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Sofa Series | Unveiling Consciousness with Bruce Burger
193 Plays1 year ago
In this captivating episode of the Sofa Series, your hosts, Chiara and Isa (affectionately known as Cheech and Nibby), are joined by a dear family friend, Bruce Burger—fondly referred to as "Uncle Bruce."
Bruce is not just any guest; he's the visionary founder of the legendary Heartwood Institute, a transformative haven in Northern California (1978 to 2006) and as the renowned author of "Esoteric Anatomy: The Body As Consciousness," often hailed as the "bible of energy medicine."
Bruce’s academic foundation includes a B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. from The New School for Social Research. Bruce's teaching career has spanned prestigious institutions like the University of Nevada and Rutgers University. Yet, in 1972, he embarked on a profound pilgrimage to India in search of right livelihood and a deeper comprehension of humanity. This journey led him to the realm of Polarity Therapy, where he has been imparting the wisdom of Energy Medicine and Transformational Bodywork through Polarity Energy Balancing since 1977.
Currently, Bruce shares his transformative insights through residential workshops in Transformational Therapy, an extraordinary fusion of Energy Medicine and Somatic Psychology.
Join us for a profound exploration of consciousness, holistic healing, and the intricate interplay between the body and consciousness. Dive deep into Bruce Burger's wisdom and experiences, and discover the boundless connections that shape our existence. This episode is a wellspring of inspiration and insight.
IG: @rippleaffectpod
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Transcript
Introduction to The Ripple Effect Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
You're listening to The Ripple Effect with your hosts Cheech and Nippy, a podcast that explores how individual change has the capacity to affect the whole. From neuroscience to donuts, we're two sisters with a deep curiosity for ancient wisdom and modern knowledge, and we're obsessed with learning alongside you because we don't know. Let's dive in.
00:00:29
Speaker
Kia ora here.
Introducing Bruce Berger
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm so excited for another episode of the Ripple Effect Pod with all of you. Today's guest is a dear, dear family friend, Bruce Berger, who Isa and I lovingly call Uncle Bruce, because we've known him since we were tiny. Bruce Berger is the founder of the legendary Heartwood Institute.
00:00:49
Speaker
a utopian educational environment in Northern California from 1978 to 2006, and he's also the author of Esoteric Anatomy, The Body as Consciousness. It's an amazing textbook. Bruce's background includes a BS from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA from the New School for Social Research.
00:01:06
Speaker
Bruce has been a member of the faculty of the University of Nevada and Rutgers University. He was guided to polarity therapy and has been teaching energy medicine and transformational bodywork through polarity energy balancing since 1977.
Influence of Bruce Berger
00:01:21
Speaker
Bruce is currently offering residential workshops in transformational therapy, his unique synthesis of energy medicine and somatic psychology.
00:01:29
Speaker
Now, we jump right in, lovingly remembering a class that Issa and I took with him a few years ago now. Just as a side note, Bruce mentions that we started with an invocation, and it was simply that Issa and I laid down a simple prayer that we would have a good conversation and be able to stay in our center, which Bruce helps with every time we're around him. Enjoy.
Sacredness and Unity of Life
00:01:54
Speaker
Issa and I a couple years ago had the pleasure of getting to take one of your classes. And it really was an eye-opening experience for me because as part of the class, we got to order your book. And it is Esoteric Anatomy, has been hailed as the Bible of energy medicine. And you as the author of this, it is a literal textbook and it is incredible. And when I got that in the mail, that's where I was like,
00:02:24
Speaker
Oh, Uncle Bruce, you're a big deal. And the class was amazing. And so I'd just love to welcome you to the ripple effect and I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today. Thank you so much. I'm really grateful for this opportunity to rave about the sacredness and unity of all life. And I love that you began with an invocation of the goddess because this creation is the self sacrifice of the goddess.
00:02:54
Speaker
She loved, just like your mom, she just loves you so profoundly that she's given herself totally to this creation.
Energy and Intelligence in Life Forms
00:03:02
Speaker
And so all of the powers, all of the forces, all of the dimensions of this vast and mysterious creative intelligence play out through you. You are one with that force. It's not that you are a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in the drop.
00:03:21
Speaker
Thank you, Bruce. What a beautiful way to start. I love the notion of creator didn't make the world, she became it. It's her self-sacrifice, you know, because each of us embodies the mystery, personifies the mystery. So the incredible, you know, love that a mother has for her children is the same love that that goddess has for her creation and the incredible self, you know, willingness to sacrifice herself
00:03:49
Speaker
is the same willingness that our Divine Mother has for us, you know. And we see that played out, you know, in the power that we've been given. Let me begin at the foundation. You know, today we all understand that everything is energy. And if we look at any energy field, we understand that it's a cybernetic mechanism that is taking in its experience and then feeding back self-correcting.
00:04:17
Speaker
So, Humberto Materana, as the father of the Chilean school of biology,
00:04:24
Speaker
And he says that life, the definitive characteristic of life is it's a cognitive process, a cognitive process, that every life form is self-creating. It's a field of energy taking in its experience and then integrating that experience to assimilate its environment and maintain its homeostasis.
00:04:48
Speaker
that life is essentially a cognitive process. So what we're seeing here is everything is made of intelligence. That's what we're seeing here, that every atom, every molecule, every cell, every organism is what it is, because it's essentially a fabric of intelligence. And we do the same thing in each moment. We're taking in our experience and hopefully self-correcting.
Yoga and the Sattvic State
00:05:13
Speaker
to create a more harmonious or more effective or more successful or more beautiful, more loving, more powerful world, whatever it is that brings us well-being. So the ancient wisdom of India reveals that everything is made of intelligence, that we live in a vast fabric of creative intelligence. And in the macrocosm, in the macrocosm, this intelligence is your cognizance.
00:05:42
Speaker
is your presence. And this is yourself, because everything else in your world is changing. And the only thing that hasn't changed, the only thing that hasn't changed, the only thing that's real is this presence, this awareness. And what's mind-blowing about yourself is it's the same self, the same presence, the same awareness in all of us.
00:06:09
Speaker
I think that's so profound because we are fed, I think, this idea of enlightenment. Issa and I have talked a bit about this too, especially in this commercialized way, you know, everything will be sunshine and rainbows. Or what was that Bob Marley quote that you had said, Issa? God will come from above, take away everything and make everyone feel high.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, for the, I think 99% of us who are not realized, it's encouraging because it's like, well, life is this process that you have to continue to, like you were saying earlier about intelligence, you have to continue your feedback loops. You need to keep interacting and then getting that feedback and then adjusting. And as you said, like these adjustments are this change that you're wanting to try to
00:06:59
Speaker
enact in your life by hopefully accessing the unchanging, right? Hopefully accessing more of the self that is, you know, maybe deep inside that knows love truly. Well, let's talk about that as winning the lottery. You know, India is a nation of about a billion people, and there is a handful of people who are venerated as realized beings.
00:07:27
Speaker
But on the other hand, India offers us a tradition called yoga, union with yourself, union with your divinity. And the beautiful thing about yoga, union with your divinity, living in an ocean of realization, a constant communion with your divinity, is our natural state. In this cosmology, everything is a play of energy.
00:07:55
Speaker
And when that energy is connected to being, is connected to your divinity, it's called a sattvic state. And when we're in a sattvic state, we're peaceful, we're happy, we're connected. And this is our natural state, that every atom of your body is a well-being. That when that energy field is coherent, you feel well-being.
00:08:19
Speaker
When that energy field is coherent, you feel wonderful, filled with the wonder of this gift of life. When this energy is coherent, you return to your natural state, which is gratefulness.
00:08:35
Speaker
So what we're talking about here is not winning the lottery. We're talking about a life well-lived and the power that we all have to live in a constant state of communion with our inherent divinity. The goddess was not so cruel that only one in, they just had a hundred billion dollar lottery. You're not one in 225 million chances of getting free.
00:09:03
Speaker
You are able to be free right in this moment. If you're living a sapphic life, you're in a constant communion. You're in a constant state of bliss. You're in a constant state of peace and happiness and equanimity. And it's available to all of us. You needn't be a spiritual athlete, you know, competing in the spiritual Olympics. It's meant for the humblest common, you know, just for the rest of us bozos riding on this.
00:09:32
Speaker
mystery bus called life. So it's a lifelong thing, you know, it's a lifelong, we're cultivating, we're in a process of maturing, you know, it's just like learning to walk your fall a thousand times and learn a tiny bit about equilibrium. And it's the same thing with sobriety or love or equanimity. We fail a thousand times and each time we learn a tiny bit of how to cultivate that well-being and that equanimity. I really am encouraged by what you say, Bruce, about
00:10:02
Speaker
it being available to all of us. Nothing, you know, nothing, it's possible to have this sattvic way. And I thought, you know, yeah, what are the practices that can help you with that? And also what's in the way? Yes. Well, everything in your life is energy. Everything in your life is either toxic, dragging you down, or is exalting your state of soul communion.
00:10:30
Speaker
And you simply have to look at the relationship between the energies that you allow yourself to be in your environment and that you put in your body and the way you're feeling. If you're in touch with the way you're feeling, you realize that you have the power to make this change and that you have to be careful to try to find work that supports a healthy state of consciousness and friends that support a healthy state of consciousness.
00:10:59
Speaker
You know, if you can get right livelihood going and if you can get the people around you supporting that lifestyle, you have two thirds of the battle there. Because it's tremendous, you know, they say the company you keep is fundamental. Their values and their practices and their energy are really, really fundamental. So true. And all we're saying is be vigilant on, you see, there are three states of energy.
00:11:29
Speaker
Energy is always moving in a cycle from the source to the field and back to the source on every level. And so satva is a state where you're in communion with yourself. Walk the dog and you're in a satvic state. For most of us, this is the most sacred part of our life. You hear that?
00:11:51
Speaker
It's a time where suddenly everything's okay. We're in universal love. We have this relationship of universal, and we get out of the box. We're in nature, and our breath is one with the breath of nature, and our rhythms of our body are connecting with the etheric.
00:12:08
Speaker
the ocean of life. God is not far away. But here is God right here. Here's this ocean of sacred life force. Nisargadatta, treat the life force as God. Any other concept you have of God is a fantasy. Here's this creative intelligence. Right here, here's life itself as God. We've been brainwashed so profoundly to think of some crusty old Hebrew in a cloud.
00:12:39
Speaker
And I don't mean, you know, I grew up with Jewish roots. But it's not some crusty old Malavant who's created this hellish world. It's you and I who've done it. And I think that that's like the best reason I've found
00:12:58
Speaker
Even in the mundane, it's important how you do things, how you interact, how you choose to cook or how you choose to look at yourself in the mirror, how you choose to untangle something that's tangled. You know, I think that there's a lot to be said with having relation and like, I guess, integrity with how you interact with life force. It's a good reminder. It's a really good reminder.
00:13:25
Speaker
The thing is we've been so brainwashed into monotheism and that whole idea of a God and all the baggage and all the fairy
Yoga's Role in Soul Communion
00:13:39
Speaker
tales and all the perversity of that whole dynamic of power and sexuality. We'll just call it that.
00:13:50
Speaker
You said something really interesting, Bruce, about there being three types of energy. You were talking about the sapphic energy, and then there were, I assume, these other ones. So your body, you know, they say that Krishna is playing the flute of creation. So your body is a musical instrument that is played by the life breath.
00:14:16
Speaker
And in each life breath, the musical instruments have always been made of guts and hide. And in each life breath, on a molecular and cellular and total bodily level, your body's taken through a cycle of natural and cosmic attunement.
00:14:33
Speaker
So as you start to breathe in, there's a lengthening of the tissue and that on the molecular level and the cellular level and organic level, this is a level of soul communion where you commune with the life force. And that's called Satva Guna. Guna usually translates quality, but it comes from roots which means field. So the energy fields are in communion with the source. And this is the intelligence of the life force.
00:15:00
Speaker
Then as we continue to breathe, we move into what we would call inspiration, where every spiral of spiritus, a life breath, moves into attunement with the solar force, the nucleus of our energy field in the macrocosm of the sun. So you move into Rajas, which is an entrainment with the solar force here in this ocean of life, of nature.
00:15:25
Speaker
And that's inspiration, that's the fire of creativity, of personal power, the passion, the energy, the warmth, I'll say again, the passion of life. And then the field drops down into a lunar attunement. So in every moment, we're brought through a cycle of natural and cosmic attunement with the breath of Satva, the source, the source of equilibrium, the life field,
00:15:52
Speaker
Rajas, creative intelligence, personal power, the passion, the fire, the warmth, the joy, the ecstasy of creativity. And then Tamas, the crystallization of that into wisdom and knowledge and form. And then again in the next cycle. So everything in nature is breathing. So we're saying that the key to life is cultivating a sattvic state.
00:16:23
Speaker
because for most of us, we're cranked up in this Rajasic state. And in Rajas, we reach a point where we fall out of soul communion, and then we start looking outside of ourselves, oh, if I only had more power, if I only had more money, if I only had more sex, if I only had more beauty, if I only had this diet, if I only had this rug, if I only had this car, if I only had this boyfriend, if I only had this dog, we look outside of ourselves,
00:16:53
Speaker
And that's Rajas. And the problem with Rajas is you've lost yourself. You're trying to find yourself in the world and all these external things. And even worse, at some point it all crumbles into Tamas where you're really lost in darkness. So you have the power to cultivate a sattvic state because you can feel it.
00:17:20
Speaker
when you're in sole communion. This is your natural state. The best parameter, are you feeling grateful? Are you feeling wonderful? This is your natural state. You are made to feel
Polarity Therapy and Safety
00:17:33
Speaker
grateful. You're made to feel wonderful. If you're not feeling grateful, if you're not feeling wonderful, you've blown it. Right. And, well, I want to... I love that. You've just blown it. That's it. It's it. We're done. We're done here.
00:17:49
Speaker
You know, I've come to you also as a practitioner. And because beyond being an author, you also, you know, have taught energy medicine and transformational bodywork.
00:18:08
Speaker
through polarity energy balancing. I think your bio says since 1977. I've had the privilege of getting to the benefit, really, of getting to do sessions with you.
00:18:23
Speaker
I'm mentioning that because going back to this, like, well, what can be in the way of these topic states? And if this is truly this access that you do have to commune with yourself, with this ever existing principle, with this quiet inside, with the solitude and safety specifically for me, that safety inside. And with working with you,
00:18:50
Speaker
I've specifically with the body. So you've worked with me with my body and the energy in my body to help loosen some of these
00:19:05
Speaker
traumas that are stored there and so I was hoping we could start maybe if I might just direct the conversation a little bit because it's so fascinating to me and you're such a wealth of knowledge with this around this concept of the body as a field of conscious energy and the healing arts because
00:19:25
Speaker
I don't know if our listeners are going to be well versed in the healing arts or just coming upon it, but I know you are such a great person to introduce some of these concepts because you've been just so in it for so long. So is there a way to talk about kind of the beginning building blocks of the body as a field of conscious energy and the energy healing in general? Well, I want to first mention how sacred your life is.
00:19:56
Speaker
that we live in a fabric of omnipresence, of ultimate intelligence, and each of us is born, okay? And the moment you're born, you personify that moment in creation, that an astrologer can look at all these planets, all these forces, all the harmonics,
00:20:18
Speaker
and say, well, this is your destiny and can predict, oh, you'll probably get married at this time. You'll marry someone like this. This will happen to your life of fault. A decent astrologer can see a lot of that because you personify that moment in creation. So your life is really not just sacred, but significant. And your journey
00:20:43
Speaker
is a journey of how present you can, so each of us represents the pathos of life, the incredible vulnerability and tenderness and beauty of sentience, of being alive, you know. All of the human drama is an offering to this incredible gift that it is to be alive. It's so
00:21:08
Speaker
So amazing to be in the body, to love, to cry, to hurt, to play, to grow, to mess up. It's all ecstatic. It really, really is. That's so important. I'm so glad you started there because that is truly so sweet and so important.
00:21:28
Speaker
Your Dharma is to be you. Your place in creation is to find the safety, to be the tender and delicate and loving person that you are. Do you realize the courage it takes to love in our defense, in our dysfunctional families? You know, yeah. Keanu and I just come back to this saying all the time when we go into these things of like, it's a lot.
00:21:55
Speaker
It's a lot. We look at each other and we just say, it's a lot. It is a lot. You're lucky you have sisters. Yeah, sisters that are willing to go into the bravery and the courage of a dysfunction and call it out and kind of point to it and say, hey, this is dysfunctional. There's a different way of functioning here that we want to live as adults. So what I'm saying here is that your sentence
00:22:24
Speaker
is significant, and you have a profound job in creation to be present in your experience. But there are moments that overwhelm us in the maturation process, where we're unable to be present, and the body literally, the tissue cringes and contracts, and we call that trauma. So when the ego structure, so for a two-year-old, it might be her brother tickling her and not letting go.
00:22:52
Speaker
or a 20-year-old that might be a car accident, or an 18-year-old, or a 30-year-old that might be losing your job, or a 40-year-old that might be losing your love. OK. So life is filled with potential trauma, things that overwhelm our capacity to be present for them. You hear that? And so the body shuts down.
00:23:12
Speaker
Now, the most beautiful thing about healing trauma is you never really have to re-experience a trauma. You only have to experience it. It's safe to be present in your body. Yes, and I can say from firsthand, from working with you, Bruce, in doing polarity therapy and inner child rescues, I think that was one of the most profound experiences in the body to feel
00:23:39
Speaker
safe while mentally experiencing that time and place and having the current self be able to be present enough in my own growth and my version of me now to be able to go back to my younger self and be present and be there. I think that inner child relationship is something that is really important.
00:24:05
Speaker
inner child work. If you've done it, you know the value of it. But if you haven't, you might scoff at it. But I think it's just, it's some such powerful work. And the presence of knowing that you're safe, no matter what in your body, that just nurturing that however possible, I think is just the, it can be such powerful work to just do that, just that.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yes. Yes. But that's the key. That's the key. You know, I think that right here would be an amazing time for you, Bruce, to share, you know, what you, I just love the way you talk. I'll just say it like that, because I'd love to hear you define or share about somatics and this somatic experiencing, because what I hear you talking about of this overwhelm, and when I took your classes, it became
00:24:57
Speaker
Like I was all smiles because I was like, you are explaining my experience. I don't feel safe in my body. I emotionally armor because I don't feel safe. And then all of that is trapped. And anytime I'm walking around the world, I don't feel safe. And you, through your classes and through your knowledge that you want or share it, you, and through experiencing actual polarity therapy sessions with you that
00:25:24
Speaker
you know, this ability to feel safe and self-regulate is something then that I can do now. Not always, not 100% of the time, but man, I actually have access to it now. So just if nobody knows and you took, you know, someone a complete novice, how would you share with them about somatics and somatic experiencing?
00:25:50
Speaker
Well, thank you for the wisdom of what you just articulated right now. That was really profound and beautiful and honest. So I really want to acknowledge that and respect
Heartwood Institute and Community Healing
00:26:01
Speaker
that. Thank you. Yeah. Well, you know, the problem is we all unconsciously recapitulate our pain and blindly keep reenacting our pain. You know, the great captains of industry, you see how crazy Steve Jobs was, you know, or how paranoid Bill Gates was, you know, just
00:26:20
Speaker
you know, shattering any competition until they, you know, engulf the whole industry there. And in the family, it's the same way when you think of our patriarchs, you know, and how wounded they are or in our, you know, schools are filled with people who are traumatized by school and reenacting their trauma. In my life, I was,
00:26:50
Speaker
I kept back in first grade. No one had bothered to teach me to read. And so I had this experience of feeling really stupid and being humiliated, you know, from my inability to spell and my not knowing literally how to sound that words phonetically. Fortunately, in second grade, I had a Miss Greenberg said, I've never met a dumb Jew. Nobody's taught this kid to read, but she taught me to read.
00:27:18
Speaker
The point I want to make here is I've spent my life proving I'm smart. Okay? Somehow my dharma was to have this trauma, and this trauma which has driven me on some level. Now, the other thing is I've spent my life, I've devoted my life to creating an educational environment and a lifestyle that would heal trauma.
00:27:47
Speaker
So we created, you know, I was very, very fortunate and blessed to witness and shepherd and midwife the birth of a place that we called Heartwood, which was a school of natural healing. It was centered in a massage school. And I started with a woman named Susan Matthews. And so I'd always had a dream of living in an A-frame or a converted barn in a community in California, okay? When I was a kid, I had this dream.
00:28:17
Speaker
So we found this white elephant out in the middle of nowhere. And there it was, there was this A-frame, red A-frame, that looked like a Der Vinner schnitzel. And we moved our school of natural healing there. And we lived, as a kid, I'd lived on Home Street and we played in a gang. And then we moved downtown where suddenly you're afraid of everybody.
00:28:45
Speaker
So unconsciously, I always believed that our natural state was to live where we were in love with everybody we met. You know the way your aunties and your uncles, your cousins love you, the way your aunties look down on you and uncles look at you? That this is our natural state to live in this kind of a village, to live in this kind of community. And that alone would heal us. So Hartwood was that place where people were,
00:29:12
Speaker
touching each other, giving each other unconditional love through massage. Three hours a day you are giving and receiving unconditional love. And the rest of the time you were doing, you had all these personal growth resources. There were two different, three different hypnotherapy teachers working with your subconscious. There was breath work. There was just all these Hendrix work, all these wonderful, wonderful resources for exploring and healing.
00:29:42
Speaker
So I had the good fortune to witness this, and through a revolutionary time, because we had no idea what we were doing. We tried a lot of things. But what we came to understand was the healing power of presence.
00:30:00
Speaker
But this was what all, you know, why do we eat a sattvic diet is because we become more present. Why do we do yoga? It has become because we become more present. Why do we cultivate non-toxic relationships so we can be more safe to be present? Why do we heal our bodies so we're safe to be more alive and more present and more feeling and more? This presence is yourself. So we're talking about, you know, a journey
00:30:30
Speaker
to yourself. I wanted to just point out how our madness and our pain is a gift. Because if I have any level of realization now, it's because of the pain I was in. Your pain is your ally. You know, we all have the carrot of liberation or the carrot of enlightenment, but we also have the stick of our pain. So you want to just, I don't say enjoy your pain,
00:30:59
Speaker
but to respect your pain and to understand that it's part of the maturation process, perhaps. And to work with it, to not try to banish it and to not try to, because that's what I realized when I started to
00:31:15
Speaker
recognize fear as it came up, you know, basically not being able to feel safe, right? It was fear. And then I saw that I was running from fear, trying to find safety all the time rather than going and really exiting my body, you know, living in my mind, not living
00:31:37
Speaker
anywhere in a somatic experience of what's going on in my body. And from not ever feel, you know, from a young age, not feeling safe in my body because of abuse and things. So being able to start to not confront necessarily, and I think there's probably lots of techniques, but to befriend, to start to want to get curious, to start to want to understand, to start to want to work
00:32:03
Speaker
with this pain to have some courage to go into it, you know, rather than to feel like if I go into it, it will consume me and I will die. When I've heard you talk and explain in your classes and in sessions,
00:32:22
Speaker
about your approach to somatics and in your journey from massage school to healing arts center, where did you start working with somatics and the body or how did you start to see that as a way to help yourself and people? Well, I want to say, I was really crazy and really acting out.
00:32:48
Speaker
Anyone who's known me over the years knows how out there I've been, which has been great because this way I create a lot of safety for the people around me. I can accept a lot of wild shit. As teachers go, you know, I'm very
00:33:07
Speaker
easy going and permissive. Fortunately, in every moment is an intersection with karma and grace. The ancient wisdom says there's no effect without a cause, so that we're 100% responsible for what we get in life. That nothing comes to your doors, which is not yours. But there's also grace, the infinite possibility that's in this moment. So I feel like grace has been
00:33:37
Speaker
You know, I've had some great karmic things pulling me in this direction. Like I've had a life where I couldn't find what I was looking for in books. I used to just devour books and I couldn't find what I was looking for in books. So I said, okay, if I stand in front of these people and try to explain the mystery, it'll become clear and clear and clear.
00:33:59
Speaker
Unfortunately, people are so hungry for the mystery that even, you know, like what that book you're reading was written in 1998, and it's still cutting edge for a lot of people. And as you can hear, things are a lot clearer now than they were in 1998. So I felt that by standing in front of a group of people and trying to talk about the ineffable, talk about the unknowable,
00:34:26
Speaker
it would come through me. And I've done, you know, for what you can talk about, you know. But so I've been giving my astrology. I have a prominent Uranus. I have a prominent Jupiter. And, you know, my astrology is, there is no me. There's only the play of the universe. The play of the universe was the kid to be born to have this trauma and this destiny. And so I've played it out, but you're always free in how you interact with the destiny.
00:34:56
Speaker
For instance, I had the chance to study with Dr. Randolph Stone in his last class. This person, I come back from India, and I was in my truck, and this guy says, you have to study with this guy. You have to study with him. You have to. You have to. He's just amazing. You have to. And instead, I chased some skirt, and I got nowhere with her, and I didn't become a direct disciple of Dr. Stone. So the universe was propelling me
00:35:25
Speaker
And, but not forcing me. And my own habits and tendencies and acting out left me in my usual dilemma instead of taking the leap of grace that I was being offered there.
00:35:42
Speaker
Now, Bruce, to me, when I get to interact with you, I always have this really clear sense of you being attuned, attuned to yourself, attuned to this larger thing that we're interacting in. And hearing your story of your mischievousness and your skirt chasing, it's nice to me because it makes me question, you know,
00:36:06
Speaker
Or how do you distinguish and decipher that natural pull towards the current of life? And I know we have that freewill part where we can choose to go whatever direction we want to go. But for me right now in my life, I'm really trying to listen deeper and to really allow life to help
00:36:33
Speaker
I look at it like a water path. The path of water is going one way. It's that least resistance. And I'm working on developing my life around that less and less resistance and more and more fluidity. And to me, I think of that as being attuned. And when I interact with you, I do get that sense of
00:36:58
Speaker
just decompression in my own system and that sense of, oh yeah, a remembrance of the mystery, a remembrance of how sweet and funny and humorous and ironic and all of it that it can be. I really get that sense when I get around you. It's like a really quick reminder like, oh yeah,
00:37:19
Speaker
Oh yeah, this life is here and we're already playing it. We're already playing. It's not like we're going to start playing soon. It's already happening. So I'm curious to hear how you attune yourself to that and how you've gotten to the place that you're in now where you seem to have a really strong sense of trust in it all. I would say that my biggest ally has been desperate prayer.
00:37:48
Speaker
I do that. You know, the mystery listens to your pain really does, you know. And so I was, you know, I was always I've always been a joker and, you know, a good vibe. But I did always did a lot of acting out of unconscious courses. And
00:38:16
Speaker
And, you know, I've been to India some 50 times. Wow. Desperate, desperate, desperate. I was teaching at Rutgers and a friend, a colleague who mentioned going to Kathmandu, and it was like I was a fly to honey, you know. I immediately got a ticket to India. And that summer,
00:38:43
Speaker
I went off to India, and I've been to India every year since then. Maybe with COVID, I missed a year or two, and I missed for a couple of years when I was starting Heartwood. But I've been to India some 50 times. I have this horrible carbon footprint. And so it's really, and I would like to say it's been this incredible struggle with my concept of God.
00:39:15
Speaker
that we are so brainwashed with this concept of God that you embody the mystery. If you want to learn about the goddess, understand yourself. You embody the mystery. Your voice is a microcosm. Your consciousness is a microcosm. The rhythms of life are a microcosm. Really, really, you know, water is a Bible.
00:39:47
Speaker
to really, really keep listening, keep going within, keep going into nature, keep loving her, keep serving her. Nature is always giving herself away. All of this is a gift, all of life, all of nature is a gift.
00:40:08
Speaker
Become part of the gift. Anytime you're in service, you're in your natural state and you feel a well-being. So figure out how to have your life a life of service. And like I'm saying, you know, a life of health. If you can get people to pay you to lead a Hatha Yoga class and pay you to show up. Hey, what's wrong with that? Yeah, accountability for the lifestyle and helping people along the way. Yeah.
00:40:36
Speaker
We're in the body, and the body is ruled by tamasguna. And the embodiment of tamasguna is a god by the name of Shiva. And Shiva means auspicious. And it's the ecstasy of being in a body, the amazing gift moment to moment of breathing. Our eyes, look out the window, look at the sunlight, it's so scintillating. Look at your sister, she's so amazing. You know, so Shiva means auspicious.
00:41:05
Speaker
And it's just how amazing this gift of life is. Even when you're miserable, it's amazing. When you're in pain, it's amazing. That's the one. That's the tough one, right? Because it's such a... This idea that the body is the experiencer, right? And we get to feel, right? But the intensity
00:41:34
Speaker
of feeling pain, for instance, heartache, physical pain, mental pain and anguish is grief.
Grief, Gratitude, and Growth
00:41:45
Speaker
The list goes on and it's such a
00:41:49
Speaker
It's such a paradox because we get to fill all these things and yet when we're inside the experiences that aren't elation and joy and, you know, all of the, you know, label them good, but the intensity of some of them do make us not want to always be in a body, you know, for some, for just
00:42:16
Speaker
And it's just tough. It's a funny thing because the outlook of, oh, isn't this grief, this grief is so intense, but I'm so grateful for it, isn't something that I came to right away. It wasn't until many grief experiences where I was like, okay, I appreciate this because I know that this is growth. I know that this is movement. I know that this is maturation, but
00:42:40
Speaker
man, when I was young, it was like, get me a, you know, get me some pot and some alcohol and some like sex and some stuff to get out of this because I need relief. Yep. And that's the journey, you know, we're young, we're young, and hopefully as we mature,
00:42:59
Speaker
Hopefully, as we mature, we can begin to cultivate some equanimity and some discrimination. But you can't judge the sweetness of a green mango. You're ripening. And the ripening process is slow, and we hope we don't rot. Yeah, grace. Give yourself grace and patience. That's a big one. Those are big. Those are huge, huge tools.
00:43:28
Speaker
You know, I had years of my life where I just had my earphones on and was chanting every minute rather than being the madness that was going on in my mind. Any minute I could be in that chanting rather than in the loop. And can you share what you were chanting?
00:43:44
Speaker
Yeah, usually high Krishna, Krishna chants. Krishna is one of the names of the mystery, but you can equally do a goddess chant, the important thing. All of the world religions are rooted in mantra yogas. And so this is one of the tools for capturing our mind. I think it was in your class, Bruce, where you shared about how
00:44:13
Speaker
chanting, using the vibrations of the voice are so powerful because it can put you in the resonance of your body. Some material you had given in your class was this
00:44:28
Speaker
chanting of certain tones. And being able to access the vagal and vagus nerve through the vu chant, not just of the spiritual part of it, but how it actually accesses your physiology to help you into a parasympathetic state, which I thought was just so valuable.
00:44:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think Bruce, you have so much information on the body just from teaching for years and then also actively working and still being an active practitioner and working with the body. And, and I think for me, I can only speak for myself, but being on your table, I experienced change somatically and I experienced ethereal, you know, communication with loved ones. And I got to, I got to experience that. And I, I think that, you know, just,
00:45:24
Speaker
The value and the information you have is so vast. But when we boil it down to the body and the physical body and on this topic of changing the world by changing ourselves and how change actually works in the body, what are your insights into that? Having had so many experiences helping people and guiding people through change in their body.
00:45:57
Speaker
Well, you know, the primary work I do is that rescuing the inner child, okay, where we're guided by higher intelligence to a time in their life where their ego structure was overwhelmed, okay, and so we create a conscious and nourishing relationship.
00:46:21
Speaker
with their adult and this vulnerable part of their being that we call and it's a form of soul retrieval because the soul is our presence and for most of us we have parts of our presence invested in unconsciously dealing with the past or in suppressing the past in some way. So by reframing or renegotiating our subconscious
00:46:42
Speaker
we're able to take the most vulnerable part of our being and enter into conscious and nurturing relationship with this aspect of our psyche. And it's very accessible. And how do you see that actually changing people's physiology? Great, great. So when we're threatened by something, okay, let's say you crash the car, you break up with your boyfriend, you lose a job,
00:47:11
Speaker
The mind, our natural state, okay, is peace. And when it's called an etheric state, ether is unobstructed motion. There's our natural state, we're one with everything. You're out there walking the dog, nothing wrong with the world. Phone rings, the bank calls, you're overdrawn. Suddenly, the mind, it goes from ether
00:47:38
Speaker
to air, which is the mind obsesses on this, looking for some way, fire, personal power, to create water, security, and let go earth. Okay? Do you hear this cycle of creative intelligence moving from pure ether, freedom, to air, problem solving, fire, personal power, water, safety, earth, resolution. Okay?
00:48:05
Speaker
So the problem is, when you lose that boyfriend, or lose that job, or whatever threatens the ego, we obsess on it. For hours, days, weeks, months, years, my mother, when she passed on it, 96, was obsessing on things that happened when she was 18. And when we obsess, it's not just mental. We're sending a myriad
00:48:32
Speaker
of mental and emotional impulses into the nervous system, into fight or flight. So that we wake up in the night jerking from the impulses. We're having breakfast and our muscles are literally from the sympathetic activation. You hear what I'm saying? So this we call body armoring. So these confused and contradictory mental and emotional impulses
00:48:58
Speaker
radiate out into the pelvis at the cordia equina, the horse's tail, where all this energy moves out of your spine, into your pelvis, for you to give birth to your self-expression in the world. That's really interesting. If people don't know, it's the bottom, very base of your spine, and they call it the cotta equina because it looks like a horse's tail. It's where all the nerve endings come out.
00:49:22
Speaker
And it literally looks like a tail that you have, but it's encased into your spine and it is at the very base. And it's very- And then that all radiates out into your pelvis so you can give birth to your self-expression through your thighs, walk your talk in the world. All illness is an issue in personal power. What does it take to be safe to express your needs?
00:49:48
Speaker
to be able to talk honestly with your papa who hurt you or with your boyfriend, with your boss, yourself, an issue in personal power. So Dr. Stone had developed these tremendous techniques, simple, easy, safe, for releasing the sympathetic activation.
00:50:13
Speaker
for releasing this body armoring from the nervous system. That's what I do in every one of those sessions. That's why it's so profound. There's a shift into a saptic parasympathetic state because we release your chronic anxiety with these simple, easy to learn techniques. And it's amazing to me that there are these points on your body that you can hold
00:50:37
Speaker
that will do that because I think of the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system are part of our central nervous system, right? They're branches and they control different areas of our body. They get activated in different ways and that's something that just naturally happens as an organism will do that. The brain is very smart and the nervous system is very smart and it will do what it needs to do. It's constantly, like you said, taking in that information from the outside world, adjusting our inside world to have homostasis.
00:51:06
Speaker
constantly and so to know that the physical form of the body has certain points on it that you can press and hold and manipulate that can affect those systems that are deep within our brain and spinal cord is something that I wasn't privy to previously to working with you and I think that I don't know that very many people are and and the value of that and the
00:51:34
Speaker
experience that we have the power to through just loving presence and touch to shift somebody's entire system is a really powerful point.
00:51:50
Speaker
And then I have to say that you're really good at it. You are and shifting it, shifting for real. How do I want to say this? It's like, it's not just like a chiropractic adjustment where you, you do need to keep coming back. My experience in the somatic and polarity therapy sessions that I've had with you is like, I shift and the physiological shifts that I feel coupled with the awareness
00:52:20
Speaker
of what was released makes a different me. And I have a resource
00:52:29
Speaker
that I can go to, that I can lean on, that is in within me. That feeling of safety, that feeling of that set point that you said, he said like the system has shifted and the experience of that safety, of that system shifting is something now that I can go, that I go forward with, that I didn't have before.
00:52:53
Speaker
Right? Around any topic or around, you know, maybe even something I'm not fully conscious of. And I think that is, I agree. I don't know if everybody knows about this.
00:53:06
Speaker
And the efficiency of it is also something that I need to praise because as someone studying psychology and looking at going into therapy, there's only so far you can go with the mind and the brain and talk therapy. There really is a limit.
00:53:24
Speaker
Not very far. It's not very far. And that's why you have people in psychotherapy for fucking years, you know, because you kind of, there are points that can't be pushed and, and there are things that are stored in the body and there is something very efficient and very profound about doing work that is therapeutic, energetic, and has a biology base to it.
00:53:53
Speaker
The problem is that academic psychology is a hundred years behind practical psychology. What you're learning in school is the psychology of, I don't know, in the 1950s and 60s, there is a revolution in psychology by Dr. Eugene Genlin, who's the father of somatic psychology.
00:54:15
Speaker
He was made president of the American Humanistic Psychology Association, and he was lauded as the most important American philosopher of the 20th century, that what Freud did for pansexuality or the subconscious, he did for somatics. He showed the trauma was much older than the neocortex, the higher brain.
Somatic Healing and Trauma
00:54:40
Speaker
that trauma was much older, that we as mammals had been dealing with trauma long before the limbic system and the emotional bonding developed, that trauma was held on a bodily somatic level, the reptilian level, if you might, okay? That we as mammals have this reptilian way of dealing with trauma. And so you can't
00:55:02
Speaker
address trauma in the neocortex. It doesn't lodge there. You can't address trauma in the emotions, in the limbic system. It doesn't lodge there. It's much more primordial. It's on the cellular somatic level that the body has a way of knowing and registering and learning on a precognitive, pre-emotional, reptilian level. And we call that level the felt sense.
00:55:31
Speaker
And trauma, as we cringe, we shut down, we armor, we block our physical body. And all you need to do to release the trauma is physically experience that it's safe to breathe, safe to be alive, safe to be present. So I really advise you to find Dr. Genlin's audio tapes or get his books focusing.
00:55:58
Speaker
or a study with Peter Levine, the brilliant, brilliant work that he, and all the people now that are teaching, there's been a revolution in psychology, and you're not going to find it in most of the colleges. They're still, they're albatrosses teaching, you know, they're teaching the stuff that they learn.
00:56:14
Speaker
Thank you for sharing. That is exciting to me because it's all very fascinating. I love learning. So it's fascinating to learn the histories of it and the different modalities. But yeah, like I expressed the efficiency and the profound
00:56:29
Speaker
ripple effect that that type of work has had in my life is something that I think it's a good reminder to shift towards the things that really have helped me and continue to let those ripple through me onto other people. Because the thing about what I experienced, too, that has that same, as you named it, Iselle, ripple is this understanding and starting to learn how to work
00:56:59
Speaker
with your felt sense. I can give an example after learning that from you going out into my life doing, you know, sending emails or interacting with my husband or doing chores.
00:57:15
Speaker
there's a tendency for me to ramp up or speed up. And I will get busy, you know, I'll get kind of lost in the activities of the actual body or the mind, right? Like, what am I doing? What do I need to do the to do this? And then just simply going like, what am I feeling? What is the sensation in my body? What is the
00:57:41
Speaker
you know, what is my energy and tissue trying to like, what what's going on? You know, I'm feeling I'm feeling I'm feeling kind of shortness of breath, I'm feeling my, my mind ramp up, but also that makes me feel like tense in my chest. And the the tool is all I'm trying to say, that is provided by exploring and learning about felt sense.
00:58:02
Speaker
as it relates not just to big T traumas that we have that are what I think a lot of people think are maybe what we're talking about of like a traumatic event but these little T traumas that happen when you're not heard by a loved one when you get your feelings hurt when you get talked over when you feel you know a trigger it can be subtle
00:58:25
Speaker
and it can and it can go into the subtle body and then the access through the body and talking to yourself practically talking to yourself asking yourself what is it that i'm feeling and and not why but just what is it that i'm feeling and going back to that and
00:58:44
Speaker
And there is an intelligence to your point that you've taught me. There is an intelligence to that messaging of slowing down enough to take in the sensations and what you're really fucking experiencing. Excellent, excellent. So wonderful that you're articulating that. That is the key.
00:59:06
Speaker
So there's a technique to, Dr. Gendlin created a system of psychotherapy without psychotherapists called focusing, where you did exactly that. After you were triggered, you took some space and you cultivated being deeply, creating the safety to be deeply present for what was triggered and your bodily response, what you were feeling in the felt sense. And this helped to process your trauma.
00:59:35
Speaker
so that you wouldn't be triggered next time, perhaps. Perhaps. Yeah, process. Cod life is a process. Somatic psychology is at the basis of a revolution that's going on to understand that the trauma is held on this level of the felt sense. And sensation-based awareness is the key to... Because again, it goes back to you personify a moment in creation.
01:00:04
Speaker
And your Dharma is to be present in your experience. When your ego's resources for being present are overwhelmed, the ego shuts down. And that's what we call trauma. And all you need to do is to find the safety to explore your body and experience that it's safe to be present, to be alive. You know, I've dealt with people, you know,
01:00:32
Speaker
left their hearts. How many think about heartbreak and how painful it is and how we leave our very own heart and what it takes to come back to our heart again? Yeah. How many children leave their bodies? And so most of us are the walking wounded.
Pain as a Catalyst for Growth
01:00:54
Speaker
And we reenact our trauma unconsciously with each other.
01:01:01
Speaker
And the body stacks the trauma it condenses experience so that when you're fighting with your husband, you're fighting with your father, you're fighting with your teachers, you're fighting with your birth trauma, that it's all there stacked in the condensed experience. That's amazing to think about how intelligent the body is to not just store, but organize the storage
01:01:27
Speaker
of all your expenses. It's trying to survive. You're an animal trying to survive. You're this mammal with this nervous system trying to survive. And, you know, for us, it's emotional, but for them, it's eat or be eaten. So all these threats, all this activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight, is stacked on there in some way. So realize when you make safety on this level, you create safety right down to the birth trauma.
01:01:54
Speaker
That's the other side of that, that the same spiral goes in two directions. Goals. So we have tremendous freedom. We have tremendous freedom to heal our lives. And if you're in pain, that's something calling you to become a teacher. Whether you formally become a teacher or whether you just become a wise sister is up to you.
01:02:20
Speaker
Thank you so much, Uncle Bruce. You have been, in my life, someone who like Isa was saying earlier that I just cherish as a really truly like a bright light of well being and modeling that as well as just like making me feel like family and making me feel
01:02:43
Speaker
safe and and loved. And I am just so grateful that in this creative endeavor, you got to say
Conclusion and Gratitude
01:02:52
Speaker
you wanted to say yes and partner with us in this to share everything that you that you have, because I think keeping you to ourselves is a great disservice. And and I'm so grateful that you came on with us for the ripple effect.
01:03:08
Speaker
Well, thank you, thank you, because I'm kind of retired and I'm kind of wasting this consciousness, not really doing much to hustle or promote myself. So if anybody else wants to interview me or set up a class, as long as it has a fairly low carbon footprint,
01:03:25
Speaker
I'll play with you. Now I'm near the airport here in Arcada. Yes, and we'll make sure to put all of Bruce's information into our show notes so that everyone does have that access to him. His YouTube is of great value and I'm sure he will continue to grow that and he does teach.
01:03:47
Speaker
right now on Zoom and maybe potentially in person if we can get a group of us together. So it's really exciting. So we'll have all that information for you to connect with him as well as a resource. I highly, highly encourage it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your loving kindness and your support and your appreciation of my rave. God bless. Please give my best to your dear mom and dad.
01:04:15
Speaker
Okay, I think we did it. Listen.
01:04:19
Speaker
I don't know what we did, but we did it. Look, unattainable ideals are overrated. We're way more connected and deserving than society's false sense of separation dictates us to be. You're not just one person, you're enough. Your effort is enough and change is possible. Question the standard that says otherwise, because what if almost is good enough?
01:04:45
Speaker
Just by tuning in, you're a part of our clan. Not in a call-to-way, though. We don't know how far this ripple can go, but we're gonna keep showing up. And we'll never get to perfection, but we're all gonna be okay if we let the process be the solution and we see the value in the attempt. Thanks for listening to another episode of the ripple affect. We're looking forward to exploring a different facet of change with you next Tuesday. Same time, same place, next week.
01:05:14
Speaker
For show notes and additional resources, check out our website at rippleeffectpod.com. That's affect with an A. Quiata has worked diligently to make our website interactive.
01:05:25
Speaker
Please visit it so it wasn't all for nothing. In all seriousness though, there's a ton of resources there. DM us directly at rippleeffectpod on Instagram and let us know what you liked about our show or any of your own ideas. We're really excited to hear from you. We value your feedback because it helps us make the pod better and it's our way of including you in our process.
01:05:48
Speaker
Okay, so ratings aren't the point of why we do this. We really want to make a change in the world. But in the matrix, there are algorithms. So yeah, every single review we get helps the ripple go farther. To help us out, please take two seconds, find the ratings and review section on whatever platform you're listening from, click five stars, wink, wink.
01:06:11
Speaker
and leave a review. We know you're busy, so just saying hello or literally hi as the review helps us hack the matrix. We sincerely appreciate it. If you want to become officially initiated into our clan, again, not in a cult-y way, hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts. And as always, we're in it with you. Keep questioning. Stay curious. You got this, clan.
01:06:39
Speaker
A special thank you, love and credit to the magnificent Mia Casasanta for this beautiful music you're listening to right now.