It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the F word here, freedom, wheelchair straight from the trenches what we've learned from leaving our own addictions behind and coaching hundreds of others to do the same. And since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it.
(0:34) Welcome back to our book club, folks, it today is chapter three, we're adventure number three, the weight of a dime and built for freedom. I know, I know, you're getting it a week at a time. And we're going deeper into some things and we're making jokes that are outside of it. And hopefully this additional content to the book is enriching, you know, the process of reading and maybe giving you a few things extra to think about, as we do it. So this is chapter three, do you want to lead this discussion that Lee, this chapter is huge, and kind of setting a really big foundation as far as the freedom process and the things that we do at retreats, and the idea of how emotions impact the body, and you bring up a lot of different evidence in here about the amount of pressure it takes to impact the cell and all of that. But then it goes into the story of you meeting Alexei, which is pretty foundational. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
(1:28) Yes. So Alexei SAP runoff, you can find him online, I think is I don't know his website offhand. But he comes from a line of like this, all of these Russian martial arts that I've trained in, among all the other martial arts that are trained in and stuff and back in 2014, McKay, Mikhail RobCo, he came to the United States and to Las Vegas and I, like drove out there through the Joshua tree forest as the sun was setting on the prickles. Right, whatever. And I stayed at a friend's house who happen to be out of town so I was like, air being being for free like some sounds like the part of the movie Elf where he goes to the sugar
(2:09) in the land of the airy fairy gumdrops or something, and so I was there and it was at some rec center in in Las Vegas, and I was training system and it would, I had just started training in this particular martial art been trained in martial arts since I was about eight. And all of them had been built on fear in a big way. Like, don't get hit here, don't get locked there, destroy the other guy, like a lot of it was built on fear and and outwitting and being superior. And this was the first approach, I had been introduced to it by my Taichi teacher, who was also one of the first sistema instructors around and who had also written some of the early books on sistema. And he introduced me to it and he's like, look, Vladimir, he has it. So like you should, you should check this out. So I started checking it out. And, and these were people that were directly confronting fear, and like recognizing that people get afraid and that they have pain. And then what you do is you just figure out how to, like, be free of it, instead of just let it fuel you. It's like the dark side versus the light side of the force, you know, let your I feel the hatred as opposed to like, stepping outside of it and operating in a more clean way. And one of my early sistema teachers, he was French and so he was always like, you have to be emotionless, you know, you know, go after him well, and do your work and don't make poopoo face and all the things right. And he's a good friend of mine. And so I went to Las Vegas, he was there actually, my friend was and it was a big one because RobCo is like the teacher's teacher. So like the Grand Pooh, bah, babushka, maybe Bucha what is the feet? What is the male version of the Bush? Bush come and so he was there and he was going to spend two days and so I'm at this seminar, like, I'm going to learn from the top dog and it was deep like internal work, like we were doing really subtle things that were you know, hiding a knife and stabbing three people without the third like without the fourth person knowing and like, how do you do this and like really deep stuff, right. And in the middle of it, he had just brought along this sort of Sideshow act who was like, you know, he does this system on massage, you know, the stick work, which was the foundation of what I started from after that and started learning and toying with and, and he was like, through a translator telling us it's really good for releasing childhood wounds and like and I was like, okay, Sign me up. So I forked over the like 100 bucks or 150 bucks or whatever it was, and I got in line for the next day and then I lay down on the ground next to a friend and he worked the two of us over for like 45 minutes to an hour and we had to stand on this really spiky man at first and then I lay down and he jammed antlers in between like each of my ribs and like, you know, whipped me with his whip and like dug deep with his sticks inside of like all of these different muscle areas and rammed a huge stick up underneath my ribcage and stood on the front and the back and The whole time that's a butthole No, no. I don't remember that part. I could have PTSD. And in the middle of it, he was just gentle, calm voice. He was doing his praying and in Russia and you know, and which I only came to like, understand was praying later, I just he was just muttering something in a language that I don't like, okay. But this tempo combo, he's like, relaxed, free unders da da, you know? And like, oh, yeah, it's just x arm and neck, shoulders. Yeah, you know, and he's like, Oh, this good sistema, man, you know. And it was all about becoming a really strong warrior. I didn't have any emotional releases. I didn't have any huge cathartic stuff. I had some sadness thing come up, I had some fears come up, worries about not being like strong enough and whatnot. And I got up from that. And I was like, wow, that was really intense. My wife was like, why would you pay someone to do that. But things changed. For me from that day forward, there was it had given a physiological context to my life, that helped me to see in a very bare bones undeniable way that nothing that I thought was a problem was as big as that. And that everything that I was dealing with, was actually a lot smaller than what I thought it was. And you huge context, you know, when if a tiger attacks you in the morning, in the afternoon, you really don't care if someone sent you an angry email. So like, it changed a lot of things. And I started exploring, like, what is this? And he disappeared, he went back to Latvia, where he lived at the time. And so I was just exploring this, I was starting to use punching. And I started mapping it in my body, which muscles hold which things and what are the emotional states that happened, my wife told me that I started finishing projects better and that I was treating the kids without so much eruption or angry eruption. And that there was, there was just something that had changed in my demeanor from that experience. And so as I continue to try and map it out, and within myself, I'm trying to work with the kids and learn more, he eventually came back. And then over time, I went and trained with him several times for, you know, multiple days at a time to really kind of understand and learn what it was he was doing. And by then I had developed a lot of my own ways of addressing this direct link between emotional states and physical states. What's interesting, though, is that it was a sort of a step of departure from what they were doing. So the Russians don't seem to be really interested in emotion they, they kind of want you to be sort of semi emotionless in order to operate and function in the world, which you would want to be in terms of being a spy and whatnot, not catatonic not numb, like, we will love the soldiers in the US, they, they want it to be like clean and how you clean yourself from it. And I think that culture has been through so much that a lot of them have to have that kind of stoic view, even now, still, they just kind of like deal with life as it comes. Many of them and so none of them are really directly targeting emotional states or, you know, mental health issues or anything like that. And so I was kind of pioneering or trying to develop a way to use these, this, that and other methods to directly address I am depressed or I am suicidal, or I feel like I'm a worthless piece of dung. And I was made that way. Like how do I address that inside the system. And that's where I started really looking at how different muscles and the way that they tense formed the basis of the thoughts that then we then latch on to.
(8:27) There is a point in this chapter we use start to talk about Brody and Brody's story and how you grab his arm. And there's a response there. And it's significant for me, you know, in the side being part of the guides to help with the retreats and stuff like that. It's like I know these people, you know, I was there when you grab roadies arm, you know, and there's other there's other people in the book that like these are real people. This isn't just philosophy or you know, pie in the sky ideals. These are things that I've seen you work out with people in their body. And
(9:01) yeah, this chapter packs a wallop in terms of a lot of stories back then for sure. There's their Chase who's dealing with abandonment and betrayal from from divorce, there was Curie with her panic attacks and her anxiety. There was Brody with his, you know, he had come for one reason and that that came up in terms of, you know, a past experience with an old girlfriend and whatnot. There's Aaron whose son had committed suicide and he was still blaming himself for it, and he was dealing with grief and loss. There was Lori Kay, who was just anxious about life and, and, you know, having heard this there's a lot of stories in this chapter.
(9:33) Yeah. And you use that all to, you know, say that, like when we're dealing with the body, it's where we see movement. Right before you start talking about a goose in the body, you say, which is why so many people come home from therapy, feeling like a million bucks and then wonder why old feelings keep coming back? They haven't yet dealt with the entire person. That means the body itself and not just the mental emotional byproducts. Yeah, we're just huge
(10:00) Yeah, it is. And this is where we introduced the idea of mongoose yet right? What I had to do, what I tried to do was coined a term. And I didn't coined the term but a borrowed a term that's not in usage. So that we could really, we could talk about this thing and not have it be confused with what other people are talking about. I don't remember who it was there was like, Oh, I've tried exercise. You know, Jeff, we're talking about people on the phone. We're like, No, we're dealing with what is it that we're dealing with? If I just say tension in the body, they go, no, no, I relaxed and I do yoga, and I do this thing. But if we can talk about specifically what we're what we're referring to in with a term that nobody has sullied with other ideas, now we can make some new headway, right. And so I borrowed an old Latin term called en gustavia. And it just comes from a term that means something tight or constricted or narrow. And it can refer to mental states, it can refer to emotional states, it can refer to landscape like a tight passage. And so it's really just a term that I'm borrowing to try and allow us to step outside of the arena that we've been in before, and really talk directly about what's going on in the body, which is the bulk of what people are dealing with. I taught I call them byproducts. In that passage, you read that thoughts and emotions are byproducts of a state of the body. And we really harped on that in this retreat with the guys that like, your brain is not connected to the outside world at all. Not at all. It's seeing everything through the lens and filter of the body. So even if the outside world is beautiful, All That Beauty has to go through whatever you've got inside your system before it reaches your brain. And then your brain makes sense of it. And if it's muddied, I mean, I don't know many people that like swimming in a pool that some kid peed in. And if that's what's going on, you know, like, Okay, you got pee in the pool somewhere, and then, oh, wow, this other thing jumps in, you're still jumping out of the pool, it doesn't matter how beautiful the lifeguard was, or this is a really poor analogy. Somebody should have stopped me earlier. But the point is like, if you have tension in the body, if you have poor chemistry, I'm not talking about chemical imbalances. As a diagnosis, I'm just because your chemistry changes all day long, with everything that happens. And when we're talking about the weight of a dime. That is how much pressure scientists have. We're researching determined, like it just that much was enough to make a cell divide faster to change the function of a cell. But that was spread out, it was an actual dime. So that was spread out over however many 100,000 cells were underneath that die. So it's like a fraction, a tiny fraction of the weight of a dime, which is needed to change the function of any cell. And so if you consider that much pressure, everything that affects your everything outside of you, affects you in some way, shape, or form the pressure of light beams on your system, we call them triggers, I saw something and it triggered me, that's just pressure on the retina in a certain pattern that your brain recognizes. And so that much pressure starts to change tension patterns in the body changes, chemistry changes, cell function, and cell division, and all of these other things. And that's what we're dealing with. And so that term is what I decided to use.
(13:05) Yeah, I think it's really been really helpful for me, the way I see it is like, thinking about interpretation or something like I'm interpreting these events, and when there's tension places, I have the habit of interpreting things more negatively. And so instead of, you know, giving myself a pep talk, or something to try to get rid of these negative interpretations that I can see are negative and I can see are not helpful. This like hack or stupid human trick or this work around or you know, or not work around, but like actually, dealing with something that works like a method for that is just relaxing, and learning a bunch of different ways to pinpoint where I want to relax. And then just noticing what that does to my interpretation of, of events. And it's like, mind blowing, like, it really, really has been been a huge switch. And, and also like, you talk about how tension is not the big bad guy that we need to eliminate all tension from our bodies. Because if we had no tension, then we couldn't stand up. It's about being like reading your instruments, like doing some preventative maintenance every once in a while and checking, you know, the whatever the jet or parts of the things that so that he's like, oh, yeah, this isn't functioning the way I would like it to function and then doing some breathing or doing some movement to get it lubricated and back working in interpreting the way that I like, that is supportive to my health and my family's health, that sort of thing. Yeah,
(14:50) I mean, if you think about exercise, right exercise is putting tension on the body and the end result of it if done well with enough breath and everything else to where you're not keeling over. Like Tucker said that goes on. But and you've and he's, you've experienced both sides of that, right. But if you put tension on the body, the end result is okay, cool, you've pushed the body negative, and then it balance it over balance is positive. And the end result is, hey, I have this great feeling that last was me for a while. I mean, you just went running yesterday, because it had been a couple of days, we're in the middle of of retreat, and he just took a moment to go take care of himself with tension in a big way. And so yeah, it's not that it's bad, it's that if you don't know how to use it, right, you can fly into a volcano. If you or someone you know, is looking to drop the F bomb of freedom in their life, whether that's from past trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other host of emotional and personal struggles, but they just don't know how or want some help doing it, head on over to the freedom specialists.com/feel better now, and check out some of the things we've got in store for you, or book a call. So we can look at your unique situation and get you the help that you're looking for.
(16:01) So Tucker, you are on the beginning of all of this. And we're probably one of the first guys who receives Tech where he was the first Yeah, the first guy. And then you've also watched the evolution of this over the last few years. And as the stick work has been developed and dealing with that goose Yeah, and watching Bob with us. What do you have to offer about that whole process does take work specifically, or even some of the stuff you were Yeah, I've had the opportunity to go through a lot of different things with the freedom specialist with Bob, specifically, from the beginning, when I was looking at the possibility of working with Bob, as a partner in the business, not just as a client, I remember flying out to Utah, and meeting him for the first time. And Bob saw me and was kind of shocked because I thought he was gonna be this like five foot 10 sandy haired corduroy pants wearing like English professor type. I was wrong, guys.
(17:03) And so this Yeah, this was the beginning and like meeting him for the first time in person and kind of looking beyond just the online program that I had just gone through. And I'd been introduced to breathwork. But not a whole lot of the movement piece yet. So the body aspect of the work that we do here was was not in place yet. At least not on the scale that it would eventually. And so I remember the first day, the only day I was there actually working with you were in a park and we were working with a client who was struggling at the time. And all of a sudden, there's some striking like martial art striking and getting getting punched in the chest and like movement and things and I'm just floored, like, what what's happening, like, what are we doing, and I avoided it as much as I could. I'm like, I'm not gonna go there. Like I could feel like this emotion welling up like, deep inside. Like there was something there. And I waited intentionally not knowing Bob, clearly at the time for reference,
(18:03) the guy that we were dealing with had been he was he had almost committed suicide the night before. And so like, he had just called it he wasn't actually a client, he was somebody who had been thinking about like getting some help with us. And he was just like, freaking out. And I was like, I don't care if you're paid or not. Why don't you meet me in the park and let's change this. And he hasn't committed suicide at all. He like it changed a lot of things, even though he was like one day, I'm gonna come and punch you back. You know, like it changed a lot of things for him in that space. But Tucker didn't have necessarily all that context. Well,
(18:34) I didn't It's just like wondering what what's going on and waited like, I'm not gonna get punched. I'm not gonna we're not gonna go through this. I'm gonna I'm gonna wait until we're walking out of the park to the car. And so I just kind of like halfheartedly like oh, yeah, it feels something come up. But you know, we'll look at it later. You don't look at anything later with bonds right now. So like, even before we got to the car, okay, well, let's do it. So I remember standing there and, you know, Bob with his martial arts background, just so doesn't seem like these random punch flying out of nowhere, like, got me in the chest and in the back. And I remember I killed over not from pain, but the emotion and just like bawled my eyes out. And to give some context growing up. I was what my mom said, you know, it's all a soft hearted kid. And so I wore that label, almost like a badge of honor. But I remember I cried a lot and like processed emotions, and it wasn't good or bad. It's just like, I used to cry a lot more sounds sounds like your son, Olivia. And I did not cry it offer for a number of years. Maybe in a really good emotional movie. Maybe in a moving song. But very, like, couldn't recall and hearing aside from
listening to Justin Bieber, you hadn't Great. Yeah,
(19:51) exactly. So leave Justin Bieber out of this assignment. Here crying and like all this stuff is coming up and in a moment of Michael Okay, there's something here. And it took some, some physical action to make this happen. But there's something here. So fast forward, you know, specifically to the stick work. And I'll I'll talk very briefly about the breath work too. But like the stick work, I'm in a room, it's our third retreat. And I was kind of the the stick word demo for for this retreat, and I'm on the floor in front of, I think, probably 2025 guys. And Bob's walking me through this process. And by the way, there's a video that you can watch, you can actually see me go through this. Yeah, it's on the freedom. specialist.com/bodywork Yep. So you can actually watch the video that we put together. And that is Tucker's first time guys, so just so you know,
(20:41) yes, you can see and, and even I think, honestly was like, as soon as the sticks hit my back, even before there was like any pressure applied. I broke down, and I cried, and I can't remember that the exact comment. It's like, you know, are you holding it because it was my daughter, my relationship with my daughter was your daughter and your, your shoulders and No, she's not. And I'm, you know, sitting there processing, but it was, I had gotten to the threshold and the sticks, were the thing that pushed me through that threshold. And so I'm processing this, you know, difficult relationship that I've had with with my daughter. And I'm, again, crying my eyes out in front of a room full of of men and young adults, and I'm sitting here, unaware that they're even in the room. So I'm in this space. And I don't know, if you asked like what that experience was like for me. But again, it was another situation where it was like, I had felt so much built up. And at that point, I wasn't processing things. So these were the moments of processing. And they were huge, even though they're fairly quick, like these moments that finally allowed me to step over that threshold, and I dumped yours, in that 2030 minutes of relationship issues of fears of being, you know, a negligent, hurtful father of not being a good husband, because I had some sticks in my back. And as Bob kind of talked the group through that, and walked me through that experience, I came out of that. And you can hear me talk about this in the video just with like this clean, feeling like I felt clean, I felt like I had just let go of a lot of weight. And so I think that's one of the things that I wanted to kind of point out specifically in this this episode. And in this chapter, we're talking about all these different stories. But this chapter really dives into the host of different experiences, life experiences and challenges that our clients come to us with. Yeah, we focused a lot on pornography in the beginning. That's what I came for. You know, we've had people that have dealt with spousal abuse, parental abuse, we've had people that have dealt with rape issues, we've had really deep, deep trauma and, you know, the gambit of mental health diagnoses, which myself included in that drug issues, and prescription drug, you know, just confusion of being prescribed medication and dealing with those things. And again, my experience there as well. But it really dives into that. And so you get to start to see like, Well, is there something here for me, and I've had multiple clients at this specific retreat, the most recent one that we just wrapped up, that have said like this is for everyone, like, it doesn't matter. Like if these big, like life defining problems like this is for everyone. And I think as you read through the book, you'll see see why and I mean, maybe some intention there, too, with the way you wrote this, so that it feels accessible to everyone, not to just one specific issue,
(23:34) I wanted to make sure that I had the widest possible range of examples so that somebody listening didn't go, oh, well, that's not my issue. So I still have to keep looking, you know, because we're all dealing with the body. I mean, in order to be alive on the planet, you have to have a body as far as I know, you know, I mean, I'm not, I'm not familiar with anyone who doesn't have a body so. So, so far, as far as I know, like you have to have a body. So let's learn to use it in a in a really profound way. And I think one thing I want to point out here is that with the stick work, particularly in which is just basically on boost your release, that's all it is we're training the nervous system, it's not massage, like the way that I've worked it in development and added to it and tweaked it and adjusted it from what I received from my teachers is one that is calculated toward teaching the nervous system to completely release its habit of squeezing itself unnecessarily wherever possible. And there might be more possible than I know yet, but at least what I know as possible. So, which is a lot. And so that's what we've done. But one of the things that helps that isn't just coming and getting some body work done, but the entire context when they talk about psychedelics and these depression therapies that they're using with with therapists and whatnot, these scheduled substances with psilocybin and MDMA and, and ketamine. They talk a lot about what they found to be useful with psychedelics, which is set and setting which is the intent Shouldn't behind it and the setting in which it occurs. And while I think some of that stuff could use an upgrade based on what we found, Tucker and I've talked a lot about that, and in our own experience with things, the context of the retreat in a place where there are a lot of other people looking at things in a very particular way, where these particular bodywork sessions are stacked on top of, we're doing breathwork. And we're also doing movement. And we're also eating certain things that are beneficial for the system, we're supportive of the system in a different way. And then we're also like listening to some audios or like we're taught, we're doing some movement work, or we're, we're sitting still for periods of time and doing some meditative stuff, or learning to use a rock, all of that stuff combines to create an environment where these types of things can happen in a big way. And people come to me sometimes for this type of work just on their own. And so you know, cool, I'll do some, but it's never the same, I still try to send them. Here's some things I want you thinking about before we come here, some intentions I want you to set and they have a great experience. But it's nothing like what we create here because of the environment in which it happens as well.
(26:02) In my own experience, I feel like as I came to the retreat that you kind of introduced me to my own body. You're like Lee, here's your body. This is how it works. Yeah, no, nobody now I must thumb body. But I didn't know what I didn't know, right? I didn't know that things could change as quickly as I could. I didn't know like that I didn't have to be carried away by my thoughts. I didn't know that I could challenge those things. Or I could challenge the way I felt or that I could change those things. In a matter of moments. I was 52 years old. And I did not know these things. You know, the journey towards healing that I had been taught was all in the head. Yeah. All in the brain, talk about it talk about autonomy has its value, we don't want to negate that. Right? What your brain says does affect the body. And so you can change it that way too.
(26:53) It got me to a point right, where I could see clearly, well, retrospectively, not so clearly. But I thought I thought I saw clearly what was happening, but I really didn't see what was happening. And it was a grace and a gift to help me challenge those things. And to learn that I could and to give me those tools. But it but it started in the body work. And it was really confusing to me. Because like, like, how am I going to get better by by feeling pain or feeling pressure? You know, but on the other side the way Lee when he went through his was like trash talking me. He was there like that all you've got little man. He was like getting back at your 13 year old feminine. He was getting back at me in advance for the voiceless.
(27:46) Which is wild because people are down with surgery. It's like, what's more violent than that? And it does produce healing. Yeah, like, that's true. That's a good point.
It's like, this is super, I mean, it was off putting for me when I saw Chris, like, first go through stick work on that first thing. I was like, What is this play? It's like, so violent, which is why we want you to watch the video in advance. But I do think, you know, like, the amount of physical abuse I experienced as a child was given with a different intent was then the intention that happens when we're in this place, working with the body. And one of the things that I that I learned through your intention for my healing, was I was a lot stronger than I thought I was. You know, we had somebody this retreat, even like who, who came beforehand, he'd seen the demonstration that we do, you know, the first night and, and, and he openly vocalized how much he was afraid of pain. And he's like, What if all I do is experienced just pain and pain and pain, I was like, you'll you'll feel the difference. And, and there's no way to describe it. Like, it looks from the outside. Like it might be something that's super painful. But on the inside, it's a very different experience because it's informed by a different intention. And it's it, I wish I could communicate it better, for sure. But we do have a lot of people that watch Tucker's video, and they see it and there's something inside of them that goes, Oh, I really need to do this. And they might be scared and they might not. But something about that process clicks in a very visceral way with a lot of people.
(29:19) I want to make this point before I lose it. But like in the talking through my problems and the narrative theory and all the counseling that I went through. It was good to a point but there came a point where I was re traumatizing myself. Like the things weren't still happening to me. And I've learned since then that the only way that those incidents and memories and stories were harming is I was recreating them re traumatizing myself and putting my body through that and gustavia over and over and over and over. And it wasn't until I came to freedom retreat that I was able to actually set those things aside, which I didn't ever think that I could do. I thought this was a lifelong thing. and no diagnosis. Yeah, and nobody else was telling me that, you know, like, if you're in a 12 step group, you're an addict for the rest of your life, you're a sex addict, alcohol or whatever. And there was, there was no one telling me that this would ever go away. And so I was a good soldier. And I would tell my story and re traumatize myself.
(30:17) Yeah, and I think a point here with that one that I tried to make in the book, or a way to make that visible, is like, your heart functions on tension, like it's muscle contractions, and all these other things, and your blood vessels have tension in them, and they run through the entire cardiovascular system. And it's how it functions. It's got a pump, it's the muscular pump, in many ways you got you got muscles in your bowels, you have muscles in your intestinal tract, your and esophagus, you have muscles all over the place tiny little muscles in your eyeballs that are dilating and contracting your your pupils. And so there's muscles all over the place. And so their function is great, you take a heart that's got muscular function, and then you add a little bit of a squeeze to it some unnecessary tension. Imagine how that hearts gonna function, it's got a little bit of a squeeze, maybe it pushes the the valve of one of the chambers of the heart off in a weird way. And then you get some weird, a arrhythmia going on or backflow into one of the thing is just a little bit of a squeeze. That's an extreme example. But how many people are suffering from all these heart conditions that might not actually suffer from them? Because they're actually reversible, because it's just unnecessary tension that they think they need to take a prescription medication for? Or get a pacemaker or something for which, which maybe they don't, and I don't know that right. I haven't been in all these chamber, these surgery, surgeons rooms and whatnot, and, but like that type of stress on the body, it's just imagine a heart beating. Now squeeze it, you know, and that that's what we're dealing with is an extra squeeze on the system.
(31:43) Lee, I'm curious about what you said, as far as re traumatizing, because that's like, when my sister when I when my sister came to the retreat, she was around when I was telling her about it. She was like, so you're, you're punching or Bob is punching people. And having them I don't punch everybody. I don't want everybody. It sounds like it. But it's not the case. And having these people use knives, sharp knives in drills, who have who are there because a lot of them have real trauma were bullied were, like physically abused. Like, that sounds exactly, like re traumatizing. And so it seems like there is and I've heard you talk about like that we are re traumatizing people and where we're doing, you know if with this different understanding of what trauma is, maybe yeah. And and so I'm curious, like with that experience, like what was different about it, when you would re traumatize yourself, telling your story and events versus when bought when you came here,
(32:47) there's an element of the RE traumatizing and telling your story of how you've been abused or harmed, that brings those things back to life. And our thought about this, like the trauma happened, and challenge him on that one, folks. Just the events happen. Yeah, events happen was a different thing that yeah, that we called trauma. It was in the past, and it was done and it was over. And when I would tell the story, I would bring all of that event forward. And it would experience the same and gustavia in my body. Because our minds are so powerful, you know that I would recreate all those same feelings like I didn't have to do that.
(33:32) This I mean, this links to Quincy story a little bit later, when he raped all these things that happened as a kid that she forgot. And then later on in the book, I cover it. But basically all the 20 years since then were things that she had done to herself. And the event happened, that was something done to her. But all the after effect was something that she continued to do herself not not maliciously, but because she didn't know any better. And she didn't know a way out. And she didn't realize that she actually had to say and whether she felt those things. Again, I'll go back to intent. You know, like, the thing that initially happened to me was, was done out of a very hurting woman. There was there was no concern for me. It was a hard thing to go through it yet to come forward and really with with Bob's intent towards my healing, to be invited back into that, and to be taught in that process, that I wasn't a victim, and that I could change something kept me from RE traumatizing myself again, because I didn't have to tell that story. I could let that story go.
(34:38) And in the process. It is training. So what am I doing in the process? I'm telling them what to relax and I'm telling them to breathe differently. I'm showing them where they're holding tension. So they are experiencing a similar it's not the same obviously, but a very similar experience while in the process, discovering that they actually have control over it, which rewires in a sense The brains relationship to that, like, oh, wait, I don't have to feel this anymore. Oh, wait, I can actually let that go, I didn't realize I could let that thing go, oh, I can breathe different. And that changes something. And all of this is like, body information sent up to the brain that it now has to make sense of and fit into a worldview. And sometimes that just, it makes it go like, Oh, there's no Santa Claus. Okay, cool. I don't have to worry about being on the nice list next year. And so like that type of retraining of the nervous system, in that moment, on top of the intention, on top of the context, on top of everything else creates a different relationship to what they thought they were carrying.
(35:36) So it's something like because of what happened to you, and because of this, what you've told yourself over and over again, you created this groove that you go into. Yeah. And so then when Lee came to a retreat, you put him back in that groove, in a way, in a way and you showed him physically, here's an exit, here's an offering. And he felt any experience that? Well, I didn't even like I didn't come to the retreat and talk about that at all. No, like, we did not bring up that trauma. We did not talk about the specifics. I didn't tell you any details of it. But but my body was in a place that I could feel the goose dia that was similar to that point. And then in that process, I could learn that I wasn't weak, I didn't have to be a victim to it. And I didn't have to live with it. I could let it go. And I can move on.
(36:27) All this stuff is built on the body anyway. So since the thoughts are a byproduct, a little bit of pressure in that kind of an gustavia, then opens a doorway. And then I had a tool for whatever the thoughts of those experiences came up that I could take a look at that and let them go. Yeah. And and as a as an important note, I think in this discussion, most people's trauma, if they want to call it that, right, that kind of a goose to or that kind of pattern that they're used to living with happens when the nervous system is in an amped up sympathetic state. And most healing methodologies happen when we've sedated the person their parasympathetic, they're in, they're calm, there's relaxing, spa music, there's somebody woowoo going now, open your third eye chakra and all this stuff. And I don't mean to make light of it, because I I'm a sucker for a lot of the things anyway, we're just a therapy session. Yeah, that'd be the same. Like you're sitting in a comfortable chair. Yeah,
(37:21) therapy session, we want to make the person safe. So we're going to validate all of their, their feelings and their opinions and just make them know that everything's okay. So that I found leads to table tarts on the table for 14 years, because the trauma is in the sympathetic side of the nervous system. So if I can retrain it when the person is in a somewhat amped up state, and it doesn't have to be super amped up, sometimes just a little bit, all of a sudden, that signals the mind to like, oh, wow, I don't, I don't actually have to go here. And if I do go here, I can find a way out. And it's a much quicker thing. And that's where we've seen people leave years and years and years and years and years of pain and struggle behind in just a few days.
(38:00) And I just want to make clear, like if if even as you go through this book, like you do not have to go into the depths of that horrible story, whatever it was, and when you come to retreat, you don't go into the depths and you're not sharing all the filth and all the things and all that that you know all the ugliness of it all you're not doing that it's kind of setting that aside, and dealing with with what is actually there in a playful whimsical way with lots of different voices. And because Lee likes to hear my Chinese voice. I shall end this episode with an invitation to you guys to to look deep into your soul and find your own goosed ya had let it go. I am not dealing with any of the emails that are coming from. Anyway, not like Asian people that freedom specialist, I once had to rerecord a training because I did that voice and they're like, We don't want Chinese people to get offended. I am not out to offend Chinese people, only to have a good time in life. And I love all the Chinese people I've been around. They're great. They're fun, and they sound a lot like what I just did some of it. So there's that.
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