For this month’s regular open-audience, open-discussion “Ask Us Anything” — continuing discussions about meditation and related topics — Insight Timer teacher Lydia Grace rejoins Denny and I along with friend and practitioner Elizabeth Foster for a roundtable about embodiment coaching.
After introductions we speak much about the body and embodiment, especially in relation to experience and working with others. We continue sharing embodiment wisdom and beyond:
- being in the body
- integrative somatic trauma therapy training
- dark night(s) of the soul
- human design
- dark ages in the Western culture, intellect, and information compared to Experiential Eastern approaches
- polyvagal theory
- social engagement system
- “science of safety”
- dysregulation of nervous system
- wisdom of the body
- Lydia’s body speak method
- holding space, mediation, safety, consent, trauma
- shame, guilt and self-doubt
- intuition
- being present to whatever is happening in the moment
- pain and despair
- holding space without judgement
- facing pain and trauma
- reconnecting to our power
- addressing internal and external judgement
- being seen, heard and validated
- recognizing and naming emotions to de-identify
- mindfulness
- hold self-judgement in limitless consciousness
- allowing experience that’s already happening anyway
- pausing
- pain vs. suffering
- guarding the sense doors
- holding on to past memories
- The Body Keeps The Score book
- Thai medicine
- blockages and the protective role of holding trauma in the body
- interconnection of various traumas
- being told about storing resentment in the shoulder and releasing it in meditation/contemplation/reflection resulting in restored mobility
- cellular memory and debris
- “A.B.C. — A Bigger Container” teaching by Charlotte Joko Beck via Jill Shepherd
- self-honor, self-respect, self-validation, worthiness
- Can you love yourself exactly as you are right now, equal to the idealized version you wish you were; have been in the past; or are desperately trying to become?
- karma, thoughts, memory, electrochemical interactions
- yin treasure organs and yang vessel organs and energies
- the connection of “between cells” to the “triple warmer” meridian
- Eastern traditions knowing body through deep meditation and Western through dissecting cadavers
- intuiting body intelligence, body talk, body messages, tailoring information to/for various clients
- resurfacing of repressed memories via body work and presence
- intergenerational epigenetics
- insighttimer.com app (competitive) teacher environment(s)
- technique of recalling previous self-coaching sessions and asking where do you feel this in the body; if it had a voice what would it say; and what age is it?
- translating self-love into practical means
- balancing superfluous story creation with using story to understand, relate with, and navigate in the world
- leveraging devastation to awaken to deep truth within
- innocence
- sharing experience to assist with material and spiritual liberation
- “qi-positive”
- what other people think about me is none of my business
Audio: Embodiment Coaching | (11/30/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” With Denny K Miu And Guests Lydia Grace and Elizabeth Foster)
Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)
Find and connect with Lydia:
- https://www.massagebook.com/Vail~Massage~lydia-grace
- https://thelydiagrace.newzenler.com/home
- https://insighttimer.com/timewithgrace
- https://www.instagram.com/joyfulnomad
Connect with Elizabeth:
- https://illuminatingintuition.com
- https://www.instagram.com/illuminating.intuition
- https://linktr.ee/elizabethfosterhd
My (Josh’s) December 2021 Insight Timer Live events:
- Silent Lying Down Meditation — Wed Dec 1 – 01:30 pm Central
- Silent meaning me not talking. Meditate in a lying down posture together, virtually, for as little or as long as desired during 30 minutes–perhaps constructive rest pose, knees in the air, or “lion’s posture” reclining on the right side, one foot atop the other, but not bone on bone, mindful, alert
- (Virtual) Eye Gazing — Thu Dec 9 – 03:33 pm Central
- Grab a partner or gaze into my virtual eyes while I gaze at the camera and we chat about the ins and outs, ups and downs, and knowns and unknowns of this beneficial yet sometimes intense interaction
- Mindfulness of Speaking — Mon Dec 20 – 06:00 pm Central [Listen to the edited audio from this event included within the Right Speech precept section for the Multi-month Pāramitā (Attainments/Perfections) Challenge For December 2021]
- Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it helpful? Is it the right time? We’ll explore these guidelines for wise and skillful speech and share stories, challenges, insights and do some practice
Join Denny live Saturdays online for Yi Jin Jing and mindful joint, stretching, breathing, and qi exercises at 8:00am Pacific via:
Denny’s other links:
- http://dennykmiu.com/Patreon (Dharma Articles and Podcast)
- http://dennykmiu.com/Circle (Insight Timer Circle: Mindfulness Fellowship)
- http://dennykmiu.com/Daily (Daily Practice Video)
- http://dennykmiu.com/AUA (Monthly Online Discussion)
- http://dennykmiu.com/Saturday (Saturday Practice in English)
- http://dennykmiu.com/Exercise (Daily Practice in Cantonese)
- http://dennykmiu.com/Video (Dharma Talks in English)
- http://dennykmiu.com/Metta (Dharma Talks in Cantonese)
Join “Ask Us Anything LIVE” next month, Tuesday December 28, 2021 at 4pm Central via:
- Facebook [custom link redirecting to Facebook Live at 4pm]: dennykmiu.com/facebook]
- YouTube on Denny’s 如是我錄Thus I Recorded YouTube channel
The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:
very special guests in addition to Josh and I, the yin and yang of Buddhama. We have Lydia.
Lydia Grace coming back for a second time. Seems like we know we know you so well now, right?
And then in addition, we have Elizabeth Foster who’s a good friend of and and and more or
less in the same profession. Um we picked today’s topic to be
embodiment coaching. So, I’m really looking forward to this because I I really want to understand number one, what is
embodiment? And number two, what exactly do you coach? So, maybe I’ll I’ll let Lydia talk
and and let her guide us and maybe with the help of Elizabeth we, can kind of
expand on this topic. Go ahead, Lydia Okay. So Yes, I’m an Embodiment coach. Um I guess I
can share a little bit of how I got into doing this. I became a
yoga teacher in 2007. Became a massage therapist in 2009 and
then a massage instructor in two thousand twelve and starting around 2012, I was also like a health coach and
did a wellness programs with clients when I was first starting out and working for my doing my own business and over
the years, so I’ve worked with close to 12, 000 people at this point in the holistic wellness
field. And one of the things that I noticed the most as far
as what people would say the benefits of what we did together was, was they would say, oh my goodness, I feel
like I’m in my body for the first time in years. Like, whoa, I feel like here again.
And it was very Interesting and it was the most, like I said,
it it was the the most often spoken outside of maybe like
pain reduction or something like that and I thought it was very interesting that people
would say that and that many people were saying that, not just like one or two that it was a very common experience
that people would feel like they finally were back in their body again. And I, before Covid
hit, I was a little bit starting to burn out with massage. My original intention for it was not to do it the
rest of my life. It was actually so that I could have some sort of technical skill to take get myself through go get
a masters or a PHD in something which I still haven’t done. Um and so it wasn’t going to I
wasn’t wanting to make it like my career. I just turns out I start doing it for a while and my passion is teaching. So like
I loved teaching the massage. And so much of the teaching aspect was less about technique
And more about presence and intention and connection Which
all comes from listening. Hm and so much of massage and the
intelligence behind touch is it’s not about us doing something to someone. It’s
about listening to the tissue. It’s about listening to the body. They’re going to come in and intellectually say, this is
what I want, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You touch their body, their body’s like, no, this is not, they’re, they
don’t know. And so, so much of massage was the puzzle of how can I satisfy the intellect of
the client and honor wisdom of the body So, as Covid hit and
everything shut down and I was one of the people that kind of freaked out and took everything really seriously and didn’t want to leave my house. So, all
of a sudden, I didn’t have my day job ironically, I used to like kind
of be skeptical and make fun of coaching like what people just give advice and they get paid for it. What like weird. Um but
my intuition was like, look into it. Because there’s so
much, I just had this intuition that there was so much that could be translated from
massages and yoga into one on one over Zoom. Like there was so much that I, there was so
much more potential out there that we had, we hadn’t explored or that I hadn’t explored. And I’m, I was an art major. I’m a
creative thinker. and I want to explore creative avenues that have never been thought of or
done at least in my life before, you know, because obviously, Embodiment Coaching is a thing. So, I started just
taking trainings in coaching, various styles, and just started offering free sessions
and groupings of sessions to people to figure out like, what am I good at? How can I, do I
even want to do this? And over time, I started to realize,
I’ve always had the issue of being overly analytical and very heady. And from various
traumas and from various conditioning, I I’m so, it’s so easy for me to get so much in my head and kind of dissociate
from my body which is why massage and yoga have been so helpful and meditation and breath work have been for me
And so, I, intuitively, over time, was like, oh, that’s what
I need to start bringing in. I really appreciate doing jobs that hold me accountable. So,
like, when I taught yoga, I have to do yoga, when I do massage, I have to receive massage. If I’m in full
integrity in showing up for people and so, it kind of became this invitation back
into my own body in order to hold presence for other people to and facilitating that
presence for other people to start discovering and coming either for the first time or
the second time or coming back into their body and starting to listen again to the wisdom of
what’s down here instead of just what’s up here, you know, because the western paradigm is mine, mine, mine but most of my
training was ancient like Chinese lineage, Thai lineage which is all like the emperor, the heart is the of the body.
What? the mind? No, that’s a servant. You know, and so it kind of brought me back to some
of the roots of the lineages I had learned and it’s just been this really beautiful unfolding working with various clients
and all the different types of people that show up like right now, one of my clients is retired military like total,
totally different than other clients I’ve worked with. Um but it’s again, each person
comes in and learns like, I’ve learned with all the clients that I’ve been working with, each person has a unique
language, their body speaks, and they get to learn the language of their body and it’s maybe different than other
people and it’s just, it’s been extremely rewarding for me to
facilitate this journey for other people because I get so much out of it myself and then,
it’s been an invitation into get receiving a lot of coaching from other people and even therapy and going into right
now, I’m in a 60 hour integrative somatic trauma therapy training not so I can
work with trauma for people but so I can understand my own deeper and kind of the human experience of trauma so it can
help me stay within integrity of my scope of practice and know how to refer people to
therapists when they need that and all that. So, that’s kind of a little backstory context.
how I came into specifically Embodiment Coaching Excellent.
Excellent. Thank you so much. Well, this is really interesting stuff. We’ll we’ll we’ll keep going in circle and just sharing our own
perspective. Um Liz Smith, you want to pick up on that? Uh however you like, maybe you can
explain to us how you and Lydia meet each other and and whether or not what you do and is
related to what Lydia does? Yeah, I’d love to. Thank you. Um so, I Lydia online like
middle of July, I think, last year, and I was in a very
interesting situation in life. Um, I had, I, at the time I was currently living in Peru, I had
like moved there and was working at this yoga and meditation retreat center, and,
you know, like, everyone, around March twenty twenty, everything shut down, and I
found myself having to create something and feeling really,
really disconnected, of course, you know, from my family, from being home, and I don’t know
how I found Lydia but we found each other. And working together in the kind of first
iteration of her work, the Body Speak Technique which was
utterly mind opening, body opening to me. I mean, I I come
from a yoga and meditation background. Um and the way that
her and I work together for our first you know, several months was a new, a whole new
perspective and it kind of allowed me to really own what I
wanted and and discover a lot more about what I wanted and and ultimately helped me find my way back to the United
States and and kind of a little bit of a dark night of the soul before you know, actually
moving out to Los Angeles of March of this year. So, her and I have through or rather she’s
she’s guided me a lot in my process in the past year and a half. Um you know, certainly
through some of the darker times and helped me kind of just reconnect and really
reconnect to my intuition. Um you know, and helped me kind of see where my gifts lie as well
because I, you know, was at the time I had been doing a little
bit of coaching through the human design perspective and with COVID just kind set that
set that down for a little while because I didn’t, you know, like Lydia mentioned the the value of integrity. I
wasn’t feeling like I was in a place to really guide other people when I didn’t really know where I was going either.
So, so I took that time and you know, thankfully, Lydia’s
Lydia’s work helped open up whole new perspectives for me and new possibilities and
allowed me to really kind of get a reset so that I was open to the possibilities of you
know, a a wonderful opportunity to move to Los Angeles and actually start a new pack with
matchmaking and and kind of relearn how I can best serve through my coaching work as
well. So, so that’s how we kind of know each other in a nutshell and and a little bit
about what I do now. So, yeah. Very nice. Very nice. Josh, you
you have anything to add? I think if anybody’s watched the show, they’ve heard enough
about me and Denny maybe, possibly, but, you know, and then it’s my spiritual ego speaking maybe that it’s just like, really don’t have much
interest in my personal story which is a good reminder that I should probably spend more time
on that. saying because you know, our stories, they really make us who we are, right? If
we say we’re something and we put emphasis on things on certain things, that becomes
who we are pretty much and so, you know, it’s just a great cop out I guess I’m I’m doing here.
Um I I don’t know what to say other than I I’m just I’m just so interest in in content and
like the actual practice and stuff like that which I probably will come off more like alien and cold that it
won’t say anything about myself. Um so, I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know what to say
here. I mean, instead of before we jump right into stuff like that, I think I’m just going to
yeah, bypass this, right? And and throw it over to Denny unless there’s specific questions as well. Okay.
Alright. Alright. That’s okay. That’s okay. You you do realize that you’re your you’re your
best friend. So, you have to learn to talk about yourself and sell yourself before you
can sell your craft. Well, that’s right but I’m not selling anything. So, I do all my stuff on donation basis
right now and you know, I could do the whole zen thing like, well, who who am I? Who who’s
Josh? You know. I like to think of myself as like an art project, right? So, you know. I
I won’t I won’t I won’t throw us into the deep end right away here but yeah. I want to I want to get back to you what
Lydia was talking about. She because she was having making this gesture what’s above and what’s below and you know, we
talk about how it was an eye-opening experience when she introduced the reintroduce the
body back to her client and it got me thinking because in the
past, I I I talk about the difference between the western versus the eastern, eastern
meaning of India and China and how one of the difference between the two culture is that
in one culture, we have what we call a dark ages. Yeah. in another culture, the eastern
culture, it’s a pretty much continuous evolution in terms of the intellectual
development. Whereas in the western, there was a time when, you know, you have dark, the dark ages and then, and then
ultimately, when, when the people got out of the total
control of the, the church, then we have this thing called the renaissance, And so, it’s,
it’s as if the whole western culture was making up for lost time, and so they focused a lot
on their intellect, thinking at intellect and intelligence are
one of the same. Uh where’s the eastern culture? Because we never had to overcompensate
like that. That we understood that there’s the intellect which is the brain, the the
whatever that mechanism that does the the analysis and and
so forth. And then there’s a whole other set of that there’s really like experience.
Sensing. You know. So it’s a difference between the brain and the and the spiral right?
It’s interesting to know that all our nerve endings goes to the spiral chord first and it’s
from the spiral chords that goes to the brain. So, just because you don’t use your
brain, doesn’t mean that you don’t feel because you feel first. You actually feel it first before then you kind of
centralize combine all that signal into your brain and do more processing, alright? So,
the western culture because of the history, we tend to just focus on the brain. We just
focus on this and how do we digest all the information without really Understanding
how the information come into the body. And so I’m I’m just throwing out there Lydia
Correct. me if I’m wrong. But it seems to me that based on my limit understanding this.
Embodiment is like rolling back the clock. Coming back to the body. And that the people sense
the body first. Yes. Yes. So,
there’s a theory that was developed by the name, his name is Steven Porges. So, the first
paper he wrote on it was in 1994. He was developing it since the 80s that kind of
explains a lot of what I do. I’d already been doing it and then when I came across this theory, I was like, this, oh my
goodness, this explains the science and it’s called the polybagel theory and it’s the
idea that our nervous system is much more complex than the
paradigm we used to think of like fight or flight, rest and digest. There’s many blended states. He calls it the social
engagement system and when we’re in our most effective, healthy state with ourselves
and with others, we’re in what’s called the ventral vagal state which is connection from
the heart to the head. So, there’s a deep connection and there’s an opening and physiologically, there’s a lot
happening in this area and we’re able to connect with others in a very safe, the, it’s called science of safety.
And the majority of this understanding or theory is based on the vagus nerve. Which
is the 10th cranial nerve. Comes out of the brain stem. And it’s called the wandering
nerve. So it goes through like almost all the organs. And what’s super interesting about
the vagus nerve is 80% of the information that passes along this major highway in the body
goes from the body to the brain. Only 20 percent come goes from the brain to the
body. So, healing, it has a lot to do with dysregulation in the
nervous system, learning how to regulate our states through the wisdom of the body. 80% of that
wisdom is coming from the body. Which totally matches like all these ancient systems of
wisdom. And we, the western paradigm is we’re stuck in that
20% of like, I have to have an effect this way. So, the
Elizabeth mentioned, the body speak method, which is a method I kind of developed from a lot of integrated. I I’m an
integrator. I like integrating a lot of modalities to work with whoever’s in front of me. So, I just named it something
for branding’s sake. The body speaks. So, the Body Speak Method. This idea that if we
start to kind of like, imagine
or take ourselves into the metaphor that every aspect of our body has a voice and many
times when we’re listening to things, we it can run away into some sort of spiral. So, like
spiral into pain and suffering. spiral into overanalysis, spiral into, and the one of the
missing components is we don’t have a mediator. and so we’re not creating a container of
safety for internal conversations to be happening. And this was something I
experienced firsthand. Over time what I realized is when I would call up the parts of myself that had leadership
abilities. So like big self, inner guide, intuition, whatever people want to call
it. Better angel. Every client has a different word for it. One client calls it new mindset. Um when that can come
and become the mediator of the conversation we’re immediately providing an element of safety.
For then, all these different voices within us to start having a say and the mediator
also has sway on being able to have boundaries to put in boundaries of like, cool, I do want to listen to you anger but
like, you’re taking up a lot of space right now. Can you go sit down? And so, I call it the round table, the internal
roundtable discussion. And when I with clients. At first, I’m, I say, I’m taking the role of
the facilitator and mediator so you don’t have to worry about what that’s going to feel like for you and as we start opening
this discussion with with your sensations, with your
narratives, with your emotions, with your breath, with your energy bodies, as we start
calling whoever wants a say, to start coming in, eventually, you start to really hear your
own mediator, your own like inner leader and you start distinguishing who that is and
then eventually that becomes something you can do on your own. And that’s one of the
techniques that I sort of developed that I will use with clients depending on how
there’s many people myself included in the past, that where it felt very unsafe to be in the body. So, dissociation
was a very helpful, safe, protective mechanism because our bodies hold trauma and so,
I don’t necessarily always just jump into there. We have a a big conversation of like
consent matters. We’ve internalized lack of consent because our society doesn’t honor really consent in life
and so first, it’s let’s develop mechanisms of safety and consent so that we can first start learning how to
trust and find ways to like even open the idea of listening
to the various parts or voices. Interesting. Interesting.
Elizabeth you, were talking about how when you first met Lydia you, were actually the outside of the country And then
through the epidemic. Your pandemic. You you would then slowly move back to the states
and now settle down in Los Angeles. So I so that
obviously you were in a very traumatic time in your life and
and and then at the at that time you learn from Lydia Give.
us a little bit more specific about how you you you use the word intuitive. Right? You were
using the word intuitive. How does that relate to Embodiment and and together how does that
help you find your way out? Yeah. So, I think you know, one
of the first things that I learned in my work with Lydia was you know, kind of having
that grace for all of the experiences and solutions that happen in the body. You know, we were working through
particularly for me at the time when we first started working together, there was a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, a lot of self doubt that we were working
through. Um and a lot of decision and disconnection and
so I didn’t really have I didn’t really have a strong sense of of my own intuition
even though that’s you know that’s been something I’ve worked for years and years on
but at that point in my life, I felt so disconnected from that. So, we started with just like
Lydia said like that getting consent from the body and from the mind to be able to step
aside and hear what the body has to say without judge or without, you know, putting
those extra narratives on it around how I should be or what I need to be doing, you know,
just kind of being present to whatever comes up in the experience. Um which I think
for me helped cultivate a lot of a lot of self love and grace
and courage even in that moment because I was able to see my
pain for what it was and not something that needed to be
fixed or or you know, relegated or or shoved on through the carpet, you know, like it was
just what it was and that didn’t mean anything about who
I was or what my strengths are. Um you know, or what or what was possible for me either
because at that point, I felt like not a lot was very possible for me and and that
was a lot of what we worked through was getting to that space where I was able to trust
really deeply trust myself again but also realign the love for for my for my experience,
for my pain, for for all the things that I had gone through in the past, you know, year and
a half and and being able to hold space for it without judgement, I think was one of the biggest things that helped
me realign and helped open up to to hear some more of those intuitive hits and and and lean
to the possibility that started to show up for me. because you
know, I don’t think, had I been given the opportunity that I have now, you know, if that had
happened right when the pandemic started, I never, I don’t think that I would have gone down this path in any way,
you know, I think for me, it was really important to be able to be present to the pain and
to the experience and and the trauma that was happening and and not avoid which I think is
something that really is prevalent in our society is not
addressing our pains, not really addressing the the issues that whether internal or
external just kind of like going along and assuming things will get better but Lydia’s work really helped me reconnect
to my power and and and grace in that sense. So, yeah. That’s
kind of a long way to the answer but that was that was what it did for me. Hm
interesting. You use the word judge, judging And and I I want to elaborate on that
because that that is either judging from the outside,
right? We were judged by appearance. We’re judged by a peer. We’re judged by a
siblings. Uh judged by elders, relative to our siblings, you
know, all kinds of judge, right? So, we grew up with other people judging us and then we either have to live up
to that or we have to live against it. When it one way or the other but there there a lot of judging too that is done
internally. We judge ourselves We judge yourself more than
other people judge us. And so going back to what leaders said and I’m wondering if this
embodiment is really about finding an anchor. so that you
put eco emphasis at least eco-emphasis on really feeling
really focusing on the sensation and lessen the self
judging and just accept it and feel it as opposed to just feel it and then right away, you
know, went off the deep end judging whether it’s the right or wrong. What what do you think, Lydia Does? that have
anything? Well, go ahead. Josh. What’s going on, Josh? Josh, you can see. Go ahead. There’s
a lot of stuff here to tie to tie together. You know, I am. So, there’s the the facing our
pain, right? That is so important. It was so important for me. Um because that’s you
know, we’re conditioned to do everything we can to to feel, you know, comfortable and not face it. So, when we can be in
a space where we can directly look our pain in the eye, you know, and and be with it and
sit with it and say, you know, I’m going to be down here in the mud hole with you. Um as far as long as I hand and then
when it gets too overwhelming, well then, we can switch to other techniques because
sometimes being with our pain depending on, you know, so many different things and how severe it is. It can be just too much
at certain times but the more we’re able to be with it and feel it, the more we can heal it. Um and now, Denny’s thing
about the judgment, you know, this was the especially for spiritually-minded people. Um
what would consider judgement is only when we’re deriving or
somebody is deriving satisfaction from judging another. So, as long as we’re
not doing that, we we give it, we give a dang, you know, it’s like, there’s this kind of
automatic judgment that will arise and we’re like start judging ourselves for the judgment, right? Oh, we shouldn’t, I don’t really mean
that. I shouldn’t say that and so, one of these teachings I learned that is really helpful for me is that there’s a silver
lining in that. So, we can say, okay, I honor your Buddha nature, I honor your divinity
but maybe with this coming up in the other person that I’m
considering a judgement and I don’t want to judge is to say, okay, I I see your booty
nature, see your divinity, and this is just not for me, you know? Doesn’t mean I have to be
disrespectful or you know, cut the person off or whatever. Um
so, that’s that’s the silver lining. Now, now, Denny you, said, what were you saying
again? The about about feeling because I and then going back to Lydia’s thing too. Um you
know, that’s so interesting, the body talk because when I finally transition to sensing,
it’s like a relief from all that internal chatter that’s normally going on. So, for me
to to go more intuitive and embodiment and sensing, it’s like a break from that. So, I
can just let sensations happen and pay attention to them without giving them a voice actually. So, it’s it’s
interesting because you know, I I definitely see the value in that, right? And Lydia’s
approach because because that’s how we, you know, we, people
either want to be seen or heard, right? Some people need to be seen, to be heard, and some people need to be heard to
be seen. And I think the more we can do that to other people, the more we can help heal them
and especially to ourselves too. So, I think that’s enough for now. Lydia what, do you
think? I have many thoughts as usual. Um the I want to say the
Body Speak Method or whatever is one of many asanas that I use in a session. So, it’s not
the only approach or philosophy and I like 100% agree with you, Josh. Like, many times, it’s
just about being with. It’s not about trying to interpret or create any story. The biggest,
from behavioral science and research because I really like keeping up with the research and behavioral economics. So,
I’m always looking at stuff and listening to podcasts and one the biggest human needs is to
be validated and understood. and that was one of the basis
for which Body Speak became like one of the techniques I use because so much of our body
would like to be heard and validated. And pain has a voice. There’s a reason for it
being there. There’s a wisdom to the various expressions of sensation our bodies going
through. We are very quick to put interpretation on it and I believe most suffering comes
from our interpretation not the actual experience. And when you were talking about judgement,
Denny one, of the things that I is we’re not necessarily trying
to have less self judgement. We’re simply trying to notice it and have more less
identification with it and then it starts to naturally go away and one of the metaphors that
I’ve used recently when I do insight timer is if you can
notice and kind of name which this comes out of like emotional intelligence, behavioral science, naming an
emotion immediately separates you a little bit from identifying with it as your only reality and it gives you a
little bit of a pause between stimulus and response. When you can name or recognize
something’s happening, like, oh, judgement. It’s an opportunity to come into a space of mindfulness and I
consider our human selves as finite and like ourselves selves as infinite. So, an
invitation to come into more of an infinite like conscious awareness that’s holding the
finite of the self judgement. And when we start to feel held
by the awareness, the finite judgment is no longer no longer
needs to feel like suffering. It’s just like, again, you know, that metaphor of like
watching clouds or whatever. And so, to me, it’s always
about coming into the validation of I’m allowed to be human right now. I am allowed
to be having the experience I’m having because it is the experience I’m having. How can I support myself to expand my
awareness within this experience? Because in that awareness, there’s more pause and in the pause, we have more
choice. you know, the Viktor Frankel quote, which is like one of my mantras since twenty
20 Um in the pause is the space like between the inhale and the
exhale and between one thought and another, that’s where we can, when we can expand that through mindfulness and
awareness, if it, based on various techniques, and again, I always believe like the person coming that’s in front
of me has an amazing amount of wisdom. I’m not trying to put
wisdom into their body. I’m here to facilitate a space for them to open up to it themselves. So, I don’t even
know, I don’t know what it is either, but we’re discovering together what techniques and tools and perspective and body
positions are going to help them hear it. Start hearing it with the greatest ease, the
greatest curiosity, and eventually the greatest like compassion.
Interesting. Interesting. So so you you use we use the word
we’ve been using the word embodiment or body speak. And Josh and I come from a
different perspective, right? So we we come from
Probably the closest description to what what we do is is like the Talavada or this
the South Asia, Southeast Asia, Buddhist approach to meditation, right? As opposed
to the North Chinese version of the meditation. And one of the
thing that we speak about is the mindfulness, the full foundation, the mindfulness,
the mindfulness of the body and the mind and the body, the feeling, the mind, and the and
the and the and the and the of it. Actually William boils down to the mindfulness of the body
especially into, you know, to today, you know, when we talk about embodiment, body speak.
So, we are about the mindfulness of the body. Except
in this case, the body is not just this. The body is actually the entirety and so when we
talk about the body, we really talk about what we call the sense doors. so the sin stores
of the eye, the nose, the tongue, the ear, the skin, and the brain, the intellect. We’ve
been talking intellect and so we think of them as the door And so in modern language, the
door is the physiology. What’s outside of door is physics and
what’s inside the door is a neurology. So, the eye interacts with the sight where
there is visible infrared and then when the sun hits the eye,
then, it turns into electrical signal, okay? So, that’s a very straightforward kind of way of
thinking about how the body interacts with the world. Now, all that come together as I, as
I said, into the spiral chord and then, the spiral cord gives it to the brain and we think the brain as a as part of the
body. We don’t think of the brain as as intellectual. Uh spiritual. So, when we talk
about materiality versus spirituality, the materiality.
The mind is something else. Something that that it’s much deeper that we’re still trying
to explore. So the reason we say is because our job is to
guard the door. And so that’s how we distinguish pain from suffering. Is that the pain is
when the physics interacts with the physiology that creates neurology. That’s the pain. The
pain can come and the pain can go. what cause of suffering is
when the pain mesticize into suffering. So, often we suffer
based on the event that has long gone. Someone spoke say
something to me that hurts me. And that was yesterday. In my
dad’s case that was like 35 years ago you know. Fine that the Japanese invader China
kills lots of people. I got that. That’s a long time ago. You know, get over it. No. I’m
still suffering. I got that but that’s the difference in pain and suffering. You’re still suffering because you are
already behind the door and instead of just guarding the door, you’re chasing after the
demon, you know. So, we don’t use the word embodiment. We use the word mindfulness of the
body. Probably be the chief the same purpose which is to really focus on the body and
understand how the body interacts with the world, interacts with the surrounding,
interacts even if we don’t mind but at the same time, understanding how that initial
interaction doesn’t need to generate further reverberation
so to speak. And so. I’m going to disagree with you on that point. Please.
Please, please, Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Yes. One of the things
that I really struggled with when I first started learning
about yoga because I studied a little bit of Traveda Buddhism myself through Thai Ayurveda
because there’s acute basis in that, you know. Yes, yes. Last time you spoke to the four components, like I was like,
that’s exactly what I learned. Mm hmm. And I hit roadblocks and it, there was a level of
frustration of like, I was your dad. Of like, no, but there’s something else here that I
can’t explain and it’s not because I’m doing it wrong but
I must be doing it wrong because I don’t know the answer. Mm hmm. The the awesome thing that I’ve recently
learned that has helped me understand it at a very different level than how you’re
you just articulated it was in trauma therapy, you know, there’s a book called The Body
Keeps the Score. So, it’s not, It’s coming through your dad’s
mind and words to you but it’s in his body. There’s been an
effect on the physiology that has not shifted. There there
when those events happened like from the perspective like we’ll just say Thai, Thai medicine
from what I understood and learned in my lineage. There was a there was some kinks in
the hose of his sunlines like Meri the energy lines in his body and it eventually affected
the physical body which is like the slowest energy. And at that
level there wasn’t a release in block of energy and so it has continued and maybe had a
cumulative effect with other life stresses that have built on it. and the perspective for
Embodiment Coaching and a lot of trauma healing modalities but I try to separate those
two, you know, to keep my scope of practice safe and contained within my skill level is we
hold trauma in our tissue, in the actual fascia, in the connective tissue, and the
cellular structure and the neurology and the physiology
and when we can start to recognize that as an extremely wise adaptation of our bodies,
there’s less judgement. there’s, and then, we’re able to come at it with more curiosity and almost a sense of
deeper gratitude for the body’s adaptation. And I have this
sense that like the tissue, our our emotional body, our physical body, our mental body,
the different aspects have some sort of consciousness. We can’t
say what it is yet but there’s a recognition of like, thank you. Yes, I was trying to do this to protect you. This is
what I knew to do and it opens up a conversation where there’s
almost a release of like, thank you for finally validating me. Now, I can leave Or like, now,
your, the new, the new habits you want to, you’re free to do the new habits or the new I’m,
you know, so, it’s almost less of like, because when I first started working with clients,
I’d, I had clients that were in their sixties talking about stuff that happened when they were four and I, like, I was in
my 20s being like, what? Like, really, people hold on to this so long and then, as stuff continue to happen to me in my
adult life, I was like, oh, stud people hold on to this so long but then, there was an understanding of like, oh and
there’s an actual reason for it and it’s more and more explained now by science and by so much research there’s so and
what is so brilliant and cool about humans is in all this trauma research, it’s becoming
non-pathological, meaning, we’re not looking for problems, we’re looking for why it has worked, and through this
non-pathological paradigm, everything’s coming back to mindfulness as the solution to
heal. Mm hmm. So, it’s all coming back to the these ancient wisdoms and it’s science. Yes, looking back to
that path and for me, it’s such a like relief Because I love the knowledge of science and
the I love being stimulated in my intellect. I just have to balance. Yeah. The role of it. You know, when when it’s being
used or not. Cuz sometimes it is detrimental to my body. Sometimes it’s wonderful. You know. Um so, I may or may not
be disagreeing with you? I don’t think we are. I I I actually do not think that we might be like on the same page.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I I think we’re we’re adding to each other. Um. Yeah. So, I I want to you you said something
about and and then and then at and then also he said to him
about knowledge. Um so again, let me come back to you know.
Can I just read a lot? Yes, please Lydia Read. it. Yeah. I’m sorry. I thought you finished this. I’m sorry. This
was also a massage therapist. Okay. That’s a move. Let’s move. You gotta you got it.
Come on. You can’t let these two. Your perspective Someone who’s worked with each own a
little square. So, now is your square. Come on, Lydia. Come on, Elizabeth. yeah, I mean, I
think, I think you’re absolutely right, both of you, as far as, you know, the body
definitely being part of the medium of holding our, our pain and our trauma, you know, I
think kind of to touch back on what we were talking previously about the judgments and the stories. I think that was
something that during our work together was able to help me
kind of move through things a lot quicker was moving the story out of the way but just
connecting in with the body and you know, we would go through
kind of like almost like a a mini trans like meditation
where we I would connect in with the body and just notice what was coming up and you
know, in our sessions, it could be something innocuous or it could be something deep and you know, it’s just whatever the
body was wanting to express in that moment and you know, and I’ve noticed in my own
practices, the massage therapist that like when when we start moving in one of those
points, we might find that, okay, well, it does actually move up the fascia in a physical way to the next point
you know, like down the meridians and and and as we start to move one thing, it
starts to release something else and then, we move that thing and it releases something else. So, we might find that
there’s a lot wrapped up into just one point in the body that that can actually unwind a
whole history, a whole you know, an entire story that we’ve told ourselves like, you
know, from childhood or from whatever experience it was that we’ve shaped our world around.
So, it’s really interesting to that the body has such such
intelligence and such memory for our experiences too. Even when he intellectually might not connect to some of those
memories. This reminds me if I can just jump right in here. Um
after I’m going through a lot of you know meditation first on first starting out and you know
had a lot of releases of just being with you know pain and having a release and openings
and then you know layers and layers like an onion. So I I wanted this place and I I
talked to this healer and I was like you know you know, what’s this? I just kind of this got this ego going like, oh yeah,
you know, I can, I’m at a good space now, you know, and then he just said something like, oh, hey, what’s that resentment
for your day? No, he didn’t, he said, your shoulder, you’re holding resentment for your
father and I could immediately notice the shaking in my voice, like, and I didn’t see it right
away. I didn’t know what he was talking about. But in in my emotions were just there and they could say and I said, you
know, you know, thank you or whatever like that and so I went and set with that and sure enough, I mean, it was really
obvious and it was just kind of like, you know, a release and some weeping there and then,
low and behold, that that that part of the shoulder released because when I was doing yoga for years, I couldn’t like reach my arm all the way up
over my head. It was, I can only get it so because the pain was there, you know, I don’t
know, that’s that’s something that came to mind. It’s just, they call it cellular memory, right? Or cellular debris It’s
my vision isn’t there to see it but I can kind of into it. That’s how it is. Um Lydia
talked about a space. There’s this teacher called I forget her. Jill Shepherd I think. She
talks about ABC. Uh A bigger container. So when we can make this, you know, the space to
have this whole for these things to to happen. Lydia’s already talked way more
eloquently than I could about this but I want to go back to this thing validation because this is a big thing in the
feminine, right? In worthiness too and this comes from in the
same way with with male, the male side, honor and respect. The only way we’re going to get these qualities to the degree
that we need and want is from the inside. So, the more we can give ourselves honor and
respect. The more we can give ourselves value and validation, right? And that’s what, you
know, Lydia’s method helps with that. It actually puts kind of like a real-life situation on
validation with the body talk thing. So, yeah more we can self validate, self realize
self worth, honor and respect. Um it it’s just I I found it so
helpful. One other thing before I pass on here is I just heard this new teaching about you
know self love and but what what would it what would it be
like now to give ourselves more self love without having to imagine ourself to be different
at all or you know, having to work so hard to have something
else happen What can we do just the way we are now for more self love? Mm hmm. And this is
not an ego thing, right? It it’s it’s a self care you know, self respect, self honoring,
worthiness, validation. Alright. Mm hmm. Thank you, Josh. Thank you, Lydia. Thank
you, Elizabeth So, I want to come back to this body, bodymen, body speak and I, I, I
heard for example when Elizabeth talks about the residual trauma that is
trapping the body. Josh talks about that. And so we we we
often use the Wakama. Kama as if comma is your destiny. But that’s not what kama means.
Kama just means memory. It just means memory. It means that if
you have a thought even though there’s no action that you didn’t really actually take it
into action. Just the thought itself has residual memory.
it’s not clear where that memory is. It may not be in the brain. It could be somewhere in
your body or maybe even outside the body. But it’s a cosmic memory of all the thought that
we might have. And so that’s why in Buddhist teaching is all about understanding your thought. And even if you have a
what we call it a a crystalla thought. A non-holesome thought. There’s consequence to that. Because comma in this
case is a is a memory. Right? Cuz it’s it’s we it’s really about electricity’s immediate
system, right? Cuz we, our body is nothing but a but a electrochemical factory.
Everything that we do is is chemical in nature and and then it’s also electrical in nature.
So, if there’s electricity, then there’s magnetism and there’s there’s magnetism, there’s memory because all
materials are pheromonetic. And once you have that in memory,
then, the next time you have similar action, then, that comes back and influence the
future. That’s when the karma as a destiny comes in, right?
And so the question is that, how does the body in a comma and work together? So, Lydia
and you both mentioned the word meridian. Uh meridian meaning that we have these energy lines
that flow in and our body. And the best way to to think about
them is that there’s 24 hours in a day and you can take that 24 hours and divide it into six
different segment And each four hour period, there’s a energy loop within you that is more
active than the others and that energy loop when it flows out
of the body is called yang and when it comes back it’s called yin. And each of the six yin
energy line is associated with each of the six yin organ. What we call the treasure organs. So
the heart, the lung, the splint, the liver, and the kidney. Now it turns out that
the heart is separate into both the mental heart and the physical. The physical heart is
called the pericardium. And that’s the yin energy. Now what’s interesting is that
there is also the yang energy which has to do with the yang organ. And these are the what we call the the vessel organs.
The treasure organs are the one that contains the essence. They were given to you And at the
time you were being developed. And where’s the vessel organs are the one that you could utilize then to digest and to
ferment food and to and so forth. Now what’s interesting is that there’s a organ,
there’s a energy line, there’s a yang energy line that has no western equivalent. It’s called
the triple warmer. And of course the warmer was a direct
translation from the Chinese word. That could mean warm or burn. That’s why sometimes
called a triple warmer. Sometimes it’s called triple heater. But that same word can also mean focus. So you can
also talk about triple focus. Because the Chinese separate the internal organs into three
sections. The upper burner, the middle burner, and the lower burner. And they talk about the
upper burner, the heart, and the lung is if they are the fog. They’re the one stick the
moisture, the nutrient from the outside and distribute into the body. And then they talk about the middle part as being
fermentation in the lower part is being the gutter where you
manage the waste but before that we claim the valuable. Anyway, there’s just one thing
that there’s no western equivalent. Which is called the triple warmer. So that has always been tricked me. At the
same time, there’s another thing that interests me, which is the fundamental a difference between western science,
western medical science and eastern medical science.
there’s a there’s a Chinese do not like to dissect dead
bodies. It’s considered the utmost
Well not not disgrace but I will insult to the family. The digest dissect the dead body.
So the Eastern’s medical science is not based on the cadiver. It’s actually based on
meditation. It’s really understanding this mature by my readings through deep meditation. Whereas the western
scientist always about the cadiver. It’s always about the body. Now what you notice? the dead ones yeah. What you notice
is that when the students when medical students when they enter medical school. They each
were assigned after they purchased a cadiver. And they actually spent months preparing
the condiver. And what is it that they do? They cut off all of the connective tissue. the
connected tissue is the conduit for memory. So, so that so, I
finally went back and they said, I gotta really understand what this triple warmer is because it makes no sense to me
and and and the English translation makes no sense to me and so, I finally found this
over old medical book, old Chinese medical book and I realized that the word for the
Chinese word that is used today has no, has, has a very old
meaning and when I look into that, it may, it means, to enter the closest meaning of
that is whatever it is it between cells.
So, when they talk about the triple warmer, the triple heater, whatever, it’s really
that one meridian that connects all the internal organs and the
one, the one exercise you can do to activate that energy field is by deep breathing, by
abdominal breathing because when you do abdominal breathing, you’re you’re exercising the diaphragm and the diaphragm is the mother of
all connected tissue and that, you’re actually doing self healing. You’re actually going
through the organ doing self healing. So, I I just find today’s conversation
fascinating, fascinating that we are coming at it from a different angle. Lydia talking
about Embodiment getting, his client to understand the body, getting them to appreciate the
trauma and and and then confronting it. Confronting it.
But why anchoring themselves onto the body, giving equal to the body of the intellect. I
Elizabeth speak, you know, similar idea doing the massaging and and healing and
and Josh talks about so now I understand that he hated his
father. I can tell from his shoulder.
Isn’t that fascinating how how he had that insight and then intuition? I don’t know. It’s
inside or just statistics. You know, it always works. Wow. Well, it’s also. I mean, as
someone who’s done body work, one of the things I was telling my dad, turns out, the other
day, yesterday, or the day before, I was like, so, I’ve recently been starting to add a
new modality into what I offer and it was a training I took recently and it’s kind of like
this this deeper, intuitive body healing meditation with
certain protocols and there’s an intellectual level to it and Elizabeth has received a couple
sessions and it’s like, what, why? Why does this so good? Ah. Um and one of the, I was sort
of explaining it to him. He’s conservative Christian so I have to like shift, you know,
how I’m saying things. So, it’s not scary, threatening. Um but
one of the things said was because I had worked on like
several thousand people at one point over time, there’s an
intelligence that we just lap in as intuition. Intuition is like an umbrella for so much of
our intelligence. We don’t have the English words to use. Um and I can, when clients would
call me on the phone, I knew what was going to I was going to work on. By their
their voice. When they would in the door, I could, their body was already talking to me. So,
yeah, touch is important because it’s this physical, tangible contact we have but the intelligence of my body and
their body was so much far beyond anything I could even say. That there was a level of
like, when I, when we learned Thai massage, we start off the body and we slowly come in as a practice of listening. Where do
you start feeling the warmth of the actual temperature of the body? Where do you start feeling the body actually
inviting you in versus pushing your presence in And so, is this intuitive practice that I
had in my training and in massage school where we would start listening from a distance
and by the time we got to the body, there was almost a recognition of my energy and their energy and like, a
recognition and there was already a validation of like, I’m holding space for you. You
have intelligence. Let’s see what happens and then, when I would work on people like in actual massages, sometimes I’d
be like, I’m not sure how to explain this but your body is saying you need to go do this. This is what showed up your
body wisdom and of course, I would start with consent like, are you open to more woo woo
ideas because I have, your body has something to say, but only if you want to hear it and so,
certain personalities like I’d work on ER doc doctors, I wouldn’t necessarily present it in that way compared to like
someone who owned a crystal shop, you know. Um going back to something, Elizabeth had
said before about how our body has memory and our, especially the fascia, turn out as Thai
massage had been has been studied more and more by like very intellectuals like PHD academics. Send lines match
fascial trains in the body. So, fascial trains actually go the
same way as the sunlines that seem like these energy magical
things in Thai and it was very affirming and confirming to like, of course, like, people
understand, the intuition, our ability to tune in to the living form through meditation
and awareness. Of course, it’s going to on some levels better than the dead could ever because there’s not that living
flow and movement and reactivity and response responsiveness. I was giving a
training back in 2012. and I had mentioned in the training,
sometimes when we work on each other, memory comes up just from us touching a certain
point. Within that training, there was this guy in his 50s and he suddenly had a repressed memory comeback from when he
was 10. So he didn’t remember it for 40 years. We were working on the shoulder and he suddenly broke down and said I
got shot when I was 10 in the shoulder. And it was when you
pressed on that spot. And so there was a, there was a a cellular memory, like you said,
Josh. In the fascia the connective tissue that was holding a pattern that came out
when presence, conscious presence, and physical touch was put into that spot and like, of course, that’s what we
weren’t trying to do that for anyone but it came up and then, he and then, he had to sort of
work through like me holding space as a teacher was like, okay, this is how you can kind of take care of your needs
while you can see how you want to continue to purchase participate in this training but it kind of, I immediately
thought of that when. Elizabeth was talking because I’ve had certain clients when I’ve worked on where certain things
happen and all of a sudden, there’s a memory and that’s even happened to me where repressed memory came up in a
massage when a certain body part was worked on. Well, we we actually go further than that.
We actually talk about memory of trauma from previous lives.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I have a little thing on my thigh that I don’t
know why. Every once in a while, I feel like I feel feel pain and and I remember talking
to one of my master and he says, well, maybe you were a warrior in previous life and got, you know, that was, you
know, he got shot in the thigh. And then inside like in
science, one of the things they’ve discovered, I think in the past decade, in epigenetics, is when the mother
is pregnant, the fetus, the baby inside, for the female,
already has all the eggs they’re going to have when they come out. Yes. Those eggs are
the, the grandchildren of the mother. Being affected by the mother’s experience. So, I I
was in my grandmother. Yeah. Mm hmm. Who was born in nineteen twelve Yeah. So, I am 100% have
had some level of effect of her body and what she was going
through when she was pregnant with my mom. Yeah. Mm hmm. And then when my mom was pregnant with me. Mm hmm. You know, so
that and then in for males, it also, it actually also passes three generations through our,
you know, that’s a whole, I don’t exactly understand everything but I always thought that was such an interesting concept where sometimes it
might even not be like the past life idea. It could just be like literally the past life of my grandma. But let’s let’s
let’s let’s go forward. You you have a for you know three
generation later. Yeah. If I yeah if I choose if you choose exercise it Yeah. And even more
so interconnected between all of us is the air we breathe. Right? They said like just about every particle of air
we’ve breathed. I forget the statistics I told. Did somebody know this? Like like we’ve
already all breathed each other’s air. I don’t know how many and no actually it’s something like like every
breath we take there’s some kind of particles that like Da
Vinci has breathed in. Or something like this. Something It’s almost gross you know.
Like I remember learning it at one point and being like what? Ah it’s so beautiful. Awesome
at the same time. That’s how like small the quantum world is and how you know limited supply
of like air we have and then how all connected we are. You know I guess. I you know it’s
it’s hard to kind of put that in perspective. Uh excuse me. If it’s so we should probably wrap this up. Um so I wanted to
remind of the conversation we had a month ago when Lydia was
first on. We talked about how inside timer is such a good place, such a good marketplace
to explore different ways of practicing spiritually but one
thing is missing is is that it it doesn’t allow to sort of
interactions among teachers. In fact, it does the opposite that it actually kind of sets up a
competitive environment because it’s a zero some game. You know, either I spend an hour here or I spend are there. So,
one of the thing that we like to do is to use this forum and
have more discussions among us and maybe introduce more variety to our students and and
and then kind of left us evolve on its own and continue, continue, continue, you know, with this information flow. So,
So, Elizabeth you’re, you’re the you’re you’re the newest person here. So, it’s a tradition that you start with
the wrap up and then we work on repeat. It’s a tradition because we just started today.
The starting of the the very first part of this tradition. Um well and and I knew I I
apologize. I have to run right after this but yeah. I I mean I’m I’m just so grateful for
being included in this conversation. Um you know I appreciate you Denny and and Joshua and Vienne and Lydia for
all the work that we’ve done together. Um this just feels like another beautiful iteration of of what we’ve done
and I’m I’m just really enjoyed this conversation, learned a lot, and yeah, I think this is
this kind of integration of of different modalities and different understandings is all
beneficial for our evolution as a species and and creating a a better world for us all. So,
thank you so much for allowing me to share in this with you guys. Thank you, Elizabeth And. before I give it, give the the
give it to Lydia Um, I, I just want to remind us of what Lydia said about healing and, and
what what she was describing how that she could just be on the phone and just having that
conversation with the person a person unseen and already you know she knew what the person
need. I, I, have heard that before or or healers have this gift and it’s just a matter of
how they exercise the skip. Now, now, I’m going to put up a a comment by Jonathan. Lydia
you, are amazing. Love seeing you sharing your gifts. See? See? And we were really good
friends in Florida and at one point, we did a little bit of a trade. He’s a brilliant artist
and graphic designer and helps people build out brands. Him and his wife and kid moved to
Arizona in the past few years when around the time I was moving out to Colorado and
yeah. So, that’s awesome that. Yeah. It’s awesome. If you’re listening in, amazing. Good to
see you. So so Lydia continue, continue. I’m going to have to
run. Thank you so much. Okay. Again, guys. Thank, thank you, Elizabeth Thank. you. Thank you so much. Buh bye. So, one of
the things that I didn’t mention about what kind of was unique about, I kind of want to
spiral back or whatever the word is, come back to. Boomerang. First thing. When
you were talking about self love before and how we can, there’s an invitation, especially in these times,
always, but right now, to like bring in more self love. and I’ve always had this
intellectual back and forth within myself of like, is more self love going to just boost our ego in the wrong way? Or is
it, like, what does that mean? And, you know, it’s this intellectual kind of abstract concept that like, how can I
actually be practical? And I discover this really beautiful experience using the Body Speak
Method on myself. So, like, we go into kind of a meditative space, set the tone, set
intention, and then we kind of open it up and I’m following my intuition being like, the last thing you said when we were
coaching was blah blah blah. Where do you feel this in your body? If it had a voice what would it say? And depending
again, it’s always this conversation of consent. If there’s any question I ask, you don’t want to answer, awesome.
If you’d rather say something else, awesome. We’re we’re just opening up the possibility of
what could be said or the voice And one of the questions is, if this part of you had an age,
what would it be? And there’s a lot of inner child work on the internet and on social media and it’s always about like
going back into your childhood and reparing yourself in those moments. Cool. and it just
takes us back in the story and out of our body. Hm. A lot of times. And that’s what it’s done for me. And what I loved
about kind of this technique, I sort of, I want to say I sort of developed because turns out
there’s a lot out there that’s very similar to this.
What age is that voice? Let’s have that voice sit right now on the table and say what they
want to say. What do you need right now, four year old, from me? So, I was doing that in my journaling and it came up.
There was a two-year-old voice in me that had a voice that wanted to say something. I was like, what do you want to say?
And the two year old was like, can you just give me a hug before you go to bed every night? And it was just like,
like tears of like, it’s that simple and my first like
acknowledgement to the two-year-old voice was like, I don’t know if I’m going to remember to do that. Like, I’m sorry, I’m going to be a bad
parent to you. But then it was just this such a gentle
experience of like this young voice just wanted my attention
a little bit more consistently. And all it wanted was a hug. All it wanted was like what you
were saying. Just a little bit of self love. A little bit of like I love you. I got you. You’re here with me. I want I’m
paying attention to you. And like meeting so many needs that maybe at various times. Being
at the fourth out of five children. Maybe I didn’t get. You know and it might have felt a little traumatic to the two
year old or whatever it was. But there was no part of me that had to go back into any memories because it was right
there in that present moment and I felt a shift in my heart space and like you talked about
the pericardium which is like the wrapping of the heart. So,
there was like a softening of that protective space in my heart, you know? And it was such a gentle discovery that
like I didn’t know and the other day, I was having, I because I practiced this kind
of conversation with myself. I was having some anxiety come up like a decent amount like where I was like frustrated of like,
can I go to the Thanksgiving dinner? I don’t know So, I was like, okay, get into your body.
Go into the shower, feel the water, just meditate on the feeling of water on your body. You know, get, feel that. Come
out of the stories. When I was in the shower, this inner
little voice came up again and it was like, whenever you have anxiety, it’s, I’m trying to get your attention. There,
you’re not listening to me. You’re trying to make me go away. And it was, again, it was
this like, what? I’m so sorry. Like, there was just such a level of inner compassion and
deepening of like, I was coming into the body but because I’ve opened some of these ideas of
like any part of me can have a voice, any age can have a voice. Let’s see what happens. I’m willing to listen. Be
sponta moments of using mindfulness of like I’m in my head, my nervous system is
activated, let me settle, feels, water, do some breath work in the shower, and then it
opened into this beautiful wisdom that immediately me validating, of course, I want to be here, I’m so sorry,
I want to learn how to listen to you and hear you, and hear your needs, and like put you first, and not ignore you, and
then there was just this wisdom of how to shift out of this place of anxious thought,
immediately, and then I was able to go about my day in like a way that I was like, what? How is this possible? And again
was like I love creativity, I love art. I love imagination. So, this feeling of like, we
get to take the wisdom we’re receiving from these lineages and from life and then, really
make it our own and do it our own way and I love some of the
techniques I use. So, I use them on myself. This is beautiful, Lydia. Uh. it it it
is like this paradox between, you know, if we’re too lost in story that could be unhelpful
but if we don’t listen to stories and validate them and use them as a way to understand
ourselves and lives and all of our experience. So, it’s For me, it’s a balancing act between those and you know, for
me, to to tune in to that innocence, unfortunately, or fortunately, it took like some
devastation to really wake up to that deep truth within me that I was not only like
ignoring my innocence but also kind of like brushing it off
and and confusing it for for stupidity and unconsciousness too which it’s not. Innocence
is not unconscious it’s yeah and and it Well, I I’ll I’ll
forgore forego a personal story since we’re we’re running out of time here but yeah, it’s
it’s such a beautiful practice that that press that Lydia’s
talking about. Thank you, Josh. Thank you, Lydia So, so as you was talking, as Lydia as you’re
talking, I, I, I, I’m, I, I think back to the days when I
was an assistant professor at UCLA and so, I was there for the total of nine years but after the six years, I get to
take one year off the sabbatical. It’s about and so, I decided to spend that year in
Caltex. So, it’s not very far from UCLA but it’s a world apart and Caltech is small
school, very prestigious school and a lot of famous people there and one of the person who is really famous there is
professor Richard Feiman and of course, by the time I got there, he already passed away and he’s a very, very famous
person, you know, Nope lawyer and all that and and I just love his books and the one that
I love the most is the one that says, why do you care what other people would think?
So so if if I want to kind of put things in context and I think, you know, as fellow
teachers, what we really wanted to do here is to give you, share with the students our own
experience on how to provide liberation you know, liberation to our mind, liberation, as
much as liberation to our material needs, it’s liberation to our spiritual needs and so,
the idea that that we own our own spiritual well-being And
that you know the judgement, the all that. We’re going to
put that in perspective. You know so so I remember so in my case in my case even though I
don’t use the same word, I don’t use the word embodiment. No, do I, I totally get it. I I
like to use the word cheap positive. As in body positive.
Because the chi, the energy is something that you can experience that noone else can. And so if you could actually
experience your own energy in your meridians then it’s exactly what Professor Fireman
says. Why do you care what other people would think? I love that saying I use it a lot of time. What other people
think about me is none of my business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you
Lydia Thank. you so much for inviting Elizabeth and and really put so much thought into
today’s topic which is Embodiment and Coaching and
Embodiment Coaching To get together. Yeah and you know, embodiment was just kind of the
word that felt like the umbrella term of so many things. You know what I mean? Yeah. Cuz I could, I could be
like. Yeah, yeah. Who would have coach? And I’m like, hey, like all the other words I was trying to intellectually figure out my title. Like, did just
didn’t have it and embodiment. I was like, oh, Embodied Embodied Touch, Embodied
Emotion, and like it covered like, you can put any word under that and it becomes the adject to describe a more full
experience of that. And I want to I want to extend a deep gratitude for both of you that
you’ve created this space because selfishly I I got an amazing
testimonial. From from Elizabeth Like. so much of what she said I was like wow. Like
really? That’s so awesome. Cuz you don’t always hear. the experience. You know of someone
that you’ve worked with. So it was like really cool to see how the work together has really
played out for her and I knew some of it but it was amazing but also just this paradigm of
like collaboration and like discussion across modalities and kind of paradigms. I mean,
I think most of it, we pretty much share very similar paradigms. And I want to I want to thank you Lydia too
because you know, anybody that’s on the wisdom side, they can immediately hear and know
and ponder Lydia’s wisdom and anybody that’s energetically sensitive can sense into the
amount of and clients she’s had and the amount of embodied
intuitive wisdom that comes across that we that those of us that are energetically
sensitive can pick up on. So, it’s it’s it’s an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to have you on here. So, and I
want to say to both of you, I’ve had several clients and students from Insight Timer
that told me they were listening the first time to the live and they loved it. Cuz I didn’t know who had shown up,
you know, and I wasn’t comments necessarily from last time but it was very cool like rewarding
even like two days ago. Someone was like, oh, I was on that live. It was so cool and this and this and this and I learned
this and I learned. So, just for you both to know, there’s people listening in. Good to
see you. I will. Well, on that note, on that note, let’s let’s let’s plan on meeting again a
month from today and let me let me see what that would be. That would be. It’ll be between
Christmas and New Year’s ish. Let me see. And then What I wanted to do is to if I only
know how to spell calendar. Lydia why, he’s doing that? Why don’t you plug your stuff? Um and I’ll plug it. Yeah. Okay.
Well, for any of you that are listening that aren’t on Insight Timer, it’s a meditation app we’ve all been
referencing. It’s there’s a free option where you just download it onto your computer
or your phone and it has over, what is it now? Like, 40 000
meditations that are free you can listen to and what I love about this app is there’s so much free **** stuff and you
can listen so many teachers go live at any point. I think there’s like 20 million people
on the app now. And then the membership aspect gives you access to like a lot of courses
and just so much. And if you’re an artist or creator of any kind, you can become a teacher
on the app and it’s so beautiful. There’s so many people that play music and like do woo woo stuff like card
readings and all that stuff. So I really highly encourage people to check that out if you
haven’t. And we can either put the comments or say it now. Mine is Lydia Grace on there.
Um so you can like look each of us up on the app and my
website, it’s a little bit obscure. I haven’t gotten the simple URL now but it’s the
Lydia Grace.new Zender.com but
I have various services on there that I offer. I do offer obviously one-on-one embodiment
coaching but I have free library of resources and then, online workshop that I’ve done
that you can learn from on pretty much all the topics I covered today and more And I’m
on Instagram Joyful Nomad. So, I’m on various social aspects
but I, you know, you subscribe to Denny’s, Denny, Denny, and Josh’s or Denny’s channel. I
don’t know if it’s both of you? Well, we we we cross posted and all this will be linked on my
on the show notes for this on my site integrating. Oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah. So, and I love your notes. So, I saw them last
time. It’s very thorough. I love notes anyway. So, it’s awesome. So, so yeah, I I had a
a couple Black Friday deals that I’m extending through the end of today for anyone that’s showing up. If you wanted to
check out what I offered. I always say, just go with your intuition. Go with what you
resonate with. You do not have to take anything that anyone ever advertises. Your body knows what’s best for you in
your timing, you know? So, like, so many people have spoken so highly of you, Denny
of your qigong classes, and you do lives, right? With meditation, Josh on Insight Timer. Yes and I’ll just jump
in here real quick. Uh tomorrow I’m doing a line. I’m lying down on the job Uh doing lying down meditation. Then I’ve got
a virtual eye gazing thing coming up which will be interesting because I never heard anything like that. And
then then then a mindfulness is speaking thing. So that’ll be I’m on inside. It’s inside
timer.com slash integrating presence. So. And I wanted to say to both of you I still have the interview function on my
lives. So I almost want to try and experiment with either one or both of you to see if actually works. Well, I wonder
if you could just have that come up why we’re doing next months if that will work. Well,
that’s what, yeah, that’s what I’m curious about because I get set up like my phone. Cuz Denny and I don’t have that option, I
don’t think. So, yeah. That’d be cool. Last, we looked at it and I it didn’t look like I had it anymore but I checked like
yesterday. I was like, oh my goodness, I have, it still says interview. I wonder, I’ve never used it. So, it’ll be an experiment but maybe I I can
try to make. It would be good. Yeah. It would happen. Okay, well, let’s let’s pencil in December twenty-8th. That’s the
last Tuesday of December. Last Tuesday of two thousand twenty-one at two o’clock Pacific Time. And for those of
you who are watching either live or or recorded put in a
comment what you want Lydia and Josh and I talk about. Yes.
Show request. If you don’t, then, we are going to find our own topic and then you’ll be sorry. In my circle embodied
living on Insight Timer. So, if you saw the link there, put what you want us to talk about next time. I I send out an Email list, send it to my
Email, wherever. Let any of us know and we will take. So, we’ll, this, this show is
called Ask Us Anything, okay? That’s right. Alright? So, with that. Denny’s Circle and and
Lydia’s Circle join invite, open invite for both to join both. So. Oh Okay. Okay. Can
you yeah. Cool. Let me end the stream and then we continue to talk. okay? Thank you. Alright, with that, thank you so much
and we’ll see you next next time, which will again be the
last Tuesday of the month, that would be December 28th.
Integrating Presence 
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