Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 119: Close Quarters

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

“Humbleness, truthfulness, and harmlessness, Patience and honor, reverence for the wise. Purity, constancy, control of self, Contempt of sense-delights, self-sacrifice, Perception of the certitude of ill In birth, death, age, disease, suffering, and sin; Detachment, lightly holding unto home, Children, and wife, and all that bindeth men; An ever-tranquil heart in fortunes good And fortunes evil, with a will set firm To worship Me--Me only! ceasing not; Loving all solitudes, and shunning noise Of foolish crowds; endeavors resolute To reach perception of the Utmost Soul, And grace to understand what gain it were So to attain,--this is true Wisdom, Prince.” – Bhagavad Gita Maya Acosta: https://www.healthylifestylesolutions.org/

Greetings friends. Welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Maya Acosta from Dallas, Texas. She is a health and wellness educator podcaster and fellow YouTuber. You can find her at Healthy Lifestyle Solutions.org. We're going to get back to her in just two seconds. Let's pay some bills. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends about my show and reach out to me to be a volunteer dreamer, always looking for more people to talk to. Also, currently available, 6.000. works of historical dream literature. The most recent, I'm going to pop it up right here. Dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson, lovingly reproduced by yours, truly, your friendly neighborhood dream wizard. You can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. Complete list of all 16 books, growing encyclopedia of dream-related people in terminology. Most importantly, MP3 download.

You can take to the gym with you, you know, take me on a walk around town, do the dishes, whatever. or listen to the solving of an interesting mystery. It's kind of how I think of what I do. That is more than enough about me. Back to Maya, thank you for being here. Ben, thank you so much for having me today.

That's very nice. So we talked a little bit off the air. Speaking of which, I love letting people in behind the scenes. We always talk before I start. I've got to find out what's people's websites. What do you do? You know, get the elevator pitch down.

So we always talk beforehand. If you ever wondered, you know, I don't just slap you on the air. and you don't roll with it like, good luck. Right. What is it you educate regarding health and wellness? How did you get into that?

And let's tell a little bit of your backstory. Yeah, okay, briefly. So I am a teacher by trade in my past lives. In my past life, I work with children. And then I also taught at the college level. I got interested in the field that I'm now in as a result of two things that happen. One, I married a vascular surgeon, so that was kind of really unexpected. And then, two, after marrying him, I learned about the power of eating healthy foods. And then later, about a field called

health, well, it's called Lifestyle Medicine. And just to give you a little bit of a background of what that is, there is an actual American College of Lifestyle Medicine. There's also the British version. And what this institute does is it trains health professionals. So it could be, you know, physicians, dieticians, people in the health and wellness field, health professionals more than anything. It really trains them on how to have these conversations with their patients when it comes to what food recommendations they can make, using exercise as medicine, managing their stress, building healthy relationships. and then kind of guiding people away from things that could affect their health, like alcohol consumption and smoking. These are areas that most professionals are not trained in when they spend years and years

in medical school, for example, the physicians, they can spend eight years plus and never once have a course on nutrition. So if you think about it, then if you ever go to your doctor and ask, are there any foods that you recommend or does food play, certain foods play a role in my health, they may or may not know how to answer that question. And so this Institute, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, trains people, health professionals on how to have this conversation. They hold like a conference every year with workshops that are all based on science.

And the goal is to understand that these pillars of lifestyle medicine can help prevent disease. But if you're already living with a condition, it can help halt. and in some cases even reverse disease. So my husband works with very advanced cases, chronic disease like arthroschlorosis, and that's a disease that when he was training in medical school, he learned is just a life sentence for people. There is no coming back from that.

And then we started to read the literature and discover that, you know what, you can sort of help move the plaque out of the body with the right foods. And so it's all about teaching people how they can optimize their health. through lifestyle medicine. And so the educator part comes in the sense that when we learned about this information,

I decided to first start with his patients at his vascular center. I wanted to let them know that they actually can have power to take control over their health and make these lifestyle changes that in many ways do not cost money like medication and procedures. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're going to spend money on food anyway. You might as well spend it wisely on foods that are good for you, et cetera. That's right.

And then we started building. We formed an organization here in the Dallas area, and we held pre-pandemic. I feel like that's always, it's now going to be part of people's stories, right? Like life before the pandemic. But we used to hold in-person events, educational classes. We partnered with our library. And we would hold lectures and panel discussions, and we would screen certain films. to support our community and also potlucks.

And now we're part of another organization called Walk With the Doc, where we walk monthly with our community to encourage them to just adopt a healthier lifestyle. Okay. That's interesting, too. It's almost like the first thing popped in my head with the Walk With the Doc thing is like reporters walking with the president. He's out for his jog. It gets a photo op.

But also they get to ask questions and it, you know, as they're walking with him too. So you walk with the Doc is like, hey, how about some free advice, right? And literally, that's kind of what you're doing with the public education thing, is literally this is free advice. You're not paying for this, you know, buy my book, et cetera. But like, share and subscribe. But the idea is getting the information out there. I, you know, I don't have a problem. It's a bad way to put it.

Like, of course, I don't have a problem. But I like that I can do this for free and show people what I do. How do the idea that dreams can have some relevance to your personal life. And I don't mind giving it away for free. I hope people buy a book because you got to make a living. but the idea isn't, you know, for me to craft anything specifically for the sake of money, you know, we got to make a living, but I'm not just chasing the dollar bills. It's got to be something genuine and authentic, too.

And it sounds like this is something you're, you know, truly passionate about, which I think really, of course, it sounds obvious, but really motivates people to do the best job with something. You care and you believe it's meaningful. And so the education becomes a, you know, educational process, the doing of it becomes a passionate endeavor. Yeah. Yes. And I understand what you're saying.

I mean, in some ways, this is an outreach program that we do. Most of what we offer is free of charge. It's how we're helping people to not become patients of my husband, for example. By the time you become his patient, it's your certain conditions are very hard to reverse and take control of, you know, his patient. is diabetic patients eventually, not all, but sometimes they can have gangrene, which can then lead to an amputation. And then once you have an amputation, your quality of life drops significantly. Oh, yeah.

Your world shrinks because you're not as mobile. And many of the patients suffer from depression as a result of that. Absolutely. And so what I like, Ben, about this way of promoting lifestyle to our patients, just in general, is that many of these professionals, that adopt these teachings. So they might already be double board certified. They become triple board certified in lifestyle medicine. There are very educated individuals, the physicians. You see on their social media that they're walking with their patients,

that they're doing food demos. They're actually in the kitchen teaching their patients, how to cook healthy meals. And it removes that white coat element that people have sometimes when they're, you know, they sometimes patients in the past have been, have said that they feel judged by their physicians for various reasons, whether they're still smoking or they might have weight issues. And so this is a way to soften the relationship between the health professionals

and patients to say, yes, you're a human being. So we all have patterns that we want to change. And not only that, most of the health physicians, health professionals that adopt this way of living, most of them have their own story of something that they themselves have overcome, whether it be, you know, struggling with multiple sclerosis or in autoimmune condition, rheumatoid arthritis. You hear all sorts of pre-diabetic. Many of these people as well have seen significant changes in their own lives. So it kind of helps to soften the relationship. And you're right, when they're walking with us, it's a casual conversation. We do a little

bit of a health topic. And we just are like everybody else. We have to work on our own health as well. And so the educator part of me is putting together a lot of these events, creating content, whether it's for the podcast or literature for the patients. But in so many ways, I'm constantly working on something behind the scenes to continue to make all of these things happen. Oh, yeah. And this is one of the great things I think about what I do because there's so many connections between the broad concept of dreams as within psychology and crossover with almost anything you can talk to anyone about. So what would I mean by that? You just mentioned the idea of people's concept of the white-coated doctor. And that's very much akin to, if not its own type of archetype. And that's a symbol

and it has components to it that, you know, it's a category to which we both, from which we draw observations of what it does and that we ascribe personal feelings to our expectations. I think it's very akin, and I think some doctors are wizards in their own way. And, you know, wizard is almost like, in some ways, it's almost like saying, you know, you're a master of a certain craft. And there's many different kinds. You know, I don't, I'm just the, the, that happened to be the wizard that specializes in dreams. And I can use that title because it's not a licensed professional title, you know, because that's part of it too. I can't claim to be a psychologist practicing psychology, but I can be a wizard.

But so it gets to archetypes and our archetypes and symbology in general is in dreams. So what are we trying to do? We're trying to do communication with people and we're taking into account their perception of what they are communicating with. So there's a, in some ways, if you think of it like the, the epic fantasy movie, the, the wizard being a powerful being, commands a certain kind of respect from their power in a way, but also for their knowledge and wisdom and ability to provide useful information. So you want to straddle that line in a lot of ways between, I have enough respect to have

you believe I have legitimate competence in this area, but not so much that you're afraid to engage with me as a human being. I'm just the guy with long hair rambling on the internet. I might know some things you don't, but I don't want to be scary. I don't want you to feel intimidated. Just listen enough to consider what I'm saying might have something useful for you. So I think that's very much what you're talking about, like trying to make doctors demystified in a way that doesn't undermine their credibility, but also doesn't put them on a pedestal.

That's like, I can't talk to you from up here. That's exactly the point is that we want to shift the narrative that most patients have about their doctors and the doctor's not caring. And I want to add one more component to all of that is that the college trains these professionals to not only be informed so that they know how to educate their patients, but in helping patients to discover why they want to make these healthy changes. So discovering their why and also teaching them sustainability. So how to make gradual changes, not overnight, but gradual changes that can stick around for a long time. And so in many ways, then the physician, and I say physician, but I'm talking about really health professionals.

They could be a registered dietitian, a nurse, a nurse practitioner, physician assistant, but they are then trained to become almost like a coach. So, and a coach is a cheerleader in many ways to me. So I learn what your why is, what you're struggling with, what you want to change in your life, and then I'm there to kind of handhold a little bit and support you. so that you can be your best version of yourself because most of us want to be healthier. It's just we're so used to our routine. All of us have a routine and a lifestyle.

And so we learn about how to make those gradual changes. Like I said, the goal is to really have changes that will stick around and also improve our quality of life. So that, you know, if we're going to live to be 80 or 90 years old, we want to still thrive at that age. Yeah, you certainly want to be able to get around so you don't end up like the amputated, diabetic, depressed, isolated, that kind of thing. Yeah, if there's any way to, that's, see, that's part of how I conceive, say, wizardry is that it's a bit of a crystal ball. It's like saying, look, if you keep going this way, what is it, Tracy Morgan comedian, he has a great thing where he's talking about the different ways people conceive of diabetes. It's with it nested within another joke, but he said something like, you know, it's a friend telling another friend, you're going to lose that foot. You don't want that food.

You keep eating that sugar. And, yeah, that's a very wizardly thing to say is, look, if you maintain this pattern, here's what you're going to get. I'm not telling you you should want anything specific. But knowing this is literally causing effect, this is the result we will obtain. I've done my part in terms of saying, I hope that's useful information to you. And then personally, we feel, you know, there's like the professional, I will give you precise, useful information, personal level.

I'm doing this because maybe I don't want to see you end up like that. It's your choice, but ideally maybe not. Yes, yes. And also, you know, you talked a little bit about, you know, like the products that you have available and I kind of want to reiterate in terms, you know, for your listeners. Yeah. I feel that I always have to explain it to other people that don't know the life of a podcaster, but this is a full-time job.

And for those of us that are sort of self-employed or think of ourselves like an entrepreneur, we work more than the average 40, 60 hour week. I mean, we are highly invested in crafting these shows in these episodes. And so whatever comes as a result of that, whatever product can support your show is very beneficial. It's what helps keep you keep the show going because you have all the other expenses behind what you do, all the costs to host and to produce the episodes and all of that. Oh, definitely. Yeah.

And it's one of those things where it's like, you've got to make. can live in somehow. And every minute you got to devote to some other day job that pays the bills, you're not doing what you love. And you're also not providing, hopefully, what your passion is, provides to other people. Yeah. So, I mean, in that regard, let's say if currently have, you know, whatever, 1,300 YouTube subscribers, if everyone went over to my Benjamin the Dream Wizard. dot locals.com and signed up for a buck. That would be, you know, a thousand bucks a month. And I could really actually not have to have my weekend gig, which is something else.

In terms of this stuff, I do literally, I think work about 12 hours a day, seven days a week. And I'd like to cut that back a little bit by not having to work on the weekends. As soon as this starts paying, so I got books and I got hopefully, you know, aiming for monetization. These are all a little behind the scenes things. But it's their practicalities. You've got to pay the bills. So you just can't keep doing what you're doing. And another problem making a buck.

We all got to live and eat. Yeah, but that's one of the reasons I got into doing the books is because I want to give some, not only do I want eventually a commercial or two YouTube monetization, but eventually what I want to do is provide something of tangible benefit. They could hold it in their hand. Here's a work of historical literature on the subject of dreams by very smart people from the past. and now you've got that in your hand forever. I get a couple of bucks.

We're both happy. You know, it's real tangible values is what I'm trying to do there. So I would definitely rather than just donations, which are great, I'll take them, please. But also, I want to give you a valuable product.

I put my heart into in that way. So I think it's very necessary. Well, speaking of your podcast and YouTube stuff, we should talk about that a little bit. I don't know if there's, you want to start somewhere first? In terms of the podcast.

itself. Yeah, describing it and guests you've had on topics you've covered. What do you do on the YouTube channel is general? Sure. So I mentioned that I originally started really trying to educate my husband's patients and then that quickly moved into local events and then it dawned on me that a podcast would even be better in the sense that for patients that are not mobile, it would be easier for them just to tune in to the podcast without leaving their home.

So like I said, these are advanced cases. that we were looking at when we were speaking of my husband's patients. So sometimes they have to have a service that will drop them off at the hospital or at the clinic. And so I really started locally here in the Dallas area highlighting some of the game changers, people in my city that are doing great things to support the community. And then I was doing everything on Zoom before moving on to the platform that I currently use now. So when the pandemic hit, I just went full forward. because everything shut down, so we had to cancel all our events.

We had a retreat that was scheduled, like a lot of people, everything got canceled. And what I found was that that anxiety that I started to develop from feeling like I could know support people locally. I just put it in my podcast. I started to invite people from all of the world. So I guess from Australia and from the U.A. South Africa and all of her. I started to talk about various things.

And that's sort of like when my podcast began to shift not only talking about nutrition, but then covering topics like mental health. Because that's part of the whole overall health and wellness. Absolutely. Yeah. And so that, you know, health disparities. And, you know, my husband is one of those individuals that was very clear about that being true. And so we've had these discussions of how can we help other people?

because they might not have access to grocery stores, for example. If they don't have a vehicle and they don't have a grocery store they can walk to, how are they expected to eat healthier? And the stress of living in unsafe neighborhoods as well. I mean, there's just so many components that can affect our lives. And so, yeah, the podcast has become bad. I went from having one episode a week. Last year, I went to two.

So it's, I produced so much. content last year. I think it was about 105 episodes last year. Wow, nice. Yeah, so Tuesdays, I have a guess. It's usually always a health expert, trained in lifestyle medicine, like I said, so I focus on some component, whether it's stress management or exercise or food. And then on Thursdays, I offer a health tip, a very short to the point tip for people that may not want to listen to a whole interview. And then starting next Monday, I'm adding a third episode to my show. Oh, jeez. I know.

And you know, as a podcaster, you can understand what that means. It's a lot of work. But I'm bringing, yeah, I'm bringing my husband back on the show. He was my co-host when we first started, but his job has always kept him very busy. And so he can't consistently be on the show with me. So he's coming on on Mondays to do just short segments. And that's under one segment. What I say is segment?

but I'm calling it a doctor in the office. And so, yeah, he's coming, yeah, he's coming back on the show to answer those concerns that people have about making changes, to answer any questions or, you know, be sort of like a health expert on the show that can just be very short and precise, again, for people that might only want to hear directly from the doctor. And as I've been, so my listeners helped me last year to rebrand my podcast. I got my audience very involved. And then this year I asked that I got them involved again. And I said the doctor's coming back on, helped me to choose the name for that segment for that series of episodes. And that's also exciting, Ben, to get people involved because they're invested in many ways.

So I've gotten a lot of positive feedback. People can't wait for the episode, the first one to happen next Monday. I think that's the 13th. And that's pretty much where I'm at today. I think in April I will be celebrating 300 episodes. Wow, nice. Yeah, I don't use Discord and I'll talk about YouTube in a little bit. But I've been wanting to maybe do a live on YouTube where I can connect with my

listeners with my husband and my dog and just kind of just kind of show who we are. I try to do that on social media. I try to show people just were average people. My neighbor moved out the other day and she said, oh my God, I didn't know that. your husband was a vascular surgeon and I didn't know you had a podcast. She said it all just showed up right. She's like, my neighbors are so cool. They're so cool.

And I said, well, yeah, we're average people here in our neighborhood. We don't promote a lot of stuff because we just want to relax. Yeah. Yeah. Moving on to the YouTube, I can't remember when I started that maybe 2016 or 2017. Good long time. And yeah. And but it took me a long time to get monetized too.

So it does. What do they say? It takes 10 years to become an overnight success. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how. And there are other ways to get more people to come to your channel if you have certain topics or if you're controversial or anything like that. But for me, it's always been that I have to stay true to my values. That's really important for me.

But what I've offered is segments, you know, just short segments of my video interviews, the video portion of it. And I've done cooking shows. I've done like live shows where I'm streaming from one of the streaming services. And then I'll have a guest on the other end. We're both in the kitchen. We decide to cook the same recipe. But then our viewers get to see, we're side by side on the screen.

So viewers can see how we're preparing the same meal. And we have conversations and we get to know each other. And so I love being in the kitchen. So that's kind of what you'll find on the YouTube channel. Very cool. So just so you know, I mean, you can see both of us side by side in the Discord. And I want to come back to that too. And that's actually how the display is for the entire thing. I'm on the screen. You're on the screen for my episodes because I think it's more interesting that way. And it's a lot less work to not be editing camera views to focus on people. But different software does that.

So that's one thing I wanted to ask you is like I'm using, or not ask, but talk about in general. I'm using Stream Labs because it's what I first became familiar with. I use Discord because I was already familiar with it. I'm able to capture audio and video from Discord and my microphone and get it up on the screen and taught myself all of these things. I used to use Zoom if people wanted to. I would try to meet people where they Google meets, Zoom, whatever they were familiar with. And then Zoom went to, no, everyone has a 40 minute hard limit, even if you're just talking to one person. I'm like, well, I'm out.

What am I supposed to do with that? I can't stop and start interviews all the time. Right. So I was just going to ask in general, you know, behind the seeds, podcaster and podcaster, or what's recording software you use. And then come back around after that to the idea of live streams. But go ahead, go ahead with that first. Oh, okay.

So along with what you said in terms of Zoom, that's initially how I started. Very difficult to edit because, yeah, I think you get two audio files. But for many years, I've been podcasting over four years. I started in 2018. And so I'm going on five years. and I, for the most part, have always recorded video. And I know that a lot of podcasters are moving towards video, but for me, video has always been there. And I found it very difficult to edit video and to really highlight my guests using Zoom.

It's just a very limiting software. And then I went to one of the conferences for podcasters. And I met the creators, I think initially when they first launched, it was very early on. I met Riverside.fm, which you're probably familiar with. I've heard of it, but no experience yet. Yeah. Those are stream yards, and it's like a half a dozen of them that I don't know if any of them are better. I mean, I have experience in one, and I know it takes me a long time to learn anything.

So if I change, it's going to be a whole thing. I'm the kind of, I was about to say the same thing. I'm a creature or have it. I like, if I find something that works, I try not to change that. It just is working for me. Yeah. And so Riverside allows you to, it records locally. So when my guest is on, their video is being recorded temporarily to their computer.

And then it's uploading, depending on their internet speed, it's uploading as we're having a conversation. So by the time we finish recording, both of our videos go to the cloud and then the files come to me. And so the quality of the video is so much better than Zoom. So you have Riverside. It's designed for individuals who want video, quality video, and quality audio. Gotcha. The other thing that I like about them is that if you want to generate content, for, for example, for your IG reels, you can actually export a nice file for your IG reels or stories where you're one on top of the other in terms of video, your guest and yourself. That's a great functionality.

Yeah, you take a short 60 second clip or 59 second clip from there. add your captions using, you know, your IG tools there. And boom, you have a reel. And then I take that and I upload it to my YouTube. And I mean, it's just I love it. I've heard of other platforms that are very similar. But since I, they've improved the platform so much that ever since I've started using it, I've just been happier and happier because they actually listen.

They listen to their users and take their advice. And so it just continues to evolve. And I'm happy with that. Very cool. Yeah. Probably if I put in the effort to understand some things, but if I did the research, which when, I don't know, I could get around to it. I might find that some other methods are easier. Like I've got multiple different programs I use.

I've got this stream labs. And also what I'm working with is kind of using free tools for the moment. I don't pay for any of this. You know, all of this stuff is free, downloaded software. I haven't got into, like, Streamlines, you can do a subscription, which will allow you to live broadcast to multiple platforms. Right now, it's one platform at a time, and then you have to upload to others if you want to. Well, I'd love to be, and then this is the thing I was going to get back to doing live streams. I do the recording content, do Dream interviews, and then every now and again, my own blurbs, whatever they are.

I cut out clips from the show. I try to do YouTube short style stuff that I, you know, try to put on. say TikTok and whatnot. I was going somewhere with that. And so I use multiple different, hi, what are you doing, Bubu?

I got a fidgety dog. Multiple different things. It might be better to say, streamline it and use a single, single thing. I was going somewhere else with that. The live stream thing. Oh, yeah,

yeah, paying for a service and broadcast. So I do video game streams too, where I'm just like, I'm just hanging out, come and talk to me about. I'm just a guy on the internet playing video games,

you know, and talking to people about their dreams. I want to be that approachable. And the live thing, is great too, you get the interaction, and it's all so content that adds to your viewed hours and hopefully eventually monetization and whatnot. I think that if maybe this will help refresh what you were thinking, but I think that if you're savvy, if you're tech savvy and can figure things out fast, then there are so many

options. Okay. I'm self-taught, so I've taught myself everything. and I study a lot of YouTubers. I'm on YouTube all the time. That's my husband and I get, we both get our information from YouTube in many, many different ways.

Yeah, I don't even watch like we're learning anymore. Haven't for years. It's all online streaming services. Someone asked me, yeah, someone asked me the other day, do you watch the news? And I say, I go to YouTube. And it gets me to the point if something happened in Dallas, I got a short little clip information about it.

That's all I need. I don't need to watch. continuous news. But yes, I learn a lot. So for individuals who need something that it's easier and they don't have time to figure it out, for example, then something like Riverside is pretty easy. But even then, you know, to use Riverside, the users that includes the gas, has to have Chrome. You have to use it on Chrome. And so for some people, I have yet to have someone that wants to give up on me because of that. But usually they'll say, I've had two people tell me, I didn't realize I needed Chrome. And so the, you know, the interview starts a little bit late.

But other than that, I haven't had any complaints. Good news. A web browser is really easy to install. Like, oh, get Chrome browser. And it takes you straight there, especially if you Google it. Yeah. But again, we're going back to, you know, two things, people feeling comfortable with technology. And the other is that most of my people are health experts.

So they're busy, you know, in the clinic, doing their work. And so they might not have as much time. And sometimes they call in from their office or somewhere in the hospital. And so that can become a little bit tricky too. Because, you know, then you have a lot of echo. You don't have a quality mic. The lighting may be bad. But I'm forgiving of those things because our health experts just don't have the time to become.

People where they're at, yeah. I'm not going to give you a hard time about bad audio. It is what it is. I screwed up the audio myself for, I think stream labs had an update and a channel got duplicated accidentally and I didn't realize it. And all my audio was jacked. I'm like, what did I do? I pushed a button.

No, it was something. And I turned off. That was telling you this off the air. But speaking of also, uh, behind the scenes. Oh, no. I lost it. Behind the scenes. Recording software.

Oh, well, uh, hmm. You were going to talk about streaming, but, uh, you don't pay for any services. Yeah. I mean, I'd like to, but it's one of those things where it's a, weird thing. It's almost like, I don't know if they call it the Peter principle or something like that. Like those who have, to those who have everything, more will be given to those who have nothing, everything will be taken. There's something in there of like the more resources you invest into something, the more successful you can be. So if I had the money, I could get the multi-streaming

output paid service, which would allow me to make more money in that regard. But first I got to start making the money. Otherwise, I'm. Yeah. I mean, I could probably do it. If it's like 20 bucks a month maybe I should just do it. That's a little bit of chump change to get a better exposure. But that is a behind the scenes thing where I'm like, not breaking even yet on this gig. And I accept that and it takes as long as this, that's why I got a, you know, a day job on the weekends, that kind of thing. Ben, I understand. I said to my husband not long ago, I said the, what I'd like to focus on is just having the interview experience and then someone else taking over everything else. It is so much work to have to edit and do your show notes and, and

and still promote your podcast. And that comes, all of that, you know, a team comes when you can actually pay them. And how do you pay your team to help you with the work? So yeah, you kind of have to work towards getting monetized so that you can hand over some of these jobs to someone else. For sure. And then there's for me, like I, well, there's two things there. One is, and this harkens back to something you're saying earlier, the idea of producing

content. So in one sense, this is the ideal level of effort for me. me. And we talked about this beforehand. You were saying, so you just like click record and then post it, like basically, unless someone tells me not to, which is part of the ethical concerns I bring to everything. So this is very easy relatively. I have kind of an intro and outro music and graphic I put up just to make it more of a show. Didn't used to do that. Now I do the professional quality improving. But really, it's all one take. And both of us are on the screen. And there's a kind of dialed it into a very minimal thing that said, there is some editing to do. Sometimes we take a break. Sometimes I cut things out because they're too personal. Like, you know, I don't always mention this in every episode. But if you talk to me, you get my, you know, look, this, okay, now my, now my head's going. I wanted to say things about like more behind the scene process of, I've had some folks show up and they're very busy.

Like you were talking about the doctors. And they're used to 45 minutes. We'll get the interview done and you'll cut it down to 15. I'm like, no, this is two and a half, four and a half. hours. I mean, I'm, some people don't understand the likelihood of a analysis requiring a lengthy conversation. You know, and there's nothing wrong with them. They're used to a different style of interview. I'm like, this is a whole dream interpretation. Usually, clinically, these things take place over multiple hour long sessions for weeks. And I'm kind of, even I'm condensing it to,

say, four and a half hours. That's fast for a really good in-depth answer. Um, so there's, There's a bit of that, too. So I want people to know out there, like my process. I ask people to set aside a couple hours. So we can talk before. I don't record until we agree that you understand the process and you get what's going here. And then I, you know, announce we're starting a recording. And I only release it with permission.

So all these things take some time. So a couple hours. I'll like to let people know what to expect if they reach out to me is, you know, hopefully you don't feel rushed. I don't want you to feel rushed. I'm in it for the marathon. And, you know, but also I'll, as I've given some recent examples.

I'll try to tighten it up if I can. I will definitely approach it differently, which I think is fun too in some ways of like, well, you give me a different slice of challenge. Like, give me an answer in 45 minutes. Okay, that's a specific type of thing. I'll try. And then we do the best we can.

So I like that too, those challenging experiences. I'm rambling again. Go ahead. Yes. So what am I going ahead about? Oh, I don't know. I didn't really ask you a question. I'm a terrible.

interviewer. I'm not actually an interviewer at all. You know what's so funny, Ben, is that I, so I edit my content and I'm a talker. I talk a lot. And so in the process of editing, I find myself removing only because I, my goal is always to keep things under an hour. Sure. And my goal is also not to talk. This is me though, not to talk more than my health expert, right? So a lot of times I cue them up. I have a question, but then I go on and on about my health or my family or something related to that. And then I ask the question. And so sometimes I go back and I say,

I shouldn't have said that. And I remove myself. But other than that, yeah, my goal is always to kind of help my health expert. Because then my health experts are not always necessarily used to being on podcast. I pulled them from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine because I see they're valuable. And I study them, right? That's how I know who I would like. I either meet them in one of the interest groups that I'm part of for that college,

or I hear them speak somewhere, and I say they would be a perfect guest for the show. And then I focus on that. But when I'm interviewing, as I'm getting to know them, because I'm excited about the conversation, sometimes I do also ramble. I do talk. But it's because it might be the first conversation we've ever had. And usually there's some admiration behind that, too, and a little bit of excitement. So it's okay.

For sure. Yeah. No, and that's, I would hope, part of my charms, I'm just this fumbly, bumbley, rambly type of guy who doesn't mean any harm. And hopefully, occasionally, says something to go, wow, that was pretty cool. You know, I hope I have something interesting to say. But I find myself doing that all the time, talking over my guest sometimes, talking too much, not actually asking them questions. If I catch myself, there's a weird dichotomy I got a poll here where I don't want to think about recording. I'm talking to a person. We're doing a thing. That's what we're doing here. We're doing the thing. It happens to be recording. Every now, again, I got to realize there's another person here. I need to make sure this is about them. I need to ask them questions. I'm doing it right now. I'm talking about me and not asking you questions. If I realize that, I try to, but I also try to give those like personal connections because let me tell you. I know exactly what you mean. Here's my experience of exactly what you just described. I think that makes for, I hope it makes for good content, you know. Yeah, because at the end of the day, this is how a conversation would happen anyway,

like if we met in person. Yeah. So I am because I also do. listen to a lot of podcasts. I consume a lot of content because that's what I enjoy. So I listen to many podcasts. And some of the best podcasts don't do heavy editing. They just allow themselves, themselves and their guests to just relax into the conversation. And so I'm trying to learn from that. I'm trying to learn that it doesn't have to be perfect. I can relax. And it's okay. The only time what I'm starting to do is if I tell my guests ahead of time that if they kind of get their words mixed up and need to start over, I will go ahead and edit that. So just I say pause and just start over. Don't worry about it.

And the other thing that I do, Ben, because again, a lot of my guests are not trained in, you know, being guests. I created, after a while, I realized I needed an onboarding video. So I made an onboarding video again introducing myself to my guests. So I just kind of tell them who I am, a little bit of history of the podcast, why it's important that they be on my show. And it's a general video, but I always say if you're invited, that's because I see value in you. And then I give them a few tips about, you know, sound and being in a quiet space

and having adequate light and all of that. And I feel it's about a 30-minute video. That's probably longer. But everybody watches it. Almost everybody, it's like I took your cues. And so they come on the show feeling a little bit more comfortable and relaxed about it. And that's really helped to improve a lot of the back-and-forth,

back-and-forth of explaining the process. Because I also explain, you know, what they can expect, how long it takes me to release an episode. So I cover a lot of that in the video. instead of going back and forth in email. That's what I try and do with everyone before you heard my spiel. I kind of give everyone the same speech. Here's my ethical boundaries.

Here's, you know, yada, yada. And especially the idea of cutting things out, you know. So I say this. Every guest hears it. But I'm, you know, so I like to show, again, behind the scenes. Everything I do is transparent. That's genuine transparent to all that good stuff. So I tell folks, if we get into something that is too personal and you don't want it on the

air, cut it out. Because it isn't about, like I said, as I tell folks, this is not the Jerry Springer show. We're not looking to embarrass anyone or have salacious content that is, you know, shock value. You won't believe what this, you know, political opponents owned, that kind of thing. It's not my show, right? It's a real, you know, human connection. So if there's something that's too personal, like I had a person just once who said, that portion where I talked about a dream symbol that relates to a family member,

please cut that out. And I did, but it was relevant to getting the next connecting link. So we just left that out and the story still made sense without that 30 seconds of explanation. And I do that for everybody. That's the only editing I really do. Otherwise, it is freewheeling. We just talk about whatever. We fumble our words and we go back and say it twice or I ramble like an idiot. You know, and I think it's, like I said, I hope it's charming and fun and genuine. People will see it. These are really just two real people having to chat about whatever, nothing, anything. Yeah, yeah, I think you're great. I think like I said to you before we started recording that this is a little bit out of my element or my comfort zone, right? I'm curious, I'm excited, but it's a little bit out of my comfort zone. And yet, you brought me to the point where I'm relaxed now. I feel more relaxed. And so that really helps a lot. That means that you're doing something right. Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah. And again, more behind the scenes. As I say to everyone, and this is for an explicit purpose. I have my extremely strong, boundaries. I'm not practicing psychology in a clinical license sense, but I do everything that kind of person does in that clinical setting under those strict rules. And that's for two reasons. It's just the right thing to do. And damn it, that's what I'm going to do. The other side of it is that's the best possible process. As I said, if people are inhibited, they don't give good responses. We don't get a good answer. My process fails. Like, why do this at all if we're not going to get a good result based on the right way to do it. So I'm trying to meet those ethical standards from a moral and a

practical element. And yeah, people should feel comfortable and know that they can trust the process and that I'm not going to exploit them. That's just like the worst thing ever in my mind is someone who feels like they were taking advantage of like, God, that's not what I'm trying to do in any way. And I'm glad that comes across. I appreciate that. Well, speaking to which, I mean, we're, you know, almost 45 minutes in, do you want to start? the dream thing? Speaking of a witch. Benjamin the Dream Wizard

wants to help you pierce the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his dreamscapes program features real dreamers, gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions.

New DreamScape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, highlighting the psychological principle, which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest,

reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the Wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature, available on Amazon, featuring the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube, and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com.

Yes, okay. So I said to you before we connected early on that when you asked me about, you know, that I actually have to have a dream, not a goal dream, but an actual dream. I said to you that I actually, I don't know if it's called lucid dreaming. I don't know what it's called, but I dream often. I have profound experiences in my dreams. and I always have like these recurring dreams, but I said, I have two of them that the, you know, the scene changes, but it's always like the same theme. And then, so I was going to tackle one of those today. And then last night I had another dream, a new one.

And I thought, I said to you, I think maybe that's the one I'm going to talk about today, which I might explain it very quickly because I, it's more like the feeling that it left me. like all day. It's kind of lingered. But okay, I'll explain it. Are you ready? Yep. I'm just going to listen. Beginning to end like a story. Ready when you were. Okay. So my husband and I were on a cruise. And it's kind of to the point, the dream, but we were on a cruise and I was standing in line sort of in a there were a lot of people, almost like a crowd, but I could see that maybe there were two lines. And the line to my left, like I said, lots of people, I could see one individual, couldn't make out who the individual was, whether the gender or the person or anything like that, but I can tell that someone was distraught. So I started to kind of push my way, make my way through the crowd until I found that individual.

And it was a man a little taller than myself, a little heavier. I guess if I wanted to give him a raise or something, he might have been Caucasian, I don't know, but I know he had dark hair. And he was experiencing what I sense was an upcoming, let me see, how would I say? He was about to have a heart attack. It seemed like he was about to have a heart attack. And I noticed him first before the crowd did. So I was the one that kind of was yelling for help, asking, you know,

saying something is happening here. And because we were in the midst of like a large setting, no one really was paying attention. And so I said, I'm going to get my husband. He's the doctor. And at first I thought, well, surely there must be other doctors here. Why am I calling for my husband? But probably because I know, I knew in that moment that if I yelled for him to come and, you know, render aid to someone that is experiencing some sort of heart attack that he would quickly come. And I don't remember the details of him actually coming to render aid. I remember the individual. We got him down to the floor, kind of lying down. And I was trying to help by pumping his chest. And almost immediately, it's almost like I could see him morphing into, I don't know,

it seemed like morphine and to death. I don't know how else to explain it, but he went from looking like a regular individual to I could see, you know, like him without skin. Like the veins and the bones and everything like death. And he died. And then I looked up to my left.

And again, the scene kind of changed a little bit so I don't understand it, but I saw what looked at. like open coffins. That's the only way that I can explain it, but rather than the coffin being open from the top, it was, I was looking at it from the side so I could see the individual, like in boxes, two individuals that were already dead. And one I can make out was a woman, and then I could see a part of the other body, but I couldn't tell what it was. And again, they had the same kind of look of, kind of like when you've seen that display,

of the human body and you can see the body without the skin. I forgot what that display was. They went around in museums. You can see muscles and other material. That's what I saw in those two bodies as well. I don't remember much.

I think I do remember my husband being there and then I have this sense of helplessness that there wasn't anything that I could do to save that person. And even though I didn't know the individual, it hurt and it impacted me.

And there might be more, but that's all I remember. Hey, that's fantastic. Lots of great imagery. And a sequence of events is really all you need. Then I got to catch up with my notes. I write as fast as I can. Ooh, crap, right? I will say, as you're writing, I told you earlier.

So I have a little dog. I took him out for a walk. And that came up, like I'm thinking about, the dream and I dream a lot. If I take melatonin, which I rarely do, but every blue moon, I take a melatonin a little bit and I'll dream even more. And many times at night, I say to myself, please don't let me dream tonight. I want to go to sleep. I just want to sleep because it's almost like I, in some of my dreams, I feel like I go to another dimension and it feels very, very real. And it's always been like that for me. So I do believe that our dreams can have really

strong messages for us. So when I have a dream and I'm walking around, I'm trying to process it. I don't try to analyze it. I try to process how it makes me feel. And even as I'm talking, I have this pain in my gut, just, you know, reliving that dream or thinking about it. Yeah, because those emotions are very real. I mean, dreams aren't, they are as real as our imagination. And we can imagine being sad at not being able to help someone stay alive. That being in exactly that situation your brain imagined, the feeling is very real. And it can carry on.

So there's a couple of things I was going to say about it's very frequent that dreams self-select for importance in that way. It's like, if you remember it, there's probably something in there that pique your interest enough to make it memorable. And not only that, but if there's a layer of intensity to it, an emotional content that sticks with you throughout the day, that's another layer of meaning. That's like, not only is this an interesting idea that seemed relevant to something in my life, but this is actually touching something very close to what I feel is important in life, meaningful in general. So, yeah, those are really the ones that you would want to understand if possible. So, and so three, there were three things. I'm trying to remember them all.

The second one was, as we talked beforehand, it's very, I've noticed over, you know, this will be episode 119, over the course of doing this for the last couple of years, a lot of people have said, hey, I got a dream for you. And then by the time they show up for the interview, they're like, wait a minute, I had one last night. Let's do that one instead. That one seems very important. And I think sometimes that's, or maybe always, it's related to the idea that we are going to sleep with somewhere in our mind the knowledge that I will be speaking to the dream guy tomorrow. And lo and behold, we have some kind of meaningful dream because it's like our brain says, how do I make the most of this opportunity I'm going to have tomorrow?

Let me think about something important to share. And we do. It's almost like dream programming in a way. You didn't tell yourself what to dream about, but you open the door. to show me something meaningful, worth discussing in my opinion personally, you know. Okay, that was two. Sorry, I got to get them all there. They're going to disappear.

And all the way back to the very beginning, you said you weren't sure about the terminology, lucid dreaming. And you described it as, or maybe I wrote down vivid, there are people who have very vague and it's a funny thing to say, dreamlike dreams, which, but it's like hazy and it's nothing's very clear and there's some impressions. And then there's people who are like, it was like I was walking down my own street. I saw the cracks in the sidewalk. I saw every leaf on the tree, intense, vivid, visual and sensory experience. And there are a bunch of different, you know, people tend to have, well, what am I trying to say about this? If you are someone who has vivid dreams, that tends to be

the way you dream. That tends to be your dream experience pretty consistently across your lifetime. lucid dreaming is more I have an awareness I am asleep and this is a dream therefore I can direct it like I'm making a movie and that's you know I'm in some speaking of discords in another discord of lucid dreamers and they love the experience like I can fly I can transmute objects I'm wizard I can do whatever I want um yeah and so that but that is a very different experience that that opens the order to the question are they really conscious in directing their dreams or are they having the dream experience that they believe they're conscious and directing their dreams? It doesn't matter.

I don't know. They enjoy it. It's all good. Well, early on, many years ago, that was my experience in terms of lucid dreaming. Like you said, in many ways, I was aware that I was dreaming, or at least I was under the impression that I'm aware that I'm dreaming. Right. But I could change things. So when I was younger, when something scared me, I knew how to stop it, how to minimize it and take control.

I would stick my hand out and I would say no to whatever was scaring me. Usually it's something that I always would call like a dark energy or something demonic. Those are the things that scare me. You know, other people have different types of fears. So I felt like I had more control over my dreams so that I could get the results that I wanted. and then it's become more vivid in the sense that I don't know that I'm dreaming. In many ways, it feels like I'm just in another dimension. And when I come back, when I wake up, I feel like I just shift it to another reality

or came back to this reality. Like I shifted. I don't feel like I woke up. It's like I just came back to another reality. And so because of I go through that, I many times don't want to dream. I just want to go to sleep. That's all. That was kind of the fourth element of it is you even sometimes experience dreams so intense that it's like exhausting.

You wake up like, God. Can I just like dream I'm unconscious and sleeping? Yeah. I even had, so the paralysis that we experience during our sleep. I've had those awarenesses that I'm, you know, something is scaring me. I cannot move because I'm paralyzed, right? Like in the middle of I'm just heavily dreaming and I can't move. And so I'll tell myself.

to wake up, wake up, wake up, and then I sometimes do wake up. And I realize, oh, I was stuck in this and something that was scaring me and I couldn't move, but now I'm awake. Oh, yeah. And there's so many fantastic layers to all this stuff. I mean, going back anthropologically over millennia, I mean, probably before mankind was mankind as such, we had an awareness that we closed our eyes and went somewhere else for a while. And there's been a tremendous amount of spiritual, supernatural, religious theories around that.

And we get the end result of the Buddhist philosopher that said, am I a man dreaming I'm a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I'm a man? And how would I tell the difference? I love that. I love that. You know, the only thing, there's a weird thing is like, what is our self? What is our awareness that we are the same person from day to day? And it is a continuity of memory and experience. So there's also the idea of, um,

What am I trying to say? The world exists independent of our perception. And then we have perceptions. And those get processed by the brain. And there's a phenomenon that happens with, say, schizophrenia. There's the auditory processing center of the brain. And that's where you speak electrical signal from my eardrum into that center. And oh, I translate it to words.

I hear, hear your voice. That center in schizophrenic folks lights up on its own. So when a person with schizophrenia says, I hear voices, you put them in a functional MRI, and they're like, yep, they're talking to me right now. And you see that auditory processing center light up like someone's talking to them. Now, there's no reason to believe that is an external supernatural supernatural force, but it is something about the human experience where their brain is experiencing the phenomenon of a voice.

So they're not lying. They're not making it up. They're not imagining it. Now, that happens in our dreams, which is weird. We have these hallucinatory schizophrenic-like experiences where none of this is happening physically, but it's being processed through the centers that receive external physical information. So there is no way to tell the difference. It's really that powerful, especially when you're in the middle of it.

That's a great way to put it, this kind of schizophrenic experience. It's not really happening, but that's a great way to describe it because many times, like, I'll share with my husband because he's, the closest person to me after I've had a dream. And then he'll tell me he doesn't remember. Actually, he tells me that he doesn't dream, which I find hard to believe. Maybe he doesn't recall them, right? Yes. Anyway.

No, no, that's exactly me. I have such vague. Like in my 46 now, in my life, I have like five dreams I can actually remember and tell you as a story. I am absolutely certain I dreamed last night. No memory of it. It fades so quickly. That's a very common experience. too.

I get a lot of folks, you know, through the pod match thing where they're like, sorry, I just don't remember my dreams. No stress. Tell your friends or family sometimes. But in my estimation, in my growing theoretical perspective that I'm going to put in a book someday, I believe what we experience in dreams is closer to our actual thought process. But what we've got when you and I are alive and awake and communicating is filtering our symbolic, associative, sensational thought process through our conscious awareness in a way that

translates it into words so, you know, and makes sense of it as an object we're looking at, looking at ourselves, our own thought process. But when we're asleep, the conscious attention is gone and we're just getting the raw feed of our associative connected thoughts and images and whatnot. And so in my estimation, the dream experience is closer to actually how we think even when we're awake. So I think in my, again, in my estimation, that thought process never stops. The heart beats, the lungs breathe, the brain processes information, even when we're unconscious.

And we are more or less aware of it based on how close it is to our consciousness, conscious attention. That's kind of like there's. So there's dreams that are happening down here where you can't see or hear or feel anything, but you're in it and you're, it's happening. And then there's the, what we call dream. which is those things that are close enough for us to see it and go, oh, that's a thing. And then we carry that with us into the rest of our conscious attention. So there's some people who think what we call dreams only happens just as we're waking up,

like right in that twilight area. I said a lot there. But I hope it validates your, you know, your experience. I wonder what your husband said about not. I'm sure he doesn't remember his dreams. I think he dreams every night like everybody else constantly. Yep. It's interesting, but I do agree with what you're saying in terms of what probably our thought process on a regular basis transfers over to our dreams. I, you know, I've had, I've done a lot of inner work in terms of therapy and now I have a life coach that I've been working with for a couple of years. So I've toned it down a little bit in terms of my emotions, but I'm a person that feels profoundly. And I do consider myself an empath, and so other people's pain can affect me as well.

But I've done a good job of working towards protecting my energy and setting those boundaries where I remind myself that that person's experience. And this is my reality. But in the past, I have, you know, other, that's why one reason why I control what I watch in terms of the news, but also television. So I'm the person that I cannot watch, violence against children or any sort of violence. For sure. Because once it's in my mind, it never goes away. That's true.

And there's theories that say, you know, everything we have ever experienced is literally hard-coded into our head. Whether we can access it or not, remember it or not. It's a physical manifestation in neuronal connections, you know. So, yeah, there's a very, it's very wise to say, be selective with what you put in your head because it's, you know, if it's not going to serve. useful purpose. It's not going to make you even feel good. Why do it? Like, I won't watch what I call torture porn movies like Hostel. Not going to do it. Now, I'll watch Saw, which is different. It has

an element of that, but there was like a mystery to solve and a clever thing happening there. And there was the horror element to it. It's a weird thing. I enjoy the horror genre, but not certain pointless ones. Like, tell me a story. Show me something interesting. Analyze a philosophical concept in the broader story. Then I can contextualize it. But if it's just who wants to watch people being tortured for no reason. That's just awful. That's, I would,

I will not put it in my head. Yeah. And I think also the people I can watch like the scary films and horror, like you, you said, are probably people like that, that, um,

won't transfer that over to dreams. So like you, it's for you, it's like it's entertainment. You enjoy it. There's the mystery behind all of that, whatever may be, but it does,

you don't internalize it. Yes. I do. I internalize everything. And then I'm the, character in my dream, experiencing the horror. Like, I'm the person in the movie. Which is just awful.

And you're helpless to stop it. It's like, you know, I get angry sometimes with certain things like that, especially, you know, children being harmed. I want to do things I can't say on YouTube because those situations make me very angry. And, you know, that's even me being. So I've got the legit autism thing. My emotional resonance with people is extremely low. and it may not look like it.

Mostly I'm engaging intellectually with you. I can understand emotions and I do experience some. You know, I get happy and sad and I don't want anyone to be hurting. It affects, but it doesn't touch me in the same way. There's people who, it's almost like tuning forks. I'm at the wrong frequency and you're at the right frequency to really resonate and like this is intense. For me, I'm like, I can feel it.

I know what that feels like. That's a thing, but it's very, me, you know, not too bad. But you got to know yourself and put up those as you're saying healthy boundaries. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. There you go.

Once again, rambling. I love it. We got off on this whole tangent of then this is. No, this is good. No, no,

no, it is very good. And like I said, that's the whole thing here. All good. We got a three hour episodes. Fantastic. All content.

More, more room for commercial. Anyway, but let's go. Okay, we'll get back to your tour. But it's good to have, I think,

that context, too. So you can see where I'm coming from my theory on dreams. And it's, I love to follow these things, too because I'm explaining stuff to the audience as well. Like, what am I doing? There's some people who get the wrong idea of like, this guy calls himself a wizard.

He deals with spooky woo dreams. He's given, you know, magical interpretations. No, it's all psychology in the way I believe the brain functions and how our thought process works. It was my conceptions of it. And hopefully the proof is in the pudding from that regard. So we're going to try to prove your pudding here. Your husband and you are on a cruise.

And this is something you do in, real life, you've been on a couple cruises? Yeah, we don't really enjoy them. So that's why that was pretty random, the dream. Yes, we've been on two probably together. And it's not a thing that really appeals to us. Just because we prefer enjoying the destination a lot more than 12 hours or eight hours or whatever maybe. Yeah.

Well, that's good. See, now this too, for folks out there and for you specifically, add whatever context comes up as we're discussing each thing. So I mention cruises, real life experience. What's your real life experience? We've been on two. We don't really enjoy them. Here's why. Love those details. That's actually what gets us really good answers. I was writing down, enjoy the destination more. I do tend to want to get where I'm going also. So I resonate with that. The idea of sometimes the journey is the point. You're going on a nice walk to look at the scenery. That's what you're doing. Sometimes you need to just get to the store because you've got

groceries to get and you got an appointment. It's like, let's get it done. Let's go where we're going to do the thing so I can go home and make dinner. Right. So right off the bat, we've got putting yourself into a situation that is not preferred. And that's not the way I want to say it. But it's like, imagine you're in a place you typically wouldn't want to be. There's something going on with the framing from the very beginning. You didn't put yourself in your own podcasting studio. You didn't put yourself in your husband's office at home or at work. You weren't at Disneyland. It's like, why a cruise ship? What does a cruise ship mean to you?

This is why you can't go to a dream book and say, I looked up ships and ocean and this is the interpretation. Probably not. But, you know, your mileage may vary, as I say, not trying to crap on anyone. Well, it's interesting that you point that out because I had not considered, I avoid crowds. I'm very claustrophobic. And so I feel, because I pick up on energy and chaos, I avoid crowds. I can't even do New Year's Eve and a big crowd or anything like that.

So it is interesting that you point that out that I'm already on a ship with a crowd of people. So that's already tense for me. Yeah, exactly. So you're in kind of a, you're in a situation that you would typically prefer not to be on multiple levels. Like I'm not doing a process that I enjoy necessarily. And I'm in a. circumstance, a physical surrounding that is usually above and beyond or outside of my comfort

zone. There's something going on there in those concepts. If you ever have a better way of phrasing something I'm trying to say, you don't have to. But like I said, I just rambled to give people an opportunity to think. I am definitely an introvert. I know that about myself. and I could only handle crowds and groups for so long before I need to come back into my little cave to refuel. And so it is, and I find myself, especially now after the pandemic, because it was in many ways, the pandemic was a nice break for me. We were very, very active in 2019 hosting all sorts of events,

and I was experiencing burnout. So when those first initial weeks happened of lockdown, down. It was soothing for me. It was a break. It was like, yeah, I get to be at home. I don't have to do this. No one's calling me. I don't have to get up early. Like I can just relax. The roads are clear. I can spend time at the park. That's initially, it felt as a natural introvert, that part of the pandemic kind of made life a little easier for me. And now that we're coming back out, I'm dragging my feet, Ben. I'm like, oh, I'm coming back to groups again.

It's interesting because I like the sense of community. I really do. And but maybe I've become more sensitive to groups now. Yeah. Well, you definitely have comparison experiences. You probably saw me smiling. I'm like, this is me. I never want to leave my cave.

If I never had to leave this little box, Step outside to, you know, get some fresh air once in a while. But I don't want to go anywhere. I'm not into travel. I'm not into crowds. Reminds me of like the situation of, um, rare fox and rare rabbit,

that old story of like, oh no, don't throw me in the bar patch. Don't make me stay home alone by myself. Oh, the humanity. Oh, my goodness. That's,

see, these are all very powerful associations. You go with it. So just from the fact of being on a crowded cruise ship, we're starting to look at, and you got to, I think a very key point, your life experience is trending back towards putting you in situations where you are in public

conducting processes where you're surrounded by more people than you prefer to be. So you're maybe trying to conceptualize how do I engage in things I think are important and meaningful, things I want to do, but that incorporate elements of things that don't come naturally to me, things I don't prefer, things I don't find enjoyable. That's like, is that making sense somewhere in there? Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, as a podcaster like you, this is my job where I'm at in this space, in this

studio. This is where I work. This is where I'm at full time. It's my happy place. I mean, I do other things. I do editing. It's my happy place too. It's my comfort zone.

And a sister of mine when she, she's a school teacher when she went back to the classroom after the pandemic and people, you know, the teachers were ready. to go back to school. She said to me, when you began to integrate, it's almost like integrating back into society, she said, do it slowly and don't overwhelm yourself because it might be too much. And I thought, that's ridiculous.

What is she talking about? Like I'm a hermit or what? What are you talking about? But I have found that while I'm happy to connect again with people that I love and admire, I've gone to two conferences or three in the last year and a half, I don't remember. While I'm doing that, I feel extra tired, extra. It takes me longer to recover.

Even my husband, he's a little bit of an introvert too. After one of our conferences, it took us over a week to recover from the drainage that we experienced. And we felt physically drained and exhausted from all the mingling. because your conferences, it's educational, but it's also social and a lot of get-togethers. And I think I now understand what she was saying to me is that you will feel bombarded, whereas being around a group of five people might have felt okay in the past. Now we may feel like it's too much. So maybe start, you know, going to lunch with one person here or mingling with two people there. Everyone's different.

Some people thrive off connections, you know, the extroverts need to be out there. Oh, yeah. And some of us need to be at home. No, for sure. And that's a great thing too. And I love just natural conversations. And then bam, I see something that is a, and actually I'm probably going to, I almost

never do this. And I've been telling myself to try to pay attention to it more. I'm about to say something that I think would make a great, you know, short. Hopefully I can condense it down. But the basic idea of a lot of people misunderstand what introvert and extrovert actually means, how it functions. and then that nested within what it looks like. So a lot of folks out there still in the pop culture sense think introvert means shy,

lack of self-confidence, inability to socialize. And what really goes on there is that it is the absorption or discharge of energy, as you say. Extroverts need to charge their battery by, let's say the friction of social contact and that energizes them and they're like and so an extrovert that cannot socialize becomes you know uh drained they're like this is i got you know they've very you know they can end up depressed i can't connect with as many people as a social butterfly style i can't connect with as many people as i really need to to feel good introverts exactly the opposite and again you i think you understand this i'm explaining to the audience mostly um but introverts need

isolation to recharge, you know, the, the friction of connection with other people, as much as we may enjoy it and be capable of it and not be shy, but be very confident and, you know, put on public displays and do all kinds of things you think a shy person can't do. We got to go home and be alone for significant quantities of time because that recharge is very slow. It takes isolation and calm and meditation and, you know, my cup of tea in a quiet place and a good book, you know, that kind of thing. I love that you said book. Yeah. Because it is, it's very much like that, like, it's not that we hate people. It's nothing like that. But it is, and you mentioning a book, I love to read. It's that I feel, and I think we, most of us introverts have a very rich

inner life. At least I feel that about myself, that I'm a naturally curious person. And so being by myself and I'm I don't I'm not referring to being a hermit or anything like that but being by myself I can enjoy my inner world and I can connect connect to nature more profoundly when it's just myself. I also in the past I've been very comfortable traveling by myself outside of the country and in finding such joy and watching a sunset and taking a nature walk I I I'm like my best friend in many ways that way and And then when I come out, I get lost in the crowd. When I'm in a group setting, I'm the observer, I'm the listener, I'm the one that is paying attention to the dynamics of the group. I don't get lost in the group. I pay attention. And then I see where, more than anything, I enjoy hearing other people.

But what, so to kind of find the medium, like the right place for me is in that one conversation with one person that is rich and perfect. that conversation. So I do well one-on-one like this. I really enjoy this. Whether it's interview style, Zoom, or just having coffee, tea with a friend, I love that.

Like going back and forth with topics and in a conversation, that also adds to me. So it's not like I need to be alone all the time. It's more like I, now, if this was a conversation where I'm not interested in anything you're having, to say, for example, it would deplete me. Yeah.

Or if I'm talking and you're not really listening and I can feel it, it would deplete me as well. For sure. But what you're saying, obviously I'm intrigued by this whole topic of dreams. And so, of course, the wizard. So I am interested. So it does add value to me. So it doesn't feel depleting. Yeah.

So I just kind of want to let the listeners know that, that it's not necessarily. that I need to be isolated completely, but probably after our conversation, because I'm already feeling like my energy is raising, like is improving, I'm probably after this going to enjoy a nice walk with my dog. Yeah, absolutely. I won't need to talk for another couple of hours because I, you know, so that's kind of like. There'll be so much to process after this experience and you got to just let it kind of percolate.

There's another thing you said there wanted to touch on, too, just in broad strokes of the idea is easing back into socialization after a period of not. I think of it like easing back into going to the gym. If you used to be able to run, you know, 15 minutes flat out on a treadmill and you've been rather sedentary. Start by walking. Don't go right back to run. You're going to pull a muscle. We can kind of in a way pull our mental muscle by overtaxing skills and coping skills and processing abilities we haven't used in a while. And there's a there's mental band with then there's kind of mental energy in a way and it takes mental energy to focus basically to just pay attention.

That's where kind of the concept of paying attention comes from. There's an accounting balance of available energy. You can attribute to different things. And sometimes you run out and you're just like, you know, I can't. We say things like, I'm sorry, I'm losing focus. And it's not anything. It's not sometimes you don't care. And it's like I can't force myself to pay attention to this.

more in a way I've run out of mental energy for that. But the other side is we do run out of that mental energy in general of like, I wish, this is so fascinating. I wish I could keep concentrating. I just can't. We run out of that energy. And that also needs to be stretched like a muscle and worked back back up to a certain capacity. So it's a very profound idea to say, you know, don't rush back into things you have done in a while. Take it easy. You know, basically good advice all the way around, I think. I want to add since you mentioned it because I realized that physically I lost strength during the pandemic. Yeah.

Because I wasn't exercising. I'm not going to use the excuse that the gyms were close because that only happened for a little bit. Yeah. But I did put like a lot of energy into the podcast like I mentioned. So I had a lot of work and I was sitting a lot. But we just started going back to our yoga studio and I got a membership so that I can make sure that I do yoga. and I realized I lost muscle, I lost strength. Yeah.

And that kind of sad in me, but as I've been going two times a week or so, I'm building it back up. And it's more like I'm realizing that I had a lot of stuck energy in my body, like a lot of maybe trauma from the pandemic that I felt like I'm feeling that I'm starting to release it. So I'm becoming more open and flexible again, like open. in the sense of the emotional aspect, not just physical, like I'm opening up again, but I really did shut down. Like when we shut down, my body shut down too. For sure. Yeah. And I think all of this is relevant to, and again, we're still on, so I'm on a boat, surrounded by crowd of people who haven't got any further than that. All of this is

very relevant. So you're very much encapsulating some of these ideas of I'm, facing the imminent future reality of coming out of my shell, reengaging in things that, I want to phrase it carefully in terms of like, it's not like you don't want to do it. Like, if there was a way to do public engagement where you didn't have to be surrounded by a crowd in public, that would be ideal. Unfortunately, not possible. So you're trying to conceptualize, how do I do this thing that is inherently to me uncomfortable, difficult.

I'm going to struggle with it. I'm going to have to be careful how I engage it. But I'm going to do it because I believe it's meaningful to me. You know, I'm going to put myself in a position where I'm uncomfortable on purpose for a good reason. Is that feeling right in terms of putting yourself on this boat and looking at that forthcoming return to public life in a way? That's part of it. What comes to mind that I hadn't thought about it until you started sharing that is.

That's why I ramble. No, but it's good because it actually sparked an interest of maybe this could be what I'm facing, too, is that the work that we do is in the field of health and wellness, meaning, but in two different things. When I first met my husband and I learned what he did, he works with very sick people. So he's a vascular surgeon. He works with, he's pretty much saving lives on a regular basis. by removing plaque when a person has had a stroke or they have a blockage in the leg that they could possibly lose the leg. So I remember I was more spiritual before I met him. I worked more in, and I lived in California.

So I lived in San Diego. So you can imagine I was kind of this inner hippie of mine that, you know, was doing more energy work. I come into this reality with him. And I remember thinking, aren't you affected by the energy of your patients, like being around sickness all the time, just sickness. Sure. And then I got interested in wanting to support people, too. And that's where my focus is on.

I research a lot on disease because of my guess as well, not just patients, but most of us talk about sickness. And then finding solutions, healthier solutions, so that we can. can help patients get off their medications and hopefully avoid surgery and cancer and all of that. And so I realize that I, now that I'm coming back to yoga, now that I'm doing my work with my coach and really working with my own past childhood traumas and cleaning up my own energy, I'm realizing that I haven't been taking care of my energy.

Like I'm coming back to self-care, but I'm the person. that I put myself last and I other things become priority because I want to help. I want to help. I want to help. I want to help people not be sick. I want to help people not suffer. And I'm not doing that for myself. Yeah. That's a good thing to to enumerate, elucidate, to incorporate into the broader picture of what's going on here. One thing I didn't ask you and it just occurred to me was any idea why you're in line? There's two lines. You're in your husband and were in one line, the other guy's in the other line? What's up?

It kind of was to my right and the sick person was to the left. I don't know why there were two lines, even though there was a crowd. Sure. There was that division in the middle for sure. That's why I say there was two lines. So there was that, like it was divided. It seemed like everyone was facing the same direction. They're going somewhere in a way or waiting to queue up for something.

Cued up would be the word because I really. I remember it was kind of, we were in the ship, but against the hole, like on the deck, but against the hall. So we were all pushed up, crowded against, like, the hull of the ship on one of the levels. And, yeah, like, we were all queued up, that's a good word, to go somewhere. I don't know where. I don't know where the door was or anything, but we were all kind of pressed. And so there's that tension already.

And then that person being lost in the crowd, dying. in the crowd and no one noticing except for me. For sure. And your experience of that, and I should have asked, I do all of these differently. And I get on my own case afterwards of like, I completely forgot to ask, what did you see? What did you feel? Like I follow my intuitive tangent. Sometimes I can't do it any better.

Sometimes I'm trying to bring a little more process to my process. Long story short, enough about me. Too late for that. Right. These are, I think, important elements of like, why the lines, and sometimes we don't get a good answer. I do ask those things occasionally. So if you imagine you are in a line and there's a press of people, it's more about, but you don't know where it's going. Sometimes the lack of evidence is evidence itself. That wasn't something

you needed to know to express the concept. It's like it doesn't matter where you're going. It doesn't matter why you're in line. You're in line. Lines happen. Fair enough. So the absence of that means that the destination, say, of the end of the line isn't as relevant to the concept itself. So that's perfectly fine if you. If I rattle a doorknob, it doesn't come open. So be it. And like I say, cut me off anytime something comes to you. But you're, so the person you're seeing is to your left.

So you're in the right-hand line-ish. And the on the left-hand side is another line. No. No. I'm more to the left. Okay. to that left line, if you want to call it a line. Although it was like a large crowd, but divided in two.

One group to the left, one to the right. And I was more towards the left. That's how I spotted that person. Like I spotted the top of their head first. Okay. And was the left-hand line that you were in the seaside or the ship side? It was where all of us. It's more like I'm facing the ship.

I'm facing. Okay. The ocean is behind me. Like there's a rail and we're like on one of the decks of the ship. So in a way, whatever's happening is on the ship. It's not, you're not disembarking. But you're definitely queued up for something that's happening on the ship. Yeah.

Okay. And you've probably been in exactly that situation on your past voyages where you're like, we're in a big crowd of people and we're all waiting to go somewhere. You don't even know why, but it's something to do something while you're waiting around on the ship. And there's a lot of people. And that's one reason I probably wouldn't want to be, you know, trapped on a, on a, on a fishing bobber in the middle of, middle of a giant body of water. Yeah.

With so many people. And what do I do? I go to an even tiny little box to get away from them. You know, probably never going to take a cruise. He gets, I don't like airplanes, don't like buses. That kind of thing. I would say disembarking is one of the worst experiences to me on, on a ship, on a cruise. and also just kind of same thing.

Waiting to go on the ship is just as bad. Those are, the waiting lines are something that I don't do. And I know people do that for concerts and for stores to open it. They can camp overnight. I will never be that person. No, me either. Not so much.

If I can't just get in and get it done, I don't even want to be there. What are we doing here? Right. Even, you know, and this is, I've had my experiences with that too. Like, I believe, you know, a few years,

oh, years and years ago, I lined up an hour or two hours ahead of time for one of the Lord of the Rings movies, with some friends. And there was an experience. You know, my, my, well, you're the wizard. You have to. You got to do it. And you're right there. You got to do it. Gandalf, a hero mine, you know, for sure. Gandalf and Socrates are my go-to examples of, I think, you know, historical and literary wizards, honestly. Yes. So very interesting. You're facing towards the ship. And you said you saw him, he's ahead of you in your same line or in the other line. Yes. Yes. No, on the same left side, like if the, yeah, in my line. I call it.

a line, but yeah. Saw movement, top of the head, maybe saw him raise his hand, kind of like something's going on, almost like actually the way that I imagine it is a person who's struggling in the water. Maybe he's going under, but tries to kind of move himself up to be seen before he drowns. Yeah. That's kind of the feeling that I was having with this individual. For sure.

And you can imagine, I mean, this is why I love dreams. and the archetypal and metaphorical stuff. We have a metaphor, you know, drowning in a sea of people in a way. Oh, yeah. Of course. Zing. Oh, you're good. For sure.

That's awesome. That's very much in the introverts experience. Sometimes, too, is there's so many people around me that I feel I'm being swamped as if by waves. And we conceptualize emotions as waves, too. You know, a rush of feeling or a crash of, you know, adrenaline dropping off. and we have physical sensations we can link to those things. So you've got a guy who's in a way,

he's straddling a couple of different things. One is the very real physical medical concerns you deal with all the time. And another is a symbolic representation of you, of you in a sense of here's another person. I'm going to externalize it a bit. I'm watching this. Even in a way as if you're watching yourself or someone experiencing something similar,

here's someone having both a, metaphysical experience similar to my own of drowning in a sea of people showing distress signs in this stressful space because of a physical symptom so it's like this double-layered

packing two ideas into one in a way here's someone who's yeah here's someone experiencing oh go ahead would you say something like projecting I'm projecting onto someone else my experience in a way. Yeah, no, no, for sure. That's a great word.

And a lot of people get that wrong in the pop culture sense, too, of like using it as an argument tactic. Oh, you're just projecting. Sometimes people do. Oh. Yes. Sure. Okay.

But no, no. I see what you're saying. Yeah. You get, no, no, but there's a very real validity. And I think you are. What we, what we do in our head is we often do project what we're feeling in the very traditional clinical sense onto a dreamlike figure to separate it from ourselves, sometimes because we're uncomfortable with the thoughts.

sometimes because we are literally taking a third person perspective on ourselves. Like I need to get some distance from this problem. Imagine what I'm experiencing is happening to someone else and analyze what to do about me by thinking about how I would help them. So I think that's exactly what's going on here is that internal self-projection of a third-person scenario. There's some people who believe everything in the dream is you. It represents something you're thinking, whether it's literally you.

but I think this guy might actually be like, let's assign him qualities of distress that I might experience in a similar situation. And then, like I said, there's a dual layer thing of like, it wasn't enough that he would feel uncomfortable. And that might have to do with, you know, a bit of a, what am I trying to say? You, if I may, seem a little uncomfortable with the idea that your mere emotional preference to not be in the middle of a crowd is sufficiently meaningful to warrant changing your behavior, establishing firmer boundaries.

It's the giver side of things like, you know, I kind of feel like I'm giving too much of being taken advantage of, but I just can't say no. It's hard to say no. And so you kind of externalize that a bit and say, what am I trying to say? Let me imagine this is someone else having the exact same problem. I would tell them to get their boundaries up. I sure as hell would. In a way, you can't seem to tell yourself.

Go ahead. Yes, yes. So it's easier to see it in someone else when I want to. So it's easier for me to offer support to other people and not see that I need the same thing. And I sometimes do feel, and it could be what, so today's Monday, we had this a very busy weekend, right, with other obligations. And I started to think, you know, I'm not. just a podcaster. If I were, if I only had a podcast, I think I would be comfortable with that. But I, I'm also sort of an event coordinator and I, and I collaborate with other groups to

accomplish other things. And we had, and it's always like deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. And when I meet the deadline, I barely meet it. And I have another project going on. And I think I was kind of probably feeling that, that, I had a lot going on last week to prepare for an online event on Saturday. And I remember getting up Saturday feeling exhausted. And this is all to promote how we support our community. And so I was with other, it was a total of four groups that are called pods in our community. And we're all leaders. And so I'm, you know, and it always feels wonderful. So that's the duality about all of this is that I feel great when we complete an assignment and a process. And a project or something like that. But it's all the other things that it entails, all the work

behind the scenes that I'm part of because I mainly do it, do a lot of it on my own. And then I still have a podcast to release. You know, I still have to do my editing on top of all of that. And so in many ways, I do feel like I'm drowning. When, again, this is interesting, when we understand that stress affects our health, we understand that there's value in having healthy relationships. We understand sleep is important, and when you're sleep deprived, that can hurt your health. And so I went to sleep last night thinking,

and the last couple of nights I've gone to sleep thinking, I have to work on getting adequate sleep. And I have to maybe hire a coach to get me into the gym, you know, like I'm thinking of things that will help my well-being because I'm feeling stressed. I have, I'm feeling stress from a lot of obligations that I didn't have during the pandemic because we were shut down. Yep. You were not stuck on a boat with other people at that time. And there's a, there's a wonderful expression going on there. I'm trying to, trying to capsulate it. If I can, it's like there's, you are not grudgingly participating in these things. You, you do this

willingly because you believe the goal is relevant. You're not being dragged into this kicking and screaming. Then again, you don't necessarily enjoy the process as much as feel the result is meaningful. It's a different experience than someone who, for them, the process is fun. They love doing the thing and they're actually, the meaning perhaps that they're drawing from it is also the experience of being the center of attention. Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It's not a judgmental way of saying it, but it's a different psychological dynamic to say, I believe in the result so strongly, I'm going to put myself through stuff that is difficult, that doesn't come naturally to me, that isn't invigorating. So there's something going on here of like, imagine yourself as a third person,

let's observe similar characteristics in this person. And you, if we go with kind of the broad strokes we seem to have kind of at least touched on in terms of the setting, the experience, we're getting up to now you engage with the person. I mean, the purpose of putting them there was so you could do something about it, even if it was just watch. You could have actually told yourself, let's imagine what would happen if I just did nothing, if I did nothing to help someone that I think should be helped. I very carefully describe these things to people, not to say, this is secretly what you want. Not at all. We do a lot of thought. experiment saying, what if I put a boundary here? What would that look like? And then we decide after

the analysis, whether we're comfortable with the result and it comports with our value set. That's one type of thing we do. I use the example of, you know, a person who's horrified that they had a dream where they stabbed their dog. They do not secretly wish to harm their animal. That is not the meaning of that dream. I guarantee you 99.99% of the time. So what did you do in this setting. You've got this guy. You've attributed to him some of the problems that you're having for a third person analysis. Now you've got the act of engaging with him. Could have gone a much different way. Your choice was, I'm going to engage. I'm going to deal with this. I'm going to see it. I'm going to interact with it and put myself in a position of being responsible to solve it, if possible,

which is probably the entire purpose of the dream. It's like, let's look at yourself here. And what can you do to help yourself. So I think that's, I think that's where we're going. Yeah. So it said, on my paper, you kind of, the phrasing you used initially was pushed through the crowd.

They, now, I don't imagine that being forceful like, make a hole and you're shoving people, but there's a quality of the crowd, which presents at least a mild resistance. You've got to kind of shoulder past obstacles.

Is that how you're experiencing it? Yeah. And I probably did push through the crowd because I was trying to rescue the individual. So there was a bit more of a forceful approach? It's more like this is an emergency. Please notice this person. And I had to get there to save the person to rescue the person. So yes, I pushed, not in a mean way, but, you know, like in a movie.

Like I, not necessarily, I was trying to. to be their hero. But I somehow knew. And it was important enough, yeah. I knew in my dream that yelling would not, in a crowd, would not, my voice would not be heard. Yes. I had to push through the crowd.

And then I called for help, which was my husband, because I didn't know. I figured the doctor could help. But I didn't think, surely there might have been, I could have said, is there a doctor in the house? But I just called for him. Yeah. No, for sure. And that's very reasonable.

I think that's absolutely connected to what you got going on here too. I've got all these ideas. It's like, I'm almost trying to catch up with my own brain. I'm like, oh, I see it. It's running away from me. Catch up. Say all the things quickly. But there's something, I'd say meaningful in that approach.

And you very well could have. I love doing these, imagine a counterfactual hypothesis. You very well could have just seen change. You're standing next to the person. There's something about pushing your way through the crowd in a way that was not aggressive, not malicious, but purposeful, like as much respect as you have for people and you would never put your hands on them in any mean way,

this is a circumstance where you are justified in, they're going to move. They are going to move because you've got something that needs to be. So this is the idea of applying the right and appropriate amount of force to a congestion, forcing it aside to let you approach resolving the problem. I don't know if that makes you think anything? Well, the

pushing obviously happened, but I also remember there was a gap in between, which is why I said there was a left line, like two lines, because it was a division in the middle. So while I pushed, I also went through that space. That made my going through the crowd easier. So it's not like I was pushing through the line. Gotcha.

When I, there was a division in the middle. So I was, I only pushed enough as I was going through that middle part. Yeah. And that's interesting too, because there, it almost seems like that gap is, well, I think certainly that gap is necessary to it. There is, there is a way. Like some people say, there's no way. It's a solid wall.

No, no, no. There's a gap. There is a path which facilitated. There's a bit of a struggle. to get to the path and then once you're there you're you know you've gotten the obstacles out of the way now you're on the right track perhaps and you're able to reach your goal more efficiently yes good deal so that resonates yes nice i think there's very much something to that is like you know how to do this you you know the the surroundings are we're going to be a bit of struggle but there

there will be a clearing in which you can make progress of a certain kind so um you get to the person And that's when you notice it is a bit of a taller, say, heavier set person, possibly dark hair Caucasian. I don't know that that is necessarily relevant to anything. Could have been anyone. Actually, the only reason that the physical aspect mattered is, I say heavier, but more like a big bone taller individual. In other words, almost like, you know, the physical aspect mattered is, I say heavier, but more like a big bone taller, taller, taller individual. In other words, almost like, you know, the, the shape of Frankenstein very square. Interesting. That's what I, that's why I mean by bigger,

like bulkier or heavies. I'm not talking about weight. I'm talking about structure. So I don't know how to describe that. So in other words, someone who looks strong in the crowd, not even muscular either. It's like Frankenstein, like, you know, the square body. That's a great analogy too, because that guy was put together from spare parts and brought back to life. There's a very interesting connection there too. Yeah. Very much had to get his heart starting again with and provide electricity to the brain by getting a lightning strike. Yeah. Yeah.

That is true. Fantastic. Because when you think of someone like Frankenstein, I always think of like a tree. Like I don't know why, but maybe. Very solid, very stout in a way that is not rotund. Yeah. Solid is. Yeah, not a, not a Santa Claus, more of a Schwarzenegger in a way.

Yeah. But not even muscular. Just big bone, tall, big bone. like a, you know, like an extra tall person. I'm a short person. I'm five, too. Yeah. And I could tell that person was like way up here.

Gotcha. Yeah. So I wonder if there's anything about, I mean, I'm looking at the physical characteristics. Like, it might just be the first thing that came to mind. It might be the last image you saw on YouTube before he went to bed that night. You're like, oh, there's a random person throw them in there because why not? But so in terms of most of the characters, why dark hair, why white skin, who knows? That probably doesn't matter.

Yeah. Something about that, the physicality of the person. Someone who looks broadly, generally, healthy, you wouldn't assume they were about to have a disaster? The only reason the person, I want to say yes to that question. The only reason the person looked unhealthy is the, remember I said, the person started to morph. Yeah.

Like the sickness started to happen. A look of I'm dying. started to happen rather than seeing you would in other words if you see that person you wouldn't say they're frail initially like they're frail and dying that's why i think the size matters because normally you would say oh that's just you know very it's kind of strong looking not muscular but kind of uh like a tree of health strong and then suddenly started to look morph into death for sure yeah there's definitely definitely people who you look at them and they don't look right. They're pale, sweaty or sickly looking, you know, sunken eyes. So I think that's...

Like the eyes started to like disappear and you can see the veins. Like the skin surface started to disappear and it's the person's dying and things start to stand out like in a horror movie. Yeah, a very rapid. Yes. Decay in a way, but not a gross pussy, you know, melting Indiana Jones Nazi face type of way. But as you, you know, a time lapse of a real purpose. person's face, if we ever saw that, that, you know, the, what is it called the bucule fat in the face, it starts to dissipate and, and that, that corpse-like sunken death mask. And you even imagine it going further in the skin melts when you get, the word I think you were looking for earlier was body works. The body works. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. I, when I went there,

10 years ago, I wanted to sign a thing right away to say, put me on display. He's plasticize me. Wouldn't that be cool? Oh, my God. I was a lot. I was a lot. I, I, really enjoyed it. I love that. It was so weird to see the giant, um, you know, they take stuff and they put it in glass in a way. They,

they put, they put the stand up figures in glass cases, but there's the kind of idea of a, a block of glass and something suspended in it. The nervous system. Looks like this weird space octopus alien. It roughly in the shape of a human being and so you realize that's actually our entire brain in a way.

Like the nerves that go out to our fingertips is connected right to what we think of as this three pound chunk of gray matter here because there's, you know, the the top part and then the sub part and then the stuff that's in the neck and then everything else that's connected. I was talking to this with another guy a couple days ago a month ago at this point, you know, when this gets released. But there's times where our hand moves and then it tells the brain that it moved. And we don't know what just happened. We get these nerve responses that are automatic. And really, when they've done tests on this stuff, the brain lights up after the nerves flashed. And it's like, where is this signal coming from what's doing the thinking? Is there a brain in our hand in a way?

Yeah, it's all these nerves that are connected. I'm probably explaining it badly. A neuroscientist will go, he's so close. But there's a concept to that. All of this. Anyway, I just had to say that about body works because I love it. I'm fascinated by the human body. I end the brain to like the whole psychological aspect of it.

But the physical part of it, the anatomy fascinates me. And when we went, it was probably 10 years ago. It was very early in my relationship. My husband and I went together. And he just, he's used to seeing a lot of things. But for me, it was fascinating. Just intriguing to see our, to have access to a body that way without calling it a corpse. Yeah, for sure that this was a real person that wanted.

you to learn something from them. They wanted to be a living science experiment in a way, in a way that is not derogatory. Like they're not being tested upon. They're like, show me to the world so they can understand themselves better. That's, I mean, that's got a poetic beauty to it. The best thing I loved, not just the, the octopus looking nerve, nerve system thing. But if you take your guts and you stretch them out in one long straight line, it's like 30, 40, 50 feet of this tiny little tube. And that's what absorbs all the nutrients.

And that's so many places things go wrong in the human bodies are gut health and the biome and whether we're processing stuff and extracting the right nutrients. You know, is there what are they called bioavailability of certain things depending on the form two different, the same substance and two different pills. One breaks down. One doesn't. You know, sometimes you're paying for expensive pee, as they say, with some supplements, right? True.

For sure. Okay. So what do we do with that kind of iconography? And immediately he went from a tall, healthy to something where the, not only is he deceased, but his exterior becomes a representation of this science display that you found fascinating and meaningful. There's something there. It's like a, if I may, and I don't want to say this is the only possible idea, but

it's almost a less emotional and more clinical observation of now I can see. this problem, the problem this person represents in a way that is more dispassionate and scientifically fascinating rather than emotionally distressing? Yes. More scientific in the sense that the reason I knew he was having a heart attack is because, not because he was touching his chest, because I could see what was happening to the heart. I could see it's very sci-fi

in the sense that I could see the spreading of you can't say arteries because we don't have enough for the amount that I saw. So what I saw was his eye started to quickly morph like one of the eyes

started to quickly morph into the layers deeper into the layers so almost like you could see the socket and then the heart did the same thing with like a combination of like blue and red. almost like several arteries or vessels that started to like a lightning strike, and then I could see, oh, the heart is what, it was the heart that was wrong there.

There's something powerful in the idea that the obscuring exterior has been stripped away to the point where you can more clearly see the nature, the specific nature of the problem. and you've analogized it in this sense of something you're very familiar with not only that but something you feel your husband is a specialist in i mean literally he is he's the specialist in the heart so there's there's also very much a connection in this externalization of the broader problem and how you're going to observe it understand it and ultimately respond to it you rely on him in your life yeah i would say quite a bit to be uh you know what am i trying to say you'd probably say well of course And maybe you do, maybe you don't, I could be assuming.

But the idea, if you consider him such a reliable person, someone that is, what am I trying to say, someone that is so important to your good mental health, your stability in life in general, that it is in relation to you looking at yourself in this problem. It is as if someone having a heart attack has a heart surgeon within walking. distance to immediately try to save their life. Something connecting there? I think I said that way too many words. No, and please don't feel, I mean, feel free to ask directly.

You're not going to offend me. I think in many ways, I do see him very closely as the role that he plays as a physician in the sense that I'm aware of a lot of work, of the work that he does and the lives that he saves and we had a very busy weekend and after that he said do you mind if we go by the hospital I have to check on a patient so I said okay I'll sit in the car and then he I wanted coffee so he said why don't you come in and it was a weekend and he said let me give you a tour even though he already had but he likes to he's proud of what he does you know he's the captain of his ship and so he's showing me the cath lab and the recovery room and all of that.

And I'm, I decide to absorb it, even though, like, he also has a clinic where he does some of the smaller cases, but I, I said, let me just imagine him here in his,

um, scrubs working with a patient. Like, let me just look through those lenses because I don't see him that way. He's invited me in the past, but I'm, I can't do. I can't even watch procedures on television.

I just, I can't handle a lot of it. I get nauseous and old faint. Yeah. Yeah. I can't. But I know that what he does is very important. And he, if it weren't for the red tape associated with insurance companies and all the other stuff that comes along with medicine, he, his craft is very important to him. And so, and I admire that about him.

And in many ways, I do see him, not only that, just the role that he plays in saving lives and the work that he does, but also. when you said that he's an important figure in terms of my stability, I would definitely say that he grounded me because I felt very, I was like, I used to call myself a social butterfly, but I wasn't that social. Like I said, when I'm ready to come out of my cave, I come out. But I was very much a free spirit, you know, had my foot in Costa Rica. I was going to relocate to Costa Rica before I met him. Like I could move from one place to the other and be, I can plant my feet anywhere. I guess you can say that.

I'm not a person that likes to be tied down too much to one location. I can plant my feet anywhere. And then I met him and it's just been very stable, which has allowed me to be more productive and more like mission driven and focused. For sure. I don't know if that has a role to play with any of the, this, but. Yeah. Absolutely your conception of him. Yeah. Yeah. But I wouldn't say that I rely on him for my mental health because my mental, I say I wouldn't say that, but I don't let me, I don't know.

I would say that I've been working on my mental health most of my life. I, I've, because I had a lot of trauma and just many things that I face early on in my life. I started with the school counselor in high school who I confided in and she would pull me out of that once a week out of a class to go into group therapy, like a group setting. And I found how effective that could be for me to be in a safe place where I can open up. And so I've been doing a lot of work for many years. And like I said, every week I have my person that I have a safe place with and we work on some aspect of myself. So I would say that I do a lot more of that work. It's important for me to be able to be open to that. And so when I, so to be in some ways, my coach calls me out when I do project,

when I'm projecting. And I'm comfortable. I'm okay with that because that's how we get through. That's how I have breakthroughs is. I need for someone else to have a different perspective than the situation that I'm seeing myself in. Sometimes there's no other way to do it. You need a second opinion. I did want to say, it looks like you're frozen on my screen. For some reason, I don't understand. Oh, my God, I am frozen on my screen too.

I don't know if it might help to maybe turn your camera off and on again really quickly. Oh, how long have I been frozen? You know, most of that explanation you just gave, but it's okay. We can let me be what it is. Hey, I'll see you there. Wonderful. Yeah, it just, it happens. Lately, my camera started doing certain things.

Like my computer started like fading. the light. It just happened yesterday. If I take one of these white pages and hold it up to the camera, the entire picture darkens when I set it back down. And it doesn't come back. Oh, my God. So I don't hold these up to the camera anymore.

No, no. So all that explanation was good. And it's a fantastic, relevant nuance. So definitely my statement could have been understood and might have been true. But to say that, you know, you're overly reliant on your husband or, or, lost without him. But that's what you explained, I think, is more the direction I was going with. The idea that you have tremendous respect for him, that your relationship to him is very important.

And not only that you consider him an expert in his field, and it's that expertise in his field that allow that that. Oh, oh, my. Oh, no. Oh, I was probably, I probably just, I get lost in my, hang processing, the little wheel starts. I should put it out on my forehead. We'll start spinning. Um, it's there, it's an analogy to your respect for his professional competence.

This is a specifically framed as a problem you know is in his area of expertise. So you can, and you know, in that way you rely on his competence. But I think that, um, it's not a reliance as much as a respect, but, but also, um, it's, it's analogizing to a broader category of experience with him in relation to, solving your own problems in a way. You probably realize that, or experience that what you, the benefit he's able to provide, it goes beyond the specifically medical. He's your husband. He's not just your heart doctor. But the things you value in him are some, in some ways tied to that. Of course, his professional competency is he's succeeded. We all have to

demonstrate that in some ways. But, you know, there's a certain competence or in the world just in general. That's, you know, nothing wrong with that. Nothing, nothing wrong with people that don't amount to much in some way. Like, they're still valuable, too. But what am I trying to get at? The idea of it isn't the value of his heart-saving ability that is relevant to this. That's just how you're analogizing it. There's some other element of your relationship with him that is coming into play here that you're showing yourself through this dynamic. Does that kind of make sense? What makes sense, and this might be what you're alluding to, but I'm not sure, is that I was interested in the wellness field.

I've been interested for many, many years because of my own health issues, but they weren't, like, significant enough. I didn't have, like, diabetes or heart issues or things like that, but I had ailments throughout my life that have improved as a result of these changes that I made. But I was interested before I met him, and I didn't want to go into medicine. So I found it I wasn't even happy about the way medicine is practiced. So it was weird when I met a doctor. When I met him, I didn't even know he was a doctor. When he told me he was a doctor, I was disappointed. Because that's, I had my prejudices of Western medicine,

because I kind of take more of the holistic approach. But I've had these interests of mine for a long time being more natural and holistic and even moving away from chemicals and environmental things that could affect our health. And then I met him and we became very interested in this work of helping people together. How I rely on him is that I become very passionate. So it was my idea to start the podcast. It was my idea to start the support group. There are many things that I'm the driving force behind when it comes to working with people in this capacity. Because he's got enough to do in medicine.

He doesn't need more work. But I started to create all these things that I need him for because I'm just an average person that no one would listen to if I didn't have the doctor. Yeah. That's where I need him. I get that perspective, yeah. In other words, like I started my podcast with him, but we couldn't do it together as much. So a lot of times it was myself, my solo episodes, because he, you know, he's very busy. And then now I'm bringing him back on the show for shorter segments that are doable for him.

So we can sit one day and record several episodes ahead of time, as you know how that works. Oh, yeah. and that's more doable and people are excited about it. And I need him in that way, not so much to, well, maybe to validate my work. And now that I think about it, I was going to say not so much to validate. The thing is that I do a lot of my own research on my own and I bring on other health experts, but I feel that I have to do so much. I'm not even trained in medicine, but I, if you saw on the other side on my camera, my library,

of books so that I can be well-informed so that I can have these conversations with the doctors. It's so, you know, I don't want to just ask a question. I want to know, have an idea of how they would respond so that I can, you know, continue the conversation. So there is a lot of pressure on my end, a lot of stress to be well-informed. And last night, I'm having a conversation with my husband over dinner about diabetes, and that would be our next group of episodes. And I'm picking his brain. And I do that a lot, actually.

I ask a lot of questions. Yeah. To be informed, but also because I'm curious. Like I said about, you know, body works. I'm fascinated with our bodies, with the ability of our bodies to be able to heal when it's given that opportunity. So in many ways, I am obsessed about health.

Yeah, yeah. So, I'm fascinated by the body and how everything works. Yeah. Yeah. I worry about his health because he works a lot and he's, he prioritizes his patients a lot. Like, we are both two people that we,

it's hard for us to say no to people. So we both have to practice on putting our families. But the difference between both of us, well, there are a lot of differences, but he's definitely more of a leader. Like he knows how to lead a group. He has stronger boundaries than I do in many areas of his life.

And I'm more like, yeah, but I definitely need the doctor. I definitely need him. Yeah. And I'd say that's a good thing to know. And it's a relationship level and it's also relevant to your work. I think you're both in the same business in a way. And I'm not someone who is, there's a weird thing of like I'm not a credentialist in terms of, well, if you don't have a degree, I have nothing to say to you. People can be experts in a lot of ways.

There's no degree to be a dream wizard. I'm just the guy doing a thing. And if I can demonstrate, I've got the ability, do I need a degree? You know, but then again, there's the degrees used to mean more in some ways. And I think, you know, in terms of a heart surgeon, they still do. You've gone through the residency. You've proven you can do this. And tolerably well that someone said, good luck and go into private practice, you know.

So there's a value to it that is getting muddied lately. And we should never confuse the fact of degrees, often meaning competent. with the fact that someone can have no degree and be extremely competent. They just life experience and independent study. So, yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that you conceive yourself as someone without value outside of his input. Definitely not, not. But you know what?

In that sense, in terms of me being like a little more vulnerable about it, I have, you know, on my podcast, I often say, well, I'm not the doctor. And I remember someone, a friend of mine who, you know, she's so sweet to me. She one day she said, you know, Maya, every time you say that, it hurts me that you feel the need to say that you're not a doctor because you have so much value that you give. And I have physicians that come on my show and thank me for the platform that I've created because maybe they don't have time to create a podcast. But there's this message that needs to get out. And some of my favorite people that I watch don't have huge titles. When I talk about YouTubers or even podcasters, people that I learn from may not have all these credentials.

But the passion and their dedication to what they're creating is enough for me to tune in. So sometimes, yeah, it's easier for me to see it in someone else than it is for me to see it within myself. For sure. That brings us back around to. So the reason I'm spending so much time on kind of conceptualizing this is that it's the main drama of the, the dream in a way. Like, this is the big thing that happens. And then there's consequences afterwards. You've got to kind of three-act play in a way. So maybe, maybe it's both. Maybe I had it wrong to begin with. I'm looking at what element of you might this be to learn

about yourself. But you also may, at the same time, there's lots of dual layers of consciousness going on in dreams too. It also may be literally a third person who is in that sense having an emergency and you are putting yourself in the situation. What do I do when I see someone in distress who needs help? What are you doing, Bubo? Hi. Do not walk on my keyboard. Oh, kitty pie. Yeah. This is my boy, Cece. He's an old man. He'll walk on the keyboard. He will lay on the keyboard and get comfortable. No, no. That's part of that. We got cats back here to sleep in a whole thing. Oh, we got another one on the pillow right there. Do that baby girl. Oh, yeah. How many cats do you have? Yeah. And then, oh, there he is.

Yeah. So you also maybe as a dual layer, putting yourself in this situation of a lot, let me imagine what it's like to see a person who needs an emergency help. I'm the one to notice it. I'm the one to take action. There's a big metaphor in there for your life of like, I'm trying to reach out to people who may be in distress. Maybe they're overwhelmed by their lives. They're having a problem. And this person had a problem to the point where your noticing was too late, not your fault.

And even the skills of your husband who you think superior to your own in certain medical things, which education and experience, you know, nothing derogatory against you to conceive that. It's maybe factually correct. Even he couldn't save that person. This was actually someone beyond your reach. And you had to process witnessing this and trying to help. And so here's one thing I thought way back in the beginning. We kind of come back around to. you may be considering the fact that your best efforts will fail for a lot of people.

They will be disinterested. They will get the message too late. You're having a moment with that. What does that make you think? Yeah. I understand that that actually is the reality of it all is that because we as individuals we're driven to behave certain ways for many different. reasons that we may never, you know, I can't fully impact people. I can only do so much and

only a handful of people will actually want to create that change. And I think what is hard for me is when we're talking about, like in my dream, having seen that person, it's too late. There was, obviously, there was nothing I could have done to help that person. And the expert couldn't do anything. It was too late. I think it's sometimes it comes out of, you know, conversations that I'll have with my husband with a certain patient and it doesn't happen often, but if a patient passes, my husband internalizes that. Yeah, it's hard not to. He comes home and he's depressed, not profoundly depressed, but you can tell he probably

had a good cry in his car on the way home. I mean, to put it mildly, it's a bummer. It's not a good day. It's not something to be happy about to celebrate. Yeah, it's the very much opposite. And then that energy, yeah, and then that energy affects me. But it's more like when you hear of a person suffering and you feel helpless, like you feel that there's nothing that you can do.

And I sometimes have to, again, remember that this person's journey here in this world is their experience that, you know, maybe depending on how you view life and why we're here, maybe that person chose to live that reality. And so it's the hard part isn't valid theory, not wanting to internalize it, not, not wanting to feel like it was my fault, like, if only. Because it's just, then I'm just spinning the wheels. Like there's no point in all of that. It feels like wasted energy to dwell on something that I had no control over. Yeah.

It's good to really conceptualize it that way, too. Like you have a person who you arrived just in time in their life in general to see them maybe, their worst before the end and you think to yourself if only i had been able to meet one of seven billion people years ago wait a minute is this any in any way realistic is this a burden you can put on yourself like what how are you supposed to do that now it doesn't mean it doesn't affect you but you can we can laugh at it because that's so irrational it's like but we can't help but feel that way man i wish i could have done something sooner to help someone maybe i could have said something different or giving them, you know, it's one of those things where we, and that's a function of the fact

that we care. And we don't want to stop caring. So it's like, you know, in order to make it stop hurting, we would have to be a person who doesn't care. I don't know that. But in many ways, I appreciate this conversation, Ben, because in many ways, it might help me to reflect on how I'm internalizing things and how profoundly I'm making my work mean when in reality I could probably enjoy it all if I just relax about it. In other words, like, yeah, I don't think I will ever stop caring, but I think if I say, okay, may I plant these seeds and wherever the seeds fall, may they flourish and be nourished and grow somewhere, wherever that is, and it might not fall on all ears whenever we do any, like in many ways for us, it's like sometimes some of the

work that we do feels like a sacrifice because we're burning the candle at both ends with the hope that this message will reach somebody. And then it might not even feel, you know, it's just random. It's whoever listens. Yeah. Every blue moon, someone will say, I, you know, change my life because of your recommendations. And then that kind of helps the cost. For sure.

Yeah. And that's a delicate balance sometimes. And no wonder it would take an intensely meaningful dream or other. meditative dwelling upon the subject to say, how do I take something seriously because I believe it's meaningful and do it in a meaningful, do it in the right way for the right reason, but also enjoy the process such that I'm not beating myself up if I fail to deliver. There's something in there. The idea of, I don't know if you can think of what to phrase it better.

It's like, you know, you don't want to enjoy the process so much that you care for. for you like, I don't really care what happens, whatever, listen, don't, but also not beating yourself up too much. There's too much pressure on yourself that doesn't need to be there, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, yes, I agree with you because, so this thing, this event, online event we held recently on Saturday was very much, you know, for support groups in a way, if you want to put it

that way from throughout the country. And we stayed on afterwards after we got off the live stream. And we're talking. And many times we're all kind of very serious because it's like we're very, I almost feel like people that are called to serve and it could be in any field. You know, you can work in a church setting. You can work as a psychologist, whatever field that is in the helping field. I think people that are naturally called to serve.

others, tend to, we tend to be very serious about this work. We take the responsibility very seriously. Yeah. We feel like we're holding the, we got the world in our hands. Like it's our responsibility to take care of this planet,

whatever it may be. And instead of just being a little bit lighter about it, and maybe even playful and having a little more fun about it. That's the idea. Playful without being flippant. It isn't like this doesn't matter. But I'm not going to. make it more miserable than it needs to be by being a stuffed shirt in a way or not allowing

myself to enjoy it. That's why I try to be a goofball and just let people be comfortable because you can't do this any worse than I do. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just the guy talking to people on the internet who thinks he's a wizard. Who the hell am I? And I say that like in one of those ways where it's like, I don't want people to read it like you feel of like, oh, I'm not the doctor. But in a way, it's very true for me too. I'm like, I want you to know exactly how much I don't take myself seriously. I take the subject matter seriously. I'm just the guy doing the thing and we're going to get there together. And hopefully I'm going to bring something unique to the table. And I think, you know, people tell me I do and I try not to self-aggrandize. You know, that's like I want to

believe I'm competent. I don't want to believe I'm better than I am. Get a big head, prideful, that kind of thing. But the playfulness versus being flippant has got to be in there. Yeah. Yes, yes, very much. And it's interesting. Lifestyle Medicine covers there's a group that's part of lifestyle medicine that focuses on happiness. So when we get together, we try to raise each other's vibration. So we do something fun, you know, just to snap out of that thought process of, you know, being too focused on our missions. But just, and so I joined the group specifically because I want to focus and not the fake, oh, I'm happy, nothing's bothering me, but more like, what can I do right now to raise my energy so that I feel better so that I can feel lighter?

So it's definitely an area that I want to work on in my life so that I can lighten up a little bit. Yeah. The phrase that just came to my mind. And I flip back and forth, like an agnostic atheist, deist kind of thing, you know, yada, yada, yada, to put it in context. Typically Christian phrase, so I'm not a Christian, but a phrase that came up was joyful worship. There's something in there, right? That kind of resonates, right? That idea of worship is something important.

This is meaningful to me. I'm doing it for a reason, but I'm joyful about it in a way where it's not, I'm not being drag kicking and screaming into it. I'm not taking it unseriously. I'm having as much fun as I can, but yeah, I'll over explain it and lose the magic. But that's kind of what we're doing with these, you know, me talking about dreams, you're talking about holistic nutritional health and different stuff. There's a joyful worship of the importance of the subject matter and that the experience that

we're bringing to people about it. It's like the method and the goal means the means in the ends, something like that. Isn't it interesting that when you see footage, stock videos, B-roll or commercials or whatever of someone, even when Big Pharma, I shouldn't say that. You know, when you see this pharmaceutical commercials on TV and they're all, whatever it may be, whatever product people are selling when they're conveying to you that you'll be. healthier. And there's usually you're walking and smiling and strolling through the park. And that's what health and wellness is. Yeah. That's what there's always a smile. It's not like you're healthy and you're sitting there drinking tea quietly. It's like this movement and happiness and joy. That is exactly what you say that joyful worship is, you know, that's kind of in my own life. What I'm thriving for is. And

even thriving is a word that I want in my life to feel like I'm thriving in what I'm doing, not that I'm a prisoner of my work. For sure. Yeah. And then to compare the two. So you've got a very interesting thing going on there where I'm trying to be both the expert and the entertainer in a way, the podcaster and the professional. You've actually got that a little divided up.

Like you would probably look at your husband and say he doesn't know half as much as I do about editing, about scheduling conflicts, about a lot of putting together different. different things. So you probably have more skill than you, like if you step back and you look at it and you go, wow, I mean, I'm not a heart surgeon, but actually the heart surgeon can't do what I do. He just doesn't have the information. He hasn't put the invested ever. He has not developed those skills. And then you realize the comparative skills are that you have more value than you thought you did going into it. of like a what you do is more important than just a vehicle to get him on the air. There's there something there of like you're coming into your own in terms of your own value

as a content creator and a message deliverer type type of thing. Yeah. So there's something there too. It's like this, what you're back to the dream, what you're considering is this situation where you have, you're going to have to confront the idea that you can't help everybody, that some people are going to literally die. That's the worst thing that could possibly happen. And even your husband's level of skill that is different than your own,

maybe not better, just different, is not going to save them. Like even the two of you coming together to notice and intervene is not going to do it. So you have the experience of this person expire. You want to confront the reality. And this may go back to what you were saying about the weekend and dreaming. I don't know if your camera might have froze again. Oh, oh. I think you did.

Yeah. Okay, hold on. That's okay. We'll keep fixing it. You're back. It's all good. No, the idea that you stayed after to talk to people at this conference, even if it was just online. And there's always one more email than you can answer.

There's always one more person that wants your attention. You've got to say, you know, I've got to go home and sleep. So at some point, you're going to feel a dramatic, intense responsibility for the one person you could have worked a little harder to save. Might that have made the difference if you had just sacrificed a little more sleep? That's never going to go away. You know, that that idea that you just cannot help seven billion people right now all at the same time. And that's, you know, so confronting that saying, how am I going to continue doing what I think is meaningful, knowing I'm going to disappoint myself on some level. Even if I know it's physically impossible, I have to deal with that emotional disappointment.

I think there's, does I feel like there's something going on there with this person in this setting? Is that speaking to something important? maybe I'm projecting. Like, I think of that too, you know, I can't talk to everybody or answer every email. Right. What would, it's sounding. I'm aligning with what you're saying. And I'm also thinking, well, two things that we definitely realize that as a team,

my husband and I, we sort of need each other. If we don't have each other, we would have to hire a team. Right. So all the things that I do, you would have to hire people to do everything that I do. But so he definitely. It's complimentary yin-yang fitting together, right? Definitely.

And he definitely credits me in public. He lets people know, I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for Maya or I just, there's just no way I can do all of this. So he definitely credits me that in that way. And as we're having one of our. Wise man. Yeah. I got that.

So as we're. Redesigning one of our websites, because we're changing the name of our local group, to all go under Healthy Livesaw Solutions, because it's kind of pretty much the same thing. So as we're talking about what we would like the website to look like, he said, we should write down our mission statement because he's very clear in his practice. That's one of the things in terms of when he first started having a mission, and things that are important to him was very important. and every time there's a staff meeting, they go over that.

And so it made sense that we should have sort of a clarity. You know, you start the work. It's like you start whatever it is that you're working towards with a passion, and then you're just all over the place. Oh, yes, I can do that, and I can do that. And you get distracted instead of having like clarity. What is our ultimate goal? Yeah.

What do we want to focus on and maybe narrow that down? And having that, it's amazing what one mission statement could do, whether it's one or two sentences or however long, but just having some clarity of what your goals are so that you don't spread yourself then. Yeah. How do you know you're doing what you're intending to do? What does it look like to get the job then? That's right. For sure. That is right.

I feel like with the podcast, I have clarity in terms of how I'm curating the show, what my mission is. I feel that it's very clear. That's how I can be selective of my guests because I understand, I know. But then we do other work outside of that, like I said, whether it's become very virtual, but it's very similar to what we were doing locally. And with that, we're just all over the place, no clarity. We're just like, yes. So I think, you know, I appreciate this non-counseling session here because I think it's helping me to understand.

where I need, how I can alleviate some of that burden, that what feels like burden. Yeah. Well, and I resonate with that extremely well, too, about clarity of purpose. Like doing this show, we're just talking to people. I kind of understand. I get it. I know what I'm doing here. I know what the purpose is.

Give you a good answer. I've had a recent opportunity lately that I've been sitting on because it is to do maybe half hour web streamed classes on different topics. Now, I can bring whatever my unique special. I can talk about it in a dreams context. I can talk about it in a psychology context. I can just do broad philosophical strokes on here's how to understand this idea and working into your life and your thought process.

Because I can go so many different directions with it, I don't have a handle on anything. And I have not put, it's like I can't conceptualize how I would do it. Therefore, I don't know how to do it. It's a very artistic thing of like, I need to put it in a box. Okay, first I need to make a box. First, I need the materials for a box. And I'm all over the place. Like, I don't even know where to begin.

So I need a clarity of purpose. Like, why would I, not why would I do this? I like sharing, educating, et cetera. But like what would be the, what would it look like for me to do it right? I can't get a grip on that. So I'm not offering to put myself in a position where maybe I should. Maybe I should. This is a challenge.

I, okay, there's two things. Maybe I should personally for me put myself in a position where someone says, as topic, go. And I'm like, whoa, I'm unprepared. I'll just tell you what I think. The problem is these online classes are kind of paid. And there's a big, I have a big problem with saying, show up. Maybe I'll have something interesting to say, you already paid.

I'm like, I don't, that doesn't feel right to me. So I'm putting a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to make this worthwhile to give them something to make it worth their money for real. So I've been avoiding engaging with that opportunity for that reason. Oh, what? Is it hard for you to accept the idea of monetizing or getting paid for all that you're offering? That's why I go with the books because that's, you could put it in your hand. Man, I put blood, sweat, and tears into that literally paper cuts.

And that's, I will hawk the books all day. Those are damn good. I, you know, me rambling, just getting by on my personality, thinking I have something valuable to say that it's hard. It is. Even if you tell me after this experience, this was great, I'm like, I could have done it better. Right.

We're hard on our. I am. But I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to put myself out there. But it's very, it's interesting because I struggle with that as well. And my husband, on the other hand, who is more of an entrepreneur, has no problem charging for his services. outside of medicine if he does something else.

What's interesting about what you're saying is I'm the person that I'll buy the book, I'll buy the class, if I can afford it, right? Not everybody can afford certain things, but I think the hard part that we have with you and say even myself is that, well, I'll go back to how we basically buy a personality. If I like the individual and I admire the individual, I have what I enjoy what they have to offer free of charge, whatever it may be, live webinars or going live on YouTube or the podcast, whatever it may be. If I enjoy the person and I find value in who they are, as soon as they release a course, I'll buy it. If they have a book, I'll definitely buy it. Yeah.

If they have a community that I can pay a little bit to join, you know, I will be part of that because as a learner and as someone who feels connected that way to people, like Patreon, like we're patrons of a couple of sailing channels. And we've been patrons for a long time because it's something we enjoy sailing. We enjoy these creators. But one in particular, they have meetups. And they recently had, they're one, they're in the top five of sailing channels in terms of big channels on YouTube. Gotcha. And they're out of Dallas, even though they haven't lived here like 15 years. And they had a recent meetout for their patrons.

And I loved it. We've been supporting them for quite a while. And I love coming around other people that love them as well. And I thought it was a great idea. And I, so if they ever, I said to her to the female, when are you going to come out with a cookbook? Because you cook some great meals on the boat. And I love you. I'm learning so much.

Unique skill, how to cook on a boat. Limited space supplies. You don't have a giant kitchen full of giant pots and pans. You got to make it work with what you got. Yeah. That's right. And she said to me, and this is interesting. She might have something going on working already, but didn't want to say.

said, you know, I don't know how I would do that because I don't use recipes. I just put things together. And I said, that's exactly what you, that's exactly what you need to teach people. Because on a sailboat, depending, you only have access to food when you're on land. And then you have to, um, what, provision for your long trip. Yeah. Yeah. So you become creative. You can, You can only freeze food for so long or have storage space, so much storage space. And then sometimes when they touch land, she buys like the fresh fruit and vegetables from the local markets. You got to plan ahead. You got to know what you need.

You get it because it's not like you run home from the store and you can just, oh, I'll go back. I forgot the eggs. You're out. You're out to see. What are you going to do? That's right. So it's that creative aspect of how she makes these delicious meals that is, I'm, I'm, Already, I have it on my list.

As soon as she releases a cookbook, I'm buying it. Nice. Right? And so because she's a personality that I already enjoy. And I think that's the part that we forget is that we are who we are. And our listeners are the people that are already invested in us. They already like us. They're probably waiting for us to release something.

Because that gives them more access to who we are, whether it's a personal story, a journey, a cookbook, sharing our stories and something they can touch, even merchandise like T-shirts. They want that from us. Yeah, I have put a few things out there. I don't feel as it's definitely a comfort level with hawking it, so to speak. I'll hawk the books all day and some of the other stuff of like, I don't think I've mentioned that I have a locals, you know, page. But there's another interesting connection before I lose it.

The idea of you enjoy sailing. So you do enjoy the ocean and boats. And you've got this interesting dream experience where you're on a, A boat that's much too big with way too many people. There's something in there as well. The dogs get a little fidgy. I don't know if you mind if we take a quick 10. I'll let him outside to go to the bathroom.

Yeah, my dog too. He's in the crate. I kind of need to see how he's at. Yeah, yeah. Take 10 minutes and we'll just come. I'm going to leave the video running. Sorry about that. He took him forever to poop.

And then he had a fur malfunction where his. Yeah, we're going to go wash his butt later. He'll, he can sit on the bed for a minute. We'll wash the blankets later too. It's funny. My dog is learning to be crate trained. So he's fine. I put him in it.

But as soon as I said that him out, he was just like, oh. Going nuts. You know, running all over the house. And then, of course, I took him out for a potty break. And so, but he gets very anxious being in the crate. Oh, wow. Fair enough. Yeah.

No, that's good. I'm glad you were able to get the time you need. I hope you, I didn't keep you waiting too long. Yeah, but he's here now. I give him a tree. He's munching on his tree, but he's fine. Yeah. Let him run around.

Like when, if I had let him this whole time out of the crate, he would have been barking at the door and everywhere else. Yeah. No, that's okay. Well, I think we're almost done. We're getting down to the last little bit of analysis of the symbology. I mean, we got a lot already. If you were like, I need to go, we can wrap it up.

But before we took a break, I'd mentioned the idea. of comparing the little boat to the big boat and too many people and your love of the ocean. And did anything come to you regarding that? So it's interesting that you mentioned that because I had mentioned to you that I have two different recurring dreams. And one of them includes water. And when I was, you know, when I typed an email to you or a message and I told you that I love the water.

I'm a water sign. water is my element. So I revere water. I guess you can say like I don't fear it, but I respect it. I have a connection to it as well, Pisces. Oh, there you go. Yeah, okay. Then you know.

Yeah. I respect water. So I'm not afraid to swim, but I know that water can do whatever it wants in its own space and all of that. So anyway. Literally a force of nature to be respected. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting when I in one of my previous dreams that I tend to always have, it's like I'm on the road. And for some reason, the water level is pretty high. Like I'm on a bridge, kind of. And suddenly the water seems to want to consume everything. And I was telling you about that because I was like, I wonder if I should share that dream. That was one of the dreams that I wanted to share. It's always that water element comes around and there's storms.

and waves from the ocean that want to consume either the road that I'm in or the home that I'm at. And so when we're comparing a cruise, being on a cruise, as opposed to a sailboat, we're still in the water. Yeah. And in both, you can, depending on where you're at, you feel the force of the water and all of that. But yeah, so I'm bringing it back to that. But in neither one of those occasions do I feel fear of the water, even though I know I'm in a vulnerable state, like the perfect storm comes through. I'm gone, even if I'm in a ship, you know?

For sure. Yeah. So where we're out in the dream is you've got your conceptual framework in a way, like here's the situation you're in. Here's the kind of experience you're having. Here's the element, the drama of that experience that you wanted to focus on. What happens when you get to that, um, you're going to drive me crazy, boy. Come here.

Now he wants to play. There you go. Speaking of dogs, get him crate trained. Now you're going to deal with the aftermath in a way. It's like, okay, let's follow this thought through to end. The cats are coming up here. We had a blissful moment of calm seas with the animals. And now they're going to really.

I know. I love metaphors. What happened was that after he, and it says you look up into the left and that there are, there's this display of the coffins. Yeah. I don't know if you know this and whether it makes sense in this connection, but a lot of people look up into the left when they're accessing memory and conversation. I don't know if that means anything to you or. Yes. Yeah.

Is it to the left when they're trying to access and. and to the right when they're trying to make up kind of when they're lying a little bit. Not like a line necessarily, but fabric like imagining. Let me create versus remembering. Okay. Yeah. Oh, interesting memory. Okay.

And I could have it backwards. I don't know. But it only really is relevant if that's your conception of it. Like I can throw that out there. But for me to say that's what it means is not the same as that's how you conceived it and what it means to you. That's right. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. No. So right now a memory doesn't cut. to play, and I say coffin, that was the best way that I could describe because it's like the bodies are in the ship. That was the other thing. Where are they in the physical environment? Yeah. So if the ship, if we were all sort of pressed against the hall of the ship, the bodies are in a compartment within that hall of the ship.

But upper left. Gotcha. So if, so I see them open. on the side, like an opening rather than a car. I describe them as coffins because there were dead bodies in there. It's not like they were being hidden, but instead of opening from the top, they open from the side. You got that kind of a cutaway side view in a sense. Cut away.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's probably more relevant is the, it happened to be that there was an element of the ship. So what you're viewing is in relation to this being an element of the ship you're on. This is a feature of the environment in which you're. you find yourself in a way and what you're seeing, I want to find a better way to say that. The idea of what we base our understandings on is observation in a way. So it's like here's something that's just a fact of the physical space.

There's something of that idea. Well, okay, here's something interesting that I had not mentioned. It's going to sound weird. But the hall of the ship, the color was black. It's like a black ship I think they pay to the Titanic Black I was going to say I was like now that I think about it

because what other ship you'd never go on a cruise that's black White or blue I mean the black is not a friendly color in a way It's not And you think of like I don't even know if you would say

A pirate ship or I don't know because then you In black sails You think of wooden Yeah But now that you put it that way. I mean, that's what the color felt like. I mean, it looked black. So what ship would be black? Like, you said, a cargo ship. But yes. Yeah. Very, very much so. And, you know, and this also deals with people's conceptions of stuff. So why would they paint the Titanic

Black? They weren't suggesting this is a boat of death. They thought it was, black was a very regal color. It was a color of something stately and important. You know, that, that, that, that, that, of, of course the ship would be black as a person was a black tuxedo to a fancy event. That's kind of the meta message of the color, say, at the time. But now it's more like they want you to think of, you know, bright, all the things associated with brightness and light and happiness and fun on the ocean. So you've got the Carnival Cruise line and it's a bright white chip. You know, it's like gleaming in the sunshine.

And so there's an advertising crafting of the of a message to the choice of a color of the boat. So for you, and what you're seeing is this cutaway and there's people in there. One of them is a woman and one of them you don't know. That's interesting too. You're not certain what the other person is, but there's at least two of them. And you are very much aware that is you that is looking at this, like you're not looking at your self from suddenly a third person camera. It's not you. The woman is not you.

No, I didn't feel like it was me. It just looked gruesome. That's what stood out. So it was like I saw the person that collapsed, right? The initial person that I saw ended up on the ground and we were done. Like we couldn't save that person. And then I look up and I see two corpse or whatever you want to call them because it was also like that body. works display. And it just was a gruesome death. That one you said, yeah, had more like the man

who died, his decomposition was more clean. It was more analytical, the observation of it. And the corpses you were looking at were a little more actually closer to what you might imagine someone decomposing looks like. Yes, yes. Not only that, the individual that collapsed was wearing clothes. So I remember he was wearing like a white button up shirt, like just a dress shirt. Yeah. I remember that, probably had a tie, but I definitely remember a white shirt and that the corpse were naked. She was facing down, but kind of sideways because I could see her face. Interesting.

Yeah. She was kind of like being stored. That's why I called it a coffin. Not in a very classic state of dignified repose. We would find someone in an actual coffin, say, at a funeral home. You know, this is a family member's body who's been treated it with respect. This is someone, it's almost just a body that's been discards. Haphasardly in a way.

Almost. Yeah, or like... Dereus. Dereus. When you think about it in this place, in this location where she was at, it was almost like she was being stored, almost like in a,

not a funeral home, what's the other place? Morg? Where they put them in, yes, like a mortuary. Is that how you say it, like, you know, they keep them in, it looks like these stainless steel

kind of drawers in a sense. it seemed like that. Like she was just being kept there, stored. Yeah, and I think the position of the body does very much suggest, you know, we think of the respect we pay to the person, the form used to contain in a sense. You know, we know they're not in there anymore. It's the remains. But we put them on their back, face up.

We put their hands over their chest. We compose them on purpose. but you've shown yourself something that is, you know, what happens if you, say, dump a body in a mass grave? It tumbles over until it lands in an undignified position that is kind of mostly but not entirely face down and it's in poor shape. So there's something very, so you might be imagining to yourself, you know, the consequences that you're going to feel maybe like you haven't been respectful of a person if you have, allow them to end up in a state because you didn't get there in time or couldn't provide

what was needed to save them. It's it feels to you. The end result feels to you disrespectful. Is there something in there? Yes, almost like discarded. I think you might have used that word. So kind of discarded. And also almost with the intention of hiding those bodies, but I noticed them. like no one else was supposed to see them, but I noticed them. Yeah. And there's something in there, too, from your personal perspective in a way, the idea of if you say, from your own perspective, fail to help someone you could have because you didn't try hard enough and they end up dying, it feels disrespectful.

And no one's going to know unless you tell them. No one's going to tell you, no one's going to know you refuse to help someone unless you broadcast it. So something you could hide. And you probably don't feel comfortable with that idea either of putting on a false display of caring more than you do. None of this is meant to say this is the truth or this is necessarily what you want in any way, shape, or form. But that internal experience of working your way all the way through the problem and saying, I might end up in a situation where I think it's where I feel shame for a lack of effort and wondering how you're going to process that,

knowing that that is how I will feel if I set a boundary and don't take the 11th person that day. You know, maybe I had time, but I wanted to go home and drink a cup of tea for myself because I need to recharge and my boundaries are important, knowing that 11th person might not get the benefit of help. And you're going to feel bad about it afterwards. And you're going to have to live with that feeling because it comes from inside you. It's not something you can actually hide from yourself. You're going to see it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. I would not have considered that, but I think you're right in the sense that I noticed that body, right? No one else noticed it. Yeah. It's almost like it only exists for you. How come I didn't reach her before she died, like, you know, whatever that was. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's a tremendous burden that people, and this connects to the whole thing we've been talking about, I think, of the idea of caring passionately enough to motivate action that is beneficial to others. and knowing when you've done enough to maintain your own health and provide as much value as you reasonably could, that whole idea of reasonableness. How do I feel like I've done everything I can in a way that doesn't exhaust me and burn me out and leave me quitting, helping anybody or sacrificing my own health to the point where it declines? And that's a struggle that everyone has to work out. out for themselves, except the rare person who's legitimately a psychopath. It doesn't care if

anyone gets hurt. They treat people like objects anyway. So anyway, like I say, anyone who's not a psychopath, and even some psychopaths for, for purely instrumental reasons, ride that line between, I'm doing as much as I reasonably can, and I'm okay. I have to live, I have to find a way to live with what I'm not able to do because it's unsustainable. Absolutely. I think, you know, what comes to mind right now is more of family members. Like the people that I'm closest to that I care most about my family members who, there are a lot of health issues in my family. And so that's also a driving force for me to want to help others, is that our family never really values our opinion. It feels like, right? Like, who are you to

tell me. And so I, so I might be, um, the public, other people that I work with who seek us out might be more likely to make a change and have more interest in what we have to offer than our own families. And that's just, you know, that expression. I don't know who said it, but I've heard it, uh, said. And it really stood out was that you can never be a hero in your own home. And so, I haven't heard a phrase that. Yeah. Yeah. That, uh, you know, you got the therapist whose child is very disturbed or, you know, you can find many ways to compare that. Yeah, too close to the problem. But also, it's like, you know, physician heal myself.

Even doctors have a doctor. They got to go see somebody. You know, therapists have a therapist. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yes, there are people in my family who I am very concerned about who are battling issues. And I can't get close enough in terms, I can't have an impact enough to help them.

And without them. feeling threatened or controlled. Yes. Yeah. Like you're trying to impose your will on them. Yeah. Or judged, even judge, I think, because health is so personal. For sure.

Very, very personal. And so they see the work that we're doing. And I particularly have one sister who feels that I judge her. When I'm with her, I'm not judging her. I don't judge what she eats. I don't judge her on anything she's doing. If anything, I've been the person that will drive down to see her when she's in the hospital as a result of health issues and I'm there for her, but I'm not

reprimending. I'm not judging. Why didn't you take care of yourself? Nothing like that. And so it's her perception of how she thinks I'm judging her. There's that projection again, right? Right. She's judging yourself.

She's looking at your example and saying, I believe this is what she's thinking based on how I view myself. You know, and this is a tough thing, too, is like, we have a struggle as carrying helpers. We can only offer advice and people have to decide if it's good for them or not and whether they care enough to do anything about it. So I might say to someone who's, you know, strung out on heroin, I don't think this is good for you. And they're like, but I like it, man.

And I'm like, well, you're probably going to die. And they're going to say, okay. And I'm like, well, I wish for something better for you, but you don't. And that's okay. I'll just love you anyway until you're not here. anymore. And that's sad. This tragic, you know. I think we get into that situation with our family too, where there's the family dynamics. And even if you're an expert on something, been doing any good to browbeat them because they're going to make their own decisions,

you know, as much as you want it for them. I mean, I could be an investor, a financial advisor, you know, like, say like in terms of money, that could be my strength. And if I try to come around my family and say, like, oh, you may, might consider investing here and there or saving or, this or that, they may not want to hear it because, again, that's another very personal issue, money. Yeah. It's like anything else, if I come around and try to convert someone to a certain religion, that's the way to hurt somebody. It's going to affect, I'm going to get some resistance there.

And so, yeah, there are some topics that our families don't want to hear about, and they definitely don't want to hear from us. And so I feel like health, money, religion, those kind of things can be very difficult conversations to have with the people that were in a way the closest to, but not necessarily, maybe they're not the most open. And so maybe that has been a personal struggle of mine is how,

not how do I love my family through their personal choices, but how can I love my family without being affected as much by their personal choices? Because at the end of the day, I'm the kind of person that I like people to have the freedom to be who they are. And same thing here. I don't want anybody preaching at me either.

I don't want someone trying to impose their beliefs on me. So I want to, I want to allow people to be free to choose. But I don't want to be as affected, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And that seems very close. Like if we had to put together a story arc of the dream, which is what I like to do, try and sum it up at the end,

you're very much looking at yourself in a, in our dreams, we can't help but do this. in some ways a brutally honest self-assessment of like, here's exactly the problem you're facing. You care, you want to help, you can't help everyone. And you're going to have to draw a line that honestly makes you feel uncomfortable because you could have chosen to self-sacrifice more at the expense of your own health and well-being.

And you're going to have to find a way to be okay with where you draw that line, wherever it is. And that's an amazing thing to just kind of recognize you're in the middle of that process so you can take it seriously and understand the question you're trying to resolve. Even if we don't consider the dream to have a message about what you should want or how you should resolve the question. That's kind of what I, something I try not to do is say, this dream is telling you to do X, Y, and Z. Hell if I know, you know, I can tell you the dream says you're thinking about this in a particular way that's meaningful to you. And hopefully that gives you the perspective you need to say, yeah, I'm going to find that line and commit to it in a way that feels right

for me. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's where we're at. I love that. I mean, this is, like I said, this is really going to help me to get more clear about where I'm going. Yeah. See you problem more clearly. That's the first step. Yeah. It's interesting, Ben, because it's a passion of mine to do the things that I love doing, what I'm doing now, it's a passion. And there's a lot of emotion behind that passion. But when I don't get the results that I'm looking for, it can also affect me. So it's more like put my emotions in check when I'm doing some of this work. Yeah. In a way, how to be okay with inevitable failure in some circumstances. You're not going to win them all, you know, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so to speak.

You've got to do all those wonderful aphorisms that people say are meaningless. I know it's contextual. It's not meaningless. Right. Good deal. Well, if you feel like your brain is full, which probably is I talk a lot, we can, we'll wrap it up. You feel like we've got at least a clearer idea of what the symbology meant to you personally

and you're satisfied with the answer, so to speak. Yes. And as a matter of fact, if I were to have a recurring dream of this again or something like that, I would probably feel more. more grounded, like if I were to face this again in a dream, because I told you that some of my dreams come back and come back. It's like they just keep talking to me, like, hello. Yeah. So if I were to have that dream again, I would probably step into that space with a different perspective and observe things a lot more, or being, because there was a lot of fear in the dream,

a lot of emotion. You know, so I would definitely have a different perspective that would allow me to feel like I'm more in control. I think so. Yeah. And that's part of the proof is in the pudding type of thing of like, how do you know we hit on something truly relevant? I mean, we can make a story that sounds like it kind of fits. But usually it's, if it's a recurring dream, it stops coming back or the nature of

the dream changes. I say this all the time, but I have one guy who, I think was episode 12, he would attempt to enter an alleyway outside of the back of this house. And in the backyard, between the house and the alleyway were shadow men. that would beat the hell out of him if you try to get past them. The next time he had that dream, he got back to me and he said, the next time he had that dream, he didn't try to push past them. And they were, they didn't attack him.

They're like, they felt more friendly because he wasn't trying to force his way past them. And they had to respond by restraining him physically. That's powerful. That's like, I don't even know what to make of that. Like I had a hand in helping that happen. A recurring dream where you got beat, you know, get the shit out of him nightly. by these terrifying shadow creatures and now they're like his friends and he just talked to him. I'm like, whoa.

That is so cool. You're very good at this. I'm really impressed. This is wonderful. I appreciate that. I do. I have to learn I get better at the compliments. I would like to believe I got a talent and I'm actually developing it by effort and that it has a positive impact.

So I'm going to take you at your word. Yeah, definitely. You do have a talent and you are developing it. I tried to study a little bit or at least analyze my dreams. And like you said, I would have looked up the word ship without understanding, like putting it within the context of all the other elements, all the other players in the dream. But I feel really, I feel like our conversation,

like where we're at with this resonates with me. Like it feels true. good deal like you said like we could have made up a story but no i i feel like it really i understand it a lot better now good deal yeah and i sincerely uh uh hope that it serves you well you know it's the whole the whole point of doing this not just content but like win win win situation i get an episode you get an answer um but in that very very few things in life in general make me feel as as good as knowing I provided something of value by native talent and effort and, you know, a desire to do good.

And that's, that's very meaningful. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. Well, what do we do? We'll wrap it up and we'll talk for like two seconds afterwards to make sure no one's going to see this if you didn't give permission to release it. So we're, I'm very serious about that.

So we always talk afterwards before and after. Let's do this thing. This has been our friend Maya Acosta at a Dallas, Texas. She is a health and wellness educator, podcaster, YouTuber like myself. You can go to healthy lifestyle solutions.org as well as get her podcast on, you know, a variety of social media and podcasting sources. Link in the description below. I forgot to say that earlier.

And for my part, would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers and viewers for video games and whatnot. Currently 15, available 16, 16, currently available. 16. available works of historical dream literature, the most recent, I've said 15 for like months. So it keeps coming out. Right here, I'm going to pop it up on the screen. It is Dreams and Their Meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson, uh, golfer turned dream

aficionado there in that book. And you can get all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. Also, Benjamin the Dream Wizard dot locals.com. If you want to kick me, uh, kick me a dollar a month, I'd love it. I should be more confident in shilling for myself, begging for donations. I'm going to try and get better at that. So just to wrap it all up, I'll say, Maya, it's been good talking to you. I appreciate you being here.

Thank you, Ben. This was wonderful. I appreciate it. This is real work. So I appreciate all the effort in helping me to understand my dream. Thank you very much. And I'm going to say also to everyone out there in YouTube land, thanks for listening.