Transpersonal Counseling EXPOSED: Healing Beyond Trauma, History, and Personality!

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Hey everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief 2 Growth. And today I've got with me Harmony Quaker, Harmonie is a psychotherapist. She's an author. She's a professor at Naropa University, where she teaches transpersonal counseling. She's also the founder of the Institute for Spiritual Alignment, where she trains practitioners to bridge the divide between traditional and spiritual transformation. She, as I said, she's an author. Her first book was a self-help memoir called Reveal: Embody the True Self Beyond Trauma and Conditioning. Where she shares her story of transformation while simultaneously empowering readers to discover their truest selves. Her newest book is called Align: Living and Loving from the True Self. It's a— it's going to be available December 1, 2022. We're recording this on November 14. So by the time you hear it, it should be available to you. So with that, I want to welcome to Grief to Growth Harmony Quaker.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you so much for having me here.

Yes, I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you. I got an early copy of your book. As I said, I've started reading it. I'm really, really intrigued with what I've read so far about this transpersonal counseling that you do. But the first thing I do with people, for people, is to help them understand what is transpersonal counseling, and how does it differ from traditional counseling?

Yeah, so transpersonal counseling really honors the higher dimensions of the human experience. Beyond the personality, beyond history, beyond— even beyond emotions. So things that are typically like sort of unexplainable, we honor and welcome into the counseling room.

Okay, yeah, that's, that's really interesting. My— one of my theories about the world is that people have forgotten who we are. We don't know anything about our higher selves or even what our true selves are. So That's why I'm really intrigued by this idea of transpersonal counseling. And how is that received by like the mainstream counseling people? How are they, are they taking this idea?

Yeah, so I actually think that spirituality and the transpersonal is more welcome now than ever before. And as you just said, I think people are more aware that they've fallen asleep to a really essential aspect of themselves. In transpersonal counseling, we believe that these aspects of ourselves that we can't see, that are beyond the body and the mind and the emotions, actually hold the answer to our healing and our transformation.

Okay. And how did you get into counseling? I'm always curious, people's background, what motivates us to do the things that we do in life. So what was your motivation for doing this?

Yeah, so I was raised in a family of healers. Both of my parents were really non-traditional healers. My mom was a breathworker and a coach. And she led a lot of spiritual development workshops in our home when I was growing up. And so it was kind of the way I was raised. My dad is a doctor of osteopath. And so he has always been outside of the convention, you know, back in the '70s, really empowering people through nutrition and vitamins and alternative medicine. And so I, you know, my first jobs were filing at my dad's office and sending my mom's mailing list when I was, you know, 13 and 14. And so when it came time to choose a major in college, psychology was the only topic that seemed like it would even closely resonate with me. But I felt really actually unsatisfied with psychology. It seemed too traditional. And I really wanted to learn how to bridge the divide between this transformation and healing that I knew was possible through alternative modalities and bring that into a clinical environment where most people would seek help. And so I ended up going to Antioch University in Seattle. Um, back when I was looking for graduate schools, the internet wasn't quite as sophisticated as it is now. And so I was really looking for the most alternative school that I could find. I didn't know about Naropa, which is where I teach now. But when we're given— when we as a clinician are given an opportunity to really find our seat as a healer, where we can contact our clients in the way that they leave contact with themselves and be there with them as they find their way back to themselves, there's so much creativity and beauty and fluidity in what wants to happen. I believe that human beings are self-organizing and self-regulating. And so when given the opportunity and the space, we ourselves can find our way back home. And it's really about learning how to do that in the presence of somebody who trusts our process.

You said something there was very intriguing to me. You said leave contact with ourselves and find our way back to contact with ourselves. So could you expand on that a little bit more?

Yeah, contact is the essence of human life. So contact with ourselves is where our soul is fully seated in our bodies, we're in full contact with our full human experience. And then once we are in contact with ourselves, we can contact another human being. It's the place where two souls meet. And so in Gestalt psychology, which is what— sorry, Gestalt therapy, which is what I teach at Naropa University, contact is what we are looking for both within the clinician and within the client. And so when a person is in full contact with themselves, they're in a healthy, aware state where they're regulated, they're available for their human experience, they are present with life without projecting the past onto the present, in full contact, fully present.

And so in what ways do people lose contact with themselves? How does that happen?

There are so many ways people lose contact with themselves. One of the most common ways is unfinished business from the past. So unfinished situations that a person wasn't able to fully move through to completion keeps them disrupting contact with the present moment. So instead of being here, in with— here with you, for example, if I had an unfinished situation that I was putting onto you, then I wouldn't be fully hearing your experience. I want to be available for what's happening inside of me. And I'd I'd be disrupting contact between us by working out the past right now. And we see this with couples a lot. I love working with couples, but they disrupt contact with each other because they have unfinished situations from their histories and childhood and with one another that they're putting on each other now, making it harder to find a point of contact with one another, even though that's ultimately what they want. But part of the unfinished situation is also unmetabolized emotions. So grief, for example, we can be aware that we have grief, or that we can be aware that we have sadness. But how, how we are with that grief and how we are with that sadness can either make it so that the emotion can consume us, or we can use it as a catalyst for growth.

Okay, yeah. So, so these unfinished things and unmetabolized emotions can cause us to lose contact with ourselves, which I guess some people might say, well, how could I lose contact with myself? I mean, I am myself. So how would— how would— could you explain a little bit further?

Yeah, so on the way to deeper contact with ourselves, I look at it as the energy centers down the midline of our body. So when, when the energy centers down the midline of our body are open and flowing freely, we're in alignment. And so we're fully in contact with ourselves, we're open, we're aware, life force is moving through us. There's a newness and an emergence that happens with us. We're not stagnant and closed, right? We're more open to life, and there's more curiosity, and there's more vitality that moves through us. When we're disrupting contact with ourselves, the energy is thwarted. And it doesn't move through us as freely. And that might be something unsaid that we're holding in our throat, or it might be old grief that we're carrying around because we don't know how to move through it fully. And so we're holding on to it. I find that people, even when they want to move through old patterns, that are causing them distress, they simultaneously cling to those patterns, because there's a sense of familiarity and safety that comes from holding on to them. And that's a way that we disrupt contact by holding on to something that we actually want to move through.

And how common would you say that it is for people to, to end up in this state of losing contact with ourselves?

I would say it's the human condition, that it's actually a learned skill to allow life to move through us as life wants to. I think that human beings have a tendency to try to control their own experience and create narratives around the experience that make it more challenging to move through. So animals in nature, when they experience like a fear, they'll, they'll go and let the fear move through their body. They don't have this higher level of thinking that disrupts their, their ability to move through it, right? It just moves through and catharts. But human beings create narratives around what they're feeling that actually stop them from feeling what they're feeling. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief? Most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper, thoughts I don't always get to in the podcast. Podcasts, essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it: the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing— listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become, a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there. Yeah, it's interesting you say that because just the other day I was listening to a podcast and someone was talking about animals and how they deal with fear or with conflict even, and how they'll get in conflict and then they'll literally just shake their bodies and it moves through them. And I thought that was really interesting.

Yeah. To actually give space for our emotions is counterintuitive because human beings want to figure it out. They want to understand it. They want to prevent it from happening again. You know, they want to make meaning out of it. And that actually prevents us from moving through the past and getting really present.

And as we talk about this, and then I ask you why, how common is this? Because I think it's pretty much everybody. I think we, I think we all do this to certain extents. And people don't realize that because it's, I guess, because it's so common, we think, well, there's nothing we can do about it.

Right. I think because it's so common, we have a map, right, of how we leave contact with ourselves. So let's just say we have an experience and we know that in our emotional state we're going to try to make up a narrative about it, and then we try to get closer with our partner and we keep coming into conflict. We can start to map out the way that we're disrupting contact, so that we can find our way back. Right? I think anytime we're learning about ourselves and the human experience, when I sit with a client, I like to sit back and just watch the way they move. How do they relate to themselves? How do they relate to the world? When an emotion starts to bubble up? What do they do with that? Did they make room for that and let it move? Do they cap off and try to keep it down? And so when we learn our own map of how we relate to ourselves, we can find our way through. Was happening.

Interesting. So what are some examples of things that cause us to, to develop these narratives that block off our emotions?

I mean, I think the most common example is feeling disempowered. So in, in moments in our lives where we feel like, like, we didn't have control, we wish like we would have, we wish we would have done something differently. We gave our power away to somebody else and didn't trust our intuition. These, these are places where we start to, to get stuck, because we wish we would have done something different. And so looping in that sort of regret keeps people stuck in these patterns. That's one way. The other way is blaming other people, like feeling like the victim, and which is still seated in that power, like, where is my will? Where where is my truth allowed to be expressed here?

So as I was reading your book, it reminded me, because you talked about like these different aspects of ourselves, these different, like, I guess I think it was shadow was the term that you use. So could you explain to people what that is?

Yeah, so in Align, I, I talk about our conditioned self. And so our condition, our conditioned sense of self is what we've learned about ourselves based on the experiences that we've had in life. And as we're learning about ourselves and developing our conditioned sense of self, there are inherently aspects of ourselves that we think are wrong or bad. And so we disown them. And they get sort of shoved into the shadow and rejected. And when we are clinging to how we think we need to be, and disowning aspects of ourselves, we come off center, from the core of our being, from our true self. And our true self is really like the spontaneous expression of life. Like, as I was saying before, as vitality is moving through us, how does life want to be expressed through us unthwarted, when we're not clinging to how we think we should be and disowning aspects of ourselves, which is what I call distorting life force energy, without allowing it to move through us?

Yeah. So I know a lot of people have probably heard the term shadow work. I think for a lot of us, we're like, we've heard it, but we don't really know what it is. And it sounds dark and scary. So why would I want to do this?

Yeah, I mean, I think people are scared of their shadow, which is why they reject these aspects of themselves. They think, if I actually go to these darker aspects, I'm going to be unlovable, people are going to judge me. And so there's a sense of control and disowning. Aspects of ourselves. But the shadow, the way that I look at it is it's like the youngest truth inside of us that never had a chance to get nurtured. So for example, desire is a really great example. If somebody was raised in a household where they didn't have space to say what they wanted, then they start disowning their desire.. And so the desire starts to grow in this way that kind of might come out sideways and be sort of like fringe desires that they think aren't acceptable in society. And so then they cling to their conditioned self, and the mask of how they think they should be. And this is a polarity, right? They're two opposing energies within a person. And the, the sort of paradox here is that the more able we are to welcome our shadow, the less it has control over us. So we have more sort of mastery over our inner world when we really claim different components of ourselves. When I first started doing shadow work many years ago, I realized that I was manipulative, I realized that I disowned my desire. And because I didn't own what I wanted, I tried to get it in sort of sideways ways, by making other people more important, by giving my power away, by not speaking my truth, and. And it was a very distorted way to engage with the world. And when I realized this, I was first embarrassed, like, I'm manipulative, I was already a mother, a therapist, I was teaching psychology at a different university, like, but this awareness in and of itself became healing for me, because it was this, the sort of gateway into welcoming what I had disowned within myself. And it took so much effort and so much work for me to reclaim my desire. And part of that was being open with people and letting them know that I was noticing this manipulation inside of me and claiming that, and, and realizing that that actually didn't make me unlovable. It, it made— it gave me more power in how I wanted to show up in life.

Yeah, I remember reading something about that in the book. And I actually teach something called positive intelligence. And I don't know if you're familiar with it. It was developed by a guy named Shirzad Choudhury. Zach Chamane. And it's— we talk in this about, we have our sage, which is like a higher part of ourselves, I would say our true self. And then we have these things that he calls the saboteurs. And for example, one of the saboteurs is the pleaser, the person that just rolls over and gives everybody everything. And then the dark side of that, though, is there's a lot of resentment, you know, at times when we do that. So that reminded me of some of the things you're talking about here with the shadow work. And I'm, I'm leading a group of people through this process right now. We're about 4 weeks into a 6-week program. And universally, people are like, I didn't realize I was so terrible. You know, it's like, that's the response. It's like, I've got this pleaser, I've got a controller, or a hyper, hyper-rational, or whatever this thing is inside of me. And we— and even then, the reaction is like, I don't want this. I want to reject it.

Yeah, well, I mean, and, and that is why people reject it, is because they think it makes them a bad person, right, for having these elements of themselves. But when we're given a space to really, like, embody what we have disowned, and move back and forth from how we think we should be— this is the polarity work— how I think I should be, and what I don't want to be, and move back and forth, we can actually find our way back to the midline. Because how we think we should be isn't actually ourselves either. It's a, it's a mask that we're wearing to try to get approval. And so it's somewhere between these two polarities where the truth of who we are actually exists.

Yeah, yeah, that makes, that makes sense to me. There's a, as you said, and as I was reading the book, I was seeing that I never thought about this way, but that, that balance, right? Because people will say, well, this part of me is good because it makes me lovable. People like me because I'm a pleaser and I give things away. So that's why, that's why I do it.

Yeah, my first book was all about me recognizing my pleaser, like this accommodating personality that made everybody else more important. And I was lauded for it. Everybody loved me for it, but they didn't love actual me, right? They just loved what I was doing for them. And I was suffering inside because of it. And I think that that happens for many people, is they think that doing this is going to get them what they want. But then when they get what they think they want, it's actually really unsatisfying because it isn't from their wholeness.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So You talk in your book also about grief and how we can get stuck in, I guess, in working through grief. And I think you've had some personal experience with grief that you share. So could you tell me more about that?

Yeah. For me, in my own life, there's sort of two layers of grief. There's, there's the younger grief that I didn't realize I was walking around with from my childhood, like the grief of my unmet needs, particularly around a near-death experience I had when I was 5 months old. I— we were at a party. My parents were at a party and I fell asleep and my dad put me on the top bunk of a bed so that I could sleep. And I woke up in the room alone and I fell and hit my head on the dresser on the way back and fell to the ground. And when I've done work, my own personal work on this, I can see that I left my body and I didn't want to come back in because I was in so much pain. But the breath came back in. And I spent all of my life really living between two dimensions, but without being able to, to give language to it. And there was so much sadness for me in the reaching out for my parents on that bunk bed and having nobody be there and instead having tremendous pain. And that sort of pre-verbal grief that I I didn't have language for, or even that much awareness of, was sort of seeded in my personality, and drove much of what I did. And, and was like, a grief that was harder to heal, because it was so much part of the water that I was swimming in. And then I went to graduate school. And 2 weeks later, my mom died very suddenly. I was 30 years old, and I felt like the ground had gotten just ripped out out from underneath me. Like the person who I thought was the only person who would believe in me, who would love me unconditionally. We were so close. And I admired her so much for the healer that she was. You know, just to have that gaping hole in my life was so painful. I could feel the pain in my heart right now just thinking about her. That was about 15 years ago. And I had, I really sought out grief therapy from so many different therapists. And I, I never, for 2 years of seeking help and seeking help. I didn't feel like I had the capacity to actually heal the brokenness in my heart. You know, there, there is this way too, that I could feel her presence, like I could see her energy quality still here with me. But that didn't actually bring me any relief, right? It just was more pain that she wasn't here with me, that I couldn't actually hug her and hold her. And then I became a mom. And the grief came out as postpartum depression, which was— I find a lot of women who have postpartum depression are actually suffering from old grief that's unhealed. And I was so lucky that I found my way to my mentor and what I could see inside myself after years and years of not knowing how to be with this pain and having it come out actually as anger, anger that she was gone and a fear of not, of not having any influence or control over that situation that happened in the hospital. I could see that my grief had consumed me in such a way that my alignment was like completely cloaked by pain and darkness and depression. And as I was saying before, the awareness of just being able to see that was healing for me. I could see that I was disconnected from my spiritual self because I had clung to the grief without knowing how to move through it. It had completely consumed me. And, and that was really the beginning of my healing, which was 2 years after she had passed. Actually, it was longer, it was more like 5 years after she had passed. And then, you know, in my work with clients, the way grief looks to me, like in the subtle energy of the expression of grief is that it's so wet and heavy that it can be very consuming, it can take up all of the space. And, and metabolizing even just the smallest bit of it can take a lot of work, it can be really draining and exhausting. Yeah, and so, and I think that that's actually part of, of the medicine is being able to know that we don't need to process it all at once. We can be with our grief for as long as our heart requires. You know, 15 years later, I I was doing yoga up in my room 2 weeks ago, and I just burst into tears because I missed her. And letting myself feel that grief in little bits, little increments, is really important for me still.

Wow, thank you for sharing that. That was— I love the imagery you used there of grief as being like wet and heavy. And I know working with people in grief and having gone through my own situation with my daughter passing, It is, it's all-consuming. It takes so much energy to work through it. And people in our society today want to know, like, when's it going to be over? You know, how can I fix it? And I was just talking with someone the other day who's— a friend of theirs' son had taken his life. And the mother hasn't really started working through it yet. And she said, you know, would you be willing to talk to her? I said, yeah, sure. How long has it been? She said, like, 2 and a half weeks. And I was like, 2 and a half weeks is like she's still in shock. It's, it's not even time to talk to this person at this point. But we always want to just, we want to fix people, we want to, we want to fix ourselves. So it's good to get people permission to say, you know, even you as a trained psychotherapist, it's like, it took me a couple of years to even begin to work on this.

Yeah, the shock, I think, is the most surprising to people, like, the shock itself. Mixed with the grief, you know, can be a really confusing experience. Like, we're trying to make sense of this huge loss. And how can we make sense of something that really doesn't make sense to us, especially when we're in heartbreak, and we're in longing, and we're wanting what is happening to be completely different. And so I love that, that you said that, like, just letting her be in the shock of it until she's really ready to feel.

It's this big ball of stuff. Like you say, you know, there's a shock, there's anger, there's fear, there's sadness, there's disappointment, and, and you have to tease all that stuff apart and, you know, deal with it. And that takes time. And it takes, it takes a lot of energy. So, and, but as you said, just that recognition can be very healing, that I don't have to do all this at once.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, giving ourselves permission and seeing the sort of messiness, like, and letting ourselves be messy, which was actually, for me, one of the hardest parts, because I really wanted to wrap it all together in a bow and figure it out. And it was the messiest experience of my life. And the other thing too, is that because I didn't know how to be with it, I actually allowed it to motivate me to make unhealthy decisions, like to try to make sense of something that was so painful for me. I was grasping at finding a ground outside of myself, because as I was saying, I was so groundless. And so I was trying to find a way to find ground again, and letting myself be groundless and fully surrendering to groundlessness is where I ultimately found myself again.

Yeah, yeah, it's ironic, but yes, I can understand that. I'm really curious about your, your NDE because you mentioned you had it at 5 months old. Was it— so what, did you always have this memory or did it come back to you in later work, or—

yeah, so the story was always there about this fall that I had, and I have a big scar, um, in my eyebrow, and I have scoliosis from the fall. And so, and I also have a lot of inner ear problems because of it. So it was such a dramatic fall. So physically, I could feel the effect of the fall. And I knew the story of it. And my mom had a lot of emotion and a lot to say about it happening. But it actually, what I was saying, I met my mentor who helped me to see that I had completely disconnected from the grief of losing my mom, it was in that experience that I started being able to work back to older grief that had been, been there all along. And I was doing some trauma work, and I could see my young one laying there on the ground, not breathing and not wanting to come back into my body. And in the work, really reconnecting with her and also reconnecting spiritually, like being held in the— in it like a divine blanket and divine hug. But the other piece about it is that throughout my life, I could always see subtle energy. So I could see the way people were holding emotional pain over their heart, or or the way people were, you know, not fresh. I don't know how else to say it. Like their emotions were sort of bogged down by something from the past. And I didn't know that that was unique. But I really believe that I could see that because of, of this old head trauma. So even though it's caused me just tremendous physical pain, I've never had a day in my life where I haven't been in physical pain. It's also been this great gift because I have a lot of access us. And like, when my mom passed away, I could see her energy body and I could hear her talking to me. And it's same with my clients. When my clients are in grief, I could hear and see their loved ones, their deceased loved ones, coming in to offer support and love and connection for them. And in, in the seeing of that and the welcoming them into the therapy room, the client can also reconnect and in a way that feels really healing.

Wow. Wow. So I'm fascinated by NDEs. So I like to stay on this for a little while, if you don't mind. Because there is a common thing about NDEs. A lot of times people develop abilities after having an NDE. So we'll never know because you were 5 months old, if that may be something that helped you to develop your ability. But another thing that people don't realize about NDEs, especially in children, it can take a very, very long time to integrate that experience. And it can cause trauma for, for a long time. And you said that not wanting to come back into the body. I don't know, there's a woman named Ingrid Honkala, who had an NDE at like the age of 2. And she's, she's seen light beings ever since then. But she talks about the anger she had when she came back into her body. And she would say things to her parents, like, I don't need a name. And I'm a nameless, infinite being. And just like, you're, you're a 2-year-old. So that's— it does give us this effect that we carry with us for the rest of our lives.

Yeah, I mean, the unknown of the trauma, while it's simultaneously influencing the way that we see and experience ourselves in the world, can be so confusing. As you know, as I was saying, it was pre-verbal, I had no language to put to it. And so for me, I can relate it to an attachment wound, right? Like, there's this deep attachment wound of reaching out. And if somebody's not there, feeling like I can— I'm on the ground again. Like, that was partly how it was showing up for me many years ago, when I first started realizing that this was still here. And I would feel dizzy, like I was on, like, literally on the ground in those moments. And so The gift of that was, though, that I could be with that pain lovingly. I can bring my awake awareness to the pain. I really believe that when we develop the capacity to love our pain, to love our wounds with so much sacred goodness, that that is where the healing starts to transmute. And so I would be laying there on the ground, seeing myself holding my young one, was simultaneously bringing in awake awareness.

Mm-hmm. So there's so much good things in what you just said, you know, first of all, with grief, it is messy. And we do carry it with us. And if we don't work through it, we continue to carry it with us. And then a lot of times later grief events can trigger previous grief that we thought we were done with.

Yes, I love the way you just mapped that out. Yeah, when we, when we don't metabolize it, the way that it interrupts the way that we meet life now can be so confusing. Like, we don't know why we keep working out the same pattern, but there's something unhealed within us that really requires our attention and our love.

And I, I think that's because I, we're getting fairly technical with the conversation, and I think, hope people are following along because I always like to come back to like you know, the so what, why do I care about this? If I'm a listener, and the thing is, I think we're all carrying unresolved issues from childhood. I didn't know this till I was like 40. And I went to therapy because I was having panic attacks. And I'm talking to the therapist, and she goes back to my childhood, like, why are we talking about my childhood? And, you know, we brought up some things where I didn't feel loved, I didn't feel like I got the attention that I needed. And that was still bothering me 40 years later. And I had no idea until, you know, we actually sat and worked on this. And like you talked about looking at your little self and saying, you know, I needed this and I didn't get it.

Yeah, I think when people think about trauma, they think about like a big event or something really like obviously distressing. But what people don't talk about is developmental trauma. Which is when our core biologically based needs aren't met. And not as if our parents or caregivers are purposely hurting us or violating us. They're just actually not meeting these needs that we have for connection and trust and attunement and care, you know, like they don't have those skills themselves. And so we don't get that need met within us. And the way that we organize ourselves around that that painful experience, whether we're aware that it's painful or not, I think is really important to not only recognize, but repair within ourselves, so that we create a secure connection within ourselves so that we know that we'll always pay attention to what we need, that we'll always listen to ourselves, that we can trust ourselves, right? This is about attaching to self and creating a secure connection within. That's where the repair happens.

Yes. And again, when I was in, when I was in therapy, and this was over 20 years ago now, but I remember, you know, talking to my therapist, and I'm like, well, my parents loved me, they fed me, you know, they gave me all the, all the basic physical needs that we all need. But a lot of us don't realize that it's not just that as far as being a human being, we need a lot more. And we all, and this is not to say anything bad about anyone's parents, because I think we all have wounds from our childhood, no matter how great our parents were.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Like, from the outside, I remember when I was growing up, people would say to me, will your parents adopt me? Like, this, this household, like, with these magical healers that raised me, like, looked like it was this utopian place to grow up. And yet still, here I was, disowning what I wanted, because I didn't know that what I wanted was welcome here. I thought that my role in the family was to please. And because I was so young and couldn't see that within myself, there was— I needed somebody to see that for me. Right. And since that didn't happen, it was my work to do later on.

Yes. And I think that's an excellent point. Because even if, even if our parents are doing a wonderful, wonderful job, We, we're adjusting, we're looking at where, what is my role here? How do I fit in? What are the things I'm supposed to do to, to keep harmony, to keep harmony in the family? And I think we all do that to some extent. And we put on these masks, we develop these coping mechanisms. And then they become so much ingrained in us that we don't realize this is not really us.

Yeah, it's part of the wisdom of the strategy. And I think that if people like when you were talking about with the shadow work, if people can see that it was actually wise of me to disown this part of myself, it kept, it kept a sense of stability in my family, it gave me a sense of safety and perceived connection, then we can actually love that strategy even more, because there's a wisdom seated in it. Even though it's outdated, it's when it becomes a rigid pattern that keeps us from actually being present with life and present with our loved ones now that it becomes dysfunctional. Like, we don't need it anymore. I truly believe that the paradox is to love the thing that we want to get rid of. How much can we love it? It's called the paradoxical theory of change. How much can we love that which we want to change?

Yeah, well, I think that's absolutely true. And, you know, what you're saying, I love that thing about the wisdom of it, because it is, it's a coping mechanism. The problem is that it gets stuck, it gets outdated. We overuse it, right? It's like, well, this worked for this situation, so let's use it for this situation. And that's how humans are. That makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, right? Something's working, you keep doing it. But then we don't realize, well, it's not really working anymore, and it's actually making us miserable. But then we don't know how to stop it.

Yeah, the making us miserable part, I think, is actually really important because beneath the pattern itself, there's actually nervous system dysregulation. So when we were children and we created that strategy, there was a nervous system dysregulation that caused us to try to find that balance, right, that we didn't know how to give language to. So once we stop using the familiar patterns, we actually have to feel how our body was holding that pattern. Like what you were saying before about like an animal, nature, just shaking it out like somatically. The memory in the body is part of finding the new way.

So I'm curious, how do you, how do you work with clients? When clients come to see you, how does— what's that process like?

Yeah, so, um, the first step is really just being really present with them. So, um, clients come in with so many different, like, presenting issues, and and those presenting issues are preventing them from being present. And so by me as the space holder who's setting the container, my presence really lets their nervous system know that we can be here together. All of you is welcome. And so I just, I listen and I see their wholeness, and I'm learning the way that they leave their true self. I'm learning the way that they stay asleep to themselves, and, and the patterns that they cling to. And part of that is I'm, I'm just reflecting, I see myself as a clear mirror, I'm just being a mirror to let them be seen. Right? There's nothing to change, there's nothing to fix, but I see you. And so I do a lot of reflecting and a lot of seeing. And as I do that, I'm also paying attention to the subtle energy movements, like like, where's their emotion flowing? Where's their breath restricted? Where are they tight? I'm just learning how they're holding their experience in their body. And I'm inviting their own awake awareness in. One of the questions that we ask a lot in Gestalt is, what are you aware of right now? So as they're talking, I'm wanting to know how they seem to themselves, what's pulling their attention, what they notice in their body. And by, by inviting in their own awake awareness, I'm also letting their system know, I believe that you and your own awareness are the solution, that I'm not the expert of you, that you know what you need, right? And your awareness and what, what you're willing to see inside yourself in this moment is going to be the information that we need to find our way through what's happening. And I'm here with you, but you're the one doing this. And I think that that's a big difference between traditional counseling and a transpersonal model is that by bringing in a client's own awareness without being the expert analyzing them or rearranging ideas or offering advice for behavioral changes, um, we're really honoring the higher consciousness of the client themselves and, and really trusting their process, trusting their timeline, and honoring their inner mind-body connection. And so really listening to the body. Another question I ask a lot of— if the sensation had a voice, what would it say? Because I want the sensation to have room to express and to cathart naturally. And ultimately, it's a very creative process where the client and myself are, are sort of finding different experiments to work through. The rigid patterns and, and find a new way that's actually true for them.

So yeah, so you're not the, you're not the expert in the room. You're not there analyzing them. And as you said, telling them what to do. It's you're helping them to tap into their, their inner wisdom, the thing that they already know that they need. So that's that— would you say that's the major difference between what you do and traditional therapy?

That's a big part of the major difference. I think that because I trust my clients' sovereign will, there's more opportunity for them to find their way through on their own. And, and I actually believe that this is what children need, right? Like, this was the unmet need in part in childhood, is that the caregivers trusting the will of the child rather than asserting their will over the child. And so it's a deep repair for them.

Yeah. So you mentioned Gestalt therapy, and then we're talking about transpersonal therapy. But you, you also mentioned that you can see the subtle energy body, you even talked about sometimes your clients' relatives in spirit being in the room with you. So that's not part of traditional Gestalt therapy, I would assume. So how do you, how do you integrate that with your clients? And do you discuss that with them?

Yeah, so it happens really organically. And I, the way that I work is I just presence the deceased loved one by saying, I have attention on your father, let's just say, like, if I know that their father's deceased. And so simply by naming that in the therapeutic space, that energy is now known that it's present without me saying, like, I can see and hear. And sometimes I will say, I'm hearing it as, and I'll give the voice to what I hear that the, that the deceased loved one really wants the message, but the message that they're trying to convey, but first and foremost, it's the client's relationship to the deceased loved one that matters the most. And actually, in Gestalt therapy, there is a traditional, you know, from the 1940s process of empty chair, which is different from two chair, which Gestalt is most known for, but where we put the deceased loved one in the chair and have have a conversation to complete any unfinished business that still might be there. That's not the way that I work, but it is part of, of really honoring the passing and the relationship.

So I would assume though, in that, in that empty chair therapy, they don't believe the loved one's actually in the chair, or do they?

It's interesting. It's not even about what the clinician believes. It's about what the client experiences. And so when I was a new therapist, before I really knew how to trust my knowing and my intuition in the, in the seat of clinician, I would do empty chair, and the client would sit in, in the empty chair of their deceased loved one. And they would say, oh my gosh, I feel completely different over here. I can feel my mom's energy, or I can feel my dad's energy. And that is transpersonal, right? We're honoring states beyond the ordinary. In a transpersonal session. And so believing the client's experience fully without trying to say what we think might happen is, is really what the work is about.

Yeah, I had to step right back. My daughter is a mental health counselor. She just got her master's like last year. So she's, you know, she's starting to practice now. So I'm really curious about, you know, this and integrating this into the work that you're doing. So do your clients— I mean, you said you see subtle energy body. Do you speak about that with your clients as well?

So I always own everything that I see as my own. So if I'm a clear mirror and I'm seeing you, let's say, I would simply say like, like, it seems like your emotions are getting caught here. But I can see that with my own eyes. And I just own that, that's how I'm seeing. And then I asked the client, what are you aware of? And so once we both have a shared understanding of what's here, that awareness gives us an opportunity to move the energy that's there. So I believe that there are 5 ways to move subtle energy. And the first one is awareness. So becoming aware of the place where emotional energy is stuck in our bodies, that awareness gives us an opportunity to start to move it. The second way is breath, right? So breath can start to move energy, and breath is also the only part of the autonomic nervous system that we have conscious control over. And so it's like a— it's a huge resource. The other one is movement. So a person might want to move their body and shake it out, or or whatever. Twist— twisting happens a lot. Touch— they might want to touch the part of their body where they feel something is there. And then sound— giving it a voice, either like if it had a voice, what would it say, or even just a tone. So the first part, I see it, I bring attention to that place inside of them. I see if they are aware of that too, or what they are aware of. And then we can be with it consciously and start to move it.

Okay, wow, that's interesting. That's really fascinating. And as I'm talking to you, and I think about, you know, you with the subtle energy and things that you can do, because I also have a lot of mediums that are friends who, you know, help people bridge to their loved ones on the other side. And, you know, mediums end up a lot of times almost having to be counselors, because by definition, people that come to them a lot of times in deep grief. And I could see someone that has the ability that you have along with the counseling could just really bridge that for people and really just rocket their transformation, you know, as they go through the grief.

Yeah, I actually believe that we all have our own sensitivities that we can nurture. And, you know, when I'm training student therapists, I really want to encourage them to nurture their own sensitivities, even if it looks different from mine. Not everybody is as visual, can see, but maybe they can feel, and maybe it's through the sensations in their own body, or maybe it's just a knowing, you know. But how can we nurture our sensitivities and bring it into a healing environment in a way that honors the client's sovereignty? Like, this is the most important part, that we have our own awareness but our clients also have their own truth. And so how to be in relationship— this is actually contact, like what we were talking about before. Contact happens where two souls meet.

Yeah.

One of my favorite quotes from Jung is, um, know all the theories, master all the techniques, but when you sit with another human soul, be just another human soul.

Yeah. Wow, I hadn't heard that.

I love that.

Uh, yeah, that makes so much sense to me. So are there other places— I, I know you're teaching this at Naropa University, which I, I didn't know that anybody was teaching this. Are there other places teaching this?

Well, so I'm starting a training institute, the Institute for Spiritual Alignment, where I'm, I'm teaching people who are already trained as therapists and coaches to bridge the divide, how to bring their own sensitivities and start to really guide their clients back into their own alignment. But there's a university in San Francisco, there's, there's little like sort of, I guess you would say, fringe universities around, um, the country.

But yeah, so tell me more about your institute.

Yeah, so I just, I just launched it, um, last year, and I'm going to start a year-long, um, training for a new cohort soon. Um, it's a hybrid model where there's, you know, a lot of, a lot of lectures to sort of lay the foundation about how we do this work, and then a lot of real-time coaching on supporting clinicians and really finding their seat. I, I really believe that the more we come into our own alignment, we can do that in tandem with our clients. It's not about being perfectly aligned and perfectly aware and healed in order to do the work. It's about making contact and meeting clients where they're at, from where, where we are, and finding our way together. It's a synergistic experience.

Okay, so this will be an online program, or how?

Yeah, so it's hybrid right now. It's mostly online, and then there's in-person retreats.

Okay. Okay. And you said it's a year-long program?

It's a year-long program. Yeah.

So I'm just curious, have you gotten much interest in it so far? How's that going?

Yeah, I started my first cohort, and they're extremely wise and brilliant. And I, I love creating community with therapists and coaches. And And yeah, people are excited to learn how to really cultivate their deeper intuition and to bring that into, into the room with their clients.

Yeah, I think that's awesome. As I said, you know, at the beginning, when we were talking, one of my— as I've observed the world for as long as I have, I think the biggest problem is people don't— we don't know who we are. We've been reduced to biological robots where, you know, it's all mechanical. Psychiatrists, it's like, okay, well, you've got this problem, this drug will take care of it. It'll, it'll fix your brain chemistry. If we fix your brain chemistry, then you'll, you'll be fine. And even psychotherapy, it's, it's still pretty mechanical at this point, doesn't really address these higher aspects of ourselves that we can really tap into and understand that this, you know, we've all gone through the trauma that we've gone through, and it's normal. It's, it's okay. And to really take this, I guess, the shame out of, you know, going to counseling, even because so many people resist, you know, even to this day, because there's nothing wrong with me.

Yeah, well, and what I love about what you just said, Brian, is that when the, the healer themselves, the psychotherapist, or the psychiatrist, is objectifying themselves by thinking of themselves as the expert, rather than being in their full humanity, they become part of the problem. Because there's no point of contact for two souls to meet, right? I'm otherizing you, and I'm here to fix you, and I'm not honoring your sovereign self. And that's part of the problem. And I think that more people would seek help if they felt more empowered and met and seen and, and really guided in their healing rather than objectified.

Yeah, as my daughter was going through her training, you know, and I'm a life coach, so I'm coaching people, which is totally different from a therapist. And she always reminds me of that. And I'm fine with that. But I'm like, she's like, well, we're not supposed to tell personal stories. We're not supposed to talk about ourselves. You know, it's really, you know, ask them these questions. And you have to put your own— I feel like you have to put your own thing into it. The people want to feel like they're in a room with a human being, not with a robot. It's just checking off a list of questions that they're asking them. And I think, unfortunately, too many therapists are like, I'm just gonna pull out the book, and I'm just gonna go through the book. And here's the way it goes. And people need to feel witnessed, they need to feel seen, they need to feel like, you know, you're— you can understand what I'm saying, you can feel what I'm saying. And I love the fact that you're giving people not only permission, like This is the way we do it.

Yeah, you know, I think the sort of misunderstanding about not talking about ourselves in the therapy room is really about a nuance of not making it about us, not going into my story, which is different from being present and sharing my experience in service of you, where we can meet in our humanity. And I think that for new therapists, there's like this this yes and no around it. And as we mature in our seat, we realize that there's a nuance there.

Yeah, right. That's why I was explaining to my daughter, like, you know, that's the way they trained you. And as you said exactly, it's not about— it's not making about myself. Like, your client tells a story. It's like, oh, well, let me tell you what happened to me. But it's like, how does this relate to you? This is still about the client. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, when I published my first book, which is a memoir, I had a lot of questions questions about like, what if your clients read this, you know, because it's, I tell a lot of the dark journey that I've been on. It's not all rainbows and sunshine. And, and the book is in service of learning, you know, and so I feel so good about being vulnerable and sharing myself if it empowers anybody else to, on their journey, you know, to know that they too can heal, that they too can come through this.

I find that— I think it's really important to know that the therapist I'm going to, the coach I'm going to, or whatever, is a human being. Because otherwise, they can't relate to me. I mean, if you just tell me, okay, well, just do this, this, and this, and you'll be okay. It's like, I want to know that you struggle too. Because we all do, you know, we all have issues, we've all had issues. And none of us, no matter how enlightened we think we are, we haven't overcome these things. And I'd love you shared that, you know, your mother passed away 15 years ago. And you just cried, you know, a couple of weeks ago. You know, for me, it's— I don't cry every day anymore. But I do have my times that I was on Facebook or something. I was Google, but these Google Photos have the other day of my daughter's, like, spotlight on Shayna, they came up and, you know, all these pictures from when she was a baby up until she passed away, you know, at 15. And it made me very sad for a few minutes, you know, and that's, that's okay. And it's been 8 years. I expect that'll always be that way.

Yeah, that's, that's love, right? Like, that's the honoring of the love that you have for her. It's by feeling that grief of the loss.

Yeah. And I have to say, it honestly, sometimes makes me feel— because, you know, we can get to the point where it's like, well, have I forgotten about them? You know, am I over it? You know, because I never want to get over it. And when that happens, like, good, the feelings are still there. It's still there. So it's even that. And I heard, I heard actually a medium say one time, I thought this was brilliant, she said, when you're feeling the most down, when you're feeling the most grief, when you feel that they're the farthest away from you, a lot of times that's when they're the closest to you. Because they've drawn close to you and you're feeling their energy. And that's what's causing you to feel like you're missing them. And hearing that just totally flipped that whole thing for me.

I just got the chills when you said that, like all up my head. Yes, you know, I really, I believe that grief, even acute grief, like when we're still in the shock phase, all of our defenses are down. And we're actually more connected with other dimensions in that time, because we're so raw, right? And that rawness is really essential to, to being in connection with somebody who's passed. Yes.

And that's really interesting that you said that, because I think people think it's the opposite. They think I'm in deep grief, therefore I can't connect. But I think maybe it is that it's that it's so raw that we are more connected than we realize. We still, we miss them so deeply. It's still, you know, really, really painful. But that's when they're— I think a lot of times that's when they're drawing the closest.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, I, and I think that it's important for people to recognize that any experience that we have isn't wrong.

Right?

So if I'm not feeling grief, that's not wrong. And if I am feeling it, that's not wrong either. Like, the way the mind relates to it gives us a lot of information on how it disrupts our ability to be with what actually is present right now.

Yes, that's, that's a very important thing for people to understand, that everything in grief is normal. People say to me, is this normal? Is it normal that I'm not feeling anything? Yes. Is it normal that I'm feeling really sad? Yes. Is it normal that I can't sleep?

Yes.

Is it normal that I sleep too much? Yes. It's—

is it normal that I'm anxious? Like, I think that's a surprising one for people that like grief can actually feel like anxiety. And yes, that's normal too.

Yeah. And that's so helping people to understand that it's all okay. It's a process. It's, you know, it's a lifelong process. I believe it doesn't mean that we'll never get any, any better. Doesn't mean that we're always going to be sad. And always be stuck. But, you know, hopefully, if our love continues, then our grief journey continues.

Yeah. And if, and if we can honor whatever's happening within us as a sacred experience, right, then we're tending to what wants to happen through us in relationship to the loss.

Right?

Like, the tears are sacred, even the fear is. And to really honor what is there is the, is the most deeply honoring of our experience and of the person his past.

Yeah. So, so, Harmony, what do you hope that people take away from, from your book?

Hmm. Yeah, well, I hope they take away that every, everything that they experience is part of their wholeness, that in their wholeness, they are so much more than any one element that they might have reduced themselves down to, even their body, their thoughts. And when we really are able to welcome our wholeness, we can integrate and come back home to the essence of who we are. And when we're here, we can create the life of our dreams that feels nurturing and empowering and connecting and enlivening.

Yeah, that's, that's great. As you said that, I just said I want to make this other point, because I think a lot of times people are, at least for me, because I've always been just like psychology. It was one of my favorite subjects when I was in college. And I used to subscribe to Psychology Today. So I'm kind of a pop psychologist, I guess. But I think some people might be surprised by these different aspects of ourselves. It's like, well, I'm just me. What do you mean all these different parts? But as you said that, I was thinking we kind of have to understand all the different parts to integrate them into our wholeness. Is that right?

Absolutely. And, and I think that when people say, that's just me, what they're saying is, I'm hyper-identified with my conditioned self. And I believe that I am this one aspect of myself. And I've fallen asleep to the rest of me, all of me, including the shadow, right. And so to really welcome our entire wholeness is essential in integrating. To come back to ourselves. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's a good point. So you say when I'm saying that's just me, that's, that's someone saying I'm my conditioned self and ignoring the rest of the aspects of ourselves.

Yeah. I mean, in states of consciousness, when somebody is hyper-identified with their conditioned self, their ordinary way of thinking, they believe that their thoughts hold reality. They believe that their mind is where truth lives. They believe that their perception is the perception. Right? And so when we start to pay more attention to the subtle, we shift our consciousness, and we drop more into the subtle mind. And the more we bring awake awareness to all the aspects of ourselves, including our conditioned self, we start to embody a truer part of ourselves. That awake awareness is one step closer to the true self.

Awesome. Wow. Very well said. Thank you. So where can people find out more about you? Please mention your book again. I know it's going to be out very soon. But where can people reach you?

Yes, well, Align: Living and Loving from the True Self is the book, and it's out December 1st. And it's available wherever books are sold. I'm at thespirituallyaligned.com. And this is where I offer both coaching, service, or coaching and therapy services and training to new therapists, and therapists who want to deepen into their seat and hold a spiritually aligned container.

Alright, Harmony, thanks so much for being here today. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much, Brian D Smith, for having me.

Alright, enjoy the rest of your day.

You too.

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