No. 1 Psychologist: I Healed DEATH ROW Inmates With Somatic Therapy - Peter Levine PHD

35 years ago, I was asked to work with a group of prisoners in San Quentin Maximum Security Prison. And these were a group of men who had beaten up or injured their wives or girlfriends or murdered them or killed them. And some of them were there for life sentence. When I was working with this one man, there was this tremendous burst of fiery rage. And I had him feel the rage, not act on it. This is important, but feel that rage. And I had to just feel what his body wanted to do and just to hold it there, to let it be there and to breathe. Keep it there and keep it there and breathe and breathe and let go. And tears start forming in his eyes. And the words came from his mouth, I will never let you make me feel that small again. So he's talking to his mother, and then all the other people started crying in the group, and they were hugging each other and hugging me. It's a little bit unnerving to be hugged by some people who are in there for life sentence for murder. I mean, it was beautiful because they could really, really see where that anger came from. They were humiliated.

All right, I have to say, Dr. Levine, to start, just. Just out of respect, I got to say, I know I asked you before, and I was like, it doesn't feel right. I gotta. I gotta say it once just to get it. Get it there. But thank you so much for joining me on the show. This is a real honor and a pleasure.

Yeah.

Let's begin. I want to just start high level, and we'll see where all this takes us as we get into the weeds. But let's just start with the defining of trauma for you. How would you define trauma? And maybe why do you think it's become such a prominent aspect of our modern conversation?

Yeah, okay. Those are interesting questions.

Okay. You know, when I started developing my work called Somatic Experiencing, it was in the mid to late 60s, and.

I was fortunate that I didn't yet know the definition of trauma as PTSD. That was another 12, 13 years in the future. So I didn't know that trauma was supposedly a brain disorder, maybe even a brain disease that at best can be managed with medication.

And was helping people change their negative thoughts. And so my discovery was that trauma is something that happens in the body. But first, let me say something about trauma. So trauma is really from the Latin, which means wound or injury. And I look at trauma in that way, not as the diagnostic category of pt ptsd. And most all of us have some kind of wounding that's affecting our lives. That's affecting our emotional well being, that's affecting our relationships, that's affecting all parts of our lives. And.

So in developing somatic experiencing, really look at what some of those injuries look like and most importantly, of course, how could they be healed? So that's really where I started, is really looking at a more broad overall sense of trauma as an injury, as a wound. Which means we all have injuries and wounds and they all affect us to different degrees. And it doesn't have to be that we're getting flashbacks. It could just be that we, you know, that our energy is not full, that we lack certain, you know, capacities to engage with other people.

Yeah. And again, usually, sometimes people ask me, well, can you heal a trauma if you don't know what the trauma is? Was? And I say, well, actually, yeah, you can. All you have to do is have some kind of symptom or haunting and that will take you where you need to go if you follow its impact on the body. And somatic experiencing is about not just the anatomical, physiological body, it is that. But it's also about the living body, the sensing body, the interceptive body.

Can you say a little bit more about the body's role or how trauma affects the body? Because I think like you're saying, for a long time when people looked at ptsd, it was generally associated with the brain. And as you know, a lot of the conversation has shifted to the body's role in trauma.

Yeah. Okay, Connor, so let's just say you go outside and you see that somebody's been injured and your guts go ugh. And you walk out and you see the person's really been injured significantly, and you really go, oh, ugh. And of course, you call it ambulance. But what your response is. Gut twist. The brain recognizes injury and recognizes injury as potentially trauma forming. And what it does, it involves a very specific grabbing in our guts. So again, you go out, you. You see the injury and your brain recognize it as threat as injury, and your guts go, yuck. And there's a nerve that goes from the back of the brain, brain stem down all the way through the body cavities below the diaphragm, especially to the gastrointestinal system, but to all the organs. And so again, when you see something like this, it registers danger, it registers injury, it goes down and our guts twist. Now, what is not very well known, not so very well known is that nerve. It's the largest nerve in the body by far, and only 20% of it is actually efferent. So in other words, only 20% is taking information from the brain and relaying it down into our guts. But the great majority, as much as 80 plus percent of those fibers, are actually taking information from our guts and relaying it back up to the brain.

So for example.

You see the injury and your gut twists. That's the motor part. But then that information is sent back up to the brain them where it's amplified and it really goes, oh, yuck. And so maybe that night when you're laying in bed trying to sleep and your guts are all twisted and then you see the image of the person being injured and it's, you know, it's like it's still happening. It's still happening. So what we need to do, I mean, what my basic discovery was that we have to get a new signal from the guts that tells the brain it's okay, the threat, the injury is over, you're not injured, the person's going to be okay, the ambulance is coming and they're going to take care of them. But you have to wait for that part to happen, otherwise it keeps replaying itself. So there are a number of different body oriented exercises that I've developed to help that process along.

So that's one example of the gut twist. Think of another simple example. Maybe as a child we were hit by one of our parents. And so our bodies brace to protect ourselves. Our shoulders brace to protect ourselves. And if that happens enough. So the first time it happens, we feel hit, we protect, but then our shoulders fall down again. But then if this continues to happen over and over again, the shoulders don't drop, they just stay there and they become chronic. So you experience chronic tension and then usually this will lead to chronic pain. So again, how do you change that signal coming from the shoulders? By, for example, noticing. Okay, it's if you have pain in the shoulder and then there's underneath that pain, you have some kind of tension pattern. And if the tension increases, what happens to the shoulders? Well, that shoulder goes up to the ear. Okay, so what happens if you just do that very, very slowly, just a millimeter at a time. So let the shoulder goes up just the smallest amount and then letting it go down and you do that maybe two or three times and surprisingly that bracing pattern stops and there can be a great relief in our bodies. Similar for the guts, there's a particular exercise that I've developed that really helps send a new signal from the gut back up to the brain that says all clear. And I'll demonstrate this exercise and you and any of the Viewers, if they want, please be free to do the exercise with me and don't feel like you have to do it. And often it results in pleasurable sensations and feelings, but it can also bring up material that could be unsettling. So here we do. We take an easy full breath. And on the out breath, I make the sound voo v o o and I let the sound and the breath go all the way out. And then I just wait for the next breath, the new breath to come in, filling belly, chest, and then again.

So I'll demonstrate it and anybody who wants to be free to join me. But don't feel that you need to.

Wait for the breath to come in on its own.

And just be curious, Connor, just be curious to see what you're noticing.

Yeah, a good amount of like, ease, relaxation, calm.

Yeah.

And it was, it was interesting because as you were talking.

I've. I've had to do a good amount of work with. I stored a good amount of. I experienced a little bit of abuse growing up and I would get poked sometimes right in the belly, you know, and it was sort of like a. Like a trigger point.

Right.

It's like whenever I was acting out of line or something like that, I would get a finger jab into the abdomen. Women, you know, it's like a real kind of like landing home, like a punctuation of what was being said to.

Me and get it. Yeah.

And it was. It was later on in life where I found I was really like ticklish in that area. I couldn't let it go. And I carried a lot of tension in my diaphragm. And when I was singing, I couldn't, you know, release that. So I felt a good amount of like, relaxation in that part of my body.

So let's maybe take it one more step. This is bottom up. Now let's connect it with top down. So you said you felt relaxation. So I'm going to give you a sentence to say. And they're my words, so they might not mean anything, but the idea is simply if you're willing to say it and be curious what happens when you say the words and the word. The sentence I'm going to suggest is I give myself this gift of inner relaxation.

Give myself this gift of inner relaxation.

And just notice sensations, feelings, thoughts, images.

Again, like an ease in the. Like a settling in the diaphragm.

Good. Let's take one more step then. Okay, how about this one? I give myself this gift of inner relaxation, whether I deserve it or not.

I give myself this gift of inner relaxation, whether I deserve it or not.

And again, just curiosity reflecting on what happens as you say those words. I can see there's a little moistening in your eyes.

Yeah. There's a picture of my son right there as a baby. I see him as I'm talking about this.

Oh, great.

Yeah, it's great positioning. He's got a pair of headphones on. That's like a funny photo that I took of him when he was probably like six months old.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, ease like.

Yeah, a lot. Just like a good amount of ease and softening, like even in like my lower back and shoulders and neck.

Right. So in other words, it's spreading.

Yeah.

So again, when we change the bodily experience.

Which is the foundation, then in a way all our perceptions change and you know, because, you know, before we might have experienced the world as being non nourishing or even threatening. But then when we connect to that inner sense, it becomes a very positive experience.

I'm curious. So we're going to get even more deeper into some of these tools because I think that would be very helpful. I think what I'm interested in just exploring, because you've worked with so many people around trauma, have you noticed whether or not men and women experience trauma differently? Is it all the same? Are some of the symptoms more pronounced in men versus women?

It's not all the same and it's not all different.

You know, I mean, I think in some ways.

Women tend to be more in touch.

With their feelings, particularly around trauma.

And men tend more likely to medicate themselves.

You know, I. E. Yeah, I don't.

Have to say all the, all the things. The booze, the weed, the porn. Yeah, all the stuff. Yeah.

And so it seems like men are less affected, but they're not, they're at least equally affected, as affected as women are.

What should men be looking for with regards to the, like, the symptoms of trauma? Because I think for a lot of guys they hear things like PTSD and because I want to help men be able to identify what that looks like, feels like, sounds like within themselves. Because I think for a lot of men it's like, well, unless I'm experiencing intense flashbacks or you know, crippling panic attacks, I'm probably fine.

And so yeah, again, like I was saying at the beginning, the, the, the, the definition or the Latin trauma is wound or injury. And I don't know anybody who hasn't had some wound or some injury in their lives. It may not be overwhelming, but we've all experienced, you Know things like that, and they affect us, and we can be surprised when they show up. Like, all of a sudden, we might be angry. So if we're in a relationship, say, this is heterosexual relationship, all of a sudden we're yelling at our spouse or at our children, why didn't you put your toys away? You know, and that's the husband coming home from work. It's been a, you know, a long, long day. And again, just triggers something.

That doesn't come just out of the blue. Something's being triggered. Something's being remembered. Not cognitively, not consciously, but in implicit memory, in procedural memory.

So a man can start to identify things like reactivity, heightened reactivity, lots of anger.

Those might be signs of it. I think another one that I've seen, the reason why I asked the initial question was that I've seen people talk about how men are sometimes more likely to experience things like depersonalization as a result of trauma. But I'm not sure if that's statistically true or not.

So I'm not. I'm not sure either. Yeah, let me give you an example about the anger thing. Oh, God. 35 years ago, I was. I was asked to work with a group of men, prisoners in San Quentin maximum security prison. And these were a group of men who had beaten up or injured their wives or girlfriends or murdered them or killed them. And some of them were there for life sentence. And so I worked with the group, and when I was working with this one man, connecting with this one man, there was this tremendous.

Bursts of fiery rage. And I had him feel the rage, not act on it. This is important, but feel that rage. And I had to just feel what his body wanted to do and just to hold it there, to let it be there and to breathe and breathe into it, and then keep it there and keep it there and breathe and breathe and let go. And tears start forming in his eyes. And the words came from his mouth, I will never let you make me feel that small again. So he was talking to his mother in this case, and then all the other people started crying in the group. And they were hugging each other and hugging me. It's a little bit unnerving to be hung by. Hugged by some people who are in there for life sentence for murder. But it was beautiful because they could really, really see where that anger came from. They were humiliated. That was. Their wounding was humiliation.

Again, when we flip into fear or anger, there's a reason for it. It's not just randomly happening.

Do you think that sometimes men Because I think I've seen this quite a bit where like we as men have this wonderful built in protective strategy of our rational mind that we can hyper intellectualize and use it as this way of like.

Right. What he's feeling and he'll say he'll give you a thought, right?

Yeah.

Or. Oh, I'm not saying that's true for all of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. But men do tend to, not exclusively, but they do tend more, I think more than women to rationalize, to go to their thought processes. But if you're with a person, man, for example, who is in his head, you have to meet that person, any person, where they are, not where you want them to be or where you think they should be. And so if I'm working with a man and he's just talking about his thoughts, I might notice all of a sudden, along with one thought, I see a reaction in his body. I might say something. It's interesting when you just described to me when you were with your dog, it looked like you had. Looked like your pulse rate went up a little bit and then. Huh. I guess so.

So you get, you enlist curiosity and without curiosity there's nowhere to go. You know, when I talk about my life because I experienced tremendous violence and trauma in my life. And one of the things that I think was really helpful in my healing was being able to be curious about my reactions to certain things.

Yeah, I'm for the, for the guys that are out there listening, wondering how they can get a little bit more into their body, like to thaw the, you know, the relationship in the body. What are some ways in which they can start to move? Take that, what's the quote? The longest journey a man will ever takes from the 18 inches, 18 inches from his head to his heart, I think is that.

I think I heard that. Yeah, that's cute. That's cute. Yeah. You know, again, I think if we're as therapist. Let's just say we're therapists. If we're curious about what's going on with the person and we're curious in what's going on in us and what's going on in us in reaction to what's. In response to what's going on with the person, then we start helping them move towards their feeling center. And it's not just the heart, but it's even our organs. When we talked about and did that boo. Exercise. Well, a lot of that is about connecting to our visceral sense. And that's our primary area of consciousness. You Know when we're connected to our mother's womb through the placenta.

And this is a deep, deep connection. A deep, deep connection. And when we can begin to reconnect to that, many different things can start to open up in our awareness.

I mean, not all. I mean, some of it is wonderful things, but some things that come up can be unsettling.

Can even be frightening, at least to some degree. But again, you know, sometimes people send me books, you know, to endorse. And I was looking over one of these books, and I saw this quote, and I said, oh, my God, I totally agree with that. And.

And I said, I wonder where that. I wonder where it's from. I looked. It was from one of my books.

And I spoke in voice. And the quote was, trauma is not so much what happened to us, but it's rather more what happens to us in the absence of an other present and empathic other. That there's somebody there who can witness this witness is really, really important. And I would imagine that that's one of the things that goes on in your groups. When men are able to witness.

With others.

And hold this together and then to share in that witnessing. I think that can be.

A very positive experience and brings together a lot of bonding. Just even that prison situation. You saw this incredible bonding. And these were hardened criminals. Yeah.

Sometimes at the men's weekend, they'll say some variation of. In what, you know, the wounds that. The wounds that haven't been witnessed can't be healed and that, you know, many of us are waiting for our wounds to be witnessed in a way that's real and authentic and raw and unfiltered and unscripted. And that once. And really felt like actually really experienced for someone to. For us to kind of lay bare in front of somebody what it was like to be in that situation.

Well, I was just thinking, you know.

About three years ago, because I'm at the age now.

Where I'm clearly. Even if I live many more years, clearly I have less years ahead of me than from the time of conception to present time. And so what I was doing was journaling an excavation of my life.

Of the things that affected me negatively. Positively, of people who have been important to me in my life and how they've been important to me. And so I wrote that, and it was very difficult because a lot of it was very raw and vulnerable. But again, it was only for myself. But my girlfriend, I shared some of it with her, and she was moved, and she said, I assume you're going to be writing that as a book. And I said, no, way. Too vulnerable. It's too raw. It's too much.

And she said, and she was very present with me so I could feel our connection. And she said, well, you know, I do think that it could help people with their own healing.

And so she said, well, why don't you think about it? So I thought about it, and I could not come to a resolution, to a conclusion. And sometimes not sometimes, but often when I'm stuck and I'm not able to go forward, I'll either have a synchronicity, I'll meet somebody I haven't seen for a long time, and then something in our relationship is evoked. But also.

Dreams. Dreams have been important in my life. And in this time of equivocation, of uncertainty. I had the following dream. And I'm standing in front of this large, large open field, and I hold in my hands many pages from a manuscript. And I look to the left, look to the right, look again to the left, look again to the right. And then all of a sudden, I'm unable. Well, I'm unable to make the decision of what to do. All of a sudden, there's a strong breeze that comes from behind me and takes all of these pages and blows them into the wind, out into that open meadow to land where they will land. And so when I awoke, I realized that the decision had been made for me by my unconscious mind. And so I set to write this autobiography of trauma. My healing journey or a healing journey.

And it was very difficult because there were some pretty raw places, but there were also some beautiful places and some tender places. And so what I was, in a way, doing was not only finding that movement in myself, but being willing, being open to sharing it with others. You know, I heard Isabel Allende in a TED talk, and she quoted. I think it's a Jewish proverb. What is truer than truth?

The answer. The story.

And this book is my story. But we all have our stories, and we all have our stories to tell. And we all can benefit by telling our stories and sharing our stories, but with the right person to not share it with anybody, because we can get injured if we. If we do that to somebody who's, you know, who's not open and not present.

So, yeah, yeah, so that's, of course, that's an importance.

Yeah. Well, well said. So did you. Did you study Jung at some point along the way? Is that where you.

He influenced me greatly. Very, very greatly. He's one of the most important.

Most Important male figures in my life. This is a whole other story. But when I was working on my doctoral dissertation in biophysics, and this was 1971, 72, and I was also.

Starting to teach the rudimentary beginnings of somatic experiencing to a group of a dozen or so Berkeley therapists. And they would come every week or every other week to my. Call it my Wildcat Canyon Treehouse. And I would just hang out with them and work with them and then try to explain to them basically what I was doing and why I was doing what I was doing.

So anyhow.

After a long day, and they were long days, I would go to my favorite restaurant on San Pablo Avenue called the Beggars Banquet. And.

The waitresses there would always greet me by name and warmly greet me. And they would usually have me sit down at my normal table. And usually they would start. They would bring a bowl of soup, warm soup, along with crispy French bread. Crispy on the outside, moist and soft on the inside. And it's kind of like the struggles for the day would recede. And I could feel the nurturance, really their nurturance and the nurturance of being served there. So one day, I'm sitting there in the usual chair at the small table, and off to the side, I see a fleeting shadow. And I look up, and at first I don't see anything. But then after a while, I see this old man with wild, wild curly hair and wearing.

A ruffled sports jacket that was two or three times the size for him. And he kind of pointed to the other chair at the table. And I assumed that to be an invitation, and I did. I invited him to sit down. Well, after a short period of time, I realized this was an image. This was an image of Albert Einstein. Now, remember, I'm also at this time doing academic work. And I know that this wasn't really Albert Einstein.

And it's something that's called active imagination, which was something that Jung coined the term. So it's something where we. It's like a bridge between conscious and unconscious processes and active imagination. I did a little reading about that, and it's. What I came up with, is that active imagination does not occur in adults. It only occurs in children. And I remember thinking, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. We adults need it more than the children do, and we all need it. And it's all a beautiful thing. But again, it's a way of connecting unconscious and conscious processes. Well, anyhow, for a period of over a year, I would ask questions to this figure, to this imaginary figure, Albert Einstein. And he would ask me questions about my questions. This is the method that Socrates used, the Socratic dialogue. Somebody would ask him a question and then he would ask them a question about their question. Well, that's what went on between me and, and the professor for that following year.

And.

At the very end, he really helped me understand how generational trauma, generational wounds that didn't happen necessarily to us in our lifetime, but to our parents, life, grandparents, great, great grandparents and ancestors and so forth. And so we had this really incredible, engaging conversations. Again, me asking questions. He asked me questions about my questions. Well, again, the logical part of me, the mental part of me realized that this was not a real occurrence, but it certainly seemed real and it had a deep meaning to me. Well, about 35 years ago. And I just, you know, after a while, you know, on time to time, I would kind of evoke his presence if I had a question to ask. And that was a special kind of relationship. So about 30, 35 years ago, I was visiting my parents in New York, in the Bronx.

And I had gone downtown to go to museums. And the end of the day, I was going up, took the D train up to 205th street, walked up the hill, opened the door to my parents apartment, and the two of them were sitting in a sofa. But above the sofa there was a bookshelf. And I noticed one of the bookshelves was Einstein's theory of relativity.

So that prompted me to tell my parents, especially my mother, what had happened to me.

And.

My mother stood up straight and she said. And I said, this was my imagination. And she said, no, Peter, it wasn't your imagination that really happened. And I thought, what? What is she saying? How does she know that? It doesn't make any sense at all.

Because I know it was active imagination. It wasn't real. So my mother went on to tell me to say, you know, when I was eight months in utero, when she was pregnant, eight months with me.

She and my father were taking a canoe ride.

In a lake in New Jersey. And a strong wind came and tipped the canoe over. And they were unable to right the canoe. And they certainly would have perished, they certainly would have drowned. And I wouldn't be talking to you because I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have survived.

So just then, in that moment of life threat, a small sailboat came along and there was an old man and young woman in that boat. And they pulled my parents to safety, gave them towels to you know, to dry themselves off. And then introduced themselves to my parents.

They introduced themselves as Albert Einstein and his stepdaughter. And my mother realized. And she could be incredibly intuitive. And I think that's one of the gifts I've gotten from her. Gotten a lot of difficult stuff, but that was one of the really positive experiences. And my mother realized that since Albert Einstein had saved my life, that we would forever be bonded, bonded together.

And her sharing of that was a really powerful, beautiful experience. And again, how she knew that and how she could just bring that memory up and talk about it really, really said something about her intuitive capacity.

I really appreciate you sharing that story. And.

I mean, it's. It's interesting. There's a lot of different threads could pull into there. My. My first mentor introduced me. The first man that I apprenticed with was a Jungian psychologist, and he introduced me to Jung, and it, like, just rocked my world and forever shaped, you know, shaped things in a lot of ways. And I know in your book you talk about science and shamanism, and it's interesting because there is this type of, like, mystical quality to healing, and I think you just articulated it through a story, which is so beautiful. But I would love for you to maybe say a little bit more about the role of shamanism, because it seems to be making this resurgence in our culture and how people can navigate that sort of mystical element of healing.

Right. Well, people would often describe me as being mystical or shamanistic. And because I was just beginning to get this work out into the world.

I felt that I had to deny that.

And because, again, if it was to be accepted to talk about mysticism and shamanism wouldn't be accepted, acceptable. But then, you know, in writing the autobiography, I mean, I'm at the age where I don't give a hoots to, you know, it's not quite like that, but it's really, really. I want to hold together science and shamanism. You know, one of the people who wrote an endorsement from the book was a German neuroscience professor of psychiatry professor, and he wrote A Man's Soul Journey into Healing Trauma, A Bridging between science and Shamanism.

And I'm really fine with that position. You know, it's not one or the other. And I think Jung was very much an influence in that regard. In terms of polarity. On one hand, yes, you have this. On the other hand, you have that. Well, they seem to contradict each other, but they also can speak to each other. You know, somebody said, I think in Chinese China, there's A proverb, how does that go? The indication that something you know is a good, a strong truth, a great truth, if the opposite is also true. So that was another guidance in my life's journey and my work and in teaching and in writing this, this book.

I have a tattoo on my arm and.

It'S got the Om symbol on it and it's got the flower of life and then it's got Metatron's cube, which is like a geometric shape that is supposed to represent the primary shapes that make up all shapes in existence. And so it's like this convergence between, between spirituality and mathematics.

Right, yeah. Can you send me that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll send it to you.

I think that was one of the like primary, not primary. I mean, there's so many things I got from Jung. But there's something that really clicked for me when I was going through his work around. Yes, analysis, yes. Data, yes. Science, yes. These, these, you know, these things are incredibly important. And yet here was a man who, you know, I mean, here was a man who on, on the archway of the, the door to his entrance of his house had a Latin saying that basically translated to called or not called, the gods will come. You know, and it was like, what an interesting paradoxical human being, you know, and many paradoxes. He, he certainly did. Yeah, he definitely did. But so this notion of like, how do, how do we make space for that? Like, how does the average person. Because I, and I know it's hard to quantify or sort of, you know, make into like this. Here's the three things you do to let shamanism, you know, to make room for the mystical aspects of your healing. But I think for men especially, it's something that, that I see so many guys struggling with. It's like, give me the five steps, I'll go do that. And I'm always like. But there's this other part to it that really is about faith, you know. And Alan Watts had this beautiful quote that has always stuck with me. He said, belief clings, faith lets go. And I've always held to that because I feel this very deep. And it's not a rational part, it's not a logical thing. It's just this very deep intuitive sense of like, yeah, there's just parts of this that I can't task my way into that I can't do my way into, that I actually have to surrender into and have faith and let go entirely. So I'm curious about how you would just speak to that a little bit more because I really wanted to land.

To speak with about.

About making space for the sort of shamanistic or mystical part of. Of the healing process.

Yeah. You know, you know, talking about putting up a sign by your door. I would put up a sign that says, welcome.

And welcome. And welcome. Welcome. These different ways of perceiving the world. Perceiving. I mean, you know, I mean, even in physics, you know, you're constantly dealing with paradoxes. You know, how can a light be.

A. A particle and a wave both? It's not possible. But it is in quantum physics. It's one of the basis of quantum physics. So, like super.

Superposition is when a particle is in one place but not there.

Exactly. There and not there. I mean, all of these things. You think, yeah, that's really weird. But, you know, that's what. That's what physicists have had to. To deal with.

Well, I feel like we'll leave that part there, which I think is a good place to continue on. So if somebody is listening to this. And by the way, actually, I wanted to ask you a more personal question. Why the tiger? The tiger is represented in so many of your books. And I get that there's the imagery in the first one, but it continues to reoccur.

That's right. I mean, I think it's probably a branding thing, but. No, it's much more than that. I mean, it's really.

Connecting with that fierce energy and using that energy to move forward in life, to heal. I mean, at many times it seemed like I was not able to. Was not going to be able to move on. You know, when my family was under threat from the Mafia, that they were, like, they told my father, if you testify against us, against me, you'll find your family face down in the East River. So we had, you know, all of this that we were having to grow up with. You know.

Anger is a form of power, but it's not good when it's power over somebody.

But power as a life force to me is represented by the tiger, by that animal. There were two animals that basically are my inner animals. One is the tiger and the other is the hummingbird. And the hummingbird is still like a hummingbird. So its wing is beating at hundreds of times per second.

And it's still, and it's still and it's quiet and it just hovers.

I was teaching at a program some time ago.

And one of the students, she was American Indian, and she gave me this beautiful beaded thing that she made of a hummingbird. And I don't Know, if she knew or somehow, I think she probably intuited it, that that was, for me, an important animal figure. And it was. And I just absolutely love to have it hanging here. And when I come to this part of the room, I always take a peek at it. Still like a hummingbird. Still like a hummingbird. Yeah.

And moving a thousand miles a minute. Are you familiar with the poet David White? Do you know who he is?

Yes, I've heard some. Read some of his poetry. Poems.

Have you ever seen his writing on anger?

No, I don't think so. Can I.

Can I share a line with you? I feel like this is. I feel like this is in some ways very resonant for you, he says. So he writes, he's got this book called Con Constellations. And the whole thing is an. Is an exploration on the meaning of everyday words. And basically each one is like a. Like a very deep, profound poem about this word, but it's like an ongoing definition of it. So here's what he says about anger. He says anger is the deepest form of compassion for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family, and for all our ideals. All vulnerable and all possibly about to be hurt.

Right. That's right. It's protective. It's self protective, for sure.

Yeah.

And.

It'S a force to be reckoned with. If it's just anger, we're just pounding on pillows or something like that, or yelling at our spouses or our friends. That's not really about the anger that I'm talking about. And I'm sure the way David White is talking about it, it's a force for good, but it's a force first and primary. It's a force, a powerful force.

It's interesting because I think it's something that every man has to contend with, you know, that he's either disassociated from, disconnected from, because he's afraid of. He's been told culturally that an angry man is a dangerous man or a bad man.

You know, how. How would you. How would you sort of color what the journey might look like for a man who's trying to reconcile with his anger?

Well, you know, again, to contain it and to see. You know that example I gave when I was working with the prisoners at San Quentin.

Yeah.

It wasn't about getting his anger out. It was holding his anger in check. Experiencing it, but holding it in check until he could find out what he was protecting himself from. He was protecting himself from feeling, from being humiliated.

Yeah. I think it's sometimes why I have beef with some of the men's work that's out there is because some of it feels very performative. And even some of the therapy that's out there. I saw an Instagram reel the other day of this woman that's leading these retreats. It's like $4,000, and she takes women out into the forest and gives them sticks, and they scream and beat the sticks on the ground and, you know, and it's like this releasing of anger. And I'm like, well, yeah, okay. I mean, sure. Like, you're getting this yell and scream, but, like, is there. Are they. Is that actually what their. Their bodies and their psyche is needing to incorporate?

You know? You know, what if. If you come from a family situation where you weren't ever able to express anger at all.

Sure.

Where it was Forboden, then maybe doing it once or twice can be useful. Yeah. But as a habit, it's not. Yeah. It really takes us away from where we need to go, where we want to go and need to go.

I like that. There's just this ongoing German.

Line through. Through this. I guess that started before we. We started the conversation because we were You. We were speaking in German before the conversation, before we hit record.

Can you speak a little bit? Can you speak a little bit? And we're almost up for time here, but I wanted to talk about this piece of it. Can you speak a little bit about the impact that.

Trauma that betrayal can have on someone's ability to express themselves sexually? Because I think this is something that you touch on the book.

Yeah, I really kind of follow that trajectory, that path in the book. I've experienced many times of pain and anguish.

But betrayal is its own beast.

And betrayal is about being stabbed in the back by a javelin by the one person that we thought loved us and cared for us.

And.

For me.

This was a particular event.

As a child, I was always interested in electricity and those kind of things. So my uncle took me to a cousin's electrical warehouse in Canal street in downtown Manhattan, and I saw a buzzer and a button, and I stole him. I put him in my pocket when no one's looking. And when I got home, I went down in the basement, and I found this big box that had a TV in it. It's like the size of a refrigerator now. And I brought it up, and I cut out.

A hole for a window, square hole, and then.

A cutout for a door. And I connected.

The buzzer to the button, the button to the electrical Socket. It's amazing. I didn't electrocute myself because it's supposed to be 12 volts. I connected it to 120 volts. But anyhow, my parents of course must have heard it and they must have known where it had come from. And so they came in and ripped open the door of.

The clubhouse and pulled me out and dragged me into the living room. And there, one after another, they would interrogate me, they would slap me and hit me and then they would push me to the other person, to the other one and then they would slap. And.

Something was never the same after that because that was a betrayal. I mean they could have said something. They could have definitely said something like, you know, it's great that you have this imagination and then you can understand about the lectures, electricity. But you know, if you want it, you have to ask for it and we'll take you back there and we'll pay. But then you have to tell him that you took it. Something like that. That would have been a good learning experience. But instead it was this betrayal. And that child, that inner child was really wounded. Really wounded, you know. And the final chapter in the book, I, I call it Living my Dying through the eye of the Needle and looking at what it is in my life, in the remaining time in my life where I really yearned to make the connection. And that was this 18 month old, 2 year old child who was just filled with exuberance and to connect with him and to love him. I, I think I can show you a picture.

There's many, many different pictures in this book. Anyhow, this is me and this is the exuberant child that I really want to, wanted and I did take in my arm at my hand and walk together with him.

It's beautiful.

Yeah, he is, he is.

Yeah, I get, I get that very much. I have, I have this little guy right here on my desk. This is me having after digging around in the dirt, getting a, getting a bubble bath in a pot, you know, just in like a, in a, in a pot because my, we didn't have a lot and so that was like the, the joy, the band aid on the knee and everything. So I get that very much. Well, let's maybe let's wrap up with just what are some just continuation of the tools. I just want to revisit that because I think I don't want to leave people hanging on that. But what are some other things that people can start to implement to support themselves as they move through this process.

To not do it alone.

To be with another, to share with another, you know, in again, one of the other books. In an unspoken voice, I describe. I was going across the street and I got hit by this woman, teenage driver at about 25 miles an hour, thrown into the windshield, thrown up into the air, down onto the pavement. And.

I was literally dissociated. I was not in my body. I was above my body, looking down, seeing myself, you know, strewn out on the. On the pavement.

And.

Even though I've developed this method and know of all of these tools.

I really needed this woman who came by and who announced herself as a physician, actually a pediatrician. And I remember thinking, that's exactly the specialty that I need right now. She asked me if there's anything she could do. And I said, please just stay here with me. And she sit down. She sat down on the pavement on the road with me and took my hand in her hand. And I could feel that connection. I could feel that warmth. And boom. I then just came back from being out of my body, back into my body, and I was able to go through the physical reactions of shaking and trembling and vibrating to discharge that stuck energy. And when the ambulance came, they were amazed because my heart rate had returned to 72. My blood pressure was 120 over 70. And they wanted to know what happened. And I tried to explain, but I never missed a moment to proselytize. And so I decided, okay.

There'S a big important lesson here, and that is without the tools, trauma rules. But even with the tools, you have to have that other person to be there with you. And, you know, there's a Motown song that goes something like, it takes one to stand in the dark alone it takes two to let the light shine through so using these kind of tools. And again, I describe in the autobiography the backstory about how I developed those tools and how I use them for my own healing. And.

You know, they can get all kinds of information. They can go to the somaticexperiencing website.com one word. And it also connects to the organization, the international organization that teaches somatic experiencing. It, I think, in 44 countries now. And.

Yeah, and they can get information and also information about therapists, where therapists are who are doing this kind of work. So again, without tools, trauma rules, but with the right tools and with the right kind of support, we can begin to come home to ourselves and reconnect to that beautiful inner child.

That child that was never injured, was beyond any injury, was whole and will always be whole.

Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful.

Well said.

And I couldn't agree more. And we'll have the links to all that in the show, show notes for people to check out. And, you know, we'll have links for your books as well. And the new one, an Autobiography of Trauma, because it looks and sounds amazing. I haven't dug into it yet, but it's. It's queued up, so. Next up. Yeah.

And it'd be good to be with somebody when you're reading it.

Yeah, that's. That sounds like a very good idea.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you, Peter, for joining me.

And I'm really curious about seeing this pic, this image here of the. That you were describing on your tattoo.

Yeah, I'll. I'll try and send you. I'll try and send you. I don't know if I can show you here.

I see a little bit. Oh, yeah, wow. Great.

Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll send it to you. But thank you so much for, for your time and your work and your wisdom and just what you. You put in the world. I know it's supported and helped a lot of people, so.

Well, it's good to be with you and also to, in some way, small way to support what you're doing with men's groups, finding connection within ourselves and with each other.

Yes.

Great.

Thanks very much. Well, and for everybody that's out there, don't forget, as always, to man it forward, Share this with somebody in your life that, you know, could use it. And again, you know, like Dr. Levine said, this might be the podcast you want to listen to with a partner or a friend and then maybe grab his book and do the same there. So thank you so much for joining me.

Take you care. Bye. Bye, Connor.

Bye.