Tobin Giblin Art of Mindful Living
TOBIN GIBLIN is the author of The Art of Mindful Living: “You Can’t Stop the Waves, But You Can Learn to Surf,” and the audio set “Finding Freedom From Your Inner Critic.” For over two decades, he has wholeheartedly dedicated himself to spiritual awakening and serving others in the blossoming of their highest potential. Utilizing a variety of modalities, Tobin helps individuals and couples bring about deep, true, long-lasting transformation. His work addresses issues on the spiritual and psychological levels to help people reach an experience of genuine fulfillment & settled satisfaction in their lives.
His main areas of expertise include relationships, work, stuck patterns, life purpose, and spiritual embodiment in the midst of everyday life. Tobin acts as a catalyst for positive change, helping to clarify and align an individual or couple with their highest potential.
He is a master at helping people identify and work through any barriers that are standing in the way of this blossoming.
Tobin also works with groups in a variety of potent & creative ways to bring about an embodied, liberated and joyful spirituality.
For over 20 years, Tobin been deeply immersed in intensive spiritual and psychological work. He was a dedicated Zen student (practicing with Charlotte Joko Beck) for 7 years, trained in the Diamond Heart School under the direction of A.H. Almaas for over ten years, and most recently, worked very closely with Adyashanti, who helped to catalyze in Tobin an ever-deepening and truly profound transformation.
He has been teaching groups, couples, and individuals for over twelve years.
The “Dharma Lounge!” is a special monthly meditation gathering that includes a delicious blend of deep Stillness/GUIDED MEDITATION, illuminating Dharma talk, live music, and MysticalPOETRY (often featuring honey-drenched appearances by the premier Rumi and Hafiz reciter in the West, Eric Schneider!) Later in the evening, we swithch gears and enjoy time of simply basking in the beauty of each other’s Presence and the Divine, Loving Space we’ve created together (i.e., we hang out, chill, schmooz and possibly dance a bit!). Young and Dedicated to the Dharma A group for people in their 20’s and 30’s Living Your Truth ~ Blossoming Your Potential ~ Are you usually one of the youngest people in your Sangha (spiritual community)? ~ Would you like to build community with like-minded people who are deeply on path? ~ Would you like a teacher that you can relate to ~ a teacher who is young, vibrant, and a very skillful guide in the terrain you are traveling through? In this group: ~ We will focus on how to bridge our spiritual practice with our everyday life, with specific emphasis on the issues of being in our 20’s and 30’s. Including: relationships, right livelihood/money issues, working with emotions, sexuality, making decisions, navigating transitions, etc…
~ We will create a safe, sacred space to develop your whole self (including your aliveness, passion, creativity, joy, connection to others, etc…) while staying dedicated to the truth of liberation. ~ We will discover how to be free from our personal conditioning so that we can live our life in the most true and fulfilling way possible. We will also address how even our spiritual training can add to this conditioning rather than liberate us from it.
Why is it called ‘Living Freedom’ Dharma Center? Once someone has done enough work to free themselves from the limiting conditioning of their past ~ the confining structures of their personal history ~ they will begin to live in a very free and open way. In this way of living, there is a particular kind of Freedom and Liberation that is beyond any tradition, outside of any box, and is very personal to each individual. The phrase ‘Living Freedom’ is an attempt to succinctly express this way of being and living ~ where a person’s Journey becomes completely unblocked, utterly outside of any pre-determined ideas or ideals, and yet remains deeply grounded in the Truth of reality. Living Freedom Dharma Center is all about supporting this particular kind of expression ~ the unique gift, the creative flow, the miraculous dance that comes when we engage with our life in a conscious way, dedicated to the Truth of our Being.
His main areas of expertise include relationships, work, stuck patterns, life purpose, and spiritual embodiment in the midst of everyday life. Tobin acts as a catalyst for positive change, helping to clarify and align an individual or couple with their highest potential.
He is a master at helping people identify and work through any barriers that are standing in the way of this blossoming.
Tobin also works with groups in a variety of potent & creative ways to bring about an embodied, liberated and joyful spirituality.
For over 20 years, Tobin been deeply immersed in intensive spiritual and psychological work. He was a dedicated Zen student (practicing with Charlotte Joko Beck) for 7 years, trained in the Diamond Heart School under the direction of A.H. Almaas for over ten years, and most recently, worked very closely with Adyashanti, who helped to catalyze in Tobin an ever-deepening and truly profound transformation.
He has been teaching groups, couples, and individuals for over twelve years.
The “Dharma Lounge!” is a special monthly meditation gathering that includes a delicious blend of deep Stillness/GUIDED MEDITATION, illuminating Dharma talk, live music, and MysticalPOETRY (often featuring honey-drenched appearances by the premier Rumi and Hafiz reciter in the West, Eric Schneider!) Later in the evening, we swithch gears and enjoy time of simply basking in the beauty of each other’s Presence and the Divine, Loving Space we’ve created together (i.e., we hang out, chill, schmooz and possibly dance a bit!). Young and Dedicated to the Dharma A group for people in their 20’s and 30’s Living Your Truth ~ Blossoming Your Potential ~ Are you usually one of the youngest people in your Sangha (spiritual community)? ~ Would you like to build community with like-minded people who are deeply on path? ~ Would you like a teacher that you can relate to ~ a teacher who is young, vibrant, and a very skillful guide in the terrain you are traveling through? In this group: ~ We will focus on how to bridge our spiritual practice with our everyday life, with specific emphasis on the issues of being in our 20’s and 30’s. Including: relationships, right livelihood/money issues, working with emotions, sexuality, making decisions, navigating transitions, etc…
~ We will create a safe, sacred space to develop your whole self (including your aliveness, passion, creativity, joy, connection to others, etc…) while staying dedicated to the truth of liberation. ~ We will discover how to be free from our personal conditioning so that we can live our life in the most true and fulfilling way possible. We will also address how even our spiritual training can add to this conditioning rather than liberate us from it.
Why is it called ‘Living Freedom’ Dharma Center? Once someone has done enough work to free themselves from the limiting conditioning of their past ~ the confining structures of their personal history ~ they will begin to live in a very free and open way. In this way of living, there is a particular kind of Freedom and Liberation that is beyond any tradition, outside of any box, and is very personal to each individual. The phrase ‘Living Freedom’ is an attempt to succinctly express this way of being and living ~ where a person’s Journey becomes completely unblocked, utterly outside of any pre-determined ideas or ideals, and yet remains deeply grounded in the Truth of reality. Living Freedom Dharma Center is all about supporting this particular kind of expression ~ the unique gift, the creative flow, the miraculous dance that comes when we engage with our life in a conscious way, dedicated to the Truth of our Being.
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Welcome to the Art of Conscious Living. Today I have back as my guest Tobin Giblin. I’m so very pleased to have him to talk about what he’s been doing since I last seen him and what he’s about to be doing in the near future here. Tobin, how are you today? Doing really, really well, Victoria.
It’s great to see you again. Thank you for coming here today on such short notice. . So what have you been doing and how has your work been progressing? And Well, it’s been an incredibly, incredibly rich time lately.
I have just closed up shop here in San Rafael and I’m sort of launching out into a new chapter of my journey. And so had probably the most special gathering of my life. It was, 20 or 30 of my closest friends and we all kind of did like a wake, although I was, it was like, as if I had died. So the, the love and the inspiration in that group of people just has been wind under my wings and I’m just sort of setting off on a new, new, part of my journey. So when you say awake, it was a celebration of It was a celebration of, one life within my lifetime.
It was kind of like, as if I had died, what everybody would bring and say in the spirit that they would kinda come with and it was like a full hearted, amazing celebration of the life I’ve lived and, and just to kind of inspire me forward to really go with, the, the spirit that I’m kind of saying yes to at this point in my life is to really just let spirit take me where it wants, to kinda like lean back into the currents of life and see where I’m most meant to be and most meant to serve and most meant to express this that we’re that we’re sharing here today and talking about when we do. And that makes me think about what we were talking about last time, that it’s not really a planning thing that you do, that you live in the presence and you live in the awareness of what is happening in the now, That’s right. And that now leads into the future. So there’s no actually analytical great moments of thinking about it or stressing about it or worrying about it or having to do. It’s basically just letting go and allowing it to talk to you.
That’s exactly right. How you’re gonna be proceeding forward. That’s exactly it. And, to listen right now, the refinement of my process is more about listening to that guidance and being able to follow it. And it just, it starts to become a very fluid, river like existence.
Everything just, you know, inner, outer, it all becomes one, almost liquid, I call it the lubricious magic of life. It’s just, it’s always flowing, it’s always appearing and disappearing, and, and it just seems to have a more and more beautiful and magical quality the more you do release or let go in the way you were describing. I call it letting be. It’s just, it’s just letting be. And as you, as you be this space of letting be, the, the magic just rolls on and unfolds and reveals itself and seems to have an intelligence that’s way beyond at least my little planning, figuring out mind.
So there’s a, there’s a, there’s a divine magic and beauty to the unfoldment, and, so I’ve just been saying yes to this in deeper and deeper ways, And then, it all just, just like this moment, it becomes just filled with that bright, beautiful spark of possibility of possibility of divinity, of life, and then you just watch. And it always does something new, you know. It always takes you to exactly where you’re meant to be. I know you have a lot of gathering, different groups of people, but have you worked with the workforce of corporations and businesses? No.
I haven’t entered into that yet. I am I’m open to it if that’s what comes my way. I have a few friends who are kind of venturing out in that realm and they seem to enjoy it and be able to, do good work there. And I haven’t I just haven’t entered that realm yet. But your thinking and your way would be so different and opposed to the way that it’s structured right now.
Yeah. So how do you think that It would be pretty radical. It would be radical. Yes. To say the least.
But do you think it would be more productive, as productive, or what would you feel It depends on how you define the word productive. Yes. Let’s define this word then. It would be much more productive if we define productive as bringing about, the qualities of goodness of your true nature. If you, if you really value joy, if you value, a kind of, inner harmony, a kind of, flow, a kind of goodness that just in just saturates every cell and makes you feel like, wow, I’m so glad I’m on planet Earth, then yes, it would increase productivity thousand fold.
But in terms of, you know, profits, I’m not sure. That would be that would remain to be seen. We’d need to do some experiments. Most likely, it would it would bring the right amount of money for that company where it would be sustainable for the long run. .
That’s what tends to happen when you release into this way of being is that things become much more harmonious and stable for the long run. So you might not get it’s kind of like if you’re pumping hormones into a plant. It might look good for the first year or two, you know, if you had rose bushes and you were pumping it full of like really intense stuff. It might look great for a little while. It might look better than the plant that you’re just using organic soil with, But in ten years, twenty years, thirty years, fifty years, a hundred years, this plant is gonna look much, much more robust and have, you know, produce much more for the world around it in the long run.
So it’s kind of like that that would probably be maximized. I’ve heard a saying, you’re calling it sacred comrades. Yes. And in sacred comrades, it’s about bringing spirit there and productivity and profit, of course. Right.
But doing it with awareness, doing it with that there is consciousness to it and there’s accountability to it Yes. Opposed to basically going in and raping the land and deforesting the land and don’t care. Yeah. It’s about a level of consciousness. Yeah.
It’s about a level of connection and intimacy with, first of all, yourself. But as soon as you become intimate with your own being, with your own self, you can’t help. That’s the doorway to intimacy with everything and everybody, including, but not limited to, our planet and nature. So you can’t help but feel completely connected, as if that were your arm. You know, you wouldn’t go around chopping off your arm to make money.
You’d, you would never do that. You know, so, or it was your family. Your closest family. You wouldn’t hurt them to make a profit. So that intimacy, the intimacy of the individual immersion in one’s own truth.
And that’s what I’m most interested in, and I think that’s why I haven’t kinda branched out to corporations and companies yet. I can see it happening. Anything’s possible. But my the main thrust of my existence and where I show up is with individuals. And that can happen in groups, but it’s really like, how do you like if I was with you, how do you, Victoria?
How do you know and fall into the recognition in a real way, in an authentic way? How do you fall into the recognition of who you really are, of what you really are, of what this life really is in its most minuscule and beautiful magic that is so possible and yet so obscured in our day to day kind of the, the veils that our conditioning puts on us. So my work has really focused on giving each person I touch that real invitation and doorway to a completely liberated way of being that, you know, you usually hear about or read about, you know, these poems by Rumi. People are inspired by them, but not many people can actually taste in a sustained way live and embody and walk around as an expression of that brightness, of that lightness and freedom. That we actually are beyond some of this momentum of our mind.
So if I, you know, I feel like even if I did walk into a company, it would be like, okay, how where does this catalyst? This is what seems to happen. This isn’t something I necessarily do, but it seems to be what happens when I walk into a room. It’s like there’s a catalytic quality of like a fire touching other people and letting them wake up to their own true nature. It sounds what you’re saying to me is that there’s a aliveness that you’re connecting with inside of yourself first, that spark of genuine goodness, a quality, that one gets in touch with inside themselves and then unites that in others and shares that with others.
Yes. It becomes almost like a, it’s like a catalytic little awakener. It just people can, oh, that’s, that’s available here too. And it is, it is all those things you said. It’s a goodness.
It’s a, it’s a light. It’s a preciousness. And in its, in its simplest expression, you know, in Buddhism they talk about emptiness. It’s the emptiness or the awakeness that we are. And so we all have the possibility.
It’s a very realistic possibility. That’s the wonderful news. That even as we walk around in, you know, this little town, San Rafael, or wherever we’re living, that you can actually know and experience and live what the Buddha talked about And in my journey, I was exposed to many teachers And many teachings And such a so. Teachers. Lots and lots of Zen teachers.
That was my first . Foray. So all the big names and the not so big names in Zen was what I first exposed myself to Then there was the spirit rock and the opening up Then there was all the gurus who kinda come in from India And who were touched by, Punjaji And, you know, all the teachers who were kind of catalyzed by him And his predecessors. Just, and then not to mention all the, you know, just the different books that are here available. And just reading all of that.
Just exposing myself. And for so many years, I had inspiration. I had so much inspiration, so much, passion for this journey, but not a lot of exposure or taste of the reality of what these teachings had to offer. And I was blessed enough to be kind of almost like taken by the hand across the bridge into this other way of being. And that was my teacher, Adyashanti.
He was the first one who really said, hey, Tobin. Enough with the theory. Enough with the practices. Enough with all That’s all great. You’re helping yourself become a better human being.
That’s all good. But here’s this other possibility here. Almost like, as if he’s sitting behind this curtain and his hand comes out and takes me behind the curtain. Wow. Oh.
Here it is. What did you see there? What did you experience? And what do you know from that point of view? That’s the million dollar question That’s a great question And that’s kinda what I’ve been trying to point to in everything I say I point to that To that mysterious, divine, almost nothing something It’s an empty something That you can’t, the mind can’t concretize You can’t put your finger on it That’s why it’s so tricky to talk about because it’s in fact, it’s impossible to put into words.
We can only kinda point to it or inspire with the words to transmit the state, the actual experience. Well, is that energy is that within us or is that out of us? That we’re trying to get to it or obtain it, or we already have it? So Very good question. Ultimately, it’s both.
Ultimately, it’s everywhere and all things at all times. But for us as human beings, on this journey to knowing this, to embodying this, to living this, to expressing it in the most authentic and pure and real way possible, this is the way, inward. We have to go in. We have to go in to find it. We have to find out who I mean, in a nutshell, it’s who am I?
What am I, really? That question taken seriously enough and deep enough, will help you help the awakening of that which you really are to occur. What am I? What really am I? So that inward, ultimately, or let’s say initially, we have to go inward to discover who we are, what we are, in essence.
Are we all different, or are we all one of the same? That we’re all sharing a common union together? Well, again, this is where we get into the mystery of things, the paradoxical nature of reality. Primarily, we’re all the same. We’re all this oneness.
We all, everyone who touches into this, this oneness will know it singularly. It’s like a singularity. It expresses itself in millions of, qualities. So you might have a different experiential overtone to that to that divinity, to that majesty, to that mysterious magic oneness. It might have a different, qualitative overtone.
That’s why you get so many teachers and so many teachings all having different emphasis. You know, one’s talking more about love. One’s talking more about, like a will, a strong perseverance quality. One’s talking about emptiness. One’s talking about, the brilliancy of things, or the Jesus Christ.
In the Yeah, the Christ love. Christ love, which was the unconditional love. In love. He was lost in love, pure love, in the bliss of unconditional love. So that expression comes out of this mystery, and it’s one of the most beautiful forms available.
So in at the essence of the essence is one mysterious singularity. I like that word. It’s a singularity. There’s no there’s not two. And yet, as one drops and becomes this, almost instantaneously, the millions of expressions, the millions of forms, of which Christ’s love is one of, and one of the most beautiful, you know?
Of which, compassion, bodhisattva like compassion is another. The pure awakeness of somebody like Ramana Maharshi just. So that’s another expression. And each soul, each individual will be expressing that, dancing with that, interacting as that in totally unique and in different ways. So it’ll be totally different as it’s coming from this one undescribable singularity.
Each time we drop down into meditation, or allow the energy of meditation to take forth, it’s filling yourself up with the divinity of the vastness of consciousness, of source energy. We it’s not only our mind trying We’re actually regenerating ourselves, rejuvenating ourselves at that moment. Ultimately, in its best form. I mean, meditation is a million things.
Everybody who’s doing meditation might be doing a slightly different thing. There’s so many forms of it. But the But essentially, they have one thing in common is there it’s the letting go of the mind Yes. The mind that thinks it’s running the show, knows all. Exactly.
It’s completely relinquishing that That’s right. And filling up with this what you’re the undescribable, which is the sense of the What you are. Quietness inside Yes. The the authenticness, The being ness of who we are. That’s it.
That’s it. Which is not coming from the concept of who we think we are. That’s exactly right. It’s coming from another place of just being. Being.
Yes. Of the being ness. And that’s what we actually are. Yeah. So the way you’re pointing it out, that’s perfect.
Because this, in all of our spirituality, in all of our endeavor as spiritual beings, to wake up, to transform, to be liberated, to, put, you know, whatever the words are. Everybody’s aspiring and working for some kind of shift. But ultimately, it boils down to these two levels. One, the mind level. The separate sense of self.
The false me. The conditioning. The mind that just thinks and, you know, plans and frets and worries and wonders and selves. It’s the self. It’s me.
And it’s so, so powerful, and it creates like a fog, basically. So, yes, meditation in its essence is dropping below that, seeing beyond that, relaxing out of that, and to and just, you don’t even you’re not doing it, but you’re just stopping what you have been doing. And what is naturally available is what you actually are, which is all these things. You just said them so perfectly. Silence, quiet, brightness, beauty, compassion.
I mean, just alive, just that purest aliveness is what we are as our beauty ness. It’s quite beautiful, but it expresses itself in many different ways, many different flavors. So one of the things in this in this path is to get very clear, a very clear distinction on the difference between this sense of self and its kind of familiar expression, its familiar sense of, a kind of agitation usually, kind of kind of nause. Even in its best moments, it has a, its vibration is one of, agitation. And so you start to realize, oh, that’s what I think I am.
It’s what I believed I am from very early on. You start to realize, wow, maybe that’s not the whole picture. And maybe that’s actually masquerading for something that more, much more authentic, much more mysterious and real. And that becomes the journey. Sorry.
Go ahead. So we are not our thoughts only, we are not only of our nervous system, we are not only of our sum total of all of the different parts of our body that may be working properly or not working properly. That’s exactly right. We are something that is un describable, but yet very profound. That’s right.
That’s for sure. And when we push away all of the obvious, and acknowledge that and drop down into the quietness of that, we start to get a taste of that. Yes. Yes. And that’s the doorway.
Yeah. That’s the doorway. That’s what I was talking about when metaphorically Adia’s hand came out of that black mystery and that’s the doorway, then that can actually deepen and further and take over in a way that it’s not just an experience, but it’s a lived, for lack of a better word, it’s a lived knowing. It’s a lived way of and it’s not a knowing in the mind, but it’s just a it’s kind of like the sun emanates rays. It can’t help but do that.
So once we’ve had a direct experience and know ourselves for what we really are, once we can actually inhabit that more and more, it just shows as a radiance. It just becomes a radiance that we walk around as in our life. And that’s quite a process to embody that deeper and deeper, more and more. So that’s kind of where you’re residing and living and walking and talking from. But that’s the possibility and that’s kind of what my work with people and groups is about.
Kinda what my existence seems to be more and more about, just living that. And again, not with a plan or an agenda or a doing or an idea that this is what I’m supposed to do and let’s go fix everybody. There’s none of that runs anymore. It’s just kind of like I walk around, and that’s what makes sense. Kinda like, oh, I’m go get a meal three times a day.
It’s just obvious to do so. That’s kind of how it is with this, with this other movement. It just happens more and more. So there’s a quietness with it, with great awareness always. Oh, I love I love your words. Yes. You’re walking with great awareness and a lot of attention to the process. Yeah. It’s it may be And it’s a word would be witnessing. The witnessing.
Yes. That’s good. Because it’s intention is a tricky word because it can so easily slip into that agenda of intention. I have an intention, but it slid into now there’s an agenda. There’s a right way versus a wrong way, and I’m gonna go do it.
You know? But this is this is completely absent of that, as if something washed through, like a like a cleansing ocean wave just washes through, and it and it just dissolves the very fabric of your the part of your body that would that would even do those agendas just gets somehow just cleansed out of the system. And then you’re like, oh, here I am. And yet, then, just like you take a breath, it’s just obvious to do that. Oh, now I’m hungry.
It’s obvious to do that. It’s not because I should, and it’s right, and I wanna impose that on the world. It just makes the most sense. And so then, movement occurs along those lines, and it’s quite beautiful. It just and it becomes a dance. And the weird thing is, as much as there’s this human man body guy doing these things with others, At the same time, the most prevalent experience is that there’s not two things. There’s not two people. And that’s that becomes the prevalent experience, and you’re just kind of left in a kind of awe and wonder, and it just kind of makes you smile with glee at the weirdness and magic of it all. Like, and that’s how that just starts to just be kind of this mysterious flow. Very beautiful.
Yeah. So lot of chaos and a lot of stress. Yes. Yes. That’s a good way of saying it, the antidote.
It’s the opposite of what I mean, if you look at it closely, our culture and all the people in it are just expressions of this separate sense of self, kind of going at its extreme, pace. It’s like machinery that’s just kind of working. That’s what causes that. If you could just boil it down to one thing that causes all the suffering, all the pain. Not just physical pain, because that’s a different thing, but the kind of emotional pain, the strife, the struggle, the sense of, gosh, life just doesn’t feel right.
It hurts. It sucks. It’s not good. Relationship dramas, you know, work, all that. It all boils down to that little momentum usually resides right around here in our brain called the me.
Well, Tobin, it’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to share that really comes up from your heart that Thank you. You would like to share with others. Let’s see. Well, I’m remembering our last conversation, and to put it connect it with this one, there’s really a desire to express to each individual, the, the beautiful opportunity, and the realistic opportunity that’s available to each and every person who really wants to know something other than that.
That cycle of me, of separation, of suffering, of whatever you wanna call it. That there is a even people who’ve done so many years of spirituality, that with an authentic aspiration, there’s a there’s a there’s a little hidden doorway. There’s a trap door in it all that we can find our way into and through, and that we can live in a completely different existence. So, I just wanna kind of put out the possibility and the inspiration from that deeper, more authentic place. Because for me, in my journey, it was usually one or the other.
It was so authentic and true that it was out of reach. Or it was so inspiring and wonderful that it didn’t actually have the transformative power that created a sustained shift in my existence. And what I’m here, I think, embodying this feels like as I recollect over our two conversations, it feels like what I’m kind of most expressing is that those two can go together. That deep, authentic, deepest, deepest spiritual truth, and that inspired aspiration and sense of possibility of the heart can come together for any person who really wants it to bring about a completely transformed life, one that’s very, very worth it. Thank you.
It’s great to see you again. Thank you for coming here today on such short notice. . So what have you been doing and how has your work been progressing? And Well, it’s been an incredibly, incredibly rich time lately.
I have just closed up shop here in San Rafael and I’m sort of launching out into a new chapter of my journey. And so had probably the most special gathering of my life. It was, 20 or 30 of my closest friends and we all kind of did like a wake, although I was, it was like, as if I had died. So the, the love and the inspiration in that group of people just has been wind under my wings and I’m just sort of setting off on a new, new, part of my journey. So when you say awake, it was a celebration of It was a celebration of, one life within my lifetime.
It was kind of like, as if I had died, what everybody would bring and say in the spirit that they would kinda come with and it was like a full hearted, amazing celebration of the life I’ve lived and, and just to kind of inspire me forward to really go with, the, the spirit that I’m kind of saying yes to at this point in my life is to really just let spirit take me where it wants, to kinda like lean back into the currents of life and see where I’m most meant to be and most meant to serve and most meant to express this that we’re that we’re sharing here today and talking about when we do. And that makes me think about what we were talking about last time, that it’s not really a planning thing that you do, that you live in the presence and you live in the awareness of what is happening in the now, That’s right. And that now leads into the future. So there’s no actually analytical great moments of thinking about it or stressing about it or worrying about it or having to do. It’s basically just letting go and allowing it to talk to you.
That’s exactly right. How you’re gonna be proceeding forward. That’s exactly it. And, to listen right now, the refinement of my process is more about listening to that guidance and being able to follow it. And it just, it starts to become a very fluid, river like existence.
Everything just, you know, inner, outer, it all becomes one, almost liquid, I call it the lubricious magic of life. It’s just, it’s always flowing, it’s always appearing and disappearing, and, and it just seems to have a more and more beautiful and magical quality the more you do release or let go in the way you were describing. I call it letting be. It’s just, it’s just letting be. And as you, as you be this space of letting be, the, the magic just rolls on and unfolds and reveals itself and seems to have an intelligence that’s way beyond at least my little planning, figuring out mind.
So there’s a, there’s a, there’s a divine magic and beauty to the unfoldment, and, so I’ve just been saying yes to this in deeper and deeper ways, And then, it all just, just like this moment, it becomes just filled with that bright, beautiful spark of possibility of possibility of divinity, of life, and then you just watch. And it always does something new, you know. It always takes you to exactly where you’re meant to be. I know you have a lot of gathering, different groups of people, but have you worked with the workforce of corporations and businesses? No.
I haven’t entered into that yet. I am I’m open to it if that’s what comes my way. I have a few friends who are kind of venturing out in that realm and they seem to enjoy it and be able to, do good work there. And I haven’t I just haven’t entered that realm yet. But your thinking and your way would be so different and opposed to the way that it’s structured right now.
Yeah. So how do you think that It would be pretty radical. It would be radical. Yes. To say the least.
But do you think it would be more productive, as productive, or what would you feel It depends on how you define the word productive. Yes. Let’s define this word then. It would be much more productive if we define productive as bringing about, the qualities of goodness of your true nature. If you, if you really value joy, if you value, a kind of, inner harmony, a kind of, flow, a kind of goodness that just in just saturates every cell and makes you feel like, wow, I’m so glad I’m on planet Earth, then yes, it would increase productivity thousand fold.
But in terms of, you know, profits, I’m not sure. That would be that would remain to be seen. We’d need to do some experiments. Most likely, it would it would bring the right amount of money for that company where it would be sustainable for the long run. .
That’s what tends to happen when you release into this way of being is that things become much more harmonious and stable for the long run. So you might not get it’s kind of like if you’re pumping hormones into a plant. It might look good for the first year or two, you know, if you had rose bushes and you were pumping it full of like really intense stuff. It might look great for a little while. It might look better than the plant that you’re just using organic soil with, But in ten years, twenty years, thirty years, fifty years, a hundred years, this plant is gonna look much, much more robust and have, you know, produce much more for the world around it in the long run.
So it’s kind of like that that would probably be maximized. I’ve heard a saying, you’re calling it sacred comrades. Yes. And in sacred comrades, it’s about bringing spirit there and productivity and profit, of course. Right.
But doing it with awareness, doing it with that there is consciousness to it and there’s accountability to it Yes. Opposed to basically going in and raping the land and deforesting the land and don’t care. Yeah. It’s about a level of consciousness. Yeah.
It’s about a level of connection and intimacy with, first of all, yourself. But as soon as you become intimate with your own being, with your own self, you can’t help. That’s the doorway to intimacy with everything and everybody, including, but not limited to, our planet and nature. So you can’t help but feel completely connected, as if that were your arm. You know, you wouldn’t go around chopping off your arm to make money.
You’d, you would never do that. You know, so, or it was your family. Your closest family. You wouldn’t hurt them to make a profit. So that intimacy, the intimacy of the individual immersion in one’s own truth.
And that’s what I’m most interested in, and I think that’s why I haven’t kinda branched out to corporations and companies yet. I can see it happening. Anything’s possible. But my the main thrust of my existence and where I show up is with individuals. And that can happen in groups, but it’s really like, how do you like if I was with you, how do you, Victoria?
How do you know and fall into the recognition in a real way, in an authentic way? How do you fall into the recognition of who you really are, of what you really are, of what this life really is in its most minuscule and beautiful magic that is so possible and yet so obscured in our day to day kind of the, the veils that our conditioning puts on us. So my work has really focused on giving each person I touch that real invitation and doorway to a completely liberated way of being that, you know, you usually hear about or read about, you know, these poems by Rumi. People are inspired by them, but not many people can actually taste in a sustained way live and embody and walk around as an expression of that brightness, of that lightness and freedom. That we actually are beyond some of this momentum of our mind.
So if I, you know, I feel like even if I did walk into a company, it would be like, okay, how where does this catalyst? This is what seems to happen. This isn’t something I necessarily do, but it seems to be what happens when I walk into a room. It’s like there’s a catalytic quality of like a fire touching other people and letting them wake up to their own true nature. It sounds what you’re saying to me is that there’s a aliveness that you’re connecting with inside of yourself first, that spark of genuine goodness, a quality, that one gets in touch with inside themselves and then unites that in others and shares that with others.
Yes. It becomes almost like a, it’s like a catalytic little awakener. It just people can, oh, that’s, that’s available here too. And it is, it is all those things you said. It’s a goodness.
It’s a, it’s a light. It’s a preciousness. And in its, in its simplest expression, you know, in Buddhism they talk about emptiness. It’s the emptiness or the awakeness that we are. And so we all have the possibility.
It’s a very realistic possibility. That’s the wonderful news. That even as we walk around in, you know, this little town, San Rafael, or wherever we’re living, that you can actually know and experience and live what the Buddha talked about And in my journey, I was exposed to many teachers And many teachings And such a so. Teachers. Lots and lots of Zen teachers.
That was my first . Foray. So all the big names and the not so big names in Zen was what I first exposed myself to Then there was the spirit rock and the opening up Then there was all the gurus who kinda come in from India And who were touched by, Punjaji And, you know, all the teachers who were kind of catalyzed by him And his predecessors. Just, and then not to mention all the, you know, just the different books that are here available. And just reading all of that.
Just exposing myself. And for so many years, I had inspiration. I had so much inspiration, so much, passion for this journey, but not a lot of exposure or taste of the reality of what these teachings had to offer. And I was blessed enough to be kind of almost like taken by the hand across the bridge into this other way of being. And that was my teacher, Adyashanti.
He was the first one who really said, hey, Tobin. Enough with the theory. Enough with the practices. Enough with all That’s all great. You’re helping yourself become a better human being.
That’s all good. But here’s this other possibility here. Almost like, as if he’s sitting behind this curtain and his hand comes out and takes me behind the curtain. Wow. Oh.
Here it is. What did you see there? What did you experience? And what do you know from that point of view? That’s the million dollar question That’s a great question And that’s kinda what I’ve been trying to point to in everything I say I point to that To that mysterious, divine, almost nothing something It’s an empty something That you can’t, the mind can’t concretize You can’t put your finger on it That’s why it’s so tricky to talk about because it’s in fact, it’s impossible to put into words.
We can only kinda point to it or inspire with the words to transmit the state, the actual experience. Well, is that energy is that within us or is that out of us? That we’re trying to get to it or obtain it, or we already have it? So Very good question. Ultimately, it’s both.
Ultimately, it’s everywhere and all things at all times. But for us as human beings, on this journey to knowing this, to embodying this, to living this, to expressing it in the most authentic and pure and real way possible, this is the way, inward. We have to go in. We have to go in to find it. We have to find out who I mean, in a nutshell, it’s who am I?
What am I, really? That question taken seriously enough and deep enough, will help you help the awakening of that which you really are to occur. What am I? What really am I? So that inward, ultimately, or let’s say initially, we have to go inward to discover who we are, what we are, in essence.
Are we all different, or are we all one of the same? That we’re all sharing a common union together? Well, again, this is where we get into the mystery of things, the paradoxical nature of reality. Primarily, we’re all the same. We’re all this oneness.
We all, everyone who touches into this, this oneness will know it singularly. It’s like a singularity. It expresses itself in millions of, qualities. So you might have a different experiential overtone to that to that divinity, to that majesty, to that mysterious magic oneness. It might have a different, qualitative overtone.
That’s why you get so many teachers and so many teachings all having different emphasis. You know, one’s talking more about love. One’s talking more about, like a will, a strong perseverance quality. One’s talking about emptiness. One’s talking about, the brilliancy of things, or the Jesus Christ.
In the Yeah, the Christ love. Christ love, which was the unconditional love. In love. He was lost in love, pure love, in the bliss of unconditional love. So that expression comes out of this mystery, and it’s one of the most beautiful forms available.
So in at the essence of the essence is one mysterious singularity. I like that word. It’s a singularity. There’s no there’s not two. And yet, as one drops and becomes this, almost instantaneously, the millions of expressions, the millions of forms, of which Christ’s love is one of, and one of the most beautiful, you know?
Of which, compassion, bodhisattva like compassion is another. The pure awakeness of somebody like Ramana Maharshi just. So that’s another expression. And each soul, each individual will be expressing that, dancing with that, interacting as that in totally unique and in different ways. So it’ll be totally different as it’s coming from this one undescribable singularity.
Each time we drop down into meditation, or allow the energy of meditation to take forth, it’s filling yourself up with the divinity of the vastness of consciousness, of source energy. We it’s not only our mind trying We’re actually regenerating ourselves, rejuvenating ourselves at that moment. Ultimately, in its best form. I mean, meditation is a million things.
Everybody who’s doing meditation might be doing a slightly different thing. There’s so many forms of it. But the But essentially, they have one thing in common is there it’s the letting go of the mind Yes. The mind that thinks it’s running the show, knows all. Exactly.
It’s completely relinquishing that That’s right. And filling up with this what you’re the undescribable, which is the sense of the What you are. Quietness inside Yes. The the authenticness, The being ness of who we are. That’s it.
That’s it. Which is not coming from the concept of who we think we are. That’s exactly right. It’s coming from another place of just being. Being.
Yes. Of the being ness. And that’s what we actually are. Yeah. So the way you’re pointing it out, that’s perfect.
Because this, in all of our spirituality, in all of our endeavor as spiritual beings, to wake up, to transform, to be liberated, to, put, you know, whatever the words are. Everybody’s aspiring and working for some kind of shift. But ultimately, it boils down to these two levels. One, the mind level. The separate sense of self.
The false me. The conditioning. The mind that just thinks and, you know, plans and frets and worries and wonders and selves. It’s the self. It’s me.
And it’s so, so powerful, and it creates like a fog, basically. So, yes, meditation in its essence is dropping below that, seeing beyond that, relaxing out of that, and to and just, you don’t even you’re not doing it, but you’re just stopping what you have been doing. And what is naturally available is what you actually are, which is all these things. You just said them so perfectly. Silence, quiet, brightness, beauty, compassion.
I mean, just alive, just that purest aliveness is what we are as our beauty ness. It’s quite beautiful, but it expresses itself in many different ways, many different flavors. So one of the things in this in this path is to get very clear, a very clear distinction on the difference between this sense of self and its kind of familiar expression, its familiar sense of, a kind of agitation usually, kind of kind of nause. Even in its best moments, it has a, its vibration is one of, agitation. And so you start to realize, oh, that’s what I think I am.
It’s what I believed I am from very early on. You start to realize, wow, maybe that’s not the whole picture. And maybe that’s actually masquerading for something that more, much more authentic, much more mysterious and real. And that becomes the journey. Sorry.
Go ahead. So we are not our thoughts only, we are not only of our nervous system, we are not only of our sum total of all of the different parts of our body that may be working properly or not working properly. That’s exactly right. We are something that is un describable, but yet very profound. That’s right.
That’s for sure. And when we push away all of the obvious, and acknowledge that and drop down into the quietness of that, we start to get a taste of that. Yes. Yes. And that’s the doorway.
Yeah. That’s the doorway. That’s what I was talking about when metaphorically Adia’s hand came out of that black mystery and that’s the doorway, then that can actually deepen and further and take over in a way that it’s not just an experience, but it’s a lived, for lack of a better word, it’s a lived knowing. It’s a lived way of and it’s not a knowing in the mind, but it’s just a it’s kind of like the sun emanates rays. It can’t help but do that.
So once we’ve had a direct experience and know ourselves for what we really are, once we can actually inhabit that more and more, it just shows as a radiance. It just becomes a radiance that we walk around as in our life. And that’s quite a process to embody that deeper and deeper, more and more. So that’s kind of where you’re residing and living and walking and talking from. But that’s the possibility and that’s kind of what my work with people and groups is about.
Kinda what my existence seems to be more and more about, just living that. And again, not with a plan or an agenda or a doing or an idea that this is what I’m supposed to do and let’s go fix everybody. There’s none of that runs anymore. It’s just kind of like I walk around, and that’s what makes sense. Kinda like, oh, I’m go get a meal three times a day.
It’s just obvious to do so. That’s kind of how it is with this, with this other movement. It just happens more and more. So there’s a quietness with it, with great awareness always. Oh, I love I love your words. Yes. You’re walking with great awareness and a lot of attention to the process. Yeah. It’s it may be And it’s a word would be witnessing. The witnessing.
Yes. That’s good. Because it’s intention is a tricky word because it can so easily slip into that agenda of intention. I have an intention, but it slid into now there’s an agenda. There’s a right way versus a wrong way, and I’m gonna go do it.
You know? But this is this is completely absent of that, as if something washed through, like a like a cleansing ocean wave just washes through, and it and it just dissolves the very fabric of your the part of your body that would that would even do those agendas just gets somehow just cleansed out of the system. And then you’re like, oh, here I am. And yet, then, just like you take a breath, it’s just obvious to do that. Oh, now I’m hungry.
It’s obvious to do that. It’s not because I should, and it’s right, and I wanna impose that on the world. It just makes the most sense. And so then, movement occurs along those lines, and it’s quite beautiful. It just and it becomes a dance. And the weird thing is, as much as there’s this human man body guy doing these things with others, At the same time, the most prevalent experience is that there’s not two things. There’s not two people. And that’s that becomes the prevalent experience, and you’re just kind of left in a kind of awe and wonder, and it just kind of makes you smile with glee at the weirdness and magic of it all. Like, and that’s how that just starts to just be kind of this mysterious flow. Very beautiful.
Yeah. So lot of chaos and a lot of stress. Yes. Yes. That’s a good way of saying it, the antidote.
It’s the opposite of what I mean, if you look at it closely, our culture and all the people in it are just expressions of this separate sense of self, kind of going at its extreme, pace. It’s like machinery that’s just kind of working. That’s what causes that. If you could just boil it down to one thing that causes all the suffering, all the pain. Not just physical pain, because that’s a different thing, but the kind of emotional pain, the strife, the struggle, the sense of, gosh, life just doesn’t feel right.
It hurts. It sucks. It’s not good. Relationship dramas, you know, work, all that. It all boils down to that little momentum usually resides right around here in our brain called the me.
Well, Tobin, it’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to share that really comes up from your heart that Thank you. You would like to share with others. Let’s see. Well, I’m remembering our last conversation, and to put it connect it with this one, there’s really a desire to express to each individual, the, the beautiful opportunity, and the realistic opportunity that’s available to each and every person who really wants to know something other than that.
That cycle of me, of separation, of suffering, of whatever you wanna call it. That there is a even people who’ve done so many years of spirituality, that with an authentic aspiration, there’s a there’s a there’s a little hidden doorway. There’s a trap door in it all that we can find our way into and through, and that we can live in a completely different existence. So, I just wanna kind of put out the possibility and the inspiration from that deeper, more authentic place. Because for me, in my journey, it was usually one or the other.
It was so authentic and true that it was out of reach. Or it was so inspiring and wonderful that it didn’t actually have the transformative power that created a sustained shift in my existence. And what I’m here, I think, embodying this feels like as I recollect over our two conversations, it feels like what I’m kind of most expressing is that those two can go together. That deep, authentic, deepest, deepest spiritual truth, and that inspired aspiration and sense of possibility of the heart can come together for any person who really wants it to bring about a completely transformed life, one that’s very, very worth it. Thank you.
Lily Oglesby
Lily Oglesby has been working with youth (pre-school through high school) in the areas of dance, theater and nature awareness and environmental education for over ten years in the Bay Area (primarily in San Francisco and Marin). She has taught in both private and public schools and through organizations such as Next Generation, Wild Care, Trackers NW and the American Conservatory Theater. Lily loves bringing her passion for the expressive arts and nature awareness to youth.
She also loves finding and sharing the bridge between the natural world and expressive arts. Last summer she created a successful camp for youth called “Dance and Drama in Nature.” which she put on in Deer Park in Fairfax,CA. Whether she is choreographing musicals for young people of getting them outdoors appreciating the natural beauty that surrounds us, Lily loves empowering young people to connect more deeply with themselves and each other in creative and inspiring ways.
She also loves finding and sharing the bridge between the natural world and expressive arts. Last summer she created a successful camp for youth called “Dance and Drama in Nature.” which she put on in Deer Park in Fairfax,CA. Whether she is choreographing musicals for young people of getting them outdoors appreciating the natural beauty that surrounds us, Lily loves empowering young people to connect more deeply with themselves and each other in creative and inspiring ways.
Welcome to the art of conscious living. I am very pleased today to have an incredible guest, something very dear to my heart, Lily Oglesby. She works with children. She prepares them for the world at a very, very young age, in their grade school, teaching them about gardening, permaculture, nature, and she’s also teaching them dance. Lily, thank you for being on the show today.
Thank you for having me. How are you today? Doing great. Yeah. Thank you.
Thanks. So your work is very, very beautiful and very, very important. You have a signature on your email and it’s so profound. It’s so beautiful. Right.
It says, if we if we are going to expect children to save the planet, we need to teach them to love it first. What does this really mean to you? I think it for me, it just means so many people, children and adults, are very disconnected from the natural world, and yet there’s all this talk, you know, we have to save the oceans. We have to save the forest. There are some people who’ve never been to the oceans, who’ve never been in a forest.
And so the work that I do, in particular through one of the organizations I work with, Next Generation, is, is getting kids to the ocean, out in the forest, or just out in their own, you know, schoolyard garden connecting with the natural world, so that they have that bond, that understanding that lends itself to love of the natural world. And then and it’s just more of an embodied experience with the natural world. Well, then people, they care more. I believe that people care more when they have that connection. Your personal experience as you as a young child, what exposure did you have to nature, to the natural world of plants and gardening?
Well, I actually grew up in cities in San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Seattle. It was really my summers where I got, that nature exposure that just, is an absolute essential part of who I am, and I’m so thankful for it, and that were in particular, it was the summers in, in Door County, Northern Wisconsin, that I would spend with my grandmother, who lived in the woods on the edge of Lake Michigan, and she was a very nature connected woman, and we would, you know, go out into the forest picking wild raspberries and seeing the birds and snapping turtles and, you know, the little critters that lived around, and she was just such a magical being, and the way she exposed me to her environment just really opened my eyes to, wow, this is magical, and I love this, and, and also, my dad, who lives in LA, and moved there when I was four, but when I would visit him on holidays, we would always get out in the trails, whether in Griffith Park, or Runyon Canyon, or up in Santa Barbara, and so those trail walks, those hikes with my dad also, were very, very much an important part of, creating my nature connection and love of the natural world.
So in essence, the elders gave you and they were setting the pace and tone of what would be happening now. And now you are doing what they had given to you. . And you’re passing this on to children. And you go to elementary schools . And middle and high school. Yes. . What’s the experience like while you’re in the schools with the children? I feel very thankful to get to be outside with the kids. It’s sometimes pretty painful to me to have to be inside of a fluorescent lit classroom on a beautiful day. So I’m so thankful that a lot of my work is outside, whether it’s in the garden, school gardens, and Marin just has an abundance of school gardens. It’s wonderful here in this county, just the commitment to that, awareness and that education, nature awareness, garden education. And then I’ll also do we’ll do nature walks around the campus or sometimes off the campus. One of the schools I work at, San Pedro Elementary School in San Rafael, I do weekly bay walks with the kids, which is, where we get to walk the bays.
I mean, it’s an amazing location for the school. It’s just about a quarter of a mile to the bay, and, I’ll walk with them, and then we’ll wind our way into this sort of beautiful grassy area where I get to teach them about some amazing wild edibles and wild medicinals that are growing. And we get to do little, you know, tastings of wild radish flowers and fennel and, you know, just some of the amazing edible plants that are growing around. And, yeah. So it’s just really special.
Similarly in the garden, doing, you know, sensory awareness exercises, just opening up their awareness of what’s around them and the beauty of all that’s growing in the garden. And, you know, then very practical, you know, hands on in the soil, weeding, seeding, growing their own food in the garden. Yeah. And what sense do you have that it’s about how it’s affecting the children in a positive way? There’s some children who are introverts or they are troubled.
And being with nature, all of this seems to just fall away. . . What have you seen from your experience of being with the children?
Well, I’ve seen that just nature is very soothing. It’s soothing to the spirit, soothing to the physical body. It just it tends to calm the kids. And it’s very real, you know. It’s not like video games or all this just hyperstimulation that kids are exposed to, that I think kinda spins them out.
I think ADD and, you know, I’m no doctor or anything, like, but, you know, these ADD disorders and things of that nature. I think it has a lot to do with our culture and the kind of, excessive technological exposure that a lot of kids have. So when we get out in the garden or we go to the edge of the ocean or the edge of the bay, it’s just really it’s very real. It’s very calm, you know. It’s it tends to allow kids to drop into themselves more and get curious, you know, and get hands on.
You know, a video game, yeah, you’re using your thumbs a mile a minute, but it’s you’re not it’s not as tactile. You know what I mean. So, yeah, that and then it just yeah, it opens their curiosity and then there’s also a real sense of achievement that can come. Because sometimes these walks, particularly if, you know, they’re first or second graders, and even if it’s just a quarter of a mile each way, that can seem like a long walk. But, you know, they get there, they get back, and there’s a real sense of accomplishment.
So I think being out, in nature, I know I’ve done overnights with youth fifth graders in the Marin Headlands, and man, to watch the transition within forty eight hours of when the kids arrive and when they leave, just how much more relaxed they are, and just that sense of empowerment that comes with, like, I just I went on a night walk or a night hike, and I did it, you know? And I was away from home for two nights out in nature, like, yeah. You know, just yeah. So it’s very empowering for youth. Do you do a lot of identification of the plants and the flowers?
Yeah. And what studies have you done? I know you read a lot of books.
So what are your favorite books and what have you done in a way to prepare yourself for this? Right. Well, for me, I learn best hands on. So I’ve learned from other, local teachers and, through some of the programs that I’ve done, like, at the regen through the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas. RDNA, is one of the programs they offer, the Regenerative Design Nature Awareness Program.
That was a fifteen hundred hour program I did that was very hands on, and it was two nights a week, forty eight hours a week. So we were there for two straight days, just learning about the local flora and fauna, and, it was pretty amazing, and camping out there, and, and similar. And then the books support you. You know, I have all the great local, wildlife books. The Audubon has some great ones, and I’ve taught through the Audubon.
And, they have a really nice bookstore that I’ve purchased some from. But just about local trees, local plants, the local birds. I love my bird books. Or even just the there’s this series of laminated cards. I forget who puts them on exactly, where it’s just a fold out card.
It just has the most predominant species in the area, whether that’s butterflies or birds or plants. And so it’s good to start small, you know, instead of, like, yeah, there’s thousands of birds out there that one could learn. But just start with, like, what are the ones that you’re seeing most often in your area? And then just really get to know them, even if that’s just five. That’s five those are five, you know, species of bird that you’re building a really, rich and connected relationship with.
So it’s not just exclusive to plants? Oh, no. It’s birds, the animals, the insects. The whole ecosystem. The whole ecosystem.
Yeah. . Fantastic. . Yeah.
It looks like it’s giving you a lot of joy that you’re bringing a lot of joy to the children, so it’s very sustaining for you also. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I just I feel, as I said before, there is a lot of magic in the natural world that really, it sort of holds that mystery that for me really feeds my spirit. I don’t need to know everything.
And when I get out in nature, I realize I don’t know everything. In fact, I’m far, far from it, and that’s okay because it’s just, it’s very expansive. And, and yet even in the tiniest detail of watching the tiniest, tiniest insect, there’s just it just completely opens your sphere, you know. I was just talking to someone earlier about spherical awareness, and that’s something we would talk about in my as I mentioned earlier. What is a spherical rDNA program.
Spherical awareness. Just that idea, and I do it with the kids too. Often in our lives, we’re very here, looking at a computer screen, driving. So I start with the kids, you know, sort of opening up our periphery, and I have them wiggle their fingers as they stare straight ahead, and start to open up this part of their viewing, and then we practice something called that would be called owl eyes. And we also practice something called a fox walk, which is walking, stepping very consciously, similar to how a fox would if he’s, you know, stalking something, but so that he hears everything, he’s aware of everything going on around him.
And, And the ego seeing the big picture. Yeah. And soaring above and seeing Right. And above and below, and so that whole sphere that’s around us. So that when we are on a trail, for instance, we’re not just, you know, straight ahead, I’m going there, but we’re noticing, oh my gosh, there’s a deer over there or a raccoon, you know, and just really starting to pay attention.
I think, the kind of nature awareness work that I’ve been grateful enough to get to learn and practice, and be exposed to, just really, it’s cultivates awareness, a deep awareness, both in the forest or in the city. You know, I ever since my eyes and ears have been attuned to the world of birds, I see the Cooper’s hawk in on the telephone wire in Downtown San Francisco, you know, Something that I might not have been aware of before when I was younger. It just it opens you up to all that’s going on and that’s pretty special. So it’s a lot like the magical child.
Just being open and being in the experience and . Opening up your awareness to allow, a greater sense of self . And the possibilities of what is there. Right. Right.
So you see the children, I mean, they can bring that back into their life and use that also. . . So there’s a lot that is not very obvious here, but it seems to be a very profound thing. Right.
Yeah. Very profound. And then they take it and they start to teach their parents what they’re learning, you know, when they’re out at the park or someone gets stung at the park and, that’s plantain. I know how to use that. Put it on the bee sting and, you know, help soothe the pain.
So, yeah, again, not empowering, and they’re not it’s not only the elders passing it to the younger generations, but vice versa, because a lot of adults haven’t had that exposure in our culture, you know, which is which is unfortunate. But I think that, you know, with such books as, Last Child in the Woods and others of that nature, like, definitely, and the new disorder that’s been coined, nature deficit disorder. The awareness of how disconnected we’ve become be we’ve become from the natural world is really is much more on the radar now than it ever was, or at least in the past hundred years. To write a book.
What would you put in that book? If I was to write a book. I feel like I’m still learning from so many of the wonderful books that are out there. But, well, to present another one of my loves. I’m also a dance dancer and dance teacher.
And, embodiment practices are also very important to me. And, I see the duo as so powerful of, knowing how to drop into your body, whether that’s with yoga or dance, and simultaneously be in the natural world and, having that open your awareness. Because sometimes, you know, if we go straight from the computer to, you know, maybe the ocean side, it might take us a while to really drop in. We can stay very in our head. Granted, the natural world in and of itself can drop us in, but I think if we’re, you know, knowing how to move our bodies and listening to our bodies and simultaneously listening to the natural world, that duo can really help to, again, expand our awareness.
And so it would be it would it would be a book along the lines of where embodiment practices and the natural world meet. I don’t know. I haven’t thought much about writing the book. So Okay. Yeah.
I’m currently writing a musical around nature, so that’s exciting. But yeah. A musical around nature? . And what would that be?
It’s about oh, it’s very fresh. But, basically, through music and dance. Well, it’s a musical about, the connection of youth to the natural world, and, where that sort of concrete disconnect, meets the natural world and how we can bring the nat like, you know, everyone’s not gonna be able to move out to a farm or a ranch. The reality is millions of people live in cities, but it doesn’t have to be dire straits, you know. Rooftop gardens and just all the creative ways that people are trying to cultivate, the natural world and that awareness wherever they are.
And so the musical touches upon that. So would this be a play or would it It’s a musical. A musical. Yeah. So songs and Yeah.
But it’s very new. I So it’s like an art performance . Perhaps. Yeah.
Beautiful. So yeah. Yeah. Where do you see this going in the future, in the near future? And how I mean, we know it’s very important.
And the budgets are being cut. I mean, I just hold hope that, as I said, this idea of nature deficit disorder and the need for us to connect more to the natural world will stay on the radar and continue to just, you know, get more and more bright on the radar. And that nature awareness work, nature, garden classes just become more and more a part of the curriculum where, you know, like, they’ve done at the Edible Schoolyard in Oakland, or is it Berkeley? Anyways, at the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Middle School in the East Bay, how they’ve really seen how you can weave in to the math curriculum, science curriculum, history, language arts, you know, this, gardening and nature connection, learning as well, how they’re inextricably linked.
And I would just love I mean, that is just an amazing prototype for what I would love to see, in all schools and for all kids. Yeah. I don’t think kids are meant to be in a classroom six, seven, eight hours a day, in a desk. I mean, I know they have many recesses, but even those are being cut back, you know, under fluorescent lighting. So I think Yeah.
You also teach dance. What type of dance would this be? I teach primarily right now, I teach creative movement, modern, and ballet. Although I’ve taught, when I taught in the public schools on a regular basis for three years, I would do different units with the kids. So they’d get West African, which I’ve studied pretty extensively, and a Latin unit, jazz, modern ballet, to get, you know, an awareness of different styles of dance.
And Yeah. So Yeah. Elementary through middle and some high school dance teaching. And yoga. I always have to throw some yoga in there.
And the youngest age you’re teaching dance would be? Preschool as well. Yeah. So four year olds.
Which is really fun. It’s, you know, each age group is so very different. So yeah. What is the main difference you see between children who have not been exposed to nature, who are not doing the dance classes, who are not tapping into that creative side of them, who are very much, as you mentioned, on the computers and . There there’s a total disconnect.
There must be an obvious difference there between the two. Right. Well, I tend to see the most in my experience working with youth, and for instance, I will just to be specific, some camps I’ve run through an organization called Trackers Northwest that’s now has a it started up in Portland, but they now have a, a program here in the Bay Area, in Marin, in the East Bay, and San Francisco, all over, is working with youth who’ve gone through the, more mainstream schooling and then youth who’ve been homeschooled. And, of course, youth who have been homeschooled who are in these programs is because the parents want them to have this nature education.
But I just noticed they also tend to have, just a lot of cool hands on learning that they’re exposed to because they’re, homeschooled and there’s just more flexibility with what they’re exposed to. And so there’s tends to be, just more of a curiosity and an openness, from these kids and as well as just youth who’ve had more of the nature exposure, curiosity, openness. They tend to be less, well, that’s not entirely true. Nature connected kids can be know it alls too, but I was gonna say just, being more humble. I don’t know if that’s true because they’ve seen the grander picture in a way, if you will.
Like, I noticed a lot of kids who are just in front of the computers or with their Gameboys or televisions, you know, a lot of what they share, it’s all it’s a lot of pop culture, you know. It’s constant pop culture, this and this and that. And, Is it possible that the children who are experiencing nature and the dance classes and the artistic side in themselves and the expression of self . They are more balanced. They are seeing the possibilities where they’re more curious.
It’s fostering the curiosity in the more Yeah. Where perhaps the other children who have not been exposed to this . Are more closed minded. Yeah.
No. Curiosity is a key is a key word. Connection, curiosity, creativity. It definitely I just feel like it nature connection just touches that tip of the iceberg, you know, of curiosity. And, oh, once you question this, then that leads to this question.
You know, it’s endless, and that’s really exciting, whether you’re a know it all or not, because you can’t really ultimately get to the be all and end all. But, yeah. So it definitely engenders that curiosity, which is really exciting. And because being out in nature, oftentimes, like I was, mentioning earlier, is a is a physical experience. It’s an embodied experience, whether it’s, you know, climbing a tree, or going for a hike, or, pitching a tent.
You know, it’s more physical. So kids tend to be in their bodies and have to depend on their own resources, the resource of their body, as opposed to, like, a television clicker. So there’s, again, that sense of, self-empowerment that comes. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about the specifics of or is there a difference between the boys and the girls?
Is there obvious difference when you’re out in nature that you observe? That’s interesting. I mean, of course, I think it depends on the individual. Child. You know, I don’t know.
I’m still hesitant to make generalizations, but they do exist. Sometimes the boys tend to be a little more rowdy, wanting to, you know, run everywhere, run, pull up their ax and grab. Let’s smash them. You know? Because there’s a little more of a, I think, a sensitivity that girls sometimes bring younger kids, you know, not necessarily the older kids.
And the girls are doing? What are they doing as the boys are? I mean, they wanna see the crabs. They wanna see the crabs too. And, and they’re not always the most, you know, suave with putting the rock back so that all the crab the whole crab family doesn’t get crushed.
But there’s just not quite the same heightened, like, you know, rampaging. So that this part of my work too is, like, okay. Let’s rein it in. That’s really exciting to run all over, but let’s start to, like, notice the details. And, And how do the boys do with acting like a fox walking through there, as you mentioned, or the owl?
Do they immediately drop down into that as the girls would? Or is it easier for girls to do it or the boys? I wouldn’t say that. I would, you know, I mean, in learning it, they both I’d say pick it up pretty on par with each other. Is there a resistance from the boys to do it or not?
No. I think they like they enjoy it too. Boys and girls, you know, they wanna be the stalker. They wanna be really aware. They don’t wanna, you know, just a little sort of that, like, I’m a hunter through the forest or something.
So when you make it a magical journey and a story that’s about to be explored, then they can lose themselves in it. Yeah. Yeah. So you just have to always have them presence and totally to engage them. Right.
Right. Right. Yeah. Like girls and boys alike. Again, then at that point, I feel like it’s an individual matter of the individual.
Yeah. Well, where do you see this going in the future for you? For you as a dance teacher and working with children? Again, just figuring out more ways to bring the two together, whether that’s writing a musical about the natural world for youth.
I bet it’s about youth too. Or, you know, just as simple as when I’m in the garden with kids, waking up our bodies, waking up our awareness with some yoga, and, and, I mean, I’ve also similarly contemplated having a show that would be kind of a nature awareness version of Pee wee’s Playhouse. So it would be fun and spunky, but it would also be very much about exposing kids to, to nature and that nature awareness. You seem to be giving us a lot of thought. Yeah.
Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. So And always, it’s just fun to also make up songs around the natural world. I do that with kids a lot, bringing the musical career, eliciting the musical creativity in them.
Like my green team at Venetia Valley School, we did a little let’s make a song up about the garden and different groups of kids got together and worked on their song and then we performed them for each other and that was very sweet. So what green team and the garden mean to them. How many other teachers are out there doing the work that you’re doing? Well, again, in Marin County, it’s impressive how many gardens there are in funding grant money for garden teachers. I think we have a pretty high concentration of gardens and garden teachers and garden education compared to, definitely in Marin County and as well in the Bay Area, so compared to other areas in the nation.
But it’s happening all over, you know, that awareness is being raised. And I think as we’re looking more and more at, you know, living local, and that we do need to learn these practices. Like, I question how much longer food’s gonna be shipped from Asia or, you know, wherever. It’s just not sustainable. It can’t happen for much longer.
I mean, not to get too dark. But we’ve already mined 90% of the lithosphere, which is, you know, under the soil where all the fossil fuels reside. So we just can’t keep going at this rate, so we have to think this way. And so I would imagine that particularly when push comes to shove, it’s gonna have to be a part of what we teach in schools. Yeah.
Well, since Al Gore, we’ve been talking about climate change . And all the possibilities, and there’s been a lot of unknowns, a lot of fear, and then the scientists are saying one thing and . But recently they’re agreeing that there is something going on and something has to be addressed and looked at here. . .
So this is a credible way to start . Of what you’re doing. . And if the children are engaged and asking for that, like, before they were not in like in the other generations . In the fifties, in the sixties.
The sixties, yes. There was a consciousness happening at that time where they were very much connected to the planet and trying to disconnect from the work in the corporate world and they wanted their own voice. But this is not gonna be the sixties again. Sixties was that. . So now there’s a awareness that children more so now, they are the younger generation is saying, no. This planet matters.
And I want my voice to be heard. In this. Issue. Right.
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, and just to roll back as far as, what I also try to really the message I try to get across to the kids is it all starts with our imagination. You know, we’re living one way on this planet, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to live, and you guys are the next generation. And it’s about thinking up new and sustainable not just sustainable, but thriving, you know, renewable ways to live on the planet that take care of us in a really awesome and healthy way and take care of the planet, mother Earth.
And so I think, you know, we have it in us. We’ve already created so many. For now, right now, it’s just a matter of, where we spend our money. And, you know, oil companies have put a lot into the car, for instance. And, from, you know, GM buying up all the rail in the sixties and ripping it out of Marin County.
We had an amazing light rail system in Marin County up until then. And of course, as we know in LA, Ford did Ford company did the same thing there. I think earlier, though, they also had an amazing light rail system, but Ford saw the potential of the car there. And so, you know, it’s just starting to say, okay. That’s great.
There was a lot of money there, but it’s not gonna serve us for much longer. And and so let’s be creative and think of, just new ways. Like that movie Who Killed the Electric Car kind of touches upon it’s all already there. It’s just a matter of shifting the dollar to something more meaningful and sustainable. Yeah.
Well, let’s explore that a little bit further. In an ideal perfect world, what, Lily, would you think would be the balance here between technology . We can’t make technology go away . We need it. It’s here to stay.
And the nature . And the respect for both of these. . Not being a techie myself, I, to a degree, would say maybe technology is here to stay.
I don’t know if I believe that quite honestly. It feels awfully ephemeral. And when things crash, I could see that world crashing too. And, you know, though it is very useful, I see for myself as my own sort of experiment when I am in front of a computer screen too long, it there’s a shutdown that happens. I don’t see as clearly.
My capacity to connect with real life, so to speak, gets a little funky. It’s, there’s something constrictive in the computer and disconnecting, as much as it’s supposed to connect us all, you know. So, anyways, just to say that. But as far as my ideal where those two would meet, Personally, I would like to see a lot less technology. I would like to see kids with their heads in computer screens and iPods or iPhones, go way down, and I don’t know if that means just a death to the iPhone.
I don’t have a cell phone. I hope that I never do. I had one for eight months when I lived in London, and that was enough. They don’t feel good to me. And just recently, I mean, I know it’s been out for a while, but I’ve had so many people come up to me about, you know, the radiation cancer studies with cell phones.
And I’m like, yeah. They’re not it’s not healthy. It’s not good for us. And a friend who is though he’s a computer program, he also studies, body work a lot. And he talks about how literally when you’re in front of a computer too long, your spine sort of lifts in your body.
And if you sort of you sort of play with that, it does. It sort of feels like your head kind of floating on top of your body. You know, we need to round our feet more. There’s this whole movement called earthing. Yet another term, but now What is earthing?
It’s getting barefoot on the earth more because we’re so disconnected with concrete, with rubber on our shoes. I mean, there was a time where we walked on the Earth a lot more. So it’s the version of the sixties that we were talking about. It’s the version of thousands of years ago too. Yes.
You know? And I’m thankful that I live in a beautiful home that has surrounding, land in a redwood little redwood grove where I can do that, and I feel the difference, you know, if I’ve been in my car a lot one day just to, like it helps to, you know, because I think that energy, what happens is we end up and they’ve been shown they’ve shown how our bodies can’t figure out ways to release it because those channels are cut off, that we kind of hold it inside of ourselves, and it leads to that anxiety, that tension, and a lot of illness, you know, too. But if we can take the shoes off, get on the earth, just let it go. You know, it’s that release. And so, I mean, woo to some, woo to some, but I guess that’s yeah.
There was a recent study of the honeybees that were dying in massive amounts, and they were saying that it was because of the cell phone, radio frequency in the towers. Right. Yeah. That’s I find I’m it’s very concerning to me. I love the honey bee dearly, and whenever I see one, I send them a prayer because I’m very concerned about the state of the honey bee, and in particular, I remember reading a few years back a quote by Einstein, who was a very nature connected man, for all his, you know Anyways, that when the last honey bee leaves the planet, humans will have something like three to five years left.
And, again, that just speaks to our connection, and we can’t keep abusing other species for our own benefit, whether conscious or unconscious. I don’t think when they made the cell phone, they’re like, oh, yay. We’re gonna mess with the honeybee. But we have to be aware of these things because they’re, well, they’re super important to the pollinating of the food we eat, you know. So our crops And, so, yeah.
A lot of love to the honeybee, and, and that it makes me angry, quite honestly. And, again, as someone who doesn’t have a cell phone, I’m like, these darn things again messing with more natural cycles, you know. So yeah. So it seems to be you’re channeling this anger into something very positive. Oh, yeah.
Oh, I don’t go around it. I mean, I’m just gonna love as much as I can and enjoy the natural world as much as I can and do what I can because, yeah, I’ve seen I, you know, I have I’ve worked with people, activists who, run that more angry energy and it just kind of, I think, eats you up. And yet, anger is not a bad thing if it’s a good, you know, impetus catalyst to get you doing what you care about and taking action. How about Greenpeace? What is your idea on what they’re doing and how they do it?
They know. They have a very radical approach. Yeah. And there’s it’s fueled by a lot of, anger and a lot of Uh-huh. Passion, of course.
Passion. Yeah. Dedication. I mean, I think some people you know, everyone’s running something different through their system or have a different reason for doing what they’re doing. I haven’t followed Greenpeace a lot a lot of late, but, yeah, I am aware of some of the work they’ve done.
And some of it, I think it’s awesome. Like, you know, going after those whaling ships who refuse to stop whaling these amazing creatures and jumping on board and, like, putting up their signs and, yay. You know? So there’s this apathy that spread throughout the land. You know, if there’s a return to the sixties, I one would hope that, it would be a return to more of more of that passion and less of the apathy that humans have of in this age seem to have fallen into.
So, you know, when it’s about violence, I don’t I can’t recall any, and again, I haven’t followed them extensively, Greenpeace, but instances of violence. But when it’s that kind of gung ho, like, get the message out. You know, these guys are you know, whether it’s Japan or Norway going after the whales in a gung ho fashion, there has to be a counter movement to that, and it may have to be gung ho too, you know. So, I don’t know if I could do that, but, yeah, more power to those who are going. Yeah.
So There’s a lot of micro movements happening in Africa where the tourism is depending on the money, where before the pultures were making the animals extinct. . Now the and these cultures, they’re coming in, they’re saying, well, you can make a lot of money here and here’s how to do it. . Stop doing the poaching and bring in the tourism.
. . So it’s working together in a very positive way. Right. When it gets down to should I poach and if I don’t poach and kill this animal, that I know I should not be killing.
So I was told not to kill it. . But I have to feed my family. .
And this is the way to give money. My belly is hungry here, so I have to have some money. . So now they have offered them other alternative solutions. .
And it’s in a very powerful positive way. Right. Yeah. And I think this is a very akin to the possibilities that should be happening more. When I say Greenpeace .
I think also the ideas that we need to find ways that, yes, we’ll say, do not do that. . But yet, what else can we do with that . That we’re saying not to do. Exactly.
The solutions are there. Yeah. Yeah. Just to say do not do that is not it’s not enough. Yeah.
Like anything, I think when you remove something, there’s gonna be an empty space, a void there, and you need to be pretty quick with what you wanna or have a creative, understanding of what you wanna fill that space with. And I was just talking to a friend the other day of, there’s a lot of people who need work on the planet right now. And in my ideal world, that work would be about, you know, would be permaculture, would be about regenerating, areas on the planet, and they are they are vast, that we have ravaged. And, yeah, how to create income for people through that kind of work. And so and that’s one example of, you know, instead of killing these amazing creatures, let’s just open up the, you know the tourist industry also has some drawbacks too, but of the two, it’s definitely much better.
Let’s get people in here to appreciate and love these creatures. Oh, well, you know, like, for instance, on the Galapagos Islands, the wear and tear that comes from the tourist industry and the boats dumping their garbage the tourist boats, dumping their garages. And this is coming from I actually I did go to the Galapagos for seven days, and they’re amazing. And I will never forget that experience. So, yeah.
It’s and, you know, certainly, green eco companies, green hotels, green, green, green. And hopefully, green is not just a guise for do whatever, but they’re really, you know . Coming from a place of integrity, that’s great. So leave less of a footprint. So the idea of green and sustainable would be what?
Would be to recycle? Yeah. Recycling, not just dumping, like, if you are in a ship. I mean, cruise ships are have a history for being reputation for being very destructive because they just dump all their crap right in the ocean, you know. But if yeah.
Being more aware of how what you do with that, bring it back to land and sort it, recycle it, like compost it, you know. So, yeah. And the solution, as we spoke about, the initiative to want to do that would be that they could make money from doing that, and it wouldn’t be more work for them to do that? Right. Right.
Well, that’s the ticket is finding out, ways so that people I mean, a lot of people do it because they do care about the Earth, and that’s an that’s enough of a, reason right there, but how to make it Are there a lot the same amount of equal people that don’t care about the Earth? Yeah. So it’s bringing the conscious system to what they can do. To balance it all out. .
Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. . So your work is incredible and your journey, from this moment as you go forth.
How do you see yourself looking back in hindsight if you did not have this awareness that you had from your elders when you were a small girl? Where do you think you would be today, and who would you have been today without all of this? I think it would be a sadder existence and definitely not as healthy of an existence. I when I moved out of San Francisco Five Years five and a half years ago, I, I was done with all the concrete and all that, the noise. And, and though it’s funny when I think, like, what are my clearest memories is what either, like, early in the morning at dawn or at dusk, and just some of those gems.
You know, San Francisco is a beautiful city, as far as cities are considered, but just those, gem little nature spots that, you know, are throughout the city, and, just having that quiet time. I just desperately wanted more quiet time and drop-in time, and since moving up to Marin, yeah, I feel very thankful for the more soothing energy that I’ve been surrounded by, and can fall asleep at night listening to the sound of the crickets, and seeing the stars all the more clearly than I ever could in the city. And I know I’m very, you know, lucky to have this. Not everyone not everyone has that option, but I think it’s been invaluable to, waking me up to myself, waking me up to the planet, you know, and allowing me for me allowing me to be a healthier creature on the planet. So.
I lived in New York City for quite a length of time, and New Yorkers don’t leave the island. They have they have no want to do that. . They go from their office to their night clubs and their environments and, they’re they have they have no idea that what nature would be about and they have no concern incredible park, which would represent, Central Park would represent nature. But do they seldom get there?
Well, that’s another thing. . . Yeah. So when you say sad that you would not be the person who you are today, what kind of sadness would that be?
I mean, and how would that be affecting you that you could possibly look back in hindsight and say, well, I was given this incredible gift from my elders . To introduce me to what nature is. . And you embraced it.
But let’s say you were not exposed to that, and what would the sadness be? Well, I don’t know if I’d never been exposed if I was knowing what I was missing, but I can say my idea of who I would be is that, I noticed when I lived in the cities where I am in the cities, it’s very much a human vibe that you’re looking to other humans to move you and to, you know, stir you up. It’s very much about, our human connections. That’s what feeds us. And, if even well, I hope I get into this.
But, and that when we’re more connected to the natural world, it allows us for me, it allows me to connect to myself more and realize that there’s this whole that much vaster beyond the human web of connection that exists, that though the human web is profound, is equally, sometimes if not more profound. And that it’s sort of this sense of, again, that self empowerment that has come through that connection. And I don’t know if this is the right way to put it, but almost less of a neediness. Of course, I still need my friends and family and love them. My time in nature and the quiet time in nature through the years has just allowed me to drop into a place in myself, that still quiet place, that being able to touch that place, I’m fine.
And I’ll always be fine no matter what happens. And though maybe you could find that in a in a room in the city, through meditation or something, I’m really thankful because I love the natural world that I found that out there. And, yeah. So, I mean, just in a I was having an interesting conversation with a girlfriend how when we lived in cities and, you know, there was more of this, like, needing to have a boyfriend. You know, you needed that.
Again, that sort of neediness to sort of feel completed or something. And it’s been really interesting. Not that I was ever super needy in that way. I’ve always been fairly independent, but since being more in this, like, natural, quieter realm, there’s just, like, again, that sense of, like, I’m fine. I’m okay, and just trusting that what’ll come will come when it comes.
You know? And I had that to a degree in the city too, because granted I, whether it’s nature, connection, or just what I came into this life with understanding, I tend to have a trust and that there’s a flow to things and a synchronicity, you know. But, I my nature connection has been invaluable in supporting that trust, you know, and that understanding. So Did that make sense? Yeah.
Absolutely. Okay. There’s been a lot of writers and great thinkers that have walked that path. Frank Lloyd Wright, he had a total reverence and respect for nature. .
That was the source energy to him. Whitman, There has been many people . Who are of greats that see that empowerment of that. Right. I would also think that, the art of meditation, the art of self, realization, the art of quietness, and this is a great example when you are connected to nature.
You’re disconnecting from the chaos of the mind. The as you say it Right.
The civilization, the neediness, the inter reaction. That can be the smaller part of the aspects of the human experience. Right. And the nature is introducing the children. To that. . But they may not have the awareness at this point in time of exactly what is happening. But I know there’s something . Something special and .
Unique here. Right. Right. Exactly. .
Yeah. And the more I can just sort of awaken that in them, I feel like I’m doing my job, and I’m thankful to have that opportunity to share that, and, just empower, again, children and adults in that way. You know? Sharing what I’ve shared with my mother, for example, she’s, you know, said thank you to me a few times just for having exposed her to that world and that place of, just solace and, you know, peace. Yeah.
You mentioned that the children come home and start talking to the parents and bringing this information of their nature experience back to the parents. . Do the parents ever go with you, with the children at some times where they have that relationship together? Oh, totally. Yeah.
I did a field trip not too long ago to, Stimson Beach. It was an Earth Day field trip. And, we were doing art on the beach. Zach Pine is the man who runs the program each Earth Day or weekend before Earth Day. And, and we’re also doing a litter clean up, and I took a group of about, I think it was 60 kindergartners, again from San Pedro Elementary, and, all most of them had their parents, or one or two parents with them.
And, I remember one of the moms commenting on how, she hadn’t been to the ocean in five years, and, how cool it was for her. And the day was supposed to wrap up at, like, we got there, I think, at ten or eleven. It was supposed to wrap up at three. But it was no easy task in pulling those kids away from the ocean side, like and we hadn’t bought swimsuits because it was a little chilly, but you can imagine that every single one of them was drenched head to foot because it was just too exciting, you know, and I saw the just the smiles and the joy on the parents’ faces too. And I don’t know how many others perhaps had hadn’t been to the ocean’s edge in, you know, several years.
So even though we’re in the Bay Area and it’s right here and, but you know, again, sometimes if we don’t have like, a lot of them don’t have cars and, the parents who I of the youth I work with, or even if they do, a lot of people, you know, our bubbles can get small and we forget about, even if it’s just a half an hour, forty five minute drive away, it’s just not on our radar of what to do on a weekend, you know, so we don’t do it. So yeah, that’s great. So parents want to contact you and put together a group . Of, the children . And a group of their friends or neighborhood groups .
And they want to contact you and have you to be their guide. . Would you be open to this? And how would they be able to contact you? Sure.
They could contact me at next generation lily,@gonextgeneration.org. That would probably be the best way.
Well, it’s gonna be very exciting to see what you’ll be doing in the future, and it sounds like you have a lot going . And a lot of experience that you will be sharing with us. And thank you. Thank you for all your beautiful wonderful work that you’ve been doing and are doing. Great.
Thank you, Victoria. What final thoughts would you like to share with us that is very dear to your heart and important to you? I would just say wherever you can find some kind of open space, whether it’s a park or a local creek, or whatever speaks to you in that way. Just try to get out there whenever you can and maybe make a commitment to getting out in that space on a regular basis. And it is, it can be just so surprisingly nourishing, to ourselves and open us up, in ways that we couldn’t have imagined and help.
I think it also just because the natural world is so real. It it, it helps us to just wash away all that stuff that’s kind of nonsense and that doesn’t really matter in our life and get very real and on our path. And I think it really nature connection really supports us in on being on our path, whatever that may be. You know, whether you’re a doctor or, a school teacher or whatever your calling is in this life, it just helps you all the more supports you in getting aligned with that calling and going for it and trying to washing away distraction. Though distraction’s gonna be there too, but at least you can have the set time where quiet time and connection time.
Yeah. And for those who sell to get out to nature, just turn off the television. Yeah. Go just go on your balcony. Look at the sky.
And go for a walk. A walk. Yeah. A short little walk. Yeah.
Make that a new adventure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. As I said, even in the city, like, I found my those times. Yeah, to connect.
The sky’s always above us, so that’s a cool thing. You’re always gonna see some kind of bird flying above. Well, one can only hope we’ll always have the birds. Yeah. So.
Do you think it’s possible that we will not be I think if we keep going, the amount of birds that are becoming extinct on this planet is, pretty huge. The different species that are becoming extinct, and I think if we keep treating the planet the way we’re treating it, it’s possible we won’t have birds always. We may have pigeons, and they’re fine. But I think most people would say they’d prefer to have other species of birds as well. So, I do send a prayer to the birds too because even in that house I lived in for five years, the woman who lived next door to me, she commented that in the time that we’d both been there, which was roughly the same, how fewer birds she was seeing and, yeah.
So But on a wishful note, I think the more we connect with the birds and send them our love and try to do all we can to change our practices to support the planet, we will keep the birds with us. So And see the problem and come up with some workable solutions. Creative solutions. Yeah. Creative solutions.
Well said. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, Lily, thank you very much for being here today and thank you for everything you’re doing. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.
And the art of conscious living, thank you very much, and we’ll see you next time.
Thanks. So your work is very, very beautiful and very, very important. You have a signature on your email and it’s so profound. It’s so beautiful. Right.
It says, if we if we are going to expect children to save the planet, we need to teach them to love it first. What does this really mean to you? I think it for me, it just means so many people, children and adults, are very disconnected from the natural world, and yet there’s all this talk, you know, we have to save the oceans. We have to save the forest. There are some people who’ve never been to the oceans, who’ve never been in a forest.
And so the work that I do, in particular through one of the organizations I work with, Next Generation, is, is getting kids to the ocean, out in the forest, or just out in their own, you know, schoolyard garden connecting with the natural world, so that they have that bond, that understanding that lends itself to love of the natural world. And then and it’s just more of an embodied experience with the natural world. Well, then people, they care more. I believe that people care more when they have that connection. Your personal experience as you as a young child, what exposure did you have to nature, to the natural world of plants and gardening?
Well, I actually grew up in cities in San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Seattle. It was really my summers where I got, that nature exposure that just, is an absolute essential part of who I am, and I’m so thankful for it, and that were in particular, it was the summers in, in Door County, Northern Wisconsin, that I would spend with my grandmother, who lived in the woods on the edge of Lake Michigan, and she was a very nature connected woman, and we would, you know, go out into the forest picking wild raspberries and seeing the birds and snapping turtles and, you know, the little critters that lived around, and she was just such a magical being, and the way she exposed me to her environment just really opened my eyes to, wow, this is magical, and I love this, and, and also, my dad, who lives in LA, and moved there when I was four, but when I would visit him on holidays, we would always get out in the trails, whether in Griffith Park, or Runyon Canyon, or up in Santa Barbara, and so those trail walks, those hikes with my dad also, were very, very much an important part of, creating my nature connection and love of the natural world.
So in essence, the elders gave you and they were setting the pace and tone of what would be happening now. And now you are doing what they had given to you. . And you’re passing this on to children. And you go to elementary schools . And middle and high school. Yes. . What’s the experience like while you’re in the schools with the children? I feel very thankful to get to be outside with the kids. It’s sometimes pretty painful to me to have to be inside of a fluorescent lit classroom on a beautiful day. So I’m so thankful that a lot of my work is outside, whether it’s in the garden, school gardens, and Marin just has an abundance of school gardens. It’s wonderful here in this county, just the commitment to that, awareness and that education, nature awareness, garden education. And then I’ll also do we’ll do nature walks around the campus or sometimes off the campus. One of the schools I work at, San Pedro Elementary School in San Rafael, I do weekly bay walks with the kids, which is, where we get to walk the bays.
I mean, it’s an amazing location for the school. It’s just about a quarter of a mile to the bay, and, I’ll walk with them, and then we’ll wind our way into this sort of beautiful grassy area where I get to teach them about some amazing wild edibles and wild medicinals that are growing. And we get to do little, you know, tastings of wild radish flowers and fennel and, you know, just some of the amazing edible plants that are growing around. And, yeah. So it’s just really special.
Similarly in the garden, doing, you know, sensory awareness exercises, just opening up their awareness of what’s around them and the beauty of all that’s growing in the garden. And, you know, then very practical, you know, hands on in the soil, weeding, seeding, growing their own food in the garden. Yeah. And what sense do you have that it’s about how it’s affecting the children in a positive way? There’s some children who are introverts or they are troubled.
And being with nature, all of this seems to just fall away. . . What have you seen from your experience of being with the children?
Well, I’ve seen that just nature is very soothing. It’s soothing to the spirit, soothing to the physical body. It just it tends to calm the kids. And it’s very real, you know. It’s not like video games or all this just hyperstimulation that kids are exposed to, that I think kinda spins them out.
I think ADD and, you know, I’m no doctor or anything, like, but, you know, these ADD disorders and things of that nature. I think it has a lot to do with our culture and the kind of, excessive technological exposure that a lot of kids have. So when we get out in the garden or we go to the edge of the ocean or the edge of the bay, it’s just really it’s very real. It’s very calm, you know. It’s it tends to allow kids to drop into themselves more and get curious, you know, and get hands on.
You know, a video game, yeah, you’re using your thumbs a mile a minute, but it’s you’re not it’s not as tactile. You know what I mean. So, yeah, that and then it just yeah, it opens their curiosity and then there’s also a real sense of achievement that can come. Because sometimes these walks, particularly if, you know, they’re first or second graders, and even if it’s just a quarter of a mile each way, that can seem like a long walk. But, you know, they get there, they get back, and there’s a real sense of accomplishment.
So I think being out, in nature, I know I’ve done overnights with youth fifth graders in the Marin Headlands, and man, to watch the transition within forty eight hours of when the kids arrive and when they leave, just how much more relaxed they are, and just that sense of empowerment that comes with, like, I just I went on a night walk or a night hike, and I did it, you know? And I was away from home for two nights out in nature, like, yeah. You know, just yeah. So it’s very empowering for youth. Do you do a lot of identification of the plants and the flowers?
Yeah. And what studies have you done? I know you read a lot of books.
So what are your favorite books and what have you done in a way to prepare yourself for this? Right. Well, for me, I learn best hands on. So I’ve learned from other, local teachers and, through some of the programs that I’ve done, like, at the regen through the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas. RDNA, is one of the programs they offer, the Regenerative Design Nature Awareness Program.
That was a fifteen hundred hour program I did that was very hands on, and it was two nights a week, forty eight hours a week. So we were there for two straight days, just learning about the local flora and fauna, and, it was pretty amazing, and camping out there, and, and similar. And then the books support you. You know, I have all the great local, wildlife books. The Audubon has some great ones, and I’ve taught through the Audubon.
And, they have a really nice bookstore that I’ve purchased some from. But just about local trees, local plants, the local birds. I love my bird books. Or even just the there’s this series of laminated cards. I forget who puts them on exactly, where it’s just a fold out card.
It just has the most predominant species in the area, whether that’s butterflies or birds or plants. And so it’s good to start small, you know, instead of, like, yeah, there’s thousands of birds out there that one could learn. But just start with, like, what are the ones that you’re seeing most often in your area? And then just really get to know them, even if that’s just five. That’s five those are five, you know, species of bird that you’re building a really, rich and connected relationship with.
So it’s not just exclusive to plants? Oh, no. It’s birds, the animals, the insects. The whole ecosystem. The whole ecosystem.
Yeah. . Fantastic. . Yeah.
It looks like it’s giving you a lot of joy that you’re bringing a lot of joy to the children, so it’s very sustaining for you also. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I just I feel, as I said before, there is a lot of magic in the natural world that really, it sort of holds that mystery that for me really feeds my spirit. I don’t need to know everything.
And when I get out in nature, I realize I don’t know everything. In fact, I’m far, far from it, and that’s okay because it’s just, it’s very expansive. And, and yet even in the tiniest detail of watching the tiniest, tiniest insect, there’s just it just completely opens your sphere, you know. I was just talking to someone earlier about spherical awareness, and that’s something we would talk about in my as I mentioned earlier. What is a spherical rDNA program.
Spherical awareness. Just that idea, and I do it with the kids too. Often in our lives, we’re very here, looking at a computer screen, driving. So I start with the kids, you know, sort of opening up our periphery, and I have them wiggle their fingers as they stare straight ahead, and start to open up this part of their viewing, and then we practice something called that would be called owl eyes. And we also practice something called a fox walk, which is walking, stepping very consciously, similar to how a fox would if he’s, you know, stalking something, but so that he hears everything, he’s aware of everything going on around him.
And, And the ego seeing the big picture. Yeah. And soaring above and seeing Right. And above and below, and so that whole sphere that’s around us. So that when we are on a trail, for instance, we’re not just, you know, straight ahead, I’m going there, but we’re noticing, oh my gosh, there’s a deer over there or a raccoon, you know, and just really starting to pay attention.
I think, the kind of nature awareness work that I’ve been grateful enough to get to learn and practice, and be exposed to, just really, it’s cultivates awareness, a deep awareness, both in the forest or in the city. You know, I ever since my eyes and ears have been attuned to the world of birds, I see the Cooper’s hawk in on the telephone wire in Downtown San Francisco, you know, Something that I might not have been aware of before when I was younger. It just it opens you up to all that’s going on and that’s pretty special. So it’s a lot like the magical child.
Just being open and being in the experience and . Opening up your awareness to allow, a greater sense of self . And the possibilities of what is there. Right. Right.
So you see the children, I mean, they can bring that back into their life and use that also. . . So there’s a lot that is not very obvious here, but it seems to be a very profound thing. Right.
Yeah. Very profound. And then they take it and they start to teach their parents what they’re learning, you know, when they’re out at the park or someone gets stung at the park and, that’s plantain. I know how to use that. Put it on the bee sting and, you know, help soothe the pain.
So, yeah, again, not empowering, and they’re not it’s not only the elders passing it to the younger generations, but vice versa, because a lot of adults haven’t had that exposure in our culture, you know, which is which is unfortunate. But I think that, you know, with such books as, Last Child in the Woods and others of that nature, like, definitely, and the new disorder that’s been coined, nature deficit disorder. The awareness of how disconnected we’ve become be we’ve become from the natural world is really is much more on the radar now than it ever was, or at least in the past hundred years. To write a book.
What would you put in that book? If I was to write a book. I feel like I’m still learning from so many of the wonderful books that are out there. But, well, to present another one of my loves. I’m also a dance dancer and dance teacher.
And, embodiment practices are also very important to me. And, I see the duo as so powerful of, knowing how to drop into your body, whether that’s with yoga or dance, and simultaneously be in the natural world and, having that open your awareness. Because sometimes, you know, if we go straight from the computer to, you know, maybe the ocean side, it might take us a while to really drop in. We can stay very in our head. Granted, the natural world in and of itself can drop us in, but I think if we’re, you know, knowing how to move our bodies and listening to our bodies and simultaneously listening to the natural world, that duo can really help to, again, expand our awareness.
And so it would be it would it would be a book along the lines of where embodiment practices and the natural world meet. I don’t know. I haven’t thought much about writing the book. So Okay. Yeah.
I’m currently writing a musical around nature, so that’s exciting. But yeah. A musical around nature? . And what would that be?
It’s about oh, it’s very fresh. But, basically, through music and dance. Well, it’s a musical about, the connection of youth to the natural world, and, where that sort of concrete disconnect, meets the natural world and how we can bring the nat like, you know, everyone’s not gonna be able to move out to a farm or a ranch. The reality is millions of people live in cities, but it doesn’t have to be dire straits, you know. Rooftop gardens and just all the creative ways that people are trying to cultivate, the natural world and that awareness wherever they are.
And so the musical touches upon that. So would this be a play or would it It’s a musical. A musical. Yeah. So songs and Yeah.
But it’s very new. I So it’s like an art performance . Perhaps. Yeah.
Beautiful. So yeah. Yeah. Where do you see this going in the future, in the near future? And how I mean, we know it’s very important.
And the budgets are being cut. I mean, I just hold hope that, as I said, this idea of nature deficit disorder and the need for us to connect more to the natural world will stay on the radar and continue to just, you know, get more and more bright on the radar. And that nature awareness work, nature, garden classes just become more and more a part of the curriculum where, you know, like, they’ve done at the Edible Schoolyard in Oakland, or is it Berkeley? Anyways, at the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Middle School in the East Bay, how they’ve really seen how you can weave in to the math curriculum, science curriculum, history, language arts, you know, this, gardening and nature connection, learning as well, how they’re inextricably linked.
And I would just love I mean, that is just an amazing prototype for what I would love to see, in all schools and for all kids. Yeah. I don’t think kids are meant to be in a classroom six, seven, eight hours a day, in a desk. I mean, I know they have many recesses, but even those are being cut back, you know, under fluorescent lighting. So I think Yeah.
You also teach dance. What type of dance would this be? I teach primarily right now, I teach creative movement, modern, and ballet. Although I’ve taught, when I taught in the public schools on a regular basis for three years, I would do different units with the kids. So they’d get West African, which I’ve studied pretty extensively, and a Latin unit, jazz, modern ballet, to get, you know, an awareness of different styles of dance.
And Yeah. So Yeah. Elementary through middle and some high school dance teaching. And yoga. I always have to throw some yoga in there.
And the youngest age you’re teaching dance would be? Preschool as well. Yeah. So four year olds.
Which is really fun. It’s, you know, each age group is so very different. So yeah. What is the main difference you see between children who have not been exposed to nature, who are not doing the dance classes, who are not tapping into that creative side of them, who are very much, as you mentioned, on the computers and . There there’s a total disconnect.
There must be an obvious difference there between the two. Right. Well, I tend to see the most in my experience working with youth, and for instance, I will just to be specific, some camps I’ve run through an organization called Trackers Northwest that’s now has a it started up in Portland, but they now have a, a program here in the Bay Area, in Marin, in the East Bay, and San Francisco, all over, is working with youth who’ve gone through the, more mainstream schooling and then youth who’ve been homeschooled. And, of course, youth who have been homeschooled who are in these programs is because the parents want them to have this nature education.
But I just noticed they also tend to have, just a lot of cool hands on learning that they’re exposed to because they’re, homeschooled and there’s just more flexibility with what they’re exposed to. And so there’s tends to be, just more of a curiosity and an openness, from these kids and as well as just youth who’ve had more of the nature exposure, curiosity, openness. They tend to be less, well, that’s not entirely true. Nature connected kids can be know it alls too, but I was gonna say just, being more humble. I don’t know if that’s true because they’ve seen the grander picture in a way, if you will.
Like, I noticed a lot of kids who are just in front of the computers or with their Gameboys or televisions, you know, a lot of what they share, it’s all it’s a lot of pop culture, you know. It’s constant pop culture, this and this and that. And, Is it possible that the children who are experiencing nature and the dance classes and the artistic side in themselves and the expression of self . They are more balanced. They are seeing the possibilities where they’re more curious.
It’s fostering the curiosity in the more Yeah. Where perhaps the other children who have not been exposed to this . Are more closed minded. Yeah.
No. Curiosity is a key is a key word. Connection, curiosity, creativity. It definitely I just feel like it nature connection just touches that tip of the iceberg, you know, of curiosity. And, oh, once you question this, then that leads to this question.
You know, it’s endless, and that’s really exciting, whether you’re a know it all or not, because you can’t really ultimately get to the be all and end all. But, yeah. So it definitely engenders that curiosity, which is really exciting. And because being out in nature, oftentimes, like I was, mentioning earlier, is a is a physical experience. It’s an embodied experience, whether it’s, you know, climbing a tree, or going for a hike, or, pitching a tent.
You know, it’s more physical. So kids tend to be in their bodies and have to depend on their own resources, the resource of their body, as opposed to, like, a television clicker. So there’s, again, that sense of, self-empowerment that comes. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about the specifics of or is there a difference between the boys and the girls?
Is there obvious difference when you’re out in nature that you observe? That’s interesting. I mean, of course, I think it depends on the individual. Child. You know, I don’t know.
I’m still hesitant to make generalizations, but they do exist. Sometimes the boys tend to be a little more rowdy, wanting to, you know, run everywhere, run, pull up their ax and grab. Let’s smash them. You know? Because there’s a little more of a, I think, a sensitivity that girls sometimes bring younger kids, you know, not necessarily the older kids.
And the girls are doing? What are they doing as the boys are? I mean, they wanna see the crabs. They wanna see the crabs too. And, and they’re not always the most, you know, suave with putting the rock back so that all the crab the whole crab family doesn’t get crushed.
But there’s just not quite the same heightened, like, you know, rampaging. So that this part of my work too is, like, okay. Let’s rein it in. That’s really exciting to run all over, but let’s start to, like, notice the details. And, And how do the boys do with acting like a fox walking through there, as you mentioned, or the owl?
Do they immediately drop down into that as the girls would? Or is it easier for girls to do it or the boys? I wouldn’t say that. I would, you know, I mean, in learning it, they both I’d say pick it up pretty on par with each other. Is there a resistance from the boys to do it or not?
No. I think they like they enjoy it too. Boys and girls, you know, they wanna be the stalker. They wanna be really aware. They don’t wanna, you know, just a little sort of that, like, I’m a hunter through the forest or something.
So when you make it a magical journey and a story that’s about to be explored, then they can lose themselves in it. Yeah. Yeah. So you just have to always have them presence and totally to engage them. Right.
Right. Right. Yeah. Like girls and boys alike. Again, then at that point, I feel like it’s an individual matter of the individual.
Yeah. Well, where do you see this going in the future for you? For you as a dance teacher and working with children? Again, just figuring out more ways to bring the two together, whether that’s writing a musical about the natural world for youth.
I bet it’s about youth too. Or, you know, just as simple as when I’m in the garden with kids, waking up our bodies, waking up our awareness with some yoga, and, and, I mean, I’ve also similarly contemplated having a show that would be kind of a nature awareness version of Pee wee’s Playhouse. So it would be fun and spunky, but it would also be very much about exposing kids to, to nature and that nature awareness. You seem to be giving us a lot of thought. Yeah.
Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. So And always, it’s just fun to also make up songs around the natural world. I do that with kids a lot, bringing the musical career, eliciting the musical creativity in them.
Like my green team at Venetia Valley School, we did a little let’s make a song up about the garden and different groups of kids got together and worked on their song and then we performed them for each other and that was very sweet. So what green team and the garden mean to them. How many other teachers are out there doing the work that you’re doing? Well, again, in Marin County, it’s impressive how many gardens there are in funding grant money for garden teachers. I think we have a pretty high concentration of gardens and garden teachers and garden education compared to, definitely in Marin County and as well in the Bay Area, so compared to other areas in the nation.
But it’s happening all over, you know, that awareness is being raised. And I think as we’re looking more and more at, you know, living local, and that we do need to learn these practices. Like, I question how much longer food’s gonna be shipped from Asia or, you know, wherever. It’s just not sustainable. It can’t happen for much longer.
I mean, not to get too dark. But we’ve already mined 90% of the lithosphere, which is, you know, under the soil where all the fossil fuels reside. So we just can’t keep going at this rate, so we have to think this way. And so I would imagine that particularly when push comes to shove, it’s gonna have to be a part of what we teach in schools. Yeah.
Well, since Al Gore, we’ve been talking about climate change . And all the possibilities, and there’s been a lot of unknowns, a lot of fear, and then the scientists are saying one thing and . But recently they’re agreeing that there is something going on and something has to be addressed and looked at here. . .
So this is a credible way to start . Of what you’re doing. . And if the children are engaged and asking for that, like, before they were not in like in the other generations . In the fifties, in the sixties.
The sixties, yes. There was a consciousness happening at that time where they were very much connected to the planet and trying to disconnect from the work in the corporate world and they wanted their own voice. But this is not gonna be the sixties again. Sixties was that. . So now there’s a awareness that children more so now, they are the younger generation is saying, no. This planet matters.
And I want my voice to be heard. In this. Issue. Right.
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, and just to roll back as far as, what I also try to really the message I try to get across to the kids is it all starts with our imagination. You know, we’re living one way on this planet, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to live, and you guys are the next generation. And it’s about thinking up new and sustainable not just sustainable, but thriving, you know, renewable ways to live on the planet that take care of us in a really awesome and healthy way and take care of the planet, mother Earth.
And so I think, you know, we have it in us. We’ve already created so many. For now, right now, it’s just a matter of, where we spend our money. And, you know, oil companies have put a lot into the car, for instance. And, from, you know, GM buying up all the rail in the sixties and ripping it out of Marin County.
We had an amazing light rail system in Marin County up until then. And of course, as we know in LA, Ford did Ford company did the same thing there. I think earlier, though, they also had an amazing light rail system, but Ford saw the potential of the car there. And so, you know, it’s just starting to say, okay. That’s great.
There was a lot of money there, but it’s not gonna serve us for much longer. And and so let’s be creative and think of, just new ways. Like that movie Who Killed the Electric Car kind of touches upon it’s all already there. It’s just a matter of shifting the dollar to something more meaningful and sustainable. Yeah.
Well, let’s explore that a little bit further. In an ideal perfect world, what, Lily, would you think would be the balance here between technology . We can’t make technology go away . We need it. It’s here to stay.
And the nature . And the respect for both of these. . Not being a techie myself, I, to a degree, would say maybe technology is here to stay.
I don’t know if I believe that quite honestly. It feels awfully ephemeral. And when things crash, I could see that world crashing too. And, you know, though it is very useful, I see for myself as my own sort of experiment when I am in front of a computer screen too long, it there’s a shutdown that happens. I don’t see as clearly.
My capacity to connect with real life, so to speak, gets a little funky. It’s, there’s something constrictive in the computer and disconnecting, as much as it’s supposed to connect us all, you know. So, anyways, just to say that. But as far as my ideal where those two would meet, Personally, I would like to see a lot less technology. I would like to see kids with their heads in computer screens and iPods or iPhones, go way down, and I don’t know if that means just a death to the iPhone.
I don’t have a cell phone. I hope that I never do. I had one for eight months when I lived in London, and that was enough. They don’t feel good to me. And just recently, I mean, I know it’s been out for a while, but I’ve had so many people come up to me about, you know, the radiation cancer studies with cell phones.
And I’m like, yeah. They’re not it’s not healthy. It’s not good for us. And a friend who is though he’s a computer program, he also studies, body work a lot. And he talks about how literally when you’re in front of a computer too long, your spine sort of lifts in your body.
And if you sort of you sort of play with that, it does. It sort of feels like your head kind of floating on top of your body. You know, we need to round our feet more. There’s this whole movement called earthing. Yet another term, but now What is earthing?
It’s getting barefoot on the earth more because we’re so disconnected with concrete, with rubber on our shoes. I mean, there was a time where we walked on the Earth a lot more. So it’s the version of the sixties that we were talking about. It’s the version of thousands of years ago too. Yes.
You know? And I’m thankful that I live in a beautiful home that has surrounding, land in a redwood little redwood grove where I can do that, and I feel the difference, you know, if I’ve been in my car a lot one day just to, like it helps to, you know, because I think that energy, what happens is we end up and they’ve been shown they’ve shown how our bodies can’t figure out ways to release it because those channels are cut off, that we kind of hold it inside of ourselves, and it leads to that anxiety, that tension, and a lot of illness, you know, too. But if we can take the shoes off, get on the earth, just let it go. You know, it’s that release. And so, I mean, woo to some, woo to some, but I guess that’s yeah.
There was a recent study of the honeybees that were dying in massive amounts, and they were saying that it was because of the cell phone, radio frequency in the towers. Right. Yeah. That’s I find I’m it’s very concerning to me. I love the honey bee dearly, and whenever I see one, I send them a prayer because I’m very concerned about the state of the honey bee, and in particular, I remember reading a few years back a quote by Einstein, who was a very nature connected man, for all his, you know Anyways, that when the last honey bee leaves the planet, humans will have something like three to five years left.
And, again, that just speaks to our connection, and we can’t keep abusing other species for our own benefit, whether conscious or unconscious. I don’t think when they made the cell phone, they’re like, oh, yay. We’re gonna mess with the honeybee. But we have to be aware of these things because they’re, well, they’re super important to the pollinating of the food we eat, you know. So our crops And, so, yeah.
A lot of love to the honeybee, and, and that it makes me angry, quite honestly. And, again, as someone who doesn’t have a cell phone, I’m like, these darn things again messing with more natural cycles, you know. So yeah. So it seems to be you’re channeling this anger into something very positive. Oh, yeah.
Oh, I don’t go around it. I mean, I’m just gonna love as much as I can and enjoy the natural world as much as I can and do what I can because, yeah, I’ve seen I, you know, I have I’ve worked with people, activists who, run that more angry energy and it just kind of, I think, eats you up. And yet, anger is not a bad thing if it’s a good, you know, impetus catalyst to get you doing what you care about and taking action. How about Greenpeace? What is your idea on what they’re doing and how they do it?
They know. They have a very radical approach. Yeah. And there’s it’s fueled by a lot of, anger and a lot of Uh-huh. Passion, of course.
Passion. Yeah. Dedication. I mean, I think some people you know, everyone’s running something different through their system or have a different reason for doing what they’re doing. I haven’t followed Greenpeace a lot a lot of late, but, yeah, I am aware of some of the work they’ve done.
And some of it, I think it’s awesome. Like, you know, going after those whaling ships who refuse to stop whaling these amazing creatures and jumping on board and, like, putting up their signs and, yay. You know? So there’s this apathy that spread throughout the land. You know, if there’s a return to the sixties, I one would hope that, it would be a return to more of more of that passion and less of the apathy that humans have of in this age seem to have fallen into.
So, you know, when it’s about violence, I don’t I can’t recall any, and again, I haven’t followed them extensively, Greenpeace, but instances of violence. But when it’s that kind of gung ho, like, get the message out. You know, these guys are you know, whether it’s Japan or Norway going after the whales in a gung ho fashion, there has to be a counter movement to that, and it may have to be gung ho too, you know. So, I don’t know if I could do that, but, yeah, more power to those who are going. Yeah.
So There’s a lot of micro movements happening in Africa where the tourism is depending on the money, where before the pultures were making the animals extinct. . Now the and these cultures, they’re coming in, they’re saying, well, you can make a lot of money here and here’s how to do it. . Stop doing the poaching and bring in the tourism.
. . So it’s working together in a very positive way. Right. When it gets down to should I poach and if I don’t poach and kill this animal, that I know I should not be killing.
So I was told not to kill it. . But I have to feed my family. .
And this is the way to give money. My belly is hungry here, so I have to have some money. . So now they have offered them other alternative solutions. .
And it’s in a very powerful positive way. Right. Yeah. And I think this is a very akin to the possibilities that should be happening more. When I say Greenpeace .
I think also the ideas that we need to find ways that, yes, we’ll say, do not do that. . But yet, what else can we do with that . That we’re saying not to do. Exactly.
The solutions are there. Yeah. Yeah. Just to say do not do that is not it’s not enough. Yeah.
Like anything, I think when you remove something, there’s gonna be an empty space, a void there, and you need to be pretty quick with what you wanna or have a creative, understanding of what you wanna fill that space with. And I was just talking to a friend the other day of, there’s a lot of people who need work on the planet right now. And in my ideal world, that work would be about, you know, would be permaculture, would be about regenerating, areas on the planet, and they are they are vast, that we have ravaged. And, yeah, how to create income for people through that kind of work. And so and that’s one example of, you know, instead of killing these amazing creatures, let’s just open up the, you know the tourist industry also has some drawbacks too, but of the two, it’s definitely much better.
Let’s get people in here to appreciate and love these creatures. Oh, well, you know, like, for instance, on the Galapagos Islands, the wear and tear that comes from the tourist industry and the boats dumping their garbage the tourist boats, dumping their garages. And this is coming from I actually I did go to the Galapagos for seven days, and they’re amazing. And I will never forget that experience. So, yeah.
It’s and, you know, certainly, green eco companies, green hotels, green, green, green. And hopefully, green is not just a guise for do whatever, but they’re really, you know . Coming from a place of integrity, that’s great. So leave less of a footprint. So the idea of green and sustainable would be what?
Would be to recycle? Yeah. Recycling, not just dumping, like, if you are in a ship. I mean, cruise ships are have a history for being reputation for being very destructive because they just dump all their crap right in the ocean, you know. But if yeah.
Being more aware of how what you do with that, bring it back to land and sort it, recycle it, like compost it, you know. So, yeah. And the solution, as we spoke about, the initiative to want to do that would be that they could make money from doing that, and it wouldn’t be more work for them to do that? Right. Right.
Well, that’s the ticket is finding out, ways so that people I mean, a lot of people do it because they do care about the Earth, and that’s an that’s enough of a, reason right there, but how to make it Are there a lot the same amount of equal people that don’t care about the Earth? Yeah. So it’s bringing the conscious system to what they can do. To balance it all out. .
Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. . So your work is incredible and your journey, from this moment as you go forth.
How do you see yourself looking back in hindsight if you did not have this awareness that you had from your elders when you were a small girl? Where do you think you would be today, and who would you have been today without all of this? I think it would be a sadder existence and definitely not as healthy of an existence. I when I moved out of San Francisco Five Years five and a half years ago, I, I was done with all the concrete and all that, the noise. And, and though it’s funny when I think, like, what are my clearest memories is what either, like, early in the morning at dawn or at dusk, and just some of those gems.
You know, San Francisco is a beautiful city, as far as cities are considered, but just those, gem little nature spots that, you know, are throughout the city, and, just having that quiet time. I just desperately wanted more quiet time and drop-in time, and since moving up to Marin, yeah, I feel very thankful for the more soothing energy that I’ve been surrounded by, and can fall asleep at night listening to the sound of the crickets, and seeing the stars all the more clearly than I ever could in the city. And I know I’m very, you know, lucky to have this. Not everyone not everyone has that option, but I think it’s been invaluable to, waking me up to myself, waking me up to the planet, you know, and allowing me for me allowing me to be a healthier creature on the planet. So.
I lived in New York City for quite a length of time, and New Yorkers don’t leave the island. They have they have no want to do that. . They go from their office to their night clubs and their environments and, they’re they have they have no idea that what nature would be about and they have no concern incredible park, which would represent, Central Park would represent nature. But do they seldom get there?
Well, that’s another thing. . . Yeah. So when you say sad that you would not be the person who you are today, what kind of sadness would that be?
I mean, and how would that be affecting you that you could possibly look back in hindsight and say, well, I was given this incredible gift from my elders . To introduce me to what nature is. . And you embraced it.
But let’s say you were not exposed to that, and what would the sadness be? Well, I don’t know if I’d never been exposed if I was knowing what I was missing, but I can say my idea of who I would be is that, I noticed when I lived in the cities where I am in the cities, it’s very much a human vibe that you’re looking to other humans to move you and to, you know, stir you up. It’s very much about, our human connections. That’s what feeds us. And, if even well, I hope I get into this.
But, and that when we’re more connected to the natural world, it allows us for me, it allows me to connect to myself more and realize that there’s this whole that much vaster beyond the human web of connection that exists, that though the human web is profound, is equally, sometimes if not more profound. And that it’s sort of this sense of, again, that self empowerment that has come through that connection. And I don’t know if this is the right way to put it, but almost less of a neediness. Of course, I still need my friends and family and love them. My time in nature and the quiet time in nature through the years has just allowed me to drop into a place in myself, that still quiet place, that being able to touch that place, I’m fine.
And I’ll always be fine no matter what happens. And though maybe you could find that in a in a room in the city, through meditation or something, I’m really thankful because I love the natural world that I found that out there. And, yeah. So, I mean, just in a I was having an interesting conversation with a girlfriend how when we lived in cities and, you know, there was more of this, like, needing to have a boyfriend. You know, you needed that.
Again, that sort of neediness to sort of feel completed or something. And it’s been really interesting. Not that I was ever super needy in that way. I’ve always been fairly independent, but since being more in this, like, natural, quieter realm, there’s just, like, again, that sense of, like, I’m fine. I’m okay, and just trusting that what’ll come will come when it comes.
You know? And I had that to a degree in the city too, because granted I, whether it’s nature, connection, or just what I came into this life with understanding, I tend to have a trust and that there’s a flow to things and a synchronicity, you know. But, I my nature connection has been invaluable in supporting that trust, you know, and that understanding. So Did that make sense? Yeah.
Absolutely. Okay. There’s been a lot of writers and great thinkers that have walked that path. Frank Lloyd Wright, he had a total reverence and respect for nature. .
That was the source energy to him. Whitman, There has been many people . Who are of greats that see that empowerment of that. Right. I would also think that, the art of meditation, the art of self, realization, the art of quietness, and this is a great example when you are connected to nature.
You’re disconnecting from the chaos of the mind. The as you say it Right.
The civilization, the neediness, the inter reaction. That can be the smaller part of the aspects of the human experience. Right. And the nature is introducing the children. To that. . But they may not have the awareness at this point in time of exactly what is happening. But I know there’s something . Something special and .
Unique here. Right. Right. Exactly. .
Yeah. And the more I can just sort of awaken that in them, I feel like I’m doing my job, and I’m thankful to have that opportunity to share that, and, just empower, again, children and adults in that way. You know? Sharing what I’ve shared with my mother, for example, she’s, you know, said thank you to me a few times just for having exposed her to that world and that place of, just solace and, you know, peace. Yeah.
You mentioned that the children come home and start talking to the parents and bringing this information of their nature experience back to the parents. . Do the parents ever go with you, with the children at some times where they have that relationship together? Oh, totally. Yeah.
I did a field trip not too long ago to, Stimson Beach. It was an Earth Day field trip. And, we were doing art on the beach. Zach Pine is the man who runs the program each Earth Day or weekend before Earth Day. And, and we’re also doing a litter clean up, and I took a group of about, I think it was 60 kindergartners, again from San Pedro Elementary, and, all most of them had their parents, or one or two parents with them.
And, I remember one of the moms commenting on how, she hadn’t been to the ocean in five years, and, how cool it was for her. And the day was supposed to wrap up at, like, we got there, I think, at ten or eleven. It was supposed to wrap up at three. But it was no easy task in pulling those kids away from the ocean side, like and we hadn’t bought swimsuits because it was a little chilly, but you can imagine that every single one of them was drenched head to foot because it was just too exciting, you know, and I saw the just the smiles and the joy on the parents’ faces too. And I don’t know how many others perhaps had hadn’t been to the ocean’s edge in, you know, several years.
So even though we’re in the Bay Area and it’s right here and, but you know, again, sometimes if we don’t have like, a lot of them don’t have cars and, the parents who I of the youth I work with, or even if they do, a lot of people, you know, our bubbles can get small and we forget about, even if it’s just a half an hour, forty five minute drive away, it’s just not on our radar of what to do on a weekend, you know, so we don’t do it. So yeah, that’s great. So parents want to contact you and put together a group . Of, the children . And a group of their friends or neighborhood groups .
And they want to contact you and have you to be their guide. . Would you be open to this? And how would they be able to contact you? Sure.
They could contact me at next generation lily,@gonextgeneration.org. That would probably be the best way.
Well, it’s gonna be very exciting to see what you’ll be doing in the future, and it sounds like you have a lot going . And a lot of experience that you will be sharing with us. And thank you. Thank you for all your beautiful wonderful work that you’ve been doing and are doing. Great.
Thank you, Victoria. What final thoughts would you like to share with us that is very dear to your heart and important to you? I would just say wherever you can find some kind of open space, whether it’s a park or a local creek, or whatever speaks to you in that way. Just try to get out there whenever you can and maybe make a commitment to getting out in that space on a regular basis. And it is, it can be just so surprisingly nourishing, to ourselves and open us up, in ways that we couldn’t have imagined and help.
I think it also just because the natural world is so real. It it, it helps us to just wash away all that stuff that’s kind of nonsense and that doesn’t really matter in our life and get very real and on our path. And I think it really nature connection really supports us in on being on our path, whatever that may be. You know, whether you’re a doctor or, a school teacher or whatever your calling is in this life, it just helps you all the more supports you in getting aligned with that calling and going for it and trying to washing away distraction. Though distraction’s gonna be there too, but at least you can have the set time where quiet time and connection time.
Yeah. And for those who sell to get out to nature, just turn off the television. Yeah. Go just go on your balcony. Look at the sky.
And go for a walk. A walk. Yeah. A short little walk. Yeah.
Make that a new adventure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. As I said, even in the city, like, I found my those times. Yeah, to connect.
The sky’s always above us, so that’s a cool thing. You’re always gonna see some kind of bird flying above. Well, one can only hope we’ll always have the birds. Yeah. So.
Do you think it’s possible that we will not be I think if we keep going, the amount of birds that are becoming extinct on this planet is, pretty huge. The different species that are becoming extinct, and I think if we keep treating the planet the way we’re treating it, it’s possible we won’t have birds always. We may have pigeons, and they’re fine. But I think most people would say they’d prefer to have other species of birds as well. So, I do send a prayer to the birds too because even in that house I lived in for five years, the woman who lived next door to me, she commented that in the time that we’d both been there, which was roughly the same, how fewer birds she was seeing and, yeah.
So But on a wishful note, I think the more we connect with the birds and send them our love and try to do all we can to change our practices to support the planet, we will keep the birds with us. So And see the problem and come up with some workable solutions. Creative solutions. Yeah. Creative solutions.
Well said. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, Lily, thank you very much for being here today and thank you for everything you’re doing. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.
And the art of conscious living, thank you very much, and we’ll see you next time.
Dr.Henry Grayson
Dr. Henry Grayson is a scientific, spiritual, mindbody psychologist who founded and directed the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York City.
He is the author of Mindful Loving (in it’s twentieth printing), the best selling Sounds True Audio Series, The New Physics of Love, as well as co – author of three professional books.
Dr. Grayson integrates diverse psychotherapies with neuroscience, quantum physics, subtle energies with Eastern and Western spiritual mindfulness.
He pr actices in New York City and Connecticut. Dr. Henry Grayson is on the cutting edge of mind/body/spirit psychology.
The founder of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York City, Dr. Grayson was a Protestant minister before receiving his P h.D. in psychology from Boston University and post – doctoral certification in psychoanalysis from the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health. This rich background led him to his work in spiritually based, mind body energy psychology and his creation of Syn ergetic Therapy. He is the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York; the Founder and Director of the Institute for Spirituality, Science and Psychotherapy; and continues to appear in numerous documentaries and PBS specials.
He has studied neuropsychology, the major psychotherapies, the new power therapies, quantum physics and Eastern and Western spiritual philosophies.
He is the author of Use Your Body to Heal Your Mind: Revoluti onary Methods to Release All Barriers to Health, Healing and Happiness, Mindful Loving: 10 Practices for Creating Deeper Connections and the best selling CD Audio Series for Sounds True, The New Physics of Love: The Power of Mind & Spirit in Relationships . His academic titles include Three Psychotherapies: A Clinical Comparison, Short Term Approaches to Psychotherapy, and Changing Approaches To The Psychotherapies. In addition, he is the co – chairman of the PTSD division of the Stand Up For Your Troops Fo undation. Dr. Grayson’s professional affiliations include:
Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, Diplomat of the American Board of Professional Psychology; member of the American Psychological Association, The New York State Psychologic al Association, The Connecticut Psychological Association, The Association for Transpersonal Psychology, The Institute of Noetic Sciences, The Society for the Scientific Study of Subtle Energies Medicine, EMDR International Association, a former Board Mem ber of the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society, and is the Founder and Past President of the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy. Diplomat of The Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology
He is the author of Mindful Loving (in it’s twentieth printing), the best selling Sounds True Audio Series, The New Physics of Love, as well as co – author of three professional books.
Dr. Grayson integrates diverse psychotherapies with neuroscience, quantum physics, subtle energies with Eastern and Western spiritual mindfulness.
He pr actices in New York City and Connecticut. Dr. Henry Grayson is on the cutting edge of mind/body/spirit psychology.
The founder of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York City, Dr. Grayson was a Protestant minister before receiving his P h.D. in psychology from Boston University and post – doctoral certification in psychoanalysis from the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health. This rich background led him to his work in spiritually based, mind body energy psychology and his creation of Syn ergetic Therapy. He is the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York; the Founder and Director of the Institute for Spirituality, Science and Psychotherapy; and continues to appear in numerous documentaries and PBS specials.
He has studied neuropsychology, the major psychotherapies, the new power therapies, quantum physics and Eastern and Western spiritual philosophies.
He is the author of Use Your Body to Heal Your Mind: Revoluti onary Methods to Release All Barriers to Health, Healing and Happiness, Mindful Loving: 10 Practices for Creating Deeper Connections and the best selling CD Audio Series for Sounds True, The New Physics of Love: The Power of Mind & Spirit in Relationships . His academic titles include Three Psychotherapies: A Clinical Comparison, Short Term Approaches to Psychotherapy, and Changing Approaches To The Psychotherapies. In addition, he is the co – chairman of the PTSD division of the Stand Up For Your Troops Fo undation. Dr. Grayson’s professional affiliations include:
Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, Diplomat of the American Board of Professional Psychology; member of the American Psychological Association, The New York State Psychologic al Association, The Connecticut Psychological Association, The Association for Transpersonal Psychology, The Institute of Noetic Sciences, The Society for the Scientific Study of Subtle Energies Medicine, EMDR International Association, a former Board Mem ber of the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society, and is the Founder and Past President of the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy. Diplomat of The Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology
Welcome to the art of conscious living. I’m very pleased to have back as a returning guest, doctor Henry Grayson. He’s from New York City.
He’s a psychologist who has absolutely defined a new way of being of using your body to heal your mind.
I’m so very, very pleased to have him here in the studio today.
Good to be with you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today on your very, very busy schedule. Well, thank you for inviting me back. Yes.
I remember it was a number of years ago. Yes. It’s been about five years now That’s right. We last spoke. And, I would we have a lot to talk about.
You have a new book, and it’s, using your body to heal your mind. So I read it, and it’s a very, very beautiful book.
It’s definitely going against the grain of where most people who are therapists are going. It’s, based on the way of being in a somatic way, based in connecting to your body, your body, connecting to deeply to your feelings. And I’m very much appreciate you sitting and talking to me today.
So let’s get into your book. What was your motivation for writing this book? You had your other book was, Mindful Loving. Mindful loving.
So this is basically a lot to do with your work of what you’ve been doing in the last recent years.
Well, both have to do with my work, but I recognize that all of us have a lot of physical symptoms. Some are simple and some are quite serious.
And of course, they are quite serious. We certainly don’t want to avoid medical treatment if necessary. We prefer to, live rather than to die.
But I think it’s what’s really important is to see that there are often other reasons behind all of our symptoms.
It’s my body that’s speaking a language that needs to be interpreted, needs to be translated. And so, whatever is going on in my body, instead of just seeing it as a symptom to get rid of, we need to see it as something that needs to be translated.
For example, I learned many years ago, actually started back when I was in graduate school, when I first used these questions. I had, severe sore throats and colds, every winter. And now four or five times, they were quite debilitating. And this had gone on incessantly. And I just learned something about mind body connection, and I was about to take my comprehensive exams, and I was preparing a fence in my re repairing a fence in my backyard in Massachusetts, and 20 mile an hour wind, and 20 degree temperature, and it’s snowing like crazy. And I started to get my sore throat. And that sore throat said to me, oh my God, I won’t be able to do much for my exam.
But instead I thought, what is the mind body connection? What might be going on here? So I asked myself some questions. Why might I need this symptom? And why might I need it right now?
What would it get for me? What would it get me out of? What emotion might it be expressing that I’ve not dealt with directly?
Or is there some metaphor involved here that I have not really looked at?
And of course, the first thought occurred to me, maybe I wanna get out of taking those exams. And when I thought of that, I realized, no, I didn’t really want that because I was 95% prepared, and I didn’t wanna give up on the weekends to study. And I thought it’s gotta be something else. And so I asked myself questions again.
Why might I need it? Why might I need it now? What would it get from me? What would it get me out of doing? And what emotion might it be expressing?
And with that, I felt a pang of guilt. I saw my neighbor looking out of her kitchen window over my yard, and I felt guilty. And with that, I realized something’s going on. What could this be? Then I realized I promised to do something for her aged father, but I knew I would do it as soon as my exams were over. But I projected onto her a different motive. I had no idea that she might be thinking, like we human beings all the time are projecting. And so I projected onto her that she was thinking some critical thoughts about me that here I was doing something for my dog when I’m not doing what I was gonna do for a father. And I was feeling guilty. So in essence of what you’re saying, with all the projecting of what you were doing and trying to talk yourself out of doing what you knew was best for you to do. You’re basically telling your mind is telling your body to go into a sick mode or a shutdown mode. It’s affecting so your mind body coordination is listening.
Your body is listening to your mind. Meaning, if you’re telling it to be sick, it’s going to become sick.
And especially guilt is a prominent factor quite often. And if I felt guilty then, which I did for that moment, that was really an attack upon the cells in my body. Guilt always demands punishment.
How did you start to get that? Punishment could be to the body. Yeah. Absolutely.
How did you start to have the sensitivity and awareness that this was actually happening to you?
I think just having studied something about that there is a connection to mind body caused me to think of that because I really didn’t want to get sick when I had exams coming up, and I really like to be free of it. And I thought if it applies to things like asthma and skin disorders and a variety of other things like that, why wouldn’t it apply to colds and sore throats too? And so that started me thinking about that. So this was the beginning of your part way back then? That was the beginning of that then.
And then maybe twenty years later, I discovered I had such a severely degenerated disc in my back that I wouldn’t walk again, the doctor said, without back surgery. Instead, I asked myself these questions. I came up with some answers of several things I needed to deal with in my life differently. I made a clear decision I was going to do those that I knew I would keep. That’s an important part of the process I found and find too.
Not just saying, oh, I better start exercising, or I need to meditate to bring my stress level down. But unless I know I absolutely going to keep those commitments, it doesn’t really work. And so when I made those commitments, I knew I would keep to deal with an issue with a couple of people that I needed to work out things with.
Then I began to get better and two months later I was skiing in Colorado. So it sounds to me what you’re saying is that you need a true pathway of communication between your body and your mind, and the thoughts need to be of a healing, rejuvenating, natural way of being in balance.
And if they’re not that, if they are the opposite, that goes right into every cell too. Like if I did, muscle testing with you, hold your arm out and push down on the arm, and if you thought a, a negative thought, a fear thought, a worry thought, guilt thought, angry thought, no matter how much you resist, I can just push it down with one finger.
In fact, fact, I could even demonstrate it if you want. Well, that would be Explain muscle testing for those who don’t know what it is. Well, just simply the way I’m using, just a simple thing is to show without even going into the whole field of applied kinesiology and muscle testing.
Is just to show that anytime I’m having a negative thought, a weakening thought, a guilt thought, an angry thought, resentful thought, instantly, no matter how much I resist with my arm, my muscles become weak. So the negativity in thought and the vibration is affected in the body, so therefore the body is equally weakened by this negativity. Yeah. And that’s where you say muscle testing Which just reveals that so quickly. And if you’re thinking a compassionate, loving thought, a joyful thought, and you extend your arm, it becomes very strong.
I can have trouble pushing it down as hard as I can press with both hands. Now we know how that works now a little bit better after Candace Pertz’s work when she was at Johns Hopkins. She’s the one who discovered how the mind body connection takes place, and that’s the role of what you call the neuropeptides. So I have a thought that’s negative or positive.
It’s really an instant messaging system in my body. Those neuropeptides go quickly to all the cells and produce a result. So if I’m thinking a negative thought or if I’m thinking a positive thought, it immediately starts to affect the cells in my body. So if I allow those thoughts to stay, then that are negative, I’m going to be causing some disturbance in my body. If I get them get them out of here, if I do, say I’m not going to focus on those, I change my thoughts to something else, then in a more positive way, then my body becomes more resilient and more strong, almost instantly.
So the opposite of that is you choose to take a walk in a beautiful sunshine, and you choose to have happy thoughts and then you start feeling all the serotonin and all of the brain chemistry being released. So you have this feel good, incredible walking experience. So basically, it’s showing us that we need to be very aware and very mindful of our thinking. Yeah.
We have a huge amount of thoughts every day. Some studies say as many as seventy, seventy five thousand thoughts. And those thoughts are all having an effect. There’s no such thing as an idle thought.
I’m thinking a thought. It’s being an act of creation. It’s a it’s a much better way to think of our thoughts. They’re not so much observations of facts as they are acts of creation. And the creation starts first and foremost right here in my body. So the mind may be having a thought and the mind may not even be believing that thought, but is the body believing that thought? So let’s say it for example, let’s say the mind is having a thought of wretched hatred towards oneself and wretched jealousy, but then the mind is saying, well, I really don’t believe that. I believe it. I don’t know if I believe it. But what is the body doing now with that?
Is the body taking it verbatim that is actually happening or is it able to censor what the body and what the mind may be believing?
Well, if it knows what we really believe and what we think and what we’re thinking is true, then it’s what’s going to resonate. We could have the thought, but the key part is we’re all gonna be having some negative thoughts. It’s it’s part of the human condition. We all have an ego, and the ego mind is always thinking negative thoughts. In almost every situation, it comes up first. But the key part is, do I just catch the thought and let it go? Or do I invite it in for tea?
Do I invite it in to stay for dinner? Do I invite it in as an overnight guest?
Do I invite it to move into my house and live there? And which is what we often do with our negative thoughts.
We allow them to linger. When instead, I think one of the first Indian yogis who came to this country, it was Yogananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, who I think has a center out here in California or did before he died.
He made a statement that I think is so poignant and relevant to this.
He says, I never allow any thought to linger in my mind without my express permission.
And I thought, boy, that is certainly something I aspire to. I can’t do it that way. Sometimes I don’t catch it, but I certainly catch them much better now than I did ten years ago, a whale of a lot better than twenty years ago, and that’s like eons better than thirty years ago. And it’s something next year I expect to be still better at it because I’m so much more aware that my thoughts are acts of creation, and they’re creating results in my body, in my life, in my relationships, in every aspect of my life, actually. Right. Well, Eleanor Roosevelt said something similar to that too.
We cannot others cannot hurt us without our permission. Without it. Yeah.
I express permission and therefore, I’m allowing it in. I’m taking it in and dwelling on it. Rather than just hearing that, seeing it from a different perspective and letting it go like water off a duck’s back. Right.
So it’s important to be very aware of our thoughts and to know that the thoughts are affecting and they are not just random idle thoughts that we need to be taking accountability and responsibility for what we are thinking at every moment. Exactly. And then we need to recognize too that sometimes it’s hard for us to, to really stop those negative thoughts. And we might wonder why.
Why are there some so hard to let go of some and not of others? And if we look back, we have to go back upstream. And we realize this, stopping those thoughts is, not so easy. If it’s like stopping a train at the same time, you got four diesel engines pushing as hard as they can trying to push the train. So what are those diesel engines inside us that might be pushing those thoughts? And several things are part of that, but one is, any negative experiences we had as when we were little. Painful experiences, traumatic experience, upsetting, disturbing, experiences of deprivation, experiences of being criticized, experiences of being neglected, you name it. Any of those negative experiences we had, they become a part of our memory bank in our survival brain back here, the old reptilian brain, just above the brain stem. And according to the neuroscientists, they’ve some have put it to me that part of our brain now is way too active for our stage of evolution. Maybe about 15 to 18 times too active.
In fact, one even put it so interesting that says that part of the brain is like, Velcro to the negative experiences, and like Teflon to the positive ones.
That means we have to be extra conscious to not let that part of the brain rule us. We have to be extra careful. Some systems of thought would say it’s way of being careful to catch the ego thoughts. Doesn’t matter which language we use, whether we call it the ego, whether we call it the survival brain, the limbic system.
But either way, we need to be much more conscious using tools to catch it. Now, what these negative experiences are encoding some information back in this part of the brain, and they give off a signal or interpretation of something as being dangerous or safe. When it gives off a signal of danger, that’s based on a past experience of something that we experienced as frightening or upsetting or dangerous. And anything that resembles it triggers it again. And so we all have that experience of something triggering us, and we wonder why at a given moment.
Why did I react so strongly to this? Or why did this other person react so strongly? And it’s because that part of the limbic system has been activated. But now we know that there are methods we can use where we can be do the equivalent of, like, pressing delete button on our computer for old programs. And we can do that equivalent thing for this information that’s encoded in our brains.
So even if I was, not very well taken care of, say, when I was a baby, and I didn’t get fed when I was hungry, I was left to cry in the crib for hours, I was not changed when I was wet, Those experiences get imprinted in my limbic system, and then they cause me to react to situations where I’m not being attended to, I’m not cared for, I’m being neglected, I’m not loved. And out of those experiences as they continue, then I’ll draw conclusions from that too. And those conclusions, I call negative core beliefs. And we draw those beliefs that, man, I must not be lovable. I’m no good.
I’m not deserving. I’m not adequate, I’m not sufficient, or I’ve been bad. We all have some of those kinds of beliefs, and we have those in place that are kind of rehearsing the negative, painful experiences.
So what does one do with those beliefs now that they find that they are there and they’re unwanted beliefs and they’re very aware of these beliefs, but they no longer serve their purpose? Well, now there are methods we can use actually to change those.
We can actually delete that information. Is that in your book? Is that’s described in the book. I drive describe a process in there that is, based on what we call Meridian Stimulation. It’s based on the Chinese system of acupuncture, but we don’t use needles.
We just have a person touch or tap on some acupressure points, and they do that with the statement of intentionality about what they’re releasing.
They’ll, bring themselves to focus by focusing on this part of the brain, you know, where we often focus, where their frontal lobes are, and we’ll recall the scenes or images where that disturbance occurred. We’ll see where we feel that emotion in our body, and then we’ll release the emotion connected with each of those, acupressure points. And so what happens is that, each one is attached to a meridian attached to a different organ in the body, and that negative emotion, if you’re stimulated according to that system, it releases a negative emotion, allows the opposite positive when they come in. Well, you’re a perfect person to talk to about this because in science, they’re gonna say that this is Pluto science and it’s not proven.
There’s, so therefore, you have a practice in New York City where you see patients ongoing basis for many years. So what results have you seen? What would be your data to show that this is actual proof that this is happening, this body mind connection? I see it repeatedly in all sorts of things.
Several that come to my mind that I can mention. You know, one is Share some of your patients. The one that comes to mind now is a person who had experienced anxiety reactions, you know, all of her life. And she’d been through years of talking therapy, many years of it, and had no success with it. And then she learned that I did this other kind of work, and she came in and we discovered that she had, a lot of painful experiences and very early in her life. And we then through went through a number of rounds of this, and she comes back saying, I’m just don’t have any anxiety anymore. It’s just gone. It’s just not there. And that is the meridian tapping.
Yeah. So you’re basically reinforcing something else of thoughts and changing the inner tapes of her mind with something else of positive. And you can even do it for things now. We know that when we’re in the uterus, we can experience traumas.
They put little cameras in the uterus. They can photograph the baby reacting to different signing situations. And if mom is all disturbed, you know, then there’s going to be a lot of adrenaline and cortisol flowing, which goes in through the umbilical cord. If they have negative music, like, hard acid rock, or, you know, or rap music that’s negative playing, the baby feels that. And his little buddy just reacts like this.
You can have the photograph of that. And if the mother and father are being loving together, or they’re having a happy time, or a joyful time, or mother’s listening to nice melodic music, little baby’s just all peaceful, laid back, just relaxed. And it’s amazing, that gets programmed in the developing nervous system. And so that becomes part of a predisposition in our lives, what we got there. That means it’s something we have to attend to.
But the good news is, from a quantum physics perspective, everything is just encoding information and energy. And all our bodies are is really energy and information. In fact, our bodies are 99.999% empty space, if you can believe that. Over what period of time the per the patient who had anxiety did you start to see positive results? And how long did it take to from beginning to the end?
Well, this varies from person to person. But this particular patient Yeah. This particular one, there were some significant things in early childhood that were very relevant to this particular problem.
And so in just a handful of sessions, we would clear those, and then she felt the results. On the other hand, there are some people I think of one person, for example, who was in Poland, during the second world war. Her mother died when she was about one and a half. She was farmed out to relatives to take care of her. Her father worked for the underground, and he was never there. Finally, he got himself killed when she was about four or five. So she lost both of her parents. Things were in such turmoil in Poland at that time that, everybody was upset, and so it was hard for her to have even the relatives taken care of, or have the time or energy to give very much to her. So she described her life as being very depressed all of her life. She married and had two children, and described herself as being a horrible mother to them, and, saw her kids as growing up with severe problems and felt bad about that. She had her marriage was horrendous as a result of all that.
And she came into therapy in her late fifties and, did this kind of work. For her, it was a gradual process. In fact, what happened, I should say too before I mention that, finally she was taken, into a home by a woman who’s had lost her daughter in the war and wanted another daughter.
But because that had happened, she was totally overprotective. And then there was also the problem because the Russians were coming in hauling people off of the work camps. It was not just the Nazis coming in, but the Russians were there in Poland as well. And if a truck stopped in front of the house, you didn’t know if it was a delivery truck, therefore, it’s regular purpose, or if it was the Russian truck coming to haul off you to the concentration camp, I mean, the work camps in Siberia. So there’s constant pain and stress throughout her whole growing up years. And she did this work cumulatively, and it took several months of this, actually, until we got up through clearing everything, that old part of the experience, to hit about age 13 or 14. Then I walk out to the waiting room and I see her.
She greets me with a smile on the face. The first time I’ve ever seen her smile. And so she comes into the office, and I say, well, how are you feeling today? And she says, why I’m happy. It’s the first time I remember being happy. And of course, I would just touch the core of my being, that this had worked for her. That these processes work that way. And then we proceeded to keep doing the work, and she had moved out of her depression, whereas nothing had worked for her. None of the notes. She tried every medication.
She tried every alternate and names, and she had been severely depressed all of her life. Now for the first time, she was not depressed. Then when something would happen that was a disturbance, she’d be disturbed for maybe a few hours or for a day, but she was resilient now. She bounded right back. Then she learned to use the tools on herself so she could sustain this as she went on.
Powerful. So that was very powerful. Or I think of someone else who just recently came to me who had stage four cancer, stomach cancer. And, her cancer markers were about 2,275 or something like that, which were very, very powerful. It was a huge tumor in her stomach. And we started doing this work, clearing out the traumas in her background, the negative beliefs she cared about herself. And we started coming up with some other work of imagery that would help focus support of her healing. And she brought her cancer markers down to about a 78 from 20 to hundred. And then she was supposed to have surgery to have it removed. And also, she was doing chemotherapy. But the doctor said, wow, this is unusual to have this much progress, because I worked with her to do some imagery to make the chemotherapy just work positively and not have negative side effects. Because if we can tell it what to do in the body, we harness the famous placebo effect.
Yes. Well, they seem to be doing studies today that the people who are doing the visualization and prayer connecting to the kindness, the gentleness within them. As opposed to the fear and the anger and the doubt. When they change that, they seem to be charting that there is definitely an effect going on there. Exactly. They don’t quite know why they haven’t because they can’t they can’t they can’t draft it or chart it well. So therefore, they’re yet to say that this is actually happening. Right. But they know that there is something going on there. Well, when they finally decided to do surgery on her to said, let’s remove the rest of the tumor even though it had shrunk somewhat, They opened her up and found nothing there but dead cancer cells. Tumor was totally gone. The doctors were aghast, that this is not supposed to happen. This is a miracle. This doesn’t happen. And, of course, we both believed it because we believe this can happen. And so for her, one thing I might add too is that she also had some people praying for her, and she believed that could help. So it was a combination, I think, of the distance healing with prayer, combination of the clearing of the traumas, the clearing of negative beliefs that combined with her mental imagery that supported her healing. And you put all that together, it was a very powerful package.
And now she’s totally cancer free. And so, I don’t give myself a credit for that, but what I give her the credit is her willingness to use these various tools to deal with the things upstream that it helped to cause that problem. Because our illnesses don’t just suddenly occur. Cancer just doesn’t suddenly occur. It’s something that we all have some cancer cells now, most of the time.
But why do they multiply at one time and not another? And of course, when we are in stress, which comes from a lot of trauma and negative beliefs and negative thoughts, that creates flow of stress, that stress weakens our immune system. Our weakened immune system allows the cancer cells to multiply and cumulatively begin to grow. Then at some point, it’s big enough to be diagnosed. Right.
Well, doctor Grayson, let’s get back to when you mentioned that you had the degenerative disc, and it must have been very, very painful to go through that, extremely painful. So actually, it was in an x-ray and MRI that there was a diagnosis. And what did you do with that and over what period of time did you get a different outcome of a more favorable outcome? Well, there were two what did you do to get that favorable outcome?
Different kind of outcomes. One was my ability to function well without pain. Then later, I found out just about seven or eight years ago, actually, when I did a routine physical exam. For just to show the doctor how healthy I am. That’s why I get why I go for a physical exam that way. Took a routine chest x-ray, and he came back saying, your lungs are fine, Henry. He said, but that something is not supposed to happen. That that degenerated disc of yours has regenerated. And I said, I believe it, because I’ve been pain free for all those years. But what I’d done, you were asking about, is when I was told that I would not walk again without back surgery, I knew I did not want back surgery because it was 68% of the time, you were worse off afterward at that time. And so I knew I didn’t wanna risk that. I like being active. I like doing sports. I like just being active in general. And so, I asked myself those questions.
I came up with about three or four things I needed to deal with differently in my life. One was a person I’d felt betrayed by. I needed to deal with that issue with that person, somebody who’d been a friend. Another issue was a conflict with a colleague about an issue that I needed to talk out with. I needed to make some lifestyle changes.
One was I’d been doing sports all my life and had never done any stretching, so I made a vow to start doing yoga. I’d never done anything about stress and handling stress and tension in my life, so I made a vow with myself. I’d start an active practice of meditation daily. I’d made a commitment to myself I would do those that I knew absolutely I would keep. Then I began to get better. Within a week, I was able to get out of bed. Within another couple days, I was able to get back to my office to see my patients. And as I said before, within two months, I was skiing in Colorado. And I had little pain there, but I used my skiing as kind of a physical therapy.
I would imagine my hips being loose, and I’d move, and the whole thing was just loosening and being good physical therapy, making my back healthier. And so I thought used that thought as I would ski. Then I became pain free. Within about, I guess, another two or three weeks, I was totally pain free and remained that for now it’s been twenty five years. But as I said about six or eight years ago, I discovered the disc was regenerated. Now what would happen, there’d be some times through those years when I would have a slight pain starting in my back or down in my sciatica.
But I would instead of letting it, oh my god, here it comes again, I would say, no, let me ask myself those questions again.
Why might I need this? What’s emotion being expressed through it? What would it get from me? What would it get me out of?
And to ask myself those questions with real sincerity and the willingness to allow any kind of mostly irrational of answers to come in. But I find that just getting the answer doesn’t solve the problem. I have to make a firm commitment to an alternative way of dealing with that other than paying the price of being sick. And if I come up with an alternative way, then and commit myself to it, I found that the pain would go away within a half hour and be gone. It wouldn’t develop into this real back debilitating back problem.
So it makes me think that for people who are having a lot of physical pain, extreme pain, severe pain, that their thinking is going to make it worse. If they are most likely. Yes. If they are all tensed up from their thoughts and they’re all stressed out and they’re. They’re really contributing to their fear, and the more they contribute to that, the more that the pain that they are having as a result of whatever, then it’s gonna start to heighten. So therefore, it’s actually taking the opposite, calming down that exactly. And just being at peace with it and being quiet with it. And what a difference that makes. And what a difference. But those neuropeptides communicate that instant messaging system. Yes. And that different way of peace rather than tension, conflict, stress, anger, resentment. You’re it must be a feeling of being a real pioneer that you are one immense many. Today, it is, you turn on the television, it’s all about pharmaceutical.
And one ad after another, showing you that if you want to get rid of this, then take this pill for that. Unfortunately, no. Bridge land, Zoloft, it’s all about quieting yourself down in a way of a pharmaceutical and dumbing yourself down if a way of turning your feelings off. And then comes you, a person who is working with your patients and has lived a life of saying, no. That is not the way that you want to go or way that you would treat your patients.
You are doing quite the opposite. It’s about embracing those thoughts and these feelings. Well, even more, it’s important to the bottom line piece of embracing the incredible power we have inside ourselves. . We mostly, as human beings, deny and disown the power we have. But our intrinsic power is really quite immense. If every thought we have is having an effect on our all the cells in our bodies, and there’s so much, you know, evidence that shows that now, like this one study out here in California that occurred with HIV patients, and they had two different groups just do a simple exercise. One just to sit down and write for a half hour about anything, and the other group was to sit down and write about loving or compassionate thoughts towards somebody. Then they went back and took their blood tests again, and they found that those who had the just a normal writing about whatever, their immune system remained the same level. But they found those that wrote about love or compassion during that time, their immune system jumped up about 200% stronger against the HIV virus.
Really quite amazing in just a short period of time. Where was the study done? It was down at, I think, at, USC. If I’m not mistaken. Down in, San Francisco I mean, in, Los Angeles.
. USC. . And, there’s an amazing kind of outcome with it. And then we go back to this whole idea of embracing our power.
What we do when we often take medication is that we’re seeing the source of the problem, first of all, is outside, then we’re seeing the solution is outside. We’re saying I hurt my back because I bent the wrong way. But what we don’t see is I bent that same way a hundred times in the last week and nothing happened.
Why did something happen this time? Or I got the cold because somebody sneezed on me or because it’s a virus going around, is what we’ll say.
In the sense, I make myself a victim. Instead of saying, there’s always some bacteria around, there’s always some kind of virus, it’s always happening around us. And why at that particular moment? Did I invite it in? Yes. But at that particular moment and why is it at that particular moment? And so I have to ask myself the question, why did I need it right now? What would I think it would get from me? What would it get me out of doing?
What emotion might be expressed in it and so on? Or what the metaphor is? Or what’s the tribal belief system in my mind? It might be simply that I believe that I’m going to get that because it’s going around that I have to catch it. And if I simply believe that, that’s gonna make it happen too.
And so what I’m concerned with is helping people become aware of the immense power they have inside themselves to maintain their health and to bring about healing and health. And that’s why a lot of times we don’t, there are also reason we need to look at too is why we don’t do things that would enhance our health. You know, we say we’re going to meditate. We say we’re going to exercise. We say we’re going to eat more healthily.
We say we’re going to get adequate rest. But so many people don’t keep that vow. Yes. They don’t keep it at all. And they wonder why.
What stops them from doing it? I had the best of intentions. Then there are others who will do these things, and then they’ll still get sick. But that takes us to then, what are the traumas that they did not clear? What are the negative beliefs that have not been cleared?
What are the thought systems that have not been changed? Those all have to be attended to. Then the amazing thing is, when we take care of this larger picture, that’s the way we sustain our health and our happiness and our productivity and our abundance and the whole works. When you were studying to become a psychologist many years ago, what form of psychology did you ascribe to and what was your interest at that time? Was it the Freudian or the Carl Jung of the dream work?
Was it more of the somatic or was it more of talk therapy of the conventional? Well, mine’s been something with journey because when I was in graduate school, I had was primarily emphasis on Carl Rogers’ approach, where you just reflect back what the person is feeling to help me get in touch with it. But then I had the great, experience of having Viktor Frankl as a visiting professor at Boston University at that time. And he was the one who was the Jewish psychiatrist who was in a concentration camp in Dachau. And, he wrote his books about his experience, which have been widely read and still classic reading in many schools and universities today.
And I remember him telling about his experiences in the camps, that he saw that why people got sick and died, why they, sometimes would stay there, or they’d run into the electric wire and electrocute themselves, or some others be offended or abused by the guards instead of befriended by them. He began to observe a lot of the things about this, and he began to see that a lot of it has to do with what the person is thinking and believing. What kind of attitude they carried about themselves, about life, about their future. And he would conclude, I remember him saying this over and over again in one class, and maybe it was my best class in graduate school, better than all the requirements. Made an incredible impression on you.
He made an incredible impression on me that shaped my life. He says in the concentration camp where all of our human freedoms are stripped away, he says the one thing I learned is that they cannot take away from me is what the power to think what I think in my mind. Right. And that, he says, made the difference of life and death for so many people. The ones who thought thoughts that would support their happiness and well-being and health, and ones who thought negative thought.
He says, for example, one day the guards might bring us a watery soup out, and they might bring a crusty moldy piece of bread with it. One person would say, those stupid guards, they think this is food, this is not food, this mold all of this bread and stuff like that. And another one person would say, boy, I’m so thankful to have a piece of bread with my water and soup today. Just that simple difference in attitude, he thought, was characteristic of a larger pattern of the way we think. And how many of us go around finding criticisms of everybody and everything most of the time?
And how many of us go around criticizing ourselves over and over again, all the time? It’s no wonder we then get sick. It’s no wonder then we get an autoimmune disease, which is my body attacking itself. Because I’ve been attacking myself and my mind over and over and over and over again. Did you practice a different type of, way of treating your patients in a way of a conventional way, and then you changed at a certain point in time during your practice?
Yes. It’s been did it evolve over a period of time? It’s been a big evolution. I. When I finished graduate school, I thought, geez, psychoanalysis is the be all end all.
I’ll go to New York, and I’ll get psychoanalytic training. I did that. I went there and got into training, and that was about my third year of training, and I’d had a good training analyst and so on. I thought there’s a lot that’s value here.
And there’s some very good things from, Freudian psychoanalysis. But I realized it didn’t cover all problem areas. It didn’t cover even all the ones for me. I knew I grew up in a household where nobody expressed any emotions, and I needed to learn to do that. So I went into encounter groups where I pounded pillows and screamed, and I hit them with tennis rackets, and I yelled as loud as I could.
Open up those feelings. I learned to practice emotions through bioenergetic analysis. I learned it through gestalt therapy. I learned some other behavior therapy systems at that point and later. I began to explore all other modalities, which is what led me to found the National Institute for the Psychotherapists in New York.
It’s because I felt it should be a place that would bring be a more integrative approach and draw the best from these various systems to help us learn. And what happens there at this center? Well This is the two. It went along for a while being that, and then, some of the students having difficulty absorbing diverse things, and then it did a reactionary movement and moved back to be more of a psychoanalytic program. But then more recently, we developed this different center within there, a trauma center, which is teaching and training people to work with trauma with much of the newer methods.
And it’s evolving more back that direction again, finally, which I’m happy about. But, what I found though about ten, twelve years ago, there are a bunch of other new methods that have emerged that are so much more effective for clearing these traumas and beliefs, much more than talk therapy. And that’s, originally, it was the EMDR that I learned about, the eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. In fact, all these methods originated out in California, so it’s interesting. And, Francine Shapiro did that, and she was a professor in a graduate school, and one thing that caused it to take off is that she had a lot of her students do research for their dissertations.
And that research started to popularize it and it spread to other universities and more research and that made it known. Give me an example of the eye movement.
Well, now, it was originally is that you look back and forth, left and right, left and right. And what that does is stimulates the bilateral stimulation of the brain. It helps the, the corpus callosum, which collects connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain to communicate more fully.
And it seems to have an effect. Even balance. It brings an imbalance, and she learned that would help clear out traumas. Then they learned that you could do bilateral stimulation by tapping on opposite shoulders or opposite knees, or put little clickers, the opposite ones in your ears, and that would work. And then I learned after that the meridian stimulation worked based on that I described before about the acupoint stimulation.
And I found in my experience that works even better. Then I’ve developed a form of that myself that’s described in the book, and actually it’s on my website too. People can just download it and use it, where you put your fingers and just touch on these acupressure points, and you state what emotion you’re releasing. Like, if I’m clear in a trauma of something that happened, say, last week, I had an automobile accident, and I was really shaken up by it, and some somebody got hurt in that accident, and I’m still carrying that trauma. I bring my fingers to the eyebrow and say, I release all fear related to this problem.
And I take a slow deep breath afterward. I release all anger, resentment, and rage, and I proceed around to all the different acupressure points. And by the time I’ve done that once, twice, or three rounds, I find it’s just totally cleared. Do you have to know which, meridian coordinates with which question and which emotion? No.
Actually, I describe in the book which emotion for each acupressure point. Okay. But, I do it in this comprehensive way because it covers all the different bases. Because what I find in doing this, sometimes people will think, oh, this thing had happened, you know, I’m not angry at all about that, you know. I was scared, but I never was angry. And they said, unleash all fear, then you get over here to the side, and suddenly they just feel this surge of anger inside them. They didn’t know they had. It’s part of the unconscious recording. And if what we know to be true now is 95% of our behaviors are all unconscious. And so it’s not that we’re bad that way, it’s just the way human beings are structured.
And so there’s a lot that we’re not aware of. And if we’re not aware of it and deal with it, it goes into the body and causes sicknesses. Yes. So when you say unconscious, it’s our patterns and basically it’s the when we’re numbed up to our basically feelings and thoughts of what actually is happening. And for a lot of people who do not do therapy and have not had the opportunity to do therapy, they’re walking in this perpetual pattern state of just reactive mind.
Reactive, and we also get just attached to our suffering too. . We really get attached to that because it becomes a part of who we are. And we identify with it. And we identify with it. That’s what it is. You know? Then we call it my thing. It’s the whole system now looks that way. The doctor says, you have an ulcer, or you have this kind of problem, or you have a virus.
Then we walk away, say, yes, I have this, and I own it as my possession. I have allergies. And so I can go around with that. And then I noticed too the power of suggestion. It was back in the nineties after the first Bush administration allowed us to advertise drugs or medicine.
We’re only two countries in the world that they can advertise drugs or medicine. . And so, when we started doing that, there were ads along with the traffic and weather report, and there was an allergy report sponsored by a drug company. And the account would say, oh, high allergy count today at such and such. You know, oh, you allergy sufferers, beware.
And I realized twice as many people were coming to my office with allergies after those ads started because the power of suggestion. There are allergies there, there’s a pollen, you’re going to be victimized by that pollen, and lo and behold, they were. They sold a lot of drugs though. So instead of subscribing to that, what would one do? We know you have a tendency towards an allergy, so you would give in to the thoughts that you are okay, you are balanced, this is not gonna affect me, I am powerful over this matter.
Yeah. We need to see that it’s really a miss misinformation system encoded in my brain. The way the limbic system works and to protect us is like if you’re bitten by a snake, then you walk along at dusk and you see something that looks like one, you run the other way or you grab a club, but it might just be a limb that fell from the tree. Our immune system works the same way. You know, it has an encoding of information.
This is something that’s dangerous. Okay. The immune system fights it. And so somehow, it got encoded in my brain. There’s danger out there, even though it’s not a dangerous substance.
And so now we have people allergic to all sorts of things that are not at all dangerous. It’s a miscommunication system that’s gotten programmed in. Often it comes from being around people who say, oh, I have this allergy, or this thing is hurting you, or this thing is going to get to you, this is going to harm you. Often we have parents who are very frightened about the world. We program that in, that helps us even be more prone to have allergies.
And so the whole system goes in programming our self to react to something that’s dangerous even when it’s not. Yes. And let’s talk about projections, when other people are projecting their thought, their feelings, their negativity onto you and one takes that literally as being truthful because they’re used to being in an established relationship, in that marriage or in that friendship. . So what does one do when this is a constant and they want to turn this around, but yet there is a firm established pattern that they’ve allowed this for many years?
Well, I think first of all, I may need to make sure I don’t have unclear traumas in my history that are similar to this kind of experience. Because if I have traumas that are similar to this, not being heard, not being listened to, or being criticized, or being judged, I’m gonna be 10 times or 20 times more sensitive to it, and I’m gonna take it much more personally. So I may need, in order to handle it, to go back upstream again, do some clearing on those, like even I do these prep methods on myself. And if something pares to me and I overreacted in a situation, I’ll ask myself, where did I experience something like that when I was a kid? Was that something that was bothersome to me?
Did it something that caused me pain? I’ll identify it. I’ll do the clearing on myself to release it. I’ll touch these points and release it. That’s the preparation for letting it all go.
And so I think the same thing is true for us, you know, about any kind of symptom that we have. That we can see, well, what’s behind it? What’s firing it up? Then I can see what I could clear about that. Then I can see how I can change my thoughts now and look at it differently.
So it’s like decoding the story and. Allowing the source to come through of exactly what actually happened and how to open up to that, to neutralize it, to balance it. That’s the part when you ask about my different training. That’s the part where psychoanalysis helped me.
Because I learned to go back and look for what the origin to something was. Unfortunately, the techniques of psychoanalysis didn’t work very well. And Freud himself didn’t see them working very well. He even concluded and says the most you can expect from a successful psychoanalysis is just to be relieved of some of the worst of your human suffering. But the brilliant part about him was the curious part.
He kept being curious and trying to find ways it would work, and he kept exploring them. And if he kept living longer, he would have come up with a lot of other things. Unfortunately, it was made into a doctrine and kept where it was. As things happened in so many religions and so many schools of psychology, schools of medicine and so on, we get attached to the doctrines that have been there in the past. Yeah.
And the Freudian way was to isolate that there was symptoms and find out the cause and the symptoms and just do it again. About it or to do brain, or to do, dream analysis of it or free association, which would help some people. But it didn’t often get to those things. In fact, the brain scan studies now say that if you’re talking about your trauma, a lot of the times it just reactivates that limbic brain and tends to rehearse it. And so, talking for some people might work, but talking for others can just make it worse. And we need to have some other means to get beyond that.
And so if it’s going to make it worse, one would think that you need to be perhaps talking about it, but releasing it with actualization and awareness at the same time. Yeah. If we can use a bilateral stimulation or we can use the meridian stimulation with conscious intent, then we can release it.
And it’s effective a very I think a larger percentage of time than any of the therapies I’ve studied, and I’ve studied most of them. Well, what final thoughts do you have that you would really like to share with others and the readers of your book . And others that are very curious to contact you? And do you also you’re in New York City.
So people are listening to the show here and they would like to contact you. Do they have to be in New York City or do you do Skype sessions or over the phone sessions?
Sometimes when I have the time, but also there are people that I’ve trained around different cities that do some of this work that I can refer people to as well. But one thing, I think, too, that they read the book, they’ll find these tools described.
But also I demonstrate them. They can go to my website, henrygrayson.com, and they can go there and download demonstrations of these tools and they can follow them, follow along with them and use them on themselves because my goal is just to help people be free of their suffering. And the main part that I really feel underneath it all is helps us not just remember our intrinsic power, but it’s remembering who I truly am as a human being, that I’m not a powerless victim. And so the goal of healing is not just to heal the body, but it’s to heal the mind so that the body just naturally follows suit and heals. And it’s really to heal the mind that thought the body needed to be sick. And if I can do that, excuse me, I take back my power. I take back my strength. I’m no longer a victim. I don’t have to think of things as happening to me. I don’t have to say, attribute bad motives to different parts of my body like some people do.
My head is killing me. You know, as if my head had a motive or my back is killing me. No, it’s not doing that. So I don’t have to, put bad motives on my body or onto people or the environment or germs around me. I need to embrace my own power, to see my own strength, my own resilience, and to know that when I move to a peaceful state and especially a state of love and compassion, my whole immune system becomes stronger.
I’m not affected by other people and their negativity. We were talking before about that, you know, somebody who’s criticizing you and you might feel attached to it. If I can just see them as coming out of fear and not being loving, and I can have a compassionate thought for them, I’m not affected at all by their criticism. I can consider and see, oh, does that apply? Did I actually do that?
Oh, let me consider it. But I’m not making myself wrong. One could think that they’re in a relationship with a negative person is projecting all of this fear and anger onto another, that is the that is the way to be in a relationship with that person. They’ve accepted the fact that the anger and the fear is the person and is the relationship, but they do not see that they can affect that other person by changing it into something else. That’s By helping themselves and helping the other person.
That’s absolutely right. And there’s another factor too though. Unless we clear our childhood traumas and our negative beliefs, we are very likely to pick a person who will help confirm those and who will abuse us in the same way we were abused, who will give maltreatment the same way we had it before, will confirm our beliefs about what we don’t deserve, and we’ll keep picking partner after partner after partner who will reinforce that until we get that stuff cleared. It’s amazing how often a woman who’s beaten up by her father will pick a guy who will beat her up. And we all see that, you know, repeatedly, you know, from time to time.
We’ve seen evidence of it all over the place. This doesn’t make them bad people. It’s just the way the limbic system works. And so, what we now know, they can find freedom from that by using these tools. That’s the part that I’m excited about, that we’re not in bondage anymore.
We’re not in bondage to the environment. We’re not in bondage to other people. We’re not even in bondage to our own thoughts because we can actually change them all. And that’s the way we take our power back and to realize that we are more than just those powerless human beings who we often think of ourselves as being. Well, thank you for writing this book, this amazing book, Using Your Body to Heal Your Mind.
And thank you for all your incredible work that you do. And, I look forward to speaking with you in the future. I would enjoy that. Thank you for having me on your show again. It’s good to do it even after all these years.
Thank you. Thank you, Henry. And I thank you for the work you’re doing. And from the art of conscious living, I thank you and do take care of yourself and take care of others. Have a blessed day.
He’s a psychologist who has absolutely defined a new way of being of using your body to heal your mind.
I’m so very, very pleased to have him here in the studio today.
Good to be with you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today on your very, very busy schedule. Well, thank you for inviting me back. Yes.
I remember it was a number of years ago. Yes. It’s been about five years now That’s right. We last spoke. And, I would we have a lot to talk about.
You have a new book, and it’s, using your body to heal your mind. So I read it, and it’s a very, very beautiful book.
It’s definitely going against the grain of where most people who are therapists are going. It’s, based on the way of being in a somatic way, based in connecting to your body, your body, connecting to deeply to your feelings. And I’m very much appreciate you sitting and talking to me today.
So let’s get into your book. What was your motivation for writing this book? You had your other book was, Mindful Loving. Mindful loving.
So this is basically a lot to do with your work of what you’ve been doing in the last recent years.
Well, both have to do with my work, but I recognize that all of us have a lot of physical symptoms. Some are simple and some are quite serious.
And of course, they are quite serious. We certainly don’t want to avoid medical treatment if necessary. We prefer to, live rather than to die.
But I think it’s what’s really important is to see that there are often other reasons behind all of our symptoms.
It’s my body that’s speaking a language that needs to be interpreted, needs to be translated. And so, whatever is going on in my body, instead of just seeing it as a symptom to get rid of, we need to see it as something that needs to be translated.
For example, I learned many years ago, actually started back when I was in graduate school, when I first used these questions. I had, severe sore throats and colds, every winter. And now four or five times, they were quite debilitating. And this had gone on incessantly. And I just learned something about mind body connection, and I was about to take my comprehensive exams, and I was preparing a fence in my re repairing a fence in my backyard in Massachusetts, and 20 mile an hour wind, and 20 degree temperature, and it’s snowing like crazy. And I started to get my sore throat. And that sore throat said to me, oh my God, I won’t be able to do much for my exam.
But instead I thought, what is the mind body connection? What might be going on here? So I asked myself some questions. Why might I need this symptom? And why might I need it right now?
What would it get for me? What would it get me out of? What emotion might it be expressing that I’ve not dealt with directly?
Or is there some metaphor involved here that I have not really looked at?
And of course, the first thought occurred to me, maybe I wanna get out of taking those exams. And when I thought of that, I realized, no, I didn’t really want that because I was 95% prepared, and I didn’t wanna give up on the weekends to study. And I thought it’s gotta be something else. And so I asked myself questions again.
Why might I need it? Why might I need it now? What would it get from me? What would it get me out of doing? And what emotion might it be expressing?
And with that, I felt a pang of guilt. I saw my neighbor looking out of her kitchen window over my yard, and I felt guilty. And with that, I realized something’s going on. What could this be? Then I realized I promised to do something for her aged father, but I knew I would do it as soon as my exams were over. But I projected onto her a different motive. I had no idea that she might be thinking, like we human beings all the time are projecting. And so I projected onto her that she was thinking some critical thoughts about me that here I was doing something for my dog when I’m not doing what I was gonna do for a father. And I was feeling guilty. So in essence of what you’re saying, with all the projecting of what you were doing and trying to talk yourself out of doing what you knew was best for you to do. You’re basically telling your mind is telling your body to go into a sick mode or a shutdown mode. It’s affecting so your mind body coordination is listening.
Your body is listening to your mind. Meaning, if you’re telling it to be sick, it’s going to become sick.
And especially guilt is a prominent factor quite often. And if I felt guilty then, which I did for that moment, that was really an attack upon the cells in my body. Guilt always demands punishment.
How did you start to get that? Punishment could be to the body. Yeah. Absolutely.
How did you start to have the sensitivity and awareness that this was actually happening to you?
I think just having studied something about that there is a connection to mind body caused me to think of that because I really didn’t want to get sick when I had exams coming up, and I really like to be free of it. And I thought if it applies to things like asthma and skin disorders and a variety of other things like that, why wouldn’t it apply to colds and sore throats too? And so that started me thinking about that. So this was the beginning of your part way back then? That was the beginning of that then.
And then maybe twenty years later, I discovered I had such a severely degenerated disc in my back that I wouldn’t walk again, the doctor said, without back surgery. Instead, I asked myself these questions. I came up with some answers of several things I needed to deal with in my life differently. I made a clear decision I was going to do those that I knew I would keep. That’s an important part of the process I found and find too.
Not just saying, oh, I better start exercising, or I need to meditate to bring my stress level down. But unless I know I absolutely going to keep those commitments, it doesn’t really work. And so when I made those commitments, I knew I would keep to deal with an issue with a couple of people that I needed to work out things with.
Then I began to get better and two months later I was skiing in Colorado. So it sounds to me what you’re saying is that you need a true pathway of communication between your body and your mind, and the thoughts need to be of a healing, rejuvenating, natural way of being in balance.
And if they’re not that, if they are the opposite, that goes right into every cell too. Like if I did, muscle testing with you, hold your arm out and push down on the arm, and if you thought a, a negative thought, a fear thought, a worry thought, guilt thought, angry thought, no matter how much you resist, I can just push it down with one finger.
In fact, fact, I could even demonstrate it if you want. Well, that would be Explain muscle testing for those who don’t know what it is. Well, just simply the way I’m using, just a simple thing is to show without even going into the whole field of applied kinesiology and muscle testing.
Is just to show that anytime I’m having a negative thought, a weakening thought, a guilt thought, an angry thought, resentful thought, instantly, no matter how much I resist with my arm, my muscles become weak. So the negativity in thought and the vibration is affected in the body, so therefore the body is equally weakened by this negativity. Yeah. And that’s where you say muscle testing Which just reveals that so quickly. And if you’re thinking a compassionate, loving thought, a joyful thought, and you extend your arm, it becomes very strong.
I can have trouble pushing it down as hard as I can press with both hands. Now we know how that works now a little bit better after Candace Pertz’s work when she was at Johns Hopkins. She’s the one who discovered how the mind body connection takes place, and that’s the role of what you call the neuropeptides. So I have a thought that’s negative or positive.
It’s really an instant messaging system in my body. Those neuropeptides go quickly to all the cells and produce a result. So if I’m thinking a negative thought or if I’m thinking a positive thought, it immediately starts to affect the cells in my body. So if I allow those thoughts to stay, then that are negative, I’m going to be causing some disturbance in my body. If I get them get them out of here, if I do, say I’m not going to focus on those, I change my thoughts to something else, then in a more positive way, then my body becomes more resilient and more strong, almost instantly.
So the opposite of that is you choose to take a walk in a beautiful sunshine, and you choose to have happy thoughts and then you start feeling all the serotonin and all of the brain chemistry being released. So you have this feel good, incredible walking experience. So basically, it’s showing us that we need to be very aware and very mindful of our thinking. Yeah.
We have a huge amount of thoughts every day. Some studies say as many as seventy, seventy five thousand thoughts. And those thoughts are all having an effect. There’s no such thing as an idle thought.
I’m thinking a thought. It’s being an act of creation. It’s a it’s a much better way to think of our thoughts. They’re not so much observations of facts as they are acts of creation. And the creation starts first and foremost right here in my body. So the mind may be having a thought and the mind may not even be believing that thought, but is the body believing that thought? So let’s say it for example, let’s say the mind is having a thought of wretched hatred towards oneself and wretched jealousy, but then the mind is saying, well, I really don’t believe that. I believe it. I don’t know if I believe it. But what is the body doing now with that?
Is the body taking it verbatim that is actually happening or is it able to censor what the body and what the mind may be believing?
Well, if it knows what we really believe and what we think and what we’re thinking is true, then it’s what’s going to resonate. We could have the thought, but the key part is we’re all gonna be having some negative thoughts. It’s it’s part of the human condition. We all have an ego, and the ego mind is always thinking negative thoughts. In almost every situation, it comes up first. But the key part is, do I just catch the thought and let it go? Or do I invite it in for tea?
Do I invite it in to stay for dinner? Do I invite it in as an overnight guest?
Do I invite it to move into my house and live there? And which is what we often do with our negative thoughts.
We allow them to linger. When instead, I think one of the first Indian yogis who came to this country, it was Yogananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, who I think has a center out here in California or did before he died.
He made a statement that I think is so poignant and relevant to this.
He says, I never allow any thought to linger in my mind without my express permission.
And I thought, boy, that is certainly something I aspire to. I can’t do it that way. Sometimes I don’t catch it, but I certainly catch them much better now than I did ten years ago, a whale of a lot better than twenty years ago, and that’s like eons better than thirty years ago. And it’s something next year I expect to be still better at it because I’m so much more aware that my thoughts are acts of creation, and they’re creating results in my body, in my life, in my relationships, in every aspect of my life, actually. Right. Well, Eleanor Roosevelt said something similar to that too.
We cannot others cannot hurt us without our permission. Without it. Yeah.
I express permission and therefore, I’m allowing it in. I’m taking it in and dwelling on it. Rather than just hearing that, seeing it from a different perspective and letting it go like water off a duck’s back. Right.
So it’s important to be very aware of our thoughts and to know that the thoughts are affecting and they are not just random idle thoughts that we need to be taking accountability and responsibility for what we are thinking at every moment. Exactly. And then we need to recognize too that sometimes it’s hard for us to, to really stop those negative thoughts. And we might wonder why.
Why are there some so hard to let go of some and not of others? And if we look back, we have to go back upstream. And we realize this, stopping those thoughts is, not so easy. If it’s like stopping a train at the same time, you got four diesel engines pushing as hard as they can trying to push the train. So what are those diesel engines inside us that might be pushing those thoughts? And several things are part of that, but one is, any negative experiences we had as when we were little. Painful experiences, traumatic experience, upsetting, disturbing, experiences of deprivation, experiences of being criticized, experiences of being neglected, you name it. Any of those negative experiences we had, they become a part of our memory bank in our survival brain back here, the old reptilian brain, just above the brain stem. And according to the neuroscientists, they’ve some have put it to me that part of our brain now is way too active for our stage of evolution. Maybe about 15 to 18 times too active.
In fact, one even put it so interesting that says that part of the brain is like, Velcro to the negative experiences, and like Teflon to the positive ones.
That means we have to be extra conscious to not let that part of the brain rule us. We have to be extra careful. Some systems of thought would say it’s way of being careful to catch the ego thoughts. Doesn’t matter which language we use, whether we call it the ego, whether we call it the survival brain, the limbic system.
But either way, we need to be much more conscious using tools to catch it. Now, what these negative experiences are encoding some information back in this part of the brain, and they give off a signal or interpretation of something as being dangerous or safe. When it gives off a signal of danger, that’s based on a past experience of something that we experienced as frightening or upsetting or dangerous. And anything that resembles it triggers it again. And so we all have that experience of something triggering us, and we wonder why at a given moment.
Why did I react so strongly to this? Or why did this other person react so strongly? And it’s because that part of the limbic system has been activated. But now we know that there are methods we can use where we can be do the equivalent of, like, pressing delete button on our computer for old programs. And we can do that equivalent thing for this information that’s encoded in our brains.
So even if I was, not very well taken care of, say, when I was a baby, and I didn’t get fed when I was hungry, I was left to cry in the crib for hours, I was not changed when I was wet, Those experiences get imprinted in my limbic system, and then they cause me to react to situations where I’m not being attended to, I’m not cared for, I’m being neglected, I’m not loved. And out of those experiences as they continue, then I’ll draw conclusions from that too. And those conclusions, I call negative core beliefs. And we draw those beliefs that, man, I must not be lovable. I’m no good.
I’m not deserving. I’m not adequate, I’m not sufficient, or I’ve been bad. We all have some of those kinds of beliefs, and we have those in place that are kind of rehearsing the negative, painful experiences.
So what does one do with those beliefs now that they find that they are there and they’re unwanted beliefs and they’re very aware of these beliefs, but they no longer serve their purpose? Well, now there are methods we can use actually to change those.
We can actually delete that information. Is that in your book? Is that’s described in the book. I drive describe a process in there that is, based on what we call Meridian Stimulation. It’s based on the Chinese system of acupuncture, but we don’t use needles.
We just have a person touch or tap on some acupressure points, and they do that with the statement of intentionality about what they’re releasing.
They’ll, bring themselves to focus by focusing on this part of the brain, you know, where we often focus, where their frontal lobes are, and we’ll recall the scenes or images where that disturbance occurred. We’ll see where we feel that emotion in our body, and then we’ll release the emotion connected with each of those, acupressure points. And so what happens is that, each one is attached to a meridian attached to a different organ in the body, and that negative emotion, if you’re stimulated according to that system, it releases a negative emotion, allows the opposite positive when they come in. Well, you’re a perfect person to talk to about this because in science, they’re gonna say that this is Pluto science and it’s not proven.
There’s, so therefore, you have a practice in New York City where you see patients ongoing basis for many years. So what results have you seen? What would be your data to show that this is actual proof that this is happening, this body mind connection? I see it repeatedly in all sorts of things.
Several that come to my mind that I can mention. You know, one is Share some of your patients. The one that comes to mind now is a person who had experienced anxiety reactions, you know, all of her life. And she’d been through years of talking therapy, many years of it, and had no success with it. And then she learned that I did this other kind of work, and she came in and we discovered that she had, a lot of painful experiences and very early in her life. And we then through went through a number of rounds of this, and she comes back saying, I’m just don’t have any anxiety anymore. It’s just gone. It’s just not there. And that is the meridian tapping.
Yeah. So you’re basically reinforcing something else of thoughts and changing the inner tapes of her mind with something else of positive. And you can even do it for things now. We know that when we’re in the uterus, we can experience traumas.
They put little cameras in the uterus. They can photograph the baby reacting to different signing situations. And if mom is all disturbed, you know, then there’s going to be a lot of adrenaline and cortisol flowing, which goes in through the umbilical cord. If they have negative music, like, hard acid rock, or, you know, or rap music that’s negative playing, the baby feels that. And his little buddy just reacts like this.
You can have the photograph of that. And if the mother and father are being loving together, or they’re having a happy time, or a joyful time, or mother’s listening to nice melodic music, little baby’s just all peaceful, laid back, just relaxed. And it’s amazing, that gets programmed in the developing nervous system. And so that becomes part of a predisposition in our lives, what we got there. That means it’s something we have to attend to.
But the good news is, from a quantum physics perspective, everything is just encoding information and energy. And all our bodies are is really energy and information. In fact, our bodies are 99.999% empty space, if you can believe that. Over what period of time the per the patient who had anxiety did you start to see positive results? And how long did it take to from beginning to the end?
Well, this varies from person to person. But this particular patient Yeah. This particular one, there were some significant things in early childhood that were very relevant to this particular problem.
And so in just a handful of sessions, we would clear those, and then she felt the results. On the other hand, there are some people I think of one person, for example, who was in Poland, during the second world war. Her mother died when she was about one and a half. She was farmed out to relatives to take care of her. Her father worked for the underground, and he was never there. Finally, he got himself killed when she was about four or five. So she lost both of her parents. Things were in such turmoil in Poland at that time that, everybody was upset, and so it was hard for her to have even the relatives taken care of, or have the time or energy to give very much to her. So she described her life as being very depressed all of her life. She married and had two children, and described herself as being a horrible mother to them, and, saw her kids as growing up with severe problems and felt bad about that. She had her marriage was horrendous as a result of all that.
And she came into therapy in her late fifties and, did this kind of work. For her, it was a gradual process. In fact, what happened, I should say too before I mention that, finally she was taken, into a home by a woman who’s had lost her daughter in the war and wanted another daughter.
But because that had happened, she was totally overprotective. And then there was also the problem because the Russians were coming in hauling people off of the work camps. It was not just the Nazis coming in, but the Russians were there in Poland as well. And if a truck stopped in front of the house, you didn’t know if it was a delivery truck, therefore, it’s regular purpose, or if it was the Russian truck coming to haul off you to the concentration camp, I mean, the work camps in Siberia. So there’s constant pain and stress throughout her whole growing up years. And she did this work cumulatively, and it took several months of this, actually, until we got up through clearing everything, that old part of the experience, to hit about age 13 or 14. Then I walk out to the waiting room and I see her.
She greets me with a smile on the face. The first time I’ve ever seen her smile. And so she comes into the office, and I say, well, how are you feeling today? And she says, why I’m happy. It’s the first time I remember being happy. And of course, I would just touch the core of my being, that this had worked for her. That these processes work that way. And then we proceeded to keep doing the work, and she had moved out of her depression, whereas nothing had worked for her. None of the notes. She tried every medication.
She tried every alternate and names, and she had been severely depressed all of her life. Now for the first time, she was not depressed. Then when something would happen that was a disturbance, she’d be disturbed for maybe a few hours or for a day, but she was resilient now. She bounded right back. Then she learned to use the tools on herself so she could sustain this as she went on.
Powerful. So that was very powerful. Or I think of someone else who just recently came to me who had stage four cancer, stomach cancer. And, her cancer markers were about 2,275 or something like that, which were very, very powerful. It was a huge tumor in her stomach. And we started doing this work, clearing out the traumas in her background, the negative beliefs she cared about herself. And we started coming up with some other work of imagery that would help focus support of her healing. And she brought her cancer markers down to about a 78 from 20 to hundred. And then she was supposed to have surgery to have it removed. And also, she was doing chemotherapy. But the doctor said, wow, this is unusual to have this much progress, because I worked with her to do some imagery to make the chemotherapy just work positively and not have negative side effects. Because if we can tell it what to do in the body, we harness the famous placebo effect.
Yes. Well, they seem to be doing studies today that the people who are doing the visualization and prayer connecting to the kindness, the gentleness within them. As opposed to the fear and the anger and the doubt. When they change that, they seem to be charting that there is definitely an effect going on there. Exactly. They don’t quite know why they haven’t because they can’t they can’t they can’t draft it or chart it well. So therefore, they’re yet to say that this is actually happening. Right. But they know that there is something going on there. Well, when they finally decided to do surgery on her to said, let’s remove the rest of the tumor even though it had shrunk somewhat, They opened her up and found nothing there but dead cancer cells. Tumor was totally gone. The doctors were aghast, that this is not supposed to happen. This is a miracle. This doesn’t happen. And, of course, we both believed it because we believe this can happen. And so for her, one thing I might add too is that she also had some people praying for her, and she believed that could help. So it was a combination, I think, of the distance healing with prayer, combination of the clearing of the traumas, the clearing of negative beliefs that combined with her mental imagery that supported her healing. And you put all that together, it was a very powerful package.
And now she’s totally cancer free. And so, I don’t give myself a credit for that, but what I give her the credit is her willingness to use these various tools to deal with the things upstream that it helped to cause that problem. Because our illnesses don’t just suddenly occur. Cancer just doesn’t suddenly occur. It’s something that we all have some cancer cells now, most of the time.
But why do they multiply at one time and not another? And of course, when we are in stress, which comes from a lot of trauma and negative beliefs and negative thoughts, that creates flow of stress, that stress weakens our immune system. Our weakened immune system allows the cancer cells to multiply and cumulatively begin to grow. Then at some point, it’s big enough to be diagnosed. Right.
Well, doctor Grayson, let’s get back to when you mentioned that you had the degenerative disc, and it must have been very, very painful to go through that, extremely painful. So actually, it was in an x-ray and MRI that there was a diagnosis. And what did you do with that and over what period of time did you get a different outcome of a more favorable outcome? Well, there were two what did you do to get that favorable outcome?
Different kind of outcomes. One was my ability to function well without pain. Then later, I found out just about seven or eight years ago, actually, when I did a routine physical exam. For just to show the doctor how healthy I am. That’s why I get why I go for a physical exam that way. Took a routine chest x-ray, and he came back saying, your lungs are fine, Henry. He said, but that something is not supposed to happen. That that degenerated disc of yours has regenerated. And I said, I believe it, because I’ve been pain free for all those years. But what I’d done, you were asking about, is when I was told that I would not walk again without back surgery, I knew I did not want back surgery because it was 68% of the time, you were worse off afterward at that time. And so I knew I didn’t wanna risk that. I like being active. I like doing sports. I like just being active in general. And so, I asked myself those questions.
I came up with about three or four things I needed to deal with differently in my life. One was a person I’d felt betrayed by. I needed to deal with that issue with that person, somebody who’d been a friend. Another issue was a conflict with a colleague about an issue that I needed to talk out with. I needed to make some lifestyle changes.
One was I’d been doing sports all my life and had never done any stretching, so I made a vow to start doing yoga. I’d never done anything about stress and handling stress and tension in my life, so I made a vow with myself. I’d start an active practice of meditation daily. I’d made a commitment to myself I would do those that I knew absolutely I would keep. Then I began to get better. Within a week, I was able to get out of bed. Within another couple days, I was able to get back to my office to see my patients. And as I said before, within two months, I was skiing in Colorado. And I had little pain there, but I used my skiing as kind of a physical therapy.
I would imagine my hips being loose, and I’d move, and the whole thing was just loosening and being good physical therapy, making my back healthier. And so I thought used that thought as I would ski. Then I became pain free. Within about, I guess, another two or three weeks, I was totally pain free and remained that for now it’s been twenty five years. But as I said about six or eight years ago, I discovered the disc was regenerated. Now what would happen, there’d be some times through those years when I would have a slight pain starting in my back or down in my sciatica.
But I would instead of letting it, oh my god, here it comes again, I would say, no, let me ask myself those questions again.
Why might I need this? What’s emotion being expressed through it? What would it get from me? What would it get me out of?
And to ask myself those questions with real sincerity and the willingness to allow any kind of mostly irrational of answers to come in. But I find that just getting the answer doesn’t solve the problem. I have to make a firm commitment to an alternative way of dealing with that other than paying the price of being sick. And if I come up with an alternative way, then and commit myself to it, I found that the pain would go away within a half hour and be gone. It wouldn’t develop into this real back debilitating back problem.
So it makes me think that for people who are having a lot of physical pain, extreme pain, severe pain, that their thinking is going to make it worse. If they are most likely. Yes. If they are all tensed up from their thoughts and they’re all stressed out and they’re. They’re really contributing to their fear, and the more they contribute to that, the more that the pain that they are having as a result of whatever, then it’s gonna start to heighten. So therefore, it’s actually taking the opposite, calming down that exactly. And just being at peace with it and being quiet with it. And what a difference that makes. And what a difference. But those neuropeptides communicate that instant messaging system. Yes. And that different way of peace rather than tension, conflict, stress, anger, resentment. You’re it must be a feeling of being a real pioneer that you are one immense many. Today, it is, you turn on the television, it’s all about pharmaceutical.
And one ad after another, showing you that if you want to get rid of this, then take this pill for that. Unfortunately, no. Bridge land, Zoloft, it’s all about quieting yourself down in a way of a pharmaceutical and dumbing yourself down if a way of turning your feelings off. And then comes you, a person who is working with your patients and has lived a life of saying, no. That is not the way that you want to go or way that you would treat your patients.
You are doing quite the opposite. It’s about embracing those thoughts and these feelings. Well, even more, it’s important to the bottom line piece of embracing the incredible power we have inside ourselves. . We mostly, as human beings, deny and disown the power we have. But our intrinsic power is really quite immense. If every thought we have is having an effect on our all the cells in our bodies, and there’s so much, you know, evidence that shows that now, like this one study out here in California that occurred with HIV patients, and they had two different groups just do a simple exercise. One just to sit down and write for a half hour about anything, and the other group was to sit down and write about loving or compassionate thoughts towards somebody. Then they went back and took their blood tests again, and they found that those who had the just a normal writing about whatever, their immune system remained the same level. But they found those that wrote about love or compassion during that time, their immune system jumped up about 200% stronger against the HIV virus.
Really quite amazing in just a short period of time. Where was the study done? It was down at, I think, at, USC. If I’m not mistaken. Down in, San Francisco I mean, in, Los Angeles.
. USC. . And, there’s an amazing kind of outcome with it. And then we go back to this whole idea of embracing our power.
What we do when we often take medication is that we’re seeing the source of the problem, first of all, is outside, then we’re seeing the solution is outside. We’re saying I hurt my back because I bent the wrong way. But what we don’t see is I bent that same way a hundred times in the last week and nothing happened.
Why did something happen this time? Or I got the cold because somebody sneezed on me or because it’s a virus going around, is what we’ll say.
In the sense, I make myself a victim. Instead of saying, there’s always some bacteria around, there’s always some kind of virus, it’s always happening around us. And why at that particular moment? Did I invite it in? Yes. But at that particular moment and why is it at that particular moment? And so I have to ask myself the question, why did I need it right now? What would I think it would get from me? What would it get me out of doing?
What emotion might be expressed in it and so on? Or what the metaphor is? Or what’s the tribal belief system in my mind? It might be simply that I believe that I’m going to get that because it’s going around that I have to catch it. And if I simply believe that, that’s gonna make it happen too.
And so what I’m concerned with is helping people become aware of the immense power they have inside themselves to maintain their health and to bring about healing and health. And that’s why a lot of times we don’t, there are also reason we need to look at too is why we don’t do things that would enhance our health. You know, we say we’re going to meditate. We say we’re going to exercise. We say we’re going to eat more healthily.
We say we’re going to get adequate rest. But so many people don’t keep that vow. Yes. They don’t keep it at all. And they wonder why.
What stops them from doing it? I had the best of intentions. Then there are others who will do these things, and then they’ll still get sick. But that takes us to then, what are the traumas that they did not clear? What are the negative beliefs that have not been cleared?
What are the thought systems that have not been changed? Those all have to be attended to. Then the amazing thing is, when we take care of this larger picture, that’s the way we sustain our health and our happiness and our productivity and our abundance and the whole works. When you were studying to become a psychologist many years ago, what form of psychology did you ascribe to and what was your interest at that time? Was it the Freudian or the Carl Jung of the dream work?
Was it more of the somatic or was it more of talk therapy of the conventional? Well, mine’s been something with journey because when I was in graduate school, I had was primarily emphasis on Carl Rogers’ approach, where you just reflect back what the person is feeling to help me get in touch with it. But then I had the great, experience of having Viktor Frankl as a visiting professor at Boston University at that time. And he was the one who was the Jewish psychiatrist who was in a concentration camp in Dachau. And, he wrote his books about his experience, which have been widely read and still classic reading in many schools and universities today.
And I remember him telling about his experiences in the camps, that he saw that why people got sick and died, why they, sometimes would stay there, or they’d run into the electric wire and electrocute themselves, or some others be offended or abused by the guards instead of befriended by them. He began to observe a lot of the things about this, and he began to see that a lot of it has to do with what the person is thinking and believing. What kind of attitude they carried about themselves, about life, about their future. And he would conclude, I remember him saying this over and over again in one class, and maybe it was my best class in graduate school, better than all the requirements. Made an incredible impression on you.
He made an incredible impression on me that shaped my life. He says in the concentration camp where all of our human freedoms are stripped away, he says the one thing I learned is that they cannot take away from me is what the power to think what I think in my mind. Right. And that, he says, made the difference of life and death for so many people. The ones who thought thoughts that would support their happiness and well-being and health, and ones who thought negative thought.
He says, for example, one day the guards might bring us a watery soup out, and they might bring a crusty moldy piece of bread with it. One person would say, those stupid guards, they think this is food, this is not food, this mold all of this bread and stuff like that. And another one person would say, boy, I’m so thankful to have a piece of bread with my water and soup today. Just that simple difference in attitude, he thought, was characteristic of a larger pattern of the way we think. And how many of us go around finding criticisms of everybody and everything most of the time?
And how many of us go around criticizing ourselves over and over again, all the time? It’s no wonder we then get sick. It’s no wonder then we get an autoimmune disease, which is my body attacking itself. Because I’ve been attacking myself and my mind over and over and over and over again. Did you practice a different type of, way of treating your patients in a way of a conventional way, and then you changed at a certain point in time during your practice?
Yes. It’s been did it evolve over a period of time? It’s been a big evolution. I. When I finished graduate school, I thought, geez, psychoanalysis is the be all end all.
I’ll go to New York, and I’ll get psychoanalytic training. I did that. I went there and got into training, and that was about my third year of training, and I’d had a good training analyst and so on. I thought there’s a lot that’s value here.
And there’s some very good things from, Freudian psychoanalysis. But I realized it didn’t cover all problem areas. It didn’t cover even all the ones for me. I knew I grew up in a household where nobody expressed any emotions, and I needed to learn to do that. So I went into encounter groups where I pounded pillows and screamed, and I hit them with tennis rackets, and I yelled as loud as I could.
Open up those feelings. I learned to practice emotions through bioenergetic analysis. I learned it through gestalt therapy. I learned some other behavior therapy systems at that point and later. I began to explore all other modalities, which is what led me to found the National Institute for the Psychotherapists in New York.
It’s because I felt it should be a place that would bring be a more integrative approach and draw the best from these various systems to help us learn. And what happens there at this center? Well This is the two. It went along for a while being that, and then, some of the students having difficulty absorbing diverse things, and then it did a reactionary movement and moved back to be more of a psychoanalytic program. But then more recently, we developed this different center within there, a trauma center, which is teaching and training people to work with trauma with much of the newer methods.
And it’s evolving more back that direction again, finally, which I’m happy about. But, what I found though about ten, twelve years ago, there are a bunch of other new methods that have emerged that are so much more effective for clearing these traumas and beliefs, much more than talk therapy. And that’s, originally, it was the EMDR that I learned about, the eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. In fact, all these methods originated out in California, so it’s interesting. And, Francine Shapiro did that, and she was a professor in a graduate school, and one thing that caused it to take off is that she had a lot of her students do research for their dissertations.
And that research started to popularize it and it spread to other universities and more research and that made it known. Give me an example of the eye movement.
Well, now, it was originally is that you look back and forth, left and right, left and right. And what that does is stimulates the bilateral stimulation of the brain. It helps the, the corpus callosum, which collects connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain to communicate more fully.
And it seems to have an effect. Even balance. It brings an imbalance, and she learned that would help clear out traumas. Then they learned that you could do bilateral stimulation by tapping on opposite shoulders or opposite knees, or put little clickers, the opposite ones in your ears, and that would work. And then I learned after that the meridian stimulation worked based on that I described before about the acupoint stimulation.
And I found in my experience that works even better. Then I’ve developed a form of that myself that’s described in the book, and actually it’s on my website too. People can just download it and use it, where you put your fingers and just touch on these acupressure points, and you state what emotion you’re releasing. Like, if I’m clear in a trauma of something that happened, say, last week, I had an automobile accident, and I was really shaken up by it, and some somebody got hurt in that accident, and I’m still carrying that trauma. I bring my fingers to the eyebrow and say, I release all fear related to this problem.
And I take a slow deep breath afterward. I release all anger, resentment, and rage, and I proceed around to all the different acupressure points. And by the time I’ve done that once, twice, or three rounds, I find it’s just totally cleared. Do you have to know which, meridian coordinates with which question and which emotion? No.
Actually, I describe in the book which emotion for each acupressure point. Okay. But, I do it in this comprehensive way because it covers all the different bases. Because what I find in doing this, sometimes people will think, oh, this thing had happened, you know, I’m not angry at all about that, you know. I was scared, but I never was angry. And they said, unleash all fear, then you get over here to the side, and suddenly they just feel this surge of anger inside them. They didn’t know they had. It’s part of the unconscious recording. And if what we know to be true now is 95% of our behaviors are all unconscious. And so it’s not that we’re bad that way, it’s just the way human beings are structured.
And so there’s a lot that we’re not aware of. And if we’re not aware of it and deal with it, it goes into the body and causes sicknesses. Yes. So when you say unconscious, it’s our patterns and basically it’s the when we’re numbed up to our basically feelings and thoughts of what actually is happening. And for a lot of people who do not do therapy and have not had the opportunity to do therapy, they’re walking in this perpetual pattern state of just reactive mind.
Reactive, and we also get just attached to our suffering too. . We really get attached to that because it becomes a part of who we are. And we identify with it. And we identify with it. That’s what it is. You know? Then we call it my thing. It’s the whole system now looks that way. The doctor says, you have an ulcer, or you have this kind of problem, or you have a virus.
Then we walk away, say, yes, I have this, and I own it as my possession. I have allergies. And so I can go around with that. And then I noticed too the power of suggestion. It was back in the nineties after the first Bush administration allowed us to advertise drugs or medicine.
We’re only two countries in the world that they can advertise drugs or medicine. . And so, when we started doing that, there were ads along with the traffic and weather report, and there was an allergy report sponsored by a drug company. And the account would say, oh, high allergy count today at such and such. You know, oh, you allergy sufferers, beware.
And I realized twice as many people were coming to my office with allergies after those ads started because the power of suggestion. There are allergies there, there’s a pollen, you’re going to be victimized by that pollen, and lo and behold, they were. They sold a lot of drugs though. So instead of subscribing to that, what would one do? We know you have a tendency towards an allergy, so you would give in to the thoughts that you are okay, you are balanced, this is not gonna affect me, I am powerful over this matter.
Yeah. We need to see that it’s really a miss misinformation system encoded in my brain. The way the limbic system works and to protect us is like if you’re bitten by a snake, then you walk along at dusk and you see something that looks like one, you run the other way or you grab a club, but it might just be a limb that fell from the tree. Our immune system works the same way. You know, it has an encoding of information.
This is something that’s dangerous. Okay. The immune system fights it. And so somehow, it got encoded in my brain. There’s danger out there, even though it’s not a dangerous substance.
And so now we have people allergic to all sorts of things that are not at all dangerous. It’s a miscommunication system that’s gotten programmed in. Often it comes from being around people who say, oh, I have this allergy, or this thing is hurting you, or this thing is going to get to you, this is going to harm you. Often we have parents who are very frightened about the world. We program that in, that helps us even be more prone to have allergies.
And so the whole system goes in programming our self to react to something that’s dangerous even when it’s not. Yes. And let’s talk about projections, when other people are projecting their thought, their feelings, their negativity onto you and one takes that literally as being truthful because they’re used to being in an established relationship, in that marriage or in that friendship. . So what does one do when this is a constant and they want to turn this around, but yet there is a firm established pattern that they’ve allowed this for many years?
Well, I think first of all, I may need to make sure I don’t have unclear traumas in my history that are similar to this kind of experience. Because if I have traumas that are similar to this, not being heard, not being listened to, or being criticized, or being judged, I’m gonna be 10 times or 20 times more sensitive to it, and I’m gonna take it much more personally. So I may need, in order to handle it, to go back upstream again, do some clearing on those, like even I do these prep methods on myself. And if something pares to me and I overreacted in a situation, I’ll ask myself, where did I experience something like that when I was a kid? Was that something that was bothersome to me?
Did it something that caused me pain? I’ll identify it. I’ll do the clearing on myself to release it. I’ll touch these points and release it. That’s the preparation for letting it all go.
And so I think the same thing is true for us, you know, about any kind of symptom that we have. That we can see, well, what’s behind it? What’s firing it up? Then I can see what I could clear about that. Then I can see how I can change my thoughts now and look at it differently.
So it’s like decoding the story and. Allowing the source to come through of exactly what actually happened and how to open up to that, to neutralize it, to balance it. That’s the part when you ask about my different training. That’s the part where psychoanalysis helped me.
Because I learned to go back and look for what the origin to something was. Unfortunately, the techniques of psychoanalysis didn’t work very well. And Freud himself didn’t see them working very well. He even concluded and says the most you can expect from a successful psychoanalysis is just to be relieved of some of the worst of your human suffering. But the brilliant part about him was the curious part.
He kept being curious and trying to find ways it would work, and he kept exploring them. And if he kept living longer, he would have come up with a lot of other things. Unfortunately, it was made into a doctrine and kept where it was. As things happened in so many religions and so many schools of psychology, schools of medicine and so on, we get attached to the doctrines that have been there in the past. Yeah.
And the Freudian way was to isolate that there was symptoms and find out the cause and the symptoms and just do it again. About it or to do brain, or to do, dream analysis of it or free association, which would help some people. But it didn’t often get to those things. In fact, the brain scan studies now say that if you’re talking about your trauma, a lot of the times it just reactivates that limbic brain and tends to rehearse it. And so, talking for some people might work, but talking for others can just make it worse. And we need to have some other means to get beyond that.
And so if it’s going to make it worse, one would think that you need to be perhaps talking about it, but releasing it with actualization and awareness at the same time. Yeah. If we can use a bilateral stimulation or we can use the meridian stimulation with conscious intent, then we can release it.
And it’s effective a very I think a larger percentage of time than any of the therapies I’ve studied, and I’ve studied most of them. Well, what final thoughts do you have that you would really like to share with others and the readers of your book . And others that are very curious to contact you? And do you also you’re in New York City.
So people are listening to the show here and they would like to contact you. Do they have to be in New York City or do you do Skype sessions or over the phone sessions?
Sometimes when I have the time, but also there are people that I’ve trained around different cities that do some of this work that I can refer people to as well. But one thing, I think, too, that they read the book, they’ll find these tools described.
But also I demonstrate them. They can go to my website, henrygrayson.com, and they can go there and download demonstrations of these tools and they can follow them, follow along with them and use them on themselves because my goal is just to help people be free of their suffering. And the main part that I really feel underneath it all is helps us not just remember our intrinsic power, but it’s remembering who I truly am as a human being, that I’m not a powerless victim. And so the goal of healing is not just to heal the body, but it’s to heal the mind so that the body just naturally follows suit and heals. And it’s really to heal the mind that thought the body needed to be sick. And if I can do that, excuse me, I take back my power. I take back my strength. I’m no longer a victim. I don’t have to think of things as happening to me. I don’t have to say, attribute bad motives to different parts of my body like some people do.
My head is killing me. You know, as if my head had a motive or my back is killing me. No, it’s not doing that. So I don’t have to, put bad motives on my body or onto people or the environment or germs around me. I need to embrace my own power, to see my own strength, my own resilience, and to know that when I move to a peaceful state and especially a state of love and compassion, my whole immune system becomes stronger.
I’m not affected by other people and their negativity. We were talking before about that, you know, somebody who’s criticizing you and you might feel attached to it. If I can just see them as coming out of fear and not being loving, and I can have a compassionate thought for them, I’m not affected at all by their criticism. I can consider and see, oh, does that apply? Did I actually do that?
Oh, let me consider it. But I’m not making myself wrong. One could think that they’re in a relationship with a negative person is projecting all of this fear and anger onto another, that is the that is the way to be in a relationship with that person. They’ve accepted the fact that the anger and the fear is the person and is the relationship, but they do not see that they can affect that other person by changing it into something else. That’s By helping themselves and helping the other person.
That’s absolutely right. And there’s another factor too though. Unless we clear our childhood traumas and our negative beliefs, we are very likely to pick a person who will help confirm those and who will abuse us in the same way we were abused, who will give maltreatment the same way we had it before, will confirm our beliefs about what we don’t deserve, and we’ll keep picking partner after partner after partner who will reinforce that until we get that stuff cleared. It’s amazing how often a woman who’s beaten up by her father will pick a guy who will beat her up. And we all see that, you know, repeatedly, you know, from time to time.
We’ve seen evidence of it all over the place. This doesn’t make them bad people. It’s just the way the limbic system works. And so, what we now know, they can find freedom from that by using these tools. That’s the part that I’m excited about, that we’re not in bondage anymore.
We’re not in bondage to the environment. We’re not in bondage to other people. We’re not even in bondage to our own thoughts because we can actually change them all. And that’s the way we take our power back and to realize that we are more than just those powerless human beings who we often think of ourselves as being. Well, thank you for writing this book, this amazing book, Using Your Body to Heal Your Mind.
And thank you for all your incredible work that you do. And, I look forward to speaking with you in the future. I would enjoy that. Thank you for having me on your show again. It’s good to do it even after all these years.
Thank you. Thank you, Henry. And I thank you for the work you’re doing. And from the art of conscious living, I thank you and do take care of yourself and take care of others. Have a blessed day.
