EP 132: Cultivating Clarity with Embodied Self-Compassion | Spring Washam

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. Hi, welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. This is your host, Fleet Maul, and I'm really excited today to share with you a conversation that I had with Spring Washam, an author, a meditation teacher, a someone who's involved in shamanism and plant medicine and leads people on retreats and journeys in South America. And we talk about embodiment, about awareness, about self compassion, and all of these various pathways for really deepening our resilience and our well being. So give it a listen. She's a wonderful teacher and really one of the up and coming younger mindfulness teachers of her generation. So enjoy.

How are you Spring?

Good. Happy to be here with you.

It's great to see you again. Thank you very much for joining us today. So before we get started, I want to let our audience know a little bit about you. Some of them probably are familiar with your work, but just to make sure everybody is so. Spring Washam is a well known meditation teacher, mindfulness teacher, author, visionary leader who lives in California and Peru and she's the author of A Fierce Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment. That Sounds pretty Necessary. Spring is considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness based healing practices to diverse communities. She is one of the founders and core teachers at the East Bay Meditation center located in downtown Oakland. I had the privilege of teaching there many years ago. It's a wonderful center.

Spring received extensive training by Jack Kornfield and is a member of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Meditation center in Northern California near where you live, and has practiced and studied Buddhist philosophy in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism for the past 20 years. In addition to being a meditation teacher, she is also a shamanic practitioner and has studied indigenous healing practices for over a decade. She is founder of Lotus Vine Journeys, an organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom. Her writing and teachings have appeared in many online journals and publications such as Lion's Roar Tricycle and Beliefnet. She has been a guest on many popular podcasts and radio shows. She currently travels and teaches meditation retreats, workshops and classes worldwide. At least pre COVID 19 lockdown. Like all of us, right?

Zoom wide.

Yeah, we've all had our wings wings clipped a bit. And you know, it's interesting. It's I'm sure the planet is breathing a big sigh of relief. And that's one of the questions I'm going to ask you, is what do you see for yourself emerging out of this? But before we go there, I'd like to ask you about how this year has been. You know, this is sometimes I think, to really get a real window on what we've been through the past 12, 14 months, we're going to have to kind of be on the other side of it or stand outside of it, because we're so adaptive as human beings, we can get used to about just about anything. And we're kind of in the middle of this and I don't know know if we even realize how crazy it's really been, Right. But it has been a really daunting year with the pandemic, the lockdowns, the reckoning with race here in our country in the US all the political upheaval and social unrest, the very polarized divisive politics at the end of the Trump administration, and I mean, just more and more and then all in the background or in the foreground of that, this climate emergency that is becoming ever more evident in our lives. So, been quite a year and I'm just wondering how that's been for you, for your family, for your community. What's it been like for you and what have you learned over these past 12, 14 months?

You know, I think one of the. I love the title of this summit and because it is that resiliency. And, you know, it's been a mix of everything as I think it's been for everyone. You know, it's like there's been so much learning and so much growth and also a lot of sorrow and letting go. So I think it's really both, you know, it's like, wow, wow. We wake up, it's a new world, and then we adapt. And you're right, I think there is going to have to be a lot of integration the years to come. Right. It's not fully digested. We're still in it. You know, sometimes it seems like we get one foot out, we get pulled back down again into it. And I know we all see the end and like, whatever that means, the end of at least Covid. But you're right, we're in the middle of all these other pandemics and environmental and racial reckoning and. And I just think for me, one of the things that I found a lot of solace in is sort of calling on the ancestor world a bit because, you know, when you ever, you have a problem, you think, who can hold this. Who's been through this? Is that what we see? We go, wait, who's dealt with these problems? I want to call them, right? And we call the oldest person in the family. We call the wisest person, the one who says, I've seen wars, I've been through the. You depression, I've been. And that, you know, who are the ones that are still standing strong. And so for me, it has been calling on the elders in my life, yes, but also the wise, wise elders, the ancestors. And for a lot of people, I think, in our Western world, they're not familiar with living lineages and ancestors. That seems very foreign to how we think of ourselves. We don't think of ourselves in a line of a lineage that's awake and alive and available. You know, it's too esoteric for a lot of people, and I understand that. But for me, I've been taking a lot of refuge and going back in time, you know, looking at, you know, as I mentioned, I'm writing a manuscript about Harriet Tubman. I think Harriet and I. I found some common ground. How do I deal with this? Harriet, you lived through the Civil War before that and all. You were a conductor. How do I conduct myself right now, and how do I help? And what is the role of a spiritual practitioner? How are we growing? So these are the questions I've been grappling with. And the energies that I've been trying to pull from are people who have met great challenges. Rather, it's our recent ancestors. John Lewis, civil rights hero, state legislator out of Georgia who passed away, or whether it's Nelson Mandela or. Or Dr. King, I find myself finding resiliency in them, Their work, their legacy, their messages. So a lot of what I've been interested in has been that which I usually take refuge more in. The classical Dharma teachings, which I have for years. I sort of took more refuge in those that have fought the battles here and now on this soil. The ones that we're looking at unique is the environmental one, as we have no really reference for this. We have nobody who's been at this place, or at least that we know of.

Right.

But I found that I just going back in time is like pulling on the roots of the oldest tree in the forest and saying, tree, tell me how to stand resilient. Because I don't know if we know how we're learning it. So I have found that has been my saving grace during this time. And it surprised me where I've been finding strength from and how it's been Helping me meet this moment.

Wow. There's so much in there, what you shared. And I'm looking forward to your book on Harriet Tubman, one of the conductors of the Underground Railroad and a great.

Fighter, liberation fighter for black people in this country in that era. And I saw a beautiful film about her. It was really, really impressive. And, yeah, it's really interesting, what you said, because we live in a culture that in many ways doesn't honor the past very much. Doesn't honor things like lineage and roots and unfound stone, because sometimes those things are associated with things staying stuck or old ways or certain unhealthy structures. But you don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Right. Because really, our human wisdom does evolve, whether it's the ancient lineages or the more recent lineages that you're referencing. Right. And that seems really important. So I think we can find. We can find our resilience laterally by being in community, but we can also find it vertically, so to speak, by connecting back in with our ancestors who've experienced some of these things and who've been weatherproofed, in some sense, by incredible challenges.

Yeah. And I think that one of the things also about Harriet Tubman is that not to see her as maybe a black ancestor for black people, but a liberator for everyone.

Absolutely.

She's all of our ancestors, your ancestor, too.

And also all the people who helped her. It's really interesting, as I've been writing about the Allies a lot, these amazing people who are white, the Quakers. And I have a chapter in my book where I really honor them, so that people don't just see the broken ancestors. They see the ones that were the role models, the resilient ones, the one that were on the lines and on the, you know, the front pages and trying to make history and trying to end oppression. So. So it's important that Harriet seen as our national ancestor, not just the ancestor to some. Because, as we know, when you liberate hatred and you're liberating oppression, you're liberating hatred. And the people who are doing the hating, they're also being liberated.

Absolutely.

Just a broader view of, you know, the black white dynamic. I think it's really helpful that we see ourselves and everyone who's coming forward.

Absolutely. So important. And they're really great liberation figures and heroes of all these kinds of movements. And the great spiritual leaders, in the end, they always transcend race and transcend even country or culture. They become heroes for all of us. Right. Whether It's Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or many figures like that. So.

You were traveling a lot before the pandemic. And I suppose, like most of us, you've been on lockdown, sheltering in place mostly over the last year. And, you know, you mentioned that we've learned a lot. And, you know, I think it's been such a time of accelerated learning, incredibly incredible accelerated learning, which is going to take us a long time to process and integrate. You're absolutely right about that. At least I agree with you. And so, you know, we're not sure if we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel yet, you know, because there's now all these variants and there's spikes going on in various places, sadly, with more deaths and more. But it does seem like we can envision being on the other side of this, and a lot of people are getting vaccinated. And so do you have.

What do you.

Where do you feel about where we're at and what it might look like for all of us coming out of this? And for you personally, how do you imagine your life has changed? And maybe as we do come out of this pandemic, what will we have learned? What will have changed for both? What do you see in the culture, but what are you feeling for yourself personally as well?

Yeah, on a personal note, I think it's refocused what my work is in the world. You know, I think a lot of us have found what's important and what's not. I would hope that after this kind of year of being in lockdown, we sort of like, why am I here? Like, what is my soul's mission? What do I, you know, if you use that language, and what is my purpose? You know, And I think I've really. It's really helped me find. Focus on the areas that I want to focus on. And also, I mean, I've used this time, it's kind of been like an accelerated MFA program, a master's program. And I think I've used this time to really, because I've been settled, I was able to really go deeper. So there has been a lot of learning that will take me years to integrate. But as far as where we are, I think it'll be really interesting because it feels as if people have gone different directions during this time. You either unraveled more as we're seeing a spike in daily mass shootings. Right. So people, 40 million people bought guns and barricaded themselves and maybe got involved in a lot of conspiracy theories. And then the other Half seems to have used the time to really go, whoa, how are we going to really transform ourselves and our community? So that's been interesting just how to hold that.

But I do see ourselves as seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I think it's important that we see some light at the end of the tunnel that we collectively and visualize and collectively hold that we will be one day over this.

And what is meaningful? What's left out of all of this? How do we want to live? And I do think that focuses back on the earth consciousness and human rights. What else is there? The land and the people. It's always been the land and the people. So I think for me, it's a simplification of that. What matters? The land and the people and how we love each other. So it's not like a big.

Dissertation of thought. It's really love. For me, that's what has come out of this with this incredible clarity. I guess it takes a lot of time to untangle the essence of. Of land, people, you know, and that, you know, so. So that's why I feel like where I am and I. The people, at least I talk to. I know I'm in a bubble. You know, I get to meet people like you and all these other great teachers that I know and meet and I'm, you know, friends with. But that seems to be our priority too. That seems to be a collective movement, you know, and being healthy, healing our bodies. Healing is deeper than body. It's also mind and soul, spirit. So how do we get to a place of compassion for ourselves and others?

Well, that's really. That clarity is really helpful. I love that it's all about the land, the people in love, the love we need to. To take care of each other and the land. Right. And yeah, you know, I think it's completely human that all of us, and some to one degree or another, we long to get back to some normalcy and do some of the things we love doing, right? And. And I'm sure there are a lot of people, as soon as they can, are just going to jump right back into what they were doing before. Hopefully many of us, though, this has been a big kind of reset button for us and things have clarified for us. I know for me, I was a complete road warrior before this happened, and I'm doing woodwork, but I was already uncomfortable with the carbon footprint of flying so much that I was doing, and my wife and I were talking about that a lot. And I have no desire to go back to that. I mean, I will travel in a very limited sense for maybe very high value professional opportunities or to do good or maybe some very high value like vacations with my wife, but international travel or something. But other than that, I've learned to do what I do from home and I'm going to do a lot more of it that way. But that's just my personal. There are probably some people that need to be out there traveling because what they have to share is important, that they get out there and do it in person. But at any rate, I hope a lot of us are.

And I think, I'm sure a lot of us are coming out of this with some greater clarity about what's important and what's meaningful. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned the health part of it. So this is day one on the summit and we're really focused on personal individual resilience. And that's, you know, the ground is physical resilience, taking good care of ourselves, physical health and well being, but then also mental resilience, emotional resilience and spiritual resilience. So you're a meditation, long time meditation and mindfulness practitioner and teacher. So where do you see the intersection between meditation and mindfulness practice and your dharma tradition and resilience? Developing and deepening our personal resilience?

Yeah, I think they're essential. I think that when things open, there'll be a buzz around the planet as the beehive is unleashed, you know, and there'll be, you know, huge amount of travel. But also, I think people during this time have recognized the importance of mental health and have reached out for ways to work with anxiety. I know for me, I never considered myself a person who had anxiety until a year ago. I mean, yes, I've had projects or whatever, but just this collective, you know, that uncertainty that came with COVID people that felt grounded and strong. Suddenly it's like your whole, you know, the earth has been quaking under us. You know, tectonic plates are shifting here. And I think that one of the things that has arisen around this is so much fear, uncertainty, you know, political people, conversations, what's happening, all the violence around. It's like everything coming together.

That feels uncertain, you know, living with the backdrop of global climate change and what could happen is enormously.

Fear producing. I mean, it's, it's sorrowful and we hold it in our bodies. So I do really feel that mindfulness is carving a way forward in the psyche of this nation, in this world to be. How do we sit with that? How do how are we with ourselves? How do we digest that? How do we process all of that in our bodies? Skillfully not acting it out, not internalizing it, not oppressing it, not. But how do we work with it? How do we move through it? Right. I think that that's going to be the question of our time. Like, how do I work with all of this? And I think meditation people have taken to it. I don't know what you're noticing, but I think the meditation centers had no problem switching online. They didn't really miss a beat because they had audiences and huge audiences that were even more drawn into. How do I quiet my mind if someone. So much loud chatter and voices of every side, every idea. So finding this way to be with ourselves. I really honestly think that there will be a need for 100,000 new temples to be built for our human suffering, to sit with, to learn how to sit with it. And it's my hope. So I do believe that people can find tremendous power and strength in the practices that the Buddhist tradition offers or any. Any tradition, whether you're a Hindu or you're a Catholic or, you know, any type of awareness, mindful practice of sitting still with ourselves I think is huge. And I don't know how I would have made it through this time. So I guess resiliently, had I not had so many years of a practice, had I not had the tools. And even then, in moments, I struggled. Of course, like all of us, as a black woman, how could I not? Looking at what was happening, and even in the news now, it's disturbing. And so what do I do with that? I just. I bring it into my heart. So not only the mindfulness practices that come with our great tradition with the Buddhist tradition, but also the practices of deep compassion for ourselves, self compassion, self love, the four Brahma viharas, joy, equanimity, compassion, kindness. Those are practices that are heavily emphasized. And so I have never appreciated those more and, and relied on them more. Right. It's like when the chips were down, what do I do? You know, Netflix and chocolate, they're only going to get you so far. You know, that starts to get old six months into the pandemic or three months, you know, you've exhausted that as a refuge. Okay? Now I have to be with myself. And that's what it is, is how do I do that and bounce back when I have a bad day or I feel depressed, or how do I get up again and recharge myself for a day of quarantine? And the same story on the news. And, you know, it's like every day we're having to find just like this new way to swim in the ocean that we're in. Like a new. A new technique, but yet it's the same one. It's can I be here and can I trust that I have the capacity.

To be here and meet this new moment?

Wow.

I think part of this accelerated learning process has been that even for those of us who are longtime practitioners in whatever tradition, with some kind of contemplative practice, awareness, practice and discipline, this has really been a kind of rubber meets the road year. Right. A rock, meat, bone year where we've really had to apply our practices and work with them and see how they stand up to these challenges.

Right.

And I think there's an incredible deepening and learning in that that again, will take us years to realize and process and understand. I'd like to go even a little more deeply into this because I think this is really at the heart of what we're talking about on day one of the summit. But it's also right in, you know, in your area of expertise and wisdom and experience. And I want to talk about the shamanic part of your work in a moment. And I know you integrate the two, but I'd like to stay with the meditation and mind plus the dharma work for a moment. And it would seem to me that in terms of resilience, you could talk about lots of different ways. But for me, there's three areas that stand out. One is embodiment that we practice in a deeply embodied way. And the advantage is that as opposed to having kind of a mental practice. Right. But a deeply embodied practice. The other is that we're developing this capacity of awareness, this self reflective capacity to not be lost in our experience, but to be able to have that bigger mind, skylight mind, where we can actually be with it and learn from it and have insight into it and live a choice around it. So the self reflective capacity. And then the third one you mentioned is the self compassion that really deepening our loving kindness and self compassion through these traditional four Brahma viharas, practice, the loving kindness practices, and so forth. So I wonder if you could address each of those maybe a little further in terms of your understanding of the practice and how you teach the practice, how you do the practice, embodiment awareness and the self compassion aspects.

Yeah, I think the embodiment piece is the. Is the real, the real challenge here, the real practice. I mean, the first foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness. In the body. But we don't really understand what that means. And for me, it took me years. You know, I would do walking, meditation, you know, hours of sitting practice and walking practice. And I thought I was present in my body, but I really, it was like I was just acting, you know, I had no idea. Most people don't really know what is embodiment really? Like, I feel like I'm here, but I don't think I'm here. You know, often people have that in retreats and in our own lives. It's like, how do I become more here and do I want to be here? I mean, that's the other question. Why do I want to be here? Most people are like, get me out of this place. Fifth dimension, the astral world, the celestial world. Anywhere but alive on earth. Here in this mess. You know, so we have to look at. We're up against a powerful force with that. This desire to not exist, this desire to numb, this desire to shut down. Who wants to deal with a racial reckoning? I'm a black woman, I don't. It's so painful. Who wants to watch, you know, people being killed and shootings and the violence and all and the planet and the destruction. It's so painful. So, so for people who are watching this and they think I don't want to. I have such a problem with meditation. I understand. Right. It's a tall order. It's like a simple thing, but it's actually a tall thing to say even for someone. Sit in the middle of your panic stricken day, 15 minutes and just go right into the height of it. You know, it's, it's, it's not, it's not our. It almost seems irregular to us. Like no, I go away, I push away. So this embodiment piece I think is really everything. And I think that a lot of years, what I've noticed in communities, especially western communities, is that there's a way the practice even, you know, exacerbates the tendency to try to block out. We use it in a way. It's like we co opt it in a way to shut down. So instead of becoming more open and more loving, we get more neurotic, more aversive to sounds, more judgment of people. Not spiritual. You know, we get more enclosed versus is more open. And this was one of the reasons why I started going to South America looking like there's some block here. We're not opening, we're not accessing what the teachings have laid out. We're only peeking at them. We're reading them, we're not embodying them. So this embodiment piece is really, I think, the challenge of our lifetime because I think when you're in your body, you really don't harm others. When you're awake, you're aware, you feel your actions right? You're present in. And you feel the dissonance when you're engaging in something unhealthy, unskillful and detrimental to yourself or somebody else. So this piece is really key and it's a core of what I teach in Peru and on my shamanic retreats, because I don't know how people can access it.

As quickly. But you can through practices. You can through sitting and feeling your body and moving the trauma out. So I think that there's a. There's a trauma response that we all have to what's happening. And Fleet, this is our challenge of the time, is how do we help people see it's a good thing to move through it. We're convincing people just feel it. It's like, well, give me the payoff. I get payoffs for my chocolate and checking out. I don't have a deal, but I don't know if I can meet it head on. I don't know. And so somehow we're moving that because that's where happiness is, even though it's brutally painful. But how do we help people to understand that step by step process of inhabiting feeling, being awake as a path to freedom? I don't know if it's believed.

Yeah, it's really challenging. And, you know, you could say a lot of the problems we have in our society is because of our unwillingness to feel. And we've all been infiltrated to not feel. And that's why we have the most severe opioid epidemic in history and so forth, you know, and there's something in Western psychology called the pain paradox that we instinctually want to withdraw from pain or push it away. Discomfort. But actually transformation and the good stuff and integration, it's all on the other side of pain. It's by leaning into pain. And it is counterintuitive. Right. And it's kind of hard to invite people.

To get that. But I think with the meditation you mentioned the four foundations of mindfulness, and the first one being mindfulness of body. My first teacher, Chogyam Chung Phram Sheh, had a very unique kind of teaching on the four foundations, mindfulness. And with the first one, he made the distinction between what he called psychosomatic body, which is kind of our Ideas about the body, our thoughts about the body, our body images, our memory of body. And then what he called body body, which was the actual direct experience of the physicality of the body. And I think most of us, when we start meditating, even with good instruction, we're more relating with that psychosomatic body than actually really dropping into the physicality of the body. And the great thing about the more embodiment, more embodied we come, we're also connecting with our emotional body, getting in touch with our hearts and our vulnerability and being willing to feel as you're saying. And then even deeper we start getting involved with the subtle energy body which I'm sure you're working with the shamanic work a lot. So all this seems really embedded and they kind of, it's it, they all connect up. Because the more embodied we are, we have a better anchor to support awareness. And we're also, I think it naturally leads us into self compassion. Wouldn't you say that the more embodied we are.

Yeah, because the heart is in the body.

Exactly.

When we meet people and we don't feel anything heart centered, we know they're in their head. We know that, you know, even in a spiritual community you could feel some communities like the coldness when you walk in the door. You just want to put your jacket on. You're like, are you guys meditating or what's going on here? A lot of speculating instead of feeling. Because when we start to drop into that, you know, we get connected to something much higher. We get connected to the heart and that's much more powerful and that. And I feel like when. You know, and I will move on to your second and third points here, but when we are more connected to our body, we. That's the earth body. It's a natural outlier. It's a natural place that we go to feel connected to that. I don't think people understand that there's damage being caused because again, it's like this is pain. I want to shut it out. That's pain. You guys are all lying. I'm fine. Let's just keep going on with the day. You know, it's the same paradigm when you start to look at it, right? It's the shutting out of like I can't even process this. So I'm going to just say it doesn't, it's not happening. It's not my reality. You know, they don't feel it, you know. Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot there with this movement between embodiment and healing the earth and the. There's a lot of overlap there in my mind.

Absolutely.

And then the second aspect. Yeah. Oh. So go ahead. I was going to talk about the awareness piece.

No, please, please jump in that we'll come back to the Earth because that's a real focus on the summit. But I think you're absolutely right that the vehicle to get more connected with the Earth has become more embodied. And the reason we're able to turn away from what's happening and kind of ignore what we're doing here is because we're not embodied, because we're not connected.

Yeah, yeah. We don't even acknowledge what's happening in our body. I mean, people deny they're sick. When they're sick, they deny. You know, it's like even they're feeling, you know, the pandemic was a good thing about how the denial works and how we can. It's so unpleasant. Then I'm just gonna say you're all liars. Like, it's so bad. I'm just gonna make up a counter story and live in that. And even though there's evidence, I mean, it's just so, so I think to think about it as a healer. Every body by body, the inhabiting of it brings us closer to the Earth body, cell by cell, connection by connection, you know, and so I think that that's the problem with the Earth based movement is they're not making that connection yet. It's very mind based. I'll give you facts, I'll show you polar bears and hope that you get it. But it's, it's so much deeper than that. It's actually your connection to this living system. You are a part of this system. And so I keep envisioning a new narrative on Earth based work because it can't just stay with facts and figures and scaring us. The more you scare people, the farther the body goes into retreat. So we had to find a middle path for those who are on the fringes a little bit.

But yes, the awareness piece that we talk about with mindfulness, to be able to be with emotion and not be lost in it is such a powerful aspect of resiliency. You know, we wade through the storms. That's often like when the difficulties come, I like to go back and read stuff from the ancestors or even. I've been reading all Maya Angelou's biographies again. Like, how did she deal with this? Like being a black woman in a body in America in the 60s. Okay. And the. Every story had resilience. Like I met the moment I opened, I get through it. And every time we, we learn how to be present in that pain or practicing with that pain and the storm ends and the joy comes, there's like a fortifying of our, like I, I met it, you know, and then we, we get more willing to go out into deeper waters because we're just know how to sell our ship, you know, and we're like, okay, I met that one, I can meet this one. So I think the mindfulness and the awareness, learning how to be with complex emotions, powerful emotions, is one of the greatest gifts that mindfulness can bring. Mindfulness of emotion, you know, that's the most powerful aspect I think of what most people are looking for, wanting help with.

Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, when we talk about self compassion.

In some ways it's like completely, if we really think about it, it's completely illogical not to have self compassion, right? Not to love ourselves. But I think there's been so much, you know, so many threads of shame and blame threaded into our culture for various reasons. The human misconceptions about various religious traditions and just the way, you know, our biology is set up for fear and survival. So unless we override that with awareness, we tend to twist things and there's so much shame in our culture and we turn that into self shaming. Whereas like.

This is my closest friend and this is my body, my mind, this is who I am. Why wouldn't I want to be kind to it, right? To me, why wouldn't I want to be kind to myself? But that seems to be a big leap for us to really find our way into self kindness and self compassion.

It's huge. This was the area that really surprised me the most as I started training with my teacher Jack Kornfield. And I would sit for weeks on end listening to interviews when he would be on long retreats. You know, like any training you said and you observe, you know, and I would just see the amount of self hatred and it was really shocking because people would come in, you know, people who had been on the COVID of yoga journal and outwardly had everything and then they'd be suicidal and addiction in an abusive relationship. And I'd be like, oh my God, this does not even meet the person that's walking across Lovely. So we do have a whole society of hiding our pain and feeling ashamed of it and not understanding it. And therefore we can't develop any compassion around it because if we won't be with it, we just feel.

Like we want to suppress it. So we don't. I agree there is this. There's something about when we don't address what's true, we can't have compassion for it. You know, we're not willing to be transparent with ourselves and, and in some way. So a lot of the retreats did a lot of good work in helping people access that first level. But for to not even have that first level, it was pretty surprising to me. And the amount of self hatred, you know, it's the poison in the well fleet because country hates themselves, they will destroy it. They, I mean like we are, you know, where there's a fight going on. And so how do we move more into that and how do we get people to understand that this is not just hippie talk, this is actually science, you know, this is real power, you know, so.

Well, I don't think any of us escape our childhood without wounding. Right. Even being born is some kind of a wound. And. And the problem is we.

You know, it's too scary to be vulnerable about that, to be transparent. But so we turn in and try to hide the wound and then we self shame around the wound and because we haven't created a culture of safety for people to be vulnerable about that. Right. And so, you know, and then there's so many examples where we have been shamed or we see other people being shamed for being vulnerable. Right. And so it does seem to be a big leap that actually this part that I'm terrified of, that I'm hiding and I'm ashamed of, I could actually let this be seen and it would lead to being loved. I mean, it's kind of a big leap. So it seems like we have to do the work ourselves for a while with a lot of the maitre and loving kindness practices where we can just bathe our own being. And even if we don't mean it, we can at least be reciting the statements for months on end until it starts to sink in that I'm okay, I'm lovable, I'm okay.

I agree with you.

And I feel saddened by this last few years of the political.

Leadership because they have been everything.

But that kind exactly enforced a terrible narrative that was already. The seeds were there and it's been watered. Just kind of bullying and this abuse and verbal and. And attacking those who are vulnerable and marginalized. And it's kind of created. There has to be a big counter effect as we start coming out of this time and to help people access this and to feel even our young people I worry about all they've internalized around this kind of Charles Bronson mindset. And that's not the path to freedom. And so I wonder about that. Who are going to be those voices trying to create that safety or is that even possible on an outer level? Maybe it happens individually, but there has to be a counterbalance with this shift.

Balance with this self compassion, which is hard for people to make that leap in their mind. They think they need more information, but what they need is just more heart, more love. You know, we're looking for something, but it's like, wait, it's all.

I gotta go in here, you know, which is again counterintuitive if you don't want to be in there.

There.

Yeah, I think about the children a lot. You know, I think I'm not a scientist around trees, but I think with trees, like you can tell in the rings, like if there was a cataclysmic event or storm, you know, something really happened at that point. You can see in the light. And so I think, you know, the kids that at a certain age have gone through the Trump presidency and the pandemic, that whole thing in one package, you know, I think a lot of them are going to be in therapy talking about it 15 years from now. Right. I mean, it has to leave such a deep imprint. And I'm really hopefully coming out of this, we can model something else that will ameliorate that for a lot of people. Well, I mean that points to the need for healing. So let's explore your shamanic work a little bit. So there's been a resurgence in the interest in plant medicine, in legitimizing plant medicine and psychedelics for psychedelic assisted therapies of all kinds. It looks like that's going to become legal and be moving into the mainstream of psychotherapeutic practice. And it really seems to some of the very difficult to treat addictions and depressions that seem amenable to this kind of treatment. And then there's other people exploring it just to kind of accelerate their spiritual evolution in some way. Right. Or open up places that were unseen or kind of open up some of the shadow aspects and so forth. And so you've been involved in that work and of course I know that's not the only way to do shamanic work. And of course there's been a lot of deep breath work that people have used to do similar things, but nonetheless it's here. So you've been guiding people on journeys and improve. Where I spent a lot of time Myself when I was young. And I'm just curious about your journey with that, how you got into it, your integration with that in the Dharma and how you see that as a pathway to greater resilience, to greater healing and resilience.

Well, you know, one of the reasons I got involved with working with plants, you know, I had already just. We had opened our center in downtown Oakland, East Bay Meditation and Center. And I was on a long retreat, actually on a three month retreat. And I was doing JHNA practices, meta JHNA Heart based practices. And I fell down into the.

I don't know where. I just disassociated. I had all this unresolved trauma. For me, the connection between embodiment trauma and healing, they all go together. That this somehow we're trauma. You know, a lot of people are traumatized. And if you don't. It seems like if you don't treat your trauma, it grows over time. It doesn't lessen. I've seen this with my own mother. She's gotten worse year after year. By not dealing with trauma, it's magnified. She's good at coping outwardly, but there's like an inner destruction when one doesn't kind of work through that. So I got really interested as a way to treat trauma because there was still. In the insight meditation community, there was a gap of knowledge there we were. This was 15, 16 years ago. We were still understanding, you know, and people would come on meditation retreats and sometimes have to leave and go to hospitals, or they were. They didn't disclose. So there was all this stuff around trauma that I was starting to see in my community in Oakland too, how people couldn't sit still. And I was like working with people and I started to understand that. And then I had this huge kind of experience where I had that kind of meltdown. Now I see it as a breakthrough, of course, you know, hindsight, you know. A spiritual emergency.

Exactly.

Yeah. Which I think is very classic. It will sort of hit all the Freudian notes, all the, you know, Stan Groff notes.

And I have been doing Stanford.

Yeah, I had done tons of that because I had loved it and I had had tremendous benefit. So I'd done everything that I thought I should do and I thought I was good, you know, that's the thought. I was done with that phase. So that's actually why I ended up starting to go down to Peru, was that a friend introduced me to it, a very good friend of mine who's a clinical therapist. I left the retreat all disassociated and panicked and couldn't eat and couldn't sleep, and my body was shaking and I'm buzzing in my ears, and I was like. I just felt unraveled. And I didn't understand why I couldn't just meet the moment like I had always relied on. I'll just be here. But every time I tried to be in stillness, it exacerbated this sense of isolation. Somehow being alone in silence now we know is not helpful for traumatized people, you know, at all, whatsoever, any contact of some kind. So I went down on a trip after I had started, was introduced to it in California. And I had so much healing in just a couple of ceremonies, sessions, ceremonies with a small group of therapists. And then I was so intrigued by the potential to help trauma. It was always that that got me really motivated to study plants and indigenous healing. And so that led me to going down to Peru, and I hid it for many years. I went down to Peru, I would spend one to two months a year because, you know, in my job, I could say, I'm on retreat. And I was on retreat. I was just in the jungle.

And then what happened was I got so much benefit out of it. Year by year, I was just changing, and I was working with it, and I had. And because I had spent so much time on the Buddhist being deeply infused with this Buddhist philosophy, and, you know, those are my heart practices as my lineage, I had this ability to be with was like ultimate meditation. And in that stage, I was, you know, the maestros and the maestros, they always say, you're good at this. You're good at, like, you can be, you know. And I said, oh, it's because I was. I'm Buddhist. I can sit. And to me, that just. Just the natural weaving of them went. And so I spent a year living down there with my teachers in the jungle, some shape of maestas. And I deeply missed the Dharma. I saw what they were missing was a road map, you know, And I said, you guys have all these power tools, but the map isn't clear on where we're. What's happening here. We're treating trauma, but I saw a lot of people leaving in confused states, having these massive experiences and no way to integrate them, no spiritual life to ground it in, no understanding. And so I realized that I wanted to bring them together. And so after I did that, I started an organization. Mostly in the beginning, Fleet, it was just to bring my Buddhist friends. I was like, hey, everybody, I wanted you to come to Peru And I'm gonna. We'll have our. And then it grew and got all, you know, into a thing. But then the beginning, it was just trauma and how. And then I started to see that as I. As we merged the two together. You know, when we're down there, we're studying dharma and we're doing the brahma viras. And we're looking at, you know, emptiness and compassion and the bodhisattva vows and. And the foundations of mindfulness. That it deeply impacted the healing ceremonies that they became influenced, you know, set and setting. When we leave this beautiful background. Then we started to see an acceleration of insight. I'm getting it not just here, but here. The idea was, let's not just focus on. The mind is embodied, and the plants do that. They help us connect to the body. Body. The real body. Like what Chogun was talking about. Not our concept, but our. Our meeting the body as it is and moving these traumas out and all the hurt and the pain and the ancestral and all this stuff. And then what's left is so much more space and freedom and connection.

So those are the kind of the things that I focus on there that we focus on to try to bring about a rapening of an acceleration of consciousness so that we can go out in the world and be healthier, wiser and serve others and to. So that. So I love working with plants in every way. Eating them, work, bathing with them. You know, I'm a nature spirit. I don't really do well in cities. I've always been, like, at home.

I'm very at home in the jungle.

Strangely enough, with all the cucarachas and snakes and everything. I just. We just play jazz together. They do their thing, I do mine.

And so that's kind of. That piece of it. It was mostly around and also helping people understand. I think this is the biggest piece. And I know you, you know, so deeply, too, is this insight into interconnectedness. If I can get somebody or the experience that. A feeling at one with everything. And it starts with being at one with the whole jungle and the sounds and the cicadas and the songs. And they're at. They. Something they never forget. So when they stand up and they walk on the earth, they walking differently. Yes, this is alive. You have now felt this on every cellular level. People get really. There's an immediate shift from that experience from concept to, oh, my God, I don't know how to. And then we integrate it, you know, the oh, my God moments. And I don't know how to be with this, we sit, we like ground them in the heart. Now let's, let's be with them, let's bring them, let's water those seeds, let's bring them out, you know, and so then that's how the two traditions really fit.

And then great ethical behavior too. You know, ethics is in clf, as they say.

Ethics is a big part as well.

Well, I think as you're saying, the more we become embodied and in touch with ourselves and the more we get in touch with the earth. I mean, when the mind really opens into resting in its own nature, we always say there's a clarity. We know what to accept and what to reject. And ethical behavior arises quite naturally. I think, you know, one of the problems in modern science, we have these incredible brains incred of creative capacities, which is wonderful, but it's become untethered from the body, untethered from the heart, untethered from the earth. And so we're creating all this damage and we need to reconnect the whole thing. And I was actually going to ask you a question about your experience with the plant medicines, both doing it yourself and ceremony and guiding others. And then you kind of already answered it. Because some of my early experiences with plant medicine in Peru back in the 70s was I would say the thing that there are all kinds of powerful experiences and a lot of healing, but probably the most powerful thing was having just an amazingly powerful direct experience of interconnectedness with the earth and with everything. Because prior to that, you know, even though I think I always had kind of earth friendly attitudes, but I think I still saw the earth as something separate. You know, there are the alive part of the earth, but then there's the kind of inanimate part of the earth. Right. Just the rocks and so forth.

And.

And I had the direct experience that there is nothing that's inanimate. It's all alive and I'm completely part of it and connected to it. It's inseparable flow that we're all part of. And that changed everything for me. Absolutely changed my life and changed everything for me. And then it's taking decades and decades of practice to integrate that and really be able to live from that place. But really that's where I got the most powerful direct. So it wasn't just an idea, it was a reality. That level of interconnectedness.

Yeah, I think it's just the reality that we just don't see. And I think that that's what's the most alarming for me about this Time that we're in the inability for people to discern truth from lies. Right now, I've seen a lot of spiritual people going off on these. I'm like, wait, this is not the Dharma path. You're on the wrong road. I know it feels like you're going to freedom, but you joined some kind of. And again, I do think that's from being deeply disembodied. They don't feel that they're involved in something that's violent, and.

They'Re still living in the fear, mind, brain part. And we only access such a small amount of ourselves. So for me, my work, blending these traditions, I still have been doing it for a lot of years, and I love it. And I always feel like I'm a beginner. I'm experiencing things, that there's always some new, new understanding that comes back to that. The earth and connection and interconnectedness that. And it's hard to know how to integrate that other than to create the experience for others. Like, are we all feeling like the more I could create it, the more that we can? Like, it's almost like I can't do it unless a whole bunch of us feel that. Like, okay, now what do we do, guys? They're all connected here, you know, So I. For me, it's just having others who, you know, have that experience, and then, you know, it produces such joy. Because I do think our primal wound is this sense of being separate, thrown out of Eden. You know, the mythology for the Western mind started there. You're cast out. Story starts Bible, right? Because, like, in this epic feeling of being outside of the universe, outside of this feeling. And so to bring people back into, like, this new understanding of. No, you've never been outside. That's a myth, right? It's a. It's an aspect of a story, but you are one with. It's a bit. It's a really radical view, and I think it has great impacts on how people view themselves. When you feel included, you treat the circle better. Do you feel one with your family, your family member? You're not the outcast that you want to harm then. So this is very complex. I'm writing about this stuff, too, all the time, trying to make sense of the understanding of, in a modern way, an approachable way to someone who may not have had those experiences. How can we articulate them within the Dharma framework?

Well, it's really profound, what you're pointing to. And, you know, all the great spiritual traditions across all cultures, across all time, have pointed to the same Reality and pointing it out does seem really radical, like this is a really radical truth. But none that is. It is a deep truth that all the great visionaries and spiritual leaders have always been pointing to, the mystics, the yogis and so forth, the saints and so forth, forth. And you know, we're in a time now and you've been referencing this a bit and I appreciate, you know, you, you, I just feel a sense of coming from a place of love and kind of universalism and how you hold this. But you know, one of the other dominant things over this past year has been the reckoning with race and racism in this country and the response to the tragic killings and you know, the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests and all the rest of it. So I'm curious, you know, how, if you'd like to say any more about how it's been for you as a black woman, as a mindfulness practitioner, as a healer, as a visionary of how you're holding that and also, you know, I guess it's understandable, but there's a lot of. We have a. We have, I, I believe we have all the innate predilections to liberation, but we also have innate predilections to fear and survival based and we. The tendency to other people who don't look or feel like us, even just people that live on the other side of the river, river over the next valley or wherever it is. Right. Those other people, right. They're not us. And that's a pretty common human tendency. So.

What'S your sense of how we can come together? Because to have the resilience and the social cohesion, to confront the problems that we're facing, we don't really have a lot of time to lose. Battling it out with each other across our differences and our tendencies to other. Each other. Other.

Yeah, I agree with you. And that's kind of why the plant based approach was why I was so interested in it, because of the. We don't have time. If I could sit on a mountain for a lifetime, I would do that. You know, this was 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years that we wouldn't even apply. I don't even think the plants would have come into an awareness like they are now. But we are at a crossroads and the environmental destruction is really powerful. I mean, if we're being this disrupted from this virus, imagine what a global heating up and a mass amount of people needing to move locations and not having food. We think we have scarcity consciousness now, you know, or othering Whole nations could collapse, and people would need somewhere else to go. So I agree with you that it's interesting for me that the racial reckoning is happening at the same time as the global Earth movement, because the countries affected are black and brown nations. And where would they go? Where, how would they live? And are we together in this? Are we not? And so, I mean, for me, as a. As a. As a black and brown woman, I have one response, which is like a gut one of like, oh, my God, my ancestors, my people, you know, And I. So I go through that phase of it feeling, trying to understand. And then I tried to understand that psychology. As a healer, I get interested in what is this program, you know, where did it come from, you know, that black is bad? Like, where? And so for me, you know, studying the history and looking at all these great books that are being written about this right now that, you know, the just have been so illuminating for me to understand that as a mindset is a program, in a way. And how do we disrupt that? What disrupts that belief system? Because it's just so destructive and so destructive for the person who holds it and for everybody around them. So I try to look at it from that, and I don't really know how to make sense of it completely right now other than I think we have to come together because there are. In history, there have always been these great allies that are writing about in Harriet. And there's great. The Underground Railroad was a coming together in the biggest resistance. It was a. It was a movement of resistance. Like, you know, we are. We're not going by these laws. We're just not going to participate. In fact, we're going to help everyone get out. So I feel like we can look at some of the Underground Railroad and some of these other. These civil rights movements, how people, a mass amount of people came together, you know, because we could change laws, but how do we change consciousness? But we have to start with the grassroots level, with the laws themselves, as we've seen in Atlanta, Jim Crow laws. So I guess for me, it is a call for us to come together and how do we build trust? Because trust is what gets broken here. Because that's what I've been looking at a lot. Why do alliances fall apart? Why do they start turning against each other? They stop trusting each other. Leaders get pitted against each other. So I do think we're. In order to solve these problems, there has to be some sense of, like, a unifying factor as human beings. And this also has to be the same with the earth, the earth work that, you know, we can't be pitted against each other. There's always going to be slow walkers and fast walkers. Don't beat up the slow ones and the slow ones can. You know what I mean? We're all at different levels in our understanding. And sometimes I think everything gets pitted against each other because there is that sense of no time to lose.

But I just, I'm hoping that. I feel like what's new and what's needed hasn't kind of evolved yet. Like we're still in the eye of a needle and we're, we're. It's like a. I'm not sure what are the voices and what are the people, but I. All I can know is that one by one we can do the work individually and then speak about it as best that we can and find new language to pull people in. You know, language is a beautiful thing. It's adapted over time. It means different things. And we have to find the language to connect to young people, find the words that can meet the times and not be afraid to make adjustments in how we approach and be willing to really connect people. In the heart, not so much the head triggering the fear based on body, out of body response, you could say not in body, but out of body response. So for me, I look at things like on that level and I don't have all the answers yet, but the resiliency is I keep trying and I'm not going to stop. There's only one way through. And so I'm hoping that as we all evolve together, we'll all start having these answers that can become.

Symbolic, archetypal, and that can move consciousness forward. But it has to be done in the heart. If it's not there, it won't matter because it won't be embodied then.

Yeah, beautifully said, beautifully said. I love your analogy of using programs because I think, you know, there are like these kind of programs or things that move around virally in human culture. And there's the negative ones and we all, we're all, you know.

Vulnerable to those in a sense. Or our immune system sometimes doesn't ward them off because of our biological survival fear. Right. So we can hook into those negative and then they bio, you know, and they go around. And to me, I don't think, for example, violence is endemic to human nature, but it's like a virus that we just keep passing around in society. But then there are also positive kind of things that can have a viral. These archetypal forms of love. And compassion and higher ways of being. Right. And so. And we also have the capacity to pick up on those, those will move us. Right. So I think you're right. How do we keep working together and exploring language and exploring forms so we can set in motion some things that will gain their own momentum and have their own, you know, they'll pull us all forward into the next level and be stronger than those things that want to pull us backwards. And ultimately I think those things that will pull us forward, they're always greater because if love wasn't the greatest force in the planet, we wouldn't be here at this point. We wouldn't still be around. Right. So yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And the truth can just be obscured as we know it's indestructible though it can't never be destroyed. So absolutely it can be co opted, I mean, as we see like a lot, but it can't ever be eradicated. And when, and when those programs of truth hit us, they just, we know it, it makes people go out. It made, you know, people stand shoulder to shoulder with Harriet, knowing they could be killed, knowing and it didn't matter. We're going, we're heading, you know, and so when we came can tap into that level of the heart. And that's, that's what I think that if this summit can. How does resiliency and the heart play into this? This is like these great conversations, right? How do we. And everybody wants that level. We just don't know how to get there. But you're right. New ways. And that's what I'm, you know, that's my think tank is all about how do we create the. Not the new program, it's the old one. Right. But a modern right. Go viral.

Right, Exactly.

Like eating that one. Y. Do the right thing, you know, because we've had a lot of this other virus and it was powerful. I mean it brought out the demons, you know, and so that's what they do. That's their design, you know, a virus in your computer designed for one thing, to interrupt it and to crash it. So I think that these are really great conversations to be having right now.

And so.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's really inspiring. So I wonder if you'd be so kind as to maybe lead a brief meditation for us, you know, three to five minutes, something that you like to do that's maybe a little bit resilience or self, whatever you'd like to do. Some kind of brief guided practice.

Sure, yes, I'd be happy to I'll just grab my crystal bowl and so one practice that's really been helping me right now, of course, because I'm in these, you can't see them. I should have done this outside, but I don't have good wi fi outside. I don't want to drop the line.

But I have these giant old growth redwoods. And so sometimes when I do practice with people, especially resilient practice and body practice, I like to imagine that people are the, their bodies are the trunks of the trees and their arms are the branches. And we want to root down in ourselves. So maybe we'll just do a couple of moments of that of rooting down and it's a great honor to kick off your summit here, be part of the opening, the opening festivities. So for all of us, this is just take a couple of breaths. So much information. Some people might be excited by it all, but we want to ground it.

So taking some.

Deep grounding breaths, just.

Deep inhalation and exhalation and relaxing.

Really relaxing. The neck and the shoulders. We often are carrying the weight.

Of.

The world on our backs. It can feel like carry the weight in our shoulders.

So relaxing the shoulders.

And as many breaths as you feel.

That your body, whatever the body is.

Wanting, the inhalation, the exhale.

And when.

You do this, try to feel the.

Breath in the belly.

Deep in the belly, under the belly button is the Sahara, our central chakra, a place where we hold tension.

So take them deep belly breath. Let the belly expand with each out breath.

And as you do, just notice how.

The body begins to feel lighter. Release any clenching or holding or nervousness in the belly.

Let the belly just expand.

On each out breath.

And then begin to feel your sitting bones touching the chair or the floor, your bed or wherever you are in this moment.

Feel the bones.

Sitting, bones touching.

Sitting.

And now feel your legs under you. Rather they're folded or are upright in a chair. Or maybe you're lying flat on your back. Or feel the upper legs and the lower legs and your in your feet.

We can move our awareness around. That is what's so magical about it. To put your awareness in your legs and now.

And your feet. See if you can feel the top of your feet or the bottom of your feet.

Imagining that now your, your legs are the great roots of a giant tree, redwood tree.

And your roots go so deep into the earth, they are earth, earth sitting on earth.

And as you notice your body becoming more rooted down, not bring your awareness to the upper body and let the upper body be expansive like the branches of the tree lifting up the spine. It's a giant branch in the arms.

And let your back become upright. And as we root down, we also lift up.

Let the breath be like a breeze blowing.

Feel the rhythm of the breath in the belly or the chest or the nose.

Let the breath be however it is natural, long or short.

And let your head come upright. Let your hands relax them, the face relaxed.

The body rooted in stillness for just a moment or two here.

Feeling the breath.

Softening.

Anytime you encounter tightness or tension anywhere in the body, soften with the rhythm of the breath.

Let the wind of the breath carry it away.

Finding your balance.

The roots and the branches where they meet together. The sitting bones.

Now bringing your awareness to the heart center and evoking the power of the heart.

Often depicted in the chakra color wheel as green growing. See if you can take a couple of breaths just in the heart center and the chest.

As we evoke great compassion for ourselves and our world.

Compassion for our bodies.

Compassion for our mind.

Compassion for all beings everywhere.

And as you breathe in and out, now breathing out of the heart and just imagine you're bringing compassion in with each breath.

Breathe it in on the in breath and breathe it out on the out breath. Kindness.

Self love.

This deep compassion for all. Feel that this body, mind and spirit is holding, that we are all holding collectively.

Amen.

End this meditation. Sound of the bell.

May this be for the benefit of all beings. This conversation, this meditation, and our time together.

Wow, that was beautiful. Spring. Wow. It just went out. I'm good now. I'm good for the week. You got me off to a great start here.

Oh, good.

Thank you. No, that was really beautiful. Really beautiful. Well, thank you so much. This has been really rich and what a great contribution to the first day of our summit here. Just so much there. And I just really, really appreciate it and the work that you're doing and all the strands you're pulling together for all of us and that it's just so all feels like you hold it with such a message of love and universality and inclusion and it just. It's really great. So thank you so much.

Thank you for inviting me and I'm glad we finally got to come together.

Me too.

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