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11 . Parts Party - Russell Price
35 Plays7 months ago
Support the podcast at https://podoflions.substack.com/
Coming from deep in the vault, rumored to be lost forever, and available to the public for the first time ever, we bring you: Russell Price!
This is the historic first ever recording made for the Sane & Miraculous, with Coach, NLP practitioner, hypnotherapist and all round swell guy Russell “Rusty“ Price.
We talk about
- Trauma informed hypnotherapy
- How to stop eating a tub of ice cream every night
- Working with abandoned parts
- Limitations of the “Manifestation“ mindset
- Rusty being a goddamn joy to be around
- The weather in Bali and Colorado
- … and much much more.
Links
Rusty’s free ebook Principles
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, it is Thursday, November 7th, 2024. Strange day. If you know, you know. And if you're listening anytime around this time, you surely know. But this is not going to be an episode about US politics. In fact,
00:00:21
Speaker
What I did for you, I'm sure that you have all the information about US politics that you care to have at your fingertips, all the conversation, all of the updates, all of that stuff.
Reflection and Subscription Info
00:00:32
Speaker
So what I have done for you today is found a recording that from two years ago. So it is blessedly untainted by that conversation. I recorded this.
00:00:47
Speaker
in January, 2023. So almost two years ago. And it is only seeing the light of day today. The conversation is with Russell Price. So I'm going to introduce Rusty and talk more about what it is we talk about in this conversation later. I just want to say it's crazy that it took me two years to put this out. Just really wild.
00:01:10
Speaker
I have a theory about why it took me so long. i'm not It's not completely transparent to me why it took me so long to put this out. I do have a theory, which I will spare you from here, but if you if you really want to know, I will talk about it in my reflection episode, which I'll release shortly after this comes out.
00:01:32
Speaker
So the reflection episode for those of you who don't know, if you are a premium subscriber for every interview I do, I will also do a little shorter reflection episode where I talk about some of my thoughts, especially kind of.
00:01:45
Speaker
post edit, you know, while going back over the material, what is interesting to me, what catches my attention, anything I want to clarify or elaborate on, and just little kind of bonuses and stuff like that. So if you're interested in that, including my theory about the incredibly slow turnaround time of this episode, you can subscribe partoflions.substack dot.com and sign up to be a paid subscriber there. It's $5 a month.
00:02:15
Speaker
There'll be a link in the episode
Narcissism and Changed Views
00:02:17
Speaker
description. I highly encourage you to do that. I think you're going to have a good time. And by doing that, you help me make this podcast. So thank you. OK, so a couple of things I want to say kind of in preparation. There's one thing. This is that all right a tiny nod of the head to the political conversation in America. There's a moment in the conversation where Rusty and I talk about the idea of g narcissism having its place, which I don't disagree with. I don't know that we elaborated on it as much as we could have.
00:02:50
Speaker
and it just given the exact historical moment we're in, left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Listening to that right now, it's like I feel kind of less apologetic of narcissism in this moment than I do in other moments. Anyway, I just wanted to say that. That's something that I would say differently today than I did in that conversation.
Understanding NLP
00:03:11
Speaker
The other thing I want to talk about briefly, so we talk about in the recording, we talk about NLP. And again, this is me defining an acronym that
00:03:22
Speaker
we talk about in the recording and don't ever stop to define. So just like last week that happened, this week it happened as well. This week it was with NLP. Some of you will know what NLP is, but I'll just give you a kind of quick definition for those that don't enter NLP.
00:03:39
Speaker
actually means multiple things, and including it's a machine learning thing. This is not the machine learning kind of NLP. This is the therapy coaching kind of NLP. So NLP stands for neuro-linguistic programming. It's a modality ah set of transformational technologies, communication technologies, modeling technologies that came out of Santa Cruz in the 1970s out of the University of Santa Cruz. A couple of guys,
00:04:06
Speaker
Richard Bandler and John Grinda, together with a bunch of their grad students and the other you know interesting characters, created this modality in the 70s. If you look it up online, they call it a pseudoscience. there is ah This is a controversial point. I'm not going to go into detail, but I would say rumors of its pseudoscientificity that's the word, are slightly exaggerated. They're not wholly exaggerated. I don't want to go to bat and say this is a completely scientifically founded modality. But I think it has been given unfairly short shrift in the scientific community. So I just want to just defend it a little bit here. And so you know what it is, it's it's a way of talking with people. It's a way of working with people and and of understanding. it's It's kind of two things, is understanding
00:05:00
Speaker
excellence in any field that's the ideal. So it's a modeling technology. so It's a way of understanding how people that are good at things do those things well.
00:05:12
Speaker
And then they applied those techniques to therapists and hypnotherapists of Milton Erickson. So Christina last week talked about Milton Erickson. Milton Erickson was one of the inspirations for NLP, Virginia Satir, Fritz Pearls, and some other people that were the kind of rockstar therapists of the 70s.
00:05:33
Speaker
These guys went around and modeled them and tried to figure out what they were doing that was so effective. And so NLP, as well as being a modeling technology, is also the outputs of applying that modeling technology to a kind of rockstar therapist of the 70s to see tools for how people can change, how people can communicate, how people can get what they want. It's super interesting. It's very controversial.
00:06:01
Speaker
It's controversial in part because the people that founded it were controversial. Those are some wild stories that you can find by yourself.
Introducing Rusty Price
00:06:08
Speaker
Where where I studied and NLP, so I studied and NLP with Kyle Buchheit at and NLP Marin. Shout out to NLP Marin. I highly recommend it. If you want to study and NLP, that's the place to go. And there's a joke around NLP Marin where you say to people, I'm studying NLP, don't Google it.
00:06:24
Speaker
Because when you Google NLP, you get a lot of weird stuff, a lot of weird stuff. And so it's being kind of co-opted by some weird people. But ah at the heart of it is a just a very useful toolkit, a very useful way of thinking about change and thinking about communication. And if it is in the hands of somebody with good intentions, it can be used for great good. So that's what I'll say about NLP. So now let me say something about Rusty who I'm talking to today. I first met Rusty hanging around the authentic world, authentic man program scene in San Francisco. I think he was coming through. I don't actually know whose friend he was or where he came from, but he was part of that scene. And he's just a delightful person. He's lighthearted. He's funny. He's very pleasant to be around.
00:07:13
Speaker
And we have a really great chat. He is a an NLP practitioner. He's also a hypnotherapist. And so a bunch of this conversation is about how he works with people and how he works with excluded parts and his kind of approach to that.
00:07:30
Speaker
So, you know, the example we talk about is like if you are eating a tub of ice cream every night and it's just uncontrollable and you can't seem to stop no matter what you do, like what's going on there and how do you work with it? That's a big part of the conversation. We also talk about some of the pitfalls of transformational world and some of the ideas and the limitations of those ideas. So there's, yeah, there's just some fun stuff in there as well. And lots beside that.
00:07:55
Speaker
Now, Rusty was calling from Bali in the middle of a tropical storm. And so there were some internet issues. The audio quality is totally great in the recording. Do not fear. It's easy to listen to. But I had to make some edits just a couple places and especially the end that might seem a little bit abrupt. So if you notice like, oh, the flow of the conversation is kind of suddenly shifted, that's what's happening. It's just like I was cutting out five minutes of me and Rusty saying like, can you hear me? No, can you hear me? No. And stuff like that. Right. So I didn't want you to have to listen to that,
Rusty's Background and Journey
00:08:30
Speaker
of course. And so, but it what it means is that maybe the the flow of the conversation is slightly more disjointed than normal.
00:08:38
Speaker
I don't think it's super noticeable. I think you're still going to have a good time, but just wanted to give you a heads up about that. The last thing I want to say, I just want to thank Rusty for his patience in how long it's taken me to get this episode out. He's been incredibly gracious and patient about it and totally chill, which I would expect nothing less, but I still want to thank him. So that's enough of an introduction from me. And now I hope you'll enjoy hanging out with a Russell Price.
00:09:23
Speaker
When we were introduced, you were introduced to me as Rusty. Do you still go by Rusty? Rusty, Russ, my mum calls me Russell, so that's kind of that's kind of awkward if you want to call me Russell. Whatever works. All right, i'll I'll call you Rusty, because that's how you are in my mind. Perfect. How's it going today? Well, I'm in beautiful Bali. I'm looking out at my tropical garden, literally at some banana trees and coconut trees, and it is raining. So in Bali, when it rains, it tends to wash the internet away. so um
00:09:55
Speaker
We'll, we'll just roll with that as it happens, but I'm great. Ah, that does sound very nice. It is currently, uh, I'm in Colorado, it's currently below zero Fahrenheit that is. Oh God. And, uh, it's pretty wild. It's pretty, it's been a few days of like icy fog and just serious cold, like can't go outside for more than five minutes without your, your face freezing off. So.
00:10:22
Speaker
the The idea of being in Bali with like a tropical rain and like something very um and enviable. but but I envy myself sometimes until I catch up with myself. It is, it is wonderful here. So I think I want to start with like, let people know just a little bit about who you are and what you're up to. I will also introduce you, but like, it'd be great to hear in your words, who is Rusty? Who am I? Who am I in 25 words or less? You can have 50. I can have 50, great.
00:10:57
Speaker
I think I'm, I play this little game with myself where I count the the new operating systems. And I think I'm up to about Rusky version 5.0 at the moment. I've just kind of clicked into a new, a new operating system. So very, very briefly right now, um, amongst many other things that I do, I am a trauma-informed hypnotherapist, uh, and somewhat of a way with spiritual guide for people.
00:11:26
Speaker
um In the past, i have I have been a geologist, I have a degree in science, I have a degree in woo and magic. um a lot of A lot of kinesiology, bodywork, NLP, Reiki, you name it, it's an embarrassingly long list.
00:11:46
Speaker
um got tangled in and out of some sex cults, which I think is a useful experience, and traveled an awful lot. And along the way, always been a fierce, of always fiercely inquired as to what is the nature of of my truth? What is the nature of of of the truth around me? And how do I use that to really liberate people and and end suffering, especially my own?
00:12:16
Speaker
um And so I guess that is that is who I am without too many formal titles beautiful I love i we're not gonna dive deep into this but I love that you have like you know one of the metaphors for working with people is kind of like.
00:12:33
Speaker
but going deep with them, like excavating the trauma, like there's like a whole kind of mining metaphor that, that, that's, you know, just one way of thinking about working with people. And I love that you literally were a geologist. You have like an actual physical analog to that, that kind of spiritual thing. 100% I've literally worked in cabins six to 900 meters below the ground, climbing through cabins with a cat lamp, looking for gold. That was literally one of my, ah one of my jobs. So mining for gold on the inside. and the Yeah, what a metaphor.
Rusty's Therapeutic Approach
00:13:11
Speaker
One word jumped out to me. You described yourself as a wayward spiritual guide.
00:13:16
Speaker
like who Like, tell me about the waywardness. ah That's like, darn, it's a throwaway comment that that arose in the last 10 seconds and now I have to justify it. um But I love it. It's it's funny because there's a an upcoming festival in Bali called Bali Bloom, which is reminiscent of of Burning Man. It's our version of Burning Man. And I'm going to be running something called the Bad Advice Booth um while I'm there. and so A wayward spiritual guide, what do I mean by that? Having been on an intense and consistent personal development journey and and ah and a consistent period of like self-inquiry into the nature of myself and and people and consciousness, what I've discovered and had to untangle myself from, I think, are a lot of the the gaps in common or popular spiritual teachings.
00:14:12
Speaker
And so what I find myself often saying is, are things which may run counter to prevailing or popular wisdom? um And so I guess that's where the wayward comes in. you know Some of my so of my perspectives and views might be either contrary to what people think or hold dear.
00:14:33
Speaker
or And i would love I would love your input into this as well, Robbie, I'm looking forward to this. Certain wisdoms are applicable at certain stages of development um and then they need to be gently and lovingly discarded.
00:14:51
Speaker
But if you don't have an awareness as I didn't, um, of what stage you're at, then the spiritual teachings and and general teachings can become at best confusing and at worst misleading and and harmful. So yeah, this is something that I'm still trying to articulate well, uh, but I'm very aware of if we start to cover that we can, maybe we can both unpack that together. I love it. Yeah. I love it. A part of the, you know, when we were.
00:15:21
Speaker
ahead of time preparing this conversation just letting people in the the ah subject of. i I don't remember the exact words but something like what the transformational world gets wrong or the gaps popped up as being like very rich so yes i'm i'm excited to unpack all of that i have a lot of questions about that before we go into that though you would describe yourself as a as a hypnotherapist.
00:15:46
Speaker
Is that right? Was there another word? Was there a specific more specificity to that? I bandied about on the internet as a trauma-informed hypnotherapist, yeah which I think is just the easiest, most accessible way for people to get a sense of what I do. um So what I'm interested in is... We're gonna go and unpack what a bunch of other people are doing and how they're getting it wrong, which is one of my favorite things to do. So I'm very excited about that. But, but I want to start with like, what do you see as the goal of your work and maybe more generally the goal of, of the spiritual journey? If that's a not too huge a question.
00:16:26
Speaker
Great. So I'll start with the goal of my work. And there's two there's probably two aspects to that. There's the formal work that I do when I do one-on-one work with clients or in workshops, for example. And then there's the informal work that I do just by being a person in the world and how I engage and and influence and interact with my general community and the people that I love.
00:16:53
Speaker
Formally, I have a modality called quantum hypnotherapy, which on the surface, it works on three levels. The first level is and we just, you know, hypnotherapy and NLP, as you know, is very powerful and very good at just shifting things, which, which shifting the ways in which you get in your own way.
00:17:17
Speaker
um Difficult patterns, relationship challenges, ah mental loop, self-sabotage, etc. That's on the surface. People will come in saying, I want to shift this and we do that. Underneath what I'm really doing is I'm not trying to shift or fix or heal anything. I'm teaching your nervous system to respond to stress in a different way.
00:17:41
Speaker
And when the when the brain and the nervous system is presented with a new and better choice, it tends towards health and it will take that choice. And this is where we see the systemic improvement in people's lives. So they come because they've got an argument having a challenging belief and suddenly their relationships get better, their business gets better, et cetera. We're all very familiar with that concept and that experience.
00:18:08
Speaker
So I'm retraining the nervous system to deal with stress differently. And then at the third level, when when you're resolving some of these trauma imprints or or you're showing the nervous system a better way to do things, the heart the wisdom of the heart has a clearer channel to connect with you and to express itself in the world.
00:18:30
Speaker
And so that's my kind of my ultimate goal if you like is to help you get in touch with and express your heart's desire in the world. So that's the formal, a formal snapshot of what I do in, in that particular context. And then what I've noticed in the wider context of like who I live with and how I live and how people engage with me and the feedback that I kind of get from, from the people who are around me, um, without, without blowing my own trumpet, um, there seems to be some kind of
00:19:11
Speaker
admiration or understanding or a sense that however I'm living my life is something that is, as I said, is admirable and is that there's something going on with Russ that certain people are taking note of and are curious about and just by spending time with me, are finding benefits in their own life.
00:19:33
Speaker
And very much I have the same experience with other people who I love and and cherish, but it's just something that is growing in my awareness is that just my like presence in a room or or as a presence in someone'self someone else's life is beneficial at lots of interesting levels. It sounds nice.
Healing through Inner Acceptance
00:19:54
Speaker
It makes me want to, it makes me want to hang out with you more. We were on the opposite sides of the earth. It's been a minute in the, in the flesh, but thanks. Thank you. I, I, I love the, also the kind of these three layers.
00:20:09
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I almost just want to get a little more into the kind of the mechanics of that. Like I'm interested in, okay, you know, here I am and, you know, say this is not my issue, but say, you know, I, I i just eat a tub of ice cream every night before going to bed. Got it.
00:20:30
Speaker
When I, when, when somebody comes to you and says something like that, what is it that you are like paying attention to? What are you ah starting to like do internally to make sense of that? love it I love it. I love this question. And I'm going to add a couple of bits of context.
00:20:46
Speaker
You come to me because we'll use a couple of examples. You come to me because you eat a tub of ice cream before bed or you're binging on Netflix before bed and the suffering arises because no doubt there's another part of you which says, I don't want to be eating ice cream before I go to bed or I don't or I have better things to do than watch Netflix and yet here I am still doing the thing that I promised myself in the morning I won't do.
00:21:14
Speaker
okay And so, ah two things ah two things are apparent from what I'm tracking. One is, you have a conflict between parts.
00:21:25
Speaker
it there's ah There's a desire in you to do something different. And sometimes and we watch, I mean, I certainly do. We watch ourselves helplessly do the very thing that we said we weren't going to do. You know, text your ex, eat ice cream, not exercise and procrastinate, for example. And therein lies suffering.
00:21:47
Speaker
My immediate perspective is that there is something wise inside you that is and that is causing you to eat the ice cream. I don't shame judge or see that as bad in any way at all. um here's Here's the metaphor and the model that i that I work with. The part that's eating ice cream, the part that wants to text your ex, the part that is procrastinating is a It's a it's a part of your nervous system often a young part that wants your attention and it knows that and it doesn't have a lot of it doesn't have a lot of ah complex language. It's basically like a two-year-old in a supermarket that wants attention and it knows that if it takes a jar off the shelf and smashes it on the ground mum is going to come running and give it attention.
00:22:43
Speaker
So, these younger parts inside us have learned that, hey, if i make you if I make you obsess about your ex, if I stop you from doing the work that you want to be doing through procrastination or distraction,
00:22:58
Speaker
If I prevent you from getting a good night's sleep by making you eat ice cream, I will get your attention. That's the intelligence that this part has at the moment. Just like the two year old in the supermarket, it smashes the glass and mum comes up and what we tend to do when we see this situation of the child in the broken glass is we go, bad child, wrong child, don't break the glass, stop crying and behave yourself.
00:23:24
Speaker
ah Okay. My approach is to help you instead get down on eye level with that little child to acknowledge, Oh, you've broken some glass and that's fine. And I'm right here with you. And I'm listening to whatever it else, whatever else it is that you have to say. And even if you don't have anything to say, I'm still here listening and I'm helping you do what we call co-regulate with that part of yourself so instead of being the angry mom which is saying you shouldn't eat ice cream you must exercise more get the work done otherwise you're going to die and starve and not earn money stop thinking about your ex you know.
00:24:13
Speaker
That kind of approach tends not to work. What I do is I help you and because you're dysregulated, we kind of continue in that kind of shaming or blaming vein, which is just the best that we can do at the moment. And I do that myself for sure. But when you're with another person,
00:24:33
Speaker
who can help you co-regulate and instead, as I said, get down on eye level with this part. Just let it know that it's not bad or wrong and it doesn't need to change or to be any different either. And we just listen.
00:24:48
Speaker
ah That part, that young part of you, which wants your attention, in my experience, starts to shift and change all by itself.
Core Needs and Early Life Impact
00:24:59
Speaker
It starts to, now that it knows it has your attention, this is where the magic happens. This is where I get chills in my spine every time. There is not one person that I have gone deep with.
00:25:12
Speaker
who I haven't found andite in the positive. Every person that I've worked with at this level, I found that at their core and that's only one or two layers deep is good and true and kind and means the best for themselves. And what that analogy means is like with the two year old that we're sitting with on the supermarket floor, that part wants to help us, wants to be reintegrated into the greater ah sense of ourself, and has incredible gifts, just like a baby has this unimaginable potential. Once we start to look after that inner child,
00:25:52
Speaker
inner child's a bit of a trope. But once we start to look after that young part of ourselves, it grows up very swiftly within us and starts to reveal, and as it connects to these more and these more mature parts of our ourselves, communicates very clearly how it's here to help and what it wants to help us with. And life changes at that point.
00:26:18
Speaker
And this is one of the ways in which we shift trauma and self-sabotage and all of these symptoms of a part which just feels disconnected. There's so much more I could say. Fantastic. It's good that you start, cause I started counting up the, the way that I wanted to respond, but I, that was really great. One, I just want to make a comment like that. I love the metaphor of that the part wants attention.
00:26:45
Speaker
And you're getting attention by doing this behavior, right? Because what that metaphor makes really clear is the trying to kind of white knuckle it.
00:26:59
Speaker
Is it just going to make it worse because you're not, it's not getting the attention. And like, I think that's a lot of times, you know, when someone is trying to stop, you know, quit, quit some behavior or they're trying to add some behavior that they haven't a hard time sticking to. Like there's a, there's a kind of, I'm just going to use my will.
00:27:20
Speaker
to you know not eat the ice cream. I'm going to use my will to not you know binge on Netflix. And and then you know that might work for a day or two days, but that part is just getting more and more unattended to in that whole time. And then at some point you you know you you act out and you kind of you eat the ice cream or whatever.
00:27:39
Speaker
So i yeah I just kind of like the way of that the pot is like hungry for attention and it just doesn't have a better way of doing it. And then that the intervention is to listen. And one of the things that you said that I really loved was like, because I think this is, this was helpful for me. And still is something I need to learn more is to listen, even if it's not saying anything.
00:28:03
Speaker
I want to give some yeah some more context because it's a really great point and I was hoping I'd be able to share this. ah at the At the core of all of us, there's a few core needs and a few core wounds. We all need to know that we are loved. You are welcome here as you are and you don't need to change or be any different.
00:28:28
Speaker
We all need validation, okay? I see you and I love you and I want you to be here. And we all need to know that we're safe, you know, no harm will come to you. And we're all all in this together. And when, as a baby, right, as a baby, you're this little blue eyed fat piece of useless human, right? You can't do anything. You can't earn any money. You're not helping anybody. You you need to eat and then you shit and someone needs to wipe your bum.
00:29:01
Speaker
But we get all this validation, you know, you move your hand this way and your parents go, oh my God, they're going to be a baseball player. Or, you know, you have blue eyes because every baby has blue eyes and everyone thinks you're going to be a supermodel. You just get validation and love just for being exactly who you are. Sorry, I'm just going to ask you maybe a really stupid question.
00:29:25
Speaker
Do you literally mean physically every baby has blue eyes or is this like a metaphor? i'm making i It's somewhere that every baby has blue eyes ah initially and then initial they change maybe they change rapidly. I don't know. Maybe I'm i'm not an expert. that's yeah ah Anyway, i was just that's a fact I didn't know. yeah One way or the other, either literally or metaphorically. that yeah Beautiful. Every baby has beautiful eyes. Every baby has beautiful eyes. But I also, I just kind of want to throw in here, like, if you're not unlucky, maybe, then then ah the world around you responds to you this way as a baby, right? There are for sure people where even right at the beginning, that's how the world is supposed to respond for not everybody is that how the world really responds to it.
00:30:15
Speaker
Yes, that's a that's a really beautiful and poignant and and tender point for sure. Like this, this is, you know, the ideal, well. Ideally, we would all come out having that experience of, I guess, unconditional love for an extended period of time. but Certainly, whether a nervous system is learning and adapting to the world. Like for the Balinese, their babies won't touch the ground for three months. you know They're always held. And I just and watch the Balinese and I see how, you know,
00:30:52
Speaker
how connected and and and family-oriented they are. Now, don't get me wrong, the Balinese have their shadow in in their communities as well, but just the if the the effect of having such close physical connection for such an extended period of time, I just can see how how um kind of calm and connected they are within their family units. I love it.
00:31:18
Speaker
Um, but I was going to say like at a certain point, if i just the the very next thing I was going to say was at a certain point, uh, all of that unconditional love changes, you know, and suddenly, and maybe that point is, is straight after being born. And yes, we can talk about stuff in the womb, but I'm not going to get too complex at a certain point yet at a certain point.
00:31:42
Speaker
something changes and we are no longer, we are no longer loved and validated just for being who we are. um We have to do things, you know, you can't crawl over there. You have to put this jumper on because you'll get cold. Eat this food, you know, not because your internal state is saying I'm hungry, but because I'm here and I want to feed you. And that is I think the first rupture, you know the first kind of disconnection between who you are on the inside and what the outside world wants you to be. Now there's really good reasons to put on jumpers to stay warm and to eat food even if you're not quite hungry but
00:32:32
Speaker
It's a period of transition where we're trying to work out how do I navigate between these inter... And then this all happens unconsciously and pre-verbally, you know, without language. how do i But the question is, how do I navigate what my internal impulses are versus what what the feedback is that I'm getting from the outside world? And if we don't navigate that successfully, we we will create a little separation inside ourselves.
Self-Acceptance Challenges
00:33:01
Speaker
which then comes out in all sorts of odd and interesting and fabulous wonderful ways as we as we grow up. The approach that I take with these ah parts that are trying to get our attention then is to restore that original sense of deep love and validation and acceptance so that that part can reconnect to this sense of like, oh, I am welcome. I am loved. I am acknowledged and seen. And from that place,
00:33:38
Speaker
The wisdom of the body, the wisdom of the heart starts to emerge because it knows that it's safe.
00:33:46
Speaker
The more that we tell these parts, you're not welcome. You have to change. ah This is not right. you know guys You know, guys don't cry. Girls don't get angry. I have to have, you know, relationships must look this way. Conflict is bad. I have to earn this amount of money. These are all examples of like these thoughts that we've internalized and potentially are different from who we actually are. And that's where the suffering starts.
00:34:22
Speaker
So I've identified a part and I'm trying to listen to it and maybe, maybe with you or maybe, you know, the folks listening at home are going to, you know, experiment with this in their own minds. I imagine how sincere and you had something I, I w we haven't talked about it yet, but you have this ebook, which.
00:34:40
Speaker
I don't, is it going to be available? Yes. Okay, great. So there's going to be an ebook. You can go, well, it'll be in the show notes of how you get ahold of this. There's an ebook, which is kind of your principles and in that you have something about working with pots. Um, let me actually just bring it up.
00:34:54
Speaker
Okay, so part of your ebook, I mean, I just looked it up. Really? You should read it. Do you do you have it memorized? You know what I'm, do you know what I'm talking about? I do remember the last chapter was quiet. Uh, there was a lot that I was like, Oh my God, I have to put this in. So yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing it through your, your eyes and ears.
00:35:13
Speaker
Okay, great. All right. I'll, I'll read it to you. It's called the prayer for pots. Oh yes. Yes. Once you identify a pot, we offer it this. Thank you for feeling safe enough to reveal yourself. I see you. I hear you. I feel you and you do not need to change or be any different. You are welcome. You have a place and I'm right here with you.
00:35:40
Speaker
Again, this metaphor of like, like it's you're taking a part of yourself and treating it the way that a child should be treated, right? ah And a distressed child, right? Like I'm here.
00:35:54
Speaker
I love you. I see you. You don't need to be any different. Like you're kind of this, this, uh, transmission of love and this it's, and it's very beautiful. So I want to say that, but then I have kind of like a, it's a two pot at one. That's very beautiful. yeah two How sincere do you have to be about the, you don't need to change pot.
00:36:13
Speaker
Because I just know that like, this is what's difficult about this is like, there's a tension, if not like a, almost a spiritual paradox here, right? Of like, yeah yeah to change, you have to stop wanting to needing to change or like, how do you navigate that? Like either, you know, you're doing your own work or when you're working with somebody else.
00:36:39
Speaker
Great question. I love it. um So a couple of things. First of all, it is very, how sincere do you need to be? Couple of things. I also have a meditation, ah which I'll also make available and a and I people through this process because those words that prayer for your parts are the very words that I will use within a session.
00:37:01
Speaker
Now, one of the questions which arises from that is, well, why don't I just tell myself that? And then I'm good. I can kind of basically fix myself, heal myself or use Russ's magical process to kind of work out these things. And this was the this is one of the humbling things that took me a decade and a half to figure out, which is basically you can't do this by yourself.
00:37:29
Speaker
You can do it to a certain extent and the extent to which you can do this um is the extent to which you have, I guess, done the work in loving yourself in other areas of your life.
00:37:46
Speaker
So if you are practiced and you've, you know, let's say, for example, you've had therapy or you've been doing personal development for a while, you will have a greater capacity to love these challenging parts of yourself.
00:38:01
Speaker
the The experience we have of ourselves though and the way the brain is structured is that we were always looking for what's the next level? What's the next place in my growth? Where do I go to next? And because we're focused on what the next thing is and always identifying the gap between where we are and where we would like to be, we can have this experience of like, I'm not getting anywhere or I'm not progressing or I'm still fucking stuck, even though I've been doing this for X many years.
00:38:32
Speaker
Okay. When we get to these places of feeling stuck, which means we are wanting and earnestly desiring to move to the next level in our life, and I'll define what a level is as well later. We need someone else, and this is kind of the role I play, who can be a skilled guide and also hold a really huge permission field, what I call the the field of permission.
00:38:59
Speaker
And so as you're sharing, say about this part, which gives me the shits, cause I keep on texting my ex and eating ice cream and masturbating all at the same time. And then I can't function, right? You're, you're like stressed out cause you're doing this. You want it to stop. Understandably, but at the very wanting to stop is what is kind of perpetuating the resistance. I just want to say, I told you a lad in confidence. We've all been there. obviously we'vevolving
00:39:30
Speaker
Yeah, you're wanting it to stop. My role is to deeply accept that. And to offer that deep acceptance to you and in that field, your nervous system will start to co-regulate with me. Your permission field, your ability to accept and love these parts will start to open. And in part, it's because I've, you know, there's nothing you can tell me that I either though haven't done myself or have heard about or thought about. And so, you know, I have,
00:40:05
Speaker
Because I've done a lot of the work to kind of accept these really awkward crazy uncomfortable disconcerting parts of myself I can offer that.
00:40:18
Speaker
permission fields, I can offer that. You know, it's not necessarily like you can get someone off the street to say, Hey, can you read Russ's prayer for parts to me so I can sort my shit out? This is where you want to connect with someone who has done and embodied a lot of that work so that you, your nervous systems can, can draw on each other. And this person can help you draw out and connect to your essential goodness, which lies just beneath the surface of whatever behavior you're judging as bad is. so you You've used this the image of the nervous system a few times, which is this kind of scientific language. It makes you sound official. It makes it you know it makes you sound like, oh, this is real what you're talking about. right and and and you know And the nervous system is a real thing. and
00:41:14
Speaker
Like I what what jumped out to me in the in that the story we're just telling is like and I've had this experience on both sides of this experience many times where I, you know, let's say I'm in the client share and I'm, I'm sat with someone who is holding a field.
00:41:32
Speaker
Like holding a view, but something specific, which is not available to me outside of that relationship outside of that actual relational moment. And then I sit down with this person and they can.
00:41:50
Speaker
accept something in me which i can't accept in myself or they can see some possibility for me which i can see for myself. And and it makes it available rated actually. Suddenly i'm like you know it's kinda like.
00:42:06
Speaker
You're going on a trail with someone and then they say, hey, like, have you been up this trail? There's an incredible view. And it's like, no, I just thought that was like a little deer trail that peters out to nothing. And they're like, no, dude, like come up here. Like check this out. The fucking mountain unfolds before you and like your.
00:42:22
Speaker
Jog drops to the floor. yeah To me, that's the antidote to any kind of solipsism, any kind of like, I'm the only real one here and everybody else is a simulation or everything is a creation of my mind, right? Which is a kind of version of that. If everything were a creation of my mind, how could somebody else show me something that I didn't know was possible? i love that yeah So there's something that's like, ah, no, there are,
00:42:51
Speaker
Connection is real. People are real. Don't spend my life worrying that people aren't real, but that there's just something about that.
NLP Techniques for Change
00:43:00
Speaker
but that and There's something magic. that like and This is the thing where I kind of honed in on the nervous system because you know the theme of the podcast is about this, like trying to integrate these two views and to think about things in terms of the nervous system.
00:43:16
Speaker
gives a certain view which is about like okay with two nervous systems here and so there's something electromagnetic going on and maybe your electromagnetism. My electromagnetism is starting to resonate in harmony with your electromagnetism in some way which is. Ultimately kind of measurable and understandable.
00:43:36
Speaker
in terms of fundamental physical particles and maybe I'm picking it up even like subconsciously like I'm seeing like micro expressions seeing you know the same thing a polygraph would pick up of like the the the tension in your skin or like the sweat or whatever the flushness and all of these things are I'm so good of a ah a you know human reader as a human being. Evolutionarily, I've been trained to develop this capacity to understand another human's internal world.
00:44:11
Speaker
So deeply that I can understand that you are loving a part of me that I can't love and then that teaches me something. And so that's kind of all of that is in the like left hand or the the right hand or the left brain right hand whatever like the rational. Kind of scientific way of thinking about it.
00:44:31
Speaker
And i but ah but there's another way of thinking about it which is it's just a kind of beautiful magic ah like of consciousness right. Yeah i just like oh my god that like two people can sit together and one person can feel.
00:44:47
Speaker
how the other person is feeling. I mean, I love it. It, to me, yeah, there, there is, and there's so many things I could say to misquote Ken Wilber, you know, there is, there is an, and there is a, an analogy in the physical, you know, in terms of what's happening, there will be things that we could measure, you know, heart rate, variance, nervous system, regulation, breath, et cetera. And then there is the internal experience. And even when you do this process,
00:45:16
Speaker
with me or with whoever it is. As you welcome in this part, as you are guided to welcome this part, I think you said it really well, you know, this is other person. This is the role that I play, helping you love these parts of yourself, which you can't love at the moment. As that very thing happens,
00:45:36
Speaker
you will have a visceral experience of this part integrating and revealing its positive intention for you in your body. It's a very visceral felt sense. And I use the NLP sub-modalities to kind of elicit these parts. You know, it's why I say when we talk with a part, you know, it's it's in the unconscious and we we draw out, what does this part feel like?
00:46:02
Speaker
you know This is also the gift of somatic experience. What do you notice in your body? But every part will also have an image. And one of the things I think I say in in the book in is, you know, darkness. Darkness is a color. Silence is a sound. Nothing is a feeling.
00:46:20
Speaker
OK, so even if I go to somebody who's like, you know, I have I'm struggling with this thing, you know, I'm staying up late at night. I'm i'm eating ice cream. I'm obsessing about the state of the world and whether I'll earn enough money to live.
00:46:34
Speaker
If I go, what does that feel like? And they say, it doesn't feel like I can't feel anything. It feels like nothing. It's like, great. We work with that. So this part feels like nothing. It's saying all these things about the world and it looks like a black hole. You know, great. That's, we use that languaging to work with that part. and And then I might say, well, great. Can you, can you see this? Nothing. Can you see this black hole?
00:47:04
Speaker
What happens if you get down on eye level that changes the internal unconscious hierarchy of power, if you like, because you can think if you're looking down on something, you are, there's a power differential. Similarly, if you're looking up at something, if something feels overwhelming, like often I've always had this image of my mother scowling at me and this face sits in the sits above my vision on the right hand side.
00:47:32
Speaker
And when I can lift myself so that I'm looking at eye level, it completely shifts my relationship to that internal version of my mother. And we can have a very different dialogue. I can accept her more. I just want to like shout out to like classic NLP, like this is such to me, like this beautiful, like the beautiful piece of NLP of this like submodality playing with, well, move it further away, move it closer, like, oh my God. And suddenly.
00:48:01
Speaker
creating this plasticity in your internal world. 100% 100% like you if we're dealing like with really ah extreme trauma, you know often these images will be right in front of your face and then with with my assistance or this you know the assistance of someone who can help you regulate,
00:48:24
Speaker
your nervous system, you then discover, oh, I can shift that image further away just so I can get a bit of a bead on it and and get a different perspective. Maybe I can look at it from the eyes of an angel looking down from the clouds at this thing and we can gather more information about it. It's not right in front of us and blotting out the sun. And that even in in and of itself can be life changing, just that little shift. And The other thing I love about working this way is this less story. You know, I often say, you know, knowing your patterns doesn't help you change them.
00:49:02
Speaker
um I can tell you in intricate detail about my childhood patterns, my relationship with my mother, my father, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Critique of Transformational Culture
00:49:09
Speaker
But it's only when I when i work at this unconscious level that I noticed I can change these patterns. The understanding is a nice mental exercise and helps me justify things and explain things, but the real debt happens at the level of the unconscious mind.
00:49:30
Speaker
so So now that we've said enough wholesome, spiritually appropriate things, I kind of want to shit talk a little bit. Maybe, I don't know how much shit talk will really get into, but you know, part of the the context and you had you had brought it up really early with this way would write the image of the way would guide. And we had already talked about this of like, I mean, it's kind of funny. We're having this conversation.
00:49:54
Speaker
I'm one of the things I loved about the book. I'm just gonna say like seven different things at once that I apologize. One of the things I loved about the book was it has this and I don't think those three like silences of sounds. I don't think that little you know poem is in there.
00:50:10
Speaker
If you should put it in if it's not cause it's really great, but I didn't catch that. But one of the things I loved about the book is it, you know, it's this kind of complete pocket sized, complete like map of this territory that we're talking about here of, of development and healing, right? It's just kind of, you know, it has these like, here's, here's ah the little taste of this idea. Here's the little taste of this idea. And it kind of comes together as this complete picture, but we're talking about this.
00:50:37
Speaker
And I want to zoom out and say, you know, a lot of people listening will have some version of some of these ideas already. And we're in a context of like a transformational culture, that like the, like not the mainstream, right? Like the mainstream, absolutely not, you know, the bachelor and the Fox news and the, like what the, you know, Twitter CNN, right? The center of gravity of the culture is tuning into, is not transformational.
00:51:07
Speaker
But there is this layer of transformational culture on top of that in which all of this shows up, right in which your work is ah is a version of that. like you know Much of what I'm talking about on the podcast is can be located within that. And there are things that it gets wrong.
00:51:27
Speaker
right And there are things that there are limitations or there are traps in that. And that's, that that's something that you've been paying attention to as well. And it's also something I just love the, this investigation. Cause I, whatever culture I'm a part of, I can't actually be in the middle of it. I have to be on the outside kind of poking holes at it. So it's, this is, it's very comfortable for me to be like, yeah, I mean, all this transformational stuff is all well and good, but.
00:51:54
Speaker
So yeah, like what's the, what are the limitations or what are the, Oh my goodness. I read, I read a list of them somewhere. Um, I read a list of them and I, I'll just try and pick the the few that come to mind. Um, and then maybe, maybe we'll see which ones we're going to dive into. What, do what do we get taught when you first embark on the personal development spiritual journey for want of a much better word?
00:52:21
Speaker
Uh, everything is energy. Okay. That's kind of spirituality 101. Everything is energy. And then, uh, the next look, the logical leap, which comes after that is, well, your thoughts are energy. Everything is energy. Therefore with your thoughts, you can create the world. and Okay. Also, I think part of the start of one of, uh, the Buddhist sutras or something, you know, with our thoughts, we create the world.
00:52:51
Speaker
um And it's just not true you know i don't create the trees outside me i don't create the walls around me i don't create the table even if i'm thinking about it. um And if everything is energy.
00:53:08
Speaker
it kind of It's a bit like saying, well, everything is made of atoms. So what? You know, it's kind of like that deepest level of flat land that you can imagine that we just reduce everything to energy and therefore nothing is more important or less important than anything else.
00:53:26
Speaker
but um By saying everything is energy and then that your thoughts create the world, there's two... I want to draw a distinction here which helped me navigate through stuff like this um between an aspirational idea and...
00:53:44
Speaker
maybe a useful or a practical idea, because generally the next chapter in these self-help books goes, well, your thoughts create the world, therefore, you are responsible for everything you're creating, which is another problem.
00:53:59
Speaker
um youre because you're Because you're thinking these things, because everything is energy, you create the world around you, therefore,
00:54:12
Speaker
And then this is where trauma comes in. Therefore, all the bad things that you experience in the world are a result of bad things inside you. okay And you need to take responsibility for those. You need to change those things so that your thoughts are better, so that you create a better world on the outside. In the political lingo of 2023, you would call it victim blaming. Victim blaming. Yeah, I guess you're kind of, victim well,
00:54:42
Speaker
Maybe we can unpack that I'm not 100% sure what you mean. um Like I just mean if if you're if you're saying to someone, the reason all this bad stuff happens to you is because you weren't thinking right. Right. Yes, you know, then what you're saying is it's you're the Vic like you're you're.
00:55:01
Speaker
Not you're the victim, but like you're responsible for all the shitty things that happen to you if you just been thinking better. Yeah, you've had three broken marriages. Clearly, the common denominator is you. You're the one that's broken. You need to take responsibility ah and fix yourself if you want to have a happy marriage.
00:55:22
Speaker
So, well good Lord, where do we start? There is truth in that and there is there is some misleading pieces as well.
00:55:36
Speaker
So if we take the example of like, okay, I've had 14 unsuccessful relationships. Deepak Chopra tells you that everything is energy. My thoughts create the world. Joe Dispenza tells me that I can break the habit of who I am by thinking really hard about being a different person. um And then maybe I can have the kind of relationship I would like because I'm responsible for for my experience of the world.
00:56:04
Speaker
Where do we where do we start? The answer is yes and no. um And understanding what is your responsibility and what you can change and understanding what isn't is not obvious. You know, and I think that we come back to that. so Is it the the serenity prayer of something of I'm going to misquote this, but I think you would be much more familiar with it. God grant me the courage to change the things I can, the something to accept the things I can't change and the wisdom to know the difference. Do you know that one? Yeah. yeah that ah But I'm also missing that one word. The courage to change the the strength to change the things I can. Maybe the courage the courage to accept the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Something like that anyway.
00:56:54
Speaker
So if you are, if you're a person at a, let's say you're just kind of waking up and you're realizing, oh my God, I've made a complete mess of my life. This is fucked. And you've gone through the phase of it's the government's fault. It's my partner's fault. It's my parents fault. You have identified as the victim. And then someone says, hey, you need to take responsibility because the only person who can make you happy is you.
00:57:19
Speaker
that's really useful at that level of development. and Okay. It's like, yes, you do need to take responsibility for your life and learn to make some different choices. And certainly for the longest time, that was me, you know, absolutely taking responsibility for every single thing, you know, the time I, first you know, and, but at a certain point that can become a little damaging, you know, it's like, well,
00:57:48
Speaker
I feel I feel like I'm responsible for all of these other bad things which are happening to me or or um you know the fact that the fact let's for take for example your business doesn't ah doesn't take off the way that you would like it.
00:58:06
Speaker
And taking responsibility says, well, you're the one. It's your energy. It's your alignment. It's it's your lack of commitment. It's your ah your your issues with procrastination. um ah It's your lack of alignment, basically, that is the reason why your business is not taking off.
00:58:27
Speaker
And that can be very challenging when you do the soul searching because you're basically going inside and looking for all the things that are wrong so you can fix them so that your business will succeed.
00:58:42
Speaker
Now, if you're in the business literally of selling ice to Eskimos, ah your business is never going to take off okay because you're there are market forces. You're in the wrong market. um There's the law of supply and demand so um and you should go and sell ice to people in the Middle East where they will just fight hand over fist.
00:59:06
Speaker
And again, the success of your business has more to do with where your shop is locating um and very little to do with who you are as a person. There are plenty of dreadful, horrible, narcissistic people making tons of money. and Okay. Their success has nothing to do with whether they're, what does Abraham Hicks say? Whether they're in the, I can't remember what, a high flying disc.
00:59:33
Speaker
The high flying disc, you know, whether they're in the right vibration of abundance, you know, these guys, these guys were born into the right. Yeah. I mean, I would just, you know, though the, I think Gnosticism actually helps you get on that high flying disc. Like I think it's, you know, it's easier to get on that disc if you're, if you don't have a, yeah, if you're not so concerned about how other people are doing and. I 100% agree. you know Narcissism has a place, especially with people who are very successful. I'm just dropping into the dropping into the documentary on Teal Swan and some of the things she says. you know She's adamant. I am going to create the world's biggest
01:00:14
Speaker
company, which is going to change the world and you can so and you can see both the deep conviction and if you pathologize here, it's like you're a narcissist and that I think the two things can coexist. I don't necessarily think narcissism is, it has its place, right? It has a place in the world. You have to be quite narcissistic and deeply immune to negative feedback, to do the thing that you want to do. But back to my business analogy, you know, in the spiritual world we get told that everything is is is because
01:00:47
Speaker
something is out of alignment on the inside, which can cause us to go and look for all the things that are wrong on the inside because we're not enjoying our experience of the outside when in fact it may have absolutely nothing to do with what's going on on the inside. I mean, one way of thinking about by that analogy, it's like, well, there is something wrong with you on the inside. It's just not very deep. It's just like you have a bad business plan.
01:01:12
Speaker
Like it's not like there's something like, what's my call wound? What terrible thing did my dad say to me when I was three years old? Like it's just like, Hey, ah ah what's, but what's interesting. I mean, I'm, I, this is, I just have to be the devil's advocate. If you, you were saying the opposite, I'd be saying the opposite because like, well, but why are you not seeing that? Like why, what's. There's something internal, which is having you go to the the Arctic and try and sell ice to the folks there. It's funny. I like, I think I, I think maybe I like their responsibility one. I'm like, no, you know, the the way I was taught about responsibility, which I really liked was just, there's no moral obligation to responsibility. There's just, what would you like?
01:01:57
Speaker
Are you getting it? If not, would you prefer to keep not getting it, or would you prefer to take more responsibility and see if you get it? Right. And so that kind of like very neutral, like, and at some point, yeah, anyway, um that's a little, I just love that, that, that frame for responsibility, but to come back to, to stop being a devil's, well, maybe I'll stop and I'll let you respond to my devil's advocacy, but then I want to,
01:02:24
Speaker
Do the opposite move and there's a way that I, there's another ah value I see in the, in the thing you're talking about that I want to celebrate, but. Right. Okay. Well, I, I mean, I like your, what I would say that what you're pointing to is a level of detachment. You know, I'm not, I'm trying to sell eyes to the Eskimos. I've listened to all of Anthony Robbins's.
01:02:45
Speaker
tapes which tell me that if you believe it, you can achieve it. I'm going to become a millionaire selling ice to the Eskimos. ah But if that doesn't seem to be working, Yeah, can you detach from your attachment to becoming an ice-selling millionaire in the Arctic? um And that becomes down to, I think, behavioral flexibility and resilience, these notions. And then can you go, okay, I am not going to be a millionaire selling ice to the Eskimos.
01:03:17
Speaker
Can I pivot and sell ice to the people in the Middle East or can I become a millionaire selling fuel to the to the Eskimos, for example, to use a very bad analogy. Yeah. And and again, knowing way to knowing when to shift and when to persevere.
01:03:36
Speaker
is also something that's not obvious. And so I think this is also the the the rigors of life, that life is a lot bigger than you. And just when you think you've got it figured out, it'll create something which will challenge you and bring up something else on the inside to be welcomed, to be loved, to be examined. um Yeah, and this is why i think I think I may address this. This is why stuff keeps coming up.
01:04:06
Speaker
Because ah we when we chase enlightenment, this is another thing that we get kind of, it's a carrot that gets waved in front of us that if you do enough emotional clearing or meditation or and NLP or whatever it is, you know, that you will arrive at this place where stuff no longer comes up. And consequently, if stuff is still coming up, you have not done enough work or what you are lacking in some way.
01:04:33
Speaker
And I think that the reframe, the very required reframe to that, which is much kinder to yourself is like stuff is just inherent. I think that's part of the Buddhist notion of life is like suffering is part of life. You will not necessarily escape that. So don't let it mean that there's something bad, wrong or incomplete about
Manifestation and Openness
01:04:56
Speaker
yourself.
01:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, that speaks to the thing that I really appreciate about this like skepticism of, you know, it's a kind of spiritual materialism, but it's like transformational materialism, right? It's not like the ah spiritual materialism of Trungpa where you're like, you're attached to these states. It's like the transformational, the manifestational materialism or something where you're like, what's important is that I can manifest the life that I am imagining.
01:05:26
Speaker
And anything short of that is a failing, the thing with the selling the ice, the asking was the thought I had and you you're, you were my brother in NLP. So it's, I think I'm having a lot of NLP thoughts, but like the meta outcome question, right? Like one of the foundational questions in NLP.
01:05:42
Speaker
is what will having that do for you as somebody what they would like i want a business selling ice to the eskimos, what will having that do for you while you know that i feel purpose not feel like i'm serving a community and more and it's like okay great so what you would like is to have purpose and serve a community. And then it kinda detaches you from this so i just just shout out to nlp and for all of its weirdness how beautiful it is.
01:06:08
Speaker
Beautiful, beautiful questions. And I use those questions a lot when i'm when I'm working with parts as well. It's a stunning framework for sure. Really, really useful. Really great. yeah And then to come back to the like the thing that's missing in that manifestational materialism.
01:06:25
Speaker
Is again it's relationship right it's like the idea that the world might know something that you don't that the but life might have something for you. That's more important than your ideas of what life has for you.
01:06:43
Speaker
yeah right um probably probably I mean, you know, like when I think about my life, so much of what's good about it, I had no idea. Like I had no idea, you know, I didn't sit down and like, you know, some things, yes, but a lot of things, it was a surprise. And it, and it even maybe took me a minute to, you know, we have this puppy that I absolutely adore, but like, I was not really that into getting a, you know, just like, right. Like.
01:07:12
Speaker
Right. Or the Teal Swan story, like I'm going to create this world changing thing. And it's so much will, and it's like, it doesn't leave an openness to to something else. to and And to being delighted, like to being like enchanted, right? I love it. I love it. So what you're talking about in terms of the external world, if I re rephrase it, you're talking about the experience of like walking through that.
01:07:41
Speaker
walking to the world and having the world surprise you with something you you could never have thought of. And this is exactly what I create on the inside for people. It's like when I hold the space for people to meet these parts of themselves, which they want to control, they want to say it's like the baby, stop crying, stop eating ice cream, exercise, do your work, we want to control that part.
01:08:06
Speaker
when I can help them just meet that part and love that part as it is, that part reveals something about itself, which is a surprise to you. And you feel it in your body and you're it can be quite psychedelic from from what people report. yeah They will have visions, they will hear this part speaking to them clearly, they will have this visceral experience in their body as this part reveals what it has in store for you. And so the inside and the outside are both giving us this analogy of what
01:08:47
Speaker
a correct relationship is like with, um, with life. Yeah, I love that. Oh, and maybe we get back to like the manifest, like what, so, so within as within, so without, but it's not as within, I have a picture of like a gold plated mansion, although that's, you know, obviously out of fashion now, but, but, you know, I have this picture of this like beautiful house and like the car and the,
01:09:12
Speaker
you know, passive income, seven figure business, whatever, like, that everybody's manifesting. And now my external reality matches that. But it's like, my internal reality is, I am surprised and delighted by my interiors. And then my external reality matches that. I'm surprised and delighted by the world. Yeah, it's, I think it's very interesting territory, which we're, we kind of, it feels like we're just articulating these things.
01:09:39
Speaker
As we're going along, to some extent, you know, you can go visualize every day, I want the gold plate and mansion. I mean, this is the premise of the secret, you know, that dreadful movie about, you know, if you create your purple treasure map of mansions and your perfect partner in the cards, and you think about it really hard, you'll manifest it.
01:10:01
Speaker
A lot of things I hear Bandit about are this sense of um you can you can live a life of joy, ease, flow, and grace, and simply manifest the things that you want want to enjoy in life, like the husband, the gold plated Mercedes, the helicopter, et cetera. And I've not really put it this way. It does happen for, I have seen some people do some of those things some of the time.
01:10:31
Speaker
which is also, you know, I think it's selection bias, you know, there's also like chance, you know, there is definitely a chance that you think of something and it will appear. This is kind of like magical thinking, but I have not seen anybody be able to manifest consistently over time.
01:10:49
Speaker
ah sustainably. And I think that is what I am the most interested in is like, okay, great. You thought about a hundred bucks and then a hundred bucks appeared in your bank account because someone owed it to you. Fantastic. But can you do that tomorrow? Can you do that with a thousand dollars? Can you do that consistently over time? um And then if manifestation, if this kind of practice of manifestation is real,
01:11:14
Speaker
Why the fuck are you bothering about manifesting a hundred dollars in your bank account if that's something you can do when you could be manifesting, you know, the proliferation of green technology, cleaning up the ozone layer, manifesting the removal of plastic in the oceans and about a thousand other things which would be more beneficial than the universe, rearranging itself to drop a hundred bucks in your bank account when your rent is due next week. That kind of thing makes no sense to me either. There's a theme emerging here for me about solipsism versus kind of relationality, right? And like, because, because the way that the secret folks, you know, if you just don't watch the news, you then, you know, the plastic in the ocean doesn't exist anymore. Like, right? Like, yeah you know,
01:12:06
Speaker
I got to tell you my, just because you brought up the secret, I got to tell you my story, my secret story. So I was, you know, I was a young, young man at the beginning of my transformational journey. And, uh, and I, you know, I'm reading a bunch of books and learning a bunch of stuff and and I watched the secret and I'm like, okay, cool. Okay. And in the secret, they, you know, for, for folks that haven't seen it, that you can absolutely skip it. Um, but if you want, if you want a, uh, like the, the real deal,
01:12:34
Speaker
My favorite version of that branch of wisdom, which, you know, has like, I think we're acknowledging it has ah some value to it and it's also limited. Is the Seth books, the Jane Roberts, which is another channeled entity like Abraham, but it's way fucking weird in the neighborhood. I'm just so weird. So anyway, Seth, the Seth books by Jane Roberts are an absolute trip and she talks about the secret. That's where I were going to tell someone where to go and learn about manifesting stuff. That's who I would send it to just because it's.
01:13:05
Speaker
Just way more fun than, then you know, the high flying disk and all this kind of stuff. But in the secret, what they do is they say, okay, to test this, this, you know, process out. So sorry, I keep, what it is, is your thoughts create your reality. So they're talking about like, you make it, you make a picture, I'm saying this for the audience, you you make a picture and then, um and then that thing arrives to check it, you know, the check in the mail.
01:13:28
Speaker
Whatever. And so they say to test this out, do you start with something low stakes? So what you're going to do is you're going to manifest a blue feather. You're going to go and you're going to manifest a blue feather. So just make a picture of blue feather and you're going to. so Yeah, probably i've ah I've got, I've got one here for you. Just wanted to to let you know.
01:13:47
Speaker
i oh my god hi We're right onto it. we Here it is. Well, that's you scooped my story. so you but That's incredible. So we just manifested a blue feather instantaneously. This shit works. I can't believe that. That's so funny. I'll finish the story, but that's way better than the story.
01:14:08
Speaker
Hello, Future Robbie here. While editing this audio, I realized we never actually make explicit what it is that happened that had us both so excited. I think you could probably figure it out, but what happened is while I was telling the story about manifesting a blue feather, Rusty produces a blue feather. He just has a blue feather in his house. And so, you know, that happened on video. So just wanted to explain that's what's happening. Okay, back to the conversation.
01:14:39
Speaker
So, you know, so it says, you know, make a picture of blue feather and you're going to sometime in the next 24 hours, you're going to encounter a blue feather. It's like, well, you know, I was living in Bristol, England at the time. There's not blue feathers lying around all over the place. And so I go out, I watched the movie and I go out that night to a nightclub and I'm talking to this woman and I'm telling her this story because, you know, this is what was going on. So I'm like, yeah, I'm supposed to manifest this blue feather. And then she turns and she says, she points at her friend and she says, look, my friend has blue feather earrings.
01:15:07
Speaker
She had, she literally has blue feather. And so I had this moment of like, Oh my God, it works. And we both run over to a friend and we're like, look at your blue feather. And we're trying to tell her this story and we tell her the whole story and, and the friend is nodding and she's nodding. She's like, uh-huh. And then she's like, Oh, but these are green.
01:15:25
Speaker
And like the light was like wrong. And so they looked blue and then she stood in the right light and they were green. And there's something about that. That's just like, I think that, uh, expresses my experience of life and the way that my mind works. I do think that's a reflection of my mind that it's like, uh, almost, but then no, it's something else. It's the green feather. Anyway, but then you just produce the blue feathers. So maybe my mind has gotten better at manifesting in the, in the 20 years since that happened.
01:15:54
Speaker
yeah It's your powers of manifestation of growing, Robbie.
Reflections on NLP
01:15:58
Speaker
It's only taken 20 years for you to ah yeah so make the leap from manifesting a green feather to a blue one. So and it's promising. This is moving in the right direction. Yeah, but instantaneously as well. I mean, the green feather took me like a few hours. This was, I just said it and then it appeared. So instantaneous, instantaneous. Really. This is well it's a good sign, Robbie, and a biological ticket. Yeah. Super, super interesting, the whole manifestation thing, because What I've also seen and and observed in myself is, the times when I have felt the worst, there are times when I have been wracked by self-doubt and anxiety and depression and yeah, crippling lack of self-confidence.
01:16:43
Speaker
And I have made the most money. I've literally closed deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I've had some of the most outrageous, pleasurable sexual experiences of my life. And again, I haven't been out, you know, I can't reconcile that with, with a teaching that says you are made of energy and your thoughts create the world around you because it was, you know, my inside and my outsides were just so remarkably different. In fact, it was a really nice kind of affirmation from the universe, if you like, that I'm still loved even when I'm feeling absolutely dreadful on the inside. And at the same time, I don't want to say that there is no truth to this perspective, you know?
01:17:28
Speaker
that it's very clear to me also that when I'm feeling good about myself, when I'm calm, when I'm regulated, I make much better decisions and decisions turn to actions which do influence the world around you. So, you know, maybe this is one of those both and kind of um scenarios and wisdom lies in determining which perspective is going to suit you um the best for any given situation, which um from NLP is all about behavioral flexibility and then resilience. You know, what is the best perspective? And if I can't, if I'm not getting the results I want, I need to generate a new perspective, which is often best facilitated by having someone external to you give you some feedback or do some work um to help open up new
01:18:20
Speaker
New opportunities new options in my case new neural pathways is what i'm seeking to help people create that's one of my favorite catechism how do you say that from nlp is the with the way that ah my teacher would say it is. If what you're doing isn't working try anything else is such a great like it's this.
01:18:42
Speaker
liberating, like, oh, I don't need to figure out exactly. And I don't need to, it's just, just try anything else and then try if that doesn't work. Just keep going. Just try something else. And then, and then, yeah, behavioral flexibility or capacity to have different things you can try. Like how many different options do you have on the menu of like, okay, this didn't work. Let me try this. This didn't work. Let me try this. I'm feeling a lot of ah appreciation, sweet appreciation for NLP in this conversation. year You're definitely representing the ah light side of that practice and that modality.
01:19:21
Speaker
Yeah, and NLP combined with a sense of, um you know, I think when you layer NLP with a deep sense of compassion for other human beings, you've got something remarkable that can really assist a lot of people.
Media Tips and Gratitude
01:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, I continually find myself coming back to a lot of the ah lot of their principles as just being absolutely remarkable and so very well articulated, certainly in the way that I was trained. And not everyone is trained in the way that I was trained.
01:19:51
Speaker
NLP's become a little bit of a an online commodity unfortunately, and but that's also the way of the world. and It didn't come from the most elevated. It's not like NLP has had a fall from grace or something exactly. um it's you know It's had a check and passed its whole history. is There's been a lot going on. 100%.
01:20:11
Speaker
um yeah yeah but But yes, but there's the yeah there is the there's definitely a strand of it which has this more wholesome, human-centered approach that's really beautiful.
01:20:24
Speaker
Hello, editing Robbie here again. At this point in the conversation, the storm afflicted Bolognese internet kind of gave up the ghost. We were just having a lot of connection difficulties and so we decided to wrap up the conversation there and we just end with the recommendation exchange of recommendations. So there's kind of an abrupt transition here. Sorry about that. ah But here's the final exchange of the conversation.
01:20:51
Speaker
Why don't you go first? So this is just, yeah yeah, this is something for me. It's something for the listeners. What's some piece of media, some piece of art that you love and you want people to know about?
01:21:02
Speaker
Oh, my God. Yeah, this is like ah ah a recommendation for a book or a ah movie or something. Oh, my God. There's so many. There's so many. Good Lord. Well, you know what? I'm just going to go with one of my favorite movies, which is Scott Pilgrim versus the World. I just have you seen that? I haven't seen that. So I'm very happy that I haven't already seen it.
01:21:26
Speaker
It's just so good. All I will say are two things. Number one, the boyfriend with the vegan superpowers. Wait for that scene. And second, I am fanboying Tim Henson at the moment, who is a prog rock guitarist and part of a band called Polyphia, P-O-L-Y-P-H-I-A. Look up there.
01:21:52
Speaker
video goat, G-O-A-T, uh, and be prepared to be blown away. Whether you like guitar or not, it is staggering. And then. That's great. I'm, i I'm very happy about the movie recommendation and I will definitely watch that. And Polyphia, I've come across them and oh my God. Oh my God. Get out of here. Yeah. If, if folks haven't checked them out and it's, they're fun to watch as well. Cause they have fascinating tattoos and their fingers move unbelievably fast. yeah Yes. Yes. Yes.
01:22:22
Speaker
Okay, so I'm going to, I'm going to give one for you, uh, which this is the one that came to me and I have a thought about why this is, but I'm going to share it with you. You very well may have seen it and for the folks at home. So my recommendation for you is Moana, the Disney movie. Have you seen Moana?
01:22:39
Speaker
I have. Yeah, I loved it. Okay. The reason I recommend it, I maybe thought of it for you because you're in the Pacific. Like, and it's, you know, it's literally, you know, it's the, it's your neck of the woods. But that movie for me, and Disney is like literally a parasite on the world's imagination. So I taught for me to like wholeheartedly Endorse Disney, but they're like a somewhat symbiotic parasite. They're not a wholly destructive parasites, it's complicated. um But Moana is the movie I watch if I am feeling tender, if I'm feeling anxious, if I'm having a hard time, and there's something about it so soothing to me.
01:23:22
Speaker
So comforting. It's so beautiful. I think it expresses some version of this idea of like the wayward part, which discovers what it's for and then becomes, discovers its belonging.
01:23:40
Speaker
Okay, we've run the gauntlet of of all of these incidents in the tropical rain and we might have ah might be at the end of our capacity. so I don't know. yeah Give Moana a rewatch with ah with ah the tenderness in your heart and see see how it goes. I love it. I'll do that.
01:24:01
Speaker
Well, I'll just say thank you so much for for being with me here today. It's been an absolute pleasure. Yeah, and i've I look forward to the day we can hang out in person again. Totally Robbie, same here. ah This was a heap of fun. Thanks so much for your questions and giving me a, yeah, just a ah space to speak about concepts and and things which I rarely get the fullness to articulate, but ah very deeply important to me. So I really appreciate that.
01:24:32
Speaker
Great. And where can people find you? Hang out mainly on Instagram where I make a nuisance of myself. You can find me at the heart alchemist. So the dot heart dot alchemist and Russell Price on Facebook, um putting together a website, but you'll be able to find the website through Instagram and the links there. And um yeah, happy to send you a copy of the book and I will have a short training on how to do this process that I've talked about.
Encouragement for Practitioners
01:25:02
Speaker
Um, so if you're a practitioner or you want to just try it for yourself or with another person, you know, I'm happy to make it. It's not mine per se. I'm very happy for people to experiment, to try it. Some people already have and are getting wonderful results, helping other people shift trauma. So it's a wonderful gift for me, out for me to be able to share. And by all means, please connect, send me a message, disagree with me or encourage me. I'm open to both and I love it.
01:25:31
Speaker
All right, well, thank you so much and take care.
Scientific Community Critique
01:26:07
Speaker
i think it has been given unfairly shorttri But I think it has been given unfairly short God, that's hard to say. But I think it has been given unfairly short shrift. But I think it has been given unfairly short shrift in the scientific community.