[Music] thanks for tuning in to Jin and Tantra spirituality with a Twist you've got Daniel driving the ship today so we are definitely going to crash this [...] just letting you know right out the gate uh we are joined today by a friend of the show friend of mine uh and of and of Eric's as well uh Christian vress who has been with us before and Christian and I uh run a men's group together and we uh we do this on a month we have meetings on a monthly basis and we do uh like kind of annual retrieves although that that might increase or decrease depending on how life presents itself so uh Christian say say hello to everybody hi everybody thanks for uh thanks for joining us today or thanks for joining me speaking in like a third person plural which is strange you know we are all we we yes yes we also French too um thank you for yeah of course thanks for you know thanks for sharing I mean and so really this episode was inspired by a conversation that that Christian that you and I had uh about a week a week and a half two almost two weeks ago I'll give the background a little bit so when one of one of the guys in our men's group shout out to Chris buds who's a tattoo artist uh came over to my house and was touching up some ink of mine and Christian was there and we were kind of workshopping our men's group and where we are looking to go as a collective like how how can we codify what we're doing and make it a little bit more streamlined for us as it's been a very organic thing I think is if I could say yeah it's been very it's just been very fluid and experimental um you know and I think just moving forward is very naturally we want to sort of consolidate our energy and really make sure that we're focused on accomplishing the mission the mission that we have um and I think you know just very natur it took a little bit of time to feel through what feels good for us as a group and where we want to where we want to position ourselves yeah yeah so even though we do this as a we're doing this as a as an expose on on our men's group what we're going to talk about today is absolutely not uh related in any way shape or form specifically to our men's group so our 55% female audience don't uh don't turn off just because um we we're talking about the men's group actually what we're talking about is something that we probably have been doing in our practices at least I have been doing in my practice and you have shared you've been doing in your practice I have been doing it intentionally but without understanding and so we're having this conversation as my my friend is kind of touching up my tattoo and Christian we were asking one of our friends who was there what do you like about the group and he had mentioned the Talking part so we when we get together we share a little bit we may have an activity but we we share a lot of what we're doing is sharing and Christian immediately said thank you for sharing that is not what I want I do not want that kind of a group and I said immediately well what did what do you want and then Christian and I'll let you illuminate a little bit brought up this idea of catharsis versus cultivation and that's going to be the topic of our conversation today or roughly around that this idea that people come in to a therapy situ situation or we'll just call it a sharing situation right and that the focus is continually on a cathartic um experiment on rehashing things that have been in their life over and over and over again without much um prodding for further reflection in order to turn the corner and to begin to cultivate from those experiences I don't want to put words in your mouth but it's that yeah well I think so very simply it just it just kind of came down to you know the a therapeutic Space versus um versus a different kind of productive space and you know when I first started before we even formed the men's group and I started researching about different types of men groups um you know what kind of men groups exist what what are their goals what are their practices and habits what are their values and their culture that they embody um one of the first things that came up was just an acknowledgement that there are a variety of groups and one of the main kind is a therapeutic space sure um it's a therapeutic group where um you know if we're talking just about men's groups here where men can come together and share the difficult things that they're going with that they're that are going on in their lives and feel a sense of camaraderie as they get to uh de-stress themselves get positive feedback from the people around them and literally have the opportunity to be quotee unquote seen and heard um and I think you and I can as clinicians can both obviously understand the value um of that and the um the importance of having spaces where you can feel safe unloading and unburdening yourself and going through that process of emptying your cup that is mostly full of stress right yes and and I think I I want to set that kind of context treating ourselves as vessels and what our vessel is full of um and you know I think what I I'm sure all of us observe is that all many of our cups are full from um are inundated with stressful or toxic energies and going into spaces that are quotquot therapeutic where we can release that feels really good the problem that I have with that longterm as we're trying to build a group that is um you know really benefiting its members is that if all you're doing is emptying your cup without really being able to um uh refill it in a Mindful and intentional way through um steady practices then we're always going to be in a situation where we empty our cup feel really good and go right back out into the world and get again sort of blast sit in the face with honking horns stressed out people bills children everything we got to deal with um and then we're just kind of stuck in this cycle of fill and release fill and release and you know from a clinical perspective that works really well to keep the lights on and it keeps you in business because you allow people a space to come in and feel temporarily better um and that is a treatment in a lot of ways you know you give people an opportunity to unburden themselves to feel more energetically balanced and relaxed right but without giving them the tools and the practices and the structures to make themselves more resilient to the things that were previously burdening them than they're just set up in a in a subscription model basically of coming back in um so you know to the men's group then you know when our when our buddy mentioned you know this thing about liking the um the being able to share what's going on and doing the talking you know my adamant response that like that's not the kind of group I want to have um is was driven from this feeling that that's a lot of what we've been doing is providing a space for people to share their feelings to share their stories uh which has allowed for a certain amount of bonding um but at the end of the day that's not going to get us anywhere um and it's not going to it's not going to benefit us in the way that it will then spread out and benefit our families and then benefit our communities um I think what in order to really benefit ourselves and our communities we have to um establish a sense of values and values and practices that go together to continue to um generate generate us so let me I'm G to I'm going to just before we continue I'm going to circle back just a half uh you know 180 here real quick and just to stand up for what you said in the beginning which was it's important to understand how to create a safe kind of container space for people to share so one of the things that we learned in school we took these classes called clinical counseling which is a counseling class for clinicians because inevitably as people who are clinicians we you know we talk about this Christian you have patience I have patience Eric has patience but if we even go more kind of mundane because most people who listen to this podcast are not practitioners that's just what it is but they're people let's just say engaging in a mindful conversation where people are sharing things with vulnerability in depth is to be able to listen compassionately to somebody and provide them with the space if it's appropriate for them to provide what is a very important aspect of the healing process probably the first step really is which is known as like um sharing your healing narrative your healing story your your your healing Journey if you will and this is important because it puts your your experience of your life not necessarily in order but in prioritization as the things that have impacted you right and so it's important to highlight these because these are the things ultimately that really shape who you are you know of course we could have particular practices but for most people who are not on a path of self-cultivation which is what we're going to eventually get to they are living their lives as people who are building careers looking for partners having families you know responsibilities and so forth but they are hit with various traumas and what is a trauma to one person might not be traumatic to another vice versa but if somebody felt influenced by some situation then that thing was influential for them and so we have to be able to provide a space as clinicians or as friends right or as lovers or family members whatever if we want to get into these kinds of things to let them do their work let them Express themselves in a narrative that is clean and cohesive for them the more work they've done the clearer this narrative will sound so this is first just to say that part but then moving forward to where you are going if I believe you know I'm clear with what you were saying and so our audience is clear also you're saying that has value full stop but that if if that is all that you are doing is providing the narrative then you take whatever it is that you're cup is and you empty it and then you go back in the world and you refill it without having any uh filtration system as to what you put back in it just gets filled back up and you come back in the week or two weeks later and then you empty it out again and then it gets filled back up and in no kind of certain terms are you really engaging with your life to decide what do I want to put in my cup and what do I want to leave out well yeah I mean I think it really comes down to who's in charge of the narrative um and I think you know that I I talk about The Narrative of one's life every day with my clients um and one of the things that I try to encourage people to Embrace um is you know writing their own Heroes Journey um creating an um creating an intentional narrative around the mythology of their own existence about why why they came into being in the first place and why the story story was written in such a way so that they could have these experiences and for what reason and I think part of our jobs um if we transcend just treatment is helping people take their debilitating traumas that frequently stagnate them and then distort their Outlook and their and their um and what they can accomplish and um turn those events into um the sort of positive cataclysms in their life that lead them to evolve to their higher selves and then once they are able to merge with or transform through that then they become guides and healers for those potentially that have suffered similar things because part of the cycle is to um transition yourself out of a victim of your own narrative out of a victim of the things that are filling your cup and becoming again the writer of your own story the hero of your journey and owning that mythology um and so and and I think you know that's if it comes down to this idea of catharsis and cultivation um for me a lot of it comes back down to feeling victimized and feeling empowered um and for when we've been victimized um I think naturally it feels good to validate the pain that we've been through um and then feel the release of letting it go um I've just you know I've seen so many times in in clinical practice though how the the sweetness of that relief um doesn't have this or it has more appeal than the mundane boring parts of actually changing yourself so that you don't end up going through the same patterns again so I have um you know we do these Retreats with Remy and Ashley who have been on the podcast before whom Christian knows from you know real life and working with them uh of course outside of the country where these things are legal and totally uh no issues what whatsoever just in case I decide to run for Congress Christian it's not a 0 percent chance I am fired up about many things politically that I'm not going to talk about but let's just say your boy might be starting to raise funds at some point I don't know anyways moving on um I might vote for you okay s thank you I got one sweet you and my mom but she's got to move back here so the Cong Congress people can be crazier because they don't have to get the whole state they only got to get like a small area you know what I'm saying anyways um we have so we're we're doing this we're do Retreats and we've talked about this before Kum and Kaaya shout outs to Remy and Ashley like I just said a second ago but she left a voice message for one of our dear friends who we shall not name because she'll be listening to this at some point I don't want her to feel off-put but basically our one of our mutual friends is not going to come with us to the next Retreat because she feels really good she's like I don't think I need the medicine right now I feel really good in life and and uh she said you know but what I feel I want I don't want to miss out so tell me what I should do you know you know Guru Ashley and Ashley really is you know she's just such a sweet anyways good lady man I I I really love her but she said the work is the integration that's the work and if you don't if you're in a good mood and you're in a good space in your life that is the medicine working that's the work is the integration part and so you can go have an experience on a psychedelic or on a retreat or whatever the case is but ultimately the movement is back towards your life and this is what this is what we're talking about essentially is the integration of our experiences in a way that um Gabor mate puts it that the lessons of your life become your teachers and I often talk about like having your life as your Guru you know and if you can do that and then like you're saying I love I I I'm calling it The conscious author if you can then do that and accept that like yes for sure we have all had things that were done to us without our permission and Hell Without Even our knowing that they were being done exactly and some of it is worse for others you and I are are I don't want to say fortunate enough but we are male straight males in this lifetime you know what I'm saying so I have an inherently different experience than a gay male or a trans male or a female or all the other you know all the various gender that that they're out there that people identify with I don't have those things and they don't have my things my things are not more or less than anybody else's but they're mine they're mine and if I can at some point and again this is in no way belittling someone's experience I have to be an author of my own like you are saying I have to feel empowered by the things that have made me because I survived them they didn't take my life you know well I think I mean from what I've seen one of the hardest parts about being the author the real author of your life and living living your narrative from an empowered perspective is doing the shadow work that comes before being able to own the more unsavory parts of yourself and transform through the more unsavory parts of yourself um you know what are the things that block us from facing our shadows and until we are able to face our shadows and the things that we feel ashamed about we're not going to be able to change the behaviors that continue to put us into um less undesirable outcomes um I work with quite a few people going through different stages of recovery um and witnessing people process witnessing being with people as they're processing their addictions has made me very sensitive and attune to my own um dare I say like micro addictions um I I don't have anything in my life that keeps me from functioning and operating and you know really um being you know I guess that I would say not addicted but uh what I what I observe is that we all have this comfort and when we when we um come face to face with discomfort we look for a way out and we look for a way out either um through food or through alcohol or through pornography or through online shopping or whatever it is it might be um that makes us that helps us not sit with our discomfort um so I I think a big part of you know again like this idea of cultivation and catharsis or even as we're saying like you know therapy and coaching is actively getting people to a place which is very sensitive and very tender to get to a place where they can sit with the things that they're ashamed of either things that they've done or that have been done to them or the complex weaving of those of how even those two things go together um so that they can come out the other side and you know feel nonuel you know I mean know weave weave in their front-facing self with the parts of their self that they're ashamed of and then that's where their that's where their power comes from um and I I have not witnessed um and that's not to say this is a you know a universally true statement but I've witnessed a lot of frustration being in the holistic field and working with patients in a holistic way I've witnessed a lot of frustration in the field of conventional therapy um and that it doesn't really do much and I'm not and I just want to stay straight up I love therapy and I've been in some form of therapy basically since I was 15 on and up and my my therapist now I T to every two to three weeks and been with him for five years at this point I maintain a relationship with him just in case you know and so that way you know and you know he I don't know if he's going to listen to this but one of my main frustrations with my therapist is and has always been that he doesn't really do [...] you know I go into that he's like I go in and I with my background and my education and my experience and the depth work that I've done on myself hold therapeutic space for myself with my therapist and you know we we do it together but he's never been and I don't think he's a bad therapist I just don't always know if it's this is how people operate once they're comfortable in their practices I always wanted him to give me more I wanted him to help me figure out my mind I wanted him to help me figure out my inner workings so that I could you know dissect why I was the way that I was so that I could get myself out of these uncomfortable situations I get putting myself in and the con I mean the psychoanalytic route at least didn't really do that for me um it it did when I did it to myself you know with the assistance of spiritual practices and plant medicines and just a lot of a lot of deep one-on-one time um but that's that's the kind of work that I think you know we need to be able to Usher people into so they can have sustainable transformative experiences and not just regularly scheduled catharsis while they go in and out of stress patterns um so we I talked about this before we started recording now is a good time to bring it up so there are different kinds of therapy right um and so I'm G to just I'm just going to run through them really quickly because you had mentioned one in particular and I think those are the two maybe we can kind of zoom in on but one is uh cognitive behavioral therapy um and then they call or known as CBT this one um the the psychologist study the patients patterns of thinking and kind of gain an understanding to this Origins and once identified the the psychologists can work to combat thought patterns that are causing emotional harm focusing on developing and coping mechanisms that will help patients uh deal with issues as they arise long term so they give you kind of pattern things to do to repattern your your behavior right so that's one kind the second one and there's so you know people don't fall asleep just yet uh the second one is psychodynamic therapy this one focuses more on self-awareness and self-examination so maybe we could say it's a little bit more meditative in a sense from a from an internal perspective um people guide patients towards identifying the root cause of their suffering or any kind of um problematic relationships we'll say um let's see what else they they kind of they want to they want to help their patients to form a practical and positive sense of self the third one is what's known as humanistic therapy now this one I'm least familiar with this uh focuses on a patient's worldview and affects uh their everyday choices it deals with unraveling ones what they call quote unquote true self processing others criticism which you had mentioned previously if you want to talk about that work with your client that would be cool and realizing self-acceptance um it's slightly different than the one we just mentioned because it talks about people's more daily life and so it's a little bit more practical in its application and the last two that are probably more interesting for us these are the psychoanalytic therapy this deals with the understanding of the subconscious mind this is probably more of your like yian subconscious analysis which we Eric and I have talked about quite a bit on here we've talked a lot about uh one of our favorite Carls Carl Young there's also Carl Rogers whom we love um this type of therapy is best fit for those who have undergone therapy for a long time and want to go deeper uh in their understanding of the unconscious and how that kind of affect them um they say this is good for people who have compulsions obsessions phobias or addictions uh but I I don't know about that I think it's people who want to go a little bit deeper and the last one then I'll say one thing about this in general the last one which is what probably what you and I do most regularly which is holistic therapy or integrative therapy and this is an integrative approach to counseling which based on a uh principles of uh they call it psychosynthesis and this deals with an understanding of the relationship between the mind body and spirit and how it addresses how one of these aspects can affect our lifestyles in many areas um and it exposes the practitioner to a greater sense of awareness for the self and for the patient and for the environment your local environment and the greater environment which will help a greater sense of acceptance for yourself and the people who you work with and this gives people a sense to their a window to their their conscious and their subconscious as well what I want to say with all of that as you know just back because we like to give a little bit of you know T tactical technical information is that when working with a therapist whether it be in a in Psychology like how you have one or whether it be working with people like us or whomever you do have to interview your P your your therapist your practitioner to understand where they're coming from and so after I've had this conversation with you I have actually gone and had this conversation that you and I are having right now with many of my patients so that they can understand where it is that I want to come from and I just had a new patient call me yesterday she'll be coming in this coming week and I told her listen there is what we call catharsis and what we're calling cultivation I am on the cultivation side I will help you with the first part but then I am going to inherently move you towards a greater sense of empowerment in your life I am in no way dismissing what you have experienced I'm actually embracing it as part of who you are but I'm not identifying who you were I'm helping you move towards who you want to be and in this way this is how I am working I think for many years I did this without the awareness that I was doing it I knew what I was doing but I didn't have that kind of like light the flashlight that was clicked on you know and our conversation the other day really illuminated that for me and now I'm like this is what I'm doing I'm going to let people know this is what I'm doing and if the answer is yes then when you come to me you will understand where we are walking and you are going to say yes to that as opposed to people who may show up to me or in conversations with some of their friends or therapists or whatever and they want the cathartic aspect and I'm like yes but that can seem very dismissive and so I wanted to make that distinction for my patience for for you to say thank you on a public forum and for our listeners and audience members to understand that like when you enter into a contract whether it be verbal or financial with a practitioner or with just a friend who's holding space for you make sure you understand where they are coming from so that you can get the most out of that interaction so if you are looking for more of a yian analysis of your psych your subconscious and unconscious then it's not that your therapist is not good or bad he's just not the right flavor for your coffee at this particular time well say I went to my therapist in particular because he mentioned y and archetypes in his website profile oh man it's a catfish [Laughter] bro um you know so I I took a note down as you were going through all of the different types of um as you're going through all the different types stuff I wrote down you see the world as you see yourself and this is something that comes up a lot um with my more resistant uh clients my clients who are more aggressively committed to their negative worldview yes um you know I work with a few people who have um I guess fairly um dire perspectives on on how the world outcome might be over the next five to 50 years um and you know very heavily committed into into these just negative perspectives um and it always comes up you know you're projecting onto yourself or onto the world the insecurities and the fears that you have within yourself about your own ability to succeed um and your own ability to have value and meaning in the world um so you know when I hear about the like the humanistic side you know that that's what comes up is you're trying to get people to realize you see the world as you see yourself and let's now progress into why you see yourself the way that you do um and I guess that gets deeper into the psychoanalytic and the holistic um approaches to therapy and I think you know it's funny you know we've maybe part of the incompleteness of all of these therapeutic Styles is that they've been reductively labeled into their individual categories instead of lumped into one holistic experience ironically Hol being one of them right um because you kind of have to go through all of them you have to go through all of them um in order to come out I think the other side and then it's just kind of part of the nature of our medical system right we live in a world of Specialists and we Bounce from specialist to Specialists and our Specialists don't even communicate with one another sometimes um and I think that's for a funny place for some people like you and I might come in where we're Specialists and that were acupuncturists but we're generalists and that we have to take care of everything and anything that might come in through our doors with our very simple tools um with our very simple yet very effective tools and the fact that you know your own healing Journey precedes the healing work that you do for others I think is why you're naturally driven to Yes um not just help people feel better but actually help them grow because you want to give to others what you did for yourself right which is what I want to do and that's that's that's a lineage of healing you know like I know worked for me and I want to help to pass that on to you I know not all of it's going to work but like I'm going to give you everything I can from my path until you can figure out your own path and then you can set you free into the world you know and [Music] um I I like to imagine our all of our existence sort of idealistically as each one of us is just lighting the candle for the person next to us so that eventually the whole world is just one big Fireball of love mm um so yeah I mean this this idea of you see the world as you see yourself and then so then why do we see ourselves the way that we do and what kind of work does it take to [Music] um not write off the story that came before it's like not like yes but but but yes and and yeah because it's recontextualizing the story that the story that came before um and using it to make meaning in your life I I think where a lot of the therapeutic Styles fall short uh except for maybe like the last one that you mentioned the holistic one is that a lot of them don't really give any context for what life even is and it gives no sense of groundedness for life after death which I think ultimately is what almost all humans are afraid of whether they're can really verbalize it that way or another right we're all experiencing the finality of our own existence and the the urgency to live to our fullest um and the anxiety that we can't live to our fullest with the short time that we have you know and that's a lot of that's a lot of pressure um so I you know really do think a lot of worth conventional conventional I don't use that word where therapies come fall short is that that doesn't say anything about the spiritual about about about spiritual possibility you know um and it doesn't give a lot of it doesn't provide a lot of guidance um to understand what life what life could be I guess you know sure and and maybe this is my own bias because for me the Mysteries give me peace you um and and I know that's that's not everyone that but that's definitely me the Mysteries give me a lot of peace and make me fear or make the urgency of Life feel less intense because the finality seems less determined um that and and understanding that and embracing that in my own healing path has allowed me to um reassess the difficult things I've experienced and put them into context that's removed the suffering and like the baggage but integrated hopefully some of the wisdom from that from those experiences right yeah that's I mean that's Alchemy right in a sense yeah that's the changing from lead to gold and I think on a gross level you know maybe people have heard this these stories before these you know Alchemists from or the or even the book The Alchemist which is great I probably read that book like four times you know it just so anyway becoming the author of your own story is totally you know The Alchemist um I mean I read that book so many times when I was in high school and then again later in college and no doubt it it it influenced the words that I'm saying to you right now for sure totally and you know The Alchemist is were people who wanted to who turn who were quote be a supposedly be able to turn lead an innate substance into gold which is the most valuable substance still on the pl I know platinum and you know whatever uh lithium or some okay I get it I'm relatively speaking gold is a standard you know what I'm saying highly conductive yes yes in many ways um especially for the anunaki no just kidding they didn't need that shout out shout out to anunaki what it is you know appreciate you yeah no you're good um but it's an internal process as well and The Alchemist is one who can take the this sort of like substance that is an afterthought lead right that is literally poisonous to the body is good for a paper weight doesn't burn is a byproduct of other uh chemical reactions and to turn basically like the mo what what you know what we're considering one of the most useless substance a poisonous substance and turn that into the most valuable substance so you're talking about the most polarized opposites I'm not going to say yin and yang because one is not so useful but you know Yin is Yin is very useful as opposed to Yang or whatever but to go from something that is innate and poisonous to something that is highly valuable that trans transformation from one to the other is the work of The Alchemist that is the work of someone who what we're talking about that is the work and when we talk when we reference the work this is the work you know what I'm saying and so yeah what we are trying and what you have so eloquently you know stated is that like that's the important part when I talk about integration that is the important part this these poisonous or these afterthoughts these Echoes or sh Shadows of experience that we all have and again some louder and more intense than others are still ours to deal with regardless of how they got there and we have compassion for those people you know what I'm saying who have deeper deeper [...] than than I do you know but you know you mentioned Gabor mate earlier right and you obviously know and I'm sure many people who are listening know the book the body keeps the score right yep and the very simple idea but very profound and I I think very real um observation that whatever you experience positive or negative let's say the after effects of that are stored within your system um and Es and compounding that um the lack of expression of the things that are stuck in your system continue to make them fester and become even more putrid sure um I think the healing Journey the alchemical healing Journey for all of us is to transform all the negative energies and emotions that are stuck inside of our bodies for the sake of opening um that clear flow of energy and vitality through our systems so that we can experience our own version of Enlightenment and I think you and I probably at at in at our highest you know at our highest mission as we're working with anyone is to help facilitate their own Enlightenment um as a journey our own Enlightenment yeah yeah that's the bodh the bodh sappa yeah so for all of the people we work with it seems like you know we are trying to help them become their own Alchemist um yes and part of part of that is is the catharsis because many of the cathartic um much of the catharsis at least that I've experienced from my practices and many practices that you've shared with me um when you start to build the fire in the body that drives the alchemical process it re it's it starts to release things right there um just starting to build the fire um gives the experience of catharsis the problem that I've witnessed is that a lot of people get stuck in doing um that fireb building cathartic experience you might even call it you know like um I I don't want to call it Kundalini because I don't think it actually is fully activated Kundalini I think it's Reckless between the leny that's just kind of shooting around um but have they have a harder time transitioning into um I'm not an expert in this but I'll just say into like higher chakra activation um or or different emotional vibratory state activation because they'll stay stuck in the lower in the lower centers um you know I I struggle with mentioning the Shockers right now because in my own studies of them I recognize how little I know and the more I know the the more recognize how little I know um and and I understand that you know all functionally um I've attributed as many people have emotions to the different energy centers of the body how accurate that is to the classics I don't want to say um but for at least a functional model for people that I've worked with um I gave them the idea that fear lives in the lower belly um and that there's a deep constriction of fear that's experienced ear or a deep fear that's experienced early in life then a strong constriction can take place down in in the lower belly of the body and these fears um are hard to tap into when we're adults and hard to identify and hard to let go of um because for whatever reason maybe it's just geographical with our heads up here we're fairly disconnected from our our pelvic floors um I'm sure you've experienced lots of patients who tell you I got I carry my stress in my shoulders right and um a functional phrase I've said to people is you carry your stress in your shoulders you carry your fear in your pelvis and your stress is a result of what you're afraid of now whether or not that's diagnostically diagnostically true who knows right but it's functional yeah in terms of deel awareness over your thought processes and then understanding that I need to get deeper inside of myself sure I'm gonna feel better so there's there's a couple things here that we you know I want to make sure that I mentioned so first we know we're talking about like traumas that happen to people and then there are somatizations of those the body keeping the score in this case which is an from an individualistic perspective true in the way that we are aware of it there also is the societal aspect that we have been talking about last year and then also more recently you know from the work of Wilhelm Reich mentioning the the um emotional plague and this kind of societal imprints familial imprints uh placed upon the being Us in this case you know me you and The Listener that creates this false self right so this is one idea we have the sort of false self which is not true authentic self that we are right and then in addition you have these things that get stored within us that then create Echoes or yeah forward moving Echoes In Time of these previous things so we have a false self one from the imprints of society and then we have these experiences that are could be passed down and I've given this told this story before about some uh woman who I had met on a blind date whatever but I ended up doing some work on her and I put my hands on her abdomen and I saw this you know very difficult scene of a elderly gentleman um basically coercing a you know pulling the fire alarm coercing a young girl that was like probably e8th grade maybe or freshman into his car driving her to a quote unquote safe place and then molesting her basically and when I told this girl what I saw she immediately called her mom and her mom said that that happened to her that happened to her mom when her mom was in eth grade way back when and that was I felt that as a as like a little nodule a little ball in This Woman's lower pelvis so she inherited that and that was residing within her you know what I'm saying so there are just other things that we carry around with us but all of this to say and we're using this word a lot recently is that the emancipation of yourself from these things from these stories from these objects from these ideas from these Echoes from our false self from our experiences gives us a more accurate sense of who we are as a being it's not the elimination of those things it's not erasing them it's the freedom of being able to decide how they're going to affect you moving forward and for me this is the transformation of lead into gold by saying yes that happened yes that's poisonous that doesn't have much value for me it is lead and Lead is making me heavy and Lead is poisoning me just like it does when it was in the paint I don't care what any conspiracy theorists say that lead was good for you it ain't not the is it there I listen to right but like you know but like that that turning that turning of your mind to say okay yes that is me that was me that happened but now I am going to embrace those things because I cannot remove them from me that this is going to be the way in which that people find their way through and it's not an easy process it's not this is not an easy thing to do this is the work of of an entire lifetime I I think you know in in a very simplistic way we have to learn how to love ourselves um and when we go through well you know something that comes up a lot with people I work with and that's come up a lot with me is just innate selfworth sure um we for whatever reason don't a lot of us don't have a lot of innate self-worth um and it doesn't seem like even in my experience as a youth like I just you know you might have been told you're good and you know like oh you can do anything you know but you're also getting belittled and yelled at and B and shown over and over and over again um you know through all sorts of inputs um that maybe you aren't and so it's easy for many people to develop a very low selfworth and when you don't think very highly of yourself you are more prone to do things I think that cause you harm well Christian that's markeet that's all of marketing is to show you you are not good enough unless you have this thing everything is telling you that for sure yeah man that's why I got off social media and all everything because I wanted less inputs making me feel like I wasn't doing well enough based off of someone else's standards I'll tell myself I'm not doing well enough based off my own I could I could see it by the box that I'm living in that I'm not doing well enough um but you know it's uh a lot of therapy you know you're going through all these things that happened to you that made you feel a certain way about yourself and about other people and about life and the world and your potential and um there's all these emotions um anger sadness regret all these negative field emotions right and you were just trying to feel more love for yourself which extends into love for other people but then it's also like you're not really going to be able to I think feel a lot of love for yourself in a sincere way until you go through the process of forgiving yourself and forgiving yourself is a really complicated process because you're not always entirely sure what you're forgiving yourself for but at some point or another every I mean and I say this because I have felt this way and as we were saying you know like we are We Are One and the same even though we're different we're all part of the same I don't think that many I don't think humans are that different than me and if I have felt self-loathing in my life for distorted reasons that I'm sure many other people have felt self-loathing and finding ways to navigate and heal myself self-loathing made it easier to accept other people sure not other people well if if we do you know we don't often do it but if we if we take a little Chinese medicine 90 Dee a little right turn here I put my blinker on we'll we'll dip in TCM for a minute um the metal element which is associated with the the lungs and the large intestine which and then psycho emotionally and you know which is associated with grief Letting Go guilt right these kind of like heavier emotions if you will um the metal element again with the things that I just mentioned is also it's also associated with one of the spirits so the Chinese believe that we have kind of like five Spirits wrapped into one so we often use the term Shen or soul on here but it's really more like a a prism it's it's ref it's refracted light and so this is one of the five spirits and this spirit is most associated with the physical body in Chinese they call it the PO but we'll we'll call it the the kind of like the Soma your your body body and I believe that like from my understandings of working with people and obviously our re V readings in various texts and and you know Reflections on those texts from more contemporary thinkers that like the difficulty in letting go the difficulty of of guilt of letting go of guilt or we call forgiveness right is difficult because the body is most aware of its own nature of like you said that it's finite that it has an expiration date that it is actively expiring we are slowly expiring milk although I that I want I'm getting sweeter before I get more sour you know what I'm saying but like that part of our soul that part of our psyche that part of our being has a hard time letting things go because eventually as you say you see the world as you see yourself it knows it too is going to have to be let go of and so that is the very difficult part on a being level on a physical level on the human level because it is reminded of its own finality and so this practice of Letting Go regularly is hard is hard because we're gonna we have to be reminded that we're going to have to let this go too and you know this is actually not we don't do this very often but this is just a natural moment right now uh Eric and I on the next episode are going to cover the Tibetan practices for people who pass and what you you know some of the prayers that you can say for them and since we're on this subject right now I want to say a uh a rest in peace to my uh friend Dr David Jay zigger who um some people you know I I share some patience with him and and he passed away um peacefully uh last Saturday he's a good friend of mine a good practitioner of holistic and and um medicine he was a do he delivered many babies he helped heal many many people uh and so you know much love to my my mentor and and homie um but yeah so metal element Soma Poe Letting Go grief forgiveness and back where we started you know we were when we first started talking about doing this podcast I we want wanted to talk about kind of like therapy versus coaching um and you know I I think what what comes up what comes up a lot in the people I work with uh is trying to create a trying to create a like a simple understanding of your early narrative so that we don't have to linger on it for too long right um I think uh we all have similar I mean again I don't want to generalize too greatly because obviously people have very unique experiences in their lives um but we were all children at one point absolutely regardless of what of the conditions in which we were raised or the resources we had available to us or the things we may have experienced we were all young and impressionable um and things happened to us when we had states of less of less agency and when we were more emotionally dependent on others for our psychological development um and we just model what we've seen and if this is all we've seen then this is what we know and and it just is what it is um what I've seen as a challenge for some people um is well just say let's talk about your relationship with your mom and they'll say oh you know like oh my mom she was you know she was real hard on me about this or you know she had a real problem with that was like but you know but she did a really good job you know and like you know I'm not mad at her anymore she did a really good job this and people don't a lot of people I've worked with exp don't want to point fingers at people um they don't want to blame other people so or it depends it depends on who it is but I mean in family experiences I've noticed like I've recently I've worked people who are hesitant to point fingers at people and I've had to tell them that sometimes you have to point the finger at someone so that you can stop unconsciously pointing the finger at someone um you have it's I don't ever want to necessarily blame people and be and like encourage a victim is a victim mentality but it's like I have to be able to say you did this it influenced it impacted me in this way and now that I can acknowledge it I don't have to hold on to it anymore and I can let I can let go of it um and I I think that is part of the way that we transition from just going over the same [...] the same stories over and over and over again um without actually transforming them is to navigate what it's like to actively place the blame so that you can acknowledge that you needed something different so that you can then take the blame away and become your own guide become your own parent um I've used the work of mar wolin a lot in my own life um and with my clients quite a bit um he wrote a a book called it didn't start with you oh yeah that's right you remember that one yeah and one of the exercises that or yeah one of the exercises you go through in that book is you know you write down your mom you write down your mom's name and you know you say when I was when I was a a little kid my mom was like this um I wish that my mom had done blank and blank differently I blame my mom for this and this I blame my mom for that and that I'm grateful for her for this and this just so that you can very simply itemize um so that you don't have to [...] yourself about pain that you had um that you didn't know how to process um like I was working with a client recently who really really loves her mom really loves her mom but her mom also [...] her up and did a lot of terrible things to her when she was growing up and she can't really process her own pain until she's able to acknowledge that even though she's not mad at her mom now she was mad at her mom then and had no space within which to express that and now it's literally taken hold within her body as a deep rooted anxiety which influences her communication and her intimacy you know so it's like being able to claim something name it so that you can own it yeah and then let it go yeah yeah yeah um but yeah but we still haven't even really you know all of this kind of still leans into the the cathartic aspect still you know um C cultivation um I I don't know that something that a therap that that a therapeutic space can provide I think they're I think they're different they have a different energy to them um I don't think you need to be fully released before you can start doing the work of like rebuilding well we would hope not because fully breaking something down when you're always incurring more is not a POS possible you know I'm saying like it would take a lifetime to get rid of a life to to to to be you know cath Lifetime and so that's not the that but that's why that's why what that's why we're saying what we're saying what we're saying is catharus is important you do have to as you said name it to own it so that you have something to work with so that you can release it and move forward from it right as opposed to just what they call generalize and I'm using air quotes because I like to use them randomly but this is actually appropriate um you know generalized anxiety disorder when we work with people who have generalized anxiety disorder it is it's only generalized because the thing that has that is the thing or things often that are causing the anxiety have yet to be labeled and sometimes they are sematic right they are physical their imbalances are off with their Electro light or their blood or you know exercise or whatever and other times it's also things that have happened to them that haven't been processed that create this sense of like I don't want to go in the water I don't want to go in the water I don't want to stay I don't want to go deep I want to stay up I want to stay out and so we you know like you said name it own it start to transform it I I think the thing we're all most addicted to is the distorted perspective we have of oursel and we do a lot of things to reinforce the distorted perspective yeah that that we have of ourselves um yeah and you know so yes that I mean that's right no I know I it's kind of it's kind of hard to move move from there it's because how how do we create an undistorted picture of reality um how do we create how do we help someone create a non-distorted picture of themselves and of reality um this will be the topic of our next when you of our next meeting when you come on okay we have you know because that that's that's an entire thing and that's essentially that's what we're doing I mean that's what that's what this podcast is doing that's what you and I are doing when we work with patients that's what I are you and I are doing we work with each other that's what I you know when we work with our family members when we work you know and I I mean work isn't like they're paying us to do stuff but when we interact what we're sharing where we're sharing from it's with that intention and uh and I don't want to Short change it I I we're we're deep in we're an hour deep into this conversation at this point and I don't want to uh uh bury it at the end and I want to come at it with with that as Our intention of of um of you know emancipating this uh distorted self- perspective I think that would be a good place to uh a good place to pick up next time well no I I agree and I I think you know just to say though that if if we are really addressing this um this juxtaposition of uh therapy and coaching of catharus and cultivation um it really isn't a matter of verse it's just a matter of and um and acknowledging acknowledging that there's that there's work that needs to be done I think um there's work that needs to be done from both ends right um You cannot just be treated into Health yes um you can be guided towards Health towards your or version of Health but you cannot be treated into health and that's part of the big issue in helping people alchem eyes is that it can't be done for you um you can have someone hold your hand while you're doing it for yourself though so what you're saying Christian which is a very Hy name for this next sentence you're saying there are no saviors just ourselves is that righta Christian that's exactly right thank you Daniel oh you are welcome my friend uh thanks for coming on today and uh chatting with me brother uh thank you Daniel yeah I'm happy to keep this conversation going next time yeah yeah I think it's a great place to uh to leave off on and to pick up next time uh I do love I do love ending on a little bit of ambiguity and a pun I don't even know if that's a pun but you know I I think people know what I meant if you've made it to the end of the episode your attention span is within the top 10% of human beings in the world f fantastic we give you one clap for uh for hanging out with us um I will uh put you know Christian has a practice uh on the north side of Chicago for our Illinois folks who are interested in getting a hold of him I I'll put the the links to his contact if you're interested in in working with him or you know whatever just checking out things that that he does um you know everybody knows what it is uh like subscribe comment if you're on YouTube do your thing share our work Instagram in and Tantra podcast slide up in our DMS we'll be happy to uh slide back up in yours and everyone's just sliding everywhere like a slip and slideer something like that uh as always we want to remind people that we are brought to you by our [...] selves we uh you know don't do any advertisement because this is a a love project and a passion project and this is definitely you know things that we live and so we are just sharing things that we live and learn and um you know it's an opportunity for us to bring Clarity to thoughts that we are having and to bring experiences that we are having that we believe are valuable uh to share that with a greater audience so if you feel that it's you know useful beneficial for you please feel free uh and obligated also uh to share with uh you know friends family loved ones and enemies also random people spam them with our [...] it's all good uh for Eric and Christian this is Daniel we'll catch youall on the next one peace [Music] a