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2023 Reflections | The Best of Sofa Series Conversations
99 Plays10 months ago
In this special "year-in-review" episode of The Ripple Affect, hosts Cheech and Nibby, the dynamic sibling duo, present a compilation of memorable moments from their favorite Sofa Series interviews. This episode features enriching excerpts from conversations with notable guests like Neurobiologist Dr. Barbara Thayer, author Bruce Burger of Esoteric Anatomy: The Body As Consciousness, and secular chaplain Elizabeth Morton. Join us in revisiting these insightful discussions as we bid farewell to the year and welcome new beginnings. Happy New Year!
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
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
Hi, Issa here. This week on The Pod, we are sharing some of our favorite sofa series interview segments of 2023, the birth year of our podcast. This episode is a compilation on change from three different and great minds. Well, five, if you include Kyara and I. Going into this new year and reflecting on this project, it's easy for me to feel into what it has done for me. It's allowed me to share my most authentic self
00:00:58
Speaker
work through serious fear of judgment and not enoughness, as well as surrender and trust in a whole new way.
Personal Growth and Authenticity
00:01:05
Speaker
It has literally been my gardener, giving me nutrients, pruning, care, support,
00:01:12
Speaker
and gently watering change into my life. I have had many ah-has and mm-hmm's throughout this podcast journey, and Kyara and I trust it has and will continue to do the same for you. Here's to learning deeper, growing together, and creating change from the inside out. Love you all. Happy New Year. Without further ado, a compilation.
Changing Mindsets through Actions
00:01:37
Speaker
It's easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting.
00:01:44
Speaker
Mmhmm.
00:01:45
Speaker
That if you want something to be different, if you want something to change, do something different. It's a lot easier to change the thinking if you have a new action than it is to try and think your way into a new way of acting. This is a bidirectional relationship between your brain and your body, and that's really hard to grasp. It's easy to think about your brain determines what happens in your body. We tend to think of that as a unidirectional flow of information from the brain to the movement or to the body. The truth is that the body gives the brain feedback.
00:02:14
Speaker
So here's my example.
Breath Control and the Nervous System
00:02:17
Speaker
Have you ever done hot yoga? Yes. Okay, so do you know you never have to open your mouth when you breathe? You can do an entire 90 minute hot yoga class only breathing through your nose. That would be very challenging.
00:02:35
Speaker
It is, but here's the thing. When you open your mouth and start sucking in air, right? Because you think that you are doing all these hard physical activities and your heart is pounding, right? And you're thinking, no, I'm short of breath. I need to... Basically what you're doing when you start breathing through your mouth like that is you're allowing your sympathetic nervous system to take over. And your sympathetic nervous system says, oh my God, we need more air, right? And so the increased respiration, right? And that's sending feedback to your brain that you're not getting enough air. And that's why breath work is so amazing.
00:03:04
Speaker
That's why breath work is so amazing. If you can force yourself to keep your mouth closed, right? Keep breathing through your nose, right? Smooth breathing is smooth yoga. At that point, you can keep your sympathetic nervous system. That's your fight or flight stuff, right? If you can keep that offline, right? You get sort of that benefit of exercise without the tension, without that sort of fear-based reaction. How do you do that? Well, you keep your mouth shut. That's an action. By forcing yourself to keep breathing through your nose. You tell your brain, yeah, no, we got this. We're fine. There's no panic.
00:03:35
Speaker
Gosh, we are such complex, amazing, interesting species. And that leads me to think about like consciousness, you know?
Consciousness and Language
00:03:41
Speaker
Yeah. That, that is like, what is it? Cause we can't agree. It's, you know, the definition of it, you know, if you look it up as being awake, right? But like, but that's pretty weak. Yeah, it, yeah. So from your perspective, what are your thoughts and feelings on, on consciousness?
00:04:02
Speaker
That's a good question. So, I don't know, I guess consciousness has to do with, I don't know. Okay, what about when you're sleeping? That's my first question. What about when you're sleeping? If the definition is being awake, consciousness is just being awake, then what's happening when you're sleeping? Because that's happening. Right? What is that then? And if you're asleep and I walk into your room and I say, Isa, Isa, you'll wake up. So you can't be unconscious because you are still monitoring the environment.
00:04:31
Speaker
Okay, so what do I think consciousness is? I know that consciousness is related to language and communication in some way, and I think that there are different kinds of consciousness. I think that my dog was clearly conscious. You would never think that, oh, your dog is not conscious.
00:04:47
Speaker
because he's sort of aware and responding to stimuli. But I don't think his consciousness was quite like mine. I think it was a little different. And I think that difference has to do with language. I think animals have varying kinds of consciousness. I guess maybe, I mean, if I had to say levels or steps, you know, because I don't think, and I think as humans we're really arrogant and we think that we're at the top level and I think we're wrong. I don't think we are.
00:05:15
Speaker
I would agree with that statement. I think varying degrees of consciousness happens in animals and in humans within species. I think there's varying degrees of consciousness. But where do you make the distinction between perception and consciousness?
Brain-Body Relationship
00:05:30
Speaker
How do you relate those two?
00:05:32
Speaker
I think that, you know, perception at its maybe most fundamental is sort of the ability to identify stimuli in your external environment, right? So perception becomes a tool to feed consciousness about what's happening in the exterior environment. Yes, I agree. And then you have that, we also are amazing because we have the ability to pull our perspectives back and make up the story that we want to believe around what is happening.
00:05:57
Speaker
Right. And this is sort of that weird, so we were talking about sort of that bi-directional thing between your physiology and your brain and about, you know, using feedback from your body to your brain as well as from your brain to your body and respecting that. And I think that's the other thing too. Mike Gazzamiga, he's at UCSB now, has done a lot of work around what he calls the interpreter. And the interpreter is closely related to the language generative portion of your brain and that it makes up the stories, it runs the narrative of your day, it runs the narrative of your life.
00:06:24
Speaker
You know that part of your brain that says, oh my god, oh shoot, I forgot to write down birdseed. I gotta get birdseed. This is really important. What is that? What makes my brain do that? Right? Yeah, in fact, if you can hear that, then you're not that. If you hear that voice saying that, someone's listening to that. So you're that thing behind mapping. Right. I am both things. How can that be? Right? The fact that we exist sort of in both of those formats. I actually really do have to get birdseed, by the way. If I'm going to write that down, birdseed.
00:06:50
Speaker
I know, isn't that greedy? So you have like this weird little narrative mechanism, and Kazanaga calls it the interpreter, and it's generative, but it's also receptive. It's the part of your brain that makes up the stories and the reasoning and the rationale for why we do the things that we do. It helps drive that sort of understanding of our emotional state, right? And I think that's one of those things that distinguishes our consciousness from that of what we call lower, and here's my air quotes again, lower animals.
00:07:16
Speaker
But that being said, I do think, okay, this is pretty far out there, and I might get fired for admitting to this, but I think plants have some sort of consciousness as well. Oh, yeah. Right? I don't think that they're not receptive to perceptual changes, to changes in their environment. They are. They clearly are. So there's some form of consciousness there.
00:07:37
Speaker
You know, I don't think it ends with us. I think there are other forms of consciousness beyond ours as well. Spectrum. I would agree. And I think that our willingness to open that up and then to try and bridge that gap of science to spirituality consciousness, I think is the perfect entry point. Do you distinguish between the brain and the mind? Yes. How do you draw that line?
00:07:56
Speaker
The brain is a structure. It is an organism built of cells, an organ, technically built of cells and cells that behave in reasonably predictable ways. The mind is an emergent property of the brain. And I don't know, this is the $50 million question, right? What is the relationship between the brain and the mind? And how do we connect
Brain Structure vs. Mind Emergence
00:08:17
Speaker
that? Because we know that we have cells and we have thresholds of
00:08:19
Speaker
excitation and we have action potentials and neurons talk to each other and they build relationships and that's LTP. How does that make a mind? No clue. There's a gap. There's a gap. A huge gap. There's this huge gap that we don't know how these patterns of cortical activity produce consciousness. We know that we're consciousness. We know that consciousness has different forms, but we still don't know how the brain produces the mind.
00:08:43
Speaker
I do know that the mind is a product of the brain. I believe that. I don't think that you can have a mind in the way that we understand a mind without a brain. I'm not saying that there isn't anything like a soul or some sort of eternal or infinite energy in there that we think of as sort of the person that may be in there as well. But I do think that you can't have a mind the way that we understand minds without having a brain. Right. But you can have a brain without a mind.
00:09:13
Speaker
Absolutely. That's a powerful point. Yeah. The mind really is so much of how we experience one another. Right. And that's, I mean, that mind is intimately related to our consciousness. And the distinction between consciousness and the mind? Well, that's a good question. I'm not sure that there is one. That's where I think that it might be more fuzzy, you know, that most things that happen in the mind are related to consciousness.
00:09:44
Speaker
Fascinating, right?
Courage and Embracing Change
00:09:46
Speaker
Oh, you know me, questions with no answers. Those are my favorites. I like them. I like them. Those are the best kinds because then you can just keep the door open and just let whatever's going to come in keep coming in, right? It's like... Yeah. And it's, you know, opportunities to learn and be curious, you know? So what is, what is something that you know or feel about change that you think could benefit others? It takes courage. And if you don't have any, you can borrow some.
00:10:14
Speaker
What are your suggestions for borrowing courage?
00:10:17
Speaker
find someone who believes in you and what you're about to change. Even if you don't think you can do it, if you find someone who does, then you can do it. You just believe what they believe. But I think that change is a gift. And it's so funny to me that most of us in whatever our spiritual journey looks like, most of us resist change. It's really hard to make ourselves embraces. And yet the reality is that everything changes every day.
00:10:45
Speaker
Nothing's ever the same. When I wake up, I'm a day older, so something's different. I'm that much closer to death. I try not to think of it that way, but sometimes my brain helps me out. But the idea that anything is static is an illusion anyway, so why not tell yourself the truth? Even if it's fearful, then you find those things that anchor you. They tell you that no matter what happens, you'll be okay.
00:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, and that is embracing change, right? I mean, there's... Yeah. Welcome it, you know? What are you most intrigued about when it comes to change in humans? I'm curious about why we psychologically resist change. So here's the thing. I see this as particularly problematic. So many of us are resistant to change. We don't want to do anything different.
00:11:41
Speaker
Even though when the thing that we're doing isn't necessarily working for us, we're still afraid of change and we perceive change as negative. And we see that a lot of us see that whatever is sort of currently happening for us, even if it's bad, it's better than the unknown, right? And what I find really intriguing about that is that the human body is designed as a change system. Your sensory systems are change detectors. Their whole purpose is to detect change in the environment.
00:12:09
Speaker
For example, I mean, imagine the first time you started wearing your ring, right? And you noticed it, and you could feel it, and you were aware of it for a while, and then after probably a couple hours, you stopped noticing it, right? And every so often, your attention would go back to it, oh yeah, is it still there? Until eventually, you stop being aware of it almost entirely, because literally, the receptors in your skin begin to adapt to the presence of that object. It's like, well, this isn't anything new, so we can stop sending signals to the brain.
00:12:31
Speaker
Same thing is true with your eyes, right? Same thing is true with your nose, you know, when you go into like the monkey house at the zoo and you're like, it smells so bad, I'm probably gonna die. And then after a little while, you're like, what smell? Because the olfactory receptors in your nose adapt to the presence of those molecules and stop sending signals to your brain. It tells your brain, there's nothing to worry about here. We're not we're not even gonna bother sending this on because it's irrelevant.
00:12:55
Speaker
Okay, so if your body is designed to detect change, why do we resist it so much? Why are we so entrenched in repeating the same behaviors and the same attitudes when our bodies literally thrive off of change?
Why Do We Resist Change?
00:13:09
Speaker
That's our whole purpose is detect change in the environment.
00:13:12
Speaker
But we're also such, we're so efficient with our energy though. All of our systems are so efficient at running our energy. And sometimes do you think it's just an energetic thing that it would cost energy to change and our body could maintain that energy, don't spend it. Maybe, and maybe that's it. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just sort of evolutionary conservation of energy. I don't know, but I would like to know, you know, because there's sort of the psychological thing that why do we fear the unknown so much?
00:13:41
Speaker
Evolution. The misnomers in that, they're people that are really good at change. The people that do have those fears but consistently work through them and out of their comfort zones. That's interesting. What do you think it would mean to be good at change?
00:14:00
Speaker
For me, when I asked you that question, the first thing it kind of popped into my mind was people who are more accepting, I think just of what is as opposed to trying to change or control outcomes seem to have more ease around change. I don't know if it's easier for them, but maybe they have more ease. Oh, I like how you said that.
00:14:24
Speaker
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. Umberto Materana, as the father of the Chilean school of biology,
00:14:47
Speaker
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. That life is essentially a cognitive process.
00:15:13
Speaker
So what we're seeing here is everything is made of intelligence. That's what we're saying 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.
00:15:34
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.
00:15:54
Speaker
In the macrocosm, this intelligence is your cognizance, 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'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. In this cosmology,
00:16:24
Speaker
Everything is a play of energy. 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 to being. That when that energy field is coherent, you feel well-being.
00:16:50
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.
00:17:05
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. And it's available to all of us. You needn't be a spiritual athlete, you know, competing in these spiritual Olympics. It's meant for the humblest common, you know, just for the rest of us bozos riding on this.
00:17:32
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. Everything in your life is energy.
00:18:02
Speaker
You see, there are three states of energy. 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.
00:18:23
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 ocean of life. God is not far away. Here is God right here. Here's this ocean of sacred life force.
00:18:48
Speaker
Nisha Kedadah, 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. I grew up with Jewish roots.
00:19:13
Speaker
But it's not some crusty old Malavant who's created this hellish world. It's you and I who've done it. That's like the best reason I've found. 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. I think that there's a lot to be said with having
00:19:40
Speaker
relation and integrity with how you interact with life force. It's a really good reminder. You said something really interesting, Bruce, about there being three types of energy. You were talking about the soft, thick energy, and then there were, I assume, these other ones. In each life breath on a molecular and cellular and total body level, your body's taken through a cycle of natural and cosmic attunement.
00:20:07
Speaker
So as you start to breathe in, there's a lengthening of the tissue and 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 is usually translated as 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. Then as we
00:20:34
Speaker
They 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.
00:20:56
Speaker
And that's inspiration, that's the fire of creativity, 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.
00:21:23
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.
00:21:45
Speaker
So we're saying that the key to life is cultivating a Gothic state because for most of us, we're cranked up in this majestic state.
00:21:55
Speaker
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.
00:22:16
Speaker
We look outside of ourselves 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 just really lost in darkness. So you have the power to cultivate a sattvic state because you can feel it.
00:22:40
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 grateful. You're made to feel wonderful. If you're not feeling grateful, you're not feeling wonderful, you've blown it. I love that. You've just blown it. That's it. That's it. We're done. We're done here.
00:23:06
Speaker
Is there a way to talk about 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.
00:23:21
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. So your life is really not just sacred, but significant. And your journey
00:23:41
Speaker
is a journey of how present you can be. So each of us represents the pathos of life, the incredible vulnerability and tenderness and beauty of sentience, of being
Sacredness, Trauma, and Healing
00:23:55
Speaker
alive. You know, all of the human drama is an offering to this incredible, incredible gift that it is to be alive. It's so
00:24:06
Speaker
So amazing to be in a body to love to cry to hurt to play to grow to mess up. It's all ecstatic 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 and our dysfunctional families? Yeah
00:24:36
Speaker
So what I'm saying here is that your sentience is significant and you have a profound job and 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 life is filled with potential trauma.
00:25:04
Speaker
things that overwhelm our capacity to be present for them. And so the body shuts down. Now, the most beautiful thing about healing trauma is you never really have to re-experience a trauma. You only have to experience that it's safe to be present in your body. I wanted to just point out how our madness and our pain is a gift. Because if I have any level of realization now,
00:25:31
Speaker
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, but to respect your pain.
00:25:50
Speaker
and to understand that it's part of the maturation process, perhaps. Bruce, you have so much information on the body just from teaching for years and then also still being an active practitioner and working with the body. And when we boil it down to the physical body and on this topic of changing the world by changing ourselves and how change actually works in the body,
00:26:14
Speaker
What are your insights into that, having had so many experiences helping people and guiding people through change in their body? 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
00:26:35
Speaker
where their ego structure was overwhelmed. And so we create a conscious and nourishing relationship with their adult and this vulnerable part of their being. 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,
00:27:02
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? 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, the mind, our natural state, okay, is peace.
00:27:33
Speaker
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 to air, which is the mind obsesses on this, looking for some way, fire, personal power to create water, security, and let go of Earth. Okay? Do you hear this cycle?
00:28:02
Speaker
of creative intelligence moving from pure ether freedom to air problem solving fire personal power water safety earth resolution okay so the problem is when you lose that boyfriend or lose that job
00:28:21
Speaker
or whatever threatens the ego, we obsess on it for hours, days, weeks, months, years. And when we obsess, it's not just mental. We're sending a myriad 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
00:28:45
Speaker
from the sympathetic activation. So this we call body armoring.
Releasing Body Armoring and Relaxation Techniques
00:28:50
Speaker
So these confused and contradictory mental and emotional impulses
00:28:55
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. And the caute, that's really interesting if people don't know. It's the very base of your spine and they call it the caute equina because it looks like a horse's tail. It's where all the nerve endings come out.
00:29:19
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 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, to be able to talk honestly?
00:29:46
Speaker
Dr. Stone had developed these tremendous techniques, simple, easy, safe, for releasing the sympathetic activation, 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 sothic parasympathetic state because we release your chronic anxiety with these simple, easy to learn techniques.
00:30:15
Speaker
And it's amazing to me that there are these points on your body that you can hold.
00:30:20
Speaker
that will do that because I think of, you know, 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 that they get activated in different ways. And that's something that just naturally happens as an organism will do that. Our mind, the brain is very smart and the nervous system is very smart. And it just, 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 constantly.
00:30:50
Speaker
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 the value of that and the experience that we have the power to through just loving presence
00:31:20
Speaker
and touch to shift somebody's entire system is a really powerful point. In the 1950s and 60s, there was a revolution in psychology by Dr. Eugene Genlin, who's the father of somatic psychology.
00:31:38
Speaker
He was awarded, he was made president of the American Humanistic Psychology Association. He was lauded as the most important American philosopher of the 20th century. What Freud did for pansexuality or the subconscious, he did for somatics. He showed that trauma was much older than the neocortex, the higher brain.
00:32:03
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
00:32:25
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
00:32:41
Speaker
as a way of knowing and registering and learning on a precognitive, preemotional, reptilian level. And we call that level the felt sense. And trauma is we cringe, we shut down, we armor, we block.
00:32:58
Speaker
our physical body and all you need to do to release the trauma is physically experienced and it's safe to breathe, safe to be alive, safe to be present. 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
00:33:20
Speaker
creating the safety to be deeply present for what was triggered in your bodily response, what you were feeling in the felt sense. And this helped to process your trauma so that you wouldn't be triggered next time, perhaps. 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.
00:33:45
Speaker
and sensation-based awareness is the key to because again it goes back to you personify a moment in creation 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.
00:34:09
Speaker
And we reenact our trauma unconsciously with each other. 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.
00:34:29
Speaker
that it's all there stacked in the condensed experience. You're this mammal with this nervous system trying to survive. 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. That's the other side of that, that the same spiral goes in two directions. Goals.
00:34:57
Speaker
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.
00:35:21
Speaker
At the same time, regardless of any spiritual framework, we have this longing for connection, right? This longing to understand ourselves in our lives and our connection to the All and our feeling of aliveness.
00:35:36
Speaker
that desire for ritual is there, even if you don't belong to any kind of religious or spiritual community.
Creating Sacred Rituals
00:35:45
Speaker
And I have officiated so many ceremonies, be they a memorial service or a wedding, where people say, please don't use God language, please don't use spiritual language. And I'm like, okay, got it. And yet,
00:35:58
Speaker
It's still a sacred experience for everyone involved because of the intention, because of the love, because of the ritual. Yeah. It's just this, let's, we're all coming together. We humans, here we are in a circle.
00:36:15
Speaker
And here we are lighting a candle and here we are having an intentional moment and here we are all being present with our phones turned off and loving our hearts and a willingness to witness whatever's happening here. I think a lot of ritual is tactile for people because it's a way of, you know, we sort of exist in our heads so much in our culture, in our society, right?
00:36:38
Speaker
And so to put it into, to light the candle, to see that flame, to smell that incense, to have the campfire or the bath or a certain food we might eat or certain drink we might eat.
00:36:53
Speaker
with intention. It's a way of, you know, delighting our senses and reminding our senses, right, of saying, oh, this is now this. Like when I light a candle for myself, it's like a shortcut for me to connect, right? Because it's telling me, oh, okay, now it's a time to get a little quiet, you know, and listen a little bit.
00:37:16
Speaker
And then also there's certain places of walking. I consider the act of walking, there's a specific hike in Los Angeles that I love and I take long walks in Central Park in New York and then obviously when I'm
00:37:31
Speaker
in the wilderness or anywhere really. Just taking a long walk too is a ritual for me. And again, it's getting me into my body. It's getting me out of my head. That is such a good point of like the simplicity of it can be anything.
00:37:49
Speaker
You naming it a ritual makes it so. You naming it a ceremony makes it so. And there's ancient ceremonies and then there's the new ones that you're going to come up with that are tailored to you that work for you.
00:38:05
Speaker
And I think it's the power of being able to participate with yourself with a certain, like you said, framework of mindset and really body set, right? To set your body up, your emotional body, your spiritual body, your etheric body, your energetic body, right? To try to bring them all together a little bit, you know, I think is challenging in a modern world.
00:38:35
Speaker
Well, I think that sort of integrated life is what we all want, you know? And we live in a society that's taught us separateness, right? That's taught us we're separate from each other, we're separate from the earth, we're separate from the divine, and also that we're separate parts. Like, you know, on Sunday is when I do my holy thing for 30, 45 minutes in this building.
00:39:03
Speaker
the rest of the time I go to work and then I have my family and then I have this as opposed to this integration and this interconnectedness which I think we are all quite aware of and want to experience more in our day-to-day life and also
00:39:21
Speaker
you know, noticing that whether you call it a spiritual path or not, whether it's just a path of, of self understanding, self-awareness alignment, whatever you want to call it, that, that it, that it's involved some work and some understanding of who am I doing this for? Right? So if I'm presenting myself a certain way in the world that is not actually aligned with who I am, you know,
00:39:49
Speaker
that's an opportunity to reflect and shift and say, actually, huh, where am I my most authentic self?
Aligning Persona with True Self
00:40:00
Speaker
And how can I be me everywhere I go? Yeah, and what's in the way, lovingly looking at what is in the way of me feeling like I can be. And also, but to recognize what precious information that is, right? What I mean by that is,
00:40:17
Speaker
you know, hey, I just left that party and I just feel a little uncomfortable with how I was presenting myself or how I
00:40:25
Speaker
was conversing or I feel like I'm just noticing how insecure I was around that person and how much I resented that person. And so being so curious about like, huh, I wonder what that's about. And that's such an opportunity to go within and to unpack that a little bit. And that that can be, oh my gosh, you can find treasure in there. And I think some people are, that comes easier to some people than to others. And it's interesting this,
00:40:55
Speaker
wanting to cultivate that in yourself though, you know, and to realize, oh, this is important. And the more I can sit with this, the better I become at this naming of this sensation or this feeling or this emotion or this memory that comes up. I mean, they say knowledge is power and it's the darn truth. And it's like,
00:41:16
Speaker
self-knowledge is huge power. In secular terms, I call myself an inner awareness coach because I work with atheists too. I come at it with no agenda. That's why I call myself a secular chaplain because chaplain is a minister of presence. I think we're all called to be chaplains for one another. If I can help people to
00:41:42
Speaker
understand where their own guidance is leading them. I put a lot of trust in my own inner compass and I really do my best to have a loving voice within myself and I think that's one of the things I help people do is understand and trust their own inner compass and also
00:42:03
Speaker
to grow their capacity for self-love and compassion because I gotta say, if the inside of our minds could be gentle places, the world would be a gentler place also. I agree with you. That brings me to something else I found in your sub-stack, actually. You used the word
00:42:21
Speaker
Maloriism, M-E-L-I-O-R-I-S-M, and you wrote, is defined as the belief that the world can be made better by human effort. And I just, obviously that struck me because this is one of the founding beliefs that this podcast is going on. And so when you talked about helping people to have an inner voice that's
00:42:49
Speaker
you know, kinder and more compassionate and recognizing that that can ripple out and have this bigger effect. I thought that that word that I had never heard before was so fitting. That was also a word I had never heard, which is probably why I don't even know how to say it, but I'm going to guess meliorism. And when I was struck by it and I saw the definition and I thought, oh,
00:43:15
Speaker
Yes, that is a belief I have. I think to me the importance of that belief now is, you know, we're coming out of a time where for centuries, I guess, so many people made that their God's responsibility, right? That the world can be made better if God allows it. We're waiting for God to do something. We're praying for God to do something. You know, there's this giving up of power in a way of our own personal power and our collective power.
00:43:45
Speaker
and our loving power as humans, right? And so this idea of human effort, you know, I love that. David Orr has a great quote, I love it so much. He says, hope is a verb with its shirt sleeves rolled up, right? So that Meliorism speaks to that, that as we are actively hoping for a better world, we got our shirt sleeves rolled up and we are helping to make a better world.
00:44:12
Speaker
God, that's such a great concept for this podcast too, because Issa and I talk a lot about this, and I'm curious of your thoughts on it, of this idea of magical thinking and spiritual bypassing. It's such an important topic, this idea of spiritual bypassing.
00:44:30
Speaker
And I think one of the teachings of the divine feminine for me, which, as you know, is very, very important in my life and certainly on the topic of change, is this permission to hold contradiction, right? And so, yes, we are co-creators. Yes, we are agents of manifestation in this world. Absolutely. We have powers that we do not even understand. They are so mighty. Absolutely. And we are human.
00:45:00
Speaker
And we have subconscious beliefs and we have emotional patterns and we have resentments and we have traumas and we have heartbreaks and we have dysfunctions and challenges and all of it. And we can't pretend that some of that doesn't exist, right? In my spiritual seeking, I remember sitting in seminars, you know,
00:45:23
Speaker
starting 20 years ago when I was really getting conscious about being a student of this. And I remember being in the presence of some spiritual teachers where they were, to me, radiating rage, just radiating it. But they had a smile on their face. Welcome to this moment. And I was like, oh, man. For those of you who can't see, Liz just put on this crazy cult leader face. I was like, I am at one with everybody. And it's like, oh, no, you're not.
00:45:53
Speaker
Bye.
00:45:53
Speaker
you've got something to deal with. So yes, it's important as we recognize intention. And I think when we are sitting around in our rituals, and yeah, if some people use sacred items or sacred objects that they have declared sacred like a crystal or whatever it is, and you have an intention and you're doing some daydreams about something you really want in your life or a desire or something, well, then the next step is to notice what's coming up in resistance or a fear.
00:46:23
Speaker
or the the belief that can happen or i'm unworthy of that or blah blah blah like keep going don't just let it stop with the daydream keep going and how can i how can i let that go oh that's something i need to heal in myself or you know
00:46:41
Speaker
That's what I mean by information from within.
Facing Uncomfortable Feelings for Growth
00:46:43
Speaker
Keep excavating, right? Don't stop at the uncomfortable, because there's this edge you can walk up with yourself of like, I want to feel this way, and I'm going to stay positive, and I'm going to hold this. But then if there's a denial happening within you around
00:47:02
Speaker
What is it that you actually feel, though, when I started to pay attention that the holistic way that I felt was both hopeful and angry? Yeah. But it's like the truth shall set you free, right? You know, it's like you got it. You got to tell the truth. You got to be like, even though I really want to be feeling good right now, I actually have a lot of sadness in me right now. OK. OK. Give that attention.
00:47:31
Speaker
I'm gonna honor that. The honoring of it, that it doesn't necessarily have to overtake or even indulge it, but at least witnessing it is that honest self-assessment and usually addresses that inner child or inner voice, right? The inner critic that does probably need some attention of some kind, if not compassionate attention, but the ignoring of it
00:48:00
Speaker
is not helpful in my experience. Yeah. And it's interesting thinking about change too, right? Because I think a lot of times when we ignore these things instead of giving, honoring them or whatever, is that they can keep us stuck in our lives. Yes. And so if you think about emotion as movement, right? And allowing them to move through. So it's not about keeping that emotion stuck. It's like letting it move out.
Self-Awareness through Deep Listening
00:48:29
Speaker
through and out. One of my blogs I wrote was called The Art of Listening because I feel like my listening practice started in acting class because mainly it's that being in the moment that, you know, you got to be in the moment, you got to be in the moment. That is just a refrain as an actor and listening to the audience, right? You know, really that's basically what I do and I have a session with anyone is
00:48:56
Speaker
deep listening, that's really what I do. And that seems so simple, but it's not because it really is a focused attention. And there's something that happens when the opportunity of being deeply listened to is ultimately an opportunity to listen to yourself in a way that can be profound and surprising, right? So I'm also holding space for people toward that other person to listen to themselves.
00:49:26
Speaker
And when you're listening without an agenda, without an urge to interrupt and to notice also what's my stuff and what's not my stuff, right? And to have that place where I'm not uncomfortable when emotions come up, you know, so that that's safe and offering a place of non-judgment. For me, as I am continuing to practice the art of listening, I am constantly learning how to continue to
00:49:55
Speaker
cultivate this inner peace and this quiet space within so that when I am holding space for someone else, I can truly, truly give them my undivided attention.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I've experienced that to be true of you, meaning when you come forward with me, and I can feel it, the non-judgment that allows me to give myself permission to not judge me.
00:50:26
Speaker
that is safety and safety is such a foundation of doing spiritual work, quote unquote. I believe that safety is a keystone to change of an individual, of a human and possibly of a society and bigger, I'm not sure. Well, because there's trust there, right? And also when we talk about safety, like feeling safe inside of myself, I want to feel safe in here.
00:50:56
Speaker
Right. Part of my role here too is to be a loving witness for someone. Right. So as in a place of nonjudgment, if I'm like, I'm also viewing you with the eyes of a loving witness, therefore giving you an opportunity to
00:51:10
Speaker
be a loving witness for yourself. And I think about the power of radical self-acceptance, which changes us when we are able to really radically self-accept ourselves the way we are, exactly the way we are, and even accept where we are in our lives, right? I can't change until accept where I am in this moment, right? Career or personal life or anything is like, I'm accepting that I'm
00:51:38
Speaker
deeply unhappy in this marriage. And I'm accepting that. That is my truth. And now I can change something.
00:51:46
Speaker
So there's a lot of power in recognizing all that's going on inside, and a power in acceptance, obviously, but changing one's perception of self. I think that's one of the keys to change that's so important that people don't tell you about is, oh, how you think about yourself is going to change.
00:52:09
Speaker
And you have to have a willingness to have that happen too, right? There's a good metaphor I have for that. Sometimes there's butterflies out in the world who still think of themselves as caterpillars. That's the human metaphor, right? So even though they've changed, even though they're a completely different being than they were before they went into that cocoon, they're still like, oh, look at me, I'm a caterpillar. And it's like the world sees you as a butterfly, but you're still naming yourself and self identifying as a
00:52:39
Speaker
And we are in the natural world, right? So I can look out the window right now and see trees that are a little more yellow than they were yesterday, right? And so it's like, yeah, I got yellow leaves in me and green leaves and everything.
00:52:51
Speaker
like that we are always changing and that that is the natural way of things. And so what a relief, right? Oh, I'm just participating in the natural way of things by being my ever-changing self, right? But this willingness to let not only me surprise me, but letting life surprise me, you know? Sometimes we go into change and to periods of change where we don't have all the information yet, befriending the unknown, right?
00:53:20
Speaker
feeling safe in the unknown. And you wrote about this, you know, being the less familiar. As we were talking about the power of naming, what happens when you can't name something? How can you expect yourself to feel safer on something that you can't name? There are so many names for the divine. And one name I like is Great Mystery. So if I was in a session with someone and someone was talking about this unknown, this unknown, this unknown,
00:53:49
Speaker
Now, if I were to say, well, what if we called it the great mystery? And if that was part of the universe or the divine or the holy and that you're part of the great mystery and you yourself are a great mystery, that could maybe feel a little, I don't know, maybe a little safer, a little more loving than the unknown.
00:54:15
Speaker
Absolutely. And the reality is we don't know. We don't know what's going to fucking happen. We just don't need to know how my arms work. Like, I don't understand. Right. But it's like, but if the reframe is instead of this unknown where I'm flailing, I'm flailing, I'm not, you know, or
00:54:35
Speaker
The reframe could be, I'm held by mystery. Actually being held by it, I'm held up by it. I can lean into it. And I don't have to understand it in my little noggin. It's okay. It's safe to not understand in a logical way. It's safe. Safe, even if I'm not grasping totally what's going on right now in my life.
00:54:57
Speaker
Yeah, to reassure yourself that you are safe when things are not fully in your control.
Embracing Imperfection in Growth
00:55:05
Speaker
Yeah. Because that is one of the most compounding falsities, is that we have control. Absolutely. And that's the power of the serenity prayer, right? Help me to understand what I can control, what I can't, and the wisdom, and know the difference, right? So that's a beautiful question, too, and a beautiful prayer.
00:55:33
Speaker
Okay, I think we did it. Listen, 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.
00:55:54
Speaker
your effort is enough and change is possible. Question the standard that says otherwise, because what if almost is good enough? Just by tuning in, you're part of our clan. Not in a call-to-way, though. We don't know how far this ripple can go, but we're going to keep showing up. And we'll never get to perfection, but we're all going to be okay if we let the process be the solution and we see the value in the attempt.
00:56:22
Speaker
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. For show notes and additional resources, check out our website at rippleeffectpod.com. That's affect with an A. Kia ora has worked diligently to make our website interactive.
00:56:43
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.
00:57:07
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, they're all our 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.
00:57:30
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.
00:57:58
Speaker
A special thank you, love, and credit to the magnificent Mia Casasanta for this beautiful music you're listening to right now.