Practice-In-Place Roundtable AUA With Lydia Grace & Joanne Muir

For the October Ask Us Anything we hosted an open roundtable on "Practice-in-place" with fellow Insight Timer teachers Lydia Grace and Joanne Muir. "Practice-in-place" comes as a wise meditative response to "Shelter-in-place" induced by reactions to Co-V. Amongst discussion about now using more technology in our practices & sessions we touch on energy work, fear, ego, PTSD, healing, love, empathy, Brahmaviharas, Polyvagal Theory, embodiment, trauma, massage, presence, puja, info, resources, etc

Transcript

Good morning,

Good evening,

Good afternoon everyone.

Everyone who's watching,

This is as far as excited as it gets,

This is even more exciting than an hour ago when I talked to my mom and find out where I was actually born.

But anyway,

What hospital I was actually born in.

But anyway,

I wanna,

So this is our monthly AUA,

What we call the Ask Us Anything.

And so here's Josh and I,

The Yin and Yang of the Buddha Dhamma but today we have two very,

Very special guests.

We have Lydia and Joanne.

Hi.

Why don't we go to Lydia first and let Lydia introduce her to the people that don't know her yet and then we'll just go around.

My name is Lydia.

I currently am located in Colorado in the mountains and I am an embodiment coach,

Which means I help facilitate space for people to kind of get out of their dissociated head space and come into their body so they can feel connected,

Come back into connection with themselves to be able to live from a more anchored and grounded place.

My background is from doing 15 years of teaching yoga and meditation,

Working with thousands of clients in body work like massage and various forms of tuning into their body and those very tangible forms.

And I've kind of integrated a lot of that and brought it into the online sphere to see,

Especially it started with COVID realizing the need was here and there was this access to start bringing a lot of what I already did locally into technology.

So that's where I'm at right now.

Thank you,

Thank you,

Lydia.

And Joanne,

It's your turn.

Hi,

Yes,

So my name's Joanne.

I am in sunny Florida.

You can see the sun coming through the windows.

So we're coming into our favorite season here.

Winter in Florida is bliss.

I am a practicing shaman and an energy coach,

Helping people in many different ways,

Whether it's in a ceremony format,

Whether it's body work.

Lydia and I share a path in a lot of body work,

Many,

Many hours on the body and on the table.

Cranial psychotherapy and visceral manipulation have been two of my favorite modalities.

Touching and playing and communicating with the cellular structure and trauma of people's bodies really helped me perceive,

Read,

And translate energy.

And then it went further past the body.

And now I teach people how to tap into their own ability to channel,

Tap into their own ability to have relationship with their body,

Tap into guidance,

Feel connected to their ancestors.

And quite often a lot of my work is to clear any interference energy.

I find a lot of people come in and they want to get there and they think that it's just up to them.

They can feel very defeated when they can't obtain their goals.

And quite often what we're doing is sort of unwinding through the physical and energy realm to remove any interference,

Whether it's beliefs or ancestral trauma or cultural programming or whatever the case is.

So I love my work and I'm happy to be here.

Thanks.

That is so cool,

Joanne.

And Josh,

Your turn now.

Hey,

Josh,

Co-host on Ask Us Anything.

No,

I guess I never plugged my website,

But probably ought to not do that if you want to put this on Insight Timer.

I don't know.

But no,

I write a lot about meditation and yeah,

I facilitate meditations and into retreats and studying Buddha Dharma,

Practicing Buddha Dharma.

Writing,

I just wrote,

Well,

I mean,

What was the modality after a cranial sacral that you mentioned,

Do you remember?

Visceral manipulation working with the organ system.

Right on,

Yeah.

Right now I've been,

For the few months my daily practice has been with this analysis of the itipada sutta,

Which is the powers and whatnot.

And one of the things recommended in there is the 32 parts of the body.

So I've been working intensely on that.

And cranial sacral is a great modality for any way that's energetically sensitive that's never experienced cranial sacral.

I would highly recommend it.

It's amazing.

I could get into doing mouth work even on the higher levels of the cranial sacral.

Yeah,

So that's that.

I just did a two hour sit today.

There's a group of monastics in caves in Almeria,

Spain,

And they send out a WhatsApp notification to people all over the world to sit at the same time for two hours straight.

So I would say getting into more hardcore meditation.

Inner journeys,

Inner exploration.

Okay,

Denny,

Back to you.

Thank you,

Josh.

Who are you,

Denny?

There's so much about Josh that I don't know.

I'm discovering new things about him every time.

Anyway,

So Josh and I been collaborating.

We're actually fellow students of the same master who resides in St.

Louis.

Josh resides in St.

Louis as well.

Dharma master.

Dharma master,

Thank you.

Thank you,

Thank you,

Dharma master.

So in the most simplistic sense,

We're both,

We were just having that conversation the other day that it's probably not good for us to call what we do Buddhism because it's not an ism.

It's really,

So we would just say that we're Buddhist students and we're learning,

We're pursuing a spiritual path that is consistent with the Buddhist teaching.

I started teaching meditation and all that about maybe about four or five years ago,

Mainly to a group of elderly,

Cantonese speaking elderly in San Francisco.

And among them is my mom.

And over the time I discovered that they need more help with the physicality than they do with mentality.

And so I'm shifting more and more towards the body as opposed to the mind.

This is just,

It's just more accessible.

And so when I met Lili and actually had a conversation with her yesterday and it just blew my mind in terms of how similar we are in terms of approach that when we live in this environment where we're just bombarded by distractions and the one place where we could find tranquility is actually our body.

This is the one thing that among all the things is the least,

It's the most constant.

It's something that we've been living with for decades.

So in that sense,

We're approaching the same way.

So our meditation technique is very much body centric.

And over time,

As it turns out,

My dad started,

It's a very apparent,

I wasn't a parent maybe a few years back,

But now it's very apparent that he's suffering from dementia.

And so it becomes more and more,

So my practice now focus more and more on trying to give him the last bit of energy without actually having to put out a constraint on his body.

So when I find out that,

For example,

Lydia is a teacher in Thai yoga meditation,

That was just amazing.

You know,

The Thai yoga massage,

Actually not meditation,

I meant,

Is actually based very much on the understanding of the energy lines in the body and so forth.

And so I am so looking forward to collaborating with all you guys and plus more,

You know.

I think the idea that we should really bring together more and more teachers and fundamentally we're students more than we're a teacher actually.

You know,

We're really learning,

My focus anyway is really about learning.

And I find out that over the years that teaching is the best way to learn.

And so I'm really looking forward to that.

Now,

I think I am hoping that,

And I believe that today is like the opening of a lot of collaborations,

Not just the four of us,

Perhaps with other people that would join us in the future.

But I'd like to think today we would have a focus,

Which is that I remember about a year and a half ago,

It was March 26 exactly when the mayor of San Francisco declared that there's an order for,

What is that word?

Something in place,

Shelter in place,

You know,

Shelter in place.

That was the day that our mayor in San Francisco declared that we should have a shelter in place.

I remember really well,

I was having lunch with my wife,

Having roast duck and we were like,

What?

Let's take that to go.

So this is exactly a year and a half ago.

And I'm just curious on how this whole change in paradigm,

You know,

Where we went from really person to person,

One-on-one type of interaction with the students to one where we now are kind of separate by the screen.

You know,

How does that work?

So that's why today's talk for just because it's thought,

I thought that would be good place to start is what we call practice in place.

And so how about we start with Joanne?

I think I know that Joanne has a time limit.

How about we start with you,

Joanne?

How has this last year and a half,

Maybe middle of the more change your way of practice and your way of teaching?

I love that I wasn't ready for that question because then whatever my unconscious wants to say is going to come out.

Firstly,

I wanted to note that I really appreciated space for a moment and I really appreciated having space around me to feel my full energy body again.

I know that the interface with a lot and be a joy and an alchemy of the connection.

And then sometimes really nice to feel your own center.

And then I started reaching out to people and do some classes via Zoom.

It's incredibly odd for me being that I've always been a hands-on practitioner,

But I actually really enjoyed connecting that way and co-channeling together.

I have people that we still just jump on Zoom channel together.

It's not even a class.

It's just a way of connecting,

Asking questions about what we're seeing in the world and how we're perceiving consciousness and how we're perceiving what Gaia is going through.

And actually I have some sustained practices,

Connecting with people virtually that started sort of in the height of 2020,

That even though I'm back to the office and I'm back to connecting physically,

We still can see practices.

We're enjoying them so much.

So I've had quite a,

So I'm grateful actually for some of the good that come out.

But how has it changed your way of,

Did you have to adjust your way of teaching?

I did.

Yes,

I did.

And yet I was pleasantly surprised,

All of us here loving,

Playing in the realms of energy every moment of the day.

I was pleasantly surprised how much I could still see and play with and direct and receive and share energy.

Even my first Zoom class,

I thought,

Oh gosh,

I hope I'm able to assist and facilitate in the same way I would a room.

And I was really,

Really pleasantly surprised at how much energy could still be read and shared and experienced.

So it changed the way in a sense of I wasn't looking around a room,

But it didn't hinder theater.

That's very profound.

I'm reminded of something Einstein said.

I'm a student of science.

And when he was talking about the beginning of the universe,

In that right before the Big Bang,

There was really no concept of space and time.

And then when the universe was first appeared,

It was space first and then it was time.

And the idea was that if you didn't have space,

There was no need for time.

If you have nowhere to go,

Who cares how long it would take to get there?

And so he has a way of saying that it's the space and the space was this change in a continuum that was the beginning of the universe and then with space and then there was time.

And so I'm trying to really digest what you said because I think it's really profound because I have the same experience.

I really do have the same experience that I have in when I first,

I'm used to teaching one on,

Not one on one,

But one on many,

But still they were like touch,

Right?

And I thought that that was important.

That was my only way to interact with them,

If not by visual,

By energy.

And what I find is that once you have no choice,

You know,

You now,

The pandemic happens and now the only way that we can connect with them is through the screen.

But actually what it does is that it removes the artificiality of the physical space and the connection is just as strong.

So what that means is that the physicality is there and we always think that it's real,

But actually the connection doesn't need physicality.

It can actually be done through space.

I wanted to add,

I had just remembered that a client of mine was in Boston and had an accident as a cyclist.

He had rented a bicycle and got hit by a car and he's used to my work in person.

And I said,

I could offer you some energy work to just help with.

And we set up Zoom and we did sound and lots of beautiful,

Just energy work that came and he messaged the next day and said,

He was surprised how helpful it was.

And I love that as you're saying,

It may be for us as practitioners to change our paradigm of energy work,

But it really changed his paradigm of what energy work was to receive energy work through a Zoom platform,

Which he had never done before.

And he came into it a little skeptical and he left really open minded.

And it was nice that both of us got to experience that.

Are you guys familiar with Matt Kahn?

I don't know if I am.

Oh yeah,

Check him out on YouTube.

He's become very popular.

I mean,

Like hundreds of thousands of views now,

But everything he does is encoded with an energetic healing.

So he's been doing it for years and you guys will be able to notice it right away probably.

You can just scroll through his stuff and on YouTube or it's K-A-H-N.

Yeah,

So it's pretty quite amazing.

He's,

It's like he's in a state of samadhi that transmits healing energy just with his regular teachings,

The whole thing.

So anyway.

Thank you.

While you guys were talking,

I just had this like visual of learning about electrons in school,

How like in around the nucleus or whatever,

The protons and the electrons,

Electrons jump and it looks like they're teleporting.

They're like here and they're here.

And there's no,

You don't see how they got from one place to the other.

They can just jump.

And when you were both talking,

I was like,

Oh,

That's maybe more what we're tapping into is this jumping where we've created collectively this understanding that solid material is real and that solid means barrier.

And what technology on some level is starting to,

I'm,

Cause I'm noticing this in teaching to clients and groups of people online too,

Is there's a level of connection we weren't necessarily tapping into cause we didn't have to when we were in person.

And now that we're not,

Now that there's so many experiences where we're not in person or we can't be in person,

By tapping more into a presence within ourselves,

We're actually tapping more into clarity with others.

You know what I mean?

So there's almost because we have to be more present with ourselves like me in this room,

There's almost a level where that actually enables me to connect on a deeper level than maybe if we were in the room together and I was just reading all the nonverbal communication that was happening with body and kind of from the five senses and we're,

I don't know,

It was just like,

Oh,

This is interesting.

No,

I agree with that.

I agree with that.

For me,

The most challenging thing to do is to be aware of the physicality though,

Because actually right now what's going on is I'm in my room talking in front of a computer screen,

Nobody's here,

But my mind is filling in the rest,

Right?

It's picking up on all kinds of other things,

But I tend to forget the body,

Especially when I'm interacting with the computer,

Because what's really here now is not you guys,

Right?

It's my computer and a room.

And I get sucked into this virtual world and completely forget the body a lot of times.

It's really easy to do.

So I was wondering if you guys have tips on that too.

I'd like,

I'm actually holding a real physical object,

This crystal in my hand to help remember that I'm not in a virtual world right now,

That I'm talking in a room in front of a computer and that's it.

And I see likenesses of Denny.

I've actually met Denny a couple of times in real life,

But as far as I know,

You guys could be deep fakes,

Right?

Probably not,

But how do I know for sure?

Doo-doo.

I want to pick up what Lydia said about the atom.

And so bringing in a little bit,

The limit understanding.

I meant atom,

You're right.

So bringing in my little limit understanding of physics.

So in physics,

There is this thing called the duality,

The particle wave duality,

Which basically says that what we think of as an atom,

Depending on perspective can actually be wave.

So the idea of the energy and the material is actually interchangeable,

Okay?

So of course that speaks to the beginning of the universe,

That it was just all energy.

And then somehow something happens and then a bunch of energy got together and created the first atom.

And then now we have the universe.

And then of course the sad part is that the reverse can also be true,

That if you take two atoms and what do you smash them or other ways that it creates tremendous amount of energy.

And that's what we call atomic bomb.

So the idea that whether it's atom or wave,

It really depends on the perspective.

And so bringing that back to what we talk about,

Which is the physicality,

That we're so accustomed to the physicality,

Accustomed to this one-on-one interaction in close proximity with a student.

We would never think about what the world would be like if we were to deprive of that.

But yet that's what happened to us from the beginning of the epidemic.

And I guess what we're saying,

And it seems like we all agree is that there is this unintended consequence when that happens,

That we're forced into this space now,

This domain now where we're robbed of the physicality.

But yet because we're robbed of the physicality,

Another part of our experience come up,

That is actually much more energy-like,

And that transcends the space.

And I think this is very profound.

Now,

Let me switch head and bring in a little bit about the Buddhist teaching.

Now,

The Buddhist teaching talks about the physicality and the mentality.

And so if you were to kind of look at the extreme of that,

The pure mentality,

The pure energy,

In the end is about compassion,

Loving kindness,

Empathy,

And equanimity.

And I think fundamentally as teachers,

We are healers.

We have different modality in terms of how we heal,

But we are healers.

And so what makes us effective is deep down,

We have our own,

Something we take very,

Very dearly,

Which is our sense of compassion and loving kindness,

And that's pure energy.

And that energy can transmit through all medium,

Including the lack of medium.

And so I find that really profound.

I find that really profound.

Now,

Let's get a little bit more personal.

And,

Lydia,

You talk about how your own experience,

How you kind of,

Remember yesterday,

We were talking about us,

All of us are actually kind of introvert,

I assume.

Maybe not Josh.

Josh is sort of the outliner.

Meziovert,

Meziovert.

Meziovert,

Okay.

So,

Lydia,

You were talking about how we balance between being an introvert and an extrovert,

And somehow this practice in place opens up some dimensions that you didn't know that exist in terms of how you present yourself to your students.

Yeah,

Well,

What we were talking about yesterday,

I was kind of expressing how it's been a cool,

Kind of interesting expansion in a lot of ways for me,

Because one of the things I love about Thai Massage is you're giving the body a chance to see itself differently from different positions,

Which is also what you do in yoga,

What I've liked about something called Acro Yoga,

Which is like a layman's acrobatics.

What I love about travel,

I feel like travel is us putting ourselves in a different position with the earth and seeing it from a different perspective,

Similar to a yoga practice or Thai Massage.

And then,

Of course,

What Joanne does is all of that at a much more subtle level internally.

Can we shift the connective tissue or the fascia and create this tiny little shift and then everything in the body is like,

Whoa,

All of a sudden big shifts in the subtleties and nuances,

Which is what I,

Those are the main modalities I love receiving.

But one of the things I noticed,

Because I've been really learning a lot more about trauma,

Like societal trauma,

Individual trauma,

Modalities that have been studied and are coming more into the mainstream.

And that whole thing is within the paradigm of this theory called Polyvagal Theory,

Which is all about understanding the complexities of the nervous system.

There's something called the window of tolerance.

And when more trauma happens to us,

Our window of tolerance gets smaller.

And then the idea in becoming more resilient and growing is to recognize and acknowledge and then to give space for that to expand back into whatever we want.

And one of the things I've appreciated about technology is it's almost allowed us the safety of having a smaller window of tolerance without judgment because we all had to do it.

And this pandemic kind of closed a lot of us in like a big kind of a collective contraction into kind of like what you were saying,

Joanne,

Earlier about like all of a sudden you had space because there was so much less interaction.

You could like feel yourself in space within your smaller window of what you were existing in.

And there's something for me that I've noticed has been very profound about that because when people feel judgment on themselves and when I'm able to share what if this was,

What if we reframe this and saw this as like amazing,

Like you have now given yourself a space of safety that you didn't know was possible before because it wasn't collectively agreed to be okay.

Now it is,

Can we like settle in a little bit and like feel supported by that as we come into this new feeling of the chaos of the world?

And I mean,

Just before this,

Joanne and I were talking about the chaos that is coming up for a lot of us to be like in your words,

You said burned off and cleared off,

Because I was sharing some stuff that's come up for me that has felt discouraging.

And she's like,

What if you saw it as more of coming up to be cleared and burned off rather than a self-sabotage pattern or something else?

And immediately I felt that in my body of like,

Oh,

That's what it is.

And I didn't see that the same way.

And when I'm on insight timer or even in groups and share slightly different perspectives,

I see because I'm so much into watching nonverbal,

The shift in people's breath and their shoulder tension and like the facial tiny nuances of like,

Oh,

Of like,

This gets to be okay.

This doesn't have to be threatening or I can adjust and my body knows how to,

If I start giving it permission and space.

I have to say,

I love that.

I'm gonna jump in for a moment.

I saw a message come in that is my next client coming this way.

So just while there was a pause,

I wanted to say,

Really nice to share screen space with you all,

Transcendence space with you all.

I did want to say actually that the word transcendence is coming up for me a lot today.

So thank you for saying that.

I think there's something about this paradigm that we're in that we're transcending the old paradigms of physicality and beyond and so just wanted to thank you for that.

Thanks,

Joanne.

Yeah,

It would be cool to hear,

Maybe you can come back and maybe talk about some of the subtle bodies like the astral body and the etheric body and if those have been enhanced or neglected because of technology and maybe holographic realities,

Who knows?

Yeah,

Yeah.

I love the holographic world.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

I love that.

So let's stay connected.

Thank you so much.

Thanks,

Lydia,

For sending the link.

Thanks for being spontaneous and jumping in.

Yes,

Absolutely.

Thank you,

Joanne.

It's a great pleasure knowing you and we'll look forward to having more time together.

Likewise,

Likewise.

Just the beginning.

Thank you.

Thank you all,

Bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

That was wonderful.

That was really,

Really wonderful.

So I was thinking as both because,

I think in some way,

Josh and I,

Over the years that we know each other,

We share a lot of common language.

And so today,

It was actually quite a new experience for me because the language that you use,

Lydia,

And the language that Joanne uses are quite unfamiliar to me.

So I'm really learning a lot.

But I can't help but to think that the one thing that we perhaps all four of us have in common is how we view uncertainty.

And so going back to practice in place,

I mean,

That was a tremendous injection of uncertainties,

Not just on a personal life,

But on a professional life.

And from hearing your presentation and from Joanne's,

I couldn't help but say,

Hey,

These are the people that actually embrace uncertainties and use it.

I would say abstractly.

My human ego,

Not so much.

The daily ego part wants to fight it.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

In this case,

Go ahead,

Josh.

I was gonna say this comes to fear,

Right?

Because for me,

This thing that we're experiencing has way more to do with fear than anything else.

I mean,

It's gotten so much better now because people have gotten used to it and they've worked on it at Coping Mac.

But at one point during this,

The fear was just off the charts ridiculous.

For running down our immune systems,

It's not good at all.

So the fear is,

I think,

Far of any danger.

So the teaching I got that was most helpful,

Just real briefly,

Is that as long as we're able,

If we're not running for our lives or fighting for our lives,

We are safe enough to feel fear.

And so instead of trying to do everything we can to avoid it,

Suppress it,

Get away from it,

Deny it,

Cope with it in wrong ways,

So many different wrong ways,

Just to be knowing that you're safe enough to feel it and to feel it to heal it.

And then that's the way to go through it.

So many people are deathly afraid of feeling pain and being uncomfortable.

And to a certain degree,

As long as we can discern,

Okay,

Is there harm in this or is it just unpleasant?

And the longer we can be with unpleasant,

It doesn't have to be like a stoic thing,

The longer we can be with something unpleasant,

We're talking about the threshold,

Right?

We adjust ourselves to a more threshold.

So when we do come into something that's actually threatening or some situation that we can't get out of as easily,

Then we're more prepared to deal with it.

We have more space that opens up and we're able to be prepared and have time to how to respond wisely to it.

Yeah,

Yeah,

I agree with that.

Thank you for that,

Josh.

In fact,

I think even though we have different approach,

You know,

Like Lydia goes about it with the embodiment coaching and we do it through meditation,

Exercise,

And Qigong or whatever,

In the end,

I think what we're doing is really addressing fear.

It's always about fear.

It's always about fear.

And fear is just our way of reacting uncertainty.

And there's always uncertainty.

And so what's interesting is that we come at it different way,

But what we have in common is basically telling our students it says,

Look,

We know so little about our existence.

There's all these dimensions that we haven't explored.

So why are you even in fear?

You know,

Why would you even be in fear about the limited dimensions when there's so much to explore?

And the more you explore,

The less you will fear.

I mean,

That's the reason why we,

At least in my view,

Is why we need to explore the space.

You know,

If you close yourself off from the rest of the universe,

Then there's just that much more to fear.

But if you're willing to put the technology and the resources together and explore,

There's less to fear.

So everything is about fear.

Interspace,

Exploring interspace too,

Right?

Yeah,

Exactly.

Really,

Fear is an illusion.

I think the only things we're born with scared of is like loud sound and falling backwards because those are,

I don't know,

I've heard that.

I don't know if that's really,

But everything- I wanna add in a controversial- We were in fear,

Right?

Go ahead.

Lydia,

Go ahead,

Go ahead,

Lydia.

What if we took,

So I always like the what if.

What's another viewpoint?

What is possible?

What if fear wasn't wrong?

Oh,

It's not wrong,

Yeah.

But meaning,

Some of this could be my own,

I can't tell if it's my ego or my intuition.

Some will say.

Let's find out.

When I was hearing you,

Some of the things that I was recognizing in this past year and a half that I've been really trying to learn is the effects of oppressive aspects of society,

That there is real fear that's needed for certain populations.

And like,

I'm a white person,

Right?

I'm in a white body.

I live with privilege and so much less need for fear than other minorities,

Other,

Not even minorities,

Because that's,

As a population,

A world population,

White people are actually a minority at this point.

But like,

Where does the aspect of trauma come in,

Where like the window of tolerance I was talking about before,

When we're outside of the window of tolerance,

That's where the negative effects of dysregulation on our body happens in our nervous system.

And that comes from conditioned trauma and accumulation of things that at some level our body wasn't able to handle over time.

And so for me specifically,

I have gone almost against,

Through my own intuition,

When people are say,

Feel it,

Be with it.

My body has been like,

I do that too much.

That's not helping,

That's making it worse.

I need the tools to navigate.

I don't,

I no longer wanna feel,

I want the roadmap.

I want the tools,

I want the support to feel like there's a reason to feel it.

Because the feeling took me too far.

And so what I'm realizing in a lot of the nuances of what I've been learning is what if,

Again,

What if it wasn't,

What if we weren't wrong in our experience?

Because we're all comparing our experiences to other people from our small limited context,

You know?

And so I'm just gonna say it straight.

When you talk,

I hear privilege.

As someone who experiences,

You know what I mean?

Yeah,

This is why I,

This is why we all deserve more love,

Not less,

You know?

We deserve more love,

Not less.

The thing that jumped into my head is fear is survival.

Yeah.

Fear is an illusion.

Yeah,

Fear is an illusion.

No,

Illusion of reality doesn't matter,

But it's part of a survival,

It's part of our evolution is to allow our body to sense fear without the inference of our big brain.

I mean,

That's why when we talk about the parasympathetic nerve,

Which is based on stimulus,

Most of it is fear and uncertainty.

It comes back to a spiral core,

Not to a brain,

Because it's really our survival.

So it's not about feeling or not feeling.

It's not about rejecting or embracing fear.

It's really about having that balance,

Having that harmony between embracing our mechanisms where we can feel fear and survive as a species and yet at the same time having the other side,

The yin and yang side of being able to say,

Hey,

Let me just kind of back off from that and not to be consumed by that.

And so the problem with fear,

It's not fear itself,

Is that we are so consumed by fear.

It's in the mind too,

Because there's not a lion there anymore ready to jump out and kill us.

But- Some people are though.

That's the thing.

Right,

But I'm not other people.

I can only speak for myself.

And just to say that I can understand everybody's situation,

No,

I can't.

So that's why I can always say we deserve more love,

Not less.

There's not judgment for how we feel.

Lidi mentioned that the fact that she's white and so which kind of said that I'm non-white and then,

But then at the same time she's female and trust me,

I am not female.

But I think it's important to kind of bring a little bit of background in here.

Lidi actually grew up in West Africa.

So she was a white minority.

I mean,

You can't get any more minority than that,

Being a white person growing up in.

So I remember before I retire and pursue spiritual practice and I was an entrepreneur.

And before that,

I was a professor for nine years at UCLA.

And I remember the first year that I was there being a junior faculty,

I was invited to the first faculty meeting.

And it turns out that they were talking about admission.

I mean,

Admission of how,

This is the time,

This is the beginning of the time when people start to say that,

Hey,

Maybe there is something called reverse discrimination that if you put the criteria towards the non-white and what happened to the white.

And then someone turned to me and says,

Danny,

You're a minority,

What do you think?

I said,

Well,

Actually I have never been a minority.

I have often been underrepresented.

And I was like,

Well,

I'm not a minority.

Since we're all interconnected,

Right?

When I love my own heart,

All hearts are loved.

And that's what we really deserve more,

Not less love.

And so all these different ideas,

Some of them are better than not,

But the body has its own non-translatable intelligence.

And so there are a lot of people that we have that aren't trying to interpret the world,

Right?

They're direct knowings.

Like our body can walk on ice and will automatically kind of adjust if we're in it without we having to think or bring back what we learned in college or what's socially acceptable now and what's not,

What's in our in-group or not,

Whatever kind of movements or things we're involved in.

It's just,

It's so amazing.

And I'm still wanting to go back to my question of how you guys remember to be mindful of the body while interacting with the computer too.

I can speak to direct experience right now.

So when I felt the need when I was listening to you to say what I said after,

I had an experience of a little bit more activation and tension on my spine all the way into my head.

Afterwards,

When you had your response,

Rebuttal,

Whatever,

I noticed there was a shift because the activation I tuned into and I was like,

Oh,

I need a little bit more energy.

I need a little bit more of adrenaline to say a piece,

Right?

Because sometimes when I feel that in my body,

I'm like,

Is that because there's anger?

But it was like,

Oh,

There's a little bit of a sympathetic response because there's a clarity that I want to come across with what I want to clarify from what I'm hearing.

But then I started noticing the tension started accumulating around the occiput where the neck meets the head.

And that felt like,

OK,

Now I have to let this go.

Otherwise,

That's going to become a headache or that's going to become tension.

And so how can I adjust?

Has there been any shift in my posture to be a little more defensive or step up?

Because there's been a little bit of a shift in the conversation.

And so just noticing my body of like,

Oh,

I kind of want to lie down on pillows right now and just give my physical spine a chance to chill out without having to necessarily change my brain yet or my cognitive biases that I'm interpreting this conversation through.

And so for me,

Just noticing,

Like when I'm doing an insight timer live,

I'll chatter,

Chatter,

Chatter.

And then my intuition will be like,

You're not in your body.

Let's bring everything,

Everyone in.

So I immediately say,

OK,

Where are you when you're listening to me?

What's your position right now?

Where is your shoulder tension?

Where is your breath?

Is it down more to your hips?

Is it up here in your head?

In the awareness,

Is there a shift?

So I just take them straight into like,

Let's do it now.

Who gives a shit what I'm talking about?

How is your body responding to what I'm talking about?

Let's tune into that.

So that's what I've been doing while you've been talking.

You're very empathic too,

Because that is a trouble area.

And I really ought to go get some more cranial sacral.

And just to plug my own work here,

It just did a recent post that I worked on for a long time,

Dharmic Strategies for Empaths.

So that might be of interest something.

But yeah,

It's brilliant.

Thank you so much.

Thank you,

Lydia.

That was wonderful.

It got me thinking about what makes us,

All of us,

Including Joanne and others,

What makes us who we are.

And also we say that we're a teacher,

But often we use the word coach.

So what is it about us?

And so what we do is we're really bringing technique.

We're not bringing theory.

We're not bringing big ideas.

All we're doing is really providing a step-by-step technique.

And to the extent that we are focusing on our body and wanted to have this practice that are body-centric,

Is that we're really teaching our students how to use this body as a tool.

And so I think what you just said,

Lydia,

Is just,

I love it.

Because we talked about yesterday about emotional intelligence,

Emotional intelligence.

And so people talk a great deal about it.

I mean,

You just do Google search,

And it's just like so many talks,

So many papers on emotional intelligence.

And we used to have fellow students that worked for Google.

And I remember making the arrangement to invite our Dharma master to give a talk at Google.

And Google,

That's all they talk about is emotional intelligence.

But what you find is that out of the people who talk about emotional intelligence,

Very few of them actually talk about the technique.

If you push aside all the talk,

How do you actually get there?

What is the tool?

Because that's what we are all about,

Is we're providing tool.

So one of the things that I like to provide is the word intelligence.

The word intelligence has two meanings.

It has two meanings.

How do you use your emotion intelligently?

That's one meaning.

But there's another meaning.

It's central intelligence agency.

The intelligence actually means,

What is the sensors?

What is that?

It's the canary in the cave mine.

So what tells you that you're going down the wrong path?

So what you just described so eloquently is really how do you use your body,

Different parts of your body,

So that it becomes a measure of your emotional state.

And so now,

Once you are trained to that,

Once you become sensitive to that,

Then it becomes innate to you.

So I'll be having a conversation.

This gets me in trouble all the time.

I'll be having a conversation.

And then all of a sudden,

She looks at me,

And I just stop.

And she's just like,

Cut off.

And she said,

What's going on?

I thought we were having a conversation.

Because I sense something.

I don't want to go down that path where we become negative.

It's not what I want.

And so I have to explain to her that I don't need that.

It's not what I want.

I'm not a negative person.

I don't want to be negative.

And when I can sense my body,

That I'm going down to either anger or aversions or whatever,

I want to pull myself back from that.

And that's sort of what we're trying to teach to a student,

Isn't it,

Lydia?

Yeah,

It's interesting.

I don't know if either of you have heard of the polyvagal theory.

That's something that I started studying,

And now I'm in training learning more about it.

And it's all about the nervous system.

So it's all about the complexity where it's not an on and off switch,

Rest and digest,

Fight or flight.

There's something called,

Well,

You probably know the vagus nerve,

Which is a cranial nerve that goes all the way down through the head brain,

Heart brain,

Gut brain,

Connects to so many different things.

And 80% of the information is coming from the,

Is towards the brain.

Only 20% is brain down.

And in this,

It's a form,

It's an expansion of understanding of our nervous systems related to trauma and window of tolerance.

That's where that term comes from.

And we have blended states,

And we have different states.

And one of them,

One where the ventral vagal is the one where we're in connection.

And that,

I purposely am tilting my head.

Because in the ventral vagal state,

Expression of eyes,

What we're hearing with our ears,

Our forehead,

The position of our head,

Is showing to others whether we're a threat or safe at any very minute details from all these nerves that are happening from the heart upwards.

And I think that's what a lot of these tools lead us towards,

Is more of a ventral vagal state.

And when we come into what they call a more regulated state,

It's the ability to move between blended states in our nervous system.

The dorsal is more in the gut,

Which relates to digestion and all that.

But when we're in dorsal,

We go more into collapse,

Exhaustion,

Paralysis of decision.

Sympathetic is like this,

You know,

In the thoracic spine mostly,

Which is like fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Fawn,

Which means like people pleaser,

Trying to just make the situation not be in conflict,

Kind of trying to move away from it.

And it's our nervous system,

Like you so articulately said earlier,

Always moving towards survival.

And the guy that developed this,

Stephen Porges,

Developed a term called neuroception,

Which is awareness without perception,

Which is what you were describing.

We're taking in information.

Our nervous systems are responding.

It hasn't even gotten up to our perception yet.

Our shift,

The tools like qigong meditation,

Embodiment,

Somatic practices,

Is this ability of starting to expand our awareness of all this and then create disruption in how quickly we're interpreting it to be negative or a threat and shifting our perception while recognizing sometimes we're in a fight or flight because it's very appropriate to the situation we're in.

And then that's very appropriate and healthy for our nervous system to move into adrenaline and fight or flight response.

So that's kind of the lens at which I'm seeing a lot through right now because that's what I've been immersing myself in studying and sharing.

Have you guys heard the definition of ego as an overstimulated nervous system?

That's cool.

Yeah.

It puts it in really good language that people can understand.

It really pins down what the ego can do.

Yeah,

That's really cool.

That comes from Matt Kahn that I mentioned before.

But yeah,

Does that modality or that teaching system talk about the peripheral nervous system too?

Because that's where a lot of sensing comes from too,

Right?

I'm sure it does.

I'm a newer student in it.

You know what I mean?

But I'm in training right now.

I'm doing through this brilliant company.

They're super collaborative,

Speaking of collaboration,

The embodylab.

Com.

And it's a training integrative somatic trauma therapy certification.

I'm doing it for personal understanding and awareness and because I feel like if I'm in the coaching world,

I need the understanding of trauma to understand where my scope is and to maintain integrity of the energy I'm holding for people.

So that I can,

If it's out of my scope,

I can be very transparent and help direct them to the resources that are going to better serve them.

Because I've been that client where I was out of their scope.

And it made me feel like I was more broken or like it was my fault rather than their lack of education and their lack of ability to be transparent with what was the situation.

That's right.

So you got to take it in your own hands.

The thing when we heal through these things and then the people who haven't yet,

We become heroes for the people who are still going through the same things,

Right?

Yeah.

And yeah,

Learning from essentially some of the trauma I've gone through.

For me,

One of the things that trauma,

And I always use a broad term because someone brilliant in one of these modalities spoke to trauma as similar to the definition of ego.

Anything the nervous system doesn't have the capacity to handle,

Like to be able to downregulate from,

Comes in as trauma to the body.

And then our tools then either absorb it and get stuck somewhere or we are able to move through it or whatever.

And so when I say trauma,

I'm not thinking extreme only,

Acute,

Big situations.

It's like anything.

Yeah,

And I suddenly lost my train of thought.

But maybe that's where it needs to stop.

I always like to say that if you're in a human body,

You've experienced trauma.

Nobody really gets into this world without any kind of trauma.

And we all have,

Especially if you start going into subtle or subtle reforms of it.

I mean,

That's one way to frame part of a reality.

And the quicker or the sooner we realize that most of us here are on a healing journey,

The easier it gets.

Because so many people are so steeped in a healing journey that they have no idea they're on.

And then they're crying out for pain.

You're usually expressing the same abuse that's been done to them.

So they're crying out for love,

Wanting recognition,

And also wanting respect to their power,

Especially for the masculine,

To be honored and respected,

And respecting the power of the shadow as an equal expression of consciousness.

Because it doesn't mean what their actions,

It doesn't approve their actions at all.

But that shadow is saying,

Oh,

Hey,

I'm important too.

I'm an equal expression of consciousness.

Now,

The actions,

Though,

Are another thing.

That doesn't mean what it's wanting to do or has done is right.

So when I'm- Go ahead.

Go ahead,

Edie.

Go ahead.

I think coming back to COVID and the pandemic and isolation,

And then I think one of the things that we've all experienced,

At least I have,

Is suddenly,

Because we're all online more,

We're exposed to so much more of the world's trauma that maybe we weren't tuning into before.

And suddenly,

Our nervous systems are taking and taking and taking and taking and taking in.

And it's like,

Oh,

Shit.

And so there's this extreme response of,

I don't want to know the news.

I don't want to know anything.

I just want my bubble.

Or my response was,

I want to find out everything.

What's happening?

How are people responding?

I need to be part of this.

I want to understand the collective.

But I think either extreme,

Obviously,

It was whatever.

It's our nervous system.

But one of,

I think,

The most brilliant and compassionate,

Because those four principles,

Compassion,

Equanimity,

That you said are the underlying principles of Thai massage.

Because it comes,

There's a huge branch that I learned from Theravada Buddhism.

And the four aspects,

When I was in teaching mode years ago,

That was the majority of what we were teaching.

It's not about what you do.

It's about how you do it.

It's about your presence.

And the grandmaster that I never met,

But the teacher who learned from the grandmaster in the lineage of Thai,

Was like puja,

Which is the Pali word for intention,

Prayer,

Presence.

Puja is where all the healing happens.

The rest is window dressing.

And I love that,

Because I immediately took it as the movement,

The tool,

The technique.

That's for our ego.

That's for our intellect.

That's for the part of us that's like,

Well,

I need to be doing something.

Otherwise,

What is happening?

The intention,

The approach,

Our presence is where we're at the quantum level of experience.

And yet,

We've all agreed to collectively live in linear time and space.

So we live on that pathway.

So many times,

I'll say,

At the quantum level,

It's done.

Now my human loves it out linearly.

Let's see what happens.

So we start out by the title that we just kind of pick our thin air,

Which is practice in place.

And as we discuss,

It becomes very clear that practice in place really encompasses all the fear,

Because behind that is shelter in place.

And this last year,

The half,

Year and the 3 quarter,

There's nothing but that.

It's uncertainty.

It's all that.

And let me take a step back.

And before I took an early retirement,

I was an entrepreneur.

I actually started two companies and spent a great deal of my time presenting my business ideas to the venture capitalists,

The people who actually manage money for someone else.

And so they're sitting in a position of power.

And we come in and just present a case.

And 10 times out of 10,

At the end of the presentation,

Someone would say something like,

Is the dog eating the dog food?

In other words,

Have you even tried your idea with a customer?

I mean,

You have this great idea how you're going to change the world,

But has the dog eaten the dog food?

And that kind of just brings you back into Earth.

Now today,

We have four instructors,

Or four quote unquote Uber students.

That's who we are.

And I think the thing that you can take away from today's discussion is that these are the dogs that have eaten their own dog food,

That we're really talking about our own personal journey in the last 1 1 1 2,

How to deal with uncertainties,

Both in a professional arena as well as a personal arena.

And we are actually taking the tools that we have honed over a career that we are in a position to present to our students.

And we're actually using that on our own to manage our fear.

And we do that by reminding us that there's so much that we don't know.

There's so many dimensions of existence that we have yet to explore.

And so then why are you so,

Why?

Then it just kind of put things in perspective.

Then I remember there was this one scene that was one of my favorite scenes on,

I think it was Finding Ryan,

Where they come up to the beach and the Germans were shooting at them.

And the lieutenant was trying to bring his soldiers in.

And one soldier was shaking like this.

And he says,

What?

He says,

You're already dead.

So why are you in fear?

So I think this is what we do is that we each have our own understanding of reality or whatever the word that we choose.

And it's a lot more than our everyday.

And what we're trying to do is just present it to our students and say,

Hey,

There's this,

And there's that,

And there's this.

How about we explore together?

And we're doing that with a student.

And definitely in the last year and a half,

We're the one that had to consume the dog food.

For me,

That's a great analogy,

Demi.

For me,

This really hasn't been much of a change for me,

Kind of ironically,

Because I'm not into shopping.

I'm not into going out and partying a lot.

Mainly,

I was going to grocery stores before.

I've had a daily sitting practice since 2012,

Which is mostly solo.

So actually,

A lot of the stuff has been,

And it has been great online because I can connect with people from all over the world now,

More than I can beforehand.

But for me,

It's more about how are other people relating to this,

Trying to figure out how other people are relating to this,

And then adjusting to that.

And it seems like everybody's experienced this a little bit differently.

It's kind of like us.

We're all so interconnected,

But we all have,

We're all a little bit different,

Different expressions of that same.

So in San Francisco,

If you just drive down Gary Boulevard,

The main Boulevard,

I would say seven out of the 10 restaurants are closed.

They just can't survive the pandemic.

The ones that thrive are the take-outs,

Because they said,

What difference does it make?

So Josh is like the take-out of spiritual teachers.

It hasn't changed my life.

I do only fast food.

I'm sorry,

Forgive me,

Forgive me.

The Wikipedia is the McDonald's of information.

Now I'm the bottom of that.

No,

No,

No.

But let me put,

The joke aside,

I couldn't help that one.

But the joke aside is that Josh has this way of,

It is true.

It hasn't changed his life all that much.

And I think for some people,

That's really true.

When I moved,

I moved to Colorado in 2018,

Away from Florida.

And at the time,

I was dealing with a lot of PTSD and symptoms.

And I was headed to Denver,

Not the mountains.

But I was like,

I want to be near mountain energy.

I just make decisions like that.

I'm like,

I've never been to Colorado.

Let's do this.

Let's see what happens.

No job,

No house.

It's something that,

Mountains put things in perspective,

Don't they?

Waking up and cleaning the mountains every day.

There was this medicine.

And then I was in Denver,

And it wasn't working.

Like,

I found a great place to live,

But then the job wasn't working.

I got an offer up here.

And my goal was,

I've worked for myself for a while.

I'm burned out.

Let me see if I can step up and work for someone else and show up.

And because that felt like it needed to be part of the accountability of moving stuff within my own healing,

To just be in more of a submit.

And it was very hard,

I got to tell you.

But there's something about the mountains that's like,

Shape up or we're kicking you out.

Oh,

Yeah.

And there's a first,

Even like right now,

My window right now is white because there's a storm happening.

And the winters here are like,

Whew,

Intense.

And I'm not a huge winter person,

So it's a very,

As a more vata,

In Ayurveda,

My body type is more like,

I like the spring and the fall and a little bit of the summer,

Whatever.

So my body's like,

Are we going to do this?

Are we going to do this?

We've got to figure it out.

Where's the nurture?

I was born in the blizzard,

By the way.

Seriously.

I was born in the blizzard in the century.

So anyway,

Yeah,

I actually traveled to Denver during the pandemic,

The height of it.

And it was challenging.

I'll just leave it at that.

I won't say too much.

But there's a little video of me doing Yijing on Tabletop Mountain in Golden,

Which is real.

Actually,

I really like Golden,

It was really cool.

Hey,

Guys,

What do you say we wrap this up?

Yes.

Let's get to the point.

And again,

This is not the end.

This is the beginning of the beginning.

I look forward to having more of this.

And Josh,

I'll let you go first.

Wrap this up for me,

And then we'll go to Lydia,

And then finally to me.

So this is the first time that we had a round table that was actually round.

Yes.

The very first episode we did in September of 2020,

We had four guests on.

I don't know if you remember.

Yeah,

I remember that.

Denny,

I'm going to throw it back to you.

This is where you shine,

The wrapping up of the intro.

No,

No,

You go first.

You go first.

You go first.

No,

You have to do this.

Thanks for having me.

I am tripping over my own words.

I want Denny to do this.

OK,

All right.

Lydia,

Lydia,

What do you got to say?

I mean,

I really appreciate this.

I appreciate this kind of,

I think on some level,

There's a need to hear processing happen.

And I appreciate the loose structure of this roundtable discussion,

Because there's a processing of different perspectives.

And when I do lives,

It's just me.

And I really appreciate the dynamic of other,

More,

More than one,

All the way up to four for a period of time.

Because even my nervous system and approach was integrating,

Or ideally integrating,

We'll see,

The different perspectives.

I love the human capacity when given more information to change.

And I feel like there's a lot of potential for this,

Where there's different perspectives that are being shared and different potential experiences in our nervous systems that are seeing something new,

Maybe from a slightly different approach or perspective,

That's either confirming the beliefs we had or shifting them slightly or putting a slight pivot of perspective on the direction from which we're seeing it.

And of course,

Anyone who's watching now or later gets a little bit of that experience.

So I think I just have a,

I'm excited about the potential for future collaboration.

And I have a sense of,

On the main channel,

Meridian,

Governing meridian,

Gratitude.

It feels like it's running central inside,

Outside of the superficial personality.

At the deeper level,

There's a sense of,

Yes,

This is good.

I'll throw in a real quick soundbite from the suttas.

Surmountable by wisdom are all things.

And as we know,

Information can turn into knowledge,

And knowledge can turn into wisdom.

So beautiful.

Let me just,

For some reason,

I lost focus.

There we go.

So before I retired,

I was an entrepreneur where I said that.

And then before that,

I was a faculty member.

And before that,

I was a graduate student.

So I had a thesis advisor.

And the dynamics of graduate school is that your thesis advisor is like the emperor,

Like the underlying.

And that relationship continues into your professional career because you constantly need to get recommendations for this and a recommendation for that.

And so one day,

We were flying into,

I believe it was Dallas.

And we had a big conference.

And it turns out that I was flying up from LA.

And as I got on the plane,

My advisor was there.

And he said,

Wow,

Danny,

I'm so happy to see you.

And so we were flying together.

And of course,

We choose the Sydney Charter,

Chatting and all that.

And so it turns out that in the middle of flight,

We encountered the storm.

And the plane actually dropped three times.

And close to 5,

000 feet each time.

And in fact,

One of the stewards had her leg caught under the seats.

And actually,

It turns out that it was a big mess.

And I remember as we were flying down,

I hold on to the seat.

And I said,

I don't want to die next to this asshole.

So all the niceties that I had.

So this is what I learned.

This is what I learned.

You can pretend to like someone,

But you can't pretend to respect someone.

And so this is what I got from today,

Is that I really liked the idea that we built a round table of healers and providers,

Where the relationship is built on mutual respect.

For the purpose of providing more knowledge,

Not less,

To the consumers.

And I use the word consumers,

Because otherwise you would call them students.

They consume our product,

Our practice.

But the consumers always come first.

It's all about them.

And this is what I said yesterday,

That the one thing that I dislike,

Or one thing that maybe dislike is a strong word.

One thing that I think Inside Timer needs to improve is that there ought to be more collaborations among the teachers.

Because right now,

By default,

We are in competition.

It's a zero sum game.

If the student comes to me,

Then they're not coming to you.

If the student comes to someone else,

Then they come to neither one of us.

So I think we need more collaboration,

Because I think the student would benefit.

I think the student would benefit knowing that,

Oh,

In Thai yogurt massage,

They talk about this.

And then in the Qigong practice,

Or in Yijie Jing,

They talk about this.

And guess what?

It's the same thing,

Just some different perspective.

It's just another dimension.

I look forward to that.

I look forward to that.

I hope that this is just the beginning of the beginning.

Cool.

Same.

OK.

So with that,

Thank you so much,

Lydia.

And thank you for introducing us to Joanne.

And thank you,

Joanne.

We hope to see you next time.

We'll have to decide when we're going to do this again.

Maybe we should do it more often than once a month.

We'll figure it out.

Yeah,

Possibly.

We'll figure it out.

Thank you,

Josh.

Thank you,

Josh,

For all your brilliance.

Always the one that starts something.

Nice,

Finally,

Lydia.

OK.

All right.

It was a perfect business.

Thanks so much.

Thanks,

Everyone.