0:27

Today I am delighted to welcome

0:30

Jane Peterson. Hi Jane!

0:32

Hi.

0:33

And she is the founder of the

0:35

Human Systems Institute and an

0:37

international trainer of systemic constellation

0:39

work. She has a PhD

0:41

in human and organizational systems,

0:44

and she's developed an approach called Somatic

0:46

Imaging that finds the family system

0:48

in the body. She's a wonderfully

0:50

effective teacher whom I have been

0:53

privileged to learn from, and I am

0:55

so grateful to her for coming here

0:57

today, Oh, thank

0:59

you. Thank you for having me. I'm glad

1:01

to be here.

1:02

All right, so I'm gonna kick

1:04

us off by asking you the question

1:06

I asked everybody who comes on this

1:08

podcast, which is, what is

1:10

your favorite story and

1:13

how did it help you in your life, and

1:15

or what does it say

1:16

about you? So

1:19

uh, that was a tough question. First of

1:21

all, I've I'm a story lover from

1:23

way back, so I've been collecting stories forever

1:25

and I, I think it's not so much

1:27

that I have a favorite story as

1:30

the role that story played in my early

1:32

life. So as a little girl,

1:34

I got the Disney, you know, fairy tale

1:36

book and of course I was reading all those fairy

1:38

tales. And then as I got a little older, my

1:40

mother had one of the old original

1:42

story books. So I got to read these same

1:45

stories in much more complex

1:47

form, you know, in late 1800's book

1:50

of fairy tales. And

1:52

the heroines were much more

1:54

empowered, much more... it was so

1:56

interesting the difference between those. So that

1:58

was a moment of like,

2:01

whoa, what is the story I'm being

2:03

told? And then when I was a, a

2:05

little girl, a little girl, my

2:07

dad used to walk me down to the public

2:09

library and he would read to

2:11

me. And of course he was not so much into fairy

2:13

tales and stuff like that, so he would get all these

2:15

adventure stories of John

2:18

Paul Jones in the Navy, you know, and,

2:20

and he read me the story of Sacagawea,

2:22

an old story, you know, here in the

2:24

United States. And so he would read me all

2:27

these stories and so very adventuresome

2:29

stories. So they both fired

2:32

at my imagination. And I

2:34

also learned to be a little skeptical

2:36

of story. Early on to realize that

2:39

it casts people in different lights, even though

2:41

I couldn't have explained that to you as a

2:43

smaller, you know, child or as

2:45

a, a young girl. So it really

2:47

helped me see that stories

2:50

conceal and reveal they set

2:52

up certain possibilities and exclude

2:54

others, and that they have an active

2:57

role to play in the way that we

3:00

construct our lives and they

3:02

can enable us or constrain us.

3:05

So I, I developed a relationship with

3:07

Story. And of course I'd love to read.

3:09

So I, I would read anything. I'll read

3:11

Forbes magazine, if it's sitting in front of me, I don't

3:13

care. I'll read this, read

3:16

anything. It's just, you know, what is that story,

3:18

right? What is that story?

3:21

So and then I met Barnett Pearce when I

3:23

was in my graduate program, who's

3:25

one of the leading theorists

3:27

of human communication. And he

3:29

really had this way of looking at story

3:31

to see what it does, how

3:33

does it function, what does it do? So that

3:36

relationship to story, I think is

3:38

what I gained from my early

3:41

encounters with story rather

3:43

than a story that defined my life.

3:46

Yeah. I mean, I completely relate

3:48

to that. I also have memories of trips

3:50

to the library when I was a, a young child

3:53

and of discovering the original

3:55

fairy tales with the original endings,

3:57

which was usually much more gruesome than...

4:00

Much more grim, right? Yeah. Consequences

4:02

were really clear right?

4:05

Like, oh, like, okay, this is obviously

4:07

not for children.

4:08

No, very different stories, right?

4:11

But they were told the children. So that's a really

4:13

different shift in the way we think about children

4:16

these days, you know.

4:16

But that's the interesting thing, cuz I think, and

4:19

I'm deviating a little bit, but the fairy

4:21

tales as they were originally

4:23

told, you know, like the Grim brothers.

4:26

They just wrote down stories

4:28

that had been passed down orally. And

4:31

they were not for children originally. They came

4:33

from oral traditions and they were for adults,

4:35

you know, hence the gruesome ends.

4:38

Right. Right. And they often had some kind of moral

4:40

or ethical, you know, they were reinforcing

4:43

the norms and values of their culture, and so

4:45

that's what the stories did.

4:47

And they got also modified

4:50

by Christianity. There's a

4:52

lot of things that happened to fairy tales and tales

4:54

when Christianity arrived. And just like,

4:56

you know,

4:57

Right. Yeah.

4:58

Some characters became demons

5:01

or witches when actually they were not

5:03

in the original tales.

5:05

Yeah.

5:06

Yeah, Babayaga is one of them. And

5:08

so you started going into that.

5:10

I think you have a lot to say about the place

5:12

of story in your work. And we started talking about

5:14

your dissertation about metaphor, and I'd love

5:17

to hear more about that.

5:19

One of the things I came across in my doctoral

5:22

wanderings, I guess I'll call 'em, my, my

5:24

studies, was conceptual metaphor

5:27

theory, which is uh, Lakoff and Johnson's

5:29

theory that what we learned

5:31

by being embodied beings in the world

5:34

structures what we can think about. It structures

5:37

the way, it's a very human way that we think about

5:39

the world. So for us, toddling

5:41

around on two feet up is good. Down

5:43

is not so good, and. So,

5:46

so we we tell stories based

5:48

on our human experience and

5:50

we use metaphor as a way of understanding

5:52

things that are not so

5:55

accessible to direct. You know,

5:57

we can't necessarily put your fingers

5:59

around them. That's a metaphor, right? But

6:01

they give us a way to relate to our world.

6:04

And so we're always making

6:06

stories. There's some nice research, Daniel

6:08

Kahneman is one of them, that

6:10

shows that we kind of have a storymaking mind.

6:13

We have a remembering storytelling mind,

6:15

but we also have an embodied in the moment living,

6:18

you know, kind of body mind,

6:20

if you will, that experiences the

6:22

world really differently. And

6:25

those two don't necessarily know the same things.

6:27

They kind of have different quote bodies of knowledge.

6:30

And the storymaking mind is not

6:32

tethered by the body so much, which

6:35

is good in one way because

6:37

it can imagine things that don't exist

6:39

right now, so possibilities that are not

6:41

present and bad in another is

6:43

that it can really kind of, you know, leave reality.

6:47

You know, stories are fascinating. They can keep

6:49

secrets, they can you know, they work

6:51

in families in sometimes ways that are corrosive

6:54

because they hide, they reveal

6:56

while trying to conceal the

6:58

family is. And says

7:01

you're forbidden to remember and forbidden to forget.

7:03

Right? So they can work in really mysterious ways.

7:06

Yeah, so story is is quite

7:08

an active thing. You

7:11

know, it's something that we're always making.

7:13

We have to explain the world to ourself, to know

7:15

how to interact with it. And how we do that

7:18

and what we do with the stories we make,

7:20

that's always fascinated me. So,

7:22

I don't know if I answered your question, but hopefully I came

7:24

close.

7:24

Yeah.

7:25

So in my dissertation, that was your question. So

7:28

I came across a, a body of research

7:30

that was a symposium

7:32

at MIT and they were

7:34

looking at assistive technology. And because

7:37

we were having kids coming back from Afghanistan

7:40

and Iraq, missing limbs and, you know,

7:43

needing this, I got interested in it. And

7:45

what was so interesting about it was

7:47

that they had different researchers presenting

7:50

their research and

7:52

the story they had of what human beings

7:54

are, shaped the kind of research

7:56

they did. So if you believed man

7:58

was a machine, you tried

8:00

to integrate human beings with machines.

8:03

There was another MD who was working

8:06

on spinal cord injuries, who had a metaphors

8:08

of plants and he was actually growing

8:11

neurons and stretching them and

8:13

then, you know, using them to bridge the

8:15

damage. And it was so fascinating the

8:17

way the story that

8:19

we have of what we are as human beings shaped

8:21

the worlds that we made.

8:23

Hmm.

8:24

And so I got really interested as another

8:26

way of seeing what does story do? How

8:28

is it working in the world?

8:30

That's fascinating. I'm so excited I'm listening

8:32

to you. I'm like, oh, this is so cool.

8:34

Yeah. So it, it was really

8:37

stark, the difference, you know,

8:38

Yeah.

8:39

So the stories we tell are consequential.

8:42

Yeah, they are. I think they're so

8:44

consequential because our subconscious, that

8:46

takes 95% of our decisions

8:49

only responds to story.

8:51

Story and metaphor. That's how it understands

8:53

the world. Exactly. Right. Yeah.

8:55

And so that makes sense that the, the stories

8:58

and metaphors that we create or that we understand

9:00

with our human understanding is

9:02

what the subconscious is feeding upon

9:04

to make decisions in our life.

9:07

Right. So if we have a story of a tree

9:09

that is lumber and

9:12

fruit and shade that's

9:15

how we treat a tree. And there's some really wonderful

9:17

research that's been published in book form

9:19

lately that shows about the mother tree,

9:22

that shows that trees are actually communities,

9:24

very complex living communities that shape

9:27

climate, that do all this

9:29

kind of stuff. But our story is lumber,

9:32

you know, fruit. So we've

9:34

taken this very complex

9:36

ecosystem and simplified it down to things

9:38

that are useful for humans. And

9:40

so there's a place where we need a different story.

9:43

We need a story that's more complex. We

9:45

need a story that's more complete. Some of the older

9:48

indigenous stories were those

9:50

stories of relationship, relationship

9:53

with another living system, not

9:55

relationship with an object that's, you know,

9:57

available for humans. Yeah, we need

9:59

different stories in these times and people

10:02

who can craft the stories

10:04

that we need to inspire us cuz stories

10:07

can be a source of inspiration and

10:09

guidance and show us directions we

10:11

can go. Now those stories

10:13

are really important right now cuz

10:16

they organize us.

10:18

Yeah. And I think one

10:20

of the reasons that we are where we are is because

10:22

we've lost the story of interdependence

10:25

along the way. Yeah. That's why

10:27

stories are doubly important because

10:30

I think at some point we knew, how

10:32

our metaphors were shaped around interdependence.

10:35

And then as, you know, civilization

10:37

grew and Christianity and like, you know, colonization...

10:40

colonization and all of

10:41

Yeah, the story of money, the story

10:43

of being able to take two completely unique

10:46

different force and make them the same

10:48

by having them be the same amount of money. Right.

10:51

So the story of money and the way we exchange,

10:53

you know, give and take, is so important for us as human

10:55

beings in our societies. And that

10:58

story has really, I think,

11:00

separated us from the uniqueness

11:03

of life. And each, each

11:05

place is unique. Each plant is unique.

11:07

You know, each human is unique and somehow

11:10

we've kind of made them into interchangeable

11:12

parts and that separated

11:14

us from our own soul, I think in

11:17

many ways.

11:18

I really feel that, and I love

11:21

how you put it into words cuz I've, I'd

11:23

never really considered

11:25

that one of the reasons why

11:27

we struggle so much is because we don't

11:29

have that story. It's not in our metaphor,

11:32

we don't see it anymore.

11:34

It's like, we are blind to it, of

11:36

that story of interdependence with the world

11:38

and with the universe, and, and

11:41

we don't feel it in our bodies because the way that

11:43

we live is not, you

11:45

don't feel it in your body.

11:46

You can be completely surrounded by human made

11:48

things, right? And

11:51

not even see those as things that somebody

11:53

made for you. That there's a relationship in

11:55

that thing. You know, that that sofa, that chair,

11:57

that whatever, that plate of food, right?

11:59

So I think we really have lost the story

12:02

of connection, the story of interdependence.

12:04

So we need to, we need to tell those stories,

12:06

right? So we need to start

12:09

writing those stories and sharing those stories

12:11

and reminding what we know

12:13

at such a deep level. And I think

12:15

the story that we have right now, even

12:18

though it's, you know, there's many, there's stories that can be

12:20

told, there's untold stories, there's lived stories,

12:22

there's, you know, stories that can't be told.

12:24

And one of the stories that is being

12:26

told right now in people's mental

12:29

health, in their bodies, is the story

12:31

of being lost. If I had to say there's

12:33

a theme among a lot of my work

12:35

is the story of being lost, of

12:38

being disconnected, of being isolated,

12:41

of feeling alone. And we're, we

12:43

didn't evolve that way. Right.

12:45

Somebody once said, I think you can take the human

12:48

out of the savannah, but you can't take that savannah

12:50

out of the human, right? You know, we come from where we

12:52

come from as social people and

12:54

social creatures. And so when we

12:56

lose that, we do feel lost.

12:59

And then a lot of illness stems from that.

13:02

Yeah. Absolutely. I really believe

13:04

that, and I, I feel like the

13:06

more I work with people

13:08

and the more I work with groups and the, the

13:10

more I see that the only thing, most

13:13

of the time, the only thing that's needed is to feel

13:15

connection. And then the system starts

13:17

kind of like reorganizing itself and,

13:20

you know, everything starts

13:22

shifting.

13:23

Yeah, exactly. We have something to organize

13:25

with and around, you know, by ourselves.

13:27

Like, I see you can't really take a human off

13:29

of Earth very well and have a human anymore.

13:33

What is it that you've got? Right? We

13:35

just need each other so much and

13:37

need this world so much.

13:40

Yeah, we do. Cuz we're in a body.

13:42

Right? Yeah. And that's been one of our more

13:44

especially in organizations, one of our more interesting

13:47

stories is that we could be minds on a stick, right?

13:50

As if there's nobody there.

13:52

No body there, right? So

13:55

how, how does that work? Right? It's the organizations,

13:57

the bodies are messy. They need things,

13:59

they fall in love, they get in

14:02

fights, they die. You know, it's like bodies

14:04

are messy. So they have been excluded

14:06

from a lot of parts, from our religions, from,

14:09

you know, our workplaces.

14:11

And it's like, how are we supposed to be whole

14:13

and healthy in a place that doesn't have

14:15

a story that includes the body, right?

14:17

And especially since the body holds our

14:20

story as you know very well, cuz

14:22

you're the magical body reader.

14:26

Yeah.

14:27

Which, you know, I should say for the people who listen

14:29

to us, that Jane can read people,

14:31

like she can see somebody and have

14:34

a lot of information about their story. And

14:36

I'm, I'm curious about that, you know, like

14:38

how, how that came about for

14:40

one and how you navigate it. Cuz

14:43

I'm sure it's not always easy to have so,

14:45

so much information also and also

14:47

maybe talk a little bit, for people who don't know,

14:49

like how, you know, from birth

14:51

like the story gets imprinted from the very

14:54

beginning.

14:55

Right. So let's start with that.

14:57

There's a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver

15:00

Wild Geese. She says, "you only have

15:02

to let the soft animal of your body love

15:04

what it loves". Tell me about your,

15:06

just bear yours and I will tell you mine

15:09

and i, I have thought of that poem

15:11

many times in terms of the soft

15:13

clay of your body, the soft,

15:16

you know, this animal part of

15:18

us that is shaped by all

15:20

of the things that happened to us from

15:22

before we come in to, through,

15:25

you know, gestation to birth all

15:27

of the events of our lives and all of those are relational.

15:30

So it's almost like our body is like this

15:33

image of all the relationships

15:35

that have been important to us. They've

15:37

shaped the way we stand, the way we

15:39

speak, the way we breathe.

15:42

You know, those have all been shaped by relationships.

15:45

If we're in supportive relationships

15:47

where we can be ourselves, you'll see people actually

15:49

literally take up space, their chest will actually

15:51

have space. If they've been in a

15:54

dangerous place, you know, you see the armoring on the

15:56

back and the collapse and the high breathing,

15:58

and that shapes everything about how we

16:00

see the world. I sometimes torture

16:03

my students a little bit I I make

16:05

them get into very uncomfortable tense postures

16:07

and then have another person tell them a short emotional

16:10

story and ask them what they thought

16:12

of the story, right? Because our state

16:14

affects our perception. And then I let

16:17

them relax and tell the same story. And

16:19

they say, well, that's a really different story, are you sure it was the

16:21

same? Right? Because the state

16:23

that our body is in shapes

16:26

what we're able to receive from our environment.

16:29

And so if we've come through a

16:31

history or her story

16:33

or their story of difficulty,

16:37

then that is gonna shape what

16:39

we can receive and perceive from

16:41

the environment, how we see things.

16:43

And there's plenty of, you know, this is one of those

16:45

evidence-based areas where there's plenty of research

16:48

that backs that up, that if we're

16:50

tense and tight, we don't hear things,

16:52

we see a neutral face as angry and so

16:54

on. So yeah, so

16:57

this is our preceptor, this

16:59

physical self is how we must interact

17:02

with all realms. And if

17:04

it's unhealthy or if we've grown up

17:06

without even knowing what freedom is

17:08

in our body, then it's hard

17:10

for us to perceive that in relationship with

17:13

the outside world. If we've grown

17:15

up feeling lost and unwanted, which

17:18

unfortunately is true for many

17:20

people in this world it's hard

17:22

for us to even imagine what

17:25

it could feel like to belong, what

17:27

it could feel like to be safe, to have a place.

17:30

And I know since you're working with therapists, often

17:32

we have to start there. People have no reference

17:34

experience. Like I say, trying

17:37

to cook with oregano when you don't know what it tastes

17:39

like. Right. How are you supposed

17:41

to... what is safety? If you don't

17:43

know what it is, how do you make yourself

17:45

feel safe? Right? You've gotta discover

17:48

that in relationship cuz those

17:50

are relational wounds that have shaped us

17:53

at the same time, there can also be possibilities

17:56

where people believed in us, you know,

17:58

inspired us or you know, cheered

18:00

us on when we needed encouragement.

18:02

So all of those stories

18:06

of relationship in our experience

18:08

are there. The thing

18:10

that I found that helped me understand, cuz once

18:13

I actually had a conversation with one of our

18:15

German leader teachers, Gunthard

18:17

Weber, where I was fairly new, and

18:20

he's a big German bear of a guy,

18:22

really sweet guy. He says, I can

18:25

tell you by looking at a person's face,

18:27

whether they were misused or who's most

18:29

important to them, he rattled off this bunch of stuff

18:31

and I didn't know him very well, so

18:34

I said, well, that's a big claim, prove

18:36

it. And so he started with me and then

18:38

my husband. So I

18:40

was like, oh, that's, you know, that

18:42

was pretty accurate. And so we actually

18:44

started a little project where I took some

18:46

of my students' pictures before and after Constellation

18:49

and had him look at what he saw in the face,

18:52

and then I'd done their work so I knew what their

18:54

story was and he was like 80%.

18:57

Like, that's really good. So

18:59

that got me started. I studied Paul

19:02

Ekman's work, you know, the primary

19:04

facial expressions. I studied everything I

19:06

could. And because he

19:08

was saying that about the face, I started to think,

19:10

well, if you could get that from that face, what

19:13

can you get from the whole body? Right? So

19:15

I just started experimenting and

19:17

I found that I could tell

19:19

a lot from people's body by using my

19:21

own body in relationship with theirs.

19:24

So by letting people just stand

19:26

in space and kind of presenting a challenge

19:29

to them with another body all kinds

19:31

of stuff would show up. And, you know,

19:33

I could even start to see what was

19:35

there. And then when it's

19:37

like the scales fell from my eyes, I'm like, why

19:40

don't we see this? You know, how,

19:42

how is it we go through life without actually

19:44

seeing each other. And that's where I came

19:46

across Robin Dunbar's work, the Social

19:48

Brain Hypothesis. And

19:51

he was looking at primate troops,

19:54

and noticed that when they got to a certain size,

19:56

they split. Mm. And

19:58

his theory is that it takes a lot of

20:00

social, you know, to keep track of, do

20:02

I owe you lunch today or do you owe me,

20:05

right. To keep track of all that

20:07

it takes a lot of mental space and

20:09

so we can really only handle

20:11

so many close connections. So

20:13

like, I don't care how many friends you have on, on Facebook,

20:16

you know, our capacity to

20:18

really track close relationships

20:20

is not that big. And

20:22

so I think in our modern world,

20:25

we don't grow up in tribes where everybody's

20:28

known everyone since the time you were born.

20:30

And so we've learned to blunt

20:32

our vision to slide

20:34

by each other without seeing. And

20:36

that is functional when you're

20:39

in a workplace or you're going

20:41

to the subway past three or four hundred people

20:43

and seeing their suffering would not

20:45

help you with your day, right?

20:47

But when we take that home, it's not functional.

20:50

When that becomes the way we go through the world of

20:52

not really perceiving

20:54

people, not bringing ourselves into relationship

20:56

with them. And just to give an example

20:59

of you know, some of the things that I've seen,

21:02

there was one woman where I would usually

21:04

start about six feet away because

21:06

at six feet you start to perceive

21:09

bodies, not faces, you get closer

21:11

and our brain switch, start to see face.

21:14

So I start just outside of that and

21:16

would stand in front of the person.

21:18

And I stood in front of one woman

21:21

and I had the urge to hit her.

21:23

She flinched and I had the urge to hit

21:25

her. And I thought, who is this? Cuz I

21:27

know that would not be my normal thing. And

21:30

so I just, to see what happened cuz we were, you

21:33

know, just playing around and she was, I was not gonna hurt

21:35

her. I raised my arms and

21:37

she had protection over her face

21:39

so fast. And I thought, okay,

21:41

who is this? She had

21:44

been in an abusive relationship

21:46

and her husband would come at her with both fists

21:48

from the front. And so she

21:50

had that instinct just like

21:53

it was just there in her body. And

21:55

the complaint that she had is, she said, I had

21:57

a great boss. I really like my boss, but

21:59

I'm always angry with him and I dunno why.

22:02

And so after this little experiment, I said,

22:04

well, how does your boss approach you? And

22:07

he would come, probably because he wanted

22:09

to be respectful, he would line

22:11

up and approach her from the front. Which

22:14

is where her body had learned that's

22:16

danger, right? So when we

22:18

were able to separate the boss and the

22:21

ex-husband she could feel more relaxed

22:23

with him there. So she could

22:26

you know carry on with her work and enjoy

22:28

her good boss, without

22:31

having this old unknown

22:33

trigger, you know, that was there as a story

22:35

in her body. So we could see it and

22:37

bring it out.

22:39

That's wonderful. And it's also so interesting

22:42

that, that you responded to the story

22:44

in her body. Like your body responds

22:46

to the story in her body.

22:48

We do that automatically with each other without

22:50

realizing what we're responding

22:52

to, right? So we don't know. We just

22:54

pick it up. This is one of the reasons

22:56

I like Arnie Mendell's work because he talks

22:58

about two bodies sort of dreaming each other

23:01

up, the the dream body, right?

23:03

And we do that all the time. So

23:06

people think that constellation work is this kind

23:08

of isolated stuff where people are somehow

23:11

channeling their dead, you know? But

23:13

let me tell you, your dead, whatever relative,

23:15

is there with you in, in the story

23:17

of your body. And if

23:19

I'm sitting in a quiet space with you

23:22

and just receptive, I

23:24

can pick it up. You know, I remember

23:27

doing a piece of work with someone where

23:29

as I looked at their face and their posture,

23:32

I said, you know, what happened to your mom?

23:35

And mom had committed suicide

23:37

when they were fairly young. And I could

23:39

see that. I could feel it. So

23:41

the challenge is, this is where all

23:43

that masking that we do gets in our way if

23:45

we want to understand somebody, because

23:48

I have to take my mask off.

23:49

Yeah.

23:50

I have to be available and willing

23:53

to see and willing to feel

23:56

what's there in another person's body's story

23:59

for me to be able to perceive

24:01

it. And then I have to be very careful

24:03

and, and I learned this a hard way

24:05

cuz I could get so quickly to really

24:09

core stories, you know, where we live. That

24:11

I have to be careful how I bring that, how

24:13

I reflect that I have to have a lot of permission

24:16

and create safety. Cuz those are big stories

24:18

for us.

24:19

Yeah, yeah. I, I relate

24:21

to that cuz I feel like I don't see as

24:23

well as you, I wouldn't be able to say

24:25

anything about what I see, but I kind of pick

24:28

up the cause behind

24:30

effects very quickly usually.

24:32

You're seeing more than you know you're seeing.

24:34

I know, I know that just like, I

24:37

know that I see more than I know. I see. But I can't,

24:39

you know, it's just like, I...

24:40

You just can't name it. You can't, that's all,

24:42

you haven't learned to categorize it. Name it.

24:44

But I get to the underlying cause,

24:46

usually almost immediately. And

24:48

I agree. It's so obvious. It's so easy

24:51

that sometimes I bypass. It's hard to,

24:53

to be like, oh yeah, the person

24:55

is not there at all. You have to take

24:58

them to that story that

25:00

they, they can't see for now.

25:02

And if you just like, blurt it out... they're not gonna respond

25:04

very well

25:05

Yeah it's not gonna be very good. No,

25:07

it isn't. And I, and the other thing I think

25:09

is that when I do this work, the thing that

25:11

I learned really quickly is that I needed

25:13

to do it as a collaboration. Because those

25:15

are really private, you know, like we don't even

25:17

know that we know some of those things until

25:20

somebody like, you know, and, and then to think that other

25:22

people could see that is, especially

25:24

if it's kind of a secret story in our family,

25:26

you know, like the case of the suicide is a

25:28

secret in the family, right? People have shame

25:30

around it. And so this ability

25:33

of creating a collaboration of

25:36

like, we're doing this together and I'm doing this

25:38

with you, not to you,

25:41

that is a really important part of any kind

25:43

of work with the body, I think because we have

25:45

such a story of like, I'm a mind, you

25:47

know, or I'm a soul. Like

25:49

I don't actually have this other thing, that

25:51

those are tethered to. And so

25:54

when people start to deal with this part

25:56

of us that's real, that we

25:58

may have actually split off from, be

26:00

dissociating from, it's, it can be

26:02

really shocking. It can be really upsetting.

26:05

So I've learned the hard way

26:08

to make sure that we're in a partnership, to make

26:10

sure that we're collaborating and to have

26:12

the skills to be able to hold things

26:14

that come up with people. Cuz it can be

26:17

you know, the old traumas are sitting there.

26:19

I know, I was just just

26:21

before this I had a session that was like...

26:24

Yeah. Okay.

26:25

all of the trauma. And that's what makes me think

26:27

of this cause it's can be tricky, especially

26:30

when the person, when

26:32

the body holds a story that

26:34

either doesn't belong to the person or the

26:36

person doesn't remember the story. And

26:39

it happens a lot with birth, I think.

26:41

Yeah. Birth is a biggie.

26:43

Birth is a biggie. And it's hard, you know,

26:45

for some people it's hard to understand that

26:48

whatever they've going on for them is like actually

26:50

direct relationship with that.

26:52

Cuz they don't remember it and we have this

26:55

story that babies don't

26:57

understand anything. That they don't, you know,

26:59

Which is total baloney,

27:02

right? Right. And there's some really

27:04

wonderful, like Masco Tova and

27:06

you know, Annie Brooks and all the

27:08

people that have unmasked that,

27:11

you know, that babies really know a lot and,

27:13

and that there's natural

27:15

processes. You know, reflexes need to get

27:18

switched on and switched off at different points

27:20

in the process. And if you skip

27:22

those steps, your body

27:24

doesn't know how to do things.

27:26

Yeah.

27:27

Doesn't even know how to feel certain things. So,

27:30

yeah. And the, the biggest one

27:32

I see is, birth is a lot of work,

27:34

right? Not just for

27:36

the mom, but for the baby. That's a cooperative

27:38

adventure. Right? They're totally

27:41

in sympathetic arousal, their nervous systems are totally

27:43

aroused and we have interfered

27:45

with the natural process of putting baby on

27:47

the belly that would switch people out of that

27:50

activation. So a lot of people

27:52

go through life without knowing how to switch down,

27:55

how to down regulate and rest.

27:57

They're just kinda left there in activated

28:00

mode. And I wonder sometimes

28:03

if that doesn't drive some of the frenetic pace,

28:06

cuz we're up, we don't know how to

28:09

actually go through a normal rhythm of activation

28:11

and relaxation. And so we're

28:13

busy all the time.

28:15

Yeah. And even when we're not busy, because I,

28:17

I can feel that in myself. I mean, as you know.

28:20

And I I'm really

28:22

aware of the struggle that I have to

28:24

switch down really, even though I spend

28:26

so much time not doing anything and

28:29

resting, but I know that I'm not actually

28:31

resting. I can feel that my system is always

28:33

activated in some ways.

28:35

Right. It's seems pretty normal

28:37

for our society, and I think

28:39

that's part of the the disconnect is like, it's

28:41

uncomfortable, so we're gonna disconnect

28:44

from our bodies.

28:44

Yeah.

28:45

Right. So being able to get some

28:47

of these natural processes working

28:49

again. Especially being able to have

28:52

other people help us, you know, that

28:54

I think is one of the major tasks

28:56

of a lot of therapy is being

28:58

able to learn how to have somebody

29:00

else help us calm down,

29:03

manage our nervous system.

29:04

Yeah.

29:05

Yeah.

29:06

Exactly. And then, that gives me a

29:08

transition into textile.

29:10

Cuz we talk a bit about textile on this podcast.

29:12

And I know you, you have some relationship to textile

29:15

cuz you sew, I think you used to?

29:17

I sew, I do, I haven't so much

29:19

since we've moved out to the farm, I've had more,

29:21

have a relationship with plants. But for many

29:23

years I sewed and I also, I actually

29:26

have almost completed a Bachelor of fine

29:28

arts. That was one detour but I

29:30

did paint silk and dye

29:32

colors and, and paint and work

29:34

on silk for many years and, and sold

29:37

some of my work during my artist

29:39

phase, I guess you could say. So

29:41

yeah, just interacting with textile and

29:43

its relationship to color and the medium

29:45

of dye and, and what

29:47

silk does, you know, how it shapes

29:50

on the body and yeah, I always

29:52

loved that. I always had a hankering

29:54

to be a weaver, but I ended up working with clay,

29:57

working with the soft clay of, you

29:59

know, being able to, you know, build bodies.

30:01

And, I think you asked me what my favorite

30:04

thing I made was, and it's

30:06

an impossible piece. I

30:08

kept pushing the limits of the material,

30:11

and this one is, the word is Zuah

30:13

which is a Chinese three-legged vessel.

30:16

And this thing, I don't know how it got through the

30:18

kiln. What? You know,

30:20

it's a very delicate kind of container

30:22

that you pour from, sitting on three

30:24

very thin legs, and somehow that

30:27

made it through the fire, you

30:29

know. So it's just this kind of like, wow,

30:32

amazing things can come that

30:34

you don't expect. I thought it would be broken in little

30:36

pieces and it wasn't. I had the vision

30:38

and I didn't know if it could be made,

30:40

and it was, it was possible. So

30:43

I still have that piece.

30:44

And it's a wonderful metaphor for

30:47

the strength of fragility or

30:49

something that is very,

30:51

that looks very delicate

30:53

Right.

30:54

And can absolutely sustain

30:56

the fire.

30:58

Yeah, it's, it's actually quite tough

31:00

stuff, right?

31:01

And I wonder what that says. I mean, that

31:04

must say something about you.

31:06

It must. Yeah. Well, I certainly,

31:09

the part about stretching the limits of the material,

31:11

I had these very beautiful platters that were very

31:14

fine, very thin, very refined on the edges,

31:16

you know, that were sitting on three legs and this idea

31:18

of what's the minimum for stability, right?

31:21

And then the expansion and the reach

31:23

on that. Um, And that would probably define

31:26

the way I've gone about things, because I've done many

31:28

different things. So there's this reaching, but there's also

31:30

this, you know, what's the minimum that's

31:32

required for stability? The

31:35

need for a certain level of order

31:37

and balance to support the expansion

31:40

and always kind of testing that. I'm testing

31:42

that limit right now with my little farm, right? Oh,

31:45

I have this other business and I'm doing this and... I

31:48

know. But the world is such a fascinating

31:50

place. Like how can you not

31:52

explore the way it feels to me.

31:55

And I'm so privileged, you know, I'm so privileged

31:57

to be in a place where I can, especially

31:59

as a woman, to be able to pursue

32:02

my interests and try things

32:04

and follow my, my muse.

32:06

Definitely lucky.

32:08

For sure. Yeah.

32:09

There's some perks to being born in

32:11

disconnected cultures.

32:14

Yeah. At least material. Yeah.

32:16

Yeah. Well, you know,

32:19

I'm sure you know the work of Riane

32:21

Eisler and others who said that we didn't start

32:23

with the patriarchy?

32:25

Yeah.

32:25

Like there are other forms of

32:28

governance and commerce and

32:30

we take what we have now as the way

32:32

it is, but it's one human invention.

32:35

It's not the only one. Some are more

32:37

functional perhaps than others.

32:40

And we've lost, we've lost the stories

32:42

of the other ones, which is partly the

32:44

thing. And every, every now

32:46

and again and more and more now, the

32:49

stories of women start

32:51

bubbling up to the surface of like, you know,

32:53

how they were entrepreneurs

32:55

and they were that got erased.

32:57

Right. Well, that goes back

32:59

to who gets to tell the stories,

33:02

Yeah, of course.

33:03

Right? And what stories are not being told.

33:05

And that's a really interesting way of

33:07

thinking about things. You know, story

33:09

is received.

33:10

Yeah. Francesca Mason Boring always says,

33:13

you know, when somebody tells you a story

33:15

in your family, you should consider who is telling

33:17

you the story and why.

33:19

Right? What is the story doing? What's

33:21

its purpose? Right? How is it working,

33:24

right? Yeah. Stories are tricky, tricky,

33:26

tricky things in families, right? And even

33:28

when you're working with, you know, yourself

33:30

or a client, stories, conceal and

33:32

reveal. They, if you've learned

33:34

to listen to stories and the body...

33:37

so there's two stories that anyone ever tells you.

33:39

You know, there's the "story story", the mind

33:41

story, but they're also telling you a body story.

33:44

And I find most people get stuck with the

33:46

mental story and they miss the relationship

33:49

between the body story,

33:51

the body's telling the story and

33:53

the story that you're hearing with your ears, the mind

33:55

story, and whether those are congruent

33:57

or incongruent. Or sometimes

34:00

one story's being told by the body and another

34:02

one is being told by the mind. And

34:04

then where did they get the mind story?

34:07

Right? You know, you can look at a

34:09

face and see suffering and

34:12

have this story that everything's fine.

34:14

And you're like, huh, those

34:16

stories don't add up.

34:17

Yeah. And then you add the third component

34:20

of language, of vocabulary,

34:22

because also somebody can

34:24

tell a story and then the lexicon they're

34:26

using doesn't fit. Is telling something

34:28

completely different.

34:30

Right.

34:30

That's something I really like to watch for. I'm

34:32

better at picking that out than

34:35

the body, like the body I, I get,

34:37

but it's unconscious and

34:39

like the...

34:39

that's a body to body transmission, Yeah.

34:42

Right.

34:43

But the words the colors of the words

34:45

and the, the images that they bring, it's

34:47

so interesting.

34:49

Yeah. Yeah. Story tells so much.

34:51

Yeah,

34:52

For sure.

34:53

So you were saying that you, you wanted

34:55

to be a weaver.

34:57

Yeah, I've always loved

34:59

weaving, right? Yeah.

35:00

So let me, let me bring

35:03

you a metaphor: which are the, the threads

35:05

that you weave in your life, the

35:07

main threads.

35:08

Well, you know, I'm, I'm not

35:11

so young anymore, so there've been a lot

35:13

of threads over my life. I mean, I've been

35:15

really gifted to have many wonderful

35:17

teachers. And so those

35:19

threads have been woven into my life.

35:22

I have the thread that I started out

35:24

with, which was the engineer, which is my

35:27

parents said, we'll for college but

35:29

you either have to go into business or science

35:31

So I loved music and art and

35:33

story, but I could see the

35:35

practicality of making a living So

35:38

I went and somehow managed to get

35:40

through, you know, my chemistry classes

35:42

and get a job as an engineer. And I

35:45

was the first woman hired in my department. So that

35:47

was a story. And that was a learning, right?

35:49

The first woman engineer hired in my department. So

35:51

I was often sitting in a room by myself as

35:54

a woman with men. Right.

35:56

And that was watching the way they

35:58

told stories, right.

36:00

Mm-hmm.

36:00

And that the game was not about what's really happening,

36:03

but whose story is gonna win. That

36:05

was an education. I'm grateful

36:07

for that early start. It wouldn't have been something

36:09

I natively would've chosen and

36:12

it gave me kind of discernment and

36:14

the ability to really analyze whether

36:16

something made sense. So it gave me a basis

36:18

for critical thinking and then I,

36:21

then I left that and went to fine arts.

36:23

I went 180 the other way, right?

36:26

As fast as I could go. And that was a tough period

36:28

for me cuz I just dismantled

36:30

the identity I'd been given. And I went

36:32

through a process of really going

36:35

down into my depths and having

36:37

to, you know, did a lot of therapy that's where

36:39

I met Arnie Mendell and his group and

36:41

process work. And I wish I'd known more about

36:43

trauma then but

36:46

I have since learned, right? So

36:48

that was a, you know, process work and

36:50

the arts are kind of woven together for me

36:52

in another thread. And I learned you can take

36:55

something you love and crush it, trying to make money.

36:57

That was a helpful lesson.

36:59

And then someplace in there, I was doing

37:01

my own personal, I ran

37:04

into NLP and Milton Erickson's work

37:06

and Virginia Satir's work and ran

37:08

into Bert Hellinger quite rather

37:10

by accident. There's a story

37:12

around that. But, I met Bert and

37:15

um, was gobsmacked by

37:17

what I saw going on, and the

37:19

engineer in me wanted to know what happened

37:21

there, how does that work? And that

37:24

launched me on this whole path of,

37:26

you know, traveling and teaching,

37:28

trying to figure out what are we doing

37:31

and how does it work and

37:33

what enables us to do the best work for our clients?

37:36

And that's been a big question for me. And

37:38

so, you know, I ended up, and

37:40

there's a whole story around what happened in Portland.

37:42

I lived in Portland for 38 years

37:45

and ended up being part of a self-organizing

37:47

neighborhood that sued the city of Portland

37:49

over the illegal sale of land in my backyard.

37:52

And that launched us out of Portland.

37:55

So now permaculture and farming.

37:57

And as I started to wanna

37:59

build a new house, I discovered how destructive

38:02

building is, how destructive

38:04

agriculture, that our current practices

38:06

are, and wanted to do

38:08

something to contribute to what

38:11

else could we do. So we're out here

38:13

on five acres right now trying to bring

38:15

this really beat up land,

38:18

it was an old nursery where they sprayed it to

38:20

kill everything and then covered it with plastic and then put

38:22

big pots on it.

38:23

Oh God.

38:25

So even the weeds looked sick when we got here.

38:27

We've been trying to, you know, bring that back to life

38:30

and create a teaching space and a

38:32

place for young market gardeners to come and get a

38:34

start. So we've been trying to, struggling,

38:37

learning a lot. Nature has been teaching us

38:39

rather ruthlessly, um, and we're

38:41

right in the middle of climate instability. So,

38:44

it's been one of those fasten your seat belts,

38:46

hang on, kind of rides.

38:48

So that's been a big thread right

38:51

now and, and, you know, permaculture

38:53

and nature have been teaching me a lot. The

38:55

idea of What happens when we start to

38:58

allow complexity to come

39:00

back in and diversity

39:02

to come back in to our,

39:04

the world that we've made, right?

39:07

And to work with nature rather than try

39:09

to impose. I've tried imposing

39:11

things, I still try that,

39:13

but I'm still trying to get those lingonberries,

39:16

you know, like I really want some lingonberries. Yes.

39:18

So we're still working on those.

39:20

I've been trying for butternut squash for like four

39:22

years. I want those.

39:25

I know. So it's like, someday I'll figure it out.

39:28

But I've had to like, mm, okay.

39:30

There's some feedback, you know, accept

39:32

regulation and feedback is one of the permaculture

39:35

principles. Like, okay, this

39:37

is feedback. So slowly, I'm getting

39:39

some lingonberries, I have to say. But yeah,

39:42

so those have been, you know, that and the fact

39:44

that I got to travel and to work

39:46

with so many great teachers

39:48

in the constellation field. So

39:50

those, those have all been important threads

39:53

for me. So I feel incredibly

39:55

blessed. I'm kind of to

39:57

that stage of my life where I wanna give back.

40:00

I'm trying to figure out what form that

40:02

needs to be in.

40:04

I feel like the, the main, I mean, the thread

40:07

that I'm hearing is understanding

40:09

how things work.

40:10

Mm-hmm. I think that's true. Particularly

40:13

people, they've been the thing that has been like,

40:15

what are we Why do we

40:17

do the things we do? How

40:20

are we gonna survive ourselves in each other? Right.

40:22

Stan Tatkin's been one of my big teachers recently

40:25

with the secure functioning and couple's work.

40:27

And so all of these people have shone

40:29

a little light on that question of like, what is

40:32

a human being? How do those creatures

40:34

work? Right, because if we

40:36

don't figure this out sooner or later, we won't be here.

40:38

So it's kind of a pressing

40:40

question: we gotta

40:42

figure out ourselves, I think before we can

40:45

successfully, you know, support

40:47

the biosphere that supports us.

40:49

Yeah.

40:50

So it's a big, a big weaving, threads

40:52

I could never have predicted. So I'm

40:55

really glad somebody else is writing the script.

40:58

Well, your soul is writing the script. Your soul

41:00

is like, I'm here.

41:01

It's going someplace, right? I'm along for the

41:03

ride.

41:04

And so that brings us to,

41:07

you know, the last question cause we we're

41:09

coming to the end, of this wonderful conversation

41:11

that could go on for much longer.

41:14

So when do you feel the

41:16

closest to your own soul? And

41:18

when do you feel closest to other people's soul?

41:21

I feel closest to my soul when I wake up

41:23

in the morning. It's like my soul has

41:25

been traveling in the night, and

41:28

when I wake up, she returns to this

41:30

ordinary world and whatever,

41:33

wherever I've been visiting, whatever,

41:36

you know, things I've been traveling

41:38

through there's this moment of reassembly

41:42

when I wake up where parts of me that

41:44

have been out wandering come back to the

41:46

part of me that's here day

41:48

to day, and so there's ideas,

41:50

there's problems to solve, there's insights.

41:52

You know, that little moment when you first wake

41:55

up is a really precious time for me. I

41:57

also studied with a Peruvian teacher,

41:59

Americo Yabar for a number of years.

42:01

And the first time I met him

42:03

which was in a camp up in Manti LaSalle

42:06

beautiful woods up in Utah. He

42:08

took a stone and he put it in my hand and he

42:10

said, you travel. You travel

42:13

at night, you're a dreamer. So I had never

42:15

really put the pieces together, but it made sense.

42:18

And he said, and then he, after he put the stone in, he said,

42:20

be careful stones make you travel after

42:23

he put it into my hand. So I'm like, oh,

42:25

oh. And so I've learned

42:27

to embrace that. I've gotten great

42:29

novel ideas from some of those stories,

42:32

you know, to be able to, to let

42:34

that wandering and the reconnection

42:36

be kind of a special moment to

42:39

see what gifts my soul has collected at night.

42:42

And it's wandering in the moonlight, if you will, right?

42:45

And so that would be when, when I'm closest

42:47

to my soul. I think when I'm

42:49

closest to someone else's is when we really

42:51

reach the lived truth. When

42:53

we're able to touch the truth

42:56

that is alive in their body

42:58

being, that resonates with the stories

43:01

of their history and past, and

43:03

when there's no longer a need

43:06

for secrets, when they can

43:08

feel safe enough to reveal

43:10

themselves, for them to be

43:12

seen and not feel judged or unsafe,

43:15

but to be accepted. So

43:17

those moments of revealing,

43:19

I guess is when

43:22

the kind of ordinary steps aside

43:24

and we see the beauty of the being,

43:27

of what is it that is bigger

43:29

than just what we think we are. So

43:31

those moments I think for me are

43:33

special.

43:34

Yeah, I relate to that.

43:36

Hmm. I think that's why we do the work we do,

43:38

Exactly.

43:39

because it's those moments of realness

43:42

where people are alive and it's

43:45

real. And the the artificial

43:47

stories we've told that

43:49

keep us from ourselves have been put down, put

43:51

away.

43:52

Yeah. I really relate to that. And here

43:54

I was thinking, I, I just like to see people

43:56

cry.

43:59

There's crying and there's crying. Yeah, you

44:01

know, real tears wash away all that old

44:03

stuff. Right.

44:05

Exactly.

44:06

Those are the tears of truth.

44:08

Tears of truth. I love that. I'm

44:10

gonna keep it.

44:11

Help yourself!

44:12

Seeker of the Tears of truth. That's

44:14

a good character name for a novel.

44:17

Yeah. There you go, right? Yeah.

44:20

All right, well this was

44:22

wonderful.

44:23

I enjoyed it. Thank you.

44:24

Thank you so much for coming

44:26

It's a pleasure.

44:27

and for sharing all your, your

44:29

knowledge and history and softness

44:32

with us.

44:33

Yep. You're welcome.