The Person Behind the Screen: How YouTuber Stephanie Kojec’s Spirituality Helps Others Navigate Theirs

Stephanie Kojec

They say never to meet your heroes — implying the idea of who the person is is a construct, that you’ll meet them and be left disappointed. 

As a musical-obsessed teen, I stood anxiously in line waiting for a chance to meet and obtain an autograph from Rent star Anthony Rapp. As he moved closer and closer to where my Mom, best friend, her mom, and I were standing, my palms began to sweat, and my heart raced. The man I had been listening to on repeat was walking toward me, and I was going to talk to him.

He barely looked at me. He took my program, scribbled his name, and moved down the line. 

Regardless of how underwhelming the moment played out, it was still a neat experience and somewhere in my childhood bedroom sits a 15-year-old program with Anthony Rapp’s scribbled signature. 

So when I reached out to spiritual YouTuber Stephanie Kojec for an interview, I was more than a little nervous. I’ve been listening to her guided meditations and watching her Oracle and astrology videos for over two years. Her calming, immersive, and healing videos have assisted in my journey of self-discovery and exploration. Hearing her voice instantly relaxes me, and I am forever grateful for stumbling upon her page.

Despite my hesitation, I sent an introductory DM. To my absolute thrill, she promptly replied. After doing some brain-tingling time math (she lives in Australia), we met via Zoom in mid-March. 

Sometimes meeting your heroes can be disappointing, but other times you spend an hour conversing with them, and the experience exceeds your expectations. That’s what happened when I met Stephanie. 

After experiencing some technical difficulties on my end, I started the conversation by word-vomiting how much her work has helped me and how appreciative I was that she agreed to speak with me. Although we met virtually, her calming and compassionate presence was palpable through the screen. After reigning in the fangirling, we entered the flow of conversation.

Stephanie is a school teacher and has been practicing mindfulness meditation since she was 16. “As the years progressed, I kind of got more and more into it,” she explained. “I actually got known in my peer group for doing meditation, and a friend of mine, who owned a gym asked, ‘Can you come and run a few classes?’” She said yes, and from there, people started asking for recordings of her meditations.

That request led to the creation of her YouTube channel, which opened the door to her creativity as she expanded her content into different types of meditations. That was four years ago, and today Stephanie’s channel continues to grow (she currently has 17K subscribers). 

I’ve listened to a few meditation-focused channels over the years, but hers leaves a distinct impression. Her videos are rooted in creative storytelling but don’t feel like you’re listening to a story. Instead, her words, delivery, and sound production invite the listener to feel as if they’re thinking the words themselves. 

I shared this sentiment with Stephanie, “That’s what I want it to feel like,” she said. “I don’t want it to feel like you’re listening to a story. I want it to be immersive and feel like you have those sensations for yourself because that’s what I want to feel in meditation.” 

Stephanie currently works full-time teaching high school but is trained in kindergarten through grade six, and she is able to incorporate her gift for leading guided meditation in the classroom. While the high school students are hesitant to get into the practice, the younger students love it. 

“There’s one video on my channel, “Into a Mystical Forest,” and you’ve got this rainbow-colored bird guide, and it takes you to a grandfather tree; they just love that stuff,” she beamed. “For them, it’s like watching a movie because they can see everything you say and bring so much more to it.” 

Stephanie always knew she wanted to be a teacher. “If you ask my parents what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would always say teacher,” she reflected. But she also loved to write as a child, getting lost in worlds she created. “I used to love when the teachers would say ‘Write a story about something,’ and I would just go nuts and write adventure-style, wizards and witches, all that stuff,” she remembered. 

Writing, voicing, and producing guided meditations allows her to tap into that childlike wonder and channel her creativity to provide a tool for others to heal. 

It’s estimated that between 200 and 500 million people meditate worldwide, and the practice is continuously gaining traction. The practice is shared by the Hindu and Buddhist religions and dates as far back as 1500 BCE in India and the 3rd and 6th century BC in China. There is no known source of who created or invented meditation, but The Buddha, ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-Tze, and a Japanese monk named Dosho are all known to have spread and encouraged the practice. 

It wasn’t until the 1700s that meditation became a topic of interest in the West with the translation of Eastern philosophy texts into European languages. In the 18th century, philosophers and intellectuals began pondering the practice, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that meditation became more prominent. 

In 1975, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein founded the Insight Meditation Society, effectively beginning the modern mindfulness meditation movement, which is now widely used in modern psychology.

Benefits of the practice include a decrease in depression, anxiety, and stress; increased emotional regulation; improved memory and cognitive abilities; stronger relationships; and enhanced physical health.

“I was doing meditation on a daily basis for about a year before I started teaching it,” Stephanie explained. “Before that, it was just little bits here and there over a few years. I wasn't that into meditation, but when I experienced it, I was like, ‘Oh wow, this feels really good.’ But sometimes sitting down to meditate can be the hardest part,” she said. “I was stuck in that ‘I’m doing nothing, I should be doing something.’ mindset. So that was a struggle for a few years before I really just committed to a daily practice.”

As a seasoned meditator, Stephanie practices three or four times a week, finding that’s enough to keep her mind clear and feel spiritually connected, which is her main goal for meditating. “When you do meditation for long enough, you can drop into that state while doing anything. It doesn’t have to be a long period of time, it can just be a minute of presence that can get you through the whole day. It’s really powerful.”

Meditation is accessible to everyone, and Stephanie’s thoughtful, creative, and divinely-inspired videos make it attainable. As someone who once upon a time also produced audio experiences, I was curious to learn more about her process. 

“To create one meditation, sometimes it can take months,” she explained. “You have this spark or this idea, and it just comes, and then maybe you can’t do anything more with it for a while and it just kind of sits there. And then you read a book or watch a movie, have a conversation, or just something comes in. So my writing process is like a bunch of little ideas that come together to create something.” 

Once she has an outline, she’ll record it as often as needed, the meditation evolving as she speaks. “I think the speaking part is really important. It brings in more ideas and different things in the moment.” After she settles on a recording, she begins adding music to her words.

“I think the music really ties it together,” she said and expressed her belief that the right music is a significant component of the effectiveness of her videos. She primarily uses work from Australian composer Christopher Lloyd Clark, who composes pieces designed for people who lead guided meditations or hypnosis. But she goes a step further, splicing sounds of birds chirping, trees rustling in the wind, and natural sounds to make the experience more immersive. “There’s also another amazing group of composers called Source Vibrations, which has amazing music. It’s got many binaural beats which trigger you to drop into the subconscious parts of yourself that activate more of your imagination.”

In a Q&A video she made for her followers, one of the questions asked was, ‘When did you realize you were a fully awakened person?’ “I’m not,” she matter-of-factly stated with a chuckle when I brought up the question. “I’m still working on it. Sometimes my partner and I joke because — you know what you’re like with your partner — you’re just your goofy, natural self, and he's like, ‘If your followers could see what you're like right now.’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, well, I think they get it,’” she laughed. 

“I have my meditation voice, but now when you hear me talking, it's just my everyday Aussie voice. It's not very special. It's just the creative aspect of me. And sometimes that can be so different from your everyday reality. So as much as I try and live out those aspects that I'm talking about in meditation in my everyday life, I'm still just like, a normal everyday loser,” she joked. 

Her pull toward the spiritual side of the human experience began in a Pentecostal church. Growing up, her family didn’t talk about God — but referred to a higher power found in nature. “My Dad grew up in the Alps, and he taught me about the sun, the earth, the animals, that was God in our family,” she explained.

When she was 16, she started attending church with a friend. “It was different. I learned to have a connection with something greater than myself there, so I’ll always be grateful for that time. But it was a little bit pushy,” she reflected. 

“If you weren’t fully in and weren’t trying to get other people into the church; if you weren't part of the youth group and weren't going on all the camps, it felt like you were in the in-group or the out-group. There was this kind of cool insider group that waited until marriage and did everything correctly.” 

“I was always on the outside because I had my roots growing up the way I did. So I didn't feel fully connected.” She shared this in her Q&A video, which she posted before our conversation. It resonated with me, as I had a similar experience with Pentecostalism. 

Stephanie expressed how she became preachy for a while, especially to her parents, telling them they should be doing this or that, reacting to the fear-based messaging of the church. Over time, their way of life no longer resonated with her, and she stopped attending. “There were a lot of really good people, but just a few experiences were too foreign and too much for me.” Still, she remains grateful for her time as a Pentecostal. “I really felt a strong connection to Jesus, just this personal relationship that I took away with me, that I continue with even though I don’t go to church every Sunday.”

In our conversation, we connected on the positive influence the church’s worship services had on us. For all the shortcomings Pentecostalism has, there’s something beautiful about people coming together, listening and singing along to music, quieting their minds and turning their attention to a higher power. “Thinking about that and talking to you now, maybe that was the basis of meditations and bringing music and being in that prayer-like state,” Stephanie reflected. 

While Christianity was the first stop on her spiritual path, it wasn’t the last. She became drawn to Islam and Buddhism, learning about each religion and incorporating elements that worked for her into her life. She was drawn to Islam, specifically, from watching her Muslim friends live their lives and seeing how they approach things. “Spending time with them opened my eyes to find out where they got their peace from. I was never practicing; I was just interested in learning more about it. And then Buddhism was the same; it just felt so peaceful, and its resonance attracted me.” And her connection to Buddhism deepened her meditation practice.

But being in and honoring nature will always be at the core of her spiritual practice, having been ingrained in her since she was a child. “I get to this point, I just feel off; I don’t feel like myself if I haven't been outside and done something in nature. I can feel heaps of frustration and snappiness if I don’t get that. I think everyone needs it, but I’m just really aware of how much I need it.”

Much like children slip into their own world easier than adults do during guided meditations, they also innately understand the importance of nature. Something which Stephanie reflected on in a way that expertly sums up the importance of communing with our natural world and the magic it holds.

“When you're so young, it's not, ‘Do I believe in it or not?’ It's just something that's a part of who you are. It doesn't need to be expressed in words; you're just connected and not even quite aware of what you're connected to, but it's just part of who you are. And then you go through adolescence, and you start working; you kind of get disconnected from it. And then you go back, and it's like your whole body remembers. It’s not something that I even need to explain in spiritual words. It's just something that I'm always going to be connected to. It’s my own personal experience.”

As our hour approached its end, her love bird, Thanos (a frequent guest star in her YouTube videos), began to chirp louder in the background. “She’s named after the Marvel character,” she laughed. “When I bought her, I was told she was male. And also, I was told she was going to be blue,” she said. “So I'm like, ‘Oh yeah, I'm gonna name him after the strongest being in the universe; makes sense! Little love bird,’ So anyway, she turned out to be a female and turned out purple,” she laughed. 

Stephanie’s YouTube channel has evolved with her spirituality, with the addition of Oracle readings to her content. After discovering the Oracle on holiday, she felt an instant connection to the practice and started doing readings for herself. She then branched out to giving readings to her friends and then people she didn’t know, and eventually, that took off into a side business. 

Her connection to the Oracle compliments her meditations. “Sometimes I use the Oracle as that little bit of spark of inspiration. So I'll be at a point in writing, and I'm like, ‘Where do I go next?’ or ‘What is the meaning of this? What's the purpose behind this meditation? What aspect are we working with?’ And then I'll pull a card, and it just makes so much sense.” 

The Oracle is a tool to help connect her to a deeper aspect of herself, which is also how she approaches her guided meditations. “It's beyond the everyday ego and logic and reasoning,” she explained.

While she doesn’t believe Oracle cards can predict the future, they hold a frequency - much like we do — and when you focus your attention on the cards, there’s a resonance, a magnetic pull between the two, one influencing the other. “You will know which one has something there for you,” she mused. “Subconsciously, you’re connected to everything. Everything's a vibration. You’re connected to this greater web, and the Oracle cards are a really cool tool to practice. And then you can expand it further from there.”

Ever the teacher, Stephanie has created an Oracle course to help people explore their natural abilities, divulging everything she knows to help others tap into that interconnected web of light. 

“At the end of the day, when someone reads for you, no matter how much they meditate or clear themselves beforehand, there's an aspect of their own life that's coming in and interpreting it from their own perspective and ego,” she explained. While she believes it’s still nice to get read by someone else sometimes, it’s that personal insight that just can’t be replaced. “You can get a clearer interpretation for yourself and find deeper meaning when you do your own cards, rather than always getting someone else to do it.”

She recently partnered with a California-based artist to design her own deck, filled with interpretations written by Stephanie. “They’re really minimalistic and watercolor. Everything is hand-painted and channeled with her. It’s exciting.”

Listening back to the hour-long conversation we shared in March was a gift. I’m thankful that technology allows us to dip back in time to discussions of the past, and I can’t help but feel renewed by Stephanie’s words. Her wisdom is effortless, and her compassion palpable. She also has extended me a significant amount of grace as it’s taken me four months to bring her story to life. 

But like she said, sometimes the words aren’t ready to bloom; they have to germinate, get rooted, and eventually blossom into whatever creation they’re meant to become. 

I encourage you to explore her videos, sign-up for her course, or book a reading. May her wisdom be a tool in your never-ending journey of awakening.