Revolutionary Trauma EXPERT, Dr. Peter A Levine, Reveals Secrets to Health & Human Connection

[Music] approximately 40 to 50% of people have experienced some sexual trauma what does that imply for you in terms of how humans can connect if you have two people that have had sexual trauma and they try to come to meet each other to uh have a a healing a sexual relationship what's going to come up not U declarative memories not explicit memories but body memories all of a Sudden the relationship just disintegrates and we wind up um departing ways because we're unable to find that Healing Connection with each other because we're stuck with it in

in ourselves it's something that it takes time to heal and willingness to open to another and willingness to share our feelings and our emotions with others so that we can connect at this level and let it be sexual healing it's break down she's going to break it Down for you because you know she knows a thing or two and now she's going to break down a break Down's going break it down M Alex breakdown is supported by rabbit air you know I'm one of those people who heard about air purifiers and was kind of skeptical

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break things down so you don't have to today we're getting embodied today we are getting embodied and in case you think that trauma is what happened to you it's not it's what happened to you in the absence of an empathetic fully present witness you Might be like trauma I don't have any of that your body body has stored memory and procedural memory which we explain and they could be very much impacting how you think feel behave and even how you like think about how you're behaving we're going to talk to literally the inventor of the

Way That We Now understand how the body holds memory and Trauma we're talking to Peter LaVine he is the creator of sematic experiencing which is a way to help us Access memories in the body of an event and not simply the story and the notion that you may not even have to know or fully understand things that happen to you in terms of the narrative but that your body already has memory that you may not even realize this is the guy that when he said this people were like you're crazy and now people are like

this is the way that we approach the body and how it holds information we're going to Talk to Peter LaVine this is the guy who literally said the body has information in it that you can access and people were like what are you talking about it's all in our heads and he's like no it's not all in our heads Peter LaVine is famous for writing waking the tiger and Trauma and memory brain and body in a search for The Living Past understanding and working with traumatic memory also in an unspoken voice how the body releases

trauma and restores Goodness and he has a new book which is his autobiography and Memoir with more information than you ever thought was waiting to be revealed about how sematic experiencing even came about as a practice prepare yourselves to learn more about your body than you ever thought possible what an honor it is to welcome Peter LaVine to the breakdown break it down Peter LaVine welcome welcome welcome it is really an honor to have you here um Jonathan and I have Been anxiously awaiting talking to you and um in particular we both really enjoyed an

autobiography of trauma a healing Journey um this is your book that is coming out very very soon has um really some beautiful imagery also on the front and the tigers um to to remind those of us of your tiger imagery that's been such an important part um really of your work um this book I mean I Doge eared more pages than we can even get to this book is really it's an exploration Into more of your personal journey and and how that Journey led to the development of a modality that no one had ever presented

the way you ended up presenting it it is now practiced all over the world it is known as a revolutionary approach not only to to pain and to trauma but really to our our lived experience why is US understanding how your journey kind of progressed why is it important for for people right now at This moment in history yeah well let me kind of go go around um the beginning when I was um I turned into my mid 80s and I was um confronted with the fact that I was going to be living less years

in the future than the years that I had lived up until then so what I decided to do is to kind of make a personal exor ex uh exploration of um how I came to where I am and who I am as as a as not just as a teacher but but as a person as a human Being and so um so anyhow I I did this just for myself and uh my partner Laura said Peter you really need to publish this because this could help a lot of people in their own healing and I

said no way this was just for me so she went behind my back and sent it to a pu a publisher that we Bo both knew and he said yeah it's not quite there but I think you you have the potential of something that could really help a lot Of people in their own healing this is my my gift to others it was difficult for me right now I feel relatively comfortable because there are some very intimate and also uh violent Parts uh but also some really beautiful Parts some very really very exciting Parts in

my life that I really wanted to share so that's the story of how I got to write it and how I I'm now have published it and now it's coming out it is mentioned pretty Shortly which part of this book do you think is potentially the most helpful for people who might be struggling well one of the things that's important in semantic experiencing that's the approach that I develop is that we don't go right into the trauma we go around we explore the periphery we go to some some uh different experiences and um so when

I started to write the book I started with this where the this Was a thing where my family was uh in life threat from the mafia from Johnny Doo for many many years and uh and to to keep my silence or to keep my parents from testifying against him which was the that was required by the district attorney Robert Kennedy at the time um uh I I was brutally raped in a way to send a message to my parents but I never told them I really in a way never even Told it to myself so

I put it in the resources of my body mind and I left it there for many years and then came to excavate it but I realized that would be brutal for the reader even though it was a very deep healing but I I I knew that I needed to really explore some parts of my life that were quite a a different experience an opposite experience in a way and what came to me when I was kind of going in my body is that when I was Probably about four years old it was my birthday and

early in the morning or at night my parents laid the tracks for a a Lionel railroad set underneath my bed out into the room and then back underneath the bed again in an oval and can you imagine what it felt like when I awoke and I saw the train going around I just jumped out of bed went to the Transformer changed the speed made the whistle go and in that moment I knew that I was loved that I was cared about And that experience the experience of that in my body my embodied experience of that

memory what is what allowed me to relatively safely go into the the uh the other traumatic memories and to heal and to and to again find that part which is something that we all Crave in our lives that we all need in our lives even if it's by one person at one time that somebody cares about it somebody loves us and that we can feel that and know it Inside of ourselves for many of us who who learn about trauma and and many of us who learn about it kind of from a more like traditional

medical clinical Western perspective the notion is you dive right into your story and you spill your guts you know yeah you're already rolling your eyes I get it so the the idea you know with sematic experiencing I I love how you talk about it like we go around it not to avoid it but you like to talk About that we get at the edges of it you know we find where's the where's the limit of it um yeah but I I have to say you know first of all you know learning these things about your

childhood the environment you grew up in and this very very traumatic um rape that you describe but mostly the healing of that rape well so I was just goingon to say what you what you said was you placed it in the in the recesses of your mind what is that Mechanism what what did you do and the most fascinating part of this story is that you yourself did not tackle this and start that specific healing until decades later when you had already invented the system with which to do that so can you talk about the

recesses of the mind and then how how that gets compartmentalized so much so that it took decades he actually said the recesses of the Mind Body which I think is fascinating that's a survival Mechanism and all of us exhibit that possibility that something happens and it's too much to experience especially too much to experience alone so a as I was starting to teach a semantic experiencing uh uh some of these symptoms started coming up for me I and I was disturbed by them and so I asked one of my students to sit with me to

be with me to go and to explore this and to see where it would take me to and take us what were those symptoms like can you Give us an example for people who have no idea what it would be like to put something in the recesses of your mind body for decades what did this look like for Peter well uh something happened and my legs felt paralyzed almost as though I couldn't move I also experienced like that my throat was clogged up with some kind of a white substance and that that that continued to

come up from me so I asked my Students to to now be my therapist to be my teacher and to sit with me and the first thing she noticed is there was a slight shuffling with my feet with my legs and uh she C brought that to my attention and I could feel it and then I could feel the movement and feel the movement increasing and then all of a sudden the images started to appear from the situation from the rape and she was there and she put her hands she asked if It was okay

to put her hands on my shoulders and I saides please so it really helped to have that other be with me one of the things I write about that trauma is not just what happens to us happened to us but instead what H what happens in the absence of the empathetic other of that present empathetic other and she provided that for me as well as being my guide to Body Sensations and um that makes such a difference you know and one of the things people say what does it take to be a trauma therapist well

first it it it amounts to doing our own work that's pivotal but it's also about uh about being present in our own being in our own bodies and that's the essential an essential gredient and she was that way for me and and and even though I've been that way for many other people it was in A way a new EXP experience for [Music] me it's important to me that the supplements I take are of the highest quality and that's why for the last three years I've been drinking ag1 unlike many supplement Brands ag1 conducts Relentless

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our battery our social battery right and spread ourselves thin especially with social Gatherings that are picking up after winter what's the right amount of socializing for you and how do you Recharge maybe you thrive around people maybe you need more alone time therapy can give you the self-awareness to build a social life that doesn't drain your battery I used to think I had to do every single thing I was invited to I thought I had to go to every party every social event I didn't know it was draining my battery used to have a really

hard time saying no even a couple years ago well it's something that therapy is continued to help me refine If you're thinking of starting therapy give better help a try it's entirely online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire you'll get matched with a licensed therapist you can switch at any time for no additional charge find your social sweet spot with betterhelp visit betterhelp.com bre today to get 10% off your first month that's betterhelp hp.com [Music] break so okay how did these things disappear or go into

hiding well um I mean first of all the the brain is a very interesting organ and it has the possibility of having all kinds of different departments and in some cases these these U these different parts are not in communication with each other I mean I think you you know about that because that's some of the doctor work you were Yes you know yeah and so it's just like they don't connect so you don't know you get a little piece here like this sens ation of my leg and the image of the white Gunk but

still it wasn't connecting but moving through the bodily experience it did connect and it allowed me to process those difficult uh Sensations and emotions and uh rather than intense emotions Body Sensations is the key to Healing trauma yeah and I think you were talking about waking the Tiger that's one of the things that I talk about in in waking the tiger is that it's not first of all it's not about reliving the trauma that's rarely helpful you know there are one of the things about semantic experiencing it's not a therapy per se but what it

is it allows people to do what they do better to do how they do what they do so we have people trained in many many many disciplines and again it's to me this was very important that we support other People you know cognitive behavior therapists and so forth we've had a number and physical therapists and many different uh disciplines take the the training and it's it's open for anybody really who has um who has some kind of certification in some way and and also some people really who are who were just I guess you would

call healers again you know was open also to people who did these different kind of healing modalities so that's Something I'm I'm very proud of that we were able to you know be be true keep true to that the other thing is well it's somewhat related is denial and then a higher level of denial which is dissociation and dissociation I believe has the physiological underpinning of the shutting down in our whole body physiological systems and uh and dissociation is one Of the most fascinating phenomenon that protects us from the overwhelm which we did experience in

the absence of that other person at at that other uh holding presence so um so nobody really I mean honestly nobody really knows what the what dissociation is that's more or less how I I perceive it uh and again we have to feel safe enough to be able to reassociate those disassociated parts so I had a sensation Of my leg and then have an image uh you know and so I have these different components of an experience but not the whole experience and with the guidance we were able to bring those experiences together in the

greater experience which was the violent uh episode that happened to me and um and again we have to go into things like that very carefully I'm really I support most therapies the only kind of therapy that I don't really Hunker to is one where they have people Relive the traumas over and over again the kind of implosion exposure prolonged exposure I just don't think that that's in many cases even helpful and can be harmful so again that's one of the other elements so again with that person being there with her guiding me with her hands

on my shoulders I was able to do that and come to that without being overwhelmed it maybe seems maybe counterintuitive that you would not feel overwhelmed by some that was Overwhelming but that is the way it is that is the way the healing occurs I think we could slow down for a second and unpack the whole process of disassociation because when you talked about that instance that happened to you you said you hid it from yourself and I think some people are going to be listening to this saying how does he hide something like that

from himself what does he mean and the reason to explore this is because I think it's A prime example is of what a lot of people are going through where they have this stored emotion in the Mind Body but it is hidden from themselves and what we're saying is that through this work we can actually reconnect with aspects of ourselves that we have lost that we may not even realize we have lost because we weren't in the loving presence of someone to help us process it so we were overwhelmed and then created some form of

disassociation but Can you sort of EXP explain that process for people so that they understand that this has probably happened to them at some level yeah well again it's it's not just these horrible things but other parts that were that were supportive that were caring that were holding they also get lost to us and to find the way into the ones that are the traumatic ones we have to go first to those uh parts of our self and when I say self I mean self with a capital S to our deep self to our true

self the part of our self that is beyond any trauma that is the basis of who we are as a human being you know the very last last part of the book uh I have a picture of myself when I was about 18 months old and I come to holding that child in my arms with my loving presence and in a way that was more important to recapture that than to work with the trauma of course Both were both were important and fortunately I had a photograph of this that my mother took in her riflex

uh camera when I was 18 about 18 months old I think I actually had the picture up here yeah the one that's in the book yeah to remind me of of that that that deep child that that loving caring child and to return to his presence and his holding when you talk about sort of this this this process by which we seek To protect ourselves and I think what what's important to emphasize and you know you talk about the significant role of creative imagination um in the book and there's some really really um astonishing and

really powerful um conversations that you that you share that you had with Albert Einstein 20 years after he had died and you talk about this is a a yian um sort of mechanism of creative imagination which is also used in in Trans therapy and in in very kind of deep therapy where we use creative imagination but I want to make a distinction between creative imagination and the work that you are talking about that is accomplished with sematic experiencing so what we know is that this is not a manufacturer of memory what it is is it's

to my understanding and full disclosure I actually have been receiving somatic experiencing with my cranial sacral therapist for about six Months so I'm literally living your book in so many ways but anyway um what we're talking about is a a a piecing together of a of an experience that does not have as its only ENT point the trauma it has a a variety of experiences many of which we can only access meaning the pain can sometimes only be accessed through a positive portal that is the entirety of who we are so it's not that we're

creating something that didn't exist It's that we're coalescing things that the body's been holding the mind has been keeping separate and that we've been protecting is that accurate yeah I mean it is a portal and it's a portal into our being our deepest being and I think that's where it's really about it's really about reconnecting to our essential nature and I think that's again one of the things where somatic experiencing really differs from a lot of the trauma Therapies in that this is really really Central you know the thing you're talking about uh creative imagination

uh you know when I did a little bit of reading about that uh it says that this kind of imagination uh it only happens in childhood adults don't have that ability and I said you got to be kidding I mean it's essential to really learning about who we are and um I can give you like an example uh you know when I was working On my doctorate in um biophysics uh and also beginning to develop and teach the the roots of somatic experiencing there was a favorite restaurant that I had and at the end of

a long day of work I would often go there and the the the women who worked there they knew me by by name and they always welcomed me and usually I started with a nice warm bowl of soup and uh with some uh French bread crispie on the outside and soft and Moist on the inside I mean as I'm telling you that I am I don't know about you but I'm am feeling my yes a salivation so again that's part of that kind of implicit memory uh so anyhow I was there one one evening eating

and I saw a shadow come from just to off to my left and I looked up and I saw an image let's call it an inner image of a man who had Cur unkempt hair and a jacket crumpled jacket that was like two or Three sizes too big and I realized that I was being startled I was being visited by this image of Albert Einstein and so for the good part of a year uh we would have conversations I call it conversations at the Beggar's Banquet and I would ask him questions and then he would

ask me questions about my questions that's kind of the Socratic method of exploration and so this went on for some time and I was so deeply touched and I Would just run to the restaurant not just to have the wonderful food but to see if he would be visiting me that night and one of the things that came up that was very important in developing somatic experiencing is that our traumas and also our our wisdom doesn't just come from our parents and grandparents but for many many ancestors so I asked him about that and how

he sees this Happening so uh so anyhow again with like an image in the the image in the image he like as a dream image he took me to the edge of a pond and he had a yard stick and along the yard stick he had a number of stones small stones and he held it over the pond and he twisted and then the stones fell to the to the bottom and waves came out in uh in in in in um in in waves in waves and in going forward but also going back backwards and

um he pointed Out he said now what happens if there's been a rupture in the fabric in other words trauma uh that these waves get stuck instead of passing uh coherently past each other they get stuck and everything after that becomes disordered disorganized and then I said well Professor um uh what how to how to work with that and he said he looked at me kindly with A tear in his eye and said that Peter will have to leave to you and that was an important again component of developing somatic experience is that where do

these things come from from what happens how do we uh lose that forward movement in our lives and our ancestors and then it then occurred to me in a Moment of clarity that all that the thing you just had to find the places where it was stuck and just unstick a number of them a few of them So that the wave gets reestablished and I thought oh my goodness of course this is a time space Contin him and that was I don't know if it was the last but that was one of the last times

that we met together and um so then about 35 years ago long time after that I was visiting my parents in the Bronx and uh I was going to museum so I came back and I walked in the door and they were sitting on the sofa and I Noticed the bookshelf above them um uh one of the books was uh this the general theory of relativity by Einstein so that prompted me to tell my parents especially my mother what had happened to me and the visitations those active imagination visitations of Einstein and she said Peter

you didn't imagine that that really happened and I said what and she said and my mother if she would have been born today would well She certainly was intuitive but she could have maybe even been a psychic and uh she said when you were in Udo uh you were eight months in utero and your father and I were paddling on a canoe in this Lake and all of a sudden a wind came and turned the canoe over and we were unable to ride it and we would surely have drowned but then a small sailboat came

along and they pulled us to safety it was an old man with rumpled hair and his Stepdaughter and they announced themselves presented themselves as Albert Einstein and his uh stepdaughter and she reasoned that since he had saved my life that in that moment of life saving that we were bonded and were always bonded together and so these I guess you call them synchronicities these things that have happened in my life have really made such an important impact in developing the work I develop But in who I am and learning to really support not just from

PE from people in my life but also from people from Generations [Music] past support for maybi Alex breakdown comes from betterment Everyone likes to kick back relax and just chill every now and then my favorite way is I've been doing guided meditations uh twice a day actually once in the morning once at night but if you're into investing Relaxing is the last thing in the world that you want your money to be doing you want it to be working hard grinding away you want to just pound in the pavement with the betterman automated investing and

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problem solved use code podcast5 for $15 off your first order at thirdlove.com [Music] these visitations were part of a a creative imagination sort of exercise you were not having delusions you were not hallucinating you were of of sound mind and body having experiences that you were able to sort of be open to and I think that's what you know a lot of our listeners we we we want to talk to people about what it means to be open to different things and for some people it's being different like being open just to the concept of

therapy the concept that someone could could listen to you or being open to trying new modalities if you have chronic pain if you have trauma trying new things so you had the kind of mind that was open to this and Albert Einstein was living in The United States uh in 1942 so it is very right possible that this actually was an interaction that your mother had um but I do want I do want you to talk a little bit about this notion that there is a shared experience that is not simply personal and it's not

simply familial you talk also about intergenerational trauma in terms of for example the ashkanazi Jewish Community or the Jewish community in general you talk about African-Americans you talk About indigenous people but you also mention this notion that there is information in the universe that we can apparently have access to yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean this is what Yun called the collective unconscious and also uh this is written about in What's called the akashic records these are the records of everything that has happened and will happen and which is very similar I think to yung's

Collective unconscious and I Believe that we can all find ourselves to that Collective if we're willing to open to it and to know that we're not crazy because I mean you were you were correct I mean some of the thoughts that I had if I talked about this people would think I was crazy but I think that was in a way the depths of my sanity not my Insanity I think a big part is opening is writing dreams for me writing my dreams has been very important over over the years and Um uh and and

and and and knowing there is a greater knowledge a greater wisdom uh that our limited knowledge is just limited and that when we open to these to these Collective aspects of our of experience we are privileged to learn a great amount of w wisdom and knowledge and wisdom but really about wisdom I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about these ripples that you mentioned it's It's this beautiful image you know and for you it was part of this sort of Einstein these creative conversations you were having and you know what struck me

about that visual is obviously it's one of the most powerful images that we have as scientists is to understand wave motion and wave theory and so you know one of the one of the the most accessible you know things especially as we're we're learning learning things about physics and and you know delving Into these aspects of of the mechanics of the physical world is is this notion of of Ripples and I I love how you talk about that you know the what you were tasked with was getting those unstuck that when you have these intersections

and you get them unstuck and you know I especially loved the this this chapter in the book where you talk about your initial mathematical and physics sort of Origins you talk about how sematic experiencing really evolved from the Notion of you have the the second law of Thermodynamics which is if you put if you put energy into a system it's going to tend towards disorder that's called entropy and that's just one of the laws of the universe but you you add to that and it kind of kept adding you add dissipative Theory and catastrophy Theory

as these influences that essentially showed you and and I think this is sort of what the unsticking is but I wonder if you can clarify it my my Understanding and when you talk about what an empathetic you know present witness is to trauma those are the boundaries that you can place around a system that otherwise would tend towards disorder it would tend towards chaos but when you put these boundaries around it when you put in energy that otherwise could be perceived as chaotic and negative what you have is the system will start to right itself

is that the unsticking ye yes it is it's or another Aspect of the unsticking you know you mentioned the second law of Thermodynamics the universe is going to hell in a hand basket uh or more more uh practically if you take ice and you introduce energy in the form of heat the ice melts and becomes water so water is more disordered than ice ice is more crystalline structure is more um yeah and um then if you continue to add more energy the water then becomes Vapor Which is much less organized much more entropic now there's

a a field in in called dissipative structures and the idea is that if you have a complex system system uh which the brain is actually that was one of the things that I I demonstrated in my doctoral dissertation that the brain is a dissipative structure and so if you introduce energy in a small enough amount it will tend to Go to disorder but if you don't introduce too much all at once it will then uh actually all of a sudden go into a higher level of ordering what in somatic experience one of the basic principles

is about titration you don't put energy into the system too quickly too rapidly because that could rise into a entropic result so you do just enough for an beginning of a change like you said you you get the place where the waves have been stuck and you just give It a little bit of a cheek and in other words you titrate what you've done and that TR titration then allows a higher order of than before and I think again that's one of the keys in somatic experiencing is when you do this correctly I mean if

you think about this you look at a window if you don't if you have an intervention that doesn't go up to the window it's not going to mean anything if you have one that goes above the window then that Could wind up and again in disordering so you want to be able to find that place the titration that just is between too much and too little and then find that window and in that window is the reorganization of the Mind Body psyche brain nervous system so I wonder if you can also talk about you know

you you're I really didn't know anything about your journey as a a student or a graduate student you know I assumed that you came out of I don't Know some Berkeley home you know like being in touch with the universe and like just communing with crystals and the akashic records but can you talk a little bit about you know you you come from a a much more sort of hard science perspective and then you you added also ethology meaning the observation of animals in their natural state ended up being such a huge influence for you

because we are animals in our Natural State can you talk about sort of what You originally started out studying and how how you decided to then you know evolve into being the person who created sematic experiencing yeah well I mean you're right I started with pretty hard science uh you know and and uh for example um I took courses in quantum chemistry quantum physics uh but what was most uh most important most revealing to me was the study of ethology and he myology is the study of Uh wild animals in their natural environments and I

was uh privileged to have contact with Nicholas tingberg during that this time and tinbergen and two other people won the Nobel Prize for ethology the the studies of animals and uh so I learned a lot from him and from observing animals and one of the things that was became eminently clear is that animals prey animals in the wild are rarely traumatized even though their lives might be threatened Many times a day many times a day and their body does something in a way to shake off that threat and we have that same ability but we've

lost in many cases that capacity and that's what we need to cultivate can you talk about that response can can you explain it to people who may not know sure uh what you'll see for example actually one when I'm teaching one of the things I show is a a polar bear that's been chased down by a uh by an Airplane and shot with a tranquilizer and then the wildlife biologists gather around and you see the animal shaking and trembling and then taking spontaneous deep spontaneous breaths and he says he says it's this is not something

that's frightening to the animal it's shaking off that um that stress and lets the animal return to equilibrium and so that again was a really important part how we Return to equilibrium uh and U what it is that we have lost as we are like I said we are animals we are mammals we have some special characteristics but we are mammals all the same and I think what happens that allows the animals to come back into equilibrium we become frightened of those very Sensations and so we block them we stop them from moving forward and

in doing that we lose that Ability to um to to heal from our traumas to discharge that energy that's got locked in in the nervous system and locked in the body again to not to do too much but to just do enough to change that that U uh that to go into into negative entropy to Greater levels of ordering um there's a statistic in the book that you share um that approximately 40 to 50% of people have experienced some sexual Trauma and this is a an astounding statistic people trying to connect with other people that

statistic which may also be you know on the lower side because this is something that people don't talk about people don't report and many people also experience sexual trauma that we've called other things what does that imply for you in terms of how humans can connect or are able to connect well I mean just think of it if you have two people or even one person But two people that have had sexual trauma and they try to come to meet each other and to um to uh have a a healing a sexual relationship and of

course what's going to come up not are not U declarative memories not explicit memories but body memories and so what happens is all of a sudden the relationship just disintegrates Ates and we wind up um departing waves because we're unable to find that Healing Connection with each Other because we're stuck with it in in ourselves and um and like you said it's probably considerably more than that uh probably more so with with women but it's still a lot with both and and uh and you know and the other thing is also we live in a

society that is largely life negative not life positive and so uh we kind of come into this environment this world as a kind of U societal trauma you were talking at the beginning of Barry Goldberg well this is a friend Of mine where our exploration together was um uh completely u s by my father and uh and it had a lasting effect and it a lot of it was healed in my relationships that I've had over the years with women and um it's um it's something that it takes time to heal and willingness to open

to another and willingness to share our feelings and our emotions with others so that we can connect at this level and and and let it be sexual healing one of my very dear Friends in uh in in Switzerland is a woman named Diane Richardson and she wrote a number of books on tantric sex and she she actually was one of the people who endorsed the book and uh you know uh in her teaching and my understanding is it's not about technique it's not about sexual techniques it's really not it's really about being present with another

person at many different levels uh psychological uh physical Emotional uh spiritual and it to use this as a catalyst a gift to open to these different dimensions through the sexual portal one of the things that I I found so powerful in your discussion of sexual trauma was also this acknowledgement that this doesn't just present itself as like sex problems or he wants it more than I do or I want to try this position you what you talk about is that in an in a truly intimate relationship sex and physicality is one Part of it but

if there's trauma of a sexual nature it very often will come out in the emotional Realms in the connecting Realms in how we speak to each other or my favorite technique like the cut and run like oh this doesn't feel good I must need to leave right and that we don't even we sometimes can't even trace it we can't even get back to it but you know you also you give an experience of you know uh you talk a lot about sexual experiences not in um Sensationalistic way you know you you really do you you

do a great service you know to this discussion because I think it is a part of so many people's experience but I wonder can you speak a little bit to what it can look like you know when you have sexual trauma what does that look like emotionally what does it feel like spiritually you know sometimes it feels like we're fil filled with fear Anger grief and if we can open to those feelings in ourselves with that chosen other then we can find a deeper healing at all of those levels psychological emotional sexual spiritual and I

believe that is the greatest gift that we can provide for each other and I am so deeply moved by those who have done that for me who have held that present for me and have let me mature as a more full human being I wonder if you can talk About you know there's a a really special place in your heart and in this book for the experience of babies and children and you talked a bit about you know us learning to have compassion you know for that child within us and you know I've talked a

lot on this podcast about my tremendous aversion to any conversation about the inner child it took me many many years and honestly decades in therapy before I was even able to to really understand it but you Talk about that there are things that happen to babies and children in many cases preverb can you please explain for for people who do not understand this or don't want to believe it how does the body and the mind hold memory like that especially if it's preverbal like what what is it where is it well let me give you

an example from myself again because that's that's what I know the most about uh when I was about I think I was about 6 Months and my parents thinking that my father might be drafted into the war they went off to have a uh a a vacation and so they left me H with my grandparents who were nice enough people but I didn't know anything really about them I barely even met them and then they disappeared for two weeks and when I came back it was as though I never recognized them uh you know there's

uh some experiments that were done I hate to even call them Experiments where the the mother is with the child and then the mother leaves the room just for like 10 or 15 minutes and the the the baby is yelling and screaming and protest and then shuts down and when the mother comes back in it's like I mean she's with another person there but when the mother comes back in it's like that baby didn't doesn't even recognize her and that's an injury that's just for like 15 minutes and so you can imagine how that might

be For many of us where we experience that kind of Abandonment so again working somatically working with body memories I had this experience of my hand my arms going out and then holding against the door frame of of a of a door and so I wouldn't be able to be put there wouldn't be able to be left there and this was years later that you started having so yeah I just want to be clear you're not saying that you remember but the report the report that your mother Gave confirmed what your body was showing you

was your reaction to it so when you went to your mother to tell her this you were an adult right and you brought this up that's right okay so what did she say and she said Peter we're so sorry that we did this we really hurt you we're really sorry and she said that you would brace your hands against the door whenever they went to visit my grandparents after that I would brace Against the door and yell and scream and protest so they couldn't let me in there so that how did that play out well

I think it really played out with fear of a relationship a woman leaving me and abandoning me and as I worked through that then I could much more freely uh have relationships with women where I wasn't afraid of being abandoned or abandoning them before they could abandon me because they were body memories they were procedural memories And again it's not something you can remember cognitively at all it's really fundamentally a body memory a somatic procedural memory and we hold on to that as though it's still happening in the presence even though it may have happened

decades and decades ago so again it's so pivotal to know how to work with these memories these body memories which are not in any way at all conscious but which really limit our whole capacity to be with Others and to relate with others I think it's really important to explain here that these body memories are being activated and then the conscious mind is coming up with excuses or a narrative in the present that will justify them so it may be people are like what are you talking about that person is just horrible and I got

to get out of the relationship but what might really be happening is that they have a body memory coming up that makes them feel Uncomfortable and instead of facing that and working through it they're coming up with an external narrative to justify not looking at something really difficult yeah I call that premature cognition we try to explain to ourselves what is happening even that though that may have very little to do with what actually happened and and again that's one of the things that we learn to suspend that information and then to Work somatically with

the bodily experience so you said it perfectly Jonathan actually um you know it it it it is to be able to hold in OB bance what we think happened to find out what actually is happening to us in the present in the Here and Now wildly important because people are for the most part just these walking brains and we go for a minute and go to our yoga class or we do our breathing and we're like okay I'm I'm I'm tapped in and I'm Centered now but we're not really given the tools to live from

an embodied place can you talk a little bit about what that means to live an embodied way and how that helps people guide through their life more effectively you know uh deat Rene Dart said I think therefore I am and he just threw everything aunder for many many for centuries and at that time uh also around the time in the mid 1600s there Was a philosopher named blae Pascal and he wrote to decart and said m m deart I cannot forgive you for what you have uh put to um to to the to our beings

that you really me and and he wrote the uh Pascal blae Pascal wrote the heart has its reasons which reason cannot reason sometimes interpreted is that the body has its reasons which reason cannot reason and we look for that reason in the body and to be more embodied I think that's the task in this Epoch of History to find more and more connection with our bodies more connection with each other through sharing of our living knowing bodies and um and yeah I think that is the the U the what what this period in in history

is and and I think about well okay so this is like the you know 2000 2020s and the when I give when I years ago when I would talk about um embodiment you know people kind of think What is this guy talking about and I think people really get it now that really embodiment is what's missing in our lives one of the lifetime achievement awards that I receiv received was for the uh uh the Psychotherapy networker and they did an interview with me and they had a picture of a body and of a person and

it was like a puzzle one of those thousand piece puzzles and there's a piece that's Missing and they wrote the missing piece is the body and for psychotherapist to say that is quite a step because you know the body has been so NE neglected negated in therapy for so many so many times that I think there's now this recognized is yes this is where it's at this is now our challenge in this Epoch of our of history and of Our Lives it's also harder now than ever before because of digital technology we're able to be

constantly distracted All the time we're able to justify reasons for how we feel based on doing research and following this person or that how do people start to follow their bodily cues and instincts like if there's a beginner's guide and I know that's an overwhelming question but like if someone's listening they're like well how do I begin to develop this Instinct okay well first of all have times when you're not using any devices so when I'm done with this Wonderful interview I'm going to move I'm going to dance you know uh I did an interview

recently and somebody said uh that we've gone from uh the couch that to say Freud to the chairs facing each other which is the way Psychotherapy is but if you're sitting together and you're just facing each other you're not opening to Body Sensations so I added so we went from the we've went from the couch to the chairs to standing and moving and when I work with people I Work with people standing and moving together with them that's how my sematic experience therapist does it just letting everybody know she or he is doing the right

thing she does all the stupid things she makes me do that's how I describe right but I mean I think we we do have to take some uh time off from you know from uh these these kinds of devices we really need to put them on quiet for some time and then just to to take a Walk you know to walk around in the neighbor to walk for me to walk on the beach here uh to yeah to to not be constantly distracted because when we are dist constantly distracted then we're really unable to connect

with our bodies and when I see you know some um young people together and maybe there are couple of dozen and they're supposedly meeting for a time together but they all of them are on their devices they're not connecting with each Other they're not connecting with themselves so I think we really need to take quiet time you know to not have our devices on and I think that's a really good first step to connecting with ourselves and I think we're all we all desire that it's not something that um that we're necessarily comfortable with but

it's something I think that we all really want for ourselves and for our others there's something you talk about Also a lot in the book which in particular um you know I resonated with because you come from the same neighborhood that my parents grew up in and you you tell a lot of the same stories that my father would tell about all of the physical activities that you like to do as a child but I think that there is something to what many of us would dismiss as generational like oh older people played they went

outside but we Have other things to do but you know you you talk about you know going to the park that was something you did as a kid or like you played stickball like as I said stickball and when I was a kid you know I was I was born in 1975 and we were often allowed in the summer to just be out all day like you would just like ride your bike and come home to eat and then you'd go out again and you because every time you came in they made you do a

chore or asked you to do something so We stayed out a lot there was a lot of play and I've noticed I have I have an 18-year-old and a 15-year-old and Jonathan also has a 15-year-old they in many cases they want to like literally be playing video games or they want to scroll things on Instagram and I don't mean to sound like such a fdy duddy but there's something to this notion of our bodies experiencing play sometimes I would just have like a journal and some markers and that's what I would do is I Would

write and draw as a kid can you talk about the importance of play of creativity generally but also specifically somatically yeah well a play actually opens to our creativity you know I mean when you were just speaking you just took me back to my time when I was you know 12 years old and we would meet the whole group of us kids would meet H you know and we would play stick ball with none of us could Afford you know Ms and and bats and so forth and we played and we and we played and

then we my mother when we were was ready for dinner she would always whistle the beg the uh Beethoven s synphony so we so she would put her head out the window and go and then it was time to come back but at the end of the meal we were allowed to go back out again and continue playing the park across the place across the house where I was raped but that was Also a place where I played and playing is so important for creativity um you know our body needs to move it needs and

that's where it's it it's not just a physical thing it really is a whole basis for for creativity so play is uh is great and that's you know I rarely see kids um playing anymore you know I mean they're on their devices but I don't see them playing and doing tag and You know games like that and it's oh my God it's tragic it really is and U yeah oh my gosh yeah well thank you for bringing that memory up for me yeah I wanted to ask about something you know in in so many ways

so many people are your children and they carry your message and they carry your teachings but you also specifically reference in the book that this work and the work of reparation that you've done on yourself The healing that you did in many cases took the place of many other things in life um what was there a conscious decision that you made of like this is my family this is what I build oh wow wow oh my gosh okay give me a minute here you know um in developing somatic experiencing over uh 50 years uh I

I had to make a decision I don't think I was conscious at the time um that I wouldn't have children of My own because it took all of my energy to develop to teach and to travel around the world teaching but and I was fortunate of having some several God children and so being involved with their lives and we would play together we would run together we would play tag together and so I got to impart that or play with uh my godchildren in a way That I that was irreplaceable in a way yes I

didn't have my own family but I had them and we shared play together and I'm still in contact with them one of my first godchildren he's now in his early 30s I guess uh I was teaching in in in United Kingdom in in in September and I arrange it so he could come and to he could be with me there and it was so great because he was then participating in in you know in this in the in the sessions that we were doing and he just Was just full of life and um so to

all my godchildren to oen to Jacob to Jada they really have been an important aspect of my life and I'm just so grateful to having shared that time with them it's beautiful Peter I want to ask about the first printing of your book not the one we're talking about now but the the the the book that really articulated your philosophy it was published in 1996 is that correct yeah I think so can you Describe a little bit about that time period because you were introducing ideas that were not welcomed initially and in many ways the

world has caught up but I think maybe you know we're talking now about somatic experiencing and people need to be embodied and that language is of the vernacular now but at the time it was not can you talk about what was so radically different from what was believed then right well I mean that was when I wrote waking tiger and Uh when I first started to to to talk about it uh I would have people who if they were there uh they would uh abruptly leave the room because they thought that what I was talking

about was complete gibberish and it was and these were mostly psychiatrists and psychologists and uh and then fast forward to you know this time uh that never happens uh if I'm in a room of a Thousand people people 999 people really are riveted they really want to know more they want to learn more so it's just completely has changed it's no longer Fringe what did they believe at the time like if you were to bring us back to that era like I'm trying to help people understand what is so radically different because I think we've

lost a little bit of the perspective of where the culture was and really that you were A core part of Shifting that culture right well people were talking about mental illness at that time yep they were prescribing Xanax like it was P exactly right Xanax and and all those other ones that it's something that you have to fix the brain because it's not working right uh and and I think again people at that time would have thought that I was talking about something that Was like I said that was in The Fringe that wasn't in

the mainstream at all and um and I think the Shifting the idea from mental illness to um to the illness of disconnection it's not really an illness it's really a potentiality a a new possibility in our lives and so uh yeah I mean I I don't see it as an illness but I see as a disconnection a disconnection to self and to body and the antidote for that is To reconnect and it and pres I mean I'm not I'm not against medications there are times when medications can be useful but it's not the answer and

the answer is to connect with our eles and to connect with others and to do that through the living sensing knowing body that makes a lot of sense and if I'm just summarizing what we're saying there is they had a very almost limited view of what mental illness was and the notion that We could reconnect through re yeah through moving towards the edges of that experience and reconnecting with ourselves wasn't in the vernacular at all no no it wasn't and again mental illness is because it's it's mental everything is about mental but that's just not

the that's not the answer and I think that's something that people are now accepting and acknowledging and changing in their lives and in their practices as therapists you know before When I would ask um you know how many people or show of hands people who had practices that they did routinely is a group of therapists and uh you know very few people would raise their hands and then when I ask that question now or recently many people Mo probably most people rais their hands and so many people do something with their bodies they do yoga

they do taii they do chiung they do dance you know and I think this people Are cultivating practices and these practices are body are embodied practices and I think that's really the the Alpha and the Omega from it it's really cultivating a relationship with our bodies and with through with the body self and when you had said something a term like the body memory back in 2000 uh back in 1996 what would the reaction have been to that like how did you stand out there really ahead of your time and deal with Something that you

knew to be true yet was you know being so getting you were getting so much push back on it what was the reaction to the body has memory and there are these stored memories inside of our body that are affecting our cognition well that was dis that was they were Disturbed um to put it mildly they were Disturbed but you know one of the reasons because I think uh Layman or even therapists really misunderstand the Nature of memory and particularly memory that that has the trauma actually that was the motivation for writing one of my

books more recent books uh trauma and memory brain and body and the search for The Living Past because these memories I I I looked at it more at at a in in terms of things that were uh that were more acceptable so rather than call them B me body memories I I spoke about procedural memories things that the body has learned to do to defend and protect Itself and these are these are procedures that the body has done like you said you know memory was supposedly just a mental operation it was never seen as a

something that the body remembers but the body does remember it and the body has its memories that and that and has reason that reason cannot reason and um you know I I think that you know some people would be saying well what do you mean by a mod memory and that's why again I Attempted to describe what a an implicit memory is like and a procedural memory is like and uh I think many people who couldn't uh who couldn't Contin to it as a body memory can understand it now as a procedural memory again things

that our body has learned to do to protect ourselves and to uh and and also to enhance our life I mean you know the expression once you learn how to ride a bicycle you never forget that's an implicit memory that's a procedural Memory so we they with our parents or guardians or our older siblings and they're together with us and they're they're uh holding their finger or their hands to our back and they go with us and go with us until we can sense that they have found the balance and then we let them go

and then they move you couldn't explain them if you wrote a book about how to ride a bicycle it wouldn't work or a book about how to ski you can only learn it by procedural Memories and once these memories occur they're there forever the problem is when these memories are of trauma then they're also there forever and that's why you have to work with the those memories those implicit procedural memories to resolve and to heal trauma I wonder if you can talk a little bit about um the this notion of what can we trust about

our memory because you know especially in the 80s and the90s when we started learning About dissociation you know as more of a um you know a real phenomenon um you know all of these sort of naysayers and you know we we had all this conversation about you know people planting memories and that that's what's happening at then all of that narish kite anyway when um but I wonder if you can talk a little bit you know from your perspective about what does it mean to trust memory ah good question uh I think primarily it means

to not jump ahead to Find out what's going on at the level of sensation and feeling and to trust that and to let that guide us to where it will guide us and I think that then when we do have something something that's more like a memory we can more trust it because it didn't come as a mental construct it came rather as a uh as a uh as an embodied experience embodied memory of what I call it what's called a procedural memory so yes we we can trust Our memories but not if we jump

ahead too quickly you know we really need to find the way to connect through the body those procedural memories and then they will usually lead us to something which is more of an explicit memory or sometimes called an autobiographical memory and I talk about those different types of memories so I think if we don't jump to conclusions then we can trust if we jump right to conclusions then I think we we maybe cannot trust I mean I Again talk about in the book quite a bit about people who have well this whole thing about false

memories which was a crazy business though either all memories were false or all memories were true and neither one is close to the mark and um you know I'll give you one example I think it's also in that book I was asked to see this this young man who uh had uh he was having memories of of of um being Raped and um he was then involved with a group uh that uh that would relive their traumas over and over again and they would yell and scream and so forth and uh and that he was

doing that for almost a year and he was just getting worse and worse and worse so then I was asked to see him I was living in Colorado at the time and uh so rather than go to those memories I had him ex describe what he Was noticing in his body and he felt his his body his lower back uh con uh constricting and I had him follow that movement and then what came is that when he was 13 years old he had a a uh circumcision and his mother was so put off by that

that she was supposed to change the bandages so she would literally rip them off and he was in agony and that could be experienced as a sexual abuse memory but By following the bodily response it was a very different thing and then that allowed him to heal and he actually took leave of that because he then uh uh took this woman uh to um to court about those uh those things that he was made to relive wow over and over again that's fascinating it really it really is and and it yeah yeah yeah yeah what

when we talk about sort of you know modalities that were previously considered Fringe right and even talking about body memory Let's say in 1996 was considered Fringe and you had you know you had to stand up against so many detractors um one of the very sort of uh I don't want to say trendy but I guess you know trendy ways to tackle trauma and in many cases you know it can be a very somatically connecting experience is a lot of people are using hallucinogens and you know I we live here in Los Angeles I I

like to say you can't swing a dead cat without you know hitting someone who's had an Iasa experience this past weekend but you know you you have had some very very significant experiences with a variety of hallucinogenic drugs even quite recently um you you utilized uh five Meo am I saying all the initials right DMT all the things um to to Really process um you know kind of what what death can can look like you know by understanding dying we can truly live right if we die before we die we'll live forever um but one

of the things that I really wanted To um thank you for is that you are not afraid to speak very specifically about the incredible significance of plant medicine in particular and I believe your suggestion is for every hallucinogenic experience you prescribe 10 to 15 sessions about that meaning you do you are not like hey let's go tripping in Joshua Tree this weekend and that's going to change your life and if people do that that's fine but you literally talk about and I think It does relate to this notion of being held by an empathetic presence

for whatever you're processing can you talk about sort of your your prescriptions surrounding the use of these very significant medicines right well again I have to be a little bit cautious because when I I was in Berkeley in the 1960s yes and obviously you know we all things were crazy Peter we're crazy with that uh but in in the book I really talk about the importance of preparing for One of those uh uh uh Catalyst and uh preparing for example you know wearing goggles and a earphone to just listening to the music without drug without

the drug and then just processing that and and then after using the drug experience the Catalyst experience then to uh do several follows up where you really work specifically with what's going on in the body and I think both of those are absolutely essential Otherwise we're uh you know we're can in in problematic uh territory potentially dangerous territory and so you know there was a a wonderful program I think it was on Netflix called the last Shaman and about this young man who his his parents cared about him and so forth but they they didn't

have any warmth they really weren't holding a holding presence and so he was you know suffering from significant depression so he you know after learning about these Substances he wanted to go and to do an iasa Journey so he he he went to um to uh to I think to Peru and all the the the shamans he met were very uh they were really self-important and they you know he he didn't feel the connection with them but then finally in one Mountain Village in Peru he found the shaman that he really felt connected with and

so he wanted to do the journey and the the the uh the shaman said Okay first for one month you Have to practice this particular uh practice and then after the month then we can talk about doing the the substance and so he did for that month but also he was with these people who were very warm the the the the parents and the children they were you know that was in some ways equally as important as having the experience with the medicine because he was able to really feel held by them and again that's

I think that's Something that we can neglect but at our Peril that we very much really need to be in that holding environment which the young man had and then he was um clearly uh uh doing the rituals uh for that time and then being with the others who had kindness and generosity and and he was able to put the the two of those together so I mean I think that um we we really have to be cautious About how these are used and I think the the chapter you're talking about was the last chapter

living by dying threading the eye of the needle and that was to really come to my to the my final chapter in the book and my final chapter in my life and uh I use one of those substances as a way to open to that and uh again I think again with the right guidance and that has to be like the last Shaman it has to be the right person who's also psychologically minded Or trauma informed to really um do it with them in that in that U uh way that's most likely to be healing

that's I mean it's beautiful um I want to just circle back on the akashic records for a moment um because it's not psychedelics but it is an accessing another form of Consciousness and you described you know your relationship with Albert Einstein and the conversations you had and what I was really struck by is it sounded like You were almost working out your theory it sounded like you came to really understand the mechanism of how somatic experiencing would work and the science behind it through your conversations with him and it it struck me that what you

were really doing was having a very deep meditation that Albert could have been a part of or he could have been the entry point to accessing a larger Universal Consciousness that was translated by you And then disseminated and there's a notion that like there is all this information in the universe and you know the way of the the artist is to become attuned to it and so it I wondered if you had ever thought about yourself as this translator of this information that you you know almost went up into the records or into a collective

conscious and said it was time to translate yeah I both are true I mean it was a deep meditation for Sure but a meditation that was brought on by um uh by the uh of that Collective knowledge of that Collective wisdom and um and then sharing it with others I mean I think in a way that was what I was tasked to do and I was given guidance along the line such as for example with those um sessions with Einstein and um and with other people as well and I think that I was supported in

this way so that I can so that I could transmit this to others and The akashic records I think again is part of this Collective that we all can have access to if we choose to honor it if we choose to uh enter into it if we CH to learn about it to read about the akashic records and um and and then to uh know that we can be privileged by entering into that realm of knowing which is not a mental knowing but which is a deep inner sensing and inner knowing there's kind of a

running theme in the book that you sort of playfully Give a nod to here and there but in the in in the end of the book you really kind of confront it you know sort of headon many see you as a prophet you know in in in this field and in in surrounding Fields you know there's there's a few big hitters and you are one of them so you know you you talk a lot about also the wisdom that you know that your mother had and you know this is something I've spoken about um on

my on my mother's side my grandmother was Hungarian and there was a lot of there was a lot of mystery to certain things you know my mother would have sematic things when my grandmother had a stroke even though you know she was far away from her there was a lot of lot of interesting things and sort of Legends in my family and so when you talked about that with your mom and you talk about sort of intuiting that you come from a line you know of rabbinic wisdom like where do you sort of see yourself

Like you know many of us see you as you know this enormous figure that that you know your wisdom spans so many fields for so many of us and especially that somatic experiencing is something that's not the practition that is not what you become a practitioner in that is a tool that you use as you are a practitioner of healing right so I'm curious yeah where do you see do you see yourself as a modern-day Shaman of sorts are you comfortable being seen as a Prophet by Some people oh no I mean I I'm getting

used to it uh one of my students interviewed me and she's the one who said that to me she's a a an African woman who lives in Brazil and has a Healing Center in Brazil and she's the one who said Peter you know you are a prophet and I said please that is totally embarrassing but I think of if we think of a Prophet as somebody who's taking a body of knowledge and bringing it out into the world I can relate to That and I can also relate to what I think it was Yung called

the mysterium tremendum The Mystery of the universe and clearly Einstein was touched by this was influenced by by this but when you said um profet well I I mean I think I could agree that I'm a Visionary in some ways and I you know read the book by kahil Karan called the prophet and I certainly couldn't um consider myself to be a prophet in that sense but I could consider myself if somebody who has had A vision that has entered into the tremendous Mystery of Life and who's been tasked to spread that knowledge to um

those who uh would um would be interested well Peter you're such a significant part of our life and it's really been such an honor to have you on this podcast and um as I said I've personally benefited from the work that you have done um that my practitioner um has trained in and continues to teach in so um we're just we're so grateful and Um thank you for this book an autobiography of trauma a healing Journey um it's really a wonderful introduction to the work that that Peter LaVine has has dedicated his life to and

also it's a beautiful read it's a fun read it's it's really a a lovely book um where else can people find out about you Peter if they want to know more okay they can go to sematic experiencing. comom and also there's information we're doing a program called Immersion and and and that's about a lot of the stuff we're talking about and that's I think from the end of uh February to the beginning of March and it's uh you know usually when you do when uh people have programs you go to different breakout spaces so this

is done differently it's and it's in the it's in San Diego it's in a beautiful Center there a hotel Center there and what it is it's about every day we'll have a new theme and it starts with us Old fogies the older people myself Bessel vult Gabor Gabor mate and and I think he's been our guest here we know these people oh yeah these are really great so we'll start but then we'll have the younger people continue with their vision and how they're carrying the work and so I think it'll be a again you can

find that information on semantic experiencing. comom also you can get a link to um to the trauma healing website uh for uh people who want to find Therapists or want to learn about the trainings because they're like you said there are trainings all over the world so those are uh possibilities anyhow it was really a joy being with you to to folks it really is and now if I'm going to live my message I'm GNA get up and take a walk and move and jump on my trampoline and have a good end of the day

thank you Peter I'm gonna give you a bronx cheer because that's what I was taught to [Music] do Jonathan I really enjoyed speaking with Peter LaVine and something I didn't get to ask him about like I wonder does he think every dream is prophetic like does he think every dream is like trying to tell you something and interpret something like he talks about in his book how like somatic experiencing itself like there was like a dream and it came it was like a Celtic vision and he looked up the Celtic thing and it Turned out

like that's what he meant to say like I have a lot of dreams that I'm wondering what they're holding maybe that'll be his next book I think we should do an entire podcast series on the recesses of your mind body like is it just a big container and you know there's just this endless slew of memory I think this is what people are like oh I'm just going to go heal but really it's a way of being in the world that helps you be more intuitive more Creative more connected to other people feel better have

a larger sense of being connected to everything around you including if you don't believe in a God the you know the universe or just like connected to a larger purpose and you know when we talk about I I don't even like to word use the word diseases but what used to be called Mental Illness but also physical diseases what's amazing is that he talks about how there's more similarities than Differences across these states so yeah that's actually um that was an observation by um one of the you know one of the sort of big wigs

that he talks about in his book who you know were the the the early the Early observers of what the body does in stress and it's often diagnosed as all these different things but I was actually talking with my older son about this because he's taking AP psych and he was talking about like bipolar disorder And this that and like oh you treat this with this medicine and that with that medicine and what celier what people like Peter LaVine like what this new way of looking at things is which you know it was it was

not new decades ago or or hundreds of years ago but it was the beginnings of our understanding which I'm hoping to impart to my child and hopefully everybody listening is that there's not necessarily a linear path between where you're at now and where You want to be and when we talk about these kinds of modalities it can feel kind of amorphous like what do you mean it's not its own practice what do you mean you could be a raiki Healer or a cranos sacral therapist or a psychologist and learn this what it means is that

the the straightest the shortest distance between two points and this is in his book is not always a straight line and so so it is with healing we sometimes Need to Simply learn a new way of seeing a new way of feeling that opens something up so that you are then the container for all of the things that contribute to you getting better but it is not like oh give me the pill then I'll be better and then we don't talk about it anymore we are all constantly experiencing traumatization retraumatization old memories old feelings wounds

being opened up things we thought we were fine with that were Not denial of things that we'd like to believe didn't hurt us that's The Human Experience that's it and these are all tools and if you don't need the tools that's great I'm happy for you some of us are on a a process of searching for the tools that will continue to add so that container continues to bring more goodness than disease and a lot of people think I don't need these things nothing ever happened to me to which I say maybe but the likelihood

that you Have gone through childhood without experiencing some form of perceived abandonment even if it wasn't quote unquote abandoned you know the notion that these types of separations from our parents can feel traumatic and you know the sensitive people among us go through this process and this path to uncover these you know stored memories that could be impacting us and what we realize is that there is a euphoric experience of clearing these what do you Want to call them negative associations or traumatic associations or they're stuck places or simply just things that are not ideal

if you people don't like the word trauma because they're like oh we're overusing that word and it's like too much well even things that are just not ideal not optimal can leave a residue that once we get to shift can leave us feeling in a larger state of connection and I like how he talked about that like we're bringing back These childhood and and childlike aspects of ourselves that enjoy play and enjoy downtime and don't constantly feel like we need to distract and disassociate and disconnect and that we're just like out there being able to

exist in a way that many of us have a hard time when we're not constantly busy Jonathan before we let all of our friends go I wonder what's your response to if people say like this is just digging stuff up everything's fine what Would you say to people I would say that these things are impacting Us in ways that we don't really realize you know there's the Matrix narrative in the world that things are happening that we may not realize are happening and this notion of body memory is one of those things I believe that

it is possible for us to be more joyous more creative to feel more at Ease in the world I believe that there is access to a larger intuitive information that helps guide us in life and that if we feel stuck in some way is because there may be a message or a shift we need to make and that when we get that information our life will become easier and things will open up for us and doing this type of work going inward to fix things and to unstick things versus going outward is a real um

just a a really powerful way to start to Experience life differently all the healers I know are like you want to change your external State change your internal State and that isn't oh I'm just going to be more okay with my surroundings it's actually your external surroundings start to change when you change your internal State and with regards to the akashic records and this notion of collective conscious I also believe in that and believe that there is a Very tangible experience of connecting outside of our limited sense of Consciousness into a shared Consciousness whether it's

the universe's information whether it's a higher Ascension uh that some people call a Christ Consciousness or a god Consciousness or whether it's the kosic records which has been described as a library of information and you can go in and literally everything that's happened in everything that will happen has a Resonance to it and like the artists speak about you know we become practiced in ATT tuning to that information I just think there's a lot more to this world than often meets the eye and that by practicing accessing it we begin to have a richer more

fulfilled experience here on Earth I have a really hard time wrapping my head around the notion of a collective consciousness meaning I understand it conceptually but that is um something That I personally have a really hard time um you know accessing and understanding but you you actually have talked to me about it the ways that ideas spring up throughout history or that musical genres uh expand and all of a sudden there's like these bursts of this sort of similar type of music that's different than the mainstream music and it happens in different pockets of the

world like those people weren't talking at the time and yet you Know now it's more interconnected and people are feeding off of each other because information travels so much faster but previously that happened all the time well the truth is out there if you want to tell us where you think it's coming from hit us up appic breakdown or if you've had an experience uh of being you know tied into a part of a larger Collective Consciousness I would love to hear about it so we are open if you like what we're doing here Give

us a review on Apple podcasts it matters it matters for us it matters for the greater Collective Consciousness check out Peter lavine's books because I think this is really um a phenomenal way to start understanding uh your body and your mind and how they work together so from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have we'll see you next time it's my and beic breakdown she's going to break it down for you she's got a neuroscience PhD or two fiction and now She's going to break down it's a break down she's going to

break it down