The Taproot Podcast - Psychology of Dragons

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

In this episode of Discover Heal Grow, we delve into the rich psychological tapestry woven around dragons, exploring how these mythical beasts have occupied our collective imagination and served as powerful archetypes for both terror and transformation.  Episode Overview We begin by tracing dragon origins in ancient mythologies and evolutionary psychology, illuminating how collective fears around predators shaped dragon imagery and stories. From there, we journey into Jungian depth psychology to uncover the dragon’s role as the shadowed reservoir of our untamed energies and primal instincts. Next, we examine practical therapeutic applications—how framing inner struggles as “battling your own dragons” can externalize negative narratives, foster insight, and promote self‑mastery. Finally, we sit down with Jungian depth therapist Dr. Elena Morales, whose work integrates dragon symbolism in somatic and experiential therapies, to learn how clients can transform their fiercest fears into sources of strength. Historical and Cultural Foundations Dragons emerge globally as composite monsters, blending talons, fangs, and scales to personify both danger and wonder . Dragons in the Psyche: Archetypal Roles In Jungian theory, archetypes are universal imprints in the collective unconscious; dragons stand among the most potent, representing what Jung called the “cold‑blooded part of our psyche” that lies beyond rational control. Therapeutic Applications: Facing Your Inner Dragon Modern therapists leverage the dragon metaphor in cognitive‑behavioral and art therapy contexts to help clients externalize self‑doubt and self‑sabotaging thoughts—those “inner dragons” that whisper we’re unworthy or helpless. Guest Interview: A Dialogue with a Jungian Depth Therapist We’re joined by Dr. Elena Morales, author of Awakening Your Dragon Power, who asserts that dragons can also manifest as static feminine energy or entrenched social structures—forces that must be recognized before meaningful change can occur  Integrating Dragon Energies: From Fear to Flow Throughout the episode, we interweave mythic storytelling, depth‑psychology insights, and practical exercises, showing how dragon myths have guided seekers on self‑discovery quests for millennia  Join us as we explore the psychology of dragons and their archetypal significance, forging a path from ancient legend to contemporary healing practice on the Taproot Therapy Collective Podcast.

Hey, it's Joel. I'm here with the Taproot Therapy Collective Podcast. And I, today I'm going to be embodying the archetype of the trickster and the mad prophet. I'm here with James Waits, who's going to be embodying the hero and everyman protagonist and then Alice Holly who will be embodying the divine feminine and the earth mother archetype for our discussion on dragons. But one of our therapists, James has written a short story. I'm going to read an excerpt to get us started here. This is the story of Ames Waitlis, the warrior. Ames Waitlis, the warrior of renown, scaled the craggy cliff, his muscles rippling underneath the black leather of his armor and gambeson that girded him against the dangers of the mountain. He cast open the heavy doors to the dragon's lair, unsheathing his trusty wand.

Pointer. Who are you, the dragon scowled? How are you able to make it through my layers of bureaucracy? I am the Wyrn, known as Wind's Chaser. I live on this peak above a cruel labyrinth of bureaucracy. In many years, no one has ever cut through the web of red tape I wove to protect this place. I am different, Ames exclaimed. I am from the age of millennia, the dragon gasped.

A millennial from the land of IPAs, wide leather belts and the dulcet tones of sad but strangely upbeat folk music with stomping in it. How have you made it here with your clear glasses and revolutionary ideals? How have you survived the crushing downward mobility I have cast on your age? But it is no matter. I thought my cronies had done a better job gatekeeping. However, you will never unlock this chest here." The dragon gestured towards a glittering box with its majestic talons that it was beholding. I did not need to, Ames exclaimed, for it is not

your treasure that I need. The treasure I carry inside myself and my bespoke leather wallet. The dragon gasped and recoiled from the light as he produced the sacred talisman, a license to practice social work anywhere in Alabama. So it's a really beautiful prose, James. Like we appreciate you being vulnerable, sharing some of your writing with us there. James didn't write that. I hope you did or AI.

That'd be great. Yeah. So today we're going to be talking about dragons and just some of the ideas of dragons and culture metaphors. Before we get going, do you all have any associations? Anyone read fiction about dragons or consume dragon media? But do a pop culture dragon thing? Anyone have any associations that come to mind?

I mean, the only thing that I always think about is Falcor from Neverending Story, like the luck dragon. And is that is that the dog? I don't know the Neverending Story once as much as that, like the dog. Dragon. That is it's the dog looking thing, but he is considered a luck dragon. So it's considered a dragon. OK. Yeah. Now, let's see. Got anything? but he is considered a luck dragon. So. Considered a dragon. Okay. Yeah. Alice, you got anything?

Oh man. You know, I'm not, I haven't been steep too much in fantasy young adult novels, but so my dragon, my dragon lore is probably limited to like, how to train your dragon. And Then I have all this divine feminine dragon lore there, but in the pop culture realm, I don't have otherwise a fixation on dragons. Well, we can get into that.

I'd like to get into some of the semantic stuff of the divine feminine and how that shows up. The history of it that I think is interesting is if you look at people who are coming from kind of a depth psychology background, generally like the assumption that is gonna be made when they're studying like the origin of consciousness and like how people evolve to basically become sentient,

realize that they're alive, separate from the natural world, like all of those things. They're making a lot of parallels, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, probably in a way you couldn't ever prove about how when a baby is born, you know, the baby comes into the world, and it doesn't really know that it's separate from mom, it doesn't really know what it is yet. You know, it is not individuated. And then slowly, as it becomes, you know, 123, two, three, the baby starts to realize like, oh, I'm my own thing in the world

and become conscious in all of these things. And so a lot of the early like myth work around dragons and the kind of story of humanity is viewing humanity as having kind of done the same thing has come from a place where they're a part of the natural world, part of the animal world, and then slowly kind of like separate and in that process, you see something that is similar to,

that's what an infant that is sort of coming into consciousness would be doing. And so when Jung or Edinger and Neumann, any of those people are writing, a lot of that is what they're writing about. And one of the ways that they do that is that if you look at mythology, one of the first places that we see dragons

is embodying this kind of like archetype or association with like a powerful, usually female and also like natural world that's like nature. And then as consciousness and like the ego develops, there has to be like a traditionally masculine hero that slays the dragon and then makes this, kind of like order and and new egoic consciousness.

So in Babylonian mythology, Mesopotamia, you get Marduk is the hero that goes out and slays Tiamat, who's the chaos dragon of the night and female, and then makes the world basically from that. And then in most myth systems later, the world goes kind of too far into like masculinity and hierarchy and order. And then the kind of female potential has to rise up and tear it down. So like in the Greek tradition, you get things like, what do you call it? The like the Bacchanase, like where the,

when there's like too much order, too much masculinity, too much like law and rule and the things the Greeks associate with masculinity, all of a sudden, like Bacchus will cast a spell on the women and they become like feral and go to the woods and wear vines and like eat wild animals off the bone and tear the civilization down and then order is restored. And so when, when depth psychologists are looking at these things, it isn't kind

of like boy, girl, masculine and feminine. It more is like understanding that all people have the both of these forces and the gendered language you can take or leave because it's maybe a little bit dated, you know, in some respects. And it more is about the, the kind of assertive and ego principle, and then the more unconscious passive maternal principle of long-term thinking and long-term growth and things that in the ancient world are associated with women. So I don't know, that's kind of a jumping off point.

What do you guys have from there? No, I think it's interesting that we have all these stories of like kind of world creation or destruction myths regarding and centered around dragons or type of reptilian type, you know, things. So that's very interesting. And then, you know, trying to think of a Thor and. God, what's the world eating snake and eating that? Yeah, I think it's just the mid. Yeah. OK, so I learned it as Midgar and serpent, but you're right.

It's your Mungander. Or however you say that a monster's. Yeah, he's generally a trickster in Norse mythology, so he's associated with all these things that are like not great, but kind of inevitabilities. The way Norse myths treats dragons is like the way it treats most things where it's just kind of like these are going to happen. Like if you read the poetic, it is like the poet's just telling you the whole time,

like don't get drunk like I did, because when you do, you'll do these things. But eventually it will happen. And then they'll be fighting. And there's this kind of this understanding that when you have a whole bunch of people together, when there's a big party, when there's a lot of alcohol, Loki will kind of sneak into the back door and start to create this chaos. And eventually that will end the world and then it'll be rewarded. But I don't know the, I think dragons and myth, like me and James were talking right before Alice got on about how like in the you could kind of see how

like in the natural world like in a in a prehistoric culture or like an early kind of Bronze Age culture you look at an animal and you can make a lot of parallels to humanity different archetypes of humanity but like when you're looking at a lizard or a snake it's like so different you know like even a fish like it maybe feels more similar to you or is easier to personify. But it makes sense that maybe dragons would contain, you know, serpent like creatures would contain, like the parts of ourself that we are the most distant from or the most threatening to us, you know, why they would show up in Eden and different things. Alice, you have any like reflections on that?

I mean, I know we've talked about a lot of these things before, so I don't know. I think when you're talking about them representing or looking to us, it's almost like a snake is like our strips down nervous system. It's like our head and our spine and then all the other extra stuff is gone. So they carry this maybe field that's similar to ours, but they just kind of in the 3D just have like that. Yeah, snake is just a spine, you know, where like it's almost like

just our brainstem without anything else, which like artistically, that's interesting. And Kundalini Yoga does a lot with like the coiled golden serpent or something. You probably know more about that than I do. And then, you know, evolution, you know, the oldest part of our brain that we deal with a lot in trauma therapy is lizards, you know, once you get away from, and we've evolved away from like the serpent, you know, we've done all these things to create our body to kind of fulfill things that maybe the serpent, I don't know, it's kind's more primal or older. It's more primal. Yeah, more primal. But like, it's like, I don't know, almost like interdimensional, like there's sort of like a layer to like their existence that we can't see. Like we just see like the and and it and I think that's like, but it's just like the beingness in the earth maybe. And that's like kind of the reptilianilian like the reptile part of the brain and I can then start thinking about reptilians, but

But the reptile part of the brain that's just all based on like fear It's like, you know fear based totally like response, you know responses all yeah and can't make slow movements You know like if you look at the chicken or something that doesn't have the more mammalian parts that we have like they're just Kind of jerks around if they want to look at something they can't slowly be like what's up like they have to just kind of jerk And they have these inherently reactionary type of processing you

Yeah, it's almost like an antenna. You know like the snake is picking up this information You know whether that what that transmission comes from Yeah, it's almost like an antenna, you know, like the snake is picking up this information, you know, whether that transmission comes from, I don't know, you know, just the deep patterns of the body or something else. But there's a lot of hay made with that and kind of polyvagal theory, newer trauma, you know, medical stuff, but also in new age and spiritual movements, you know, you see that a lot. James, you have anything?

Not that comes to mind off based off that, but that does know the medical aspect of, you know, paramedical aspect of who we are and our lizard brain. And I was actually thinking about that, like the snake, snake and its skeleton is just a head and a spine. But if you strip away all that we are, we are head and spine, just kind of go hand in hand together. So we're little snake people.

Do you know the am I wrong about that yoga stuff? Like, doesn't Kundalini have something to do with like the snake is like an image? I know I've seen that in different. Can you say anything? Yeah, Kundalini and Kundalini yoga or Kundalini. Kundalini energy is represented by a snake. It's a serpent. It's coiled in the base.

Sina is like this extra dimensional energy that's not literally coiled in the base of your spine, but it rests there in the energy body. And you can have different, there are different things that can happen in your life that can activate your Kundalini. You can have like trauma experiences or you can meditate your entire life and like have a Kundalini awakening that way very slowly. But it's represented by the snake in it, and it is seen to, it rises up the spine when you release it. So you release it with yoga or with other practices

and rises up the spine and into the pineal and activates the pineal gland and then the energy starts flowing back. But it's all about the snake initially slithering up the spine. Do you have any personal experience with that? You feel comfortable talking about like the just the the feeling or the phenomenology of like when you make because I know that my I think my wife does Vispanayana or something but there's like a lot of different

schools of thought in yoga and Kundalini tends to be the one that's trying to about removing an obstacle making a breakthrough. And generally like I think models of like somatic and experiential therapy, they're more pushy, have more kind of potential to be transformative, but also are a little bit more dangerous, you know, and how you go about them, because you're activating all of this, you know, energy that is some intuition, some trauma, you know, I don't know. And Kundalini Yoga, it's very, you know, the dragon energy is

in there, like, it's breath of fire is the backbone of Kundalini yoga. And that's, you know, essentially, we are like, using fire, like, heating up the body, oxygenating the blood and flushing everything out, our trauma and everything, using this particular breath. So there's a lot of kind of like burning away trauma, burning away imbalance in that practice. And Kundalini, there's a, that's a loaded topic about Kundalini experiences, awakenings, et cetera, and like kind of the feeling there. How so? I think there's a difference between

like a full blown Kundalini awakening, and then sometimes people full-blown Kundalini awakening and then sometimes people just have a Kundalini experience. That's a very... I think some people who are doing ayahuasca or something might be having a Kundalini experience, but it doesn't necessarily... Like where that energy is released from the base of the spine, and suddenly you have access to all this greater consciousness than your average walking around person.

That's what we're talking about, is like awakening your consciousness and making you awake within the reality. But I forgot where I was going. How do you see is like the difference between? Is one good, is one bad? Yeah. A Kundalini awakening is when you've actually integrated all that stuff. Like using, like using like ayahuasca as an example, maybe, and I don't have experience with ayahuasca just, but just using it as an example,

like that is something that opens up your consciousness and gives you access. And there are many other things that, and practices and particularly like just breath work and things like that, but give you access to these, to higher consciousness, where all of a sudden you kind of know answers to things that you wouldn't otherwise like, Is it more of a remembering what you knew already and kind of a clearing away? Or is it an actual like, a view that's

like an insertion of new information? Initially, it's initially it's like remembering, I think, yeah, like what you're saying, remembering what you knew already. But in kind of, and like, there is this sense of like, there's the fire kind of burning away the stuff that isn't relevant anymore. And then it's like, all of a sudden you get all the pieces are like your brain connects parts of puzzles that you never really realized your brain was working on

this whole time. But it's, but, and so there's, so that happens. But then when you have a full blown Kundalini awakening, you've kind of flipped into where your brain is naturally hooked into higher consciousness as you're walking around and not just for a few hours. It's like you've actually fully awakened and crapped into. And it's like the, like do you, you know, when it's released, when the energy is released from the base of the spine, it goes up and then you wanna channel it back down.

But basically there's like, you're trying to eliminate, there's an echo that happens from the signals going up and down the spine, and so you're eliminating the echo. When you say echo, do you mean that the body isn't able to hold the new potential or the new potential for cognition or somatic reaction? What do you mean?

Yeah. I literally mean like if you... You feel like an up and a down? I literally mean an echo from... I can't think of the language, but like all the way up and down your spine that carries signals that's always going up and down and up and down and up and down in our spine, but with... If you activate your Kundalini energy, you activate it totally so that it's not having to send signals back and forth. This is also like breaking the bridge between the right and the left hemispheres of the brain. Like if you it's over, it's overcoming that so there's not so there's no longer an interference pattern there and you suddenly have access to Yeah, but but and then in the and then in a real Kundalini awakening to you're also like not only are you remembering stuff that's like

Suddenly things in your own life is are making sense But you'll I mean Everyone has different experiences, but you might have insight on or like, feel like you're remembering things that never happened to you before, like things from the history, things from just- Just kind of a wide identification of things outside of you. Yeah, and it's sort of like in the sense that like,

when people have a brain surgery or something and wake up and all of a sudden know a new language, that there's no reason for them to know. Like that type of stuff is sort of like what you're activating when you have a Kundalini awakening. So those types of things will come on where you have all of a sudden this knowledge that there's no real reason for you to have it,

except that what we're seeing is that it's like, you've activated, you've sent this highly charged energy up into your pineal gland and activated it. And it's that's your antenna to the to the universe. That's our antenna to that. It connects us with greater consciousness is the pineal gland. And it's also the one that's responsible for, you know, circadian rhythms and military production and, but that is, it's not studied. I mean, it's not, it's just like, I'm not, it's not not studied, but it's not, I don't think it's given as much credit as it needs to, because I think it's just largely misunderstood, because it is, it's hard to wrap your head around concepts like

people being able to just intuit all of a sudden have a download of a language an entire language for example or something like that. Well it's interesting like if you look at evolution like the the origin of like what the pineal gland is doing with hormones is originally something that the parietal eye is doing. Like in our evolutionary past, there's like a clear scale on the top of the head of like a lot of blizzards, some sharks. But in the past, that was a lot bigger of a thing.

But there is this whole like part of the brain that is primitively trying to process like a cosmology, like awareness of the world around you, like the lizard. Because one of the things the parietal eye can do is detect the polarization of light, which tells you the time of year it is, because the light has the sun will go through different amounts of clouds. And so, you know, a snake or a lizard with a parietal eye, Komodo dragons still have one, you know, will handle the same environmental stimuli to mate or eat or hunt or travel differently at different times of year based on this felt sense of the world around it. And so it's neurologically possible, hard to prove that there are these kind of deep brain structures

that are still gauging all of this information about the world. We lose the physical eye as you know, as the mammalian system takes over, but we still have this kind of cosmology making part of our deep brain. I think that a lot of people contact with different types of language, different things. I mean, James, the last time you were talking about how you had a lot of patients that when they were healing trauma and working with you, that they had like an increased creativity and kind of an openness to spirituality

that was almost scary or disconcerting. It seems like in what Alice is saying, there's a lot of room for what like the Buddhist might call spiritual bypass, where somebody sort of co-ops the language of an actualized person that has a genuine revelation or vision or something sustainable. And then they take the language and they start to just kind of grift and, you know, just because you're talking about something you can't quite talk about

or you can't quite prove. And so there's within that, you know, you have people who borrow the language of I don't know if you're familiar with, that's a question. Yeah. So yeah, I think that when you get to that point of connection and try to figure out yourself, there's a lot of scary things and kind of equating to almost kind of like shadow work in that sense of when you know, when you get so connected and fight and, you know, work through all these things that you've come to kind of

there before, it's getting kind of comfortable with not necessarily your alternate self, but, you know, that shadow aspect of you, which is a lot of kind of, it kind of reminds me of that somatic feeling of how do I feel gross? I don't, I know I'm not gross, I feel gross. And then, you know, that you could be both at the same time and kind of incorporating all that. And when we were talking about kind of like being able to sit in paradox or tension of opposite parts of two parts of you, the multiplicity of self becomes more, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, I'm asking if that's what you mean.

Well kind of, yeah, it's kind of in the paradox of kind of, but then you work through being okay with that uncomfort and not in a weird way, but kind of, you have to accept that part that that is still wholly you and still kind of all of you. But you know, but it's that realization is that come, you know, it's that thought, it's kind of being that conscious self of, yes, I mean, being okay and not okay at the same time is a very interesting feeling. And not necessarily through trauma, but just in general, I think of it like sitting on a comfy couch, like, you're sitting down, but like, it may be made of wool and it's very you know

It doesn't you don't like that feeling but you're still resting and so being okay with like, okay I'm sitting on the couch and things like that and working through that But it kind of when we were talking about dragons It was kind of that thought and I was doing sort of like looking into kind of that shadow aspect of how dragons and things like that and kind of equating that to it like in a lot of you know a lot of things dragons are beautiful but also bring destruction and all yeah or they hoard things so they still might be pretty but they you know they want the prettiest things and they keep hoarding it and so we look at that and i was kind of looking at that being a

part of who this person is in front of me and how to, you know, you can be okay with being seeing this dragon version of yourself or the shadow version of yourself and incorporating to who you are and that makes you fully whole person. And that's a crazy feeling for some, you know, some of my clients that come. It's just incorporating that being okayness or being, you know, finding comfort in the uncomfort has been pretty helpful for them that this is a normalization. So it was interesting that when we talk about dragons, it's kind of looking at that like, even in any kind of pop culture that we when we see dragons, we don't get scared, you know, we are like, ah, it's a dragon, you know,

every time something pops on the street, you know, so it's kind of looking at that of that we when we see dragons, we don't get scared. You know, we are like, ah, it's a dragon, you know, every time something pops on the street, you know, so it's kind of looking at that of that's how we should treat ourselves in the sense of we're not Oh, my God, you know, fearful it should be. Oh, this is us. You know, this is normal for us. So yeah, I think there is so much of like seeing dragons as a part of ourselves, we don't understand that gets a lot of hay made with it and different fiction and mythology traditions. A lot of times the dragon is both beautiful and terrible. It symbolizes some kind of inevitability, but also there's a beauty in that,

or some part of you that is scary, but ultimately rewarding. Alice, when you talk about the kind of New Age associations with that divine feminine like energy. Could you say anything about like, you're familiar with like spiritual bypass or that idea that you can like, I know there's a writer that... You know, when people, it's kind of, it's like over-intellectualization,

it's like an intellectualization, but it's spiritualization where... Yes, sometimes like I think that intellectualization where people are kind of talking about things that they've read without experiencing them, that's something that comes up. You're using the language of experience without the experience itself. Like that's something you see. But there's also this tendency to be like,

to get rid of the ego and just disband it with meditation or drugs or something, and to have inherently is integrative, which isn't true. There's a ton of people that take acid and go to a fish concert and then go back and they didn't work through anything they're not taking. You're making the music weird or whatever, but you're not really taking anything away.

And there's a guy who wrote a story about working with people with meditation a long time ago and he was saying that these people would take two years off life and go to Thailand. And some of them would come back and they'd be totally different, but they tended to realize that meditation wasn't the point that like you were kind of the point. The people that were like, well, I came back and I had the same

fight with my dad and I'm in the same toxic stuff. But I feel like I know everything because I meditated with monks for two years. Those were the ones where he felt like it was this kind of spiritual bypass of just as a nice trip or relaxation turning everything off. But you're still there when you get back because you're not really using the opportunity to go in and slay the dragon and work with the shadow. You're just kind of turning off your ego and then turn it back on. I don't know. Do you see that? You work more in kind of spiritual communities than I do, I would think.

I think it's... And that's an interesting... I think there's an interesting line because, there is the hermit phase. Like, and so there is sort of a, like there is this period in any person's, journey to enlightenment or journey to integration where you want to,

where like the universe like asks that you cut yourself off from everything and go and remove yourself from your life, remove yourself from different, I say to people, remove yourself from social media, remove yourself, stop watching the news, do all these things and just go completely within. And so sometimes from the outside, somebody who's doing that like having a true hermit phase or has had something maybe in their life that was a catalyst for that and they might use to choose it, choose to go. I'm saying they're like a couple, kind of a couple different, several different things that could be happening here, but I think that there is like a legitimate version of like, you know, people are saying like, this is, this is a new me, like, there's something new here. Like, I'm newly experiencing myself.

And it's like, that's a person who's waking up in a life that they're suddenly like, okay, this isn't necessarily like what is reflective of me at all. And so then from the outside perspective, we have to be able to set, like, be like, okay with and on board with like somebody being able to like reflect on and change like change who they are how they present and how they come you know how they show up in the world and what their values are and what they want to

do with their time you know I think we accused people of like maybe spiritually bypassing because maybe they I mean there's a legit place for you know if you have a really crappy meaningless job to all of a sudden have a spiritual awakening and then, you know, want to do something like go travel the world or do something that's not going to make any money. And that's the person who we kind of look at as the crazy person. But it's sort of like to keep going and going and going to something, to a job that's just killing you and just resigning yourself to that. Like that's actually the bypass and just resigning yourself to that like that's actually the Bypassing spirituality rather than yeah, I think that's right that you know, ultimately you are the like it

There's no one who can tell you if you're doing the work or not, you know There are people who maybe are good guides or but ultimately it's between you and your relationship to the thing You know a lot of things that I've done in my life that resulted in good stuff later, like I didn't even know why I was doing it. I could probably tell you now, you know, what I was working through, but it looked crazy. I maybe felt crazy starting a therapy practice. It's maybe one of those things that just felt like

there's something on the other side of it. Nobody can see it. I can't see it, but I have to do this because I feel like there's something on the other side of it. Nobody can see it. I can't see it. But I have to do this because I feel like there's a higher way of knowing that is I'm in conversation with something. I think what I meant was spiritual bypass was more of the people who take the language of actualization to kind of talk about those things.

But what you're really doing and a lot of time they've convinced themselves, I think, very few of them. Yeah, they've got I know. I do know what you mean. Like you take your own bias and trauma and then you say, Oh, actually, that's a higher spiritual purpose. Like when I was growing up, there was a lot of, um, in the Christian tradition, people were like, well, you should be afraid of people who look like this or do that or do these things. And it's just like, well, it's convenient that all of those

things are just not you and you don't know those people are having any experiences with it. You know what I mean? And you're kind of putting that into the mouth of the divinity and then saying, oh, well, yeah. But I mean, people do that just as much, I think, like on the more kind of liberal left with like something where you're like, maybe you could change your relationship to this thing

or do work or kind of face a part of yourself that you're running from. And they're like, No, I'll just buy a crystal, or I'll do this. And it's like, ultimately, this is about your relationship to yourself. And those things are pathways to do that. But the pathway is not the destination. I don't know if that if that makes sense. Or if you see that. I was wondering if you had if that was something that you see or comes up, Aliswair James, in your practice. Yeah. I mean, it definitely does. You know, and like, that's like with everything, you know, people can kind of use it in an unhealthy way or kind of. But I think, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. We'd have to talk about a specific example because for the most part, I'm just like, how harmless is it for people to want to have a crystal? Yeah, the point isn't to call people out or something. It's just kind of, I know my own.

I'm trying to think of like who, of like the type of people who are the spiritual bypassers that I get. It's when people are the people who start getting high and mighty is when you think you have power over other people because you're so enlightened. Yeah, that's that's when you know, when you when you start preaching to other people, that's when you're probably spiritually bypassing. But at that point, you're not looking in the mirror. Yeah, I've definitely seen that type of high and mighty of becoming that kind of legalistic role of, you know, judgment of others is so hardcore that you're kind of missing the point of how free you actually are. Actually, that's what other people are not free. You feel like that feels like freedom, but it isn't. Yeah, you're just kind of, you know, counter to what you want. But I put up these two angry dragons on the couch because that's kind of like that is

definitely in couples is that, you know, when a lot of people use that spiritual bypassing, that's a good example. When they're kind of looking at the other and trying to say, I mean, I've had it where it's like our relationships failing because, you know, that we don't have the same beliefs or we're not on the same page in beliefs and all these things and set something so ingrained in them and kind of not accepting the journey that somebody else has. And then that person who is not who's pretty angry with the other person with not being on the same page tends to have that legalistic role and kind of that judgment. And, you know, I point out, it's like, you know, that's not what you're supposed to do. You know, if you believe in this type of, you know, the Christian God is the final judge, like you have no place in judging him. And it's weird that, you know, they walk through this, their life with these moments of,

yeah, I tend to be legalistic and I broke away from that. And now I'm back again. I'm like, why do we come back? You know what? And it is kind of failure to kind of reflect on yourself in that sense. But it's kind of, yeah, you use that and say, well, this is what it says, and they're not doing it. So we don't have to look at me.

The spec in my eye versus the yes, and yours is that the Bible, you know, says. But then there's also those like, I think you're a lot of those lessons can be misappropriated from especially like Eastern things where you really is like something like marriage counseling We're supposed to real our relationship counseling supposed to realize that we're out of touch with a thing that we need from another person Which is kind of why we're attracted to them and we're accepting help, you know, and and that they are also doing the same and But what you can take a lot of that language that is about how you should take, you know,

something bad happening to you or abuse as like a lesson or meditate on compassion to justify abuse basically, which is not really I think the point of those wisdom traditions. It more is to something bad happened to you, it's a lesson to kind of confront yourself. But that doesn't mean that you should go out and defend those things in the world or justify them in a way when you can change. So I don't know when you look at the way that the East and the West handle dragons, especially in fiction, I think that is similar

to kind of what y'all are saying, but our relationship to the ego. Because in the Western tradition, dragons tend to be bad, you know? And they hoard gold and they're very egoic and they're very greedy and they're just kind of beasts. Whereas like the Eastern tradition with like something like Taoism and the yin yang,

like they're more likely to see that quote unquote bad things as like a balance or a cycle. And you see dragons and Eastern traditions have more of that cyclical nature of, even if the thing that is happening is bad, it's part of a process that is inevitable or timeless or just part of a greater whole. I don't know, have you all ever read Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or Wheel of Time or any of those series as they were coming out? Or the rings for sure.

The other ones are a little too long for me. Yeah, I think I read like 14 books of the Wheel of Time and like when I was in like middle school and then I quit. And I think they just now got finished by another author because the guy died. They go off the rails in the same place. The Game of Thrones goes off where they're they're both written by world builders. They can't get their arms around the worlds that they build enough to finish the plot.

And I think George R.R. Martin with Game of Thrones, those are very kind of Western English style dragons, whereas Wheel of Time, there's not even a dragon in the series. The dragon is like a metaphor for this cycle that's very barbaric and cyclical. Jordan is definitely writing from a more Eastern perspective on them. But what do you think about the way that culture uses dragons to contain parts of itself or talk to parts of itself. That was the Game of Thrones, I think, had like a huge. Impact it like not even the author probably intended on culture. It was like everything that people talked about for two years before they quit. What do you think it was? I mean, what do you think that speaks to people?

Because it was like you had like accountants and like, you know, normies for the like of a better word that were like supposed to be watching football and they're like trying to talk to you talk to me in the hospital, you know, by the water cooler about dragons all of a sudden. It's like, wait, what's going on? What do you think? What do you think that was about? Or what is it that made that game of Thrones something that was such a zeitgeist for a minute? I'm like, you tell me because I'm like the person I'm like the only person who didn't. I don't know. I just don't vibe with it.

I couldn't it just felt too dark for me. But I know it's and I watched all of it. I was sort of forced to watch all of it. Oh, no. And it sort of got Yeah. So I mean, and that's a whole mother's suffered with the dragon of Game of Thrones. That's a whole different, that's a different trauma story. Yeah, but um, yeah, I don't, I don't know, I, because I, I sort of, I couldn't, I didn't, I didn't really understand they're not like, how there's not really like a resolution towards

towards good that I don't know. I had an ex who had been very into those books in the early 2000s and was like early Reddit like following like very into like following everything George RR Martin was doing and I just couldn't ever get into that. I could never get into it. And then it turned into such a huge deal. And one of the main writers went to my high school here in town, Indian Springs, one of the main, for- Oh, wow. Yeah, and his episodes were always really good, but I was just like, they were really well done.

But I don't know, there's something dark and I'm just not sure. I'm always like, well, what's wrong with me that I don't that Do it I'd kind of like to do a longer episode on them because I think they're complicated But yeah, James you have what is your experience with Game of Thrones? I? Have not read them, but I watched the series and you know, it's a very interesting

I actually So one crazy thing about me is that I love spoilers. So I will look at some Game of Thrones spoilers halfway. You know, as if you know, I'll try not to. I love spoilers. And so if a series comes out, I usually typically didn't watch it until it was done. And I would just like, you know, read what happens in the series or if a good movie comes out and definitely goes in theaters before I like,

you know, went to before I'd go to see it, I'd actually read the actual plot of the movie. I like the full. Yeah. So Game of Thrones was the first thing, kind of the first type of series that I did not read spoilers on because I know I could just Google it and see what happens in the book. But then it was so intriguing that like the whole book versus books versus TV shows and TV series was kind of just like, oh, you know, we'll see if it you know, we'll see if it goes in

the same direction as the book. So I didn't want to read one thing and then the series be about another. So I went into a blind. I kind of just said, I don't know anything about Game of Thrones. And it turned out to be something that I had no idea was going on. God, I think what really intrigued me

is I really liked the series, Pillars of the Earth they made. I think- Yeah, that's a great series. They're they are very similar. So that historically, I think I think the Game of Thrones, some of this stuff is based around the the two fighting families or three fighting families of the War of the Roses. Yeah, he said several times if I was a better writer, I'd write historical fiction.

But I'm not a good enough historian. So I mean, it very like Starks and the Lannisters the Yorks and the Lancaster's I mean, there's a lot of on-the-nose parallels Yeah, so I went into it and then when I started seeing those similarities, I'm a big history kind of guy And so I was like, oh, this is interesting, but I had no idea but when the Dragons came out I was like man, you know, that's the You know cool dragons and you see this, know, you see the dragons grow up over time and you're thinking like how their personalities change.

It's a very interesting show. I do not like dragons are really compelling. That is one thing I liked about the game. It's when I think like the just because it's not a terribly political show. Like, I don't think that they're like it isn't trying to be Parks and Rec or something where somebody is just like writing their political beliefs to lead you back to them or something. I mean, he's just kind of trying to build a world and let it live. And Martin is, I think, a more left leaning guy, like he was a conscientious objector to Vietnam. And there's some things you can see, but the series, like it really was like picked up by people who were very right leaning, very left leaning. And I mean, there are spoilers, because he'll probably never finish. I don't think he'll ever finish the books. I just don't see a way that he can.

I think it'll probably be similar to somebody like Robert Jordan that just can't quite get their arms around it because they're not going to change their pacing and tone and the way they write to wrap up a series. And Martin wanted, he started, and they both started as a trilogy. And then they ended up becoming these 15 volume, you know, the things that just couldn't end. And like, but you had people who were like very kind of like liberal feminists, like naming their daughter halfway through the series.

Khaleesi was like the joke for a minute. And George R.R. Martin was being like, wait, wait, you don't know how it ends because spoilers, like she does a genocide. Like the dragons are fundamentally uncontrollable forces and the protagonists, some of them lose to forces like inside and outside of themselves. And I don't know that, well,

I don't think the end of the HBO show is what Martin would have written, but I don't know that we'll ever know what Martin wrote. But if you want to guess, I think that that's where it was going. These things are kind of a dead age. Valeria died. You're trying to kind of bring back

this old glory and empire and power, but it really is not something that anyone is in charge of. And it's not something that is gonna come back that it's kind of time for the next part of the cycle. And I think when he says, I love Tolkien, but I'm not ever going to do Dark Lords, I'm not ever going to do good versus evil, like the White Walkers are not just the Orc army,

there's more nuance here. That's what he means, is that he was trying to write a different type of fiction. But we may never know that. So you can't say that I'm wrong. Don't email me. And the prequel series that's going on, that's still is all about the dragons. And then you're thinking, I get too deep in the weeds with that, of how did they just become

extinct? And by the time that Game of Thrones picks up, you know, there's only eggs. And then, you know, bones of other dragons. But in the current series, it's just like, man, there's a lot of dragons and like riders and stuff. Then you think about like, what if they lived or what if they were different? What if they were, you know, kind of like the Eastern luck dragons instead of just like the medieval type, the fire breathing dragons and how different Game of Thrones would have been. Yeah, the Eastern dragons tend to be more of like a serpent, kind of a celestial thing, whereas I think Western dragons tend to be more of like a monster, a beast. They're more, but what you're talking about in Game of Thrones, I think that's like one of the

places where the world building does work for me because if we ever do a longer episode on that, there's a lot of places where it doesn't like one of them, as they say, that because the winter is really long, like the winter can last a super long time. It's like held the culture back. And I'm like sitting there like with the like anthropology history lens being like, no, no, no. Like you can't like you're saying that for 2000 years you've been stuck in the medieval times

because the winter is cold? There's no way in a literate culture to just, that would just be like, because we had a two year winter, we're still in Bronze Age technology of Jesus. That just doesn't work for me as world building at all. And there's some people will fight with you and say there's other things.

But I think as the metaphors, he tends to get the metaphors well in the world. And the other things are kind of, you know, plot arcs you have to, you have to close in order to get where you want to go. But I mean, when you're saying that, why did the dragons die out? I mean, a lot of the extended universe stuff says

that they're wild animals and they need to fly around and eat stuff and that like Yeah, they have this ability to bond with the Larian's the the Game of Thrones dragons are kind of racist So you have to have the right genes or they don't like you And the these people, you know He kind of writes about them like the same way people write about like horses that they're like You have this magical connection with the horse and it ponds with you or something They're like, you have this magical connection with the horse and it pawns with you or something.

But like when they try and make them basically Imperial weapons and build the dragon keeps and feed them all the stuff, you just, they die out. They're not able, they have to be out there and alive. And then the books, I think do a better job of that than the show does. Kind of explaining that they're trying to make something that just is not sustainable basically.

that they're trying to make something that just is not sustainable, basically. But there's good commentary in there somewhere, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And I think he is comfortable with political realities and kind of realities of the ego that are interesting. And I guess, yeah, that's like the war machine in general, like you're going to feed feed feed, nothing really good comes out of it and other people suffer, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And he does. Those are the political elements, I think, that works for me. Like he talks, there's just so much in the books about how winter is coming and everyone's about to starve, but that people are doing war instead.

And I think there's some kind of climate change and economic and sustainability parallels that he's doing that are the more progressive elements of the book. But, you know, like it was on HBO, it had nudity, it had violence, it had like manly warriors. So no one, at least I didn't see accused it of being like woke or I don't really, I didn't see a political backlash to it either way. Everybody seemed to be kind of united

and like in dragons for two years. Yeah. Gore. Gore, go or go or yeah, suffering. Well, I know James is going to hop off right at 11. Do you have you've got do you have anything to close or kind of closing thoughts on? This is pretty open ended discussion. I don't think we're going to solve dragons in an hour. Yeah, there's so much. Yeah. If you have a second, I'd like to talk about some of the somatic stuff, you know, associated with it, because's so much. Yeah. If you have a second, I'll

say I'd like to talk about some of the somatic stuff, you know, associated with it, because I think that's interesting. Yeah. I don't have any closers. Just Yeah. Oh, well, thank you, James. I appreciate it. Yeah, we can. Well, what do you want to do next week? What do we what was the next one? Oh, I don't know, to have to email and come up with a thing. I wonder if Well, what do you want to do next week? What do we what was the next one? Oh, I don't know. So I have to email and come up with a thing. I wonder if and then maybe I don't know when you have to hop off,

just hop off when you need to. But I was curious, like one of the things I hear from the somatic experiencing people and the lifespan integration people that I've talked to, it feels I don't know as much as you do, but it feels a lot like some of the Eastern perennial philosophy stuff. So I was wondering if you could speak you do, but it feels a lot like some of the Eastern perennial philosophy stuff. So I was wondering if you could speak to that, that a lot of times when somebody's assertiveness is turned off, that manifests like in the chest, chest is tight and hot. And then when you're able to, initially, they're kind of afraid of that somatic release,

but when they do it moves up into the throat and the mouth and the head. And that feels a lot like kind of chakra work that I've heard about, but I don't know a lot about it. And those people are not coming from that lens, but they're still observing those things. And I've heard that called dragon energy. I wondered if you could speak us out on that one. Yeah, I mean, I think it's always like, I guess what you're seeing there is, is like, energy that's trapped,

you're talking about energy that's trapped in the heart, maybe, and chest pressure and energy there. So maybe traumas that kind of impact, like, how is it okay for me to be vulnerable in the world, and then to release that. And we want, you know, as we're doing energy work or Kundalini yoga or other things to make that energy flow up, you're aligning your chakras that way, you're flowing that energy up. And so you're releasing from the heart through the throat. And there is essentially burning away, it's like that instinctual, where the dragons are fire breathing, they're breathing like the spark of creation. It's not just we're destruction.

Just like, like, was it you or James who said, like, the dragons have to live, they can't just they can't just like be kept there and held for their goal. But I think, yeah, like releasing into your throat chakra is how you speak your truth into the world. And so to unclog your heart chakra would kind of help nudge open your throat chakra. And then there's just like this message of truth and vulnerability, or like, and that burns away any unneeded vulnerability. I see that in emotional transformation therapy, which uses, it's Dr Vasquez's model out of Texas, but he uses color. And there's a lot of evidence that these, a lot of the ways that we process color has these somatic associations. So you're using that. But a lot of times when

somebody comes in and the, they feel like a black hole sucking around their chest. During somatic work, they feel like a burning heat. It's green is the color you work with, and then green will kind of turn into blue green, which is throat and blue, which is the mouth. And then at first it feels overwhelming, they don't really like it. Most people just don't believe that colors

have any kind of somatic association until they start to do ATT, because I Definitely would have wouldn't have been until I felt it. It's pretty Interesting stuff and then you start looking at how the brain works and there are you know neurobiological pathways that make sense That aren't just memory associations, but the way that we react to color But a lot of times you do see it go from green to blue green to blue and then And then people talk, they have all this stuff to say, they're angry and they feel like that's a problem.

And it's like, no, that's good. You're, you're able to know that you have a right to life, to the world, to be seen, to be heard just as much as anyone else. And that comes up as a kind of fiery anger. So that metaphor makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's and it's like you've stripped away or kind of cracked out of

The you know, the shell is suddenly like burned away. And so you're a live wire in those you know in that in that energy, but But Yeah Well, it makes sense why it would be hard like going back to the spiritual bypassing like hard to know if I'm going in The right direction if I'm doing the right thing One of the mystics I like Simone Bay says you have to go into the labyrinth and you have to keep walking and know Not even know if you're going in the right direction and not know if you're just going in circles and you're gonna starve that

The darkness has to be that intense and there has to be some kind of principle of faith for you to keep going and I think a lot of those early kind of semantic encounters with the self or just unconscious information, when you start to make contact with that in therapy, people initially are scared, you know, which is why I think dragons are an interesting metaphor for for all that stuff. The beautiful and the terrible, but also the self. Yeah, it's it's a really fascinating archetype. Yeah, just I think the distinctions too between...

I mean, we could talk a lot about what you're saying about the Western and Eastern versions of dragons, and maybe there's more of like a kind of masculine overtone to like how the West usually kind of frames dragons and then the East. Well, yeah, I think they wanna have a monopoly on the ego. You know, I think that the difference in those are how we handle the ego. That's like why it comes out differently in art.

There's very different assumptions about things like energy and with even the nature of identity, like in the East is a lot of times around collectivism that you're a part of a group or that you're a small part. I remember seeing a paper on how like protests in America versus protests in China, how the crowds reacted. And the assumption in the Chinese crowds was that like the the greater good was the group, you know, so people would kind of take individual risks to do whatever. Whereas, I don't know, like, I think that a lot of that changes when you see sort of historical cycles or empires falling or, you know, an idea like the Mandate of Heaven that, you know, just have a ruler for a while and then eventually they lose the mandate and that empires wane and all of your identity isn't caught up in maintaining the empire or the current political thing, then you do get this more balanced take on like,

oh yeah, it's a cycle. It's bad when the seasons change. There's uncomfortable for a minute, but it also is not something we can stop. So we kind of have to see this as an inevitability, whereas the West is more about control and trying to make something permanent. Yeah. Power structures of power hierarchies. Yeah. Maybe that shows up in our dragons. I was thinking about, oh, just this is just really, really random back back when you were talking about the parietal eyes, like making remember in that, is that like where like we have a fontanelle? Like is that the same place?

I don't, that's a good question. I don't think it's where the skull stitches in infants. I think my guess, I don't know that, but my guess would be that we lost that long before that because a lot of that is a result of having to not be born in an egg that you kind of come out, you have to be like live birthed and then the body has to account for all these changes there. So I think the pineal system is probably pretty established long before that, but that would just be a guess. Well, and I think so not necessarily that it's like, but like energetically that it might be

the same. And then in, I was going to, I meant to say this a long time ago, but in Kundalini Yoga, you, or in different yoga practices, many different spiritual practices, you cover the head, like the fontanelle, that's like, that is your antenna, that's your crown chakra, is that same place. And so it is sort of, you know, we're kind of talking about the same thing, I think, that parietal eye of, you know, we're kind of talking about the same thing, I think. That parietal eye of, you know, the bar dragon energy. Yeah, I forget the name of the tradition too, but that's one of the reasons why I think bringing up a lot of the New Age stuff is important, is it shows up in all these cultures without any kind of idea exchange.

So people are coming at these same ideas. And there's like a mystical Jewish tradition about like making yourself a root between heaven and the earth And like the top of your head becomes purple or it just depicted artistically purple And I forget the name of that when I have had some clients that were into it, you know about ten years ago But a lot of like a lot of those have to do with you. What would you say? Yeah Similar, but there's a specific name. I'm just I'm not remembering have to do with you. What would you say? Like Kabbalah something? Yeah, similar. But there's a specific name I'm just not remembering. But there's something about that you basically

route your body to the earth, your bottom and your legs and your posture until you feel the top of your head kind of turn on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In those, I don't know. I mean, it's kind of interesting, you know, in those traditions that's, you know, you're protecting like your spirituality and things and you kind of do notice like going out in the world that there's sort of a difference when you have something on your head, not

like in like trauma healing, it's kind of nice to have something on your head and then in yoga practice, you like your hair is your antenna. And so as is part of your cosmic antenna, clairvoyant antenna. And so if you're going out in public or doing or doing your yoga, you're supposed to put it up. For men, it's like, like right at the top of the fontanelle, like you put it there and that protects your crown chakra. And you're- And you can see how your hair would draw your attention to it, make you kind of hold that in a different way. Yeah. Well, it's just like, like it's taking your antenna and like bringing it all in and

coiling it and concentrating it here rather than like letting it just be all. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, I don't have never had hair super long, but I imagine if it was like bound into a bun, it would, you know, change the way your scalp felt and draw your attention to that. I know there's that line in the Bible about that's the hair on top of the head is the sign of a woman's power or something. And the Pentecostal church takes that to mean women shouldn't be able to cut their hair at all. So like a lot of people have been Pentecostal their whole life

will kind of have hair that goes down to the floor and they have to wear it up in a bun or something. Um, but yeah, there there's a lot, there's a lot about kind of contacting the divine and hair in different religious traditions. Oh my gosh, so much. Yeah. And that's one of those things where it's like your hair really is a powerful spiritual, it's very powerful energetically. And so, like these traditions where they emphasize hair and the importance of it, like are coming from something that's rooted in truth, but then it ends up being used to like manipulate and to actually undermine the power and the agency of people.

Like, you can, you know, it's kind of, hair is what, you know, hair is what you do with it. If you use it to express your, and it's and cut it, then that's, and in those ways, then cool. But if you, you know, but it's, so it's sort of ironic, like that they are sort of forcing them to have, I don't know, to maintain that spiritual connection. Yeah, I think when you take anything that is intuitive

and kind of a living wisdom tradition and turn it into a rule, some of that is an inevitability, but the rule is not the point when you forget and you turn it into the rule. You know, that's like, I forget there's like a sect of Judaism where they would always like tie a farm, a goat, like outside the church. And that was like, it became this kind of spiritual practice. And then there was somebody who found some record from like one of the early parts of like where they had settled and there was like a guy

that had like a really bad goat and it would run through the services. And so there was a rule to like tie it up, but everyone forgot that. And then 500 years later, they're just tying up a goat because it's what you're supposed to do. And I think when you go into religious traditions, there's like a lot of capacity for like abuse and bad stuff. But there's also, you know, kind of an embodied transcendental wisdom that doesn't go away and is there, you know, no matter how you contain it and what tradition. And then there's also stuff that's just kind of silly and fun, like that, you know, when you look at the way people make meaning and some of the absurdity that goes along with that. Like, oh, yeah, and humor is the best way to make meaning in and of itself. So an interesting to end on here too, because if you look at the biggest difference between

reptiles, like dragons and mammals, what are the things that we don't lay eggs, and we have hair, they don't. That's sort of what I was trying to get at. It's like, there's a lot that's like physical and external to us. That's like the reason I was trying to get at. It's like, there's a lot that's like physical and external to us. That's like the reason that these creatures are so mystical is because they contain all the stuff. It's just invisible. They're energetically, but yeah. Well, let's wrap there.

That's great. We will connect and get something out soon. And I appreciate you joining. Yeah, thanks Joel. Well, see you soon. Bye. Hey guys, I wanted to pop in here to give you a quick reminder that we do this podcast for free and there are significant expenses associated with it, including the biggest

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