Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning. Hey, how
are you welcome to Destiny. This is Cliff your host. I hope you're
doing well today. I'm all about wellness and looking at the best that we
can be. I mean, I've mentioned many times I launched Destiny a couple
of years ago because there's so much out there that we don't really that we
don't understand, that we are unaware of. And as a former program director
for a wellness conference, Destiny is all about personal growth, spirituality, wellness,
and then everything in between, and that counts for a lot. One
of the huge issues I have today, and I'm talking primarily about the United
States Western wellness, is that the allopathic model, this is what we have
as a standard in the United States, is not about wellness. It's about
trauma care, it's about recovering from illness, it's about I mean, there's
really not preventative medicine in there, although they do try to say that they're
preventative. When you're giving people a drug to main health, to maintain health,
that model is defective because and I'm a perfect example. I had a
heart attack last September. I was out hiking, and I noticed that I
was my chest was bothering me. It was a tightness, and as I
continued down the trail, I became weaker and weaker and weaker, and I
thought, okay, I got to get myself to the doctor. Normally people
would call an ambulance, but I was out where, out in the middle
of nowhere. So I said, uh, oh, there's something going on
here. So I got myself in my car. I drove to the local
Kaiser. I'm here in northern California and Kaiser Permanente is the chain of established
medicine. They hooked me up and said, yeah, you got something going
on with your heart. They ambulanced me without the siren to the cardiac unit
just a few miles south downtown Oakland, and they proceeded to quickly put a
stint in a carnary artery that was blocked. I spent the night never talked
to my cardiologist. I ever talked to a physician, had my blood drawn
three or four times, and then it went home. Discussion about what was
going on, no lifestyle discussion of what your diet was, What's going on.
I was shocked, I was, and I was kind of angry that
I didn't get a chance to speak to the physician who put the stint in.
I actually met her a few months later, and I thought to myself,
this is asked backwards, This is so asked backwards. What was going
on with my mental state when this happened? You know, again, what
was my diet? You know? How much weight am I carrying? What
are my vitals? You know, it's just so ass backwards, and this
is what we face. And so I was disappointed, to say the least,
and I wondered what was you know, on my own, I wondered
what I could have done to prevent this? You know, now I had
a history. My father passed away at sixty five. A couple of years
after he retired, I had an uncle that passed away at sixty two,
and my grandfather on my mother's side had had a heart attack because of the
stress. Now, in the days of my you know, twenty thirty years
ago, stints weren't around, and so the recommendation would have been open heart
bypass surgery, which is very, very invasive. You're crippled because they crack
your chest, you crack your rib cage. They take they put a line
from the blocked area and they re route the blood flow, so the heart's
not you know, her heart's getting the blood it needs. So luckily that's
not in the works. But the problem with this model is that it doesn't
address subtleties, and this is where our problems are. And so there's a
lot of other things that we bring up here on Destiny that should be in
play with modern medicine. And today we're going to talk about family what is
known as family constellations, in other words, generational trauma and how it bleeds
through each preceding generation and if it's not addressed, then it can linger and
also cause problems with the generation that is currently alive. I don't know if
my great grandfather had a problem with health. I know my father wasn't you
know, obviously had heart problems. I know my uncle, who I didn't
know very well, had problems, and I know my grandfather had problems.
I would have loved and to this day, if a physician had asked me,
you know, what's going on with your family history, I would have
liked to have addressed it. During this this problem I had, it's not
discussed. It's it's it's corporate medicine, which is so hands off, and
so it's just it's just not it's just not healing. And this is the
huge problem. The wealthiest country in the world, United States, has the
worst healthcare in the world. And I have to say this too. It's
the most expensive. It's the most expensive. It's it bankrupts people. You
go in for a surgical procedure, it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And if you don't have the right coverage, if you if you're working
for yourself or your company doesn't offer health care, it can ruin you.
It can literally ruin you. So I'm I feel very fortunate to be able
to talk about these things and to have people on the program who are presenting
and who have traditions of energy medicine, other forms of healing techniques that are
more holistic, less invasive. And remember when I say invasive, we're talking
about drugs for conditions. I'm talking about unnecessary surgical procedures. And you know,
you look at watch TV. Every other commercials is a commercial for our
drug and they make up shit too. It's like, Okay, you got
a nervous leg, we're gonna call it something and we're gonna have a drug
for that. The latest craziness is for those people who have sleep apnea,
they stop, they stop breathing for a period of time, they snore.
The airway is blocked at certain types of the evening. Most people use a
machine that forces air through the nose or mouth to keep the air flow consistent.
There's a new procedure and it just came out called Inspire, and this
is an implant. Listen to this. So they implant a box that has
a stimulation and they run some cords to your I guess it's to your esophageal
area esopha guess, or close to your where you suck in air your larynx,
air passage away in your throat. And when it detects that you're gonna
when when it detects that you're not getting good flow, it shocks that system
open. But they got to cut you open and put all these little boxes
in there, and they it's so funny. It just came out Inspire.
You got to see it. I'm sure they're going to start having commercials on
TV for it. It's insane. It is insane. Why don't they tell
people, why don't they look at a little better. And because I have
this issued myself, I was in a sleep study. I have my old
or moderate sleep apnea. But I've discovered if I keep my weight at a
certain level and also prop my head up with another pillow, I'm in pretty
good shape, so I don't have a problem. When I went to the
sleep study program at the local clinic they actually have you come in, I
was surrounded by a room of obese people. I mean literally everybody was hundreds
of pounds overweight, hundreds of plus pounds overweight, and no one was addressing
lifestyle. If you can drop your weight, this is not typically a problem,
you know, it really isn't, but they don't talk about that.
They want you to get this searcher. It's insane. We live in an
insane healthcare system. The model is totally screwed up. So the point I'm
trying to make is the allopathy is not a healing modality, and I guarantee
you in the next few decades are going to go what we're rethinking. You
know, and for those people, those of you who have had cancer,
you know what a nightmare it is to work with alopathy. They want to
open you up immediately they want to dohose you with chemotherapy. Typically it just
causes more problems. The billions of dollars, probably in the trillions of dollars
that they've spent now over the last few decades hasn't really improved the odds of
surviving certain types of cancers. They don't even look at lifestyle change. It's
such a crazy model. And I have to say this, it's because America
has a marketing model. We've got to make money on everything. We've got
to market, you know, technique. So drugs are marketed and they say,
you know, rather than changing your lifestyle, take a drug. The
drug will help you change your lifestyle. Well, the residual effects, the
huge problems that your body faces when taking a drug, are critically problematic.
You know, I got off all my drugs as soon as I could because
I was having residual problems with it. I was having neurological problems with these
blood thinners. It just goes on and on and on. For the most
part, if you look at a natural solution, at a non invasive solution
for your health condition, you'd be surprised what you can find. So the
program we have today is with somebody who is a therapist who deals with trauma,
and emotional trauma can lead to physical manifestations of illness. And why this
is important to address is that trauma can come in all sizes and shapes.
It can come from family lifestyle, it can come from physical accidents, but
it most often comes from emotional aspects. Emotional trauma. So, and my
guest has been working with it for decades, and she's from Tanzania, Africa,
and it's unfortunate that the African American community is dealing with a tremendous amount
of trauma because depending on where you're living, there's racism, that's a form
of trauma. There's just economic abuse. You're struggling, and so that's traumatic
financially. And so when you're listening to my guest today, get a sense
of what her background is, but also understand that she's working specifically with trauma,
which is the first phase. If it's untreated, it's the first phase
of physical manifestations of illness. So the program today is healing trauma through family
constellations and so manic experiencing, and my guest is Efu Nayaki. Destiny is
all about wellness. Healing, personal growth and when I find I should say,
when in my team and I find a author who is working as a
healer and describing her techniques, we want to have her on the program.
I came across a book called Healing Trauma through Family Constellations and Somatic Experiencing Ancestral
Wisdom from the Snell Plan of Tanzania and the author is Efu naiaki Yah and
she is a I mean, she's a generational healer, and this is somebody
you want to have on the show because it's like it's almost in her dna
to be a healer. So it's like, you know, I have friends
that are these natural heelers. And my grandfather was a doctor and he was
one of these natural heroes where he would look at somebody and go, what's
your story? Have you been doing something here that causing you problems? It's
like they're intuitively knowledge like that. So Efu is a healer born and raised
in Tanzania who works internationally facilitating trainings and workshops on trauma healing and this is
a very important topic that we're going to talk about today. She is the
founder of af Ya, a women's holistic healing Center in Brazil and she is
a faculty member at the Somanic Experiencing Trauma Institute and Professor of Systematic Family Constellations
Therapy at Hellinger Science Institute. She's coming to us from Istanbul, and I
want to mention I thought she was in Brazil, so it's late there.
So I before we started, I was like, if I think you're going
to have to have a hot cup of coffee to stay awake to keep going.
Hey, if we welcome the Destiny's so great to have you. Thank
you so much, Cliff. I really like this. I mean, I
know, I said it's worth it to stay at work with this program that
we're going to drop so many people around the world, and shared this ritteness.
You know. So I'm happy Istanbul, Turkey because I'm giving another class
here so magic experiencing and so I just thought it was a great opportunity to
be able to share this book with that. Well. I love the book.
It's published by who's the published by Inner Traditions right in Traditions. Yeah,
they're a great publishing. Now, so you published my book too,
So talk a little bit about your family. Now, your great grandmother was
a healer, right right, and talk about how this came down because you
didn't start out thinking, oh, I'm going to work with people as a
healing with a healing modality. Talk a little bit about your childhood and being
around these people. You must have been in the presence of your father or
your grandfather as they were working. But talk a little bit about the transition
from childhood to an adult. Yes, thank you. Yes. From as
a child. When I was growing up, I had these stories of one
of the great grandmother, who is the mother from my mother's side, Yes,
the mother of my grandfather. And they said, oh, you know
what she used to be. Actually, she got some kind of disease.
She will be lying on bed, but people will come. She couldn't even
move, but people will come to her and explain their diseases and she will
heal them. And she will tell them go and take that plant or that
plant, or she will touch them. They will get healed. So they
said, I mean she was healing except for the other problem. She had
some kind of disability that they never were able to explain it. And so
she just was lying on bed and doing the healing. And so when I
was growing up and I had that so that's one side from my grand From
my mother's side, yeah, I will talk about my father's side. So
then when I head of that story, I always start in my mind,
wow, how would somebody just be lying on bed and heal? You know,
as a little child, you just think about that and you let go
of that. Right. The thing is like really heab or medicines. When
we were little, we never went to the door. You know, will
you have a stomach ake whatever, there's a plant, to take that plant
there and eat it and that's good. And that's how we also did most
of the healing around us. So that's also what's kind of normal. Nothing
to like Leonard say that I'm a healer. But as I actually grew up
and then I began to notice that I do have this capacity to actually touch
people heal people. I remembered then of the story of my grandmother. So
and I said, well, my grandmother was lying in bed healing, and
I move. It's like I moved her energy out of bed and bring it
to the world. So I'm the evolution of part of my grandma moving the
energy of healing out into the whole world. And I'm grateful for her.
I think that's fantastic. Now you right about your ritual initiation at the age
of thirteen with your clan, the Naiaqi clan. Did they tell you at
your initiation that you would be a healer or is it more just becoming a
woman ceremony? This was more of becoming a woman. And again it's more
than a healer. Just what they tell you. You know, when you
become like whether you're a boy or a woman, that every one of us
had to have that ritual at that age of when now you're changing into like
from a child to adolescent moving into the world. They do this before you
go to a boarding school. In my country, we used to have this
boarding school. That mean you left, you leave home and go to a
school where you will only come home in every six months or so. So
that way you're beginning to move out of the home or not and go to
the world. So they do this ritual. Really it's very empowering ritual because
what they tell you this slaughter animals and sacrifices and all that. But there
is this movement where you have an uncle who is the brother of my father
come behind you and they have you carry something in your head on your head
and they say, they say these words like, you know, our daughter,
you're now growing up, and we want to give you to the world.
And when you go to the world, you're going to be big.
You're going to give a lot. You're taking our energy, our ancestral energy,
to make the world a better place for everybody. You're going to be
You're just everything is going to be easy for you and all the ancestors will
accompany. So it's a blessing that comes with everything. Like at that moment,
I felt so I felt like, you know, I felt like it
win, you know, like with people behind in me just sending me off
with that, and I was really proud of myself. I remember saying,
Wow, isn't this wonderful? And I'm ready to fly. I'm ready to
go, you know. Anyway, they bring you in and then the women
receive you. You know, these are men who go to the reachual place
where they cut the animals, and then the women are there waiting for the
meat to come so they can cook and all that. Yeah, I want
to mention also to our listening audience that in this description of this initiation,
they sacrifice the good and then there's a there's a festival, is it for
the whole clan that joins it in the festival for your initiation for the whole
clan. Yes, the whole clan is there and they join into the initiation.
They eat meat, they drink, you know, all of that is
the initiation. When you come, of course, they receive you, and
then they all receive the meat that I carry in my head. It's almost
like you bring and they said, okay, well come, you bring us
a lot of wonderful stuff, like almost like a rehessal of what you're going
to do to the world, Like you're bringing a lot of goodness to the
world. You know. It's so funny as you describe this efu, we
don't have this in the West. You're born and you're putting a little crib
and then it's like you're on your own, whereas there's something about this initiation
that is very not only is it a blessing, it's almost it's almost And
you describe how your uncle is anointing you in a way as part of a
generation of your ancestors, and so you have all these ancestors that are you
know, there in memory aprationally. You know, I think it's extremely powerful.
It is powerful and the fact that is there, but the father doesn't
do it because I think for him sometimes it's very emotional, the father sending
the doll, it's very emotional. So the ancle usually will do it and
the father will just be able to observe. You know. It's very interesting,
that's fascinating. All right. I want you to describe this amazing.
And I don't know if this is a myth or not, but you talk
about the snail healing and in the book you describe how I guess that's your
ancestors or the people before your birth would place snails next to a wound,
and the snail would crawl and the slot whatever the slime is that they create,
would cover the wound and heal it immediately. Now you right in such
a way that this is like earth healing, you know, like like native
world healing. And I'm like, whoa, if that's true, So talk
about that, yes, and so uh, you know, this is the
story that our grandfather used to tell us, so they will say that he
will tell us. Look when in the past, in the history, our
clan became small for some reason. But even with that, they had to
go to the war, you know, for fighting these things of war was
always there, right even if they didn't have guns, they have knives and
spears, you know, and fighting was about stealing the cows from each other,
you know. Okay, So now when they went into the fighting,
they had they our clan some like, they were getting more beaten up and
and the number was going down. And then they my grandfather said, they
prayed to the ancestors and asked the ancestors to really help them recover this because
they don't want to go, you know, to the clan to get totally
finished. And so the ancestors sent this a snail that was very specific.
It was beautiful, was big, you know, it came and it came
in in a in its shell and it was placed at the back of the
house of one of the ancestors. And so then they discovered they said,
oh, yeah, what we were praying for is here. So then they
one of them from the dream. I didn't put these details in there,
but from the dream, one of the ancestors saw the snail and went behind
the house and so the snail was there, and so then they know,
okay, the snail is there to heal the people who come from the world.
So whenever somebody was wounded from the war, they will bring him right
there, and then they put the snail there, and the snail will come
out of its shell, and of course it woke over the wound and it
smears its own that liquid that yeah, yeah, the land that is there
and the wound will cover completely, will be healed immediately instantaneously. So they
were happy. And then the person will get up and or go back to
the wall, and they were like, what is going on? How come
we we are not these people are coming back. But you know, so
then they just didn't know what the secret was. So what you're saying is
that the healing healing was so profound that the person wouldn't die, they'd get
up and recover. They go back to fight. Yes, they get up
and go back to fight. So my grandfather told us in a way that
what I think it was a way I also learned from this. It was
a way of telling the story. You know how sometimes they say, oh,
the when they used to go to the war and then they were all
killed, and then as kids we all felt very sad. Oh they were
killed, isn't that terrible? But he said, no, the best part
is still coming. And then he told us that best part. So then
the shell will come, the snail will come and liak it and then they
are alive again. So that for me, working with trauma is like the
healing of trauma, the transformation interesting healed again. So it was just so
beautiful and I thought, Okay, this is another aspect I'm taking into the
world. You know, heal those who have been traumatized. They'll get up
again, not to go back to the wall, but to live life fully.
So you use it as an analogy for trauma. So trauma, someone
has a traumatic experience, has internal wounding and they need to clear it.
And once they're cleared, they're refreshed and ready to enter society again. Yes,
they're ready to move on with life again and full life. Okay,
So it's a myth about the snail or is it an actual story it actually
happened, or you're not going to tell me because you want to keep it
curious. Okay, I think that's fascinating. Let's talk a little bit about
your life, and then I want to get into this this family constellation therapy,
which I find just amazing. You didn't initially work in healing. Uh
as a young person, you were a teacher for many years. Yes,
talk briefly about that. You taught you know, secondary school, middle school,
and talk a bit about that and then transitioning into the healing. What
was it that got you into the actual work. Maybe it was when you
moved to Brazil. But talk a bit about that, would you please?
Yes? Okay. So I became my study you know, university's usual and
I finished and then I actually studied subjects like mathematics, physics, science subjects,
physics, chemistry, biology. But I always wanted to become a teacher
because that it's a very nice thing to be able to share knowledge with others.
So yeah, sure enough, I got a chance that I went to
the Teachers Training College to learn how to teach, and then of course I
went to Actually I taught in the seminar for three four years there and I
taught these subjects you know that's actually it's a high school. Yeah, from
one to four we call it in the British system. And so I taught
mathematics, are biology, physics, chemistry for four years. But there was
something in me that was telling me, this is not enough. There's more.
You need to do more to satisfy my soul. I felt I need
to do something even though like I will teach during the week and during the
weekend, I went to the community and help women young people organized. I
went on my own. Nobody sent me. I didn't have any project,
just on my own with whatever I had to organize people and teach them about.
I used to say, like, you have to have an intention for
your life, objective of your life. Why God created you for what we
need to live. And that's what I was working with people, with women
and and as inviting them to find their own calling, internal calling. And
as with that, I started feeling I need to follow my calling, something
like vocation. So it was really bothering me such a way that even when
I had I had a boyfriend and he wants to get married, and I
said I can't. I can't because I'm not settled in my mind. You
know, I need to resolve something big. I need to do something more
than this just teaching science and mathematics in the class. I think I have
a higher a vocation I understanding. Actually, he said, well, if
you want to become a religious or whatever, then I will understand that,
and that was really fair enough. So then I met this religious group and
I told them my dilemma what I want to do, and they said,
oh, why don't you join us? We actually work with people all over
the world helping them with healing, with you know, healing with teaching with
so many ways, especially those who are disadvantaged. I said, okay,
I will join you so I can work there. I said, can I
just join you and stay here? They say, no, you have to
actually go to New York. That's where our center house is because there's where
religious people that our center House is in New York. And I actually I
had a panic attack thinking of going to New York's. I couldn't sleep for
a couple of nights because I was scared. It's going to be wind time.
They said, the snow, and how is that going to be?
You know? So I had a bit of difficulties accepting that. Said no,
it's okay, you will manage. So then I went. When I
got to New York, then I saw ow there's whole well met people from
different cultures and you know, talking and listening to the stories of work and
healing. So then they said, why would you like to go to mission
after you have made your commitment towards I said, I studied, and I
said Brazil. I wanted to go back to thousand. Yeah, but then
I discovered that place. It's like, so I chose Brazil. Wow.
And then when I got to Brazil, I will tell you what I think.
The earth, Brazilian earth is what helped me to integrate now begin to
integrate, read all of my earthly healing energy into action. Because as soon
as I got to Brazil, I started getting involved to the women there.
I started this. When you talk about a f a y is a is
afia, it's called afia. It's afia is the name itself in Swahili.
It means healing health. Afia is health. That's why. Yeah, Afia
means health. So that then I, you know, I started that and
we start helping the women heal all of their traumas. There was a lot
of violence and so and I was as I was working with them, I
discovered that it's just not enough to you know, to shout or to do
these methods of mental health or telling stories was not enough. I started setting
and that's when I came across somatic experiencing. But in me and though,
using herbal medicines of which I already knew. I already using some kind of
massage, you know, therapeutic massage, which I already knew, reflexology,
which I already knew. So I was using those methods to heal already,
but I always felt that it was not enough. However, when I was
then, I was searching for more, and I found the somatic experiencing.
Like the whole world opened up because a lot of more healing happened, and
I started now understanding somatic experiencing in terms of the stories I had from my
grandfather. It was something like the Peter Levin's method really connected with my ancestors
in some ways. Yeah, that's fantastic. So it was a holistic method
of healing that all kind of worked together. Huh yes, yes, yes
exactly, and just started into grating it and it worked out that way.
And I and I know everybodybody will say to me, you're so present in
this method, you do so well. When did you learn this? I
mean I learned it very fast, so it just integrated with my own enage
very easily, and that's how it continued. Yeah, so I want you
to talk a little bit about family constellation and transgenerational therapy because it is so
amazing. I don't think I've ever heard of it before, simply because it
doesn't deal with the necessarily present problem. It goes back generations to pre to
family influences that could have left scars on each descending family group, and then
you carry these scars. So give us a brief hint about it. Yes.
So then, of course, after the somatic experiencing I found I thought
that was my answer for everything, but I found out it was not.
So then I was introduced to family Constellation system therapy and again the family consolation.
As soon as I found it like it also felt very much at home
because I connected with my ancestors right away. So when I started using it,
I learned it very fast and everything made sense. Integrated it with my
somatic experiencing, with my my roots. Now I could claim my roots now
as I could feel like I brought them here to Brazil. Oh, I
found them in Brazil, like I came here to reconnect with my ancestors in
many ways from the slavery too, the people who were brought in as slaves,
Oh I, they reminded me so much of home too. It was
amazing real quickly, your book mentions that there is an African community in Brazil.
Is sixty percent of the population. Is that what it is? Yes,
yes, very high. Yes, the African descendant in Brazil, they're
about sixty percent of the population in Brazil. So that whole migrating slaveship trauma
is very very generational, right, it is very generational and it's right there.
So as was amazing. So for me working with this method, I
just feel like we're healing the wounds of years and years and years and so
it is just amazing. Yeah. Yeah, So now let's get it back
so we don't get lost too much of this. I want to explain though,
how it works. That is very important for the listener. Yeah,
that was my next question. If okay, give it, tell us how
it works, and if you would please give us an example without using names
of somebody, I would love to hear about somebody who had great grandparents who
were on the slave ships and how you release that trauma because that is embedded
on a cellular level, right, yes, yes, yes, yeah.
So so one of the first of all we talk about this method of family
consolation, is it helps our client of the people, the group of people
who are listening to it, is to help them to really understand their conflicts
that have been passing on over and over and over again. Family conflicts.
These all kinds of problems that have been carried on, and even some patents
of that, like alcoholic patents and drag patterns that been having passed on and
over and over again from one generation to another and make everyone so unhappy,
and nobody can explain that. To family consolation, it helps us to understand
where is that coming from. And when we look at it, it will
look it's almost like we're looking at something that it's invisible. But the family
consolation help us to see it clearly of how it became about. And when
we talk about being invisible, and yet the method help us to be seen,
it's because the method itself, it uses other people, human beings,
you know, to represent other members of the family. And as you play,
it's almost like a social drama, but it's not exactly the drama,
but you're representing other people, and yet you bring the energy of that of
those people in here, and then people beginning to understand begins to understand what
had happened in the past. You can play it is exactly. You can
use exact people, or you can use you know, like little dolls or
any representation you Okay, so let me stop you real quickly here. So
what you're saying is the therapy is developed where you bring in the ancestors who
you are acknowledging, and through some kind of role playing you can bring their
energy in a present state and articulate them or speak, And that's the therapy.
By speaking it, yes, by explaining what is going on when they
speak, then we begin to understand. Ah, that was the problem,
right, Okay, So when they yeah, when they share how they are
feeling, we ask them to explain how they are feeling, and they bring
up these feelings, these emotions that help us to understand what is happening in
the present life. It's amazing. Yeah. And so then I'll give you
an example quickly, because as we are talking here people, it can become
very abstract. It is very I'm going if we got to give somebody,
I mean, can you give like a case study of perhaps a woman who
you worked with who was able to extract her ancestors and perhaps relived being on
these slave ships or that's a horrible experience, you know, or something that
kind of identifies her trauma with alcohol abuse or drug abuse or sexual abuse or
whatever. I don't know, all right, Okay, so maybe I'll give
you a very good example. Actually this one of it was a young man.
Okay, I was a young man who's was not in the in the
in the in the ship, you know, from the ship from the slavery.
Maybe I will remember another one from the slavery. But this young man,
he was actually an evangelical who decided not to ever drink or not to
ever use any substance abuse and drugs or anything, because he said his father
and his grandfather and his grand great grandfather were alcoholics, and therefore he resolved
that if he became a religious evangelical religious where they don't drink at all,
he will resolve all the problems. However, by doing that, he was
doing a big judgment. Actually, he's so proud they were it's almost like
saying that they were doing wrong and I'm going to do the right thing.
So yeah, that judgment comes in there. So anyway, yeah, he
decided he was doing quite well. When he got married. He had a
son, and the son was about five years old, and then he got
involved with these what do you call that, people who do not believe in
God? Atheists, you know as atheists who aren't say that we don't believe
that God exists. And they do this in the through the computer. So
they and then you go to the face you know, on our days with
the medium. So they go to the Facebook and he goes he was into
that, going to the Facebook and found them and he started arguing with them,
Oh, yeah, God exists, God is here, God is good,
and God is that, and they say, nah, you don't know
what you're talking about. So they go back and forth. Yeah, with
his fingers on the on the computer. Yeah, you know what I'm going
to say, right. He got addicted to that, so addicted to that
that one day his little boy five years old goes like ten o'clock, eleven
o'clock. He said that let's go to bed, and why are you always
in that computer? He's like, go, go, go, go to
go to sleep with your mom. He pushed the boys over that with his
hand and then the boy fell off and he was his head was bleeding,
and the mother come out and said what is going on here? And he's
still on there. He said, I'm talking to this fes. I didn't
want to show them God. And so of course when she got there and
shook him and said, what are you doing? The boy is bleeding.
We have to take him to the hospital what they call an ambulance. And
of course they're saying why the father was beating the kid. It became a
big issue. Then he woke up, what am I doing? I'm so
addicted. So then he became so guilt. He lost it because I think
he remembered that he's addicted and now trying to be better, so he was
he completely lost it and he started yelling and screaming and beating people. They
had to put him in the the hospital of the Mental Psychic Hichic War.
Yeah. So then you know, people visited him and people who knew him
said, no, I think they do family consolation. He will be okay.
They could sid that he was just taking the medication and he was not
getting better, and so they brought him to us. So we did a
family consolation. So where did it go? When we're doing a family consolation?
We just put somebody to represent him, his father and grandfather and you
know, and his alcoholics, and he's not him, but his addiction.
We put his addiction. You know why his addiction went to when when to
place itself in the grand great grandparents that way back there, that were in
Africa, or are they in Brazil? They were in Brazil. Oh,
he had come over already. They were in Brazil already. But it was
an African ancestry, and that African ancestry said, well, you're right,
you think we are wrong? How about you? Now? Okay they speak
like that, and then everybody understood. Oh. So actually this connection of
his addiction is connected to his to the grandparents' addiction, like, you think
we are wrong, how about you? Now look at what you did.
We never heard our children. You had your son. And the person who's
saying that doesn't even know him, but it's somebody who is just representing,
and everybody who is there saying, oh my gosh. I think because he
was so proud of not drinking and judging his own ancestors and he thought he
was doing the right thing. But now look at what happened. So what
do we do? In the end, we ask him, we have something
in the family consolation, which is called the orders of love and the orders
of love. I saw that, Yeah, you saw that. There has
to do with something of really lots of respect. It's like honoring, reverencing
those who came before us. And so what he did actually for him to
get well again come from the mental health problem. He had to reverence his
ancestors and said, yes, I cannot mess with what you had. I
don't know where it came from. It's too big for me. I leave
it with you, and that I will ask for your blessing. That is
what is important, and your strength and your love, and I can move
on with my son and my wife. Thanks, that was enough, and
he's healed. We're gonna take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to
identify themselves and we will return shortly with my guest today, Ifu Nayaki,
will be right back. My guest today is Ifu Nayaki. She is a
Tanzanian healer with the tradition of working with people with trauma and also the family
dynamic trauma down through generations. Talk a real briefly, because this is an
amazing technique transgenerational therapy. Somebody must be in a bad state to come to
you. First of all, right, or can it be anybody who has
an issue that is kind of intuitively bothering them and they want to work on
it exactly. The second part anything like you feel like, I'm quite satisfied
with my life right now. I don't know what's going on. I'm okay,
get a good salary, I have a familiar wife, have children.
But it's just something that right you're just start in the family consolation. It
will show you what is going on. That's so amazing. The other thing
IFU is that you made it seem like there is more than one therapist in
the room with this person. Is that the case or is it like three
or four people that are working with this individual and they're all kind of giving
them hints of what they're seeing or feeling. Yes, Like you know when
I said when I talked about representation, So we talk about it's very nice.
When you are you want to do the therapy. Then you invite the
person who is going to who's bringing the issue. Let's say this is the
client, So you ask them to pick people from their room. In the
room, you will have we always this is like a community healing really,
Oh, you have full of people like seven eight, nine, ten eleven
depet and they also come with their own cases, but they just want to
watch. So they're sitting in a second, and you ask now the client
to pick up somebody to represent, to represent this person themselves, to represent
the issue that is making them feeling uncomforab wait stop for a minute. So
you're in the circle and you are the leader, is saying, pick somebody
to represent your grandfather to represent the problem. Yeah, well you right,
you don't have to pick up the grandfather yet, okay, right, like
you come. You can imagine you come and you say, I have something
bothering me, but I don't know exactly what is, and said, okay,
come over. So as a pick up somebody to represent yourself and somebody
to represent the problem. Oh so they do that. Okay, Now they
pick up somebody who does not know them at all. Okay. So then
after that the therapist, now everybody else seats and wait, including the client
watching, And then we what we do is we just let the energy sit
in the room. We keep quiet, and in the quiet there is a
movement. Those who were chosen to represent They begin to do some unconscious movement
without knowing what they are doing. They feel uncomfortable and they start moving,
or they go here or they go there, and oftentimes, if the problem
was then connected to the ancestors, they move back behind the person because we
have the understanding that our ancestors is behind are behind us. This is so
strange. It's amazing that you're setting a resonance, a certain healing circle.
Yeah, and the energy is bringing in the energy of these previous souls.
Yes, exactly, exactly and without knowing, and it's so simple. And
they go there and we said, okay, this place is a represent of
this ancestor. So we say what do you know about your ancestor for and
say, oh, yeah, you know, my ancestor came from the slavery
and they had this problem and that problem. And then we start tracing back.
Maybe you need to add more, maybe his wife, maybe he had
five wives. You put them there, and then all of a suddenly,
you know they you just listen to their language, what they're bringing up,
and then actually the solution comes about. We begin to understand what is going
on. And the people, the person who came, they understand more than
everybody else. They said, now I understand what's going on. I have
a grandfather who died of this, and I always thought of him, and
I really would like to give this back to him so I can live my
life today. So you give it back to him because he's bigger. So
what we're doing here in the TransGeneration of healing as like the new generations,
we have a tendency of wanting to take over and repeat exactly what our ancestors
did because either we judge them to things very important, Either we judge them
because they didn't do the right thing, or we feel pity for them.
We pity them, and we're not supposed to do none of that. We're
supposed to reverence them, to thank them for being who they are, great
people and anyway they are inside of us and we can do better today because
of their blessings. And I think they're very happy to see us doing better,
but they don't want us to feel pity for them or to judge them.
Talk about a quote that you have a chapter this says trauma is measured
by impact, not events. Yeah, talk about that, because your entire
book is about the subtleties of trauma. We don't see trauma, and trauma
doesn't necessarily have to be a cut on the arm. It's a cut on
the soul that is hidden, but we don't see it. So someone can
be working around, walking around completely damaged by the heaviness of the traumas it's
afflicted on his life. So talk about that quote of uh not impact,
No excuse me, it's not event. It's measured by impact. Yes,
exactly, because sometimes when we talk about trauma, people always go and wanting
to tell stories about the event itself. But really the event is something that
happened in the past. It's gone, but it's our reaction, how we
reacted towards that event. This is what remained in our neighbor's system. Yeah,
now if remember I will, I will go back to some examples that
I give. If when my grandfather was telling the story, if he wasn't
careful enough to bring the healing part listening to his story of people who were
killed in the war, it could have traumatized me, Yeah, because I
was like, oh my gosh, they were taken to the war and they
all died. So now my ancestors are very few, so we have very
few, and I will feel pity on them. I'll be stuck in there
until today. So that's it. It's the impact. How does that story
impacted me? When I was listening to him? But it was clever enough.
When I was about to get the impact, he pulled me out and
said, wait, there's the best part that is coming, and the best
part is the results. Uh huh. There was something else which brought the
healing. And where there's a trauma, there's always a resource. Yeah,
we just look around and see it so that we are not stuck on the
trauma all the time. But remember that there was a resource for healing.
Okay, so trauma is very subtle. I was just mentioning you don't necessarily
see it, but a lot of us are walking around with a lot of
trauma, are we? Yes? How do we resolve? Do you?
I mean, give us a technique if you will. And by the way,
those of you listening, this book that IFU has written has wonderful solutions
for She calls them action steps for resolving problems. Give us a couple.
Here's one. A huge problem that you list in the book is stress.
Yeah, and can you give us a few action steps for managing stress?
Yes? The action steps for managing stress is, first of all, okay,
you're stressed, up and mostly many people who are traumatized, who have
trauma in the body. Like you said, many of us walk around with
traumas. You just feel your body feels like it has to do something all
the time, so you cannot settle, you cannot see, you see,
but you're always looking around. Like now they sit, but they're always looking
at the telephones. Oh my god, those iPhones are terrible. Yeah,
you see it. But they're always trying to do something. This is signs
of trauma and stress. So one action step I suggest is, first of
all, we invite people to sit and begin to notice their feet on the
ground. This is what we call the ground. It's simple. Few shoes
on the floor there, and feel like, oh yeah, I'm grounded.
As you're tapping the shoes on the floor, like you're feeling, Oh yeah,
there's a floor beneath me and it is holding me, it's crowning me.
So there's a chair that I'm sitting on. And then it's giving me
some com foot Oh that's nice. And when I notice those two things,
how do I feel? I take a deep breath, and already I'm beginning
to get out of whatever I was. I wanted to do. And I'm
settling here inviting people to be in the present moment and noticing what is here
right now, and then we are guiding them into the body because it is
in the body where the trauma is. So when you're able to connect with
your body, you're actually being able to feel present of here now. And
then as you're doing that, slowly magic energy is being liberated from your never
as system. Because you might feel like a little bit of tingling, a
little bit of learning, a little bit of trembling, and that is why
the liberation of energy is happening. So do you feel much better? Actually?
Here in America, my African American friends have been immersed in trauma because
of the civil rights, because of just the lifestyle abuse, racism. Yes.
And I have come to realize in many cases, they are numb to
their feelings, yes, And so they can't get in touch with their emotions.
They're just angry all the time and wanna and want to fight, and
wanna reach out and say, You're not going to treat me like this anymore.
I'm a human being, da dad. How do those individuals begin to
heal the trauma? Because I think what you're doing is amazing. And if
their intuition is turned off, they're not going to know what to do.
Yes, they do know inside themselves. Okay, Now there's lots of trauma
with these people of African descendant of African American, Brazilian American, I mean
Brazilian, African, Brazilian, all of these, you know, Caribbean.
You have all these African people inside their bodies. Okay, so what we
invite them? You know how African people are so good with singing and dancing.
Yeah, so I invite when I work with people like this, I
know there. Now, I invite them to start harming for exams. Hey,
let's do a little bit. Let's do a little bit of humming.
Immediately they join you because it's in the blood when they start humming and they
start moving their body. Also, this is a way of healing trauma.
It's really a very very good resource. So beginning to feel a little bit
of mint rhythm and they start feeling happy, and with that you can capture
it with and now how are you feeling? Asking their badly sensation and they're
explaining and then little by little, actually you're helping them reberating all the traumatic
energy. But This is a way of getting them in touch with their body
through the resources they have had. I know that harming is one of them
singing, dancing, and you know, just this is a cultural way and
it helps, and this they learned from their ancestors also, ha ha.
I really like the idea of the reliving the ancestral trauma and getting in touch
with that because it could be my great great great grandfather. He stands in
front of me and this is what he's telling me. This is what I'm
feeling about him, and getting in touch with his feelings and seeing because of
the blood it being passed down to me and maybe I have this issue with
this thing or that thing. It's like, it's so amazing, and then
using intelligent emotion and saying, well, I give you back the suffering because
you already dealt with it, but I will take the blessing and the goodness.
I'll take the blessing, I'll take the strength because the suffering, you
see, you're living in the present moment. The suffering, it's already happened,
and they took it with them, they died with it. But today
I don't have a need to suffer anymore like them, but I can reclaim
their strength and their resources. The books called Healing Trauma through Family Constellations and
Somatic Experiencing. My guess today has been Efu Nayaki. As we conclude,
talk a little bit about and this is for women, sexual trauma and how
do you resolve this? Because here in the West, you know, some
people are raised with respect how to respect others? Some people are not.
Do you not understand what respect is? And relationships and things like that,
and so you get in a relationship and all of a sudden, you don't
know what the hell you're doing, and you hurt people because trauma. But
I'm curious about sexual trauma because it is so prevalent. Yeah, it is.
First of all, there's something we call order, you know, the
order of love. Also one of the orders of love is that there's order
in the family. Right, so there's a place of a mother, there's
a place of a father. It's very traditional. But you have partners who
are not father or mother. They are two men together or the two right,
you know, like, let me finish this fetter. I can give
an example of two men that get together and they want to be you know,
they want to create a family. So when you have a mother here
and a father, the traditional and father, and then they have a child.
When a father and a mother know their places, even when they fight,
they know their father and a mother, and a child is a child
when we know that the love flow in a very organized way. When now
the father fight with the mother and then now they start looking at the child
as a partner and live alone, live the partner on the side, or
they start having competition in you know, in terms of their child. They
start pulling the child into their fighting. And after sometimes this create what I
called I think I might have mentioned in the book too. I call it
sexual entanglements. And the sexual entanglements they begin to repeat. They could have
come from the ancestors too, but they begin to repeat. Where you have
a father and a daughter very close relationship, even if they don't have sexual
intercourse, but they really have this energy and big words energy which the doctor.
The daughter doesn't get resolved, he cannot, she cannot really get married
to anybody and resolve themselves. The father doesn't get along with the mother,
and if he marries somebody else, it's hard because the daughter is always there.
So this is sexual entanglement. And this repeats themselves in so many ways.
Now, when people like this move on into their marriage, sometimes they
found their sexual lives and you know, like entangled in many ways, where
then you find the rapes begin to happen, the incests begin to happen.
Because many intersts that I work with, I found a lot of these entanglements
that happened before them. So usually I found the sexual issues, sexual matters,
sexual traumas are connected to trans transgenerational trauma. Wow, when we are
able to look at that, we heal a lot of sexual traumas. When
we look at the sexual traumas as like this guy is very bad, he
did something wrong, he's wrong, he's wrong, he's wrong. He will
just keep repeating, you know all this woman is wrong and wrong and wrong.
It just keep repeating. But when we look at the roots and look
at where the entanglement started, we are able to heal trauma, sexual trauma
in its roots completely. Yeah. And so now, because I'm talking with
people from the United States from you know, west, from the West,
also just want to say that this is not only for the traditional family.
But if I have two men who are a couple and they decided to adapt
a child. If the two stays in their place, yeah, and they're
very much united even when they are fighting, but they know their place as
partner, then the child who is adapted knows that they they are the child
who's adapted. But if the two fights and they start bringing that child inside,
it will be the same way. So it doesn't matter what kind of
relationship this is, but it is the place of who is adult and who
is a child, and how the adult relates and they don't let their energy
overpower their children. Yeah, this is where the issue is and this is
how I heal sexual trauma and sexual entanglements. Do you think that sexual relations
are too casual for a lot of people and that the entanglements can happen with
this casual feelings? I mean not that you have to pray to God every
time you have sex, but you know, can I don't know, it
just came out. What do you say a therapist? I know, as
a therapist, I you know, let me as a therapist, I will
tell you this sexual energy is one of the most powerful energy. It's a
life giving energy. Yeah, and so when you use it correctly, it's
faful, it's life giving, it's pleasurable. It's just the most that's all
we have for life giving. That's so I even come to I know that's
you know, when people have this, they feel more alive. Yeah,
they feel more alive and more more, more together, more happier and all
of that. But because of all the entanglement, it becomes an object and
it missed. It gets to be misused, you know, and used in
the wrong place, used as a punishment you used as you know, and
apart from punishment, it can also be used as a revenge, you know
what I mean. So we misuse the energy, and again it's because of
the sexual entanglement. We trace it back, we find it in some of
the ancestors where it was tack someplace, and now we can actually help to
untangle it and people live again. This very powerful, wonderful, very very
pleasurable energy that is life giving to all. Let me I want to ask
you again about the transgenerational trauma. How much how acute is it? As
a therapist, do you see it like everybody's got this issue or are some
people so perhaps they came in a little more evolved in the average person and
they cleared it out as a young person I don't know how they would do
it, but maybe they were into meditation, or they got into reiki,
or they got into some form of cleansing and that trauma is gone. But
talk about that for a bit. I mean what we can say, we
say, like trauma is very rampant. Many people have trauma. Transgenerational trauma
is there, but it's not like every moment you'll find it. Like you
you're in your life, and that's even where you are right now in your
work. You've been doing well, great job, but all of suddenly there's
something that comes up that becomes like a little bit of mysterious. You go
to the therapies, but you cannot really resolve it. And then let me
check with transgenerational trauma, and you find that is result there. So it's
not like something you carry, you know, throughout your life. But it's
part of our daily life. You know why, because we are our ancestors.
Read their DNA. Yeah, if so, whatever in our thinking and
our doing, in our everything we do, sometimes some of their energy,
cellular energy perhaps up. I've done most of my work like this and I
feel like I'm resolved, but once in a while, I can't have a
little conflict, and I said, what is this? And I go and
to open the family conslation. I do work with it, and I found
it in some ancestors too, or I found it in Yeah, sometimes it's
in our own belief system too, And and you know, you entangle it
and you continue living. So it's a continuous process because they're part of us.
We are part of them, but we make sure we give them their
place and we have our place, and we don't want to suffer for them,
but we want to get more their resources, their blessings. And if
this has been really an enjoyable interview and you really shed light on a whole
new way to deal with trauma and its influence on our life. As we
conclude in a number of locations in the book, you suggest that this book
is a resource. How can people who purchase the book use it as a
resource. What would your suggestions be? Well, I suggest it as a
resource because when they read and it's very simple, I write, very simple,
right, of course, I think it's very easy to read. Yes,
But then at the end of every chapter we have those action steps,
right, and in the action steps, you read slowly and you put it
down and you practice it. It really helps you to Some people have already
told me that they they already got benefit from it just stopping and practicing it
by themselves. Yeah, especially those who know so much experiencing, because it's
good to stop and pay attention to your body. Because with somatic experiencing,
you're able to be present. That helps a lot to practice whatever I have
given there. Everything's helpful, it's not. People can get in touch with
me and then I will tell them what to do. Call me in Brazil.
Can you do self healing with the family constellations or do you still have
to have the group where sometimes you can? Because if I come across something
that I just remember that, oh wow, that like I remember one time
telling a story about my mother. Okay, this is very simple. I
told the story about my mother and I said, my mother was a very
simple and naive person. Okay. So now after sometimes I remember I had
a little bit of a guilt in my heart and I actually I ended up
having a conflict with one of the colleagues that we are working together, and
this colleague I also look at her the same way. I thought she was
very simple and naive. I know, but all I suddenly when I'm meditated
about it and I become aware. I went back and Anna my mother,
and I said, you know, when I say that, I think I
still carry a little pride in me thinking that I knew better than you.
And now when I do it to you, I repeat it to the people
I live with today. So I actually lie down and Anna, I reverenced
my mother and say, I'm sorry for calling you naive. I mean,
if I think you and naive, I am too because of your p So
I better say that I better change my language. And that's it. And
then I got I got better alone with the other colleague I was working with,
So I ended up doing it. When you have the knowledge, you
might be able to untangle some little things, but there are some big things
that you need a group that helps to you. At the very beginning,
you mentioned using intention. How important is intention in the healing process? Oh?
Yeah, intention? So what do I really want to do this?
Like? What is my intention as I'm sitting here with you? Okay,
I put it my intention. There's one point you ask a question and I'm
like, okay, God, help me to answer this in a way that
it brings clarity to people I love. That good for you, Sally.
You know when you asked about the sexual trauma, I knew this is very
polemic. So immediately it's like okay, God, okay, there comes please
help me. The intention here is not to create any polemic here, but
to help people understand. Okay. It works like a magic like that.
IFU, it's been a pleasure speaking with you, and I know you're ready
to go to sleep now it's way past your bedtime, and I appreciate you
staying up to interview with me. It's been a lot of fun. Thank
you, Thank you so much, and I will actually go right to bed
and then we'll continue mean in touch. I will send you the website,
the clean website. Yeah, okay, bye bye, Thank you very much.
Ifu's therapeutic approach is not that unusual. It's been going on a lot.
It's not offered by allopathy, it's not offered by oriental medicine. It's
unique. And if you do a search for traumatic therapists and actually family constellation
therapy or trauma reduction, you'll find it. I'm sure on the internet.
Always do near me when you're doing a search, and that's where it'll come
up. So it's nice having her on the program. And I know it's
funny. I have a number of friends who are African American and they,
you know, I can't imagine what they're going through, especially those people who
live in the Southern United States, Southern States where there is systemic racism.
It's just part of the culture. You know. People can't help themselves.
It's handed down generationally, and that is so traumatic, you know, just
being treated poorly by your neighbor, by your community. It's a challenge,
you know. So anyhow, that was interesting. I want to mention that
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com Forward slash Tours all right, that's it for this program. I want
to think my guest today Ifu Nayaki, as always, the team of Gail
tor Mark Foster and everyone who makes this thing happen. You guys rock,
all right, take care of me well, and we will talk to you
next time.