Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Tough Times Don’t Last, Tough People Do with Steven Washington

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

Regardless of whether or not we’re brave enough to admit it, most of us have been addicted to one thing or another during our lifetime. When it comes to this topic, drugs and alcohol are the first things that come to mind, but you’d be surprised to learn there are so many more. You’d be even more surprised to learn what these addictions really represent.  In this Language of Love conversation, I sit down with Steven Washington as he discusses his experiences with addiction and his journey toward recovery. Steven is a movement master and also the author of Recovering You: Soulful and Mindful Movement For Overcoming Addiction. Join us today as we discuss the importance of connections, the power of touch, self-care and much more. If you’re serious about understanding your addiction and charting a course for recovery, you’ve come to the right place. Resources and Links Dr. Laura Berman Language of Love Podcast Laura Berman Instagram – Dr Laura Berman Facebook – Dr Laura Berman Youtube.com – Dr Laura Berman  Steven Washington  Steven Washington – Website Steven Washington – Instagram Steven Washington – Facebook Steven Washington – Youtube.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers and celebrities about love, sex and relationships from a mind, body and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love. Stephen Washington is a movement master, author, and recovery advocate who is passionate about helping others navigate toward a happier and healthier life. And he has had a successful career as a contemporary dancer. He's worked for the New York City Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Broadway and Disney's Lion King, and also struggled with addiction.

And one of the keys to his recovery was through his study of Chinese medicine, discovering Qigong and healing touch. And those things were really not only key to his recovery, but key to what has become his life's work. Stephen is also the husband of one of our faves on The Language of Love, Lee Harris. I interviewed him not too long ago about his newest book, The Conversation with the Zs. Lee is a channel and a psychic and an intuitive. So the two of them are quite a powerhouse. In this episode, we're diving into Stephen's work and some of the amazing lessons he's learned that he's sharing with us about how to move through tough times, whether you're

struggling with addiction, recovery, or just someone who's living in the world right now, we all need more support. So how to change your life, how to end feelings of isolation, how to work with your triggers, how to process shame, how to use movement as a path to healing. I also get into it with Stephen about what it's like to be married to a channel. I've always been curious, so I'm asking all the good questions on this episode of The Language of Love. Welcome, Stephen Washington. I am so glad that you're able to join us on The Language of Love.

I wanted to get into with you your book, which is really wonderful, is called Recovering you soul care and mindful movement for overcoming addiction. And it's sort of, you know, while there was a tremendous amount of movement strategies, and we're going to get into some of your specific strategies in a little bit, it was also kind of, in my mind, as someone who is not a recovering addict, but certainly loves a lot of recovering addicts and active addicts, I'm a recovering codependent. So I guess that's an addiction too, isn't it? But to me, it's really a guidebook for kind of coming home to yourself and learning how to be with yourself in a way that I loved how you were describing what's really an addiction. I think you were talking about your story,

which I want to ask you about, but how for you addiction was an attempt to kind of calibrate Your body's energy either and your emotions either by numbing yourself out with substances or taking your energy up with substances, right? Because you couldn't internally calibrate like many of us. I love the way you put that because to me, that is the core. Like I've always said, what you're doing with addiction is you're either running toward something or running away from something, but you're running, right? You're not being with yourself.

And this was a really beautiful way to explain it. like inability to kind of calibrate. So to me, that's, you know, whether you're consider yourself an addict or not, that was one of the most beautiful parts of this book to me. And I guess what you teach in general is that it was, and we'll talk about some of the different aspects that really stood out to me, but I'm wondering if you can comment a little bit on that. Thank you. Great way to begin this lovely conversation. For me, my using alcohol and drugs and cigarettes and at certain points, food was definitely an attempt to self-regulate. I did not know that that's what I was doing, but I was trying to bring about some level

of peace, some level of balance, some sense of harmony within me because I was anything but that. And it's only now in hindsight that I can see that that's what I was doing. And now I have healthier ways in which to do that. And I think that that's something that we're all trying to do in our own way, shape or form. and to varying degrees of success or failure. But we're all just trying to be okay within ourselves and try to find some way to navigate life because life is tricky. Life is challenging.

Life can be scary. Life can be joyous. It can be heartbreaking. There's so many things and we all need ways to help ourselves, self-care. Ultimately, I think what's at the core of the book is self-care and we all need to practice self-care and most of us don't do enough of it. And I wanted to provide tools and practices to help people to help themselves. There's so many things within the book.

I like to call the tools like tools that you put in toolbox. But the thing about tools is they don't work unless you pick them up and use them and do them consistently. So this is definitely a collection of tools and processes to help us be more in harmony with ourselves and with the world around us. Yeah.

And during these times, it feels like more than ever. I know every hundred years or so this happens in one form or another, but this is our lifetime's time, it feels like, where all hell is breaking loose on every level from the macro to the micro within our own homes. I mean, just there's so much happening right now and so much uncertainty and so much upheaval and so much division and so much polarization and so much anger and so much anxiety. And, you know, it just feels so everything feels so heightened right now. And to me, these strategies are about learning to kind of internally reference your peace, your stability, your clarity so that you don't have to numb out or externalize it. But I also want to highlight, and before we even dive into all of that, I just want to

talk to you specifically about addiction, because in my mind, there are quote unquote hard addictions, let's call them. And what's hard, what's soft, but there's hard addictions and soft addictions, like hard addictions would be gambling, sex, drugs, alcohol, maybe even love addiction and soft addiction, social media, shopping, work, work. Yeah. I mean, and I feel like we are all myself included. Like I am not only recovering codependent, which, as I said earlier, is definitely a form of addiction, but also I've learned to manage it.

But I definitely online shopping is one of the ways I numb out the way I manage it is I still do it, but I put everything in my cart and I don't push by. And then a few days later, I go back to the cart. And of course, I don't want anything that's in it still or I don't need anything like I needed in that moment. Like that's the way I've learned to not spend all our money on addictive shopping to numb myself out, but I'm still doing it right at times. I notice now these days, even I, who I feel am pretty, I've done a lot of work to learn to hold my center even now during these times have been, you know, so I just was wondering if we can talk a little bit about that.

Cause I know you're noticing that too. We haven't even, we will be getting in cause I'm, I have to talk to you about your husband as well and about your relationship, because he's one of my favorite humans. And I know that he talks a lot about what's happening in the world right now, but I'm wondering what your take on all of this is and how that plays into what you're teaching. Really good question. Here's what I think. I think that the world is crazy. The world has been crazy. It's always been crazy, except we know about all the crazy now. Ah, the veil has been lifted. Yeah, because of social media, because of the news, 24 hour news cycle, it's everywhere. It's constant. And I think that the world has always been this balance of good and bad, peace and craziness. We just know about all the itty bitty bits of it.

And so it's a matter of how do we protect ourselves from all the information, all the stimuli, because it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming if there's no filter, if there are no barriers. So that's something that I could speak to for sure. And also... B12 to help support immune function and coffee plus B6 to keep your day moving or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight. Our new double espresso with ginseng extract. Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover coffee plus on Nespresso.com. I think that they are like you talk about hard addiction, soft addictions.

And I talk about this in the book, my story, your story, anyone's story. We're not going to, We're not going to be able to completely match one another story is in terms of events and details, but we can meet each other on the level of the heart and the emotions, because what drugs and alcohol and cigarettes and food and all that did for me and some of the harmful ramifications of those behaviors and dependencies beneath all that was a sense of shame was grief, sadness, isolation, anger, frustration, all those things. And if we all look at what's underneath all of our dependencies, you'll find the same stuff. Yep. You'll find the same stuff. Same little monsters. Yeah. Yeah. And all of the practices

that I've learned from being in recovery and everything else that I've done, like you, I spent a lot of time working on myself in my life and I'm 51. I've been sober for almost a little over 20 years and I'm still working. I'm still working. And more things are being revealed. The more layers are being peeled back. So the recovery isn't a destination. It's the journey. Amen. Yeah. It's never ending. I mean, that was something I had to really understand at a certain point too. And not only understand, but fully embrace that, you know, if you're not healing, you're in the ground. You know, it's until I'm sure we do it on the other side too. We keep feeling we'll see. Yeah. We'll have to see what happens, but okay. So I want to unpack both of

those things you said, because I took some notes of some of the things you mentioned that I wanted to dive into some of the topics of shame and isolation and some of the strategies you talk about, but let's talk about the first part, what your advice is, because it sounds like you have some beneficial advice about how to manage all of this crazy divisive input that we're being surrounded by, how to sort of protect yourself, as you said. Yeah. Self-care practices are really important. Paying, keeping the focus more on yourself than on the world around you. And to hear myself say that, I know that there's going to be some people who will think, well, that's just selfish if you do that. But here's the deal. You can't do anything for the world or anyone else

in the world unless you take care of yourself first. You have no use to anyone if you're out there running yourself ragged on fumes, trying to help people or help others when you don't have anything to give to yourself. So it's really important to do that. Also, it's really important to be clear about your boundaries, clear about your boundaries when it comes to people, people that you surround yourself with. I think there needs to be a level of reciprocity in our relationships. And sometimes relationships can be more heavy on one side or the other. And can you find balance in those relationships? Because I feel like our relationships need to feed us in some respect as well, but also we need to be able to give of ourselves too, for it to be

balanced. I also think in my own experience, it's been important for me to just pay attention to what kind of information I allow into my energy field. I can't watch the news all the time. Me either. I can't watch it at all. I have my husband report the highlights to me because I can't even watch, not only because it's so traumatizing, but because I get furious no matter what network I watch and I've watched them all about how freaking biased, how the same story they like twist and turn to their own agenda. And then I'm like, what are you doing? You're adding to the division. I get like all upset. So I don't even watch it. I like news or information that's, that's delivered to me with a little bit of humor. Like I love the ladies on the view

because they talk about hot topics and they talk about politics. I used to say that I get my news from Saturday Night Live. Hey, you know, because within all the jokes, there's a little bit of humor. There's a little bit of reality. There's a little bit of truth. So I take a little bit from that. And, you know, occasionally I'll watch a news segment here and there, or occasionally I'll watch it. I'll read an article, but I don't let too much of that in because I've had to learn to just let go. And also I have to be mindful of when in the day I do that. It's not good for me to do that late in the day as I'm trying to unwind. Cause then you go to sleep and start thinking about it all. Yeah. So yeah. And I think also limiting because it's not just watching the

news and this is kind of the irony is that we're numbing out from the chaos using social media usually, but then social media is full of divisive and feeding you. The algorithm is feeding you more of your own viewpoint. And a lot of that is divisive. I mean, I always say, if you want to know what you're unconsciously manifesting in your life, look at the Explorer page on your social media, because the algorithm will give you things on the Explorer page that are consistent with where you've been putting your attention. That's so true. That's so true. I also think that, and this is going to go back to my 12-step recovery days, there's an acronym called HALT. It warns us all to not let ourselves get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

When we are too much of any one of those things, we are more likely to search outside of ourselves to fill some sort of hole, some sort of space, and really making sure that you eat when you're hungry. If you're angry, you're lonely, talk to someone, connect to someone. If you're tired, take a nap. If we do all those little bits of self-care, that puts us in a very different position, a very different state of being. And we're all able to navigate all the challenges that we're talking about in life and living on this very dense plane if we practice self-care in that way. Yeah, I think that's so true. And some of the other practices or issues that you talk about, which I think are super, super important, is isolation, which you refer to like the loneliness or just being unconscious or being in pain, even forget addiction, just struggling. I mean, the world, we're more connected than ever before electronically or digitally, but

I feel like we're more isolated than ever before as well. And I love the discussion. You spoke a lot, not only about isolation and the risks of it and why it happens, right? We isolate to avoid conflict or to hide our shame or to just be able to feed our addiction without interference, right? But that isolation is so damaging. So I wanted to ask you about that. And also really important, because I feel like what's more important or as important as talking about isolation is our strategies for building connections, building communities, because people are craving this and they join an online community, which is a place to start. but we really need human to human connection. We are designed for that. Our systems need in-person

connection. So talk about that. Well, I thought that isolation was a great place to start in the book and talk about it because I feel as though isolation is something that feeds addiction. I think isolation is something that feeds a lot of the mental challenges we have in the world because we feel like we are alone. We feel like no one else will understand us. We feel as though we are living on our own island. And like you said, we are designed for community, for connection.

Human beings are tribal. And we all thrive on a sense of belonging. And that's really important. And there's so many studies that show that when we have social support, the benefits to it are just uh countless just in the ways that it enhances our own physical health and well-being it helps us to manage stress and the challenges of life it helps us to manage that and so when we have that kind of support it's less taxing on the systems and it's so beneficial

to our mental health, to have connection, to have people who are able to help us when we need help doing things, even daily tasks, or when we need financial help, that there's people there who could support us because money is a very big trigger. Money is a very complicated subject. And many of us in the world, there's a big talk about the haves and the have-nots. There's a great divide between the two. And so being able to support one another in those ways is very important. Just feeling heard. It's important to feel heard and to be seen. So many people feel invisible, like their needs don't matter. And just companionship, having people to play with and laugh with and touch and connect with and feel physically, not just intellectually and

visually like we do digitally, but to really be in the energy of people who we feel connected to and supported by and aligned with. Well, just think about this. We think about just in the development of a child, how important touch is between a caregiver and a child, how the caregiver helps the child to learn how to regulate themselves just by touch or just certain visual cues, the sound of a voice, all those things where we're dependent upon early on in life that gives us a great foundation. It helps us to wire the brain in a certain way. And I think even as we grow older, we're still dependent upon those aspects of community and connection, but something happens along the way for many of us is that we get disconnected from that.

And one of the ways that we cope with getting disconnected from each other is through substances or other dependencies, ways to regulate ourselves, ways to check out, to distract ourselves, to numb. To numb out from the loneliness, yeah. So what are your tips for creating or finding community? Because I know you share a lot of good ones in your book. I think the first place to start is the awareness that you need it and that you would benefit from it. that, and that there's a willingness to seek it out, to be open to it. For me, when I began my recovery journey, I found community in 12-step recovery. And thank goodness, because being able to go to various rooms and hear people share their experience, strength, and hope, and for me to be

able to identify with them and to know that I was not alone was really important. And it didn't even matter if I raise my hand to share, or sometimes I would raise my hand to share just to say, I'm Steven. I don't really know. I'm really nervous. I don't know what to say. I'm just acknowledging that I'm here. And that is enough to start. I talk about in the book how there's so many ways that we can start to create more social support for ourselves. And part of it is just like leaving the house, leaving the house, going for a walk. What happens when you leave the house and you go for a walk, maybe you'll run into a stranger and you can have an exchange of hello to someone you don't know, or a hello to someone that you do know and have a moment of

connection on the street. That's just incredible. That's one way to start to build a community that builds some sort of social support, following your instincts and your intuitions about what it is that you are drawn to naturally, what it is that you like to do. That's a great way to begin to find ways in which to connect with other people. Like a class or a club, like a Sierra club or a knitting class or a dance class or something else. Yeah. I mean, I've made a lot of friends in yoga classes and breath work classes and the things that I'm into as well. So yeah, that's a great tip too. What else do you get? What else? If you have an animal, if you have a dog, my God, there's nothing like, there's nothing so more connective than having a dog and walking

your dog and then meeting other people with dogs. And then next thing you know, you go to the dog park. It's a way to pick up potential partners and friends. All of it, all of it, you know, spiritual centers. That's one way also that I found community as well. And I never imagined that would be the case for me in my recovery. My 12 step recovery was my spiritual center, but around the time when my father passed away, I was maybe eight years sober, and I started to go to spiritual centers and attend services, and that was miraculous for me. Just being able to put myself in the room with all that energy was really important. So those are really great places and things to do to begin to start to build

social support, you know, and also therapy has been a big part of my life. Having social support can also come in the form of counseling, working with a counselor. If I talk about this in the first chapter, when it comes to loneliness and isolation, one way to not feel so lonely and isolated is to, is through body work, working with a body worker, someone that you trust and having receiving touch and receiving that kind of connection. There's that's twofold. You have the breaking out of isolation through touch but also touch being a way to connect to other to another human being in a loving nurturing way yeah and by healing touch you mean like massage or even reiki although they don't really you know they're more touching above you than touching you but

any kind of healing hands kind of stuff is really and we're not talking about going to a sex surrogate or something, or, you know, we're talking about, we're talking about that, the body work of, of the healing body work. Exactly. Listen, regardless of your sexual orientation or your gender or your relationship status, every single one of us has struggled at one point or another with a lackluster or disconnected sex life or difficulty finding the partner that we most desire. So I have designed an amazing program for you. Seven days to better sex. Each day, you're going to get a video and an information packet all designed to help you jumpstart your love life. Just go to www.drlauraberman.com. And you alluded to this in terms of the spiritual

centers I think you were talking about. And you wrote a lot about this actually more toward the end of the book, but it's something that I personally am really, really interested in. I know many of my peeps are as well. It's something that I've been working on in many years, for many years, having been raised in a very secular home where God was something very abstract and rarely talked about except a few times a year. Then it was more like, I better ask forgiveness for all the mistakes I've made and sins I've committed because I was in trouble in the book of life or whatever it was. My parents were God to me. They were the source of my safety and center and protection and worth. And it wasn't until probably my mid to late

forties that I started a spiritual quest of seeking God, spirit, Allah, Jesus. You know, everyone can pick their own title, but seeking that deeper connection that is two ways, right? That isn't some abstract concept. And that also having that faith, which to me is absolutely a muscle, but having that faith that you are, that that power is there and that whatever that name for it is that you have and that you are held by that and supported by that and connected and that that which is right is unfolding and that it's like a two-way exchange it's not you just praying to some abstract man on a cloud but that there is this co-creation coast you know not co-support what you're supporting the spirit doesn't need your support but you receive that support and

love and connection and to me you know that has been such a journey and when I'm still figuring out about how to build faith. So I'm wondering if you can share what you've learned about that. So important. And it makes me think about how much my spiritual life has grown over the last 20 years and how it's just continuing to grow in ways that I just could not even imagine i was just having a conversation earlier today about faith with someone and they asked me how do i talk to this power greater than myself and it's like i talked to it just like i'm talking to you like those are the greatest moments that i have with my higher powers when i relate to it like i'm relating to you and being as as authentically me as i can possibly be

And I use words, which I think is important because it's just important for me so I could hear myself speak and hear what it is that's going on in my head and my heart. But my higher power knows before I even utter a word. It's that deep. It's that meaningful. It's that personal. When I first began my spiritual journey of sobriety, I already believed in a higher power, but I didn't think that my higher power believed in me.

in some ways, I kind of felt like I was forgotten. I was still living with the higher power that I grew up with in Southern Baptist churches and where I didn't feel like I belonged because I was gay. Even before I knew what being gay was, I felt like I was different. And I knew that my difference wasn't something that was going to be embraced in the walls of that church. Right. And that was all you knew of God. That's all I knew. So it wouldn't be embraced by God either in your mind, which unfortunately you were the majority of kids. Yeah, yeah.

And it wasn't until I found recovery and I was shown that having a higher power or some relationship with a higher power was going to help me in my recovery, is going to help me stay sober for a long time, hopefully the rest of my life, that it's just important to have that kind of connection. Not that sobriety requires you to believe in a God. Lots of people are sober and they don't believe in a higher power. They don't believe in a God. Extract. Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover Coffee Plus on Nespresso.com. But my definition of a higher power is all-encompassing. It encompasses everything. It encompasses nature, love, music, art. My higher power encompasses like the energy I get from animals in my life too. So I'm able to tap into all of that and

appreciate all of that and, and really work on being as open and receptive to what my higher power brings into my life. And that to trust that my higher power loves me unconditionally, loves me more than words can ever express, accepts me for exactly who I am. My higher power is funny as all hell. How do you know it says funny things or just the things that happen are so ironic that you can't help but crack up basically all the above all the above and it just makes me crack up so that's how I know it's real yeah that's how I know it's real and it's it's constantly changing and unfolding and I love what I talked about in the book and what my friend Jennifer said but the people who maybe have a difficult time with the act with the concept of

God or a higher power that it doesn't really matter if you don't believe in a higher power because your higher power believes in you and that there is, there's a reason why you've made it as far as you have in your life and survived all the challenges that you have and the higher power, the energy of it is wrapped up in all of it. And that it's okay to trust the process. And I feel as though my higher power is the embodiment of that. That's beautiful. You know, I was thinking as you were talking, because my faith journey, I would say, really began in earnest a few years before my father died.

And he died two or three years ago. So it was maybe five or six years ago at this point where I had started a spiritual journey way before that. But the idea of a two-way relationship with God, spirit, universe, you know, non-denominational there, I was just starting to wrap my head around it. I think part of the reason I had a lot of resistance was not only because I'd never had a concept of that, but because I too was raised in the Bible belt. As a Jewish girl from New York, my family moved down to Southeast Georgia when I was in middle school. So the

entire community was Baptist and very religious and very prejudiced against anyone who wasn't. And so I experienced so much rejection and shame and humiliation and bullying that like if I met someone who was a born again Christian, like I was running the other direction because to me that equals nasty judge, which isn't fair. You know, I'm just telling you about my ignorant perception as a kid and as even a young adult, it represented rejection and humiliation and ignorance to a certain degree of, in my opinion, of like only seeing one thing is correct. I mean, I had so many judgments. And then I met a beautiful soul down in Georgia. God bless him. His name is Gregory Goodwill. And he was my, isn't that a great name? Gregory Goodwill. Shout out to Gregory Goodwill. And he was my father's nurse, caretaker, basically. He was the RN that was taking care of my dad in the last few years of his life. and Gregory always had a Bible in his hand. And he asked me one day, we were sitting in a waiting room in a hospital and he asked me about the difference between what Jews believed and what Christians believed. And I said, well, basically the essential difference is that Christian, you believe that Jesus is the son of God and Jews believe that Jesus was Jewish,

which Christians do too, but that he was an amazing, sage, God-connected healer of the utmost degree, but was not God's child and any more than any of the rest of us are, you know, or any less. So that opened this whole realm of conversations. And I'll never forget him saying to me, you know, and this is what really struck me and I've never forgotten. He goes, you know, God is my very, very, very best friend. I was like, what? What are you talking about? God is your best friend. And we had so many conversations, but it was really ironically through him. He was part of that community. Not that he didn't ever reject. I mean, he was someone who was the complete opposite of what I had always experienced growing up in from people who believed what he

believed or subscribe to what he believed. And he was really, I think the catalyst for me starting to be like, okay, let me be open my heart to this. Not to, I mean, I'm not a, I'm not a born again Christian. It's not about Christianity or choosing Jesus as my savior. It's not, you know, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that he was the beginning of my path of like even conceiving of the idea that this could be a two-way relationship. That's so beautiful. So shout out to Gregory Goodwill. Gregory Goodwill, thank you for walking into Laura's life. That's incredible. I love that. I love that. It's a powerful time when you're in the process of witnessing someone transitioning, leaving this plane and moving on to another. It's a very tender

time. And like you, I just had just such a growth-filled experience around that and just diving deeper into my own mortality and my own heart with it all. And I grew so much because I started going to spiritual centers, but that shocked the living daylights out of me because I never would have imagined that I would be a regular churchgoer. I just did not envision. Yeah, because you had been felt so rejected by it in the same way I did. But this place is very different. Yes. Very different.

It was so open. It was so inclusive. It was all about the music ministry. And the music was what really touched me, like bring me to tears. We are so going off topic from the book and everything. But that's fine because I have to share this with you. during that time i remember going to service and a friend of mine that i used did the lion king with his name is charles holt charles was a guest singer at the church that that sunday and he

sang a song called rolling river god and when he sang this song it touched my heart so deeply that i burst into tears i'd never done a piece of music like that before i had to get the recording of the the service so I could hear the song again. I listened to that song on the, during the days when we had iPods, that's how long ago it was. And every time I would listen to that song, I would cry because I was just crying. There was, I was crying so many tears for so many different reasons and it opened me up in a way that I just will never, ever, ever forget. And I feel like the whole process made me more human. Wow. Made me more human. That's beautiful. Yeah. Music can do that. And I know you talk about that in the book as some of the pathways. And I think you even said

that sometimes you didn't tell that story, which is a beautiful story, but sometimes music is a pathway to God and to peace and to calming down from your trigger. And I know that you come and you mentioned Lion King, you come from a background of dance. You're a dancer. You're also a healer. And you talk about one of your specialties, and I know you actually have a community online called the Stephen Washington Experience Studio, right? So it's like a subscription platform where people can get access to all of your movement classes and videos because you specialize in Qigong, right? Qigong and Pilates. Yes. Qigong. I mean, Lee, your husband told me about your Qigong practice several years ago when I first met him. I took a few of your online classes because I've always wanted to do that.

What I wanted to ask you is because Qigong is basically mindful movement, right? And it's kind of centering you and grounding you and getting you back into your body, which is where the true power and spiritual connection and healing is found. I'm always talking about that on this show. And to me, it's almost a form of somatic expression. What I don't understand, just because I'm clueless, what is the difference between Qigong and Tai Chi? Great question. It's a common question. My understanding is that Tai Chi is just another form of Qigong.

Oh. And that the difference between the two, or one of the differences is that Tai Chi is you will take several movements and string them together, almost like a dance. Yes. uh in qigong we take one movement and we repeat it over and over and over and over again so that's one big distinction between the two i believe it's still a practice to do for health and well-being as well as energy cultivation and circulation yeah and is it the same thing because i did take a tai chi several tai chi classes and what i found and i'm wondering if the same thing happens in Qigong, there were these movements where you were almost building energy between your hands

and like building it and building it and then like putting it into your heart. And I literally was like, whoa. I mean, I could totally feel it because the movements were kind of feeding and building the energy. Does the same thing happen in Qigong? Absolutely. I'm definitely going to do this with you. I'm getting on that Stephen Washington experience. Well, good. I encourage you to do that and everyone else, because right now I'm offering a free 14 day trial for you for the platform. So anyone who's interested, just go to Stephen Washington Experience dot com and you can sign up and give it a shot for two weeks. We'd love to have you. All right. We're going to put that in the show notes.

Great. The link to the Stephen Washington Experience, which is the website name, too. we will put in the show notes. I can't end our conversation without talking a little bit about your husband, Lee Harris, in particular, not talking about him per se, but talking about, he's told me about you, but you and I have never actually met before now.

And I've always been curious. And I asked him, he's like, oh, you'll have to ask him. And this was years ago when he said that with his little British accent. But Lee, as you guys know, he's been on the show before. You probably will have his correct title, but I would call him a spiritual teacher, a psychic and really a channel of this group of spiritual masters, spiritual entities that are called the Z's.

And you can listen to the podcast, guys, that I that I've done with him to learn more about that. But the thing I want to talk about now is what it's like to be married to someone like that. like when you guys first got together like were the z's part of it did you know about what what he was about before you met him in person you know what i mean or was it something you discovered once you were already in relationship with him yeah what happened something that i didn't know i knew that we both valued spirituality and that it was a central focus and and in our lives independently of one another. And I knew that when we got together, it was going to be something that could grow and develop and change. But I had no idea that he was a channeler. I had no idea that

he was an intuitive. And it's funny that you asked this question because one of the things that we realized early on when we first started dating and seeing each other was that there was so much more than being significant others to one another. There's so much more to us. And we saw a potential for us to work together and collaborate. He walked into the Pilates studio I was teaching at in Palo Alto around the time that we met and he saw me teach and he was just blown away because he could see my level of mastery with that. And he had some events in Australia that he was scheduled to do and he wanted to have a movement component to it. And so he invited me to go with him to Australia. We'd only known each other literally a month, two months,

maybe before something like that happened. It was really magical, a really magical time. But I'll never forget during one of those events, those evening events that he did in Australia, I watched him channel for the first time. And did you know before then, or did he just start channeling? I mean, had he said, by the way, just so you know? yeah I think I knew but I didn't really think much of it and I didn't know too much about channeling other than the fact that I had a friend's mother in high school who was a channeler and she did a couple of sessions for me and and all that so I wasn't opposed to it or I wasn't afraid of it or anything like that I was you know but I remember that night watching him do what he

did and I was just blown away and bless him he I think he was so accustomed to some people not being able to accept him because of that part of himself on some level he had an expectation that once i saw that that i might not you were gonna bail yeah yeah and it was it was anything but that yeah it was anything but that yeah and so things just grew and developed from from there i would love see speaking of building faith if my husband who is the opposite of lee my nickname for him is send your root chakra. Like he is so in this 3D. I mean, he's a wonderful man and I adore him, but he's Mr. Pragmatic. I think he's an empath, but he would never admit it. Well, that's the yin of the yang.

Yes, definitely. I'm all yin and he is heavy yang. But I've thought like, God, if I were married to someone like that, I mean, you're probably used to it now, but I would be asking, talk about building faith i would be like checking in with the z's like lee listen where's the best place for us to live next you know what should we embark on this thing or not you know like how how much of a role do the z's have and you're the ones he channels the when it's such wisdom guys i mean it's we all have access to that wisdom but he just they have this great disease and lee just have this beautiful way of of uh distilling it yeah now and articulating it so how much of the z's and and the channeling play a role in your daily lives it well the thing is it's also

integrated that it's not so specifically like i'm talking to the z's or i'm getting advice from the z's it's also well integrated that it just flows effortlessly through so it's not something that is really perceptible yeah yeah from the surface you know but it but it's just integrated it's all integrated i was thinking like they could have officiate it would have been interesting if they officiated at your wedding wouldn't that be fun oh that might be a little weird i mean a little scary right like he's the group one of the grooms and he's also being like i was laughing to myself this morning because i was thinking oh and it'd been felt like he would have jumped to the front of you and been like, okay, you know, send the jump to the side.

Anyway, this is how I entertain myself story in my mind. But yeah, you know, and you talked a little bit in your book about how, and I think this is so important. And I really wanted to highlight this in this conversation with you and get a little bit more from you about it is how important for your recovery, like, like the, the dynamics of living in relationship in recovery, because, you know, one of the things we talk about on this show all the time are the millions of different ways it comes up so often that our partner is our greatest teacher, obviously, but also part of the reason they're our greatest teacher is because they're our greatest trigger. And just by nature, a relationship is going to bring up so many

growth edges, so many triggers, so many tough things that you have to kind of face about yourself or work with within yourself or navigate or negotiate between the two of you. That's why they say, you know, while you're in recovery, I don't remember what the time frame is, but you're not supposed to be in a relationship while you're working, actively working your recovery or newly in recovery. You're supposed to be really solid in your recovery before you get into a relationship. And I'm sure this is one of the reasons as well as heartbreak and trigger, you know, other things that might trigger a relapse. But I'm wondering what you could add about some of the challenges, but even more specifically,

some of the strategies that you've developed or discovered as you've moved through relationship in recovery, because this is a tricky thing for people who are in recovery. It is. And that thing that you just mentioned is that suggestion to not get involved in any intimate or romantic relationships in the first year of sobriety, in large part, because it's just important to keep the focus on yourself and your own health and well-being. And also, you don't really know who you are. I mean, who you are when you're in active addiction is drastically different from who

you are in recovery, especially once you begin the healing process and doing the work, we do change. There are certain things about us that don't change, but there are certain things that do change. And it's been a remarkable experience being married in recovery and being with my husband. I think I got very lucky to connect with someone who was willing to do the work that's involved in being in a partnership. An emotionally healthy partnership anyway. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing is,

one of the things that's worked well for us is the fact that we communicate. We communicate pretty well. Communication, we say, is one of our superpowers. And that's so important. It's just communication. Another thing that comes to mind about my unique situation with Lee

in our relationship was we come from very different backgrounds. I think the fact that I'm African-American and he's not, the fact that I'm American, he's British, those two things bring a lot to the table. I went through a lot of trauma early in my life, and that has created some interesting things to navigate and to heal from. And so it's so important to do the work individually and then together in order to to work through that stuff because it's not easy stuff to navigate and none of us come with an instruction manual as to how to do it a lot of things get said that you wouldn't say again if you could take it back and a lot of things get done that you wouldn't necessarily do if you could do it over again fertile ground for growth

and what i would advise anyone to do is to not do all that work by yourself get support yeah get support like i've had a therapist you know through most of my life at you know various times with different people and i've just started working uh with another therapist again but this time focusing on trauma and doing some somatic experiencing work oh yeah yeah and doing And neurofeedback, I've been doing a lot of neurofeedback and those things have been helping me because I've just, at 51, I understand that there's a way, a certain way that I relate to the world because of my experiences and I need to get more perspective on it. I need to get more tools so that I can have more freedom and more choice within that rather

than just responding and reacting to the world and dissociating and things like that when I get triggered. So it's been such an amazing experience to do this work. And that's the thing, the longer we're alive, the longer we're in recovery, the more experiences we're going to have, the more opportunities to grow and change, the more challenges we're going to get, the more layers of the onion we're going to peel back. And sometimes it feels like you're ripping a bandaid off. But the most important thing is to not give up, to not give up on yourself, to love yourself, to forgive yourself and keep showing up yeah and and are we lucky if you're since we're talking about relationships to have someone in your life who loves and cares about you enough to to be

there and be a witness to it all and to do the work with you and to do their own work too to do their own work as well because because we all we all need work yes that is so important apart and together. Yeah, we do. And I think we can end on, I mean, everything you said was beautiful, but one of the things that stood out to me that you said sort of toward the end of your book and that you alluded to just now is that we talk so much, especially when we're healing our past and learning to integrate that healing, not only to heal, but integrate that healing into our lives, that so much of that work is about forgiving those who have trespassed against us, right? Forgiving, forgiving. But self-forgiveness is something. Forgiving yourself

for the ways you've screwed up, for the mistakes you've made, for the places you've been blind or ignorant or self-sabotaging or hurt other people or made mistakes or fell off the wagon or all of those things. That forgiving yourself was something that I think isn't talked about enough and you really beautifully spoke to that in your book so i i just want to highlight that thank you yeah it's it's important it's important and that uh forgiving yourself is so important and sometimes it's one of the hardest things to do but i think it's really important work because we're all doing the best we can at any given time we're all doing the best we can with what we have it's i know we hear it a lot but it's true yeah we are we're all just walking

ourselves in each other home as Ram Dass would say. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for walking with us and for doing and dancing with us and doing all the beautiful work in the world that you're doing and make sure to check out this Stephen Washington experience. We have the link in there. The book once again is called Recovering You, Soul Care and Mindful Movement for Overcoming Addiction. Lots of tools and tips and strategies and even specific Qigong moves for doing different things that will facilitate, um, your soul and your recovery. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to come play with you and Lee soon. Love that. Thank you. arms around me

I guess I'm falling in love