The One You Feed - How to Find Healing in Nature with Ralph De La Rosa

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Ralph De La Rosa explains how there is an important connection between nature and mindfulness. He encourages listeners to engage with nature in mindful presence and open their hearts to the natural healing force of the environment. In this episode, you’ll learn how connecting with nature can be a simple yet impactful way to improve mental and emotional health, and also… How connecting to nature fosters healing and resilience Why spending time in nature more readily draws our attention to mindfulness Understanding the framework of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Why engaging with our internal parts can bring healing and transformation How the earth has a natural compassionate presence that is necessary for healing The benefits of slowing down and being open to mindful presence while in nature Learning to hold and bring compassionate presence to our difficult experiences Understanding the window of tolerance and how it can grow and expand To Learn More, Click Here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The body will always move in the direction of healing and clarification of its own systems when in the presence of the right conditions. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure?

And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to really know really dot com and register to win five hundred dollars. A guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign. Jason Bobblehead, the really know really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Ralph De La Rosa, an internationally published author of books about meditation, trauma, and internal family systems.

He's a mentee of Richard Schwartz and advanced meditation trainee of Jack Kornfield and has been teaching for over 15 years. Ralph is also a trauma-focused psychotherapist in private practice whose work has been featured in Tricycle, the Ram Dass Fellowship, CNN, New York Post, Refinery29, Women's Health, and GQ. Good to be back. It's lovely to have you on. You and I have talked a lot since we last talked on the podcast and are even teaching a workshop together. So I'm excited to have you on and just have some of the conversations we've been having and share them with people who are listening. So we'll get into all that in a minute, but we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild and they say,

in life, there's two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second, look up at their grandparent and say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, our attention is the most valuable commodity on the planet. Corporations are spending untold billions on capturing our attention because they know that wherever

our attention goes, it's like a magnifying glass. And what we focus on is what our neurology is building and bringing more of into our lives. And so, yeah, what we feed in our lives is what is going to grow and prosper and thrive. And we have some choices. We don't have a lot of choices with regards to what comes our way much of the time, I think, as we all learn through the pandemic, really. But we always have a choice of where we place our attention, the attitude that we choose, and how we relate to things. And that's actually quite empowering to realize.

Yeah, I love that very basic sort of interpretation, right? Which is kind of what the parable speaks to so directly, you know, that our choices about where we put our thoughts, where we put our energy, our actions, they all matter. So I thought maybe we would start talking a little bit about the role of nature in our lives and the role of nature as a healing practice, because that's the heart of the workshop that we're going to be teaching this summer at Kripalu. And I think it would be nice to explain why does that feel important to us? Why is that something we wanted to do versus any other kind of workshop? Yeah. I mean, first of all, there's that powerful moment in the Buddha's story,

right? Where he's being tempted by, you know, the personification of evil, for lack of a better term in Buddhism, the demon god Mara. When the chips are really down and Mara throws his last temptation at the Buddha, which was really an assault on his worthiness and his self-esteem and his sense of self-love and his sense of deserving to awaken, the Buddha put his hand on the earth and just said, you know, the earth is my witness. I have a right to this awakening. He didn't say much more than that. He didn't say, you know, the earth is a living being, etc. He just placed one hand on the earth and that was enough to overcome this great challenge. And I think we saw city folk en masse retreat to the woods, to the mountains, to the beaches, in so many different parts of the world during the pandemic. And I think we collectively had this realization that something about our connection to nature, which is inherent, we can have it even in the city, of course, but bolsters resilience, has everything to do with waking up, has everything to do with healing our hearts.

So for me, I had that experience of fleeing the city, going to the beaches, going to the mountains, going to the woods, and very much felt affirmed by the experiences I was having out there. Yeah, I've had similar experiences. I was reflecting a little bit on when did it start for me, me recognizing that nature was a key part of my life. And I think the fundamental time was, it's probably about 20 years ago, and I was ending my first period of sobriety. The wheels were starting to come off the train a little bit. And I was dating this woman and the relationship was very problematic. And she just tended to be in and out and in and out, which is the perfect way to hook most anybody, right? The intermittent reinforcement. And we were supposed to go to Washington DC one weekend. And she just called

me like two hours before we're getting on the plane. She's like, I'm going to go, but I don't want you to go. And I was like, Oh, you know, kind of feeling heartbroken. I was like, you know what? I'm not going to sit around here all weekend. So I found this place in Hawking Hills and it was this little place where you could go and retreat, but it was very rustic, but not rustic in like, you know, farmhouse rustic that we see like on Instagram all the time. It was rustic, like no running water, you know, no electricity, but it was yet somehow still really nice. And something about that weekend being there, something in me healed in a way, just being in nature. Like I didn't have to go. I wasn't talking to anybody. I wasn't doing anything except just being there. But there was something

about that quiet and that natural surrounding that I just felt so much better. And it was really a turning point for me where I went, oh, I've been kind of overlooking what's right in front of me all these years. Yeah. And so if I can update my answer a little bit, I can share something very similar. So about six years ago, I was finishing my first book, The Monkey is a Messenger. My career was exploding right in front of me in ways that I'd never actually had conceived of or even asked for it to. And at the same time, I was going through all these profound traumas. My partner walked out on me, my sister died, and my personal life was very, very difficult. And my professional life was filled with all this ease and satisfaction.

And the dichotomy of that was kind of pulling me apart in a way I'd never experienced before. And simultaneous to that, I noticed I've become so focused on my career. And I work from home. I see clients in my living room. I'm writing from home. And a lot of my life happens from home. And I realized I my living room. I'm writing from home and a lot of my life happens from home. And I realized like, I kind of don't go outside as much anymore. What's beyond that? You know, like I go outside to get on the train and go teach somewhere or to get on a train and

go to a restaurant and see friends or get on a train and go to an art show or whatever. And simultaneous to that, I started asking myself, when was the last time I've had play in my life? Just like simple, stupid, silly, pointless, no real purpose to it other than the thing itself kind of fun. And it's like, no, I'm a New Yorker. I go to dinner. That's what I do for fun. Or maybe I go to a rock and roll show. But easy childlike laughter wasn't a part of my life anymore either.

And I really started to question that. And the first time I got taken to a rock climbing studio, which was around the same time, I said, oh, here it is. This is an adult playground. This is a bunch of grown adults acting like childlike little beings on monkey bars, basically just having a blast and pushing themselves. And there's no point to this except for the thing itself. And everything else in my life was so goal oriented and, you know, just intentional and everything else. And here's this thing that is its own intention. And then that eventually took me to an outdoor rock climbing trip in Mexico, which really blew my doors off climbing in Chiapas and being introduced to just a different mode than I had grown so accustomed to in New York City. top of a double pitch wall that we climbed that was at the top of this cave and overlooking this town of san cristobal and just going i'm one of the very few people who gets to see this you know

being willing to go off it's cliche but off the beaten path of being willing to go you know down these dirt roads to these not well-known places in nature, I'm actually getting to experience something special that you only get to experience this if you've done this beautiful work to get up here. Something about that was so confidence-inspiring, just put me back in touch with something really essential that I had been missing. I said it before, our connection to nature is inherent. And so we have it even in the cities, we're always under the sky. But there's this piece around really being open, really being in that mindful state of receptivity to the forces of nature that it does things for us. It does things for us that I can't even describe. Yeah. And as we can hear in the

background, you are currently back in the city, Seattle, I believe, right? Yes, living basically on the Bourbon Street of Seattle. So, yeah, cars and trucks going by every once in a while. Well, one of the things I love about nature is, you know, we spend, when I say we, I mean you and people who study with you and those of us who are sort of in a mindfulness field in some way, right? those of us who are sort of in a mindfulness field in some way, right? We spend a lot of energy trying to be more present, more mindful, more attuned, more attentive, and that's all energy well spent. What I have found is that that all becomes easier in nature. Nature naturally draws our attention, at least as for me and many people, in a very easy way. I'm not saying that it makes meditation easy.

I'm just saying that a lot of the qualities that we're striving for, I think, emerge more readily in me when I'm in nature. I mean, I've been trying to meditate on and off for 20 years. I struggled. I think I would have done much better in today's era where there's teachers all over the place and apps, but you know, it's kind of often me and you know, the bookstore Buddhist kind of guy, but I struggled with breath practice. It was just challenging for me. And at some juncture, I just heard somebody say, just go outside and listen.

And so I started meditating outdoors every day. It was in a park in a city. There were city sounds, there were nature sounds, there was all of it, but it was just being there that really unlocked for me the joy of meditation that I'd heard people talking about that I had rarely touched. And so that's one of the things I love about, you know, going to nature is that it just feels like it's easier for me to be attentive because there's so many lovely things to pull your attention. Yeah. I think there's a piece here around the body, honestly, as you were talking about intention and mindfulness and, and all of these things, right? Like we are so in our heads, we're so habituated in our heads.

We live in a society that compels us to live from the shoulders up. And so our assumption when we start talking about intentionality, aspiration, things like this, is it's mental. We have this cognitive approach so often to mindfulness, and even loving kindness practices so often presented as like a cognitive based thing. And for me, what I noticed that correlates with what you're saying about the ease of presence, the ease of insight, the ease of disentangling in nature is I'm pulled back to my body in nature. It's quite automatic. It's just, you know, all the energy that's ordinarily concentrated in the beehive of the brain just naturally kind of melts like a candle into that universe that exists below our shoulders that is so important and has everything. You know, the body is always present. It's our minds that are imagining we're in the

past or the future. I come back to this again and again, that our body is really made of the earth. You know, the cells of our bodies comprised of the food and the nutrients that we take in, which I don't know, maybe it's down to like 95 to 99% of what we take in food-wise actually comes from the earth. But it's earth stuff. Our cells are made of earth stuff. And so I think that there's a correlation there. It's pseudoscientific for me to say that, but I think there's a correlation there. Yeah. Well, and much like meditation in recent years, there is a wealth of scientific information

that shows us how good being in nature really is for us, right? So it's the sort of thing that for me, my experience confirms it, you know, and the science really confirms it too, that it benefits just even short amounts of time out in something resembling nature, even cortisol levels drop, blood pressure drops, immune cells get better. I just love when I can hear certain things correlated from multiple sources. It always just gives me a little more confidence, like, yeah, okay, this feels like it's worth doing. It's in the traditions, too, or should I say in the traditions and then the lineages that developed outside of the traditions as well. Because, you know, in Buddhism, and certainly in the more Hindu side of Eastern mysticism and

Eastern practice as well, We have the traditions that really flourished in monastic environments and in institutions and what have you. We have those traditions. And then we have the yogic traditions, which the Buddha was really in so many ways, even though he initiated something that became more institutionalized and monastically oriented and what have you. You know, there's also these yogis who went and practiced in the wilds and practiced in the caves and didn't write things down and didn't want to be well known and remained rather hidden and what have you. We also have those traditions that the yogic practices and the mystic practices and what have you stemming from the

East come from. And these are all folks who related and relied on nature and living in the uncertain circumstances of the wild to support their practice. And just to bring it to a more contemporary place, if you think about the asanas that you would do in just any yoga class, downward dog, pigeon pose, and what have you, they're all named after animals. I watch my dogs do upward and downward dog every day. It cracks me up. Right?

Yeah. It's because it's about returning to this essential nature that has something to do with our inherent connection to the earth. Yeah. It seems to be synonymous with waking up. It seems to be synonymous with waking up. So I'd like to shift directions a little bit because one of the things that you, in my mind, have really gone deeply into and teach about a lot is internal family systems. So I'm wondering if you could just maybe for people who don't know what that is, just give a couple minute definition of what is internal family systems. And then I'd like to kind of explore in there a little bit, and then maybe tie that back to some of what we've talked about, like the healing parts of nature. So it seems to check out that anytime we have

insights or truths about how the body works, we have a parallel insight and truth about how the psyche works, because the two parallel insight and truth about how the psyche works because the two are intertwined. They're not really two. They're, in a sense, both one, you know, and two at the exact same time. Just like the body is comprised of parts. I'm holding up my hand and that's a part of my body, but it's still the body itself. So it's distinct from the body and it is the body comprised of parts that form a dynamically interwoven system that functions very well to make my life happen that's one way of describing the body and there's a parallel truth in the psyche inside you know we have one mind we have one personality we could say

and also within that one mind there are many different working parts of that mind and there's many different sub-personalities. This has been part of many different psychological lenses for a very long time. It hasn't been well accepted until recently because it makes it sound like you have multiple personality disorder. Right. To which I would say, well, there does seem to be 12 of me in here at times that all want different things, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think the part we could drop from that is the disorder part, right? Like it's not a disorder that we have these different parts. I mean, even the parable of this show is talking to that. It's an oversimplification that we have these parts inside of us, right? It's boiling it down to a binary, which isn't really accurate, but it reflects that angel on one shoulder, devil on the other shoulder. You

know, I want to do this, I want to do that. But then another part of me wants to do this and, you know, all this roiling around inside of us. Exactly. Exactly. And once we start to see that, it opens up some very unique doorways for us. For one, we can start to think about the fact that, you know, just as the body is this living force, you know, again, this part of the body that I call my hand is also a living force. It has functions and kind of a character, if you will, and needs of its own that might be distinct from the needs and the function and the character of, oh, say, my liver, right? Just like that, the subpersonalities inside of us are living forces. The mind is alive, we're alive, and so everything about us is alive. And internal family systems basically says, you know, these parts of you inside, parts of you that maybe help you to function and wear the right mask in the right situations, such as work versus being with friends, parts of you that might hold your loneliness, your your traumas if you will at bay so that

they're not out all the time and you can function parts of you that step in when you get triggered or feel too much vulnerability somehow and you reach for something maybe to self-medicate or you get angry or you shut down all of these different parts of you actually form an internal family and just like with an external family, isn't it that in our literal families, you know, everybody wants the same things to feel heard, to feel like they matter, to be loved, fairness, justice, right, to be appreciated and what have you. And so we have these parts of us inside that function very much like an internal family in that, you know, are we really listening? This little thing called self-love that has become so popular

in the last decade. Are we expressing love to these sub-personalities inside, right? Like, such as the inner critic or the inner child, you know, when was the last time we actually listened to that part of us and tried to first, I guess, see that we have a relationship. I can hate my inner critic. That's one kind of relationship. I can ignore my inner critic. That's another kind of relationship. I could also stop and listen and say, what's going on here? Why is this part of me like that? And what are they trying to accomplish? And does that part of me actually enjoy being that way? Or is it exhausting? We can enter into those kinds of conversations with ourselves. And when we do it from a place of compassion, which, by the way, I think, in a sense, the

earth really helps us to tap into in a natural way. And we could even say, you know, the earth holds a certain level of that compassionate, wakeful energy for us. When we do this kind of self-inquiry, when we enter into an internal engagement with these parts of ourselves from a place of compassion, what we find is that change starts to happen on its own rather easily. easily, that the way these certain aspects of our personalities just naturally start to grow and evolve and start to give us flashes of insight and what have you in a manner that is often really surprising. And so that's just kind of a breakdown on IFS. And, you know, there's a lot more to it. There's a lot of stages of healing that that process can bring one to. But what we find over and over again is that healing is actually possible,

that permanent healing is actually possible, that transformation isn't actually so extraordinary. It's special, it's meaningful, don't get me wrong, but awakening is actually our birthright, and it's staring us right in the face. Hey everyone, this is Jenny. One of my absolute favorite things is when we hear from listeners of the show. And something we hear quite often is that one of the biggest obstacles to feeding the good wolf is remembering. Because life is busy and we get caught up in routines and we're all on autopilot so much of the time. So to help with that, we've started sending a couple of text messages after

each episode is released to listeners who sign up for them. And it's something we're offering for free. A listener wrote us and said, the messages caused me to pause, even if just for a moment, and help me to remember important bits of wisdom, bringing them to the forefront of my mind. Remembering is the hardest part and the text messages are super helpful. So if you'd like to hear from us a few times a week via text, go to one you feed.net slash text and sign up for free. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of therapy for black girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January jumpstart series for the third year running all January. I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you

kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. It's a little bit of past, present and future all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love.

All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like...

Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Oh, Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What you just said there really resonated with me, which was just that call it what you just said there really resonated with me which was just that call it what you want healing transformation awakening that these things are very much possible and i think that's such an important message the world's very different than it was oh god how long ago was i a heroin addict

like back in 1994 1995 right the world is a very different place. We're exposed to so much more than we ever were. But there was a phase there where I just thought once an addict, always an addict, right? That was a phrase that used to go around, you know, and that was a dark place to be. And it often seems when we are in the depths of whatever it is, addiction, trauma, whatever it is that, like you said, that healing is for other people or we can't do it. We've tried and it hasn't worked. And I just think that message over and over again of like, as I would say in AA, keep coming back. And I don't mean keep coming back to AA. I mean, keep coming back to your own growth and healing and all that, because it is possible. And I just love how ordinary you make it sound.

Not that it's not deeply special, but it's not for people who are quote unquote different than us or special. It's for everybody. I mean, to come back to the somatic lens in the body, if you think about it, the body doesn't hold on to things it doesn't need to hold on to. It doesn't want to. It doesn't hold on to illness. It wants to heal. It doesn't hold on to toxins. It naturally wants to detoxify. The body will always move in the direction of healing and clarification of its own systems when in the presence of the right conditions. That last piece is really important, when in the presence of right conditions, right? So in the presence of further toxicity or things that perpetuate illness, you know, or bad nutrition, for example, it's going to move in that direction.

But place the body, you know, in alkalizing environment, in a place where the proper nutrients or proper care is being administered and what have you, where the relaxation response can be triggered and what have you. It naturally, in a parasympathetic state, goes into tissue repair, detoxification, all of these things. The body, which I would say is related to the foundation of our very being, naturally wants to heal and naturally moves in the direction of healing on its own. And, I mean, this also comes back to the earth and nature conversation. It's like we're putting the body in the presence of these conditions that are very conducive to everything we aspire for on this path, really. psyche or the soul, whatever you want to call it, naturally moves towards healing. And I hear that and I go, well, yeah, kind of, sort of, maybe, you know, but I can think of lots of cases where it

just doesn't appear to be moving that way. But the qualification you added there sort of brings it all home, which is under the right conditions, you know? So you can't expect a psyche that is continually re-injured to be healing itself, right? It might be trying, but it's not going to be successful. The body's not going to be able to heal itself if it is exposed to this or that. And so I really love that framing because it does point out there is a natural inclination towards healing and we have to be very conscious of the soil in which, you know, we're planting those seeds, to use an overused analogy. Yeah, well, I mean, it's the imperative of compassionate presence. In terms of the psyche and psychological healing, healing trauma and

what have you, compassionate presence is absolutely necessary, absolutely essential. There's no substitute for it in this world in this society you know that is just barely waking up to the reality of trauma for example and to so many other things getting compassionate presence in the right moments as well can be incredibly challenging i can say a quick thing if you like about neurobiology of trauma and how healing experiences work please trauma is defined loosely, kind of umbrella definition is any adverse experience we have where our defense systems are mobilized and then rendered useless. So you put an adverse situation in which fight-flight

gets triggered, all those intense neurochemicals are pumping, and they have nowhere to go. All those intense neurochemicals are pumping and they have nowhere to go. And basically what we call trauma is a process that got started and didn't get a chance to complete itself. And the body, again, naturally wants to complete that process, but it gets stuck very much like records skipping. The record itself is designed for the song to move forward. The record player itself is trying to move the song forward, but something went wrong with the record. And so outside intervention is needed to get to the end of the song. And so when we have a traumatic experience, basically all these neurochemicals get consolidated into the body. Because not so much of what happened, but because of the voice we didn't get to have, because we didn't get to express because of the support we didn't receive because of the community we didn't have because of the process that wasn't offered to us or the awareness that wasn't offered to us or whatever it was that we needed to complete the process.

You know, so if you think to common traumatic experiences, you know, somebody didn't come to save us. Somebody didn't come in and speak up for us. Somebody didn't ask us what it was like later. Compassionate presence wasn't introduced into the situation. And that's what's really supposed to happen. And that's what causes the record to skip for us. But anytime we're triggered, anytime we're put in a situation where our woundedness comes out, our vulnerability comes out, our reactivity comes out, those neurochemicals are alive and active in the system again. And there's what's called a window of reconsolidation. The experience that consolidated into the nervous system all of a sudden has a window where it's about to be reconsolidated. And what happens during that

window really matters. If compassionate presence, giving somebody a voice, giving somebody support, actually listening and affirming to somebody rather than giving advice and trying to fix, things like this happen during the moment where that wound is exposed again, window of reconsolidation is open. Then when those neurochemicals reconsolidate into the body, they're going to have a different and more powerful influence intertwined with them. And so bringing it back to the earth piece or the meditation piece, I mean, this is certainly the function of psychotherapy and why therapy works as well. We're opening up tender things in a compassionate space. There's a reason why, you know, when you're heartbroken or feeling a little lost, going for a hike and taking your woundedness out to the woods often seems like just the thing to do.

Because the earth, you're saying that nature is that compassionate presence in its way. Yeah, I think that's what you're saying, right? I mean, listen, I'm an old school punk kid. I don't like sounding so corny and cliche. This isn't a front to, you know, my former identities in so many ways. But yeah, I'm gonna say it, you know, and the Buddha said it. And Richard Schwartz, my mentor, says it, that the earth has this natural compassionate presence to it that sort of holds the Buddha said the earth has Buddha nature itself. It expresses Buddha nature in so many different ways, that a tree has it, animals have it, etc. et cetera, you know? And so for me at the spiritual level, this accounts for some of the experiences we are naturally inclined to have in nature without question, without analysis, even without trying. Yeah. I mean, and I think if that phrase, you know, nature has, you know, natural compassion is the other punk rockers in the audience who are cringing, right? You and I both share the same thing. I think we can just sort of look at the very least the sort of open,

welcoming sense of nature and the complete sort of lack of judgment, right? There's something about it that defies words. And I was thinking about this before we talked and I was like, you know, we can talk about nature a lot, but it's the practice, it's being in it that matters. It's sort of the old phrase, like writing about music is like dancing about architecture, right? Saying like, it doesn't quite get it. The same thing when we talk about what being in nature is like, is not the same thing as being in nature, you know, and feeling that. But there is something that most people report. I feel better. You know, I may not know the words for it. You know, and feeling that. But there is something that most people report. I feel better. You know, I may not know the words for it. You know, I'm not quite sure what to call it or why,

but I feel better out here. Yeah. I mean, there's also a piece here around participating with nature as well. We're starting to pick up on this. We have practices like forest bathing that are very popular and people doing outdoor retreats and what have you. Because I was sitting in the Hoh National Rainforest up here in Washington two summers ago. And I just spent like, I don't know, like three hours under this tree that had this beautiful moss just draping down off of its branches and overlooking this river. just draping down off of its branches and overlooking this river. And I was just sort of watching people as they walked by and recognizing how easy it is to just be a tourist in nature. It's like a trip to a museum or Disneyland or something like, oh, look at that.

Oh, there's a bird. Oh, and very little stopping and really taking something in really drinking it in you know and then there's always the hikers with the backpack speakers on that i mean see there's the punk rock judgmental part of me popping out but you're not alone but it's just the obliteration of presence in us is such a strong habit to actually slow down and be receptive in nature. There's a lot of things that I think happen for us automatically, but just to actually open and shift into mindful presence, mindful receptivity, is a gift. Because again, I'm going to argue that there is a natural healing force, that there's a compassionate presence waiting there for us. And when we open, it's like our hearts inside that hold things, that hold stresses and experiences and what have you,

get to receive it in a deeper, clearer kind of way. Yeah. My inner punk rocker objects to the phrase forest bathing. Ever since I heard it, I was like, oh God, this is terrible. I often joke like I was doing sort of parts work. It's not as evolved as parts work is today, but this is, you know, 20 years ago. And it was, it was called inner child work, right? Oh God, did I hate that phrase? I mean, it just caused me to cringe, but I couldn't deny the power of what was happening when I engaged in it meaningfully and worked with those parts and allowed those parts to have their say and understand why and what and how. Again, the phrasing can be difficult, but it shouldn't ideally turn us away from the power of these

practices. It's true. And I mean, let's face it, like so many things that have goodness and value to them that we'd be wise to bring into our lives and become so cliche and watered down. And, you know, Instagram has basically turned us all into commercials so that they can hide the real commercials in between the fake commercials that we're doing for them. Like, that's basically what's happened with social media. And, you know, so there's a lot of powerful concepts and practices and what have you that have really had the wind taken out of them yeah by this phenomenon that we're all experiencing together and at the same time i don't know like ram das was onto something you know yeah some of these folks were really onto something and thankfully we have parts so i can have my black flag self and i can have my all right, I can utter the word force basing on a podcast. Self as well. Yes, yes. I want to circle back to trauma for a second, because we have become a much more trauma informed society is another word that is starting to creep near mindfulness in its ubiquity.

And I think that in my mind, there's no question that becoming a more trauma-informed society is a really good thing, right? Because people experience trauma. At the same time, you know, what you're talking about is a natural process. Something causes our fight or flight thing to come up and that process gets interrupted, right? So there's two ways to work with that, right? One would be to say, okay, we give the process the chance to finish, whether that be at the time or we have to go back later and do it. Another way to work with that is to not have the fight or flight be getting kicked off as regularly. And so one of the things I worry about is as we talk about

trauma and we continue to talk about psychology and we talk about safe spaces and we talk about all sorts of different things is there's that debate of, is that making us more fragile in a way that we are responding to things that perhaps in a different culture we wouldn't have responded to, that our fight or flight is coming up in ways that it might not need to. And I think I want to be really careful with that. You know, suddenly you're starting to define what experiences are appropriate for people or what responses are appropriate. And I don't want to get into that because I don't understand other people's lives well enough to do that. But I think about it and I wonder about it. And we hear the word trauma used all the time for things that at first glance don't appear traumatizing. And I'm just

kind of curious what you think about that because you're much closer to this space in your day-to-day life than I am. Yeah. And I mean, thank you for the sensitivity that you showed, especially towards the end there, because a big factor in all of this that you were definitely acknowledging is the subjectivity. Right. That what's traumatizing to one person might not be for the other person. And there's a complex network of factors and variables in somebody's lives that contribute to that. This is a researched things, and there's a lot of answers out there with regards to that why one person might be shook by something and another person might say, yeah, a challenge is an opportunity. I'm going to grow from this, right? You're very

right, because so many of the mental health conversations that I'm so grateful we're having, this is definitely the golden age of mental health and trauma awareness, but they're happening on these 90-second videos on TikTok, where we don't get so much of the nuance and people are reading less books with that, which is necessarily the place that you're going to get more nuance and live workshops and online courses and what have you. So something that doesn't get talked about enough is that traumatic experience doesn't have to become traumatic stress, and traumatic stress doesn't have to become PTSD. That a traumatic experience, we can, in the moment that it's happening, if we're resourced enough, work with it in such a way that it doesn't have to, we mitigate its opportunity to become traumatic stress and then go to become that

skipping record. And again, it's compassionate presence, it's compassionate relationship to what's going on in the moment that it's happening that makes all the difference and helps us complete this process. I'll give you a personal example. Without going TMI, I had a really devastating experience on Saturday night. Absolutely crushed me, heartbroken. On Sunday, I was very much in that heartbreak and I did a few things that I just know to do now. One, I let myself feel it. I just said, oh, well, it's here. I can either prolong this or I can let it just kind of carve into me.

And so I let myself feel it. Two, I texted just about everybody I knew who could be a compassionate support for me. And whether that conversation stayed on text or became a phone call, there was a few phone calls, but I connected to a lot of different friends who had a lot of positive feedback or were able to just listen. And then I rode the waves as the feelings came up throughout the day. And then three, I turned to my creative practice and I turned on GarageBand and I picked up a guitar and I channeled some of those feelings into this meaning making practice that I have in my life. I made meaning out of it. I wrote songs about it. And I walked away from the day with

something to show for it. I have these recordings that I made that day. And I did this in part because I was like, well, I have to be a trauma therapist by Monday. Right now, I don't have that capacity. And so I can just retreat for a day and really be with this experience I had last night. And lo and behold, by Monday, I was good enough, you know, still heartbroken, but good enough to hold space for people. By Tuesday, I had therapy and I really got to work through some things. And here we are on Thursday and I'm relatively back to normal with some more processing to do. But what could have spiraled into a deeply traumatizing experience became the impetus for connection and creativity.

And that's exactly what we're talking about. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I think there's a couple of things as you were talking that sort of came to mind for me there. And one was you neither indulged nor repressed what was happening. You sort of allowed it and gave it that, as we're saying, compassionate presence and allowed other people to enter that space. And it makes me think about, we used to use this phrase in AA called, you know, keeping your side of the street clean, right? And it was largely talking about our own behavior. However, I think it applies across our psyche, right? That when we are dealing with what comes up as it comes up, then the accumulation doesn't build up, right. And, you know, for me, when I hit recovery,

there was such an accumulation of psychic injury that had been both caused to me and I had caused to myself. Right. I mean, they co-created this mess, you know, but over time, as I, you know, to use a software development term, as I reduced the backlog, right, I was more able to, when a situation happened, experience it in a more present moment me kind of way instead of it being what's actually happening and all this backlog, you know, all this stuff coming at the same time. And I think what you just showed there is exactly how to do that, how to remain somewhat current with what's happening so that, you know, your heart's broken, it's tender, but it's going to heal and you're going to be on the other side of it. And it's not going to be this thing that you carry around for the next decade. This is the function of meditation practice. This is a function of the self-help and even pop psychology lenses that we hold. This is the function of the Dharma. This is a function of you, very Buddhist word, but you know, what your view of what your life is and what have you. This is part of the function of all of that. It's a part of the function of doing internal process, such as with parts work, but there's many other processes as well, as it engenders that sense of trust. So you just said it, I want to highlight it, trusting that there is another side to this.

I can get to that other side of this. Things are messed up now, but I can return to being okay later. Our society teaches us two modes of relating to intense emotions the most popular mode is repression stuff it down not today and they i'm a fan of that one yeah i'm a deep practitioner in that art you know it'd be it'd be really wonderful if it worked it would definitely be my go-to if it you know wasn't cancerous but um and then the other which used to be my favorite was expression right just get it out just offload it scream yell cry what have you which there's some wisdom to that too the way i used to practice it was not so good you know literal recovering coffee table flipper here like i actually i actually flipped a coffee table at one point, but there's a third option

that we're not shown so much, which is learning how to hold our experience. Just be with it. Just bring compassionate space to it. Just allow it. Just render it. Let it take you for a moment. Just be with it. Be in it. And to me, that third option is actually the most powerful. There's times when the other two options are definitely the skillful thing to do, but that third option opens the doorway inside to relationship and to all kinds of resilience bolstering factors in our lives. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running.

All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love.

So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. It's a little bit of past, present and future all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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you get your podcasts. You talked earlier about a window of reconsolidation. There's another window idea that shows up in psychology, which is a window of tolerance. Talk to me about the window of tolerance. A, what is it? And B, what things are we able to do when we're in it? And what things are we not able to do when we're not in it, right? Because the experience you just described is the experience of somebody whose window of tolerance is broad enough to hold the experience, right? And depending on, I think, the nature of the experience, the intensity of it, and what our window of tolerance actually, the size of it, right?

Very often, well, I'm talking too much. You talk about the window of tolerance. So I'm going to go explain the whole thing. You know, first week of COVID-19 lockdowns happened in this country and I hop on a call with my therapist at the time and asked how she was doing with everything. And she goes, it's the value of being a traumatized child. You know, I grew up in a chaotic environment. I know how to do this one now. And, you know, of course, things got more intense with the pandemic. But that's just another example of somebody with a broad open window of tolerance, which I think trauma survivors naturally tend to have.

We're used to handling so much, get some healing work in there. And it's even more to the point. So window of tolerance is basically, we can think of it as our capacity for putting up with shit, right? Frustration, decision-making, stressors, having to hold back how we really feel so that we can function in the middle of a situation, these sorts of things. Being able to tolerate difficult experiences, difficult emotions, difficult thought streams, worries about the future and what have you. We have currently a finite window of what we can hold before we basically either collapse

into chaos or rigidity, right? We either act out, self-medicate, freak out, or rigidity. We start making rules. We start saying never again in all kinds of different ways, freak out, or rigidity. We start making rules. We start saying never again in all kinds of different ways, shutting down, dissociating. But that window, it's finite in this moment how much we can hold, but it can grow and it can evolve over time. And everything that we do that asks any level of discipline of us is going to help us to expand that window, so long as it's not too much and it's we're not

outside the the edges of that window right the perimeters the boundaries of that window are what we would call it growth edge and so it's like this very able-bodied example but it's like working out i see uh instagram videos of you on your peloton these days eric's like, you know, a good strength training workout or a good cardio workout will take you right up to your edge and it's going to injure you a little bit. You're going to be sore afterwards. You're going to be dehydrated afterwards. You're going to need to put some nutrition in your body and what have you. And then you get stronger as a result of working right at that edge.

It works the same way psychologically. If we relate to experiences, if we go on a silent meditation retreat, for example, if we engage in psychotherapy regularly, if we push ourselves, you know, maybe academically, or there's so many ways in which we can work with the mind and go to the very edges of what we think we can handle. And then almost like a workout too, if you meet with that edge, a really good thing to do is to slow down for a moment, back off, take a break, drink some water, and then return working at that edge. And then, you know, if you work at that edge and you know how to bring compassion and softness and some balancing factors in, you find that that edge can expand.

I want to talk a little bit about two practices. You've mentioned them both a lot, and you actually do both of them, both as a practitioner and as a teacher. And they are therapy and they are meditation. And I've heard you say before that meditation can do the same thing therapy does, just in a different way. And sometimes it's more powerful, sometimes it's less powerful. And I'm just curious how you think about the relationship between those two things. Kind of talk a little bit more about how they interact, complement, or how to choose which might be the better choice for you at a certain time. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I teach people how to use internal family systems in meditation. That's

kind of become my niche these days. And there's not a tremendous amount of people doing this right now. And it boils down to this, again, the simple reality of the window of consolidation and reconsolidation and the imperative of compassionate presence entering when that window is open. And we have a lot of research now around how we can receive compassionate presence from the outside, and it does a certain thing to the body. It does a certain thing to the brain. It does a certain thing to our wiring. And we can also receive it from the inside. And it does the same things to the brain and the body when we receive it from

within, this little thing called self-compassion, self-love, right? So in the therapy room, I am that compassionate presence. I'm holding that compassionate presence for folks. And hopefully it's a space in which the boundaries of that space feel solid enough, the energy expressed in that space feels loving and accepting enough that people have that basic sense of trust, they can bring some tender things forward. And I personally, having been to hell and back several times in various neighborhoods of hell and back several times, I feel like when people really start opening up like the most shadowy stuff, I'm like, ah, this is my old neighborhood.

I know how to be here with you. I know how to walk through this with you. And I know how to get us both back home all in 45 minutes. But, you know, I know how to get us back and sealed up and you balanced and regulated so that you can go on from your day having had this healing experience. And then, you know, the same thing can really happen for people in meditation practice because what I'm expressing, what I'm holding internally as I'm in that therapeutic process with people is something in IFS we would call self-energy. In Buddhism, it's called Buddha nature. All kinds of traditions have different names for this essential open-hearted state that

is inherent to us all. And if I have it and I can feel that open-hearted state, even with my sadness or my loneliness, the heartbreak I experienced that I spoke of earlier, I could have that heartbreak. I could hold the heartbreak and I could reach back into the heart and bring forward some love and sympathy and compassion, some openness, friendliness to that heartbroken state. That's the exact same thing that happens in the therapy room. And people can absolutely learn how to do that for themselves.

In many cases, you need the therapy and to have that internal experience as an accoutrement to the therapy. experience as an accoutrement to the therapy. But I've had people in my courses who have been able to become adept at having openheartedness towards their own suffering in myriad different ways and have been able to do the full process. There's three stages of healing in IFS that increase in their level of subtlety and complexity and that the third stage, which is called unburdening or sometimes final healing or permanent healing, isn't often taught too much publicly. Certainly, you know, only described in books with the caveat of like, do not try this at home. And I've seen people be able to use meditation even for the unburdening processes that are in IFS, where we're releasing the stored energy of what happened into the elements and then replacing it, integrating

it with something more childlike and free. So meditation is a powerful arena. You know, the last thing I'll say here is this bolsters my passion for longer meditation sessions, which is something we're losing. You know, we're so accustomed to five and ten minutes and that's fine if that's what you got. But if you want to develop your practice to the point where it offers you the opportunities for deep transformation and deep growth, deep healing, like what I'm talking about, you got to spend a little bit more time inside. Yeah. I think that last point is an interesting one because I'm certainly a big proponent and have been on this show of small steps, doing what you can. But I also think you're right. I think everything's a balance. You can go too far one direction or the other. And maybe we're going a little bit too far into five minutes is enough.

Well, it's a starting place and it may be all you have. And in the season in your life, that may be what is there. And there are possibilities when you go deeper. and part of going deeper is going longer. And I've noticed that happen just in my own practice. It narrows down as far as the time commitment, you know, I'm like, well, I'm doing it every day. And then I need to sort of recommit again periodically to the longer piece of it. And that's part of what retreat can do. You know, I think certainly part of what we'll be doing at the workshop. And I wanted to ask a question though, because you used a phrase in there, self-energy, right? And so without going too far into IFS theory, there is this internal self that looks a lot like what we would call Buddha nature, different things. And that's where we want to get, but it can be

difficult to get there. Right? And so you talk about something that's a really interesting idea, which is the idea of self-energy surrogates. Right. So we know we could get it from ourselves. We know we could get it from a person who knows how to hold compassionate presence. But what are other places of drawing that self-energy or borrowing it from another source? Yeah, because if we can borrow it from another person, I mean, don't we feel it around dogs, cats? You know, sometimes, right, that they exert a healing presence on us, that we feel better in their presence. We regulate, we calm down. We sense it in other beings all the time. And, you know, again, I'm going to just come back to the earth. You know, the earth is,

I mean, I'm not going to say it's a person. I'm not going to call it a mother. That's for sure. It is a provider. It's literally made all the food that went into my body. It made these clothes. It made the microchips that had to be mined. Very big problem. But for the computers to work and the devices to work and it's all Earth stuff. The Earth has given us everything and really asked for so little in return. You know, the Earth is the greatest artist that ever was. You know, you're not going to find anybody more profound and prolific than this planet that we walk on. Absolutely. Yeah, I think about that so often, just the literal riot of creation.

You start looking around and you're like, the creatures that exist are insane. You know, just the diversity and the number and the multitude is just sort of amazing to contemplate. To me, that's a beautiful reflection of that generative nature that is in the natural world. Yeah, we're still discovering, what, 1,500 species of life in the Amazon rainforest every year. Is that the number, huh? I believe so. It's crazy. Yeah, it's really wild, the extent of life, right?

But that is synonymous with Buddha nature. That is synonymous with what we call self-energy and IFS. And I've come to the realization that it's all over the place. There's another Buddhist teacher, Locke Kelly, who teaches with Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, who talks about when we open to spacious awareness, such as with some typical Buddhist meditation practices, but spacious awareness practices are all over the place in the somatic world. When we open to the space around us, that space has what he calls self-essence, that it's kind of the vapors of self-energy, if you will. And we know that when we open our

awareness to the environment, to the sense of space, the body goes into that parasympathetic healing mode very, very easily. and so there's something to that it's also in the breath it's also in the breath it's something i become recently convinced of if you think about the breath it's regulating it's literally sustaining your life it's oxygen you're breathing in is what's pushing the plasma to deliver nutrients to your cells you know you have a nutrients to your cells. You know, you have a relationship to your breath that's always been here for you. You know, you can use it as an anchor into this present moment.

There's lots of things that correlate with what love is in the breath. And so I'm literally teaching a course right now on developing secure attachment, where one of the practices is developing a secure attachment to the breath, using the breath as, you know, this essential relationship, this very good, healthy relationship in our lives that we can then work out our issues in our other relationships with. So there's lots of ways to draw in self-energy from the outside, not just in the presence of a therapist or a coach, and then bring it into the body where these parts of us that hold our experiences and need love and attention live.

Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. We've mentioned this workshop. It's called Awakening in the Outdoors, and it's happening at Kripalu August 6th through 11th. And I know on our website, whenyoufeed.net under programs, there's a link to it. I'm sure at some point on your website, it'll be there, but anybody who's interested, we would love to see you there. And I'm already hatching our next workshop, which is something to do with punk rock and healing. We're going to need to work on that one, but for now, we've got one on nature. Good to see you as always, Ralph.

Likewise. Likewise, Eric. Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

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