Authentic Relating – With Ryel Kestano

Okay, on the show today, Raul Castaño. So Raul is co-founder, one of the teachers of ART, International Authentic Relating Training. Am I getting— have I got the acronym right, Raul?

You have indeed.

I had done a little bit of it, hear very good things from students, and I know you're one of the top people involved in this world. So welcome.

Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

How did you get interested in authentic relating? Like, you know, talking about feelings and connecting and all that girly stuff. Like, how did that happen?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, out of the necessity of my own life. It wasn't that I ever set out to specifically explore this or learn about it or teach it. I was really suffering and struggling in my relationships, my marriage primarily, and I was at least able to notice that there were— there was evidence of some kind of underlying recurring pattern, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I couldn't penetrate it, couldn't figure it out. Uh, and then we kind of hit a rock bottom, and that was really the catalyst for me to like, okay, I need help. The universe, show me the way. Sought out any teachers, retreats, modalities that I could possibly find, did everything I could. This is like the very first step I'd ever taken in any kind of deeper introspective work or therapy or anything in my entire life. Uh, and it was in the midst of that that I was invited to my first authentic relating/circling immersion weekend in Boulder. That was 10 years ago. And out of everything I tried and experienced, the, the moment that I sat down in that first circle, the experience that I had of being fully welcomed and worthy of people's attention and curiosity was a brand new experience for me. I'd never felt anything like that before, in that even in just that moment, something healed, something opened. I had access to a deeper level of vulnerability that I never had access to before. So I was blown away even in just minutes of that first experience. And from that point forward, I said, I need to understand everything I can about this practice. Like, this is extraordinary. And even in that early stage, I could start to perceive that there was a universal access to this social technology unlike anything I'd ever been exposed to. I, I really believed that the skills and tools that I was learning and practicing and experience and using to experience incredible transformation, not only in my personal relationships but professionally and elsewhere, just had massive worldwide implications. I, I thought these are the skills and tools that people need. Yeah, on a foundational level, to be able to create the relationships that we all deserve, and I would even say have the right to have. I've come to believe that healthy relationships are a human right.

The right, the right. That's a big thing to say. We'll come back to that and let you know that. Um, all right, let's, let's take it back a step. So it's hugely important how we connect, how we relate, how we converse, how we get on with people. And I think most of us hit a pain point at some point. You know, we realize we're screwing up our careers, or marriages is a big one for people, like you mentioned. Kids is another big one. It's some sort of pain point where we go We're not taught this, and it's a skill. Yeah, and it's an essential skill for life, right? Like a critical skill for our happiness and well-being. Exactly. We're not taught it.

That's right, exactly. That's it. I mean, that's, that's been— that's what I know. It's like I never got the education how to create and participate in skillful relationship. And as I started to talk to people, none of— hardly any of us did. It's the class that they actually didn't give us. In school. And it's just as you said, our entire lives are revolved around relationships with other human beings, and it's the quality of those relationships, I think, that have an enormous influence on our sense of well-being. And yet it's a completely— it's a huge gap in our education. So ART, the organization I co-founded, our mission and dedication is to provide that missing education for people and to give people very simple, basic skills and tools that they can bring into their relationships immediately with everyone and be able to experience access to nourishment and depth and intimacy and vulnerability that is potentialized in every human interaction, conversation, and relationship.

Yeah. Yeah. So all the studies show, don't they, that sort of the quality of our relationships determines a lot of our happiness. A lot of the career studies that it determines a lot of our success, you know, great leadership, great communication, great sales, all those things. But we were just not taught that. So it makes sense. Let's just go a little bit into some of the things you studied and let's kind of, before we get more into art particularly, I wanna kind of map this for people. So there's different systems out there, right? There's the nonviolent communication. We've had guys send stock on, on circling. We've had the European circling guys out who, you know, Marissa and John, they're friends of mine, you know? Yeah. So there's all these, and there's probably, I've heard of verbal judo that was ancient. I've heard of all these systems. Let's kind of map the territory a little bit. We don't have to badmouth anything, but just to kind of map it out, you know.

For sure. Well, you know, I, I think any modality that brings elements of skillfulness and consciousness to the relational space is important and valuable. Um, so I, I'm excited and, and grateful that these modalities and teachings exist. I mean, NVC, Nonviolent Communication, you know, sold millions of copies. And has made its way around the world and has really supported people in developing a framework to be able to be in conscious relationship. I personally, of course, I mean, I'm biased, but I think Authentic Relating goes further than any of them, primarily because it makes these skills and tools universally accessible and applicable. It doesn't require or depend on any kind of prior value system or training or experience or anything like that. I mean, just to let you know, I started a nonprofit along with Art to bring this work into prisons and jails and work with inmates because I wanted to test the hypothesis that authentic relating is relevant to everyone regardless of their background and walk of life. So I started bringing and teaching this work to inmates in the jail here in Boulder and then throughout the state. And it was mind-blowing. I couldn't believe, I believed it was gonna happen, but I couldn't believe how readily they picked it up and applied it even in the prisons with each other. And cultivating a transformation even within the facility. So, you know—

And language matters there, sorry to interrupt, but if you tried like a classic NVC, you know, I'm feeling this and I'm needing that.

Yeah.

Those guys would be like, shut the fuck up.

Well, exactly. And then, you know, a huge part of our mission too is to go to where people are already living and being and relating around the world. We didn't want to make it like, hey, you need to come here, pay a lot of money, you know, take time off of work. We really wanted to make it as accessible, lower the barriers of entry as low as possible. And so, you know, I've had the opportunity to sit down and relate and connect with people from countries all across the world, and universally there is a shared human experience. For me, authentic relating is the language. It's the universal language of human connection. And now our work is being translated into multiple languages so we can and, you know, bring it to ever more people. Um, and I think, you know, NVC is probably the most well-known of these conscious relating modalities. Um, and while I love it, I, I think it can be a little bit clunky in its formulaic structure, and it also has a lot of emphasis on naming and expressing needs. But they themselves— there's a shadow, I think. There's a, a way that the expression of needs cannot actually undermine the fabric of relationship, because it's like, I can say, I need you to do this, I need you to do all kinds of stuff to make sure that I get to have the experience that I want to have here with you. And in authentic relating, we— I think we go deeper to the values. What are the values that I hold? What are the values that you hold? Let's bring those out and name those and then construct relationship around those values. And it's the needs that are an expression and manifestation of the underlying values. So I think it's important to drill down and penetrate, you know, into these subconscious layers of being to see what people actually care about in relationship and life and work in community, and then build relationships based on the striving to honor those core values.

All right, let's get into the nuts and bolts of it then. So I've done a few little things with you guys, but not much. You know, let's say someone turns up fresh to a workshop online, in person, whatever. What are you, what are you going to teach them?

Yeah, well, the very first thing is I say authentic relating is an embodied practice. It lives in the entire body, and it requires our ability to be aware of our embodied state of experience in any given moment. And the key, the catalyst to be able to tap into the sensations, emotions, and experiences of the body is to slow down. That is the number one skill that I teach everyone, regardless of the context or the audience. I tell people, hey, then for the next hour, day, weekend, we're going to slow way down so that we have an opportunity to feel more, to experience more, to notice more of ourselves, of each other, of the shared space. So that's the very first thing I share. I often say at the beginning of workshops, if I had a megaphone that I could speak to the entire world through for 5 seconds, what would I say? What I would say is slow down. That's it. And then spend them, I would say that for the first 2 seconds and spend the next 3 seconds in silence. And then from there we move into what we call the 5 practices of authentic relating. This is something that we developed early on that act as a kind of foundational basis. It's almost our Ten Commandments that we build all of our courses and programs upon. And so the 5 practices really are a way to create and build a context, an explicit context for the work that we do. And I can run through those if you like and just give some—

Yeah, yeah, just give us the overview and then we might drill down into some.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, so, and again, these 5 practices, they came from living this work in the world with people in all different kinds of social contexts. So it really was as if the practice spoke to us through our interactions and embodiment of the work in the world. So the first is welcome everything. And for us, this is sort of the first step. It's the gateway to be able to access the remaining territory of this practice. So welcome everything means becoming aware of, turning toward, embracing, giving space for. It's recognizing where it is that we suppress, avoid, fragment aspects of ourselves or our experience off from us. It's a recognition how we don't acknowledge aspects of ourselves, of each other, of the world, of relationship, and how those splits and fragmentation undermine and sabotage the, the very objectives we're trying to reach in relationship. So welcome everything is becoming aware of everything. Doesn't mean agreeing with everything, simply becoming aware of, conscious to. The second is assume nothing, and this is the invitation to check our assumptions. Assumptions distort the channel of connection between people. There are relationships that have gone on for decades with built-in assumptions that have never been revealed or checked out. So assume nothing is having us first feel and notice the assumptions that we are making about each other and then to bring them out, to reveal them. Hey, I'm assuming this about you. I have, I've had this assumption about you and I want to check it out with you. Does it feel accurate or not? And so this is a way to be able to set aside the distortions of relationship and be able to come into more accurate and intimate relationship with people. The third is reveal your experience. And this is really built upon the belief that deep down, basically all of us, most of us yearn to be seen, loved, welcomed, heard, honored, accepted for who we are. We don't need to be anything or anyone other than who we authentically are. And that should be worthy of acceptance, of love, of welcoming. And yet, even with that longing that lives in many of us, how many of us are actually revealing ourselves? We long to be seen, but are we revealing ourselves so that we give other people the opportunity to see us? And the answer is often not. So Reveal Your Experience is invitation to create a kind of window or transparency into one's inner world so that people can experience us from the outside as we experience ourselves on the inside. The fourth is own your experience. This is the invitation to take responsibility for the experience I've had in the past, the experience I'm having now, the experience I want to have, and to check where it is that I'm blaming other people or I'm outsourcing the source of my experience to people or to external circumstances. So, and if that's the case, I'm just at the whim of other people's decisions or external circumstances that I can't control, which inherently is disempowering. It's like if I need you, if I need you to say something or apologize or show up in a certain way or behave in a certain way for me to have the experience of relief or connection or anything, and you never do, well, I, I'm the one who's paying the price for it. So own your experience is a practice of re-empowering and reclaiming the ways that we have outsourced the sources of our experience to external people and circumstances. And it should feel empowering. I can make a difference in the experience that I'm having. I can look within. I can release the people outside of me, let them be who they are, and cultivate the experience I want to have within. It also means looking to see where it is that I can take responsibility for my contribution to any dynamic of conflict or tension with someone. It's so much easier to say, yeah, this is your fault, so you clean it up, and then we can have the relationship that we want to have. So it shifts the frame from what can you do to make this relationship better to what can I do to make this relationship better. And then the final of the 5 practices is honor self and other. Which really is a natural and organic outcome from living in alignment with the prior 4. Honor self means knowing myself well and deeply and wholly enough to know what are my values, needs, and desires, and then to live my life in alignment with those. So much suffering, I believe, arises from people living out of alignment or overriding or suppressing their core values, needs, or desires. I, I am you know, sort of challenge people to look back at their relational history and be able to see what it was like when they overrode something that was important to them, a need or desire that they had, how that felt. Usually didn't feel good. And so, you know, this also points to the fact that authentic relating doesn't in any way say you are supposed to be in relationship and connection with everyone all the time at all. You know, it's, it's It really has us check ourselves. Where is it that I can remain in honoring of myself while still being in relationship with other people? And then honor other is simply that mirrored outward. What are your values? What do you care about? What matters to you in relationship? And then let's create a container of relationship in which both of our values, needs, and desires are being honored. Or if you scale it to a group, to a family, to a company, and beyond. And so really all these five constitute a way of, you know, being able to live a conscious life, a life that allows for deep and profound healing, intimacy, health, vitality, enlivenment in relationships, both at the, you know, individual level and at the collective level.

All right, it's a lot there, and it sounds kind of theoretical in a way. Like, what I want to jump on is something that I experienced when I did some stuff with some of your students, is they played like little games. It was, you had structures. It wasn't just this abstract theoretical thing. And it, and they were quite fun. Like I've had, I've had experiences of sort of sitting in groups around communication and it just being fucking painful. Not like emotionally painful, just like dull and like, oh, you're talking about how I'm feeling about how you're feeling about your feeling. Yeah, just was just like a circle jerk. And then what I liked about this is it actually felt like, like it felt like, oh, there's some little exercises. I'm learning something. I'm building a skill. You know, there's skills here. This isn't, this isn't just abstract philosophy.

Yeah, exactly. It's a training, right? It's like we're training people in the skills and tools so that they can take those skills and tools and apply them to their lives and relationships independently of our mentorship or guidance. That was the whole purpose. It's like, Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. We're teaching people to create meaningful relationships in their lives forever after, right? So it's inherently skills-based, even though I think there's a profound spiritual component to this, right? It's like tapping into the ancient instinct to be in connection and community with other human beings, right? I mean, we're becoming ever more isolated, obviously. I mean, just look at the state of the world. We're becoming ever more pressed into our corners There's more and more polarization, you know?

Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. It's one of the things, like the other one I wanna ask about is really is online, like communicating now on Zoom. It's not the same as being in the room, but it's okay. You know, I can see a third of your body and we can't smell or touch each other, but you know, this isn't exactly eye contact, but more or less I feel this warmer. I'm also having a lot of communication by text, like WhatsApp text.

Yeah, it's junk food. It's junk food connection. It's not nourishing. Yeah, right. It's like, it's functional, it gets the job done, but we're denying ourselves of the deep nourishment that's available and necessary in real-time shared space human connection. It's like, again, it's like rates of depression, suicide, anxiety, you know, medication, all these things are skyrocketing. Why? Why is it? I believe it's because we are losing access to meaningful human connection. Yeah, it's critical. That's why I say it's a human right. If we're not in connection, we wither and die.

This is absolutely essential for our well-being, right? Like, our physical well-being is intricately tied to our social well-being. And, you know, I'm like virtual working in another country right now. I can barely talk to most of the people around me. You know, I was just in London where there's people from all over the world, and, you know, hey, diversity, that's a good thing, but no one can communicate. People are just about able to communicate together.

Well, I want to say too, you know, it's actually less— in my world, it's less teaching people how to communicate and express and actually more teaching people how to listen. I think that's the great missing here, is the missing of meaningful listening, right? And the gift that true, real, active listening is when it's offered to others, to other people in our lives. We were not listened to very often. And so I think, you know, enormous, you know, gift and opportunity in this practice is teaching people how to listen and offering a space of listening for other people's expression.

Yeah, yeah. I did a bunch of mentoring calls today, and sometimes I feel like the only thing I really do is just listen and be a bit encouraging, maybe on top of that, you know. This is already— I think too skilled beyond that. Encouraging people are wanting a real relationship with a real teacher and bit of encouragement.

It's not exactly—

hard question. Do you think we're pissing in the wind here a little bit, Ryle, in the— so much of the way modern life is set up seems the antithesis. Like, social media does not encourage people to listen. Modern city urban living doesn't encourage people to connect. Virtual working and digital nomadism doesn't encourage people to connect. Like, do you think, like, the way the world's going is just so anti-this? Like, it's like—

I mean, it's—

I don't want to say it's hopeless, but it does feel still profoundly countercultural in some ways.

Yeah, well, I, you know, I think it's, it's natural, you know, with the advent of technology and our ability to have access to real-time news, constant, constant feed of news hitting us, hitting our screens, hitting our devices, right? It's like you look through the lens of, of this technologically mediated window out into the world, and it's like, oh my God, the world is in absolute chaos. right? It's like dangers are lurking, threats are coming at us from every direction. What do humans do when they're, you know, faced with an array of threats around them? They're going to find their tribe. They're going to find wherever it feels safe, and they're going to hunker down there and weather the storm. So I think it's natural that we're seeing, you know, a breakdown into tribalization across the world as people make sure that they find their strength in numbers and have people around them that they can feel safe with. So It's not that surprising that a phenomenon like this is happening. And, you know, I think that the evolution of humanity works in cycles, right? There was an era of our past in which, you know, you had warring tribes, enemy tribes fighting each other, you know, trying to claim land or resources. And then at some point, there was the advent of trade. It's like, oh, we actually can benefit more by trading with each other than fighting with each other. Right. And so that went through that cycle. So I think like there's some kind of collective intelligence to the cycles that we're facing. Um, but, you know, I, I think there's a growing— I mean, for sure I'm seeing a growing backlash against this kind of junk food style of connection and the ways that we are just closed to listening, fighting to score a point, and, and really never getting anywhere. It's a permanent stalemate. And so I, I think there is starting to you know, become more of an awareness and value for meaningful connection. I mean, I love these— like, I remember watching a show where they took people who would otherwise be in massive conflict because of their values. In this one case, they took a newly arrived immigrant to the United States and then somebody who was like extremely anti-immigration, and they put them together, and all they did was have them eye gaze for 5 minutes. And then 3 minutes into it, the tears are running down both their faces.

Yeah, yeah.

So it lives in us, you know, it lives in us. Like, it lives underneath these calcified layers that we've taken on, uh, that has us reactive and tribal. Um, so it's deep down in there. Again, in the work in the prisons, it's like I've worked with rival gang members and gang leaders in the same space, you know, and it's, it's like when we spend a few hours together in these practices, these exercises, applying these skills and tools, all that garbage melts away. You know, all the surface tension melts away, and we realize that we are experiencing an experience of shared humanity that grounds us, that has us feeling at home with each other, and has us recognize that we're all tiny specks of consciousness floating on this minuscule pebble floating through space. And the shit that we fight about is just such a waste of time.

Blue team, red team, right? Bloods and Crips, Democrats, Republicans, blue, red, blue, red. And I mean, America's fucked right now with the polarization. I mean, the whole world is, but particularly the States in my experience. They're just— there isn't almost a possibility of listening. There's entrenched positions of I'm right and I'm ideologically, I've got a whole framework around that, a whole language around that. And I'm even seeing sort of kind of concepts from personal growth and particularly therapy. You know, I've had people say, I'm not talking to you anymore because it's boundaries. And there's a text message they've sent, you know, being— and some— there was also the normalization, like ghosting, which used to be a term from dating. I've had that happen professionally to me. I had, you know, a student just ignore my emails and messages. I'm like, what have I done? Have I fucked up? Have I upset you? You know, tell me what's going on. I just got nothing from them.

Yeah.

So like the normalization of some of these, uh, behaviors which can be justified with this whole ideological framework— it's not just— not— it's not just bad communication, it's there's a reasoning and a justification and a whole framework behind that.

Well, it's like, I mean, our neurobiology has not hardly evolved from 10,000 years ago while the state of the world has evolved at an insanely accelerated pace. I mean, essentially our nervous systems, our brain functions, our neurobiology has remained more or less unchanged for thousands of years. And so it's still, you know, oriented to an environment in which we had our small tribe or village. We had the people that we related to throughout our entire lives, the same people, and that was it. We didn't communicate with anybody else. And so living in this world, we're just bombarded by opportunities for communication with people we often hardly know and aren't maintaining a regular contact with. I don't think it's any wonder that there's a breakdown in the communication paradigm. We can't keep up with it. You know, I, like you, I have people, you know, not returning messages or just dropping off. I take it personally or what does that mean about me? But if I drop that, I recognize like nobody can keep up.

There's a quantity issue, isn't there?

Yeah, it's impossible. It's impossible.

In the space, like my phone's on airplane mode, right? But in the space of this call, we've been on here half an hour. I'm not gonna do this, but I guarantee if I turned on my WhatsApp, my email, my Facebook and my Instagram in the last half hour, I would've had messages And I'm not boasting about this. I just don't know what to do even about that situation.

Right.

Then I have to go, okay, well, this person's a student and I want to respond to them. This person's a friend who I want to stay in connection with. I mean, I've just, even on this interview, I've thought of like 2 people in this field I haven't talked. I was like, shit, I haven't talked to Guy Sinstock in ages. He's amazing. Where's he gone? You know, I should give him a call. You know, like, it's like, ah, ah, it's too much.

Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, just remember the days. I mean, you're old enough to remember the days before you know, the internet and devices and smartphones. We actually wrote letters to each other. We called each other, you know, I remember the days you call somebody up on their landline and you'd say, hey, is, you know, Joe there? You know, and the person would be like, oh no, they're out right now, right? It's such a simple time, you know, and the cadence of communication was much slower and much more spacious and less like laden with expectations, right? It's like if I don't get a response from a friend in a day or two, It's like something's going on, you know, and it's just, we just haven't been able to keep up with the rate of accelerated development, you know, that we're seeing in the world. And something really, I think really important is being lost in the cracks, and we're seeing the consequences of that loss manifesting.