Ep.76-Bill Protzmann- Music As A Self Care Tool

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

Hey everybody, welcome back. Today's guest is Bill Pratzman, is a man on a mission to raise awareness of the power of music as self-care. In addition to founding and running a successful high-tech telecom management firm, which he held for 28 years, he also holds degrees in piano performance and creative writing. He has performed for many years with a focus on bringing music to audiences in non-traditional ways. He has a recording of Amazing Grace, which topped the MP3 charts in July of 2000, and was subsequently included in the Library of Congress's permanent record in 2016. In 2015, he was given the Award of Excellence for the National Council for Behavioral Health Care for his work in advancing music as self-care. In addition to two all-original CDs, he's performed and worked with opera stars and poets, Dixieland, jazz, rock, pop tribute bands, in musical theater, and as a solo concert pianist and entertainer. He's also the author of two books, More Than Human: The Value of Cultivating the Human Spirit in Your Organization, and In Our Eyes, In Our Words: Portraits from the Edge of Society. He created a one-man show called Connected with a focus on using music as self-intervention tools for issues related to military service. Since 2010, he's volunteered as a musical teacher for homeless people. 2011, all over, right, going back and forth in time here with all these things that you're doing. You launched Musicare Inc., a nonprofit corporation dedicated to providing education and music as an adjunct treatment for PTSD, for post-traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety. Bill, beyond the fact that like there's just so many things that are so important to me in my life, and to see all the beautiful things that you've accomplished, I'm so excited to have you hanging out with me today.

My gosh, Jason, listening to all that, I feel like, wow, that all happened?

And there's so much more to go out there, right?

Right. And that's just the last 10 years. Imagine what the next, you know, few years will bring.

Well, I think that very much ties into the tragedy that's been going on over this weekend of the loss of Kobe and the 9, you know, the 8 people that were on this thing. My biggest takeaway from this experience is that It was the potential that was still yet unmet by all the people there, right? And I'm a Miami guy, so I never hated Kobe like a lot of people who hate Kobe. Either love Kobe or you hate Kobe. I never had a thing about that. But like, every time I read something or I'm looking at something over the last couple of days, including this morning, I'm brought to tears. And every single person, the coaches, the children, and for me, it's about lost potential. And I think there's a running theme where you and I have a lot in common where it's about helping people minimize their stressors. And maximizing their potential, which is my catalyzing statement for my business.

Yes, mine too. It's about being free. If you're coming to me, you're somebody who's stuck in some way and just want freedom. And the loss of this tragedy— and people fly in helicopters all the time. It's, you know, if that's your thing, that's what you do. It's safe, it works. So it's just incredible to lose, well, so many people, but to lose anyone to a mode of transportation that's pretty well established and operational and it works. And oh, but the potential. Yeah, I think that you really nailed it for me because I've been struggling with why I'm so broken up by this. And I follow basketball, I know what's out there, but I'm not anywhere near a fan. I mean, I'm obviously appreciative, but the lost potential and the kids. My stepdaughter's the same age. It's— there aren't words, you know, there aren't words. I think the Grammys did a good job of connecting us with that "there aren't words" kind of feeling.

Yeah, and it's okay to cry, and it's okay to feel whatever you're feeling. And it's really interesting because, right, there's unfortunate tragic things that are happening all around us, and we're gonna get into those topics like with homelessness and PTSD and all those different things. So, but yet we don't cry, we don't shed a tear because we're— maybe we become so immune to something that just becomes part of our landscape on a daily basis. This. But when something massively tragic happens that shocks us to that core, then we're gonna have an emotional response. And it's good to have that emotional response.

Yeah, good to let it come up, to let it come up.

And I'm glad that I am. I'm glad other people are who also feel— I don't have a major connection to him. I didn't really care and follow him, but it just hit me on a deep level. Yeah. So, so let's, let's, let's go back a little bit before we get into the meatier topics. Let's go back because, right, you, you started off in with degrees in piano performance and creative writing, but then you ended up creating a telecom company.

I know.

Right? So, what was your life like, right, in a little bit of a nutshell, where that got you into the appreciation and love and passion for music and creative arts? How did you get that degree and then going on into the business world?

The music thing is, it's just a part of who I am. And I think I accepted a long time ago that I was good enough to do what I wanted to do with music, but I wasn't going to do it as a career. That pathway when I chose another career in the early '80s wasn't one that I could feel confident about, which is really strange. I mean, I love music so much, but I also recognized that I need to put food on the table. I need— I should do that in a responsible way. So it took about 6 years, and I took all of the IT business and knowledge and customers that I had at the time with me when I formed my own company. And, uh, in, what was it, '89, I guess. And it's just been that for all these years, which is wonderful. It pays the bills and it gives me the freedom to do the other things that I love to do that really feed my soul. And I think it's important, if you're out there listening to this and you know that some part of you is unfulfilled, that's something you need to focus on. That's tapping you on the shoulder for a reason. That's part of who you are that you need to pay attention to and perhaps leverage and exponentialize that because it's part of— it's a part that needs expression in your life, I guess is a good way of saying it. And stuffing that, as I did for many years before I got into therapy, I stuffed a lot of my, my who I am. That's not healthy. And there are ways to let that come and enliven whatever it is that you're doing, whether you're doing computer programming or making music with people or helping folks to, to realize their potential or intervene with things that are troubling to them, uh, whatever it is that is your lane, it need— you need to come 100% with it. And even though I'm running two different businesses, basically I'm still 100% there in both because I have the ability to go deeply into my music at any moment. And I have the ability to shift gears and go deeply into whatever I'm doing professionally, managerially, and all that administrative stuff at any moment.

Without regret, you know, without saying, "Oh my gosh, I gave it all up for this, and it turns out that this wasn't the right thing to give it all up for." So what do you find where your talent and passion about being a musician and your ability to play and create music and the ability to create a business and run a business and be a business owner and an entrepreneur, what do they have in common?

You learn to be very nimble, and I think that's something that comes from having early experience playing in the Dixieland band. It was the first group I ever played along with, and you learn very quickly when you're working with other musicians that you have to adjust and you have to listen carefully and you have to be able to fill in the gaps where there are gaps. And when they look at you for the solo, you better have something to play. And, you know, it's like that group dynamic that has nothing to do with verbal communication and everything to do with being in the music in the moment together, that was a huge component of, I think, self-confidence for me, knowing that I could jump in with a solo when I needed to and that other people were relying on me for some rhythm. And, you know, that's a beautiful thing for a teenager to have. And that all happened in high school. So I got early exposure, which is wonderful because there— I don't know any other way to teach that, you know, Jason, you other than being in a musical group, there's no way to learn what it's like to interact with musicians and open up parts of you that wouldn't be open otherwise. And that could be a drum circle or a choir or whatever, but doing that group thing in music, so key, it's so important. And gosh, I hope all of our kids have that opportunity. I really do.

Yeah. Well, I definitely have that passion growing up because on both sides of my family, they're also musicians. My grandfather on my mother's side, My mother's father, who passed away years ago when I was young, was a piano player in the military band. And my mom plays piano, my aunt plays violin, my uncle plays drums. And then my dad's side, he plays guitar. And then my mom sings. So I've inherited this beautiful, rich culture of music and started playing violin when I was 3 years old. The old Suzuki method, you know? And then as years went by, in 10th grade, I picked up my dad's acoustic Goya, you know, acoustic gut guitar and started playing Nirvana on a flamenco classic guitar in the '90s and went on from there and has picked up subsequent other instruments. And I played clarinet in middle school band. But it's funny that you're saying that, like, people, it's hard for people to understand what that experience is like of like knowing when to step in, knowing that you're necessary to play down this rhythm or that by not playing, you're actually adding to something. And I wonder if the only culture that can really explain that's closest to that is by going to a concert of a band in the jam band culture and the Grateful Dead, Phish, Dave Matthews Band, right? That hippie jam band culture where it becomes so part of that experience where you are co-creating that at some level.

Yeah, yeah. Now that we both know about it, I've noticed it in other ways too. I went to— when I got to travel in the UK for college, I got to hear a family friend of my dad's play a piano concerto. And because I'd never met Malcolm Frager face to face and my dad knew him, I went backstage afterwards and told him who I was and how amazing he played. Well, I was standing there waiting to talk to him and he was talking to somebody else and they were kind of like, you know, joshing the way musicians do. And the guy said, you know, when you started the cadenza, I was a little bit worried. And Malcolm said, you know, I was too. He said, I got off on the wrong foot. And so I had to improvise for a while until I could find my way again. And I had no idea that that had happened. But there he was, you know, the orchestra stops and you have to do something, right? And what he had to do was basically go for it, you know, until he could get back in the lane. So it happens at all levels. And, you know, I attend a lot of live jazz concerts. I've had a chance to hang out in small environments where amazingly talented musicians are playing in a restaurant or something, and you get to know them and listen to them over years. It's all about just the interaction. It's just there, it's a conversation, and you can see it happen, you know.

My first jazz concert was probably 19— I'm thinking 1991, down here in South Florida in Hollywood. They used to have an outdoor amphitheater, and Dizzy Gillespie played.

Oh my gosh.

And it was literally the year before he passed. So I'm in 7th grade, and my dad took me, And it was just, I mean, I still remember, right, the cheeks and the, you know, playing a musical note for 2 minutes. And like, and I grew up like a violinist. Itzhak Perlman was my— oh my gosh, was my favorite, because my Hebrew name, Jason, my Hebrew name is Isaac, is Itzhak. So right now, not only with the violin and all right, I had this like, oh, this is my guy, you know, my guy. But I was, I grew up with jazz and everything from, you know, Led Zeppelin to Bob Marley, all that stuff was already part of of my dad's record collection, Simon Garfunkel and Moody Blues, and all these things were part of my culture of what I was raised in. And it wasn't even forced upon me, which was really cool. It was just there and it was accessible. And the records were playing at night, or this was on, or—

Yeah, it was always music in the background.

Always music. And I've subsequently taken my father, the last concert I took him to was Jimmy Buffett. And he passed out. We were on the lawn seats and he fell asleep. I'm like, no, it's Jimmy Buffett. You can't fall asleep at a Jimmy Buffett concert. But I've taken them to like really cool, like different grunge and rock shows and whatever. But it's like the beautiful thing about music, right, is the culture around it. But one of my professors who in graduate school is an expert in hypnosis, his name is Dr. Douglas Flemmons, and he wrote a book called Of One Mind. And he, I think that the title of it is like Of One Mind, where the theme is kind of like hypnosis and therapy should be like jazz. You should know when you're speaking, you should know when to stop talking, you should know when to pause, you should know when, right, you should be more forceful with your words, you should know, you should raise your voice when you should lower your voice.

Yeah.

And creating space in a therapeutic context and how hypnosis ties into all of that. And it's a really powerful one. When I heard that, I'm like, wow, that's a really powerful metaphor for what we're trying to create and co-create with the other musicians in our therapy room, in the therapy session.

I know you've heard of vocal psychotherapy where you improvise your therapy session and sometimes play along with it yourself, but what do you think about this whole idea of being in flow? Like when musicians are in flow and they're just totally in sync, is that a form of self-hypnosis in some way?

All hypnosis is self-hypnosis according to these theories, and when you're talking about state first trait, right? Tony Robbins is like the master of state and trait change physiology. And I know we're going to get a little bit into neuro-emotional technique, where it's a modality where we use neurological muscle testing, Chinese medicine, meridian points to change the physiological response to an emotion, a memory, or a trigger, what I call emotional allergies to unconscious self-sabotage.

Well said, yes. Yeah.

So we're always talking about a state first trait scenario, but the way I describe it to people who are working with me is that you can come do your talk therapy, but we're working from your neck up. And we're really only focusing on one aspect of your brain, which is your rational brain, the neocortex. Yet many people don't realize that there's the triune brain theory. Triune brain theory. You have your rational brain, which is your neocortex, your mammalian brain, which is your memories and your emotions. And then you have your limbics, right? I mean, then you go into reptilian brain, which is your fight or flight, safety, heart rate, breathing, reproduction, right? Survival skills.

Yep.

Fear-based. So if those three parts of your brain aren't in sync, you're going to have triggers, traumas, emotional stuff, digestive stuff, right? Cause emotions can cause disease is really the way we look at it from this perspective. So I do believe that everything we're trying to do is changing straight for straight because Esther Hicks and the Law of Attraction, one of her famous quotes is, "You can't get there from here." So from the way you're trying to solve the problem is not— from that vantage point, you can't solve it because you've always been stuck there. So don't use that same logic that got you stuck to try to solve the problem.

Yep. What was that? Einstein said that. But I love this idea of intentionally saying, whatever got me here, I now have to put aside. So there's this conscious effort to put it all aside and open to something else, just something else. Of course, you have some intention, so you can direct what that something else is. But putting it all aside, I mean, this is what happens when you go on stage. Anything that's happened before the moment that you walk onto the stage, you must put aside. Right? And that includes all the practicing and all the hoping that you get it all right and the size of the audience, whatever. You just— it all goes away.

And it has to be a level of trust that you have. And I describe it to my therapy and coaching clients as that emotional muscle memory that's sticking in. And whether it's going to be proactive emotional muscle memory or it's going to be reactive. And the work I do, especially through NET, is about getting rid of the reactive. So you, instead of having that, you could now proactively choose to act in that what we would deem a negative way, but it's a choice. And it's also, but you can also choose to act this way, this way, this way, and this way, and be neutral as opposed to be compelled to only be acting in one way, flooded with an emotional response. And I agree with that, that when we set up into every scenario, whether it's a business scenario, relationship scenario, or friend scenario, a financial scenario, how do we identify what is unconscious or subconscious that is triggering us? To be stuck and then really trust ourself, which I think is a big theme throughout all of mental health, is self-awareness, self-trust, self-love.

Yes, we're so in the lane on this, Jason, together, because in my practice of using music personally and what I teach is that you can use music to unpack all of that stuff so that you can accept neutral and your presence at that moment. And music does a great job of that, Safe, and you can practice doing it so that when you need to, you can obtain neutral pretty quickly, you know, without a lot of effort. But, you know, the moment of walking on stage is anything but neutral. The butterflies are all going, you know, it's that. And it's a leap over the cliff without a net.

Completely.

Because to be that authentic You've got to be willing to take the risk. Hello, cat. Say hi to everybody. There she is, and off she goes. They love to climb up on my keyboard.

Spirit animal.

Yeah, it's true.

Yeah. Well, that's a surrender in a way, and it sounds very Buddhist in a way that you're talking.

It is. Yeah. I didn't know anything about Buddhism when I was growing up. I just learned, you know, my mom would say, go have fun. And I'm all like tense and, you know, agitated. Am I gonna hit the right notes? But it is that, it's acceptance and it's allowance or allowing. And there's a certain level of healthy fear that goes along with it. And of course, there's this, if you're going to bring emotion to your performance, which you better do, otherwise people won't get it, you've got to be prepared with those emotions too. And part of the practice, of course, of being able to access those emotions so that they come up authentically when you're ready for them to appear. All of these things go into the moment, you know, the moment where you take that first step out onto the stage.

And that applies in every arena of our life. And as I see, like, exactly what you're saying, like, I'm thinking of couples I'm working with, like the fear of doing something different in their relationship or responding a different way or asking for something that they're afraid they'll get denied over. Or in business, right, sales specifically, the people who are the least successful are the people with the most fear about going out of their comfort zone to say, "Great, I shared the information. Now would you like to buy something?" Right?

Right.

And I have a buddy of mine who I met actually when I was in high school in my youth group, who came— he was speaking at the time to a lot of high school and colleges. His name is Scott Freed, and he's published a few books, and he still is incredible. He's a public speaker, and he picked up HIV back in the day, because he didn't have, you know, he explains the story is that I asked if they got tested and the person said yes, but I never asked the next question.

Yeah. What was the result?

Yeah. So the fear that we have, and now he's transformed. I mean, thank God he's healthy. He's gonna live probably longer than anybody I know, you know, thank God due to medication and everything, but he's become one of the most profound people that has inspired me. From the time I was 16, 17 years old to now at 41, where it's, you have to be able to ask, and then what's the follow-up? And I feel with emotions, and we can call it whether it's therapy, mental health stuff, the belief, what am I worth? What am I deserving? Right? Especially when we get into suicidality, we get into, you know, the homelessness question. I don't know anybody who has the right answer of how to solve of homelessness, right?

Well, I don't have the answer, but I've got an idea. Yeah. I have a personal story that you triggered for me that I've never shared before in this way, but it's important, I think, because one of the amazing things about my wife is that we met over music. We were actually working in a— she was— we were doing a Mamas and Papas tribute, and they invited me to be the keyboard, and there were 4 singers, and she was doing the Michelle part. Michelle Phillips. And so we basically connected over music before anything else. And I hadn't thought of that until right now, but what an incredible, durable relationship we have that, that didn't get started for any other purpose than to make music together.

And it went from there But isn't that the most beautiful metaphor for a relationship, is that we're making music together?

You said it.

And this is what I tell clients all the time, especially my young professionals, where dating has become more challenging this generation because of social media and the instant gratification and swipe or all that stuff. And it's like going shopping in a store and you're dismissing people for less important reasons than we should be. And the idea of having this, like, where are you looking for people to find? Are you living your life in alignment with the type of person that you want to bring into your life?

Oh my gosh, exactly. Right? And what masks are you wearing? So when you come to the, when you come to make music, you must come vulnerable or it won't be, it won't work.. And that means you've got to be willing to make mistakes if that's what it takes, or to screw up in ways that you wish you hadn't, or to offer something that might be novel in a moment where only you can do that. And if you're not vulnerable, you're going to miss all that stuff. You're just going to be a, you know, you might as well hire a player piano, right? And, and coming that vulnerable, what, what, what part of the dating scene encourages that? I'm just thinking maybe we ought to have a drum circle for singles, you know. Where you can come and relate to one another as musicians first.

Well, you're also letting your guard down because the focus isn't on— in any environment, whether you want to do this in a business environment, a family environment, a friend environment, whatever the— when the culture is— I'll give an even better example. So this past Sunday I ran a half marathon. It's my second ever. I did my first one in 2014.

Congratulations.

Thank you. So, right, I'm 41 years old, so it's a really, right, Why are you starting at 41? And it's become, a lot of the influence has been through some of my connections in the social media and entrepreneurship world. Jesse Itzler, who I'm not sure you're familiar with, but Sarah Blakely's husband, big into endurance races, and I've had other people in that community on as a podcast as guests. And I've been trying to work on my weight, and I know I have some physical, medical-related stuff that I'm trying to figure out, but if I focus directly on why aren't I losing weight, or why aren't I getting the right diet, or why aren't I eating, then I'm gonna be stuck and saturated in a major problem. I decided that if I make a bigger goal for myself, which is going back into running, signing up for a marathon, because of that, everything else is gonna fall into place, 'cause those are things that are important to live and support yourself while running 13.1 miles, is getting your nutrition dialed in, getting your hydration dialed in, getting your sleep dialed in, getting your schedule dialed in,. And because of that, right, all of a sudden, like, all these other things fell into place. So we're talking about, like, the fear that people have, especially when wanting to make changes. I find that people set goals a step below where their fear factor will kick in. Interesting. That they think about something. So let's say it's a financial goal. Let's say I want to make $200,000 this year. And then all of a sudden, they're like, well, I've never really even made $112,000 this year. So to go almost to double that and that, okay, well, me, let's make something a little bit more reasonable.

Oh, yeah. So they dial back on their dial back.

So Grant Cardone, in his book, The 10X Rule, which is a brilliant, brilliant book, says that you're always better off setting the larger goal, game planning around the larger goal. And even if you don't hit the larger goal, you're way more likely to hit a goal number above the goal that you would have set had you not 10x'd it.

Yes.

Because you're in momentum, because you're game planning, because you're looking at it from a different vantage point.

Yes. And I love the pull towards something more. I think spending all this time volunteering in the nonprofit world, there is a huge focus on what Maslow calls, with all candor, deficiency. But it's like putting food on the table. That's an important thing when you're at that level of sustaining yourself and having a house. And these are important things, but they don't really pull us toward the self-actualization or transcendence part of our potential. And I think maybe we're stuck in this world in too much of deficiency and not enough growth, and there needs to be more of a pull toward growth, you know, to set the higher goal and challenge yourself to try to reach that rather than just hitting the, you know, the bare minimums, so to speak.

So what you're doing with listening can say, well, that's great in theory. I mean, it's awesome. You made your— you have a career, you have food on your table, you have a loving partner, you found somebody in your life, right? All these things. How do we make that really nitty-gritty practical? Like, what would you say, like, if you haven't thought about this, and it doesn't have to be picture perfect because it's never going to be picture perfect. But what would you say is kind of like the steps involved in that going from a deficiency to, you know, I always talk about efficiency with my client. I'm like, well, you're solving your problem, but there's a more efficient way of doing that, right? But going from a place of deficiency, going from a place of lack, and it's funny, like in the mindfulness space, they'll say, well, gratitude, that's the key into that, right? But let's take it even like really more meta.

Yeah, exactly.

What would you say, yeah, as your practical application, step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, whatever, to go from that deficiency to a place of momentum of success?

Well, I know what to put aside to open you up to that potential. And one of those things is, we're really at a conflict right now in this, the bigger, better, faster mentality. We're right back in that. The industrial age is back with us now. It just looks like the internet. And that, the internet, man, that'll run you ragged. There's so much you can do to promote and market and create content. It's just adding to the noise. That's not self-awareness. That's just turning the crank. So the things that you can put aside, and we hear about this now as the distraction, internet, taking a holiday from social media and all of that, these are really good practices because they return us to our innate ability to go deep, to really allow things to have their effect on us, whatever those things are. If you're volunteering and you are affected by homelessness at a deep level, That's something that the internet can't convey to you. If you're going on a retreat, maybe you're going to sit in silence for a week. That's something the internet can't convey to you. But it turns out that these are very healthy things for the human system to engage in. And not only are they healthy, they're starting to become recognized as almost like food or oxygen. You know, I don't know who is it, Zig Ziglar, he says, I don't know about money, but if you take it away, it's almost It's like not having air to breathe, right? So these fundamental things that we have distractedly or chosen to ignore, we need them in order to go up the levels. I think the level right above sort of sustaining yourself in the Maslow hierarchy is the aesthetic level. And there's a reason we need aesthetics. It's great to belong. I mean, don't get me wrong. You've got your tribe. Everything's cool. It's working. That's great. You can roll with that. But just like you're experiencing, Jason, there's a need for something more to go back to running, right? To challenge yourself, challenge yourself to look at some art, to go to hear some music you haven't heard before. See how that opens you up. But when you do that thing, do it as a human being, not as a robot, you know, because it's human beings that are really making a difference here, especially if you can do that with someone that you love, with someone you care for, and share that experience and see what comes from that that aesthetic ability to connect on a deeper level. Does that make sense?

It absolutely makes sense because it really does sound like you're able to step out of your story, right, or that person is able to step out of their story to allow a different viewpoint, a different vantage point, without the weight of everything crushing them, of what's keeping them, what they perceive as keeping them stuck. And you probably know this, that our brain is 4 times as likely to focus on on something negative than it is on positive.

Oh yeah.

We have to work really, really hard to, to, to look at things, and our brain is really sifting and sorting through every day, through every moment, what I want more of and what I want less of. And, and I joke with my clients that when they come to me, whatever the issue is, whatever the theme is, I say this at the beginning of that session: I want you to tell me what you hope to accomplish over the next 30, 60, 90 days without telling me what you you no longer want.

Yes, yes. Very difficult, right?

Very difficult.

I mean, that'll stop a conversation.

And they're just like, because the way our brain is, we're so like, well, I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. Okay, but what do you want? What will that leave you? Well, we'll be arguing less, or I'll be less stressed, or I'll be sleeping better, right? Okay, but what's the positive variant, right, description of that? And then I use the example of, well, when you go into a pizza place, and you order your pizza, you don't say, "I don't want mushrooms and I don't want olives on it." But yet we do that in our personal life with the perspective of, "Let me tell you who I am by what I don't want." Yeah, right.

And I've even done it right here in this particular conversation. So who's encouraging us to more or to not— I don't want to say more, that's a terrible word. Who's encouraging us to to humanize, perhaps is a better word. Who's encouraging us to love? Who's encouraging us to go deep and take the shadow journey if that's what it takes?

Yeah, right. And that word shadow, right, for people who aren't familiar with that, can you just give like what that shadow journey— give you a quick— from your perspective, what's a shadow journey?

A shadow journey is Luke Skywalker in his Jedi training, and Yoda says, no, you have to go into the dark place and you have to confront what's there. It's not a it's not with the purpose of ending your life. It's the purpose of breaking you open to see what more potential is inside of you. It's— this is a— the shadow has been used by philosophers for a long, long time. I think, is it Jung that started the whole shadow thing? One of my favorite authors on this, contemporary author, is a guy named Robert A. Armstrong. I think I've got that right, who wrote a book on the shadow journey. And Yeah, we all know you got to have light and darkness, you know, there's this duality. But when it comes to the psychological and the emotional part of you, we tend to steer away from the shadow journey. It takes a lot of effort for somebody to intentionally go there and unpack what's there and what the richness is that's at that moment for you. And there are guides. I mean, Jason Wasser, you're a guide. You can help people go through that shadow journey. I do that with music. There's a plethora of coaches out there right now that are helping you. Yeah, they can help you get your business running and, you know, 10x your profits and all that. But if you really want to do the work, you're gonna have to take the shadow journey sometime in your life, more than once.

It goes back to, right, because wherever you go, there you are, says Dr. Seuss, right? So you bring yourself to whatever scenario, and it's like, it's not the people around you. And I discussed this with a client today as we were talking about their relationship, and I said, but at the time you were at when you met your wife, you are a magnetic attraction to each other because of the stuff that was finished and unfinished in each of you. And I have a 50— I have a magnet that's a 50-pound weight magnet. And I stuck it to my aluminum file cabinet. And it like stuck, but it slid down. Yeah, right. And I'm like, you know, there's gonna be people that like, you know, you dated and have relationships with, and they're like that. And then I took the magnet and I stuck it against him. And it fell. Right. And I'm like, and then there's gonna be people you're walking by who you're gonna have no energetic attraction to. And then I took my— I have a nutritional supplement aluminum cart here, which is like much thicker metal. And I, from 4 inches away, the magnet flew out of my hand and stuck to the thing.

Yeah.

And I'm like, and those are the people that you do this long-term dance with. And maybe your wife was more of the aluminum where it's, you know, it's stuck, but it's sliding because you guys aren't fortifying it. And maybe it's, you know, there is the, that you both are in alignment, you both have done your work, you're both at the same developmental stage. And that's going to build a greater thing. But you can see based on the work that you have to do. What's showing up for you in your life is the mirror to teach you where you got to do more work. It wouldn't bother you about your spouse, it wouldn't bother you about your employee or your boss or the market or who's in the White House if there wasn't something about you and that character trait or a character trait or an experience that is unfinished business for you.

Yeah, law of attraction, right? And once that becomes conscious, it's like, oh, whoa, you mean I actually somehow or another subconsciously or not, chose all this, and it isn't what I want. Okay, that's a shadow journey opportunity right there.

Exactly. And one will never get anything differently than that which they believe, consciously and unconsciously. So, so as we go through this, and maybe let's take it to the next level a little bit deeper, right? PTSD, depression, homelessness are three areas that are really important to you. How did, how did that evolve?

Well, I had the opportunity to do some trauma work of my own, and I did that after volunteering for about 7 years with veterans and post-traumatic stress. And it was really intriguing for me to go back in and sort of unpack my own traumatic journeys. And, you know, if you're listening to this, the good news is that you can do that. The bad news is that it doesn't stop. Once you start that process, you're going to be going through it. And, and there's a reason for us to go through that. They're talking about post-traumatic growth now. The trauma is not a wall, it's a doorway. And and that you can walk through that doorway quite successfully. We're actually built to do this, folks. This is how it works. Just look around at all the blown-up veterans who are motivational speakers. They can tell you how it works.

Right. And that's called resilience. Yeah.

There you go. Yeah, it's resilience. And if you don't exercise that muscle, you won't be resilient. And from an early age, when you skinned your knee and you got a Band-Aid put on it, you're learning how to be resilient. And it gets harder and harder and the lessons get bigger and bigger, but the reward The rewards get bigger and bigger too. And they don't necessarily come in the form of cash. That's one of the sort of where the pathways diverge. And if you're chasing the cash, God bless you, because, you know, we need people who have that money to be able to sustain the people who need it. So thank you for that. But if you're going the other way, if you're choosing to come from the human potential side of the equation, might be a little lonelier. It might not— unless you're Tony Robbins, it might not be as lucrative. But that's the real journey of the human spirit. That's why we're here. That's why we've evolved from wherever we started to where we are right now. And if you're participating in that part of the journey, that's the difficult path. But it's also the path that we need because somebody needs to advance the ball. Somebody needs to move it forward. Somebody needs to take us out of our old forms of thought and say, no, I did that. And it really, you know, it got me to a place where I had to deal with my trauma. I had to deal with the trauma of being in a place where my task was to kill people, which is very much not like my belief system. How do I reconcile those things? That's a huge question. And it's very difficult to walk through that. My own traumatic past involves emotional neglect. How did I learn to be someone who could accept love? What was love in the first place? And how do I unpack the trauma that got me to that place and will offer me the next opportunity to go through something else and, you know, and find how that leads? This traumatic journey is, I think, at the heart of everything we do. It doesn't necessarily have to be traumatic. That's an important point. But if it comes to you, it's just an invitation. I mean, I don't want to minimize that because trauma really sucks. It hurts. But there's an invitation implied in that, and you can accept the invitation or not. And I've come close to not accepting it. I've been suicidal, and I have a story on that. But to accept the invitation and get to that neutral place that you were talking about earlier, Jason Wasser, so, you know, this trauma exists. This is part of who I am. And I'm at a place right now where I can respond to that opportunity instead of being led by it. Or surrendering to it, I think is probably part of what this is about. There is a level of surrender where you go, yes, I accept this is me. But then the work begins. And there's experts out there to help. You're one of them. You know how this goes. So if you're at that place, you're listening right now and you're at that place like I was of feeling suicidal, what an invitation. It's not about taking your life. The invitation there is to be reborn. And I'm using a Christian metaphor advisedly there, so nod to folks who understand being reborn and the revitalization that goes with that. That's a symbolic moment. And once you learn it, you can have that moment over and over at different levels of depth and really incredibly come to a realization of your potential that you couldn't do any other way.

Yeah, agreed. And we can call it different chapters of your life, right? Different— Sure. Beta version 1, right? Version 2. There's so many beautiful, rich ways and languages for a person to access this. And as I'm thinking and going back through my own, you know, history and the life stuff that I've been through, that we really look, especially through the NET community, we say like, all trauma is going to create some type of post-traumatic stress symptoms, because you don't want it to happen again. So what are you doing in life? You're doing things to avoid anything that ever hurt you before.

It's like what you don't want again, right? Right.

But, right. But it's real. And this, like, how did I get hurt? So I'm protecting myself from getting hurt. And in a way, PTSD is, right, being in an environment where you were either the person getting hurt or you witnessed other people getting hurt or killed, right? A very significant event, whether it could be 9/11 or someone who's in the military or someone who saw an accident or witnesses to God, you know, to whoever it may be, that it's that scenario. But we also have to factor in, which I know you for sure do, but for people out there who don't get this, is what about the people who are close to the person that's going through that?

Right.

And you have the secondary, right? In a way, like, it's like kind of like the caregiver, who's taking care of the caregivers who are taking care of the people who are sick, who's taking care of the people who are taking care of the people who have post-traumatic stress or significant depression or suicidality and stuff like that. So I just want to mention that for that, if you're someone listening to this episode, and you're— and you love or care about someone who's going through those experiences, know that you should be, you know, finding the right resources for you. It's not all about they're the priority, we have to take care of them. I'm going to sacrifice my needs for now until whenever, until that's handled. But no, no, no, get your cup filled.

Yeah, you have to. Yeah, there's no way to come to— there's no way to be useful without, even in spite of your own issues, there's no way to be useful unless you're full enough to be able to offer something with authenticity. And the last thing in the world that helps everybody listening to this, but, you know, bless them for trying, are government programs. Because government programs are the most inhumane thing that you can offer someone who needs help, right? Well, fill out these forms and Follow this path and connect with this navigator or whatever. It's like, no. And I see this through the eyes of veterans who are dealing with the VA, the VA healthcare system. I don't have any visibility on the pension side, but the VA healthcare system is overwhelmed. There's not enough people working in it to be able to offer anything like the services that veterans need when it comes to their spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health. And it's just the nature of the beast. There are too many veterans. And to do that job at all is a huge win, but to do it with anything like compassion is almost impossible. There's just not enough humanity available when you're pushed to the limit that way. So it all falls, as you've pointed out, back on the caregivers, family, friends, whoever is around. And, um, the, the nice thing about being a caregiver in that situation is that you have no answers. The only thing you can do is show up. And hold space and be there with your buddy or with your family member or whoever it is and just say, "Yeah, this really sucks and here we are together." And that simple thing works in homelessness. It works for blown-up veterans who are trying to access healthcare or trying to solve lifelong issues that result from combat, whether they're mental or physical. It works in so many ways. And it's so easy. And yet, who's teaching this? I mean, somebody needs to sit down with everybody who works in the VA and say, okay, look, you know, you've got your medical degree. Now you can, you can fix anything that's wrong. But here's the thing that works. The thing that works is— I don't even want to call it compassion. The thing that works is humanity. It's just being there as a person instead of a tool, you know.

Well, two thoughts come from that when we're now talking about in the medical care world. One specific niche has carved itself out as the compassionate care medical community. And of all communities, you know which one I'm talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

Right, right.

It's— on one side you have hospice, who's the compassionate care, right, at the end of days. But one other niche community which was federally banned is the medical marijuana community.

Yeah.

And they're talking about compassionate care because why— if we have a thing that can relieve relieve your pain, that can help you. And now it's funny enough, the market has flooded now with— they're now doing for PTSD, we're doing with all the controlled substances, right, LSD and MDMA, that they're doing it for trauma and abuse and, and stuff that's changing people's lives in a handful of sessions with the right guided care. Or people are— why are people going down to the Amazon to do ayahuasca?

Exactly.

Yeah. Having—

I had a client of mine that had significant significant trauma, but they were never sure where it was coming from. And there was family stuff like everybody else, but they had a slew of things that were holding them up in life today that were manifesting in major blockages, major mental health type stuff, even though they worked and they were great and they had relationships, but there were some very maladaptive behaviors in their life. And they did an ayahuasca journey experience, came back in, was like, oh my God, I realized I was abused. I knew who it was. And I remember now going back to my childhood and saying to a family member, I think so-and-so did this to me, and everybody dismissed it. And I came and had this realization that this person abused me as a child.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that came from an ayahuasca journey. Now, again, I'm a licensed medical professional. I can't legally formally say go do that, you know, because it's not legal here in the state of Florida. But, you know, those who are doing research or have seen documentaries on these type of experiments, as I know, right, with medical marijuana, with LSD, with MDMA. There's a tremendous amount of research that's finally happening again. I know Israel is leading the forefront with medical marijuana stuff, but we're talking about like trauma. No matter what your story is, you can come from the most entitled, multi-million, billion-dollar successful family and have trauma. And I think we're seeing this now with the royals, right, with, with Meghan and Harry.

Yes, yes.

On with why they're leaving and the rampant racism for his wife being a biracial woman and for, right, and all these different things. So trauma is really a major part of it. But I wanted to go back just for another moment. There was something that you said about human growth about 10, 15 minutes ago. And I wanted to make sure that I brought this up before it gets completely lost, is that I think we got screwed. And this is One of my mentors, one of my spiritual guides, Rabbi David Aaron, who's written really a bunch of great books and is on YouTube, and, you know, he's a rabbi who grew up in Canada, moved to Israel, but his stuff is very non-denominational, and he has people from other religions and cultures reading his books as book clubs. Very spiritual, very mystical. But he once said to a small group of us in a workshop that we got screwed by being called human beings. Because if you look, so we're human, we got that, that's not the issue, but the being part is where we got screwed and shortchanged. Because what's inferred by being, you are being, so right now you are being in your chair and you're doing what you're doing, which is talking to me and we're having a conversation and I'm being in my office, but that's it, that's where it ends. Why? And his thing is, well, why, what would happen if we started calling ourselves human becomings.

Oh, I love this.

And where could— what's the possibility that has not yet unfolded for you?

And this is powerful. If you accept yourself as a human becoming, that puts you right in the lane of growth. And there's a— I love be. Be is a great word because in growth you can also find human belonging. The longing to be a part of something is so much a part of how we're wired. You know, we're tribal, we're social.

Right, and maybe that's a little bit of a difference between in the homeless— they don't call it the suicidal community, but there's the homeless community, right? So there is a community, right?

There's a tight-knit— It's tight. It's tight. It's, you know, people in the homeless community will watch your shoes while you sleep, because losing your shoes if you're homeless is a huge problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's incredible because we said like, they don't want to fill out the forms, right? What's the resources? What's the access? A very good friend of mine is the clinical director at St. Joseph's in Santa Monica, which is majorly involved with homelessness and mental health care.

Oh, yeah.

And is the clinical director overseeing all the, you know, a lot of the programs that are going out there. And it's right, it's a constant battle, right, for funding versus these resources. But they're also doing like they tried acupuncture and they're trying yoga and meditation and like, yeah, right. Why should you only be a certain segment of society that should have access to those tools? If we know that works for the, right, the average person, why wouldn't it work even more so for someone who's been through these things? So it's beautiful that certain places out there are doing this and that other people are going to give them crap saying, what do you mean you're giving them alternative medicine healthcare? When you can't even get them off the ground and into being able to take— and like, no, that's equally as important.

Yes, yes. Homeless people are people primarily. And communities, at least in our part of the world here in Southern California, we're overwhelmed. Communities are starting to take on the opportunity to say, hey, we can't put everybody in a house, but we can bring in portable showers. Twice a month, and we can arrange for safety in a church parking lot where people who are sleeping in their cars can come and not be worried about being towed away or robbed. So we're dealing with it on sort of an intervention level, but it's a human level. It's a level of humanity that hasn't yet been tried. And I'm so glad that it's being tried because solving the big problem, it's a whole lot more difficult than the guy who's walking down the beach and throwing starfish back in the ocean, right? And somebody says, "Why are you doing that? There's so many starfish." And the guy says, "Well, you know, it matters to this one." Yeah, right.

And it's the number of one versus the number of millions. And I have a buddy of mine who I met through my entrepreneur circles in Alaska who once every few months partnered with a barber shop. He's in the real estate industry. He partnered with a barber shop where once every 2, 3 months they'll do on a Sunday afternoon for the homeless community to come in. Get a clean shave, get a clean haircut. And then he has people from his real estate company and other people from the community sitting down with laptops doing resumes with the individuals. They come in, they get a clean shave, clean haircut, whatever gender, right? Whatever it may be that they need, then get their resumes worked on and done. And then here you go, here's 10 copies, whatever it is. And, you know, it's, it's not everything, but it's such a big something.

Yeah, it is. It's, it's, it is even bigger than the operational result, right? Because you've made a, you've made a connection to somebody. I have known a handful of homeless people now for more than 10 years, and at one level or another, but just the human connection is enough. And I'm not advocating— like, this one guy that I know has been living on the streets of San Diego since we moved here in 2010, Chris is amazing. I mean, somehow or another he manages to keep it all together. And there are times where he gets ill and times when he's like on his game and times when he looks clean-shaven and times when he's kind of bushy. But he's got something that keeps him going. And why can't we encourage that, whatever that is? Why can't we encourage that? Hey, Chris, how's it going, man? I haven't seen you in a few days. How's things? Nothing wrong with that and everything right with it.

Yeah, well, that's the compassion. That's just the humanity that you're describing. And I remember my first trip out to Portland, Oregon. What floored me the most was the amount of teenage homelessness. And like, I never like, you know, I'm in South Florida. I grew up around homelessness in downtown Miami and in other places here, but to see teenagers who are homeless blew my mind and broke my heart.

My kids were in elementary school with several friends who were living, you know, hotel to hotel or on the street or in their car. Um, very difficult situation, but it's real. I mean, public schools have to take anyone, even if they're homeless. And, and, and they do. And oftentimes that's the only stability in those kids' lives. But the tragedy— so, oh my gosh, so I didn't know about this and you mentioned it, but when my daughter was interning as a chaplain here locally, her responsibilities included folks who were LGBTQ, and many of them were teenagers who had been kicked out by their families because of their gender orientation. Kicked out people. What's going on with us that we're adding to homelessness By disowning our kids because they don't happen to do what we think is the right thing to do. I mean, honestly, people, this is not humane. You know, I understand losing a job, losing your house, whatever, that kind of stuff that happens sort of circumstantially, different kind of an idea. But why are we kicking our kids to the street?

Yeah. Well, we have a stubborn belief that we carry, that people carry, that there's one size fits all. And this is what I think if we take it back to the mental health side to really take it on a, on a different level. But this is like a worldview as a whole. And when I started my marriage and family therapy program, our training is around systems theory and cybernetics, not to be confused with Scientology's Dianetics. So cybernetics is that, right? It's really very engineering that one thing is going to affect another homeostatic, thermostatic regulation. This person's going to trigger something and that's going to cause causes the people to, you know, trigger another behavior. So everything is real, everything is a system and nothing operates outside of a vacuum. Very different than the pathology-based DSM, one size fits all, you are, you are a diagnosis, you're, you know, normal psych versus abnormal psych. So I remember like one of my professors said, if you ever have someone who comes in and during the session, they're like, so I was abducted by an alien this past weekend. Your response should be, cool, why do you think they took you?

There you go. I love that.

Right now, you know that you're filtering through mental health stuff already.

Oh yeah.

You don't need to be like, oh yeah, well, you're schizophrenic, right? What's that going to do? You know, but, but if you hear a narrative and a story and a belief behind why, you know, what's— is it— was it a dream? We don't know. Was it right? Was it a vision? This past two weekends ago, Saturday night I was brushing my teeth and I had a 10-second vision of a friend of mine at a funeral. Monday morning I go on Facebook and that person's mother passed.

Yeah. How do you explain this?

Right? So mental health is a spectrum.

Yeah, there you go. Well said.

Right? So in some cultures it's shamanic healing, and speaking in tongues. And the cool thing is, I don't know if you're familiar with— so NET, one of the studies that we did, it was around post-traumatic stress regarding cancer, post-cancer diagnosis. And they found within 3 to 5 sessions that we literally are not only changing the brain, but the symptomology is completely eradicating and disappearing. So the person who did the neurological imaging side is Dr. Andrew Newberg, who is one of the top neurological specialists in the world. He also is one of the founders and pioneers of neuro- neurotheology, what happens to the brain during religious and spiritual experiences.

Yeah.

And has done everything from shamanic stuff to speaking in tongues, and putting people right in, right in the church community, right in the really fundamental revivalist community, and had them in MRIs while that was happening. And he found that like different parts of their brain are turning on, the parts of pain and the parts of stress are shutting off. And you're seeing different neurological things happening. So, you know, one of his books is Are We Hardwired for God? Just incredible, incredible. And he breaks down neurology into a really incredible, accessible— you would think the book would be very dry, but it's actually incredible the way he explains everything. It's very simplistic and plain language. But we have these experiences that I know some cultures are so normal and so neurotypical and environment, you know, environmentally typical. And then some go like, oh, that's weird. They're mentally ill.

Right, right. Yeah, I've had the incredibly moving experience of watching a documentary where an American white guy on a mission took himself to a culture that transformed him. And you can watch this too, it's called Throw Down Your Heart, and the white guy is Bela Fleck. Bela Fleck, master Yeah, the Flecktones, a banjo player. He wanted to find out about the roots of the banjo, so he went to Africa to play music with African banjo players and other musicians in Africa. And he shows up, you know, he's like this, he's going to do it, right? And then by the end of the documentary, you just weep because you can see that the experience of allowing himself to be changed by a culture that's very dear to him, the music culture, has opened him up to potential. His banjo sounds different. Than it did at the start of the movie, right? You can see it on YouTube. But it's that experience of being, of, I don't know, allowing yourself, wanting to, you know, there's something more that you've got to experience, but you can't get there unless you take a risk that's sometimes huge. And he's really working at it. I mean, he's really working to be able to play some of this stuff that they're doing over there. And the result is, of course, that he's this new man. At the end of the movie.

It's that opening track. Especially in the music world, right, where now everything is like genre bending, right? And so right at the Grammys the other night, Aerosmith came out, right? And they played two songs. And I'm sitting there, it was my brother's birthday, and we're sitting at dinner at his house and it was playing in the background. And we were just sitting around pre-dessert. And my dad's like, who are those guys? And like, why, you know? And I'm like, that's Run-DMC. Do you remember them? He's like, I remember the name. But like, I know, like, yeah, this was like the first main crossover rock-rap thing. And they just, I mean, it was just like the biggest deal ever to, to have a rock song like the one of the, right, our gen— this generation's Rolling Stones is probably the best way to describe them, right? Yeah, they're playing 50 years, right? Um, or whatever, God knows how many years later. Um, I know the Dead is already at, uh, so I saw them, I saw, I was at the 50th in Chicago a few years ago. So then I went to whatever, you know, '54, '55. But like, right there, though, one of the longest standing rock and roll bands from the '70s and '80s. And then you have this Run-DMC, which is like this hip hop group from the '80s, that'd be right, that cross merged and they blended and they just evolved into this new culture of music. And we're seeing this. And one of my favorite teachings, and that I know is clinically researched, is the relationship, specifically couples, but the couples who have the most relative influence on each other are the couples that have the most successful relationships. And it's an infinity loop. And if you put one person on, one partner on each side of the infinity loop, it's that when, right, for you and your example, for your example, right, every time you see her take your influence, take a thought, take an idea, take a suggestion, and you see her do it, you're like, oh wow, that was really nice. You're going to be more like, to take a step closer to her. Yes, she's going to see you take that step closer and she's going to feel more confident, more comfortable, more loved. And, and then in return, you're going to be like, well, she did that for me. I should do that for her. And she's going to see you do that and step— take a step closer to you. And it becomes this really beautiful infinity loop. And according— and I'm not sure if it was Dr. John Gottman or whoever, I can't remember exactly who said it, but that, that is one of the most key components of a successful relationship is relative intimacy.

Influence. I agree with this. I've seen it happen and experienced it so many times, both in relationship and in musical relationship, because the idea of trading improvisations with someone that you're on the bandstand with is the same thing. You know, you've got to be that plugged in, and then when you get from them, you give back and they give back to you, and it starts to— this, it's not a conversation, it's something more than that, something deeper than that. It's like, it's an intimacy.

It's a massive intimacy because you think like there's the giving and the receiving, right? So if you go into like mystical, any mystical tradition, right, of— and I'm not talking about necessarily from the gender politics, but the masculine and feminine energy of things.

Yes, yes.

So, right, or, you know, Gaia and the sun, right? What, earth and the sun and whatever, right? Whatever paradigms we want to use, but there's, there's always subscribed or prescribed a masculine energy, feminine energy. And David Deida, I don't know if you've ever heard of him.

Oh my gosh, yeah, my hero.

Oh, okay, so there you go, right? The Way of the Superior Man. You know, like when you read that title, you're like, what the hell, this guy's an a-hole. Like, superior to who? Superior to the women, superior to me? No, no, no, in order to become a superior human being as a whole, you have to know that there's gonna be times where you're gonna have this type of energy and there's gonna be times when you have this type of energy. Doesn't mean you're more manly or more feminine, doesn't mean that at all. It just means you have to act, you have to understand, going back to self-awareness and your shadow side and all these different things, what are you doing? So if you're a guy who acts more in masculine energy and you have a woman or, you know, or a partner, whatever, whoever it may be, that's acting more in feminine energy, there's an energetic balance. But if both of you are holding the same energy at the same time is where the conflict comes in. And again, it doesn't matter male, female, self-identified male, self-identified female, whatever, but it's just the polarity, like a magnet. Yeah, great, great book. And I've actually given it to females to read because I'm like, it's very blunt, it's very between the eyes, it's very, very, very what you can say un-PC. But every female that I've had read that book, right, oh no, this is spot-on.

Oh yeah, completely. Yeah, my wife introduced me to David Deida. You know, it's like, this is the kind of man I want. So Bill, you know, man up.

Yeah, so very few people know about it. When I give it to one of my clients, I'll send them the PDF that I found. And they're like, okay, I'm in chapter 3. This is ridiculously— like, why isn't anybody ever taught this before?

Exactly right.

It's not in the normal circles. So, so I know, speaking of books that you've written.

Oh yeah. Let's go there. Mentioning me in the same sentence as David Deida. So I wrote a little book called More Than Human. There's a, there's a level at which you kind of top out in your practice. And we can see that happening in our world today. Let's be honest, competition has gotten us about as far as we're going to go. Law of attraction, whatever, look around, you just go, okay, so this is what we've got. This is everything that we've done for the last X thousand years has brought us to 2020, and this is the situation. So what needs to change? For me, that's practicing spiritual attributes. I think that's my gateway. Whether that works for anybody else, I don't know, but in business, they seem to think that it does because businesses that are kind to each other and show each other integrity and respect do better than businesses who don't.

You don't.

That's just the way it is. I mean, who wants a customer that's a troublesome a-hole if you've got other customers that are producing and that don't cause you as much pain and agony, right? So, you focus yourself on the similarity. We've been talking about this. You find people or businesses who connect with one another across things that work. So, what works? Well, we're finding collaboration works better than competition these days. We're finding that kindness works better than unkindness. We're finding that respect works much better than, you know, whatever the opposite of that is. And if you need to know what the opposites of them are, just take a look around. But this is a really complicated practice. Not only is it something that goes deep in our spiritual roots, whatever your religious or belief system might be, there's a pull toward doing the right thing. And that's hard. Our default settings— we talk about this— our default setting is not necessarily to take the difficult path to advocate for what's honest, to advocate for, to show good discernment. These are tough practices, but they come from a very deep place inside of us that I think is grounded in spirituality. Thank heavens we have science now. There are scientists studying gratitude, people. I mean, okay, we need that, I guess. It's important to have scientific evidence for gratitude.

It's not real unless it's scientifically valid.

Exactly right. You said it.

We're not really friends unless we're face Facebook friends, right?

Exactly. Yeah, I know. It's like, so click on like if it's gratitude, click like. So these are attributes, and I think spiritual attributes is a good way of describing them, but they're practical. They're practical ways that you can change your environment around you. Being kind will change the environment around you from one that wasn't to one that is more. That's what we need. We've hit the limit, people. We've hit the limit on the other way. There is no place in this world for people who are rude or or masochistic, or racist. I mean, these are not practices that work.

And they're going to continue to exist. It's like, I wonder, right? There's no necessarily an eradication of racism and bigotry, right? It's— this is— this has been there from day one of humanity on something, right? It's— we get on a higher frequency, higher level, we can call it discernment, right? Saying like, I like chocolate ice cream versus vanilla ice cream. Right? But we're still discerning on something. But like, it's— no one's gonna judge you for liking chocolate versus vanilla unless you're a chocolate lover or vanilla, right? You're a purist, right? But God forbid you— but again, I'm not— God, I don't want anybody to hear what I just said and saying I'm using that as a metaphor for racism.

No, I'll be honest with you. I would rather hang out with a bunch of Black musicians if it's about making music. There's something— I don't care whether it's freestyle rappers there. I am just blown away by, by Lizzo, by Brittany Howard, by these— Michael Jackson, Miles Davis, you mentioned. There is a richness in music that Black people have that not many white people do. I mean, classical piano player, so I grew up in that tradition, and there's also a richness in classical piano that comes from— so you can find a lane and appreciate the richness that's available in that lane. That's the way forward. It's not denigrating it.

Well, I have this big grin on my face for people who are not gonna watch the YouTube version of this, and I'm thinking of my discernment with music is that there are bands that I like, and then there are bands that I like that have horn sections.

Oh yeah, right, right.

So it's like, you know, you can listen to reggae or you can listen to ska, right? Reggae is great, right? You get a good ska band, like, it's just gonna take it to the next level, right? Tranastasio, right, again referencing him, right? You have Fish, and then you have when they used to bring out the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, or his band, right, the Tranastasio band, where he has Jennifer, who I think is what the trumpet is.

What about Zappa and that craziness? You know, it's incredible.

Jimmy Buffett has a horn section, right? Whatever it is. But like, there's levels of, right? And it's like, I would always rather, I would always love to hear a band specifically. They could be their regular touring thing, but if they're going on tour with a horn section, that's gonna give me an extra, you know, an extra kick to go, because there's that other level, there's an extra, there's more culture, there's more, right? We know like all this stuff, jazz and really like Delta blues and the dirty, right, all that stuff, right? Coming out of like the— why do the Oh Brother, Wear Out Their Soundtracks sell through the roof? Because it's spiritual, it's, right, it's, you know, from the time, there's times of the slavery, right? Chants and stuff while they were on the— right, doing what they had to do while they're out working and singing these things to help them get through the day. But it's going back to a deep spiritual freedom, emancipation. Let me get out of my woe, whatever the jailing that I'm in, whether it's a mental jail or a physical jail. And I think there's a deep connection to that. I know different cultures bring that to the world. Why did Paul Simon do with Lady Blacksmith, Lady Mombazo. Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes. And if you listen to any of their songs, I mean, it's incredible. Why is world music so powerful? Idan Reichel, I'm not sure if you're familiar with his stuff. I mean, he's got the Idan Reichel, but he's an Israeli musician. And he has musicians from all over the world. It's very world beat. But there's in French and in Hebrew and Arabic and Sudanese. I mean, like all these different traditions that are melded together in his music. And it's just like going to his concert is an hour and a half of world peace.

Yes, yes, yes. I've had two concert experiences where the person who was coming on stage received a standing ovation before they even played a note. And one of them was Ishtar Perlman, whose appearance on stage is very labored because he walks with crutches.

And he now uses his wheelchair, and then from the wheelchair too.

Yeah. Yeah, and he plays a Stradivarius, and the first violin in that concert was holding his violin because he couldn't carry it with him onto the stage. So when he finally sat in the chair and turned back to receive his violin from the first violinist, the first violinist handed him the wrong violin, like on purpose, like as a joke. It's like, no, I'll keep the Strad. Right, exactly. And everybody who was Who had been standing and applauding and weeping now laughed, and a note had not yet been played, right? The other one was Wynton Marsalis, and everybody stood for him, and nothing had been played. He came on stage. So there's this appreciation that goes beyond the musical abilities. That's part of it too, but there's appreciation of this human being who has arrived to be in this place with us and to share something with us that is remarkable.

Remarkable.

Yeah.

And I just watched— and for people out there, even though I've already referenced Trey a few times, and I'm like, I'm not a person who necessarily goes around the world traveling, I just really appreciate them. I've gone to a bunch of concerts and stuff like that. But there's a great documentary that just came out called Between Me and My Mind. And he goes through his whole process. And it's very therapeutic because he's talking to both of his parents who got divorced. And his dad was more this way and his mom was more this way. And he was sitting sitting with his mom on the bench in New York City, and she goes something along the lines of, "You were born with too many musical notes in your head, and you're going to spend your entire life getting them outside of you." What a beautiful thing. That is like the world's greatest— like, no, I don't think anybody can say I love you. Like, to say I love you would never do justice compared to that phrasing, right?

Yes.

You are doing and bringing, like, every day you're bringing music to the world, and that's your purpose. And you're just gonna spend your entire lifetime bringing all this out of you. And I really want people to hear that everybody does have that. And I don't want to be cliché or tongue-in-cheek or coachy or preachy or, you know, spiritual rah-rah guru, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk or Tony Robbins-ish. I know this because I've gone through my own journey. I'm the one 1.8 GPA high school graduate who barely graduated, who spent time in Israel to figure out what the heck I wanted to do and went to learn there, didn't get accepted even to the school now that back then everybody got accepted to. Now it's a great school, University of Central Florida, but everybody got accepted to UCF except for me, you know, in 1990s. And, you know, parents divorced and all this stuff and scholarship kid to have a successful practice, to be having conversations with people all over the world who are leaders their niche, you know, to be working with coaching and therapy clients all over— therapy clients here in Florida and coaching clients all over— from that, that origin story, right?

And, you know, that's our job here as coaches and teachers and healers and therapists, is to open people up to their purpose. And maybe it's our job to offer people their purpose based on what we've seen. You know, I can spend a couple of hours with you and have a pretty good idea of whether you've got a purpose in mind or not. But whether or not you do, whether or not you've owned that, is the key. Once you own it, well, the good news is you've owned your purpose. But the bad news is that you're going to have to prove it over and over and over again in your life. You're going to be challenged to walk on that stage when you're not as prepared as you want to be, to show up and give the speech that you just wrote because Kobe Bryant died and you need to say it a different way now., or if you're a musician, you need to play it a different way. So these are the opportunities that we have. It's not all just a cakewalk, you know, and, and there are good people out there, of course, who are doing this from blown-up veterans to the, like Robbins and Vaynerchuk and people who've really earned it, you know, who've really made the commitment and who are still walking on stage, even if it's with crutches or riding in a wheelchair to give what they have because they can't stop giving it.

That's their life force. That's their vitality.

That's the life force of all of us. I would suggest that we all have that inside, the all spark, whatever it is. You know, once you found that, you can't go back, you know. And if it took you getting blown up on a bridge in Baghdad to put you in the lane, then I'm so glad you got blown up, right? Because you're in the lane, you're doing that now. Even those we've lost. I've been thinking frequently about Chris Kyle, American sniper. Chris left us with a legacy that opened the way to post-traumatic growth. Somebody looked at that and said, you know, it doesn't have to end this way. Post-traumatic stress is awful. It's terrible. It's, it's, and if you, if you don't take the opportunity, it could kill you. But in spite of all that, Chris still inspires generations of people with his military service, and he's inspired the post-traumatic growth movement to find a way that's different than how it had to end for him and how it's ended for others.

Yeah. And to know that there are resources out there that are not necessarily traditional, like neuro-emotional technique.

Yes.

And I've seen people through the mill. I would say at a certain point, 25% of my caseload was military, post and active military. I'm still a TRICARE provider. It's actually the only insurance that I'm remaining with.

Oh, thank you for that. If you're listening and you know what TRICARE is, that's a huge sacrifice Jason's making. So thank you.

So, and I've been like, my insurance moved from all insurances to now full cash practice, but TRICARE I'm not letting go of. And NeuroEmotional Technique, one of my colleagues who was the former president of the ONE Research Foundation, which is the research, the nonprofit research arm of NET, had a vet who got, who lost a limb and was having all of that phantom limb pain and all that stuff and was treating him as a chiropractic patient with the mirror therapy and all that other stuff, but was also using neuro-emotional technique as part of the process. And through that was getting rid of like the stress and the anxiety and the self, right, the self-suicidal ideation and the substance abuse that came with the pain management. And within the span of a year or so, the guy's life was transformative. And now he's a public speaker and going around. And you can see this and he made a little bit of a 8 to 10 minute little clip with, with that gentleman. And knowing that like unresolved traumas, whatever it be, whether again, being post-traumatic stress, whether it being something that happened to you when you were 10, something you don't even realize, a divorce, a financial loss, a loss of a child, God forbid, chronic pain, is all can be handled through this modality, NeuroEmotional Technique. So if you live anywhere in North America, and there are thousands of certified practitioners on the website netmindbody.com. There's a great documentary called Stressed, which is on iTunes and I believe through other, through a few other places. But, and then, you know, in Australia we have providers, in London, in UK we have providers. So you can go on the website and kind of, not sometimes you unfortunately have to get on a plane, but in California it's actually out of Carlsbad. That's where the main So right around the corner from you.

Yeah.

So, so there are really wonderful tools and my hope and I would love to get NET into the VA. And yeah, that as a resource to have them send clients to have and I can do 100 a day. Give me 8 minutes. All I need is 5 minutes. And that's how crazy NET came out of chiropractic. And it started off with 5-minute chiropractic visits. Let me figure out why you have a subluxation. Is it emotional? Is it a toxin? Is it nutritional deficiency? Or is it purely structural? And is any one of those other ones affecting the other? And if we handle one, it's like Jenga, then everything else is going to topple. So I don't do the body mechanics side, but I've had clients come in for chronic pain and injury that by hitting the emotional stressor gets rid of the physical component. And that's the beautiful thing. So let's just wrap this up with— right, so there's Music Care, and I want to kind of make sure that people people know about what's going on with that. So let's talk a little bit about Music Care.

Certainly. So Music Care is the lane between music as entertainment and music as therapy. Music therapists are of advanced degrees, skilled in the therapeutic relationship. They use music as a modality, and they're obviously working on goals that any therapeutic client would have with that modality of music. I'm in this Music Care lane, which I've just sort of called Music Care for want of anything else. To advocate and teach how anyone can use music for their own self-care. There's a lot going on in self-care— yoga, meditation. There's, there's amazing techniques— trauma release exercise, Dr. David Berceli's out of Arizona. He teaches that around the world, and it's an amazing way to release trauma. I was introduced to that by an Army Ranger. They use that in combat, basically, when they come back over the wire to safety to release the traumatic experience of having to do what they do. So there's all these self-care modalities that are amazing. Why not music? Music has been around us for so long, and in many parts of the world, it's not entertainment. It's, it's food. It's oxygen. It's how you work. And the movie that I mentioned with Bela Fleck, you can see that in many of these cultures in Africa, that music is just part of the day-to-day. You sing your way through the day. You play your way through the day. There are musicians in Africa who are whose whole job is minding people in their transitions, whether that's the loss of a parent or a friend or the birth of a child. The musician shows up to sing the story, to make it real. It's like until you put the song to it, the experience isn't complete. That's a whole different way than we treat music in the United States. Although there are parts of the United States where that still happens. But the idea here is to make music more present, introduce it as a functional tool for your own care. And it works so well alongside other things too. I mean, you can have any kind of treatment and you can enliven that with music. The idea is that when you're not face-to-face, like if I'm Jason Wasser's patient and I'm face-to-face and we're doing this thing, I can go home and the next time that I see Jason Wasser, I will have had a practice that supports our work together so that when I come back to the face-to-face, I've continued the work. The work just doesn't happen when we're sitting together. And music is a great way of doing that because it's so ubiquitous. And becoming conscious of how it works doesn't take a whole lot of effort. But once you do, oh my gosh, the possibilities are infinite. The potential for self-awareness, all of that's there, and the potential for intervention with pain, with stress, to spark your own healing, even if it's physical. There's so much that you can do for yourself by intentionally engaging with music in this way. So that's Music Care. You can, of course, find me online. That's a great way to start with just Google Music Care. There's a company in France that's a music therapy organization that's actually called Music Care, and you'll find them too. That's great. I love it that there are music therapists doing this internationally.

Yeah, and as you're talking, I'm thinking about like connecting the music to military, and every time in any movie movie, right? More often than not, there's typically a song that gets played. There's two songs that typically get played when there's some type of military scene. They're in the helicopters and they're going out to the battle. One, I think it originally was in Forrest Gump, right? Which was the Creedence Clearwater Unfortunate Son. But how many movies can we probably name where that song has become the soundtrack song for— because it was the anthem of Unfortunate Son, you're going out to war, you're the unfortunate son that got picked for a lottery. Back in Vietnam, but to the Welcome to the Jungle from Guns N' Roses.

Yeah, yeah.

And I don't— and I think like, as I'm thinking while you were talking of like, what song corresponds with my association with going out into a battle? Are those two songs that have been through culture, have been implanted in my brain? And it's not what is the— what does it look like nature-wise, that there's always these things, right? It's the Vietnam picture of like big big thick trees and everything, but it's those two songs. It's "Unfortunate Son" and "Welcome to the Jungle." And somehow that's an association now that I have, and probably many other have now that they'll think about it, to some type of military experience of hyping yourself up. You're going out, you're gonna go into battle, you're gonna kick ass, everything's gonna be great, you're gonna destroy the other side.

And then on the flip side of that, we've got that amazing song from Platoon, the Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings, that's been associated with all kinds of tragedy from Kennedy's death and his funeral to— I mean, it was, I think it was written after World War I, but that amazing just acceptance of things we can't change is in that song. So they work both ways. And I was on a phone call a little while ago, and in the background somebody's ringer went off and it was the Rocky theme. It's like, you know, these songs just light us up. And they also allow us to breathe, like give us that space to just be with the moment, of whatever the moment.

My client's phone rang yesterday in session, it was Bad to the Bone. It was, and of course I'm gonna start singing the lyrics, this is just right, right off the bat, we're cracking up. And like, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm like, no, let it play. You know, let's have our interlude, our musical interlude, right? Because there's so much power in the music. And it's like, I know for me, I'm a huge West Wing, West Wing fan. And I know like how many people out there love that theme. Like, there's really very like theme songs to songs like Friends and Cheers, right? The culture around like having these type of things.

Yeah.

But like that West Wing theme song, right, which is like that patriotic march battle swelling, right? Swells at the end, right? There's emotionality in it. And I love I love the fact as a therapist, who is a musician, who believes in the power of music, and music is a lot of my therapy. You know, it's kind of like even in my dating and relationships, I'm like, if they're not into music, there's no relationship.

Yeah, it's not gonna happen.

You don't have to be a musician. But if you're not a music appreci— right, if you're like, if you want like the regular basic music stuff, that's fine. Everybody listens to radio. But if like, you don't have like, like, this is why, or like there's some level of major appreciation, like we're probably not going to be in alignment at some the way you met your, right, your spouse. So I really value that. So any specific resources as we wrap up that we want to share with the audience? I know, right, the website for Musicare is quest.musicare.net. I know that you can be reached at billprotzman.com. Any other specific resources, whether it's for homelessness, whether it's for suicidal ideation and support or anything like that, that you feel is really important that you've been in touch with or have support of?

There are so many sites for suicide. I have a page off of one of my websites where people can find resources that are not about intervention. They're about support. And I think that's an important thing to recognize. I ran a suicide group for a while, a suicide Suicide group. That sounds so weird, but a group for people who think about suicide. And one of the commonalities that we had was that at the moment where we're feeling most vulnerable, we don't want to pick up the phone and call the crisis line. You know, we don't want intervention. We want somebody to connect with us as a human being. And oftentimes that's not possible. So how do you like reinvigorate your own humanity in that dark moment? So it's a page for people who are searching for that. We can put all this in the show notes, of course. In fact, it'd be great if you put all the books you mentioned and all the— They always go in.

So, it'll all be there. Especially yours.

You can find it later. So, there are resources out there. One of the most amazing things that coaches are offering right now is the opportunity to connect as a human being. I do it too. If you want to pick up the phone and talk to me, please do that. Make an appointment. I think my phone numbers are listed on all the websites I curate. I want to stay accessible and open because there are times where you just need some stranger on the phone to give you back your humanity. And if that's all that happens, that's enough. So take advantage of that if you have the ability, if that rings your bell, go for it.

So for everybody out there listening, know, right, again, without it being tongue-in-cheek or cliché, that you really aren't alone. As much as you've heard this over and over again, there's two people here who are here to help, here to support. There are networks of therapists and coaches and organizations and nonprofits that are there, and to take that step out of your vulnerability, out of feeling like you are alone, that you can tackle all of these things, whether it is as extreme as one thing or you're just struggling through, you know, what we call the basic day-to-day life stuff, that there are resources and there are incredible And pop on some good music and dance, and dance a little bit. That'll be like, right? That'll be my tongue-in-cheek responses. What music can you put on that'll make you feel a little bit better in the next 20 minutes? And Bill, I really, really want to thank you for joining us.

Jason, thank you. It's been a pleasure to, you know, to rap with you here and just sort of chat about what's going on in the world and move things forward. Good.

So if anybody out there has gotten any value, which I know today specifically You're going to get tons of value from this episode. Please do us a favor. Leave a 5-star written review on iTunes, on the podcast app for us. Share this episode with anybody you believe that you care about, that you know, you know, even if you're afraid to do it and just say, hey, I care about you. Here's an episode you might want to listen to of whatever you're going on. If this touched you in any way, shape, or form, please share this episode out. And there's other episodes where we talk about NET more and about other stuff that's going on. One of the other previous is about alcoholism and being a successful business person in recovery, which I just had a wonderful chef from San Diego a few days ago. So please again share. If you found value in this, please help share this. Give us a 5-star review. Subscribe. Please connect with Bill out on his social media. And again, thank you so much for hanging out with us.

You're so welcome. Thank you, Jason.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️.