t know, it’s usually easier for them to answer what they don’t want. People tend to be in a mindset of complaining about what is painful. I help them use that circuitry. We brainstorm a big list of everything they don’t like about their life or job. They are usually happy to tell you all the things they can complain about.

Then we take the reverse. What is the opposite of each of those things? They realize they have a list of 40 positive things they would like for their future. I ask, “If you implemented some of these, would it change how you feel?” Almost 100% say yes.

The other way is to ask for an ideal scenario without getting lost in the details. If they don’t know what industry they want to work in, I ask, “What emotions do you want to feel in that future job?” They might say happy, fulfilled, and secure. I ask about working hours—maybe flexible, with some home office. We take those high-level points and start the manifestation process. The details will evolve by themselves.

I tell them to create symbols for those feelings. Security might be a contract with a stamp. Fulfillment might be people holding hands. Then we do “mental rehearsal.” Relax, go into that alpha state, and focus on the symbol for security. I ask them to find a memory of when they felt secure—maybe being hugged by their mom as a child. Once they feel that security in their body, I tell them to “lock it in” and link it to the symbol of the future job.

The vision in your mind is the GPS coordinate, but the emotion in your heart is the gas pedal. It’s the magnetic field. The more you have that feeling, the more you attract that vision. People are often surprised when serendipity happens—someone calls them with a job offer that fits those high-level points perfectly. You don’t need to know everything in detail; just focus on the high-level goal and the feeling.

Molly Patrick (50:49)
I love how thorough you are. This is different for a lot of people because we’ve been told we have to work really hard to get what we want. We focus on action items and stress. Maybe working hard isn’t the best way.

Juan (51:22)
Exactly. It might make people kinder because they aren’t under so much tension. If you think you have to work hard to be successful, you might end up stressed, with health problems, and not being nice to your family. You can be addicted to a life you don’t even like.

If you want a house with a swimming pool, you might work for 30 years to pay a mortgage, spending hours in traffic and meetings. That’s a lot of action for one output. If you manifest, you speed up the process. You attract it with your mind and feelings.

When I started my company, I thought it would take two years to get a good income. I decided to experiment. I wanted the same income I had in the corporate world in my first year without spending much on marketing. I used the Euro sign as a symbol and visualized money coming into my banking app. I felt the joy of it.

Two days before I founded the company, someone called me out of nowhere. I had coached her 10 years ago. She was now a Head of Business Excellence and needed a coach to train project managers. She said, “I don’t know why you came to my mind, but I needed to contact you.” She had a budget left over at the end of the year and needed to pay an invoice before December. The amount she offered was exactly my annual corporate salary. I didn’t just find that; I created that manifestation.

Molly Patrick (57:54)
That’s a wonderful story. I know our audience is going to love this. I’ve loved learning from you. Where can people find you?

Juan (58:37)
The easiest place is the website: www.wave-bef.com. WAVED stands for Business Excellence Footprint. We transform businesses, employees, and management. I also have three podcasts: Health, Happiness and Planets, WAVED for Managers, and WAVED for Employees.

I have three final tips for your audience:

1. Continuous Improvement Mindset: Never be happy with the current state as the way it will be forever. Always think about how you can be a better employee, parent, or friend.
2. Metacognition: Look at yourself from a “bird’s eye view.” Observe how you think, act, and feel throughout the day.
3. Tune into your Emotional State: Have an emotional dashboard. If your mood shifts, ask yourself what the root cause was. It’s much easier to fix it in the moment than three days later.

Molly Patrick (1:03:12)
Those are great tips. It takes a lot of awareness and practice.

Juan (1:03:41)
Exactly. It’s like a muscle. The first day at the gym is hard, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. If you don’t manage it today, that’s fine—there’s always tomorrow.

Molly Patrick (1:05:06)
Awesome. Thank you so much, Juan. It’s always a pleasure. Thanks for being on the show.

Juan (1:05:10)
Thank you, Molly, for the invitation. It was so nice to be here. Bye-bye!