The One You Feed - Judith Blackstone on Healing Trauma Through Consciousness

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

Judith Blackstone is an innovative and experienced teacher in the contemporary fields of non-dual realization and spiritual, relational, and somatic psychotherapy. She developed The Realization Process, which is a direct path for realizing fundamental consciousness. She also teaches the application of non-dual realization for psychological, relational, and physical healing. Judith has taught The Realization Process for over 35 years throughout the United States and Europe. She currently has 6 books in publication including her latest book, Trauma and the Unbound Body: The Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness.Need help with completing your goals in 2019? The One You Feed Transformation Program can help you accomplish your goals this year.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Judith Blackstone and I discuss Healing Trauma through Consciousness and …Her book, Trauma and the Unbound Body: The Healing Power of Fundamental ConsciousnessUncovering fundamental consciousnessAttuning to the 3 components of fundamental consciousness: awareness, emotion, and physical sensationDefining traumaThe way we hold back things that won’t be met with approvalHow traumatic events cause us to be divided – driving us out of our fundamental nature of wholeness, which is fundamental consciousnessInhabiting our body vs scanning our bodyReleasing trauma through our bodiesHealing trauma through consciousnessPsychological healing in addition to spiritual awakeningThe role of memory in healing traumaAccessing memories through somatic connectionsHealing trauma in relation to other people as well as with other peopleJudith Blackstone Links:realizationprocess.orgFacebookThe Great Courses Plus: Are you a life long learner? A perpetually curious person? The Great Courses Plus is an on-demand streaming service that offers courses taught by professors on a whole host of topics such as Human Behavior, Money Management Skills, Black Holes, the History of England and so much more. Eric is currently enrolled in their course called, The Hidden Factor: Why Thinking Differently is Your Greatest Asset. Listeners of the show get a full month of unlimited access to their library for FREE by signing up at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/wolfEverlyWell: Offers more than 35 at-home lab tests with super easy to follow instructions. Results are processed in a certified lab and reviewed by board-certified physicians and are then sent directly to you within days. The EverlyWell digital platform helps break down exactly what your results mean for you plus you can also set up a free discussion with a healthcare professional to discuss them. To start learning more about your health, go to everlywell.com/wolf and enter promo code WOLF for 15% off your testFabFitFun – A women’s lifestyle subscription box filled with full-size premium items that you will love. Give yourself (or someone special in your life!) this gift – use the promo code FEED for $10 off your first box at fabfitfun.comIf you enjoyed this conversation with Judith Blackstone on Healing Trauma through Consciousness, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Hilary Jacobs HendelMary O’MalleySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fundamental consciousness is the basis of our wholeness. With that means that in order to experience it, we need to open to it throughout our whole being, our whole body. 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. 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 and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts our guest this week is judith blackstone she is an innovative experienced teacher in the contemporary fields of non-dual realization and spiritual relational and somatic

psychotherapy she developed the realization process which we'll be discussing in this interview, which is a direct path for realizing fundamental consciousness, as well as the application of non-dual realization for psychological, relational, and physical healing. process for over 35 years throughout the United States and Europe. Her latest book is Trauma and the Unbound Body, the Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness. And now, here is our interview with Judith. Hi, Judith. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm very glad to be here. I'm very glad to have you on also. We've had a couple of, needed to reschedule this a couple times due to various things. So I'm happy we're finally able to do it. Your book is called Trauma and the Unbound Body, the Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness. And we're going to dive into the book in a minute, but let's start the way we always do with a parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson,

and she says, in life, there are 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 other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother 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. Yeah. Well, what it means to me is that we can, to some extent at least, nourish the better qualities of our being, the better impulses of ourselves.

But, you know, it's an age-old question, certainly since the beginning of psychoanalysis and quite a long ways before that philosophically, whether these wolves are innate, whether we're innately good and innately bad, so that these two wolves are on an equal footing. That's an interesting question. Some people, of course, think that they are. Some people feel that our bad tendencies, our greed and our hatred, tendencies, our greed and our hatred, even our aggression, are perversions or clouding of our goodness. And my experience, well, as a long-term meditator and as doing the work that I've been

doing for several decades now, seems to bear up the ladder that when we get deeply inside of ourselves, we really make contact with ourselves. Not an easy thing to do, but when we do, there's an innate goodness that we feel that at the same time as we reach a kind of sense of authenticity, like, oh, finally, the masks are off. I can be who I am. this really feels like who I am. At that same point, there's a feeling of one thing of kinship with other life forms, with other people, kinship, and also, we draw close to our actual love, our actual ability to love, which is, of course, a wonderful feeling. And also happiness. There seems to be, and I'm just basing this on experience, there seems to be an innate source of happiness that we can attune to in our body. Of course,

when we feel happy, okay, you know, happy may be too strong a word, content. Yeah, happy. When we feel love, you know, like, and I remember in my own process, as I began to feel the, you know, automatic, spontaneous welling up of compassion for other human beings and for myself, when that occurs, then that greedy old wolf gets smaller and smaller. I just want to say one other thing about this. One thing that that bad wolf feeds on, one of the things that it feeds on is being caged. Yeah, it builds adrenaline, builds strength. So we need, so even though, yes,

we can focus on our better tendencies and that's a whole lot better, you know, of course, we're talking here also about mindfulness, you know, that we know how we're acting, that we know what we're thinking, we know what our responses are. So then we have a way, you know, we can start to look at least the sources

of that and change it, shift it. But if we just try to squill those bad impulses, they sometimes come out in sneaky ways. Yes, I agree with everything you're saying. And I always find that distinction, you know, in the West, we tend to have the concept of original sin. Eastern philosophies tend to be more underneath everything, we're fundamentally good. And I think for purposes of practicality, I think that both those things, we have the seeds of both those things within us. But I tend to agree with you that my experience has been as whatever the process that sort of clears away and opens me to a deeper nature or increases the sense of a bigger part of me tends to lead almost automatically to a lessening of those sort of quote unquote bad wolf qualities. Yes, yes. That's exactly been my experience. of those sort of quote-unquote bad wolf qualities.

Yes, yes. That's exactly been my experience. So that battle, you know, when there is a battle between, for example, being kind to people and not being kind to people, and there's a battle, I think what we're really battling is our old hurts, right? If I've been hurt by people, especially when I was young and very impressionable, I didn't have much to compare it to. I've been hurt by people. Then I distrust people. Then I'm battling within myself. Should I be kind to them? Well, why should I be kind to them? They'll probably not reciprocate that, but maybe I should, maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt.

And that's the battlefield rather than on a more innate level of ourselves. Right. It's kind of always ironic to me that when I am feeling better, like if I'm just in a naturally happier, more expansive mood, then it's just easier for me to be kind to people. And I'm not really having that debate. But when I'm hurting, and whether that hurt come from past traumas or whatever, or wherever it's coming from, but when I'm in a place of constriction and hurting, then it's very, very difficult for me to summon kind feelings, even if my intention is to be that way. Yes, that's right. Yeah. my intention is to be that way. Yes, that's right. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about your book. As I mentioned earlier, it's called Trauma and the Unbound Body, the Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness. So what I'd like to start with is do two things. First, I want to talk about what

fundamental consciousness is. And then I'd like to talk a little bit about what trauma is. So, but let's start with what is, in your definition, fundamental consciousness? Okay. So, fundamental consciousness is an experience. So, I really don't know what it is ontologically or metaphysically. You know, I don't know what it is. But I do know that we can experience it. And as an experience, it's an experience of ourselves as actually made of a very, very subtle, I'm going to say dimension for lack of a better word, a very subtle dimension of consciousness. So our most subtle attunement to ourselves uncovers, seems to uncover rather than create, uncovers this very subtle consciousness that we can experience everywhere in our body at once. Now, at the same time as we experience it pervading everywhere in our body, so it feels like this is what we're made of, we also experience it pervading everything around us. That means that even if we look at a table, the table appears both to be substantial and permeable,

actually pervaded by consciousness at the same time. We don't know, I don't know if that experience of ourself and the world around us has made a fundamental consciousness is actually like i'm actually seeing it the nature of the universe which is what some traditional teachings claim or whether i'm seeing my own mind at my own consciousness at the same time as I'm seeing what that consciousness reveals, as some other traditional teachings claim. So that's open for debate as far as I'm concerned, but I do know that we can experience it. Right, right. And I think that is an interesting point, and I think it's partially why these things, this deeper level of consciousness is often described as beyond words, because

the experience is ineffable in a way, and the intellectual debates about what's actually happening become kind of unimportant if you're actually experiencing it. That's right. That's right. It's an experience. There are also teachings that say we can't experience it because there's nobody there to experience it, and I'm not of that school of thought. We can experience it. It seems to, I mean, as the Buddhists say, experience

is itself. You know, it's not a consciousness of something. It's consciousness itself, but we know it, right? We know it when it appears, but we know it, right? We know it when it appears. And we can also facilitate its appearance or emergence. And that's what my work is about, is facilitating that what seems to be a self-arising, uncreated experience of ourselves as this very subtle consciousness.

Wonderful. And so a couple of things about fundamental consciousness that you say, you say it has three qualities, awareness, emotion, and physical sensation. Can you tell me a little bit more about each of those aspects of it or each of those qualities? Yes, yes. Fundamental consciousness is the basis of our wholeness. With that means that in order to experience it, we need to open to it throughout our whole being, our whole body and our whole being. So when we do that, it's not just blank space, although we can experience this emptiness. It's just empty, just sheer transparency. We can experience it that way,

but we can also experience it, the same fundamental consciousness, as having in a very subtle form the basic qualities of our human being, of our being. And by the way, this acknowledgement of the ground of our being as having qualities innately is again a matter of debate within the traditional Asian spiritual teachings, but many of them, both Hinduism and Buddhism, have schools of practice and schools of thought that say that yes, indeed, that this ground of our being, this essence or Buddha nature does have qualities. In the realization process, that's the name of my work, in the realization process, I name these qualities,

awareness, emotion, and physical sensation, as a way of opening our whole being, our awareness, our emotional capacity, and our capacity for physical sensation, opening all of that to the whole pervasive ground of fundamental consciousness. So we attune to actual felt quality. By quality, I mean feeling, only the word feeling I use too many other contexts. I use the word quality. We attune to the experience, the quality of awareness around and within and way above our head to the actual attunement to feeling of that space.

When we do that, we experience that same quality pervading our whole body, awareness, and pervading our body and environment. and preventing our body and environment. When we attune to it lower down, right, like the mid-third of our body, it has an emotional quality to it, not a specific emotion, because this is a very subtle, ongoing experience. Fundamental consciousness is unchanging. Our experience of it is unchanging. So we experience it as steady, as stable, in other words.

So this emotional quality is deeper and more subtle than any specific quality. But once again, we can attune to it in the mid third of our body has a feel to it. Once we do that, we can experience it everywhere in our body and everywhere in our environment. right? So even the chair, I don't mean that the chair has emotion. I'm not saying that, but this emotional ground pervades the chair, right? Pervades everything that we experience, both inside us and outside of us. Now, the third one, when we go way down in our body, down in our torso, down in our legs, we can attune to another feeling, physical sensation, again, more subtle and more ongoing than any of the content, right? I make a distinction between ground and content in this work. Physical sensation is the ground is unchanging, more subtle than any specific physical sensation. Once again, we can attune to it in that lower part of our

body, but then we experience it everywhere in our body and pervading everywhere. They blend together, right? They blend together, awareness, emotion, physical sensation, pervading our whole body and our whole environment, and they make up the richness of that ground of our being. Wonderful. I really like that distinction. Thank you. 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 brian cranson is with us how are you 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 yeah no really go to really no judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. Yeah. 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. So now let's go into the second part of, of what I said is like, let's talk a little bit about what trauma is. And then we'll tie fundamental consciousness and trauma together. But let's start from your perspective. What is trauma? I'm using the word trauma in a general sense, as it often is used these days, to mean anything that is too overwhelming, too abrasive, confusing, or painful for us to take in as a whole. Mostly, of course, this occurs in childhood, where we're so extremely sensitive to the environment, and we don't have anything to balance it.

You know, we don't have any, our understanding isn't developed and we can't get away. So even angry voices or a face that's usually loving suddenly looking very sorrowful or angry, even that something as ordinary, a commonplace as that can be traumatic, can be too much for a child to take in. Being fed when we're not hungry, all of the things that most children, you know, experience at some point in their lives. Certainly, if there's more severe trauma, such as being held down, being abused, being hit, beaten, being criticized consistently, so more severe trauma

that will have an even greater effect on us. We will have to keep that out. So in the realization process, my main concern is the realization of ourselves as fundamental consciousness, and that requires us to inhabit our body the more fully we inhabit our body the more fully we Open to and know ourselves as fundamental consciousness But when the child or teenager or even if trauma is severe the adult when we experience Something that we cannot take in as an experience that we have to keep out to some extent, we constrict the instrument of our experience, which is our body. We constrict through the

level of the fascia, I think mostly, fascia being a level of tissue that's everywhere in the body that surrounds all of our organs. That means that we can constrict ourselves deeply even within our body. So we're keeping abrasive events out, right? We're limiting the impact of these events on us so that we're not shattered. This is a very good thing that we do automatically to keep ourselves intact, to keep ourselves from shattering. We also constrict ourselves to hold back, to hold in anything that is not met with love or approval from our environment, at the beginning from our parents. So we hold back our tears, we hold back our anger, anything that's not going to be met with approval. And so one of the things you say is that even though our basic

nature is wholeness, that traumatic events cause us to become divided, that that is what one of the primary things, as I understand what you're saying, that drives us out of fundamental consciousness. That's right. You know that drives us out of fundamental consciousness. That's right. You know, to realize ourselves as fundamental consciousness, it takes a very deep inward attunement to ourselves. There's a question of whether children are just naturally in fundamental consciousness. I don't think they are, no, because it requires deep inward attunement to the very core of our being.

Children are undefended. They're open, but they're not necessarily realized in this way. Experiencing themselves and their world is pervaded by fundamental consciousness. So it's when we go to then try to realize ourselves as fundamental conscious that we come up against these constrictions. Now, we don't need to release all of these constrictions in order to realize ourselves as fundamental consciousness. But we do have to release a certain degree of them, right? As those constrictions in the fascia of our body, along with the memories of the trauma, of our body, along with the memories of the trauma, right, even the mentality of ourselves as children or as adolescents when we went into those constrictions, as that releases, we are able to contact ourselves deeply enough, fully enough, that finally we're able to

attune to that very, very subtle ground of our being. attuned to that very, very subtle ground of our being. And so let's talk now a little bit about how your process works. You know, you talk about that you approach the healing of trauma in two ways. You attune to fundamental consciousness by inhabiting the body, and then you use fundamental consciousness to release trauma-based constrictions. So talk to me a little bit about what the method involves in a sense that listeners might understand what they would be doing as part of it. Yeah. So realization process, that's what it is.

It's a series of practices. is that's what it is. It's a series of practices. And most of the practices work with inhabiting the body, attuning directly through through the internal space of the body, through that deep context, being able to let go of ourselves on that very deep level so that we let go of ourselves into this very, very subtle consciousness pervading everywhere. So those are specific practices for living within the body. It's very different than being aware of the body to actually be present within the body. And those practices also attune to these qualities of fundamental consciousness and directly to that permeability of the world around us

that we experience when we experience our own permeability as fundamental consciousness. There are also practices for tuning to a very subtle channel that runs through our torso, neck, and head. This has been also in the Hindu system and Hindu yoga called Shishumna. In Tibetan Buddhism, it's called the central channel. So many of the Asian teachings recognize this very, very subtle channel. Again, it's an experience, not something that we find, you know, if we open the body after death or

something. But we can experience this very, very fine channel, the depth of our being, and that helps us to enter into fundamental consciousness. So these practices, they're also practices for relating with another person that way, because the more inward contact we have with ourselves, the more contact we can have with others. So most of the realization process involves those practices for realizing fundamental consciousness. But there's also a specific practice for releasing the constrictions, the trauma-based constrictions within the body. The very deep constrictions within us will not unwind just by inhabiting the body. They're too deep, and they're tied to painful memories, right? So we know better than to simply open our heart when we've been badly hurt. So these constrictions are not just physical.

They're tied to our being in a very deep way. So those deep constrictions within ourselves need to be worked with in a very specific way, which we do by attuning within them from the subtle core of the body so that we get a very fine attunement and focusing within them in such a way that they actually move further into constriction and then release. And a very important part of that release work in the realization process is that then after that little bit of release occurs, we inhabit the body, right? So we're not releasing into just nothingness, we're releasing into that ground of our being. So we get to experience ourselves as more, as more love, more voice, more understanding, more power, more sexuality, as we release these holding patterns and more capable of opening to fundamental consciousness. So I've got a couple of questions about what you

just said there. The first is I'd like to explore this idea a little bit more about the difference of being aware of our body and living within the body. So let's take a common practice like a body scan. Is a body scan being aware of the body or is that living within the body or does it really depend on how you do it and the depth to which you go? Yeah, it depends on how you do it. But most people who scan the body, it will be just they're scanning their awareness through the body, right? So they're aware of their feet and then they're aware of their ankles and then they're aware of their legs. So that's not yet living within the body. Some people may just automatically, maybe because they already have that depth of contact with themselves,

when they do a body scan, they may actually enter into and be present within each place in their body. We also, in the realization process, go part by part. And then we go to inhabiting the body as a whole. And that's because if we just simply told ourselves, well, okay, now I'm going to live within my body, we would leave out those parts of ourselves that we habitually leave out, right? So if we're a little bit ungrounded, you know, heaven in the clouds, then we won't include the feet in that internal inhabiting of ourselves,

in that internal presence. So that's why we go part by part, very much like a body scan, except that the maneuver is different, right? You know, it's different to top down, find the feet. That's the awareness of, you know, from my mind, I focus down on my feet, or to actually know ourselves from within, so that it feels like the internal space of the feet, for example, is conscious, right? That our consciousness is everywhere in our body.

And so when it comes to inhabiting these parts of our body, you know, I've done some work in this area. I imagine you're familiar with like Reggie Ray's work, who tends to do some of this type of stuff. And what I find is that in general, what I notice is not a lot happening. Is that just a matter of not being attuned to it enough and needing to just go more slowly spend more time be more patient or kind of what are your thoughts on that when you're let's say you say all right i'm going to descend into my feet and really be there and that the amount of sensation that is noticeable is very very very low. Yeah. If that's the case, then you're not deeply enough and fully enough in your feet. Of course, we would have to look at what your expectation is, right? What you're expecting to feel because low is a subjective quantity. So maybe that's

how it feels. Constant bliss is what I'm looking for in my feet. Right. Well, that's certainly your birthright. That's everybody's birthright on some level. And in fact, we can attune to bliss within the feet. I actually have people attuned to a quality that feels like self. And it's, you know, it's controversial. I'm not saying absolutely not saying that there is a self, whatever that would mean in our postmodern world, that there is a self, I don't know. But so you know, that's like an old, old debate from many, many years ago. But the quality of self actually enters us into our wholeness. So especially with people who have some experience meditating, knowing themselves introspectively on any sort

of subtle level, I'll have them inhabit each part of their body and then attune to the quality of self within the body. That helps fill out that experience. But if you dwell there, even without attuning to anything in particular, the richness of the experience will deepen. Excellent. 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. Brian 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, 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. 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 find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So that was the first part you mentioned, which is to attune to fundamental consciousness by inhabiting the body. And then how about using fundamental consciousness to release trauma based constrictions.

Right. So let me just be clear that we're attuning to fundamental consciousness, not just in the body, but we start in the body, but attuning to it, then pervading the space outside of our body, and then the space inside and outside at the same time, and then pervading our body and the environment. So we're attuning directly to it in the environment as well as within our body. To the three qualities that we discussed earlier. Not just that, you know, before we get, that's a separate, actually a separate exercise, but just attuning to that transparency, that permeability, feeling that we're in our whole body, then finding the space outside of our body, then experiencing that the space inside and outside of our body is the same continuous space, and then experiencing that the space that pervades our body

also pervades the other people in the room, the other furniture, even the walls of the room, without leaving our body at all. So we're finding that very, very subtle, pervasive space. Of course, it's not actually space. If it's anything, it's consciousness. But I talk about it as space because it's spacious. It's experienced as expanse space, right? So we attune directly to that. Now, when we get to tuning to fundamental consciousness to heal ourselves from trauma, there's many things. For one thing, just being in the body gives us a sense of actually existing, which heals trauma in many different ways by helping us feel secure within ourself, that we're in possession of that internal being that we can attune to, that we know is who we are, that in itself is very healing, is a basis for self-confidence, is a basis for feeling that we take up space, that we're as potent as the other human beings around us in terms of the strength

of our being. When we experience fundamental consciousness pervading our body and everywhere around us, we get to that very, very subtle level of ourselves that has never been injured. We get to, oh, this is who I am. This has not been, it's just waiting here. This is the experience I'm talking about. I'm not speaking metaphysically. I know it sounds that way,

but we have an experience of when we get to it, of having uncovered it as if it's always been there. Just the way they say, like in Buddhism, in Zen Buddhism, they say, I've never moved from the beginning. I have never moved from the beginning. I've always been this expanse, this pervasive space. But that's the experience.

We uncover it. There we are. We're still intact. Even if no matter how severe the trauma has been in our life, we can get to this part of ourselves that is still intact, still capable of love, right? Still capable of feeling power, feeling sexual responsiveness, feeling, you know, understanding, expressing ourselves, so forth. So that in itself, really much all of the realization process practices have some impact on the healing of trauma. The locating of that subtle channel that runs through the vertical core of the body, very

important for our realization, but also important for healing from trauma because it allows us to feel centered, right? That subtle core of the body feels like the center of our being. And then even if people are yelling, going berserk around us, we're still in the center of our being. We don't need to get drawn into the old powers of reactivity, the old patterns of reactivity to those kinds of circumstances that used to trigger us, right? So the subtle core of the body also very important, deepens our perspective, connects us deeply inside ourselves, very important for healing from trauma. Now, we use that focus, that very refined, subtle, thin, keen focus that we cultivate, that we get to when we know that subtle core of our being, we use that subtle focus to focus within

the trauma-based constrictions in our body as the first step to that process of release. constrictions in our body as the first step to that process of release. And so one of the things that you say is that you say psychological healing and spiritual awakening are, you consider them to be too intertwined in inevitable aspects of our progression towards personal maturity, and that a lot of spiritual people think that meditation might be sufficient for becoming whole. Or if we can release the constrictions without knowing our personal history. And you say that I believe that healing does not occur or last without psychological insight. So my question to you there, slightly more specifically, is to what extent do we need to, as you say, know about kind of what our traumas were? Obviously, some people have very strong, very clear traumas that they remember really well,

but there's a lot of other people that don't have a lot of memory. Myself is one of them. Like, I don't think I had any capital T traumatic events, right, as a child, but I think I had lots of lowercase t. But my memory, my actual being able to recall an event, it's very blank back there. It's kind of blank. My memory is just bad in general. But I'm kind of curious, how does somebody who may not have access to some of the psychological memories work with this process? Okay, well, it's not that we have to remember everything, you know, but if we start with the body, as we release those holding patterns, that will often uncover the memories, right? As the release is happening, we're like, oh, wow, I just remembered, you know, my father coming into the room that time, you know, when I was three years

old. You know, the memory, for whatever reason, it's fascinating, seems to be connected, associated, or even bound within the tissues, you know, of the constriction, the trauma-based constriction. So that will help unfold the memory. And then once the memory starts to appear, if it does, if it does, then we can use that memory to help us be even more precise in how we constricted ourselves so that the release is, you know, we're actually releasing the exact pathway of the way we constricted ourselves. That's why it's important. It's not vital. I mean, if we work just with the body and release it, the only problem with that, you know, there will be release. And if we inhabit the body, we can maintain it.

But we are liable if we come into a situation that is similar to even those low-grade traumas that we had as children, we're liable to constrict again, right? Because we don't know what the trigger is. So it's helpful. I won't say it's vital, but it's helpful to have the memories. I always begin when I work with someone individually, which by the way, I'm retired from now, but when I had worked with someone individually, I always start with talking. For thing you want to make, you know, establish contact and trust in the therapeutic situation, but also want to know what do people know about their past?

If there's no memory at all, it often means that there was quite a lot of pain. You know, there's no rules about this, but that's often the case. If someone says, oh, I don't remember anything. Well, then I will, you know, ask some pointed questions. Well, where did you live? You know, what was your father like? What was your mother like? Just to start that to open a little bit.

But if there's just kind of sketchy memory, it's fine. We can then proceed, you know, just with the memories that are there are usually the more important ones. You know, of course, severe trauma will sometimes really be suppressed completely. And even that will begin to emerge with the process of release. I also think it's good to know our history so that we know who we are. We know what we survived. Certainly not to blame anyone, because it's pretty obvious that pain is passed down through the generations that our parents suffered or would not be causing us suffering. So not to blame, but to know, to have compassion for ourselves, what we went through, what we managed to survive,

why we constricted ourselves, how come it's hard for us to love now? How come it's hard for us to express ourselves now? I think it's a good thing to know if it's accessible to you. Wonderful. So we're near the end of our time here. Is there anything else that you feel like is really important to your method, to your process that we haven't talked about that we should before we wrap up? I don't think so. I mean, there is one important aspect, which I just mentioned very briefly, and that's the relational aspect of the work, where we practice being with another human being in and as fundamental consciousness. For one thing, because we created pretty much

all of our constrictions, almost all of them in relation to other people. So we can open very lovely on our meditation cushion all by ourselves. And then as soon as we see another person, we'll go back into that fragmentation itself, other fragmentation. So in the realization process, I go right away to relational work and also helps people know that they can experience oneness, real openness, which is, of course, the basis of trust and all those good things. Oneness with other people without losing inward contact with oneself. In fact, that oneness is based on inhabiting our own body. So it's based on inward contact with our own experience. Excellent. Well, Judith, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I've definitely really enjoyed talking

with you and I really enjoyed the book. Thank you. You mentioned that you don't do individual work with people anymore, but there are a list of licensed teachers on your website. We'll have links in the show notes to your website and all that stuff. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Yeah. Thank you, Eric. Take care. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.

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