Speaker 1: Welcome to Skin and Soul. I'm Gwenhemkarsley, a transformational body,
Speaker 1: sex and Soul coach, and I'm inviting you on a bold,
Speaker 1: unfiltered journey into the heart of our humanity through the
Speaker 1: lens of arrows. This is where we strip away the shame,
Speaker 1: dive into the unspoken, and embrace the wild.
Speaker 2: Raw truth of our desires.
Speaker 1: Together, we'll crack open the taboo and cover our deepest
Speaker 1: intimacies and awaken the pulse of our sexual essence. Because
Speaker 1: real transformation it's messy, it's thrilling, and it's oh so delicious.
Speaker 2: Buckle up, loves.
Speaker 1: Skin and Soul Beyond the Pale starts.
Speaker 2: In three two one. Let's go.
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome back.
Speaker 2: I'm Gwenhem.
Speaker 3: I'm your host of Skin and Soul Beyond the Pale,
Speaker 3: and today we're going to be talking about heartache, the loneliness, pandemic,
Speaker 3: the things that we never get to fully digest, the
Speaker 3: loves that linger and the wounds that settle into the body,
Speaker 3: the stories that we keep feeding or keeping alive after
Speaker 3: they've stopped nourishing us. So I'm really lucky to have
Speaker 3: today with me. Ben Ufana, thank you for being here
Speaker 3: who is a healer, a teacher, and an author who
Speaker 3: has spent at least thirty five of his very young
Speaker 3: years doing the things that most of us spent our
Speaker 3: lives out running and avoiding.
Speaker 4: So welcome Ben, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: I have spent the day with you quite literally just
Speaker 3: kind of absorbing your energy and your work, which is
Speaker 3: really beautiful and magical. And I think where I'd love
Speaker 3: to start is a little bit about your.
Speaker 2: Journey and.
Speaker 3: The Vision Quest, because explaining what the vision quest is
Speaker 3: and how you kind of came to it.
Speaker 5: Sure, initially from a very early age, I was drawn
Speaker 5: to Native Americans and fascination continue to grow in to adolescence.
Speaker 5: When I first learned about the traditional Native doctors, I decided,
Speaker 5: if given the opportunity, this is what I'll do with
Speaker 5: my life. Took off on my own at seventeen, landed
Speaker 5: in a community predominantly Kiaway Indians, was sitting up all
Speaker 5: night in the teepees with the native elders and is
Speaker 5: in one of these pyote meetings I met my mentor,
Speaker 5: or as Dalkeye. This is one of the last surviving
Speaker 5: traditional Kiahway doctors that time. In the apprenticeship he transmitted
Speaker 5: portions of his own healing gifts. And typically what is
Speaker 5: involved is you go through the vision quest, which generally
Speaker 5: involves the four days and nights without food and water
Speaker 5: alone in the mountains in order to earn the right
Speaker 5: to work with those gifts of healing. And although I
Speaker 5: missed a number of years in my twenties in my
Speaker 5: wandering alone in the desert phase, metaphorically, at thirty one,
Speaker 5: I started going back. And since that time, I've been
Speaker 5: going And this is like over thirty years ago. Now
Speaker 5: I'm older, I look and just spring and fall like clockwork.
Speaker 3: Because yeah, and what brings you what keeps you going back?
Speaker 3: So when you tell when you speak of a vision quest,
Speaker 3: first of all, what is the process? Like, what brings
Speaker 3: you there to do the vision quest?
Speaker 5: Initially I was thinking about how are reflecting on how
Speaker 5: a lot of these traditional native doctors they were developed
Speaker 5: extraordinary gifts of healing and other capabilities that range into
Speaker 5: the paranormal. And I was thinking, hey, if I need
Speaker 5: to go back, this is how these individuals became so
Speaker 5: extraordinarily powerful and and so I was feeling that pull
Speaker 5: and I reached out to a friend back in Oklahoma
Speaker 5: and I was living in New Mexico, and I said, sure,
Speaker 5: come on out. And I remember the first time I
Speaker 5: was back in Oklahoma to go on the vision quest
Speaker 5: and I was on the in the witch Tap Mountains
Speaker 5: and I was woefully unprepared to sleeping bag that was
Speaker 5: grossly inadequate. I was freezing my ass off and fortunately
Speaker 5: it didn't rain that time. But literally I felt as
Speaker 5: though I was waiting to die at one point, and
Speaker 5: I was having the traumas, the traumatic memories of early
Speaker 5: childhood just flooding back into my awareness and in it
Speaker 5: even in subsequent vision quests that happened numerous times where
Speaker 5: events that lift experiences were flooding back, and all the
Speaker 5: vivid sensory impressions, all the emotions, the thoughts that were
Speaker 5: occurring at the time, oh, that was coming back. And
Speaker 5: it's like I could feel this presence working within my body,
Speaker 5: helping me to digest what I had experienced, and this
Speaker 5: new foundation was gradually taken shape. Which now this has
Speaker 5: played a hugely important part in my own healing process
Speaker 5: because so much of the trauma of the dysfunction that
Speaker 5: I internalized that was playing out in my relationships. I
Speaker 5: was caught in the cycle of re enactingment and so
Speaker 5: it was through the Vision Quest that that started to dismantle,
Speaker 5: to come apart, and that new foundation developed.
Speaker 3: Because I know you talk about having gone through some
Speaker 3: toxic relationships and so on. So when you went to
Speaker 3: do the Vision Quest and all of this wounding was
Speaker 3: coming up all like you just said, your traumas were
Speaker 3: showing up, and I'm like, I'm going why on earth
Speaker 3: would somebody want to do that? How was that experience
Speaker 3: for you? To move through it before and after?
Speaker 5: At the time, it could be excruciating. And part of
Speaker 5: it too was you know, before I started going back
Speaker 5: to do the Vision Quest, like as I said, my
Speaker 5: mentor had transmitted portions of his healing gifts to me,
Speaker 5: and I parked myself in college for a few years.
Speaker 5: I needed to reassemble myself because the training was really extreme.
Speaker 5: He would do things like at one point he dropped
Speaker 5: me off in the middle of the Hopee Indian Reservation
Speaker 5: said hitchlike to Las Vegas. Make it the best you can.
Speaker 5: And that was traumatic so extent. You know, at twenty
Speaker 5: to go through that and being in survival mode.
Speaker 4: But as it's come in time for.
Speaker 5: Graduation, then it's like, wow, you know, college financial aid's
Speaker 5: running out. I actually have to support myself. And when
Speaker 5: I started working with other people and that transmission, that
Speaker 5: gift was awakening, a lot of that trauma was surfacing,
Speaker 5: and I was caught in the cycle of reenactment, and
Speaker 5: so the emotions that surface at that time were debilitating,
Speaker 5: is incapacitating, I could hardly get out of bed, is excruciating.
Speaker 5: Yet instinctively I taught myself to dive into the depths
Speaker 5: of what was coming up in those moments. I mean,
Speaker 5: I did go through a few years of psychotherapy that
Speaker 5: was extraordinarily helpful to give me the much needed intellectual
Speaker 5: understanding of why was the mess I was and the
Speaker 5: dysfunction playing out?
Speaker 4: But the patterns were continuing.
Speaker 5: I continue to attract the same type of individual, the
Speaker 5: same kinds of emotions kept resurfacing. So it was by
Speaker 5: teaching myself to go into the depths of these emotions
Speaker 5: that and I would sometimes breathe into the depths of
Speaker 5: what I was feeling for hours on end, but at
Speaker 5: a certain point I could feel it breaking open and
Speaker 5: coming out of my body in waves. And as that happened,
Speaker 5: there was these powerful emanations of warmth that were beginning
Speaker 5: to emerge from within, and so it was breaking dissolving
Speaker 5: those unhealthy attachments. And so my attachment or fixation to
Speaker 5: someone who was not a good match, and there were
Speaker 5: a few that had either borderline narcissistic tendencies or even
Speaker 5: issues with alcohol and other substances, those attachments were dissolving.
Speaker 5: But the thing is, the wounding was so deep, and
Speaker 5: that's when I really started exploring, which is what I
Speaker 5: encourage people who do. In addition to working with this practice,
Speaker 5: we need to be incorporating the most effective therapeutic interventions
Speaker 5: to facilitate the healing that we cannot fully do on
Speaker 5: our own. And then again at thirty one, when I
Speaker 5: start feeling that pool to go back to do the
Speaker 5: vision quest, that has been the most powerful as far
Speaker 5: as I dismantling, taking apart this deeply ingrained patterns that
Speaker 5: were we developed these for lack of a better term, configurations.
Speaker 5: You know, it's like the lived experiences and the emotions,
Speaker 5: the thought processes, everything just it solidifies within our bodies.
Speaker 5: And where so many people get into trouble too, is
Speaker 5: the fact that the vast majority of people have never
Speaker 5: learned to work effectively with their own emotions.
Speaker 4: And so the tendencies we deny.
Speaker 5: We suppress, we distract ourselves, we do everything we can,
Speaker 5: Like I don't want to go there. I don't want
Speaker 5: to feel that we pour ourselves out of it. But
Speaker 5: that the wounding, the trauma, the emotions, everything resides in
Speaker 5: our body. And it's hard word, and I found it's
Speaker 5: essential to have the combination of both. Like like, I
Speaker 5: studied hypnosis for a few years and I kind of
Speaker 5: got distracted from that deep emotional processing I described, and
Speaker 5: I would go to the mountain and that despite all
Speaker 5: that power, a lot of it was bouncing off of
Speaker 5: me because I was so armored. But then I just
Speaker 5: that instinctual knowing pulled me back. It's like, no, go
Speaker 5: back and do your practice.
Speaker 3: We have to want to though, like, and I think
Speaker 3: that's the thing, like when I think about, you know,
Speaker 3: my own journey, which also started probably pretty young, where
Speaker 3: I started just having that calling for some form of healing,
Speaker 3: which I think many people are like, I don't know
Speaker 3: anything about healing, or I don't you know, or even
Speaker 3: in the thought of I want to heal, I always wonder,
Speaker 3: you know, whether that's I think people initially think they
Speaker 3: want to heal, but there's a lot of work.
Speaker 2: That goes into it.
Speaker 3: And so when it comes to things like we're really
Speaker 3: talking about attachment here, like being attached to whether it's
Speaker 3: a person or a story or a dream or whatever
Speaker 3: it is that's causing us to suffer in some capacity. Right,
Speaker 3: But even when we say we want to heal, we
Speaker 3: have this attachment to not letting go of even the suffering.
Speaker 3: And so it does like you going to the mountain
Speaker 3: every year or twice a year and to do the
Speaker 3: vision quest. And I think just to give people context, right,
Speaker 3: you go, you fast for four days, there's no water,
Speaker 3: there's no food, You're in extreme kind of conditions. I
Speaker 3: love that you were thrown to Las Vegas. I go
Speaker 3: on the trip, right, part of me is like what
Speaker 3: did you learn on that trip?
Speaker 2: Like not I'm never coming and doing this again.
Speaker 3: But for most people it's like how do I do?
Speaker 2: You know? How do I stay in this?
Speaker 3: Because most people are like, oh my god, you know
Speaker 3: now I've got to be with myself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's so crucial because whatever we deny or
Speaker 5: suppress or disconnect from, we carry it. You know, there's
Speaker 5: no way that you're going to get rid of it.
Speaker 5: It's it's parts of us split off. They operate from
Speaker 5: the subconscious mind. There's sometimes there's a deadening of parts
Speaker 5: of self that and eventually they they manifesto some kind
Speaker 5: of illness or pathology. I don't I'll say everything you're
Speaker 5: carrying is going to manifest is in the illness. But
Speaker 5: that often is the case. And I see that in
Speaker 5: the work I do with people, especially as people are
Speaker 5: growing older their forties and fifties, sixties and on, our
Speaker 5: bodies are not quite as resilient as they were, say
Speaker 5: when we were in our teens and twenties or even thirties.
Speaker 5: So I'm working with people with stroke and heart disease,
Speaker 5: and all this residual is like leaking out, just rage
Speaker 5: and anger and grief and so much so and.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, And I do think, you know,
Speaker 3: I look at my mom now, who is eighty four,
Speaker 3: and I do have this theory that what we don't
Speaker 3: deal with kind of amplifies as we get older.
Speaker 2: So we haven't dealt with the rage.
Speaker 3: If you haven't dealt with the sadness or the grief
Speaker 3: or whatever it is, that somehow it houterized is itself
Speaker 3: or I don't know if that's the right word, or
Speaker 3: crystallizes in our bodies in a way and it cements
Speaker 3: in our personalities and shows up that way. I find,
Speaker 3: you know, like witnessing multitude of people just as they
Speaker 3: get older, if they're not like dealing with their shit,
Speaker 3: that it's the impact of life itself is like just
Speaker 3: becomes solidified and they're like, this is just what it is, right,
Speaker 3: and it's and it's always like, no, there's there is
Speaker 3: a path, but it's not an easy path.
Speaker 4: Not at all.
Speaker 3: No, No, And I wanted to ask you because because
Speaker 3: I what today when I was watching around COVID, because
Speaker 3: I think COVID was one of those moments in our
Speaker 3: history where we are we were forced to sit with
Speaker 3: ourselves and this like this deep I think there was
Speaker 3: so much deep loneliness going on, uh and people having
Speaker 3: to sit with themselves. And I wonder whether people walked
Speaker 3: away from that richer like I have to wake up,
Speaker 3: there's something else that I need to do with my life,
Speaker 3: with myself or whether you know, people have gone back
Speaker 3: and even like more hardcore have distracted themselves with which
Speaker 3: is with distraction right now, it can be anything, AI am.
Speaker 3: You know, we're on our we're on our phones, we're
Speaker 3: at work, and I'm just wondering what you think, what
Speaker 3: you think about that.
Speaker 5: Let's address that, and let's come back to the importance
Speaker 5: of real facing ourselves because because both need to be
Speaker 5: And now, what what I found is before COVID, I
Speaker 5: taught classes on a weekly basis, and but there is
Speaker 5: over time there was people were showing up less and
Speaker 5: less and like let's say, when I first started offering classes,
Speaker 5: maybe eighty percent of sixty to eighty percent of people
Speaker 5: who are SVP would show up, and it went down
Speaker 5: to twenty or thirty percent, And then when COVID happened,
Speaker 5: even coming out of lockdown, it's yeah, much less so.
Speaker 5: And so there are a lot of concerns with that
Speaker 5: people are less apt to show up in person. And
Speaker 5: it's not just COVID. There are so many things. COVID
Speaker 5: just put the accelerator through the floor on the direction
Speaker 5: we were already having the fact that we're relying more
Speaker 5: on texting as opposed to picking up the phone and
Speaker 5: calling or showing up in person, which is even better
Speaker 5: that I feel it is tragic that so many people
Speaker 5: are reliant on dating apps. We cannot engage with the
Speaker 5: people in our immediate proximity. And because we're relying so
Speaker 5: much on apps and texting and everything, you know, it's
Speaker 5: there's less and less of us present, engaged and we're
Speaker 5: missing these critically important developmental processes that we need to experience,
Speaker 5: that we need to go through, which is so much
Speaker 5: of our learning. And you know, because there's a lot
Speaker 5: of trial and error, a lot of learn as we
Speaker 5: go that happens through direct engagement, and the fact that
Speaker 5: we have these apps and this illusion of endless possibility
Speaker 5: that it contributes to this devaluation of the individuals that
Speaker 5: we would meet, that we would connect with, that we
Speaker 5: would partner with. And there's much more of a sense
Speaker 5: of disposability.
Speaker 3: Yeah, such an epectification right now of life itself. There's
Speaker 3: no real sense of accountability because you can break up
Speaker 3: with somebody over a text, not having to witness, like
Speaker 3: you said, you used to have to pick up the phone,
Speaker 3: or even better, in person, and which brings in the
Speaker 3: human element of Oh, you have to deal with yourself
Speaker 3: either way on either side of the coin, right, whether
Speaker 3: it's the person receiving or the person giving the news.
Speaker 3: And I think you know, in talking going into parts
Speaker 3: of heartache or loneliness, we're no longer being able to
Speaker 3: sit in that in a deep way. It's kind of
Speaker 3: like there's one side of the coin that's just not
Speaker 3: even being witnessed by any It's just it's such a
Speaker 3: solitary place to be, and then we just go distract
Speaker 3: ourselves with something else, that shiny object.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and a lot of times we form attachments to people,
Speaker 5: and a lot of people are many of us. I
Speaker 5: didn't for some time, and many still don't understand that
Speaker 5: much of the population is not really what you call
Speaker 5: growth oriented. They don't have that petis or that internal
Speaker 5: driver commitment like to better themselves, to better ourselves, and
Speaker 5: so they just go through life in ways that are
Speaker 5: they're creating messes and they leave messes. They don't deal
Speaker 5: with things, and they disconnect. And it's.
Speaker 3: What do you think makes you different than my curiosity?
Speaker 3: Is what makes you different from the average person who's
Speaker 3: going along? Like, what do you think the seed was
Speaker 3: within you that made you go like I.
Speaker 2: Feel this deeply or I.
Speaker 3: Want more than where I'm sitting in this moment, like,
Speaker 3: what makes you know? Because there's so much mass out
Speaker 3: there that always surprises me if they're like this just
Speaker 3: the way that that life is, I've never questioned a thing,
Speaker 3: and I'm always like, really, so what do you think
Speaker 3: for you that that seed is?
Speaker 5: There are different aspects of it. One is I was
Speaker 5: not one of these individuals who is able to compartmentalize,
Speaker 5: to suppress or disconnect and think to myself, Oh, everything's cool,
Speaker 5: it's all fine, and just move along.
Speaker 4: I was so consumed.
Speaker 5: By the overwhelming and even at times excruciating emotions that
Speaker 5: I could not escape from it. And also it was
Speaker 5: being reflected back to me in relationships that were not working.
Speaker 5: And maybe if there's someone who's quite beautiful or handsome
Speaker 5: or something, and because of their appearance they could still
Speaker 5: attract or whatever it's there's still somebody going to be
Speaker 5: interested in them, no matter how is it.
Speaker 4: Okay to use it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, anything, no matter how fucked up they are. Just yeah,
Speaker 5: because of their beauty or handsome, they're still going to attract.
Speaker 5: And there's but it's going to be attracted to him.
Speaker 5: It wasn't working that way for me, and and so
Speaker 5: to have that continually reflected back to me, And so
Speaker 5: there was a profoundly deep desire to well two things. One,
Speaker 5: the pain I was excluish experiencing was so torturous at
Speaker 5: times that Okay, I got to get to myself, get
Speaker 5: myself to a place where I'm no longer living like this.
Speaker 5: I mean, I cannot continue to live like this.
Speaker 4: I have to.
Speaker 5: I have to heal if I'm going to continue to
Speaker 5: exist in this body on this planet, you know. And
Speaker 5: so I don't off myself or something.
Speaker 4: That was. I mean I did.
Speaker 3: When you say that, But that's real, right when the
Speaker 3: pain is that acute. Yeah, And again, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: somebody who grew up with a mother who's very depressive,
Speaker 3: full of anxiety, and through that I had carried a
Speaker 3: lot of you know, wounding within me. So I think
Speaker 3: I had a similar like just carrying a lot of
Speaker 3: emotion and wounds and grief and not knowing what it was,
Speaker 3: not knowing how to deal with it, and then leaking
Speaker 3: it out and seeking toxic relationships and and in life.
Speaker 3: And then there's that moment where you sat down and
Speaker 3: you said, like, I don't want to live this way, right,
Speaker 3: I want different which to me speaks to resilience by
Speaker 3: the way, like I just see you and I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's really resilient.
Speaker 2: Because then again, you know, I'm going.
Speaker 3: To my poor mother was no say in what I
Speaker 3: say about her here at all. Bless her, but she
Speaker 3: never had that desire.
Speaker 2: She did have a desire to seek help.
Speaker 3: But ironically, like for her, it was oh, let's take
Speaker 3: the pill, right, like when we talk about addictions or
Speaker 3: you know, like for her, it was about numbing the pain.
Speaker 3: And I think part of when we talk about sitting
Speaker 3: with yourself right, it's it's it's to get to the
Speaker 3: place where.
Speaker 2: You're not numbing.
Speaker 3: And you were able through this I guess your initial
Speaker 3: vision quest, which is probably a big hurricane to you.
Speaker 2: I bige that moment, and yet.
Speaker 3: You continued on that path where most people are doing
Speaker 3: everything not to feel.
Speaker 5: Also, there's a profound shame that came with because we
Speaker 5: all have a certain amount of blindness or dysfunction. And
Speaker 5: so for me, when I would form those attachments, especially
Speaker 5: if there was like someone was unavailable or disinterested or
Speaker 5: they were really dysfunctional, was causing me evoking a lot
Speaker 5: of painful emotion. The shame the humiliation, and so there
Speaker 5: was like seeing myself reflected back to me through those relationships,
Speaker 5: and so there's this understanding like there's work to do.
Speaker 4: And another thing.
Speaker 5: Too is I feel acutely I'm not in pain like that,
Speaker 5: and which you can see the way I was laughing
Speaker 5: about even the times when I had suicidal ideation like
Speaker 5: years and years ago.
Speaker 4: But there's still like if something.
Speaker 5: Like if I'm seeing something reflected back to me through
Speaker 5: a relationship and it's evoking these distressing emotions, it's like, Wow,
Speaker 5: there's work to do, and there's a profound desire to
Speaker 5: be the best version of myself. And I think that's
Speaker 5: so important going into relationship too, because there's a lot
Speaker 5: of people who are just content to in a sense,
Speaker 5: let themselves go. And I have this curiosity about people,
Speaker 5: and I just just watch and how people live their
Speaker 5: lives and how things play out. And I don't know,
Speaker 5: maybe someone like David Lee Roth, you know, Van Halen's vocalist.
Speaker 5: I'm not a fan, but but you see how we
Speaker 5: just partied wildly and just you know, and you look
Speaker 5: at him now and whereas I admire like having trained
Speaker 5: with a traditional Native American doctor, a master from China,
Speaker 5: people in the hindu Vedic lineages, and watching these individuals
Speaker 5: how they, through intensive daily practice, hours of intensive daily practice,
Speaker 5: continue to transform and develop themselves. And so this is
Speaker 5: what I admire, this is what I aspire to, and
Speaker 5: so that's a big part of what's kept me going
Speaker 5: through the vision quest. But there's I feel a sense
Speaker 5: of aliveness, and like I can feel the heaviness when
Speaker 5: when I'm triggered emotionally or when I'm put in touch
Speaker 5: with something inside of me that I'm carrying. And again
Speaker 5: there's the desire to better myself. I don't know that
Speaker 5: I have the full explanation for it, because I recognize that.
Speaker 4: And and I.
Speaker 5: Have it reflected back or I see it all the
Speaker 5: time in the work I do with people. A lot
Speaker 5: of people come to me, you know, they approach me
Speaker 5: as if I'm Jesus sometimes and how there want I
Speaker 5: want to heal, will you help me? And then when
Speaker 5: you really get down into it, you see how many
Speaker 5: people flake and they'll go this deep and maybe they'll
Speaker 5: stay long enough. Just because I'm working with people who
Speaker 5: suffered heart disease and stroke and digestive disorders collidis and
Speaker 5: Crown's disease and a wide range of issues autoimmune disorders,
Speaker 5: and I see people's bodies actually healing, but we're getting
Speaker 5: down into that all that yuckiness that dysfunction, and but
Speaker 5: there's symptoms are clearing up, but we're getting down into
Speaker 5: that stuff, and they're they're like, I'm cool now, see you,
Speaker 5: bye bye, and maybe they surface at some point later.
Speaker 3: Well, there's probably you know, digesting takes time, right, and
Speaker 3: everybody has their own their own timeline. So you know,
Speaker 3: going through getting to that level of healing where you
Speaker 3: start to see the body healing and then somebody leaving,
Speaker 3: it's either getting too close. It's either like too much
Speaker 3: in terms of the of the overwhelm, or someone just go, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm good for now, because not everyone is.
Speaker 2: Probably I have, you.
Speaker 3: Know, people in my life all the time that's saying like,
Speaker 3: I don't want to be on a healing path all
Speaker 3: the time. I don't always want to be feeling like
Speaker 3: I'm getting in there. I don't always want to be
Speaker 3: in the trenches, especially when you're going through it for
Speaker 3: extended periods of time, because that that requires a certain
Speaker 3: personality I would imagine personality.
Speaker 5: Maybe I think part of it too, was because the
Speaker 5: worst of it hit me. I mean, there were some
Speaker 5: periods that got really bad along the way, but I
Speaker 5: had so much hitting me initially that was so difficult,
Speaker 5: so excruciating that and having to go through that, And
Speaker 5: there's a there's this knowing based upon experience that every
Speaker 5: time I face whatever comes at me and whatever is
Speaker 5: triggered elicited inside of me, I'm that much more connected.
Speaker 4: To my source.
Speaker 5: I feel that much more alive, I'm that much more capable, empowered.
Speaker 5: There's more clarity, the quality of my relationships improving. And
Speaker 5: so when we teach ourselves, condition ourselves to continually move
Speaker 5: towards that which we have resisted, there's more and more
Speaker 5: of that aliveness and that connectedness to your deep innercore
Speaker 5: being in the higher power.
Speaker 3: I think, the more you can face your demons, or
Speaker 3: the more demons that come up that you can sit
Speaker 3: and stay with, yeah, the more life clears up for you,
Speaker 3: so to speak. And as like you know, we were
Speaker 3: talking about relationships and reflections like right to me, like somebody,
Speaker 3: if I keep showing up in relationships where the other
Speaker 3: person is quote unquote fucked up, that that to me
Speaker 3: is a direct reflection of like how messed up I am,
Speaker 3: And I use these words like, you know, loosely. But
Speaker 3: wherever we are is we're showing up in our lives
Speaker 3: to show us what we're missing, what we're.
Speaker 2: Where we need to grow.
Speaker 3: Right, If I'm in a state of abandonment, right that
Speaker 3: we have a b then there's a belief system within
Speaker 3: me that is allowing it somehow mm hmm.
Speaker 4: And there is yes.
Speaker 5: And there is a lot of tolerance too. You know,
Speaker 5: a lot of people can drink heavily, and they developed
Speaker 5: this alcohol tolerance when I was in high school smoking weed,
Speaker 5: and you show up in class and you get to
Speaker 5: where you could smoke weed and function. I don't smoke
Speaker 5: or I don't I'm not doing any substances and clean
Speaker 5: for many many years.
Speaker 4: Never did abuse that heavily anyway.
Speaker 5: But but even with our emotions, you know, in facing
Speaker 5: what needs to be dealt with, when we set our
Speaker 5: intention and we just go in and do it. There's
Speaker 5: a warrior society among the Kia was quite synco and
Speaker 5: they would charge into the midst of the battle and
Speaker 5: they would stake an arrow that was attached to a
Speaker 5: sash that looped around their neck. They would stay and
Speaker 5: fight till all the enemy was killed, had retreated. On
Speaker 5: one of their comrades picked up the arrow handed to him,
Speaker 5: they would free to write off. They would not retreat
Speaker 5: no matter what. And there is that courage. Native elders
Speaker 5: said that when you go on the vision quest, whatever
Speaker 5: comes you face it, you deal with it. A friend
Speaker 5: of mine, his father did multiple tours of Vietnam, and
Speaker 5: we were talking one day and his father just used
Speaker 5: those very words, despite all the hell he was going through,
Speaker 5: face it, deal with it. And I've just built that
Speaker 5: tolerance over time, just condition myself.
Speaker 4: I still and we're all going to do this.
Speaker 5: We're going to react at times, so we're going to
Speaker 5: become really resistant.
Speaker 3: Well, because we also build a tolerance on the other side, Right,
Speaker 3: we can build a tolerance and heartache. We can build
Speaker 3: a tolerance inside loneliness, and so much so that there's
Speaker 3: an addictive quality to staying in the heartache, to staying
Speaker 3: in the loneliness, to staying in the numbness, in the disconnection.
Speaker 3: So because the other is the is the discomfort, right
Speaker 3: of absolutely feeling and facing it. I mean, I can
Speaker 3: imagine that many people who went through any kind of war,
Speaker 3: be it the Vietnam War or any other war, and
Speaker 3: a lot of them came out with PTSD. So when
Speaker 3: we say like, face it right, you're talking about bodies
Speaker 3: that are holding on to so much trauma that barely
Speaker 3: function right that they can barely so, so, you know,
Speaker 3: teaching somebody to stay with it is a whole other,
Speaker 3: whole other kind of worms I would imagine to be
Speaker 3: able to stay with that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And there are a lot of issues around capacity.
Speaker 5: You know, for instance, I knew nothing about it initially,
Speaker 5: and yet in my late twenties I started having mostly
Speaker 5: women and some men, for instance, with histories of childhood
Speaker 5: sexual trauma. And I remember the first time this woman
Speaker 5: I'm allergic to beastings and I had stopped by this
Speaker 5: shop to kids some kind of what do you have
Speaker 5: that can help you with this? Because I didn't want
Speaker 5: to do pharmaceuticals, And I told her what I did,
Speaker 5: I want to try that, and she was first session,
Speaker 5: she was crying profusely, and she was accessing memories. She
Speaker 5: had been in psychotherapy for a decade and there are
Speaker 5: years of memory that were completely blocked out, no access.
Speaker 5: First session, she's accessing it. And she, like many people,
Speaker 5: have limited what I call processing capacity that we develop
Speaker 5: this this term I use infrastructure that enables us to process,
Speaker 5: to digest, or lift experiences and emotional responses to what
Speaker 5: we experience. And to a large extent, for many people,
Speaker 5: especially if they've suffered extensive trauma, or if they've spent
Speaker 5: much of their life avoiding or distracting, it fails to develop.
Speaker 5: And so I have to I'm able to have developed
Speaker 5: these highly empathic capabilities. Look, I see and I feel
Speaker 5: what's going on in people's bodies, where they're at emotionally,
Speaker 5: what they're carrying, what trauma, the backlog of emotion in
Speaker 5: so many people. In addition, they don't have that infrastructure,
Speaker 5: those faculties to really process. So in the course of
Speaker 5: working with people at presence, working through me, I work
Speaker 5: is it conduit, as indigenous healers have done for centuries.
Speaker 5: It's taking all that lived experience and emotion, it's transforming,
Speaker 5: transmuting it. They're going to something into a profoundly deep
Speaker 5: dream state. They're digesting with their carrying, the experience, the emotions.
Speaker 5: It's building this foundation, this infrastructure that never developed, and
Speaker 5: they're developing this resilience, this capacity to to process, to
Speaker 5: digest whatever comes up, whatever they encounter in their life.
Speaker 5: They become more highly functional. And I had to do
Speaker 5: that as well. I had What often happens is many
Speaker 5: people they're starting out, there's this backlock of all this
Speaker 5: life history, all these lived experiences people have gone through,
Speaker 5: like all kinds of things in their life that were
Speaker 5: some things traumatic, all kinds of adversity, relationships that have
Speaker 5: blown up. There's a whole range of experience. And because
Speaker 5: we shut it down, so much of number selves, so
Speaker 5: much of that's living inside of us, and then all
Speaker 5: the emotional backlog surrounding it, and then those faculties are
Speaker 5: not developing that would enable them to.
Speaker 4: Do the deep level processing of all that.
Speaker 5: And when they do get triggered, then they find themselves overwhelmed.
Speaker 5: And all that stuff we carry creates barriers that diminish
Speaker 5: our capacity to love and to be loved, to be
Speaker 5: present with a partner, to experience that depth of intimacy,
Speaker 5: to fully open up sexually on all these different levels.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 5: What I've found is like, initially I've found myself overwhelmed.
Speaker 5: It was blowing me out of water. I was consumed
Speaker 5: by all this pain. And but as I kept doing
Speaker 5: the deep work, the mass of pain was decreasing. Over time,
Speaker 5: there was less and then the really painful periods were
Speaker 5: becoming they were less in frequency. When they did occur,
Speaker 5: it was a shorter duration, and I had a greater
Speaker 5: digestive capacity. I could cycle through these things. And so
Speaker 5: there's you know, by doing this, I'm building resilience. This
Speaker 5: is what I work with people to help them, do
Speaker 5: you know, this continual building that foundation.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: So in terms of digesting, and I just want to
Speaker 3: make it clear because I think a thought that comes
Speaker 3: up for me often and talking about detaching and detaching
Speaker 3: is a word that's that's really been thrown around, just
Speaker 3: as like digesting and moving through heartache or painful experiences.
Speaker 3: What do you think the difference is and in your experience,
Speaker 3: in your lived experience, between truly digesting something and cutting
Speaker 3: yourself off from something, Because they can feel, I think
Speaker 3: from an outsider, you know, be something similar to be
Speaker 3: like oh yeah, I'm over that, or I don't. I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna you know, I'm good now. And yet there's
Speaker 3: still layers of armor, there's still layers of the scar
Speaker 3: tissue that isn't being dealt with, that isn't gotten into
Speaker 3: for for better, for my own words.
Speaker 5: Right now, detaching as you described, and digesting or near,
Speaker 5: we're nowhere close. And the detaching is often stems from
Speaker 5: limited capacity that many people lacking.
Speaker 4: The ability to do the deep level.
Speaker 5: Processing of their emotions, not having or not utilizing the
Speaker 5: additional external tools, the therapeutic interventions, for instance, they're not
Speaker 5: really processing. It's the relationship that they were in, the
Speaker 5: person they were involved with, the whole drama they went
Speaker 5: through evoked a lot of distressing emotion, left them hurt, devastated,
Speaker 5: left them quite wounded in many respects. And often what
Speaker 5: happens is people move from one relationship to the next,
Speaker 5: to the next to the next, and the wounds keep
Speaker 5: getting dug deeper. There's a thickening, there's a layering that.
Speaker 4: Occurs over time.
Speaker 5: And so what happens is they cut off, they disconnect,
Speaker 5: they stop contacting that person, the no contact for all
Speaker 5: all of these things. And yet so much of that
Speaker 5: lived experience and all that undigested emotion that was triggered elicted,
Speaker 5: it ain't gone anywhere. It stays within the body and
Speaker 5: it just accumulates, it builds up. It's in the tissues,
Speaker 5: it's in the organs, the cells, everywhere, and that's more
Speaker 5: that buffering, so that we attempt to go forward and
Speaker 5: we're more guarded, and we have more walls, more barriers,
Speaker 5: and we're even if we're not fully consciously aware of it,
Speaker 5: we're seeing through that filter of that wounding as we're
Speaker 5: interacting with whoever we encounter, someone that we might consider
Speaker 5: or that we're starting to become involved with, or that
Speaker 5: we're partnered with. And again a lot of people, what
Speaker 5: happens is there's that accumulation and it just builds up.
Speaker 5: I mean, I've worked on this every day. It's my
Speaker 5: own practice. I know most people are not going to
Speaker 5: do quite this much. I would encourage at least an
Speaker 5: hour of daily practice because if you go, you know,
Speaker 5: training with the Chinese master in the internal martial arts
Speaker 5: rooted in Taoism, with my mentor the Native doctor, those
Speaker 5: in the hindu Vedic and other lineages, in all these traditions,
Speaker 5: this is so commonplace. This is how they develop these
Speaker 5: profound capabilities. I can hindu Vedic tradition what they call
Speaker 5: self realization, and people argue, well, who has time for that? Well,
Speaker 5: what about all the time you spend scrolling on your
Speaker 5: devices and on your social media feeds, and I have.
Speaker 3: To want to I think that's the thing that comes
Speaker 3: up as is, you know when we talk about practice,
Speaker 3: and we talk about like going in there, and most
Speaker 3: people don't know what going in their means and what
Speaker 3: it means to feel into the body or even recognize
Speaker 3: their own scarring or recognizing I think, for for I'm
Speaker 3: going to say a general population, you know, it can
Speaker 3: be very overwhelming to go.
Speaker 2: Oh, a practice.
Speaker 3: So maybe just understanding what is a practice? What does
Speaker 3: a practice look like? That can be bite sized and digestible.
Speaker 5: I developed a whole series over the years depending on
Speaker 5: because you know, we face all kinds of challenges adversity
Speaker 5: in our life, people coming to me with wide range
Speaker 5: of health related issues and trauma and emotional wounding, whatever.
Speaker 5: But let me give the most basic practice one acknowledge
Speaker 5: what's happening, like if you're going through, say, if you're
Speaker 5: in the midst of a breakup, if someone ghosted you,
Speaker 5: if you're dealing with you're getting all kinds of mixed messages.
Speaker 5: This ambiguity, confusion, acknowledge what happens, how in do or
Speaker 5: is happening right now?
Speaker 4: Two?
Speaker 5: What do you feel in response to it? Is it sadness, grief, confusion, anger, frustration, uncertainty,
Speaker 5: all the above, and it's shifting.
Speaker 4: All over the place. Now what are you feeling in
Speaker 4: response to what happened? Three?
Speaker 5: Where are these feelings and sensations residing within your body?
Speaker 5: Are they in your throat, your abdomen, deep within the
Speaker 5: middle of your chest, or your heart and lungs reside?
Speaker 5: Where do you find them or maybe multiple locations, or
Speaker 5: bring as much awareness as you possibly can to what
Speaker 5: you're feeling. You're not observing it from a distance. You're
Speaker 5: getting inside of it. You experience it as fully as
Speaker 5: you possibly can. And yes, sometimes it can hurt like cow,
Speaker 5: But teach yourself. Acknowledge what's happening, What do you feel
Speaker 5: in response to it?
Speaker 4: Get as deep.
Speaker 5: Inside of it as you can, fully immersed your breathing,
Speaker 5: very softly. Breathe all the way down to your aptimen,
Speaker 5: expanding your aptimen, then your ribcage. Pause, briefly, exhale fully
Speaker 5: all the way out, Pause again, and continue the cycle.
Speaker 5: Just keep doing it, stay with the feelings, and sensations.
Speaker 5: They can intensify, become a lot more intense. Initially, it varies.
Speaker 5: Sometimes some things will start to dissolve rather quickly, even
Speaker 5: ten or fifteen five minutes.
Speaker 4: They may.
Speaker 5: Spread occupy more of your body. They may shift to
Speaker 5: other areas. Whatever they do follow them. It may go
Speaker 5: through a whole succession of feelings like to anger, to grief,
Speaker 5: to resignation, to letting go, to accept It.
Speaker 3: Will move right like there's this and naden's staying with it.
Speaker 2: That it does move.
Speaker 3: I think when most people get stuck is in their
Speaker 3: heads because it comes back to, well, I think that
Speaker 3: person did me wrong, that person did this right, that situation,
Speaker 3: I'm this as opposed to like staying within your body
Speaker 3: and like staying with the sensation.
Speaker 5: And that's a big thing too, because our minds will
Speaker 5: just real they starts obsessing about what that person said
Speaker 5: or did and what it all means, and we're going circles.
Speaker 5: And one of the things I taught myself to do
Speaker 5: is I've actually, metaphorically I've jumped out of myself, faced
Speaker 5: myself and just said, shut up, what are you feeling?
Speaker 5: What are the actual feelings? Get down back down into
Speaker 5: my body where the feelings reside, and or I would
Speaker 5: maybe be a little more gentle. I'd say, I know
Speaker 5: that we've already rehearsed that innumerable times, what are the
Speaker 5: actual feelings. Get inside your body where the feelings are,
Speaker 5: dive back into their depths and breathe. And it involves
Speaker 5: a lot of training, Like we're training ourselves where we
Speaker 5: have over many years, we've conditioned ourselves to flip out
Speaker 5: of our feelings into our head, to overly intellectualize everything.
Speaker 5: But the problem is we go into our heads and
Speaker 5: we're spinning and spinning, and I call it churning because
Speaker 5: we're up in our heads spinning away. And yet the
Speaker 5: emotions are building their churning in the body and it's
Speaker 5: creating a stronger emotional force. But we were in that disconnected, dissociated,
Speaker 5: stayed up in our heads, and then it's reinforcing that split,
Speaker 5: that disconnect, and it's it's fueling the helplessness, the addiction,
Speaker 5: the uh, you know, like trying desperately to make it right.
Speaker 5: And the more what I found is the more that
Speaker 5: I could catch myself, bring myself from that that spiraling
Speaker 5: and get down into my body and into the feelings
Speaker 5: and be chewing up and digesting what I'm going through.
Speaker 5: Then I start calming down and the crazy attachment fears
Speaker 5: start diffusing, and and I'm able to relax and let
Speaker 5: things flow more. And even if someone was being weird
Speaker 5: or ambiguous or whatever, it's like, okay, whatever, I'm not
Speaker 5: going to chase them.
Speaker 2: It's like, what does love mean to you? Now?
Speaker 3: Before we transition into into our final questions, I'm just
Speaker 3: going to ask you, like, what does love mean to
Speaker 3: you now?
Speaker 2: After all of this work for yourself?
Speaker 5: Love to me is just the closeness someone just being
Speaker 5: present with me. That there's because I've experienced much of
Speaker 5: my life where there there was when you carry so
Speaker 5: much wounding, so much trauma, and you go through a
Speaker 5: lot of your life and there's a lot of disconnect
Speaker 5: or mismatch and connection just wasn't happening. And then when
Speaker 5: you start healing this wounding, you know, as I said,
Speaker 5: I'm using my lift experience what it's reflecting to me
Speaker 5: and digesting my emotional response to it all. And then gradually,
Speaker 5: as this healing transformation is occurring, then I'm experiencing greater
Speaker 5: depth of intimacy than I ever did before, and so
Speaker 5: as that's happening, I'm feeling that this individual will being
Speaker 5: present with me, this person I'm connected with, that I'm
Speaker 5: partnering with, how much more connected I am to them,
Speaker 5: and just that feeling of intimacy or connection. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's one thing to hook up with someone. You could
Speaker 5: go on tender and you could go out and bank
Speaker 5: somebody tonight, but that's not necessarily connection. I mean it's
Speaker 5: physical intimacy. But when you have that deep emotional bond
Speaker 5: and you feel it touching you deeply, and.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and I think it's in when when the
Speaker 3: channels get clear and then it opens up for love
Speaker 3: to flow more freely, to have that that presence, that connection,
Speaker 3: that intimacy.
Speaker 5: And more continuity. Yeah, yeah, continuity. And and you're it
Speaker 5: increases that there's less of the crazy dysfunctional like you're
Speaker 5: more likely to. What I find is more of the
Speaker 5: kind of individual who has the capacity to sustain intimacy.
Speaker 5: They have a greater capacity, which is reflecting back the
Speaker 5: changes that I've experienced within myself.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Okay, I'm going to I'm just gonna shift us.
Speaker 3: I've got my ten questions to ask you before we go,
Speaker 3: We're going to try to do it within I don't
Speaker 3: know whatever seven minutes.
Speaker 2: Tell me?
Speaker 3: What is one truth your body has always known that
Speaker 3: your mind took years to catch up to.
Speaker 5: I just have to instead of spire in my head.
Speaker 5: It's like I need to get down into my body
Speaker 5: and digest to what I'm carrying, and then the clarity
Speaker 5: comes from it. We need both the intellectual understanding and
Speaker 5: the emotional But until I do the deep level processing
Speaker 5: the digestion, I'm not going to gain that deeper insight.
Speaker 5: I have to do the digestion first.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: What is the most intimate moment you've ever had that
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with sex?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 5: There are a few individuals that I've just spending time
Speaker 5: with them and that where I just have felt this
Speaker 5: profound closeness. And so there are a few people. And
Speaker 5: then also just I really bond with animals. And I've
Speaker 5: had numerous experiences with dogs that I've had, even stray dogs,
Speaker 5: and just other animals I've encountered along the way that
Speaker 5: just have really touched me. And I think as you
Speaker 5: do more and more this work, animals sense it and
Speaker 5: they feel drawn to you. And I like that they
Speaker 5: there's a way that there animals are not armored like
Speaker 5: people are.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, yeah, I had mine. He's gone now right now? Yeah,
Speaker 3: but yes, thank you. If you could be remembered for
Speaker 3: one sensation you gave someone, what would it be.
Speaker 5: I think it would be more that sense of embodiment,
Speaker 5: that sense of well being, and especially that sense of
Speaker 5: the deep intimate bond. I'm feeling deeply bonded to me.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: If pleasure were a language, what would your first word be?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 3: If your erotic life had a title like a novel
Speaker 3: or a film, what would it be called?
Speaker 4: Mhm? I'm not sure to be honest.
Speaker 5: Wow, diving into the depths of intimacy and all its aspects?
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: All it's many facets, all.
Speaker 2: Of its many facets. Thank you. I had one for you.
Speaker 2: Should I say it?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 2: Emergence?
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't know what I'm recalling your book, but
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, that might be.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: What is one thing you've never said out loud but
Speaker 3: you wish someone would ask you about?
Speaker 4: God?
Speaker 5: What haven't people asked me about? I'm pretty open, so
Speaker 5: so when people ask me about things, I just I'm
Speaker 5: pretty articulate. I won't share everything with everyone. It's like
Speaker 5: I can be very discerning because you know, when you
Speaker 5: grow up and with a narcissistic parent, there's a lot
Speaker 5: of things you don't share because you know they're going
Speaker 5: to take that and use that and distort it and
Speaker 5: manipulate it in some way. So I'm very intuitive who
Speaker 5: I share what with. But but if I sense that
Speaker 5: is and I do this being so empathic on a
Speaker 5: personal level, when I work with people, I'm always just
Speaker 5: kind of feeling and sensing, like what can this person
Speaker 5: here that I can share. So whenever I sense openness,
Speaker 5: and that's part of the impetus to grow and heal,
Speaker 5: it's that that ability to open and share, and it
Speaker 5: deepens our bond, it deepens the intimacy.
Speaker 2: Thank you. What is one part?
Speaker 3: What part of your erotic self are you still afraid
Speaker 3: to bring.
Speaker 2: To the light.
Speaker 4: I'm just thinking for a minute. You know, there's.
Speaker 5: There are parts I don't just that come out.
Speaker 4: With whoever wherever.
Speaker 5: Obviously you know it's there are a lot of times
Speaker 5: where I mean because I travel, I move around and
Speaker 5: still spending time in New York City, I'm gradually working
Speaker 5: myself out here. I stayed here in order to train
Speaker 5: with this master from China. So there are a lot
Speaker 5: of times I'm just around people. I'm with people and
Speaker 5: it's like there's a lot of myself I don't want
Speaker 5: to share. But when I'm with someone that I feel
Speaker 5: deeply connected to, I don't have any sense of holding back.
Speaker 4: It's like just I feel more and more comfortable.
Speaker 5: I mean, maybe some of it is maybe if I
Speaker 5: sense they're not ready or capable, you know, just there's
Speaker 5: a patience too. Okay, it's not quite there yet. So
Speaker 5: I'll give her time and if she catches up here,
Speaker 5: then I will allow more of these parts of me
Speaker 5: to come out. But I don't feel a sense of
Speaker 5: holding back as long as there's that we're matching on
Speaker 5: that level.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: What dies in you when you pretend and what comes
Speaker 3: alive in you when you don't.
Speaker 5: Anything that I'm suppressing or avoiding are not being completely
Speaker 5: honest about. And I feel that I have a very
Speaker 5: acute sense of where something's getting twisted up or constricting
Speaker 5: or contracting or deadening in some way, and it's like,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, it's like I hate that feeling. And so
Speaker 5: whenever I do feel that. It's like, how can I
Speaker 5: articulate that? I do think though. I mean, there are incidents.
Speaker 5: There's an incident on the subway some years ago where
Speaker 5: someone pushed me from behind.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 5: Yet there were three of them, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: there are some things I would like to say, but
Speaker 5: I don't want to go up against these three, who
Speaker 5: are actually pretty well developed. I don't think I'm going
Speaker 5: to come out that well. And so I held back
Speaker 5: in that instance, and being spending a lot of time
Speaker 5: in Sri Lanka, much of that time in the former
Speaker 5: war zone, and knowing what people have gone through, close
Speaker 5: friends that have lost they're friends and immediate loved ones,
Speaker 5: and a lot of times they were just you know,
Speaker 5: it's almost like these kind of like please don't shoot me.
Speaker 5: And so they are instances where we face actual physical danger,
Speaker 5: you know, where we're just getting through those moments just
Speaker 5: to survive. I experienced some of that growing up.
Speaker 4: I mean there were some.
Speaker 5: Nobody was pointing a gun at me, but well, stepfather
Speaker 5: came around the side of the house with a butcher knife.
Speaker 5: I didn't know i'd survive that in that instance when
Speaker 5: I was dead. But yeah, there are I always look
Speaker 5: for those areas where I contract and as much as
Speaker 5: I can, It's like, how can I show up more
Speaker 5: fully in this moment?
Speaker 4: What can it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Thank you, Okay, finish this sentence. When I leave this life,
Speaker 3: I want my skin to remember.
Speaker 5: I think more of my focus is is having trained
Speaker 5: with this master from China for seventeen years and a
Speaker 5: Native American doctor, there's always this sense of like, all
Speaker 5: the work you do is to evolve so that when
Speaker 5: you reach the other side you're at a much higher level.
Speaker 4: And so there's this continual building.
Speaker 5: You see the yin yang symbol, and there's this emphasis
Speaker 5: on here we are in the body, and there's like
Speaker 5: our soul spirit that doesn't fully incarnate. So you're doing
Speaker 5: this practice to continually bring more the soul into your body.
Speaker 5: And with the soul and the body, there's this alchemy
Speaker 5: and so so for me, it's just this continual building.
Speaker 5: That's my thought, love what I live with all the time.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Last one, If the soul has a scent, what does
Speaker 3: your smell like today?
Speaker 4: Mmm? I really like the scent of a juniper.
Speaker 2: Mmm.
Speaker 5: That that grows. Oh, where I go to do the
Speaker 5: vision quest?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you for joining us today. And for
Speaker 3: anyone out there who would like to work with Ben,
Speaker 3: it's I'll let you say where they can reach you.
Speaker 3: I know you have several websites. There's ben ufana dot
Speaker 3: com and then you have several others.
Speaker 4: Right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: And on my main website, benefana dot com there's a
Speaker 5: blog which at the top bar there's a tablets as articles,
Speaker 5: and so you can click on that and do a
Speaker 5: deep dive. A lot of in depth videos on YouTube.
Speaker 5: There's my website teach Me to Meditate dot com. I
Speaker 5: developed this whole extensive series of meditation practices that are
Speaker 5: all about becoming more and more embodied and you know,
Speaker 5: for instance, going deep into the intestines their deepest empathy.
Speaker 5: There's so much emphasis on the heart, but the deepest
Speaker 5: level of bonding actually comes from that abdominal area. So
Speaker 5: I teach people how to cultivate that abdominal awareness. And
Speaker 5: that's one and many. If you're in the midst of
Speaker 5: a devastating breakup, you've then ghost to divorce whatever. There's
Speaker 5: breakup first aid. It's getting you through, cycling you through
Speaker 5: the initial devastation, and a more deep dive is heal
Speaker 5: my heartache. So if you cycle through repeated disastrous relationships
Speaker 5: and one after another, you keep attracting the same kinds
Speaker 5: of individuals. Abandonment unrequired a lot of attachment wounds.
Speaker 4: This is.
Speaker 5: Much deeper dive and it's about healing and transforming yourselves.
Speaker 5: So you can find me on Instagram too. Yeah, so
Speaker 5: those are my contact details.
Speaker 3: Beautiful, Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: It was a beautiful conversation and thank you to everyone
Speaker 3: and I will see you again next week.
Speaker 1: Thanks, thank you for listening to Skin and Soul with Me,
Speaker 1: Gwenham Join me Fridays at ten AMPST and Transformation Talk Radio.
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