TrueLife - Dr. Janice Campbell - Naming & Taming The Elephants in the Room

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Dr. Janice Campbell, a licensed acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, and somatic touch practitioner, possesses a unique superpower for recognizing the unspoken and transforming it into valuable assets, skills, and opportunities. Her multifaceted approach extends to in-person services, including acupuncture, herbal medicine, and somatic touch, with a specialty in stress-trauma-recovery. Janice’s expertise is not confined to physical presence; she offers distance mind-body integration through guided somatic meditations, seasonal integration, and energy work, leaving a lasting impact on individuals and corporations worldwide.As an ordained officiate through Open Ministry, Dr. Campbell conducts ceremonies and celebrations for all rights of passage, including weddings, unweddings, funerals, and naming ceremonies. Her thoughtful approach and ability to navigate sensitive situations earned her praise and appreciation from clients across the globe.Beyond her therapeutic services, Janice is a distinguished entrepreneur, co-founder of Five Seasons Learning, LLC, a founding member of The Octopus Movement, and co-founder of Acupuncture for Veterans in Maryland. She wears various hats—a namer and tamer of elephants in the room, an old-school “B” in the LGBTQIA community, a teacher, bridge-builder, cultural creative, speaker, mom, partner, friend, writer, artist, musician, pluviophile, ambivert, and lover of words (logophile). Additionally, she proudly identifies as a recovering AEA stage manager, showcasing her diverse and dynamic contributions to the fields she engages in.https://drjanicecampbell.com/index.html One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini, check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody is having a beautiful day. I hope that if you find yourself in a bit of a funk, you realize it's always dark before the light. And maybe there's some meaning in chaos. Maybe if you just take a time of quiet contemplation, you'll figure something out.

That's what I like to do when I find myself feeling a little bit blue. I have the antidote, if you're feeling down, though, because I have Dr. Janice Campbell today. Dr. Janice Campbell, a licensed acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, and somatic touch practitioner. possesses a unique superpower for recognizing the unspoken and transforming it into valuable asset skills and opportunities. Her multifaceted approach extends to in-person services, including acupuncture, herbal medicine, and somatic touch, with a specialty in stress trauma recovery.

Recovery, recovery. Janice's expertise is not confined to physical presence. She offers distance, mind, body integration through guided somatic meditation, seasonal integration, and energy work, leaving a lasting impact on individuals and corporations worldwide. As an ordained officiate through open ministry, Dr. Campbell conducts ceremonies and celebrations for all rites of passage, including weddings, unweddings, funerals, and naming ceremonies. Her thoughtful approach and ability to navigate sensitive situations earned her

praise and appreciation from clients across the globe. Beyond her therapeutic services, Dr. Jenis is a distinguished entrepreneur, co-founder of five seasons learning, a founding member of the octopus movement and co-founder of acupuncture for veterans in Maryland. She wears various hats, a namer and a tamer of elephants in the room, an old school, B, in the LGBTQIA community, a teacher, bridge builder, cultural, creative, speaker, mom, partner, friend, writer, artist, musician, pluvophile, avivore, and lover of words, local file. Additionally, she proudly identifies as a recovering AEA stage manager, showcasing her diverse and dynamic contributions in the field she engages in.

Dr. Janice, thank you for being here today. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'm not sure what we're going to talk about. You seem to have covered it all. Well, thanks for coming out today, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed the show. My work here is done. Well, you know, you have an ability to see things without saying things. So maybe we could talk about, like, let's just jump into that. Like, what does that even mean? Like, seeing the unseeable and knowing the unknowable.

Like, what does that come from? Well, I mean, the reason I use the phrase naming and taming the elephants in the room is because half the time when I point something out, people go, oh, right. It's like the, it's like the old doctor joke. Doc, it hurts when I hit myself in the head with a board. Don't hit yourself in the head with a board. I mean, a lot of what I do, or as one person I know and love likes to describe it, my job is to point out the blatantly obvious. And so a lot of that is pointing out the things that you might have noticed if you were three, but there have been layers of all sorts of other stuff and ignoring of things and whatever since then.

And so I pointed out and you're like, wow, I had no idea. Oh, yeah, that. That would be easier. I'll do that. So in some ways my job is really easy. And that I just sort of watch and go, hmm, I wonder if it would be easier if we did this. And that applies whether or not I'm seeing my patients in person with acupuncture and all my other bag of tricks. Or if I'm dealing with one of my online clients for a distance mind-body integration session, a lot of that, well, a lot of that is, I like to think of it as therapeutic improv.

It's listening to what is going on with the person and then in the moment creating a somatic guided meditation that allows them to actually move things. And in a lot of cases, anything that I'm doing is making a, making a suggestion based on all the things I've ever done or known or seen or heard or watched or observed. and that have seemed to have helped somebody else or that seem to fit with what's going on. And then they do all the work. Even when I put the needles in, all the needles or the herbs or I are making is a suggestion of, hey, you remember when it was easier?

Maybe you should do it that way. And then the person does all the work. So in some ways, it's a whole lot simpler than my first career as a theatrical stage manager where I was running around doing everything and getting everybody else to do everything else. And I get a lot more sleep now. than I did in my first career.

And people are much more likely to say thank you, which is also nice. It's an interesting concept to unveil patterns of perception. You know, and a lot of times when you are saying things that may seem obvious to you, but they don't seem obvious to the people that find themselves in that negative feedback loop or they find themselves in that destructive pattern. I once heard a great quote that was something along the lines of, people don't go to therapy in order to to solve a trauma. They go there to become cognizant of a pattern.

And, you know, they realize I'm stuck in this pattern. And if I don't seek help, I'm going to be stuck here forever. You know, you had mentioned early on and when you just started when you, when you opened up that, you know, you point out the obvious. Like, what is it about these layers? Is it conditioning that happens to us? Is it us one to fit in? Like, what are these layers of conditioning that don't allow us to see the patterns? Well, a lot of the work that I do is helping people return to being their whole selves

in the way that they were when they were little. If you, well, here's an example. We get late, we get, this is an example of how we let stories and ideas overlay actual experience. when my son was like two years old, he got croup. And he walked into the room and he said, I sound like a goose, make it stop. And so we did all the things, you know, and I gave him stuff and we stuck his head in a refrigerator and it went away.

And, you know, that's actually true. If you put a kid's head in the, if you open the freezer and let him breathe the cold air, sometimes it'll stop the group. Anyway. And about a year later, and since then he'd learn what Kroop was and, you know, whatever. And other people had talked about it in his playgroup and whatever. So a year later, he's a little over three and he gets Krupe again.

And he flips out. And I'm like, you just sound like a goose. We just have to do the thing we did last year, remember? But he had gotten all these stories about it being bad and scary and all this other stuff from all these other people that suddenly he was really. reacting to the stories that he had about it as opposed to the fact that he sounded like a goose and he wanted it to quit. And so we're pretty much doing that. So we kind of, we, we, we know the deal when we're little. As long as, you know, as long as we're healthy, we're in a safe environment,

you know, we come in with a set of understandings that, you know, we're connected to everything and everybody and this is how life rolls. And then as we get older, we start ignoring what our bodies tell us, we start ignoring our, you know, what we're eating. We'll eat stuff that we don't we don't like. We'll drink things we don't like. We'll skip meals. We'll put ourselves in situations that make us uncomfortable. We'll buy into other people's definitions of us. And it just, it builds and builds and builds. And then we start to, instead of having that smooth flow of she of a smooth flow of energy of a little kid will start to clunk rather than roll. And then so a lot of it is, you know, just saying, remember when, why don't we get you

back to doing this thing? You're actually, one of my favorite things to say to anybody that, well, anybody really is you're a grown up. You can eat dessert first. I have a good friend who's married to a guy from merit of Mexico. And he, um, When he's out to dinner, he always orders his dessert first so he can see how big it is, so he knows how much other food to order. And whenever a white staff person looks at him funny, he says, it is my culture. And his wife, his American, says, it is not your culture. I lived in Meredith for a year. Nobody does this but you.

And he looks at it and he goes, it is my culture. But that same idea of, you know, smooth, getting back to a smooth flow that we're all capable of, we just forget. Do you think that that also speaks to our relationship with uncertainty? It can. It can. And it depends on what uncertainty you're met with in your life. Some uncertainty is a, what next? And some uncertainty is what next?

And so how we deal with that and how we learn to move with that and roll with not knowing everything or not, you know, and how strongly we feel the need to be prepared and all of those things. Absolutely start to affect the stories that we tell and the way that we carry them in our bodies. And, you know, that's that uncertainty can play out in bravery. It can play out in fear. It can play out in being frozen. I mean, all the trauma responses are from uncertainty, right? I don't know how to respond to this.

and so being able to complete some of those impulses and or being able to not just rewrite the story from a mental standpoint or an emotional standpoint, but also thanking our bodies for going into that fight or flight, but we don't need it anymore. We can let that, you're good at that. You'll do it again if I need you to, but we don't need to do that right now. I think that definitely plays into it. But I also think every, I mean, but to some degree, also everything else plays into it.

You know, whether or not, you know, how easily we feel loved, how easily feel like we belong, how easily our creative ideas are accepted, how, you know, how easily the way we physically move in the world is accepted. I mean, you know, all those things will play into what stories we, you know, unless there's a conscious effort. well I don't know some people actually probably just pull it off without there being a conscious effort and for some of us unless there's a conscious effort towards how do I make this big enough to live in this is too tight how do I how do I draw a big big enough circle that that I can breathe in here then we get trapped and we don't even know we're trapped and we think it's the way it is and it's not it's like um what one of my dear mentors and the one of the founders of the school, the acupuncture school that I went to, Bob Duggan used to say, the, you know, you can fall in love and stump your toe and your response is, I have a toe. Isn't that great? You know, or you can be going about your everyday life and stump your toe and you gripe about it all day long and you get mad at the thing you tripped on and you tell everybody for sympathy.

as much as you possibly doesn't change the fact that you have a toe. Right. And so all of that play, you know, D all over the above. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting the perspective of the foundational myths through which we live. You know, when I think about perspective and mythology, I think about my life. And I think about sometimes I'm playing the role of the main character and sometimes I'm playing the role of like a supporting character.

But if people can do that, like that's a cool little hack that I've found for people listening or watching the show is who are you playing in the story you're telling? Are you playing the main character? Are you an observer? And sometimes you can switch back and forth, but it really helps you change the perspective of what's happening in your life. It's interesting to think about the idea of foundational myths, stories we tell ourselves and the way it plays out in our lives. On the topic of navigating the unspoken, in your work, you you acknowledge the unspoken and transform it into assets. Can you share a profound instance where recognizing the unspoken led to a significant positive transformation in an individual or a group? Well, I do want to just add one thing. Yeah, of course. You can be a supporting role. You can be a lead role, but it can also be a company cast. It can also be a story about a group of people. I like that. And so then it's, then you're not,

you know, that's a different story altogether. Or an author, you could be the author. Sometimes I like to play with that idea too. That's kind of an even better one, because then you have control. But sometimes it's good to play all the positions and then come back to the author, right? Or as, as the Xanders,

I've forgotten their first names. It's a husband and wife team. They wrote a book called The Art of Possibility. And as they say, one of their things is, what if it's what if you're not a what if you're not a piece in the game what if you're the board oh i like that what if you're the board what if you're the board and how does that how did that piece end up on on on the board since you're the board how did you let that in or how did you

how did you give it that kind of you know space anyway that's not the answer that's not your question but that's okay let's let's think about that for a minute i've never really heard that aspect before. If you are the board, then what kind of question does that bring up? Does that, does that bring up the question of who are you allowing to play? Or, no, well, I mean, the example that they give, and of course, it's been a minute since I've read the book, so apologies if I don't do this right. The example that they give is a woman who's waiting at a red light in her car, and somebody slams them to her in the back. And so, which, which, she's the victim, then she's outraged.

You know, when she's concerned about the person driving, and if they're okay, because why would they do that, then she's somehow anything that might need to be tended in her isn't taking care of. When she's the board, it's, I have to accept that anybody getting into a car is, there's a percentage of risk in driving a car anywhere, even if it's in a parking lot by yourself. And so part of that is I got in the car to drive. And part of that is I can tell this story in multiple ways. I'm lucky that I just got bumped and I have good car insurance. And my things are now taking care of what are their things that, you know, I, it's,

It takes the element of personal, it takes blame and the either or or the S&M conversation out of it. I like that. When it becomes, what's the whole picture of this? Right. It's like years ago when I was in undergrad, or actually after I was in undergrad, I lived in London for a year. And The Guardian did this great television ad where first you see this guy running and run into this woman and knock her down. And then they pull the camera back and you see him run into her and get caught and grab her purse

and keep running. And then they pull back even further and you see them running and grab her purse full or turn around, grab her and pull her out of the way because a piano's falling. And so it's like, which are you looking at the whole story? Are you seeing the piano fall? Yeah. And realizing that, yes, all these other. things happened in this context or are you looking at, you know, he's stealing her purse? What a jerk.

You know, so there's that. Apparently my lighting is deciding to change randomly. Sorry about that. That's all right. It's fine. So that's, I mean, that's the way I think about it anyway. You can go read the book. They have many more profound things to say. in fact I like to reread it every several years and I just haven't I'm not it's not in my loop at the moment um but it does give perspective on you know on the storyline so to speak that's a great way great way to see it and that's a beautiful picture that they've painted because that if you just take a moment to realize all those different things then it can really change the way not only your perspective but it can change the way you act accordingly right or the words you say the story you tell everything about it well and it comes down to even just small interactions yeah like um one of the teaching stories i use in my practice is you know from people come in complaining about their co-workers i'm like so okay somebody walks into your office and they drop a folder on your desk and they go and they turn around and walk out you could tell the

the story that they hate you you could tell the story that they think your work is crap you can tell the story that they started to say something and then they didn't. You could just as easily tell the story that their stomach hurts or they haven't eaten and their blood sugar is crashing and they don't think they can be coherent if they open their mouths right now. You can tell the story that somebody out in the hall really offended them and they're trying to process that and they just want to get you the folder. I mean, you can tell a thousand stories about what happened. And you can, and none of those things, you don't know if any of those things are relevant. And, like, you ask because all you actually have is they came into your office, dropped the thing on your desk

and then walked out. That's all you've got. That's all the information you have. And so to be able to understand what's going on, even if they lie to you when they answer the question, you still only have that information. And making up what they're thinking is that's never going to end well. Even if you're right, it's never going to end well. because it takes agency away from everybody and it twists the interaction in a way. And really, honestly, why do you care if they made that face that you just move on with your life? You've got other things to worry about. And if you do have an issue with this person or you're worried about what they think about you,

that's a conversation for another day. Right. You got the folder you needed. Who cares? Yeah. meaning you know it's it's you can't control what happens to you but you and you alone can control the meaning of that event we should be careful with that right yeah well it also can be fun it can be fun to retell the story to to change into a way that because

it's it's in opening up those stories or in this in the scenarios where I'm naming the elephant in the room it's so clear to watch the shift either in me or in the person that I'm talking to, that when the room opens up, when the story gets bigger, when there's more, the circle is bigger and there's more, their whole body changes. And soon then my question is, what happened? What changed? How is your body different now that you? Because that just shifted. What happened? I saw you take a bigger breath. I saw you lean back in your chair. Your right shoulder dropped. What did you experience? What happened in there? because if you can figure out what happens in there

without words, then you can lay breadcrumbs to get back there when you start feeling that shoulder go back up and you start feeling, you're like, oh, no, wait, I know what that felt like, this is what this feels like. And if you look, talk to, or if you look at small children or babies, their whole body is hungry,

their whole body is angry, their whole body is happy, their whole body is sick. It is a full, you know, complete deal all the time. And that's still true of us, but we have evolved particularly in Western culture to believe that, you know, everything from here down is here to carry our head and our hands around. And when in fact, studies have shown that when you're happy, the chemical makeup of your toes changes. And so you're still responding to the world full body, you just don't know it. And when, or you're not acknowledging it. And so we start off with that full body response and engagement. And then people start giving us words for it. Oh, were you a happy baby? Oh, does that hurt? Is that painful? Oh, are you mad about something? I mean,

you started getting words. And that's why people who are raised in households, like abusive households, or over-controlling or domineering or micromanaging spaces, get weird definitions for things like love or safety or responsibility or any number of other words. And then they carry those definitions with them, but their body's still having the same response it did before it had a word. And then on top of that, it's layering the response to the word on top of it, which if they line up and are congruous, it's the same response. But if they're not, they start to have this response.

And then they shut it up because that word says, don't do that. That word says, that's not happy. That's not who you are. That's not whatever. And so, yeah, anyway, I could rattle on about all sorts of things. It's fascinating. It's like the body keeps the score, right? That's a pretty good book that talks about what's really happening.

But I love the idea about labels. It's interesting that labels have so much authority over the way in which we interact with our environment. Like that's kind of, I guess that's why they call it spells or magic. Like in some ways you're casting a linguistic spell on someone to make them see things from a certain point of view. And look at the different, look at the different language. I mean, different languages have different numbers of words to describe different experiences. And how does that affect how the culture moves or how this culture sees something? It's really interesting to me.

I'm not, I, you know, one of my many alternate lives that I, you know, should have veered off into when I was, you know, younger is, is studying languages and studying how they culturally affect what, how people respond to, to things given the, given the way the language describes certain things. You know, because some, some languages, some languages have like one word for something where another language has 15 and it's a different, different experience altogether. Yeah. What does it mean when, you know, some cultures have their number system as like one, two, three, many. That table has many legs, you know, where, you know, that table has three short legs and four tall. Like all of a sudden, the way in which you describe your environment has radical implications for the way you interact in it. It's kind of mesmerizing. Exactly. Exactly. I could run with that for days. I love that kind of stuff. Me too. Imagine that. Funny that. Yeah. So do you think that that plays into naming and unnaming or naming and taming things? Is that same sort of curiosity that you have with language?

Yeah. Oh, completely. Well, language and also just, okay, well, I'm originally from the South, the Southeastern part of America. And, of course, you won't, I like to say, you won't hear it unless I'm tired, drunk, or angry or some combination thereof. But it shows up in words like Thanksgiving or insurance. So story is the way that we interact with people.

We tell people stories about ourselves. We tell people stories about other people. We tell people stories about our families. And so you collect them. You collect. And when you make a friend, you're collecting them. and their stories and to some degree. And then I went into theater for 15 years,

which is nothing but storytelling, right? And then I moved into acupuncture, which oddly enough is still storytelling. And so, and the distance mind-body integration work is even more storytelling. And so, I mean, it's sort of the way I do things. But, and I, that same mentor that I mentioned, Bob Duggan is probably rolling over in his grave

because he's always like, don't, don't, he was like, stick with the, Look at the phenomena. Don't look at the story, which I agree with too. It's the thing about the folder and the co-worker, right? The phenomena is they drop it on your desk. The story is the thing you make up. And humans being prone to stories, I'm all about helping people draw, you know, tell bigger, bigger, juicier ones. And where was I going with this? I've wandered far afield. So, I don't know. I've lost where I was. But then. you go there's that well i think it speaks volumes of of what we do in this world especially when it comes to to mental health or helping people or even science for that matter science is a way in which we tell stories in which we measure certain parts of the story oh well let's let's get rid of this stuff i'm only going to tell you about what we can measure even though there's tons

of variables in which we can't measure i'm going to pretend those don't exist and i'll tell you's other story why you're sick you know why you're sick because you're eating these foods you know why you're sick because you don't do that. But maybe there's a whole another segment to that story that no one's talking about it. It's interesting how we decide to give up our, or it's interesting how we allow ourselves to be part of someone else's story. Like we actually pay people to tell us a story so we can feel good about ourselves so we can get help or help us get out of our own story, you know.

Well, yeah. It's also how we carry information though. And we can only tell part of the story ever. Right. And so when it comes to science, which I'm also fascinated with, it's telling a snapshot of just that piece that we get now. Right. It's like the people studying DNA and for a long time people are like, yeah, there's all this junk DNA that's just like filler. It's like, you know, it's like.

Only ACTG. That's all we need. Right. It's like, it's like, it's like bubble wrap in the, you know, or shredded cardboard. And when in fact, you know, it's not working if the, if that, it doesn't work if all that stuff's not there, right? And, but they could only tell that story. They'd only figured out that part of the story. And that's why science keeps evolving because it's not that they were wrong.

It's they only had that piece of the story and then they discovered it's, it's the, it's the guardian television ad all over again. You know, it's, here's. this piece of the story. No, wait, no, no, no wait, it's actually this. And then, you know, who knows years later, it'll be like, actually, it's this. So, yeah. So, so I, you know, my, my concern is when people get stuck in the story that's this big, or even the one that's this big, even the one that's this big, and don't realize that there's, it just keeps going, you know, and, and so finding the one that people, can move easily with move emotionally, physically, mentally, culturally, societally, in their family,

with their dog, you know, that's what I care about. Because it's all about, it's all about creating that smooth flow that we all, we all got a glimpse of when we were little. You know, when you're little and you're playing, half an hour can last four years. Yeah. if you're deep in whatever you're doing. Yeah. And then as we get older, half an hour lasts, what, 15 seconds,

you know, depending on what you're trying to get done. Yeah. And that elasticity of presence and time also is part of what helps draw the bigger story. If you're willing to go into it and see, I mean, why not? Life is too short not to be having a good time. Why not be curious about all this stuff and curious about how to make it easier? You know? I do. And I think that that's a great place for people to start if they find themselves, you know, in a bad spot because of health or because of a mental problem or because of a circumstance you can't control is there's all kinds of myths around time. And you, as an individual, you get to make up your own idea of time. You know, and if you can change time. And if you don't believe me, people do this exercise. I mean, maybe maybe don't do it, but at least listen to it. When you find yourself at a red light, sometimes that red light lasts forever.

But if you pick up your phone, that light will change like that. You know what I mean? Like you probably shouldn't do that in traffic, but that's just an idea of how you can change time. You know, there's different kinds of time. There's what Marseilleille talks about sacred time. And if you have ever been married, I've been married. So you and I have shared this time together. Even though we weren't in the same spot, both you and I can close our eyes and understand what that time was like a time when someone's born.

Like we share these times, but it's all these stories we have around time that allow us to close in and sometimes make us sick. Because if you look at depression, it's being trapped in the past or anxiety is being trapped in the future. So our relationship with time is one factor that can make us sick, right? Absolutely. And lots of times that's the thing that needs to shift for everything else to correct. And that's not saying, you know, that things don't happen or get lodged in the body in such a way that it becomes an actual concrete thing that you've got to do something about. That's true too. I mean, people are in disfiguring, or in car accidents that disfigured them in some way. It's going to change how they emotionally and mentally move in the world. And vice versa. Everybody knows or has heard of somebody who's worried themselves into a stomach ulcer. You still have to do something about the stomach ulcer. And let's also address the worry because you don't want another one. Yeah. It's funny that you talk about different types of time because when I, between being a stage manager and deciding to go to acupuncture school, I took a year and I worked. as a television production coordinator.

And at that point, when I was a stage manager, I was working 60 to 80 hours a week, six days a week. So I got this job as a television production manager, which was 40 hours a week. They let me out when the sun was still shining, and I had two days off in a row. And so I was doing everything. I could think of it.

I was rewiring my attic and landscaping my yard and refinishing furniture and God knows what else. And I would take the bus downtown. We were living in Minneapolis, and I'd take the bus downtown. And I was reading this book called Einstein's Dreams, and the author has escaped to me at the moment. A little book. But it goes through, each chapter goes through describing all the ideas he had about time and how it worked before he got to E equals M.C. Square.

And so because I found this job so uneventful, it was a lot of details. and right and but it was uneventful and it was 40 hours a week so it was like part-time as far as I was concerned at that point in my life um I would read one chapter on the way down on the bus and then I would spend all day pretending time worked that way ha that's so awesome it was hilarious um but um anyway they just made me think of that when I mentioned the different types of time because you can you know I mean what else was I'd say I do about laying around the laying around on a couch they think about, I wonder what if it does it this? What if it does that? Yeah. It's an interesting concept, too, to think about time. And I guess that, what role do you think time plays in, like, ceremonies and art? Like, we've talked about ceremonies, like, weddings and stuff like that.

Like, that definitely plays with time. But what about art? Is there a relationship between art and time? Oh, sure. I mean, there are things that, I mean, we, oh, there's. There's so many places we could go with this. I mean, there are things that are relevatory when they, you know, when they happen. And then later or not.

I have a, I have a soon-to-be 18-year-old son who, you know, I'm like, you wouldn't believe when this happened. They'd be like, yeah, mom, whatever. That's decades old. What does the world even look like without that in it? What are you talking about? And so from that standpoint, I think that's true. And also, some people can get caught up in the idea that the amount of time it takes to create something speaks to its value. And that's, for me, that's not the definition of art.

For me, that's, who cares? I mean, that's why a brilliant improv artist is equally as talented in a different medium than, you know, a Shakespearean actor. You know, it takes completely different sets of time and training and impulse and whatever to do both of those things. And yet they're both getting up and entertaining people. What about between like an improv actor and a cathedral? Both performances can be monumental. and last a long time. But that's an interesting sort of way

to look at different types of art. If you look at a cathedral that took generations to build and then you see this final monument, you're like, wow, everybody portrayed in that. Similar to a cast of people that help each other and a beautiful play, right? In some ways, it's synonymous.

Yeah, in some ways. And it also depends on how, well, I think time also impacts art in the way that it echoes. And what I mean by that is, who knows what buildings were built that don't exist anymore that we can't see. You know, that had a huge, amazing, earth-shaking impact on the people

that were alive at the time while it was there, but then as it got destroyed by a flood or, you know, wherever, then its echo disappears. In the same way, you know, and the same thing with a piece of, if we're going to still talk about plays, You know, there are plays that were performed in some tiny little space in, you know, in the 18th century that only a handful of people saw, but they talked about for the rest of their life, you know. And but they didn't, but they didn't echo.

They didn't, they didn't carry forward in a way beyond maybe a family story about something that then morphed into something else. It morphed into something else. And nobody knows it was a play. some people think it actually happened to somebody in their family you know um and so i think that's also a part of it is how and and does it have to echo you know are there things that um there's a lot of performance art that it happens then and it's gone yeah and if you if you weren't there you missed it and that's why it is and so i mean time is malleable in some way which when it comes well time's malleable in general. But when we're talking on the subject of art, it's, you know, it

stretches and bends just like it, you know, just like stories and life and whatnot do. I mean, music performed and, you know, a split, you know, like a jazz. Like, for example, I went to a friend's house a couple months ago and we all sat out in his backyard and played music and we did some great stuff and it was gone. Nobody recorded it. None of us, you know, some of them remember exactly what we started with or what key we were in and that was about it.

You know, but it was great. And that's, you know, and now it's gone. But it's, it's gone as far as its whole piece, but it's not gone as far as what that did for me. So, I, it's too

snaky to talk about. It's too many too many, too many, like, rabbit warren. You know, there's too many rabbit holes to follow down when you talk about that kind of thing. It's slippery. It's hard to hold on to. Like, you can grab it for a moment and then it's gone. But that's something so beautiful. Well, and it's back to not being able to tell the whole story, right?

Right. We can only talk about that spot. Yeah. I think that's necessary, though. In order for someone to come along and pick up the story, you know, it's almost like those old school choose your own adventure books. Like once you've read them a few times, like, I'm not going to read it anymore. But, you know, you can begin telling the story or anytime you repeat a story, you change it a little bit. You know, and I think that that slippery sort of, that slippery essence to it is necessary in order for people to build the next part of the story.

You know, the character has to become the mentor at some point in time and give rise to the next hero's journey. Right, right. Well, but people also are doing the same thing, right? What is it like every seven days, all your electrons have changed? And so what if we allow ourselves and our fellow humans or any other living, breathing thing, allow that to be that elastic? What if we acknowledge that, like I like to say when talking about the work I do with acupuncture, You know, the medicine is so deep and so wide, and each individual is so deep and so wide.

And every time I see them, they are different than the last time I saw them. And they are different five minutes from now. My life, I will never be bored. And what if, you know, with the people we live with, we let them be that elastic. We let them be that constantly changing, making sure we make sure we make. checking in to make sure that that part of the story is still there you know like my son with butternut squash soup you know he when we used to make creed butternut squash soup when he was little and he loved it he's like I have never liked butternut squash soup mom you know and I'm like okay

so that part of the story's not there anymore no more butter nut squash soup for you we'll eat the rest of it you don't get it um but you know something as simple as that or something is you know profound as someone's, you know, gender identification or religious beliefs or political stance or, you know, whatever it is. Again, only part of the story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it blows my mind to think about us having the power to change or model

reality just by changing our story. Like, you can, you can change the way you see the world by changing the, underlying beliefs by which you live your life. And isn't that interesting for the people around us when we decide to do that? It changes our relationship with everybody. Sometimes it can lead to divorce. Sometimes it can lead to you being kicked out of the house, you know, just for changing. Or sometimes it can lead to a relationship suddenly being much more bribered than, you know, back.

Well said. That it's, you know, it's not, it's not always a, well, and, yeah, it's not always necessarily a perceived loss. right it might actually be the thing that was missing that you were waiting to show up and if you change it's another another thing i use a lot in the treatment room is you know every relationship is a tug of war and you can change your end of the rope but you have no control over what somebody's going to do with that on the other end you know they can chase you with the rope they can sit down and cry they can find somebody else to play with they can i mean there's a thousand things they can do with that rope. They can let go of the rope too and go do something else. Yeah. But you're

into the rope will have changed. And so therefore, their end of the rope will change. Is there a form of integration, like in acupuncture or what you do it, you know, when I speak to a lot of people in the psychedelic space or people that work with alter states of consciousness or talk therapy or gestalini, you know, whatever it is when it comes to that, there seems to be a point of like integration. And I'm wondering, is there something similar in the role that you're playing? Say a little bit more. So let's say that someone sits down for like a therapy session.

One thing that a therapist may do is just reflect stuff back to them. Like, oh, so you think that this has happened? Or can you give me a metaphor for that? And they'll allow the person to come up with their own answers. Sometimes people will try to get it out of them, you know, or sometimes people will say it sounds to me like that sounds like fear to me. You know, I'm wondering, is there a sort of integration process after the acupuncture or in there? I'm always going back to how do you feel in your body.

I see. Whether it's in my acupuncture work or my distance, my body integration work, it's always about where do you feel it in your body? And how do we move it or how do we keep that? Like one thing I'll often say when people have a positive shift in their body, I'm like, okay, now your job is to, your mission should you choose to accept it is what I usually.

Is too, exactly. is to is to is to take really careful internal notes and observations about what this feels like so when you start to wander away from it you can get yourself back or you can practice trying to get yourself back to it um because you did that I didn't do that yeah we just made some suggestions and you did that and so empowering people to realize that they can move it um it's it's like when we first moved to Minnesota when I was, and I just started stage managing. And I can't remember if somebody told me or if I figured it out,

I can't remember. Or I'd read somewhere that when you get cold, you tend to tense your middle to try and pull everything in, right? Because it's okay if you lose your fingers and toes, but you want your internal organs to stay intact. And I realized that if I relaxed my middle, my fingers wouldn't get cold. And so I practiced relaxing my middle.

And it became, and so it becomes a thing that when I first go outside when it's cold, the inside of me will, you know, clench like the reaction everybody or a lot of people have. And then I'll intentionally let go of that holding and trust that my body's going to keep my internal organs. It has,

it has priorities. It's going to keep my internal organs. turn or some storm, but it also will not cut off everything to my extremities in the same way. It sounds like a great way to not only preempt the cold weather, but also a great way to have an open conversation. Because when you tighten up like that, all of a sudden you have all these blocks, you have all these reasons. You have all these reasons why you can't do it. You know, you're part of he's afraid, right? Well, when you come back to the whole conversation about fear and no and not knowing things and uncertainty, being able, and as long as it's not a threatening situation.

Right. Which in some respects is you know a lot of things when you're being threatened. Yeah. You're not sitting in a void of just not knowing what's going to happen. You got some information coming in about being threatened. There are some things you still don't know about, but you also know some stuff that's really happening. And, but if you're in a space of just not knowing, like waiting for, a job interview or, you know, whatever the thing is that you're, you, you, you want time to pass

quickly and you also don't want it to, you know, or whatever it is. Being able to get to, to put your body in a space of being, put yourself in your body enough to be able to, just wait to hear or see, wait for input. Just wait, just wait and see what shows. up in the same way that you would if you were i don't know sitting in a park somewhere and didn't have anywhere to be and had 15 minutes to kill before you needed to be somewhere and you'd already set an alarm on your phone so you didn't even need to watch clock um and you just watch and you wait to see what shows up you know you watch a bird and then you watch the guy walking his dog and and you want, hear the two people talking.

And you just watch for, to see what comes in. And that's, when you can get yourself in that kind of state in not knowing, then you can respond with greater ease, for one thing. You won't be reacting. You will be taking it in and then making a decision about what you're going to do with what's going on. And it also allows for much deeper listening. Because if you're in that space of, I'm going to see what happens.

Then you can take in what somebody's saying and really hear them rather than being thinking of the next thing you want to say or thinking you know what they're talking about or wanting to, you know, thinking you know how they're feeling about something or thinking about something that happened to you that was similar to what happened to them and then you're going to, you know, or whatever any of that is, you can just take it in, have a and then be reflective about it and then be able to say,

wow, that sucks. Or, or say more about that. you want a cup of tea? You know, and be able to continue to take it in in a way that, that, because a huge part of, a huge part of our culture is that people want to be heard and they want to be listened to. And we're really good at, you know, the springtime energy of popping up out of the ground, the stuff that allows dandelions to, like, grow out of concrete.

You know, we're good at that. And it's also, you know, what makes everything like this? And we're good at the high summer of play and interaction and, you know, and somewhere between those two is where you get that whole football mentality of, you know, competition and whatever and back and forth. But as a culture, we, at least the American culture, in my opinion, Anna speaking at the moment, the, the, our, Our ability to savor things, our ability to go into late summer and savor things and really, really value stuff.

And then to be able to move into fall and what's important and what we can let go of and what we, you know, and what jewels we get to keep. You know, what's a value that we get to keep. And then those two things prepare us to be able to sit and not knowing of winter to be able to do that deep bulb in the bottom of the ground, building up potential energy. to be able to then rise up again in the springtime and have at it. We don't do that part so well. We don't do that slide down so well. And one of my favorite things to do this time of year

is when I'm invited to a holiday party is I will go and, excuse me, I will go and be at the party and talk to people and whatever, and then I'll eventually settle somewhere. And I'll let my body go into that sort of list. space, that kind of winter. And that doesn't mean I don't tell funny stories. And that doesn't mean I don't. But it's more a funny story told around a campfire rather than a funny story yelled across the room at a Fourth of July party. Right. There's a different, different timbre to

that. And it makes it less exhausting for me to be at the party. So it's sort of self-serving to begin with. But it's also really entertaining to kind of watch it out, see how many people come over and sit by me. It's so peaceful over here. Just because I'm to some degree being lazy and not wanting to put all that effort in. But at the same time, it's aligning with the season. It's aligning with this time of year in the northern hemisphere, obviously. It's a different conversation when you're in the southern hemisphere. Yeah.

I love the idea of the metaphor of the seasons through which we act different ways. Do you think that that same metaphor can apply to daily conversations? Is there like a cycle in conversations that can be the metaphor? Oh, okay. So now you're asking a five element acupuncturist to talk to you about season. This is a whole other conversation. What time I do actually have to go. I do actually have to go see patients at some point in my life.

All right, it's two of five. All right. But yes is the short answer. Yes. I mean, the, when I say five element paradigm, or five seasons or the learning platform that I'm building with folks, the five seasons learning and people like there's only four seasons

Janice I'm like well no there's there's what I just walked to you there's winter there's spring there's high summer there's late summer and then there's fall because there's a very big difference between late summer when like the tomatoes are splitting on the vine and everything is super lush and

heavy and you know ripe ripe and fall where they've fallen off they're rot on the ground. The plants are dying back in. You know, the roots are, you know, the bulbs are pulling everything back in so they can build up energy, you know. It's very different. So there's five. And those cycles are what it can be applied to, well, they are applied to, organ systems and emotions and times of day and times of year and interactions and, and,

it's an overlay that works really well in a lot of different structures. I'm actually right now creating a course called the five elements of creative or the five seasons of creativity for the platform. And it's a generative cycle. I mean, it's the bulb in the ground. It's the shoot that comes up. It's the flower. It's the seeds that are produced.

It's the dying back. It's the bulb in the ground. It's that cycle. And we're all doing it. And we're all living it through. the, I mean, we're all, we've spent centuries pretending that we're trying to tame nature when we're part of it. It's so true. It's like, it's like, it's like a bear saying, okay, now you guys are going to do what I tell you.

Yeah. And not just because I can eat your face, but because I said so. And I made this whole thing. Now look on the wall of my cave. I've figured this whole thing out. This is how we're working. Now we're going to build everything like this, you know. And the, you know, and the birds are going.

I can't build anything like that. I can't pick up a tree. What are you talking about? And so it's just, it's preposterous. And so, so a lot of, you know, a lot of the work that I do, a lot of things I'm passionate about are getting people back into that thing of, you know, having the holiday party where everybody is letting themselves slow down. And like, what I want to think, okay, here.

Yeah. Venture capitalists listening. I have so many ideas for things. but this one I really think needs to happen. I think that there should be yen centers around the country. Yen being the opposite of Yon, or not the partner to Yon, the two ways you describe the movement of the oneness.

Anyway, where you go in and there's their saltwater pools and their meditation and there's martial arts and Qigong and yoga and everything is quiet. No clanking of machines. I mean, yes, if you want to go to a gym and do that, great. But no clanking of machines, no loud music playing.

Everybody just comes in and they still get exercise and they still move their bodies. But they also fill up on quiet. And then they go back out into the world. And how would that change things? big on the salt water pools, love a saltwater pool. But that that be, that, you know, half the thing, I think, half the reason people buy gym memberships and never go is because they're already exhausted. And they're like, I just don't want to go into that din of activity. I just don't have it in me.

You know, where it's like, I need to go float in a saltwater pool. I need to go quietly, you know, do whatever with, you know. Yeah. Those isolation tanks do wonders. Yeah. They're allowed in there too, all of it. It's just quiet, quiet space, you know, dark rooms where people just go sit in the dark.

Yeah. How do you get okay with not knowing? Go sit in the dark. The thing that I miss many things about being a stage manager. I do not miss other things, but I miss many things about being a stage manager. And the one of the things I miss the most is at the end of a show, preferably the end of the run of a show,

but just on any given night of having closed down the theater, everybody's left, I walk into the main stage, I look out, I take the ghost light, I turn off all the other lights, and for just a minute I stand there

on the lip of the orchestra pit, and I cannot see my hand when it's here. And when I do that, everything would just drop off of me. all the weight of the job and everything would just fall off my back. And then I'd turn on the ghost light, which is a single light bulb on a pole that is traditionally set in the middle of a stage. The practical being, anybody wanders in here,

they're not going to fall in the orchestra pit and sue us. The mythical piece of it being that so much energy gets put into creating characters on stage, that that stays. and that that that that that that haunts the space and and so this allows them this allows them to relax and receive whatever and set for the next day make space for the characters the next day um but that's but that in itself just standing in the dark that kind of dark because it's hard to find that kind of dark on the planet anymore yeah um and there's some place in europe that has created dark space like that, scientifically created a dark space, like done readings and everything.

And they have a wait list of like years and they're charging guillions of dollars for people to go in and be in the dark. Anyway, I'm bouncing all over the place, but welcome to talking to me. I love it. I love it. I wouldn't have it any other way. It's fascinating to see the way in which the connections are made. And, you know, I think it, I love the idea of the esoteric, like the ghost.

light and the magic that happens on stage and the darkness. When I think about darkness, I think about growing up in a world where, you know, a lot of people have a lot of problems. And I think a lot of nonlinear's find themselves growing up in chaos. And chaos is kind of dark. Like you don't know what's happening around you. But at a young age, your relationship with chaos has a transformative pathway for you to follow for later in life.

And I think that's why you embrace it later. life. You're like, oh, this is home, you know. Yeah, it's dark. It's kind of scary. I don't know. Is it a bird or a bear? I don't know. But it's just real peaceful right here. You know, and most people are like, what are you doing over there? You're like, come on over. They're like, I am staying in the hell. I don't want to be around you. You know, you are a weirdo. I don't want to be around you. You know, you're like, why? It's beautiful over here. Come on in. Well, after, after, you know, when I say about my stage management career, my understanding, my understanding of chaos and fatigue is so much deeper and wider than

anybody who wasn't in the military, then I can't explain it to you. But yeah, no, I think that's true. I mean, I was actually, everywhere I go, I'm a little bit like the niece and the monsters, because even in the non-linear community of the octopus movement,

of which we are both apart, I had a, I had a completely lucky childhood. I mean, I had some, I had some, there were some events that then I had to deal with later, but they were all external forces outside of my house. And generally speaking,

I, and there was no understanding that I was different. I was just, you know, that's just Janice. Yeah. That's just Janice over there being herself, you know. And, and, and so in some ways I feel sort of, you know, like I should apologize for not having more, more, you know, dark, scary, chaotic things to talk about from that period of my life. And I do think that, I do think that people, well, first of all, I'd like to say,

have you ever met a linear two-year-old? Nope. I think linearity is an overlay. And I think people get comfortable with it because they don't, because it provides security. It provides safety. It provides predictability. But linearity is an overlay.

Yeah. None of us show up, none of us show up, you know, making spreadsheets. Don't get me wrong. I love a pretty spreadsheet. But don't, in the same way that I like a nice smooth marble run. But anyway, moving on. But we don't start buying in to, I mean, even kids that like organize and lay out all their toys in a particular order, it's, I say, from my observations, granted, I'm not looking at the whole human race, that it's about the beauty of it. it's not about the

it's not about the the control or the detail or the I mean maybe the detail if the detail's beautiful but I think it's about the I think any of those impulses start off about the beauty of it and then they become an overlay for how to fit in or

control or when I was a stage manager I was a little nutty. I mean, first of all, I got into, I got into, that's another conversation. I'm not going to tell you that story, but I got into stage management purely by accident. I was sort of kidnapped into it. And so I was constantly in fear that somebody was going to figure out that I didn't know what the hell I was doing. And so all of everything became very tight, like all my forums were like gorgeous and really tight.

and all the information had to be just so because, oh my God, you know, what if somebody figures it out? And now I, you know, I love a pretty spreadsheet, but I like it because my goal is now, when I used to, when I was the Director of Clinical Education at the university, I used to say to the provost, I don't want to control anything. What I want to do is create a really pretty marble run that I set the marble at the top at the beginning and I go read a book

or watch a movie or hang out with a friend or have a good lunch and I come back and it's at the bottom. And I am perfectly willing to sand pieces of the marble run or painted a different color because it'll be more aesthetically pleasing or change the route because it makes more sense for somebody. But really honestly, I don't want to watch the marble all the way down to the bottom of the run. I want to set up the run and let it be beautiful and leave, which is the same thing. If you look at like paperwork I created as a stage manager and paperwork I create now, you would, and see a whole lot of difference, but it's such a different animal, which goes back to, you've never met a linear two or three-year-old. It's when you allow yourself that freedom of being the way you came in,

then it's a completely different conversation. It may look exactly the same, but the experience of it, the story, the circle is, so much bigger. Yeah. How's that for wrapping it all together? I like it. I like it. It's, yeah, the illusion of control. You know, like, I know some people that, like, I got to put all my cups.

The handles have to be this way. Because it's pretty. It's so confining. Like, I can't, like, my wife is like, for you. For me? For you. It's beautiful. It may very well be beautiful for her.

She loves every part of it. And I tried, I try, I try. I see. the beauty in it, but for me, it's like, I'll go move it just a little bit and see if she noticed and she always does. What are you doing? I had a 45 degree angle. Okay. So, so, so, so. And I love it. That's weird. Like, I love doing it. I know, but it's still the cut, but so there's a little bit more control than the beauty in there, right? There's a little bit more need for security or, or, or feeling like it needs to be, that it's safer to have it all like that. That's a good word for it.

I think safe is, how do you lead the conversation towards beauty is the question. Ah, see, something just changed in your body. What happened? I think that that's the reason why I'm so attracted to her is it's a different shade of beauty that I'm not used to and I don't understand and I'm mesmerized and thankful for it. It's mysterious to me. You know, like, oh, is it that? Is it that? Is it that? And all these questions. questions come on. Thank you for that. Thank you. What changed in your body? Because something changed when you sighed. Like a like a slight dizziness that move from my head to my toes. Like, hmm, what is that? You know, and it's like maybe that's the sense of beauty or sense of wonder that moves through me when I think about my wife moving a cup, which may be my wife, which may be our

relationship, which may be my daughter. You know, it might be all of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it just may be more space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it could be. That very well could be. It's the miracle that allows you to see beauty in the shifting of a 45-degree handle on a cup. That's so great.

I know. Isn't it? Yeah, you're good at what you do. You can see the unseen things. You just did it. for me. I will never be bored. Does it ever get exhausting, though?

Not if I'm doing it right. I was just saying to a patient last night that because he's starting to lead these groups in these refugee groups and the people working with them in conversations. And he loves doing it. and he's asking, he actually sort of comes to me as a coach more than a patient,

but I put needles in him anyway because it helps me things. And I, but I was saying, he's like, but I was exhausted afterwards. And I'm like, ah, that's because you're only doing this. I said, see if you can't figure out a way that you do this. And you're not taking anything from anybody else. What you're doing is you're creating the third thing in the middle. You know, what's the thing? if there's two people in a room there's three relationships right one with the one with yourself one with

myself and the one we have in the middle right and so if you create it so it's doing this then you're both fed and so if i'm doing it right then like yesterday i didn't get like terrible sleep the night before and um i woke up super groggy and whatever and i bike to work and I got ready for work and the biking helped a little bit. But by the time I got ready to go home last night, I felt 10 times better than I did when I started. So no, it's not exhausting if I do it right. If I'm getting exhausted, then it's a sign. It's a signal to me that I'm that I'm, that I'm not, I'm not walking my talk. I'm not doing my thing. It's an interesting, it's an interesting point of view that you could probably, most people could probably take and use in their life. Like,

it should be fulfilling as much as it is giving. I don't think that came out right. No. Well, I mean, it comes back to, it comes back to life is too short not to be having a good time. Yeah. And, and I mean, the two things I've said in every job interview I've ever had since I applied to work, get rid of my first job at someplace in the mall when I was in high school is life is too short not to be having a good time. And I probably didn't say this one then. I think I saved this one later when I was an adult.

But if the process of getting there is not as rewarding as the final product, then I haven't done my job. And particularly as a stage manager, that was true, because honest to God, that is way too much work to only be hanging on opening night. Yeah, that's, you know, are you okay on time? Do you have time for another couple questions? Let me look at my calendar because it tells me. Oh, yeah, we have like 20 minutes. Let me just make sure my calendar isn't, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Because, you know, no, I'm good. I do. I'm good. So here's something that comes to mind that I've, that when you talk about the job interview, the stage management and something that I've seen recently happening in our world is this, this process of verbing nouns. And so, you know, if you look at a person, place or thing, it's kind of becoming a process. Like we, at Google used to be, it's a thing, but it's also now you Google something.

And it seems to me when we look at our lives, Instead of looking at George or Janice as a person, you can look at them as a process. I think it really helps you have a lot more leniency in who you are, what you're doing, who you're becoming, who you were. What's your take on this looking at nouns as verbs or verbing nouns, especially in our own life? Okay. So clearly you have psychically listened in on conversations or on my kitchen table. We're a very, the three of us are a very, we're logo files, we are lovers of words. And so we have discussions about how they're used a lot and how they're not used and how they, how language morphs and how, you know, and should we let it morph? And that's ridiculous because it was better when it was before and lots of opinions.

and we all change opinions depending on, you know, the moment. But, I mean, I think, well, for example, this whole five-element paradigm is actually a snapshot, like a millisecond of a millisecond of a millisecond snapshot of the movement of yin and yang, which is a millisecond of a millisecond of a millisecond snapshot of the movement of the oneness. And it's just different. It's just ways to describe the oneness. Everything is just ways to describe the oneness in that in that paradigm, right? And so, sure, I'm, I'm out here Janusing the world because, because all you're getting is this

hour and 20 minutes of me that will be different in a minute after, you know, 60, a second after I turn off to my camera. And we're constantly in motion. And that whole thing of your electrons replenish themselves every seven days. And all our cells, I remember the amount of time that your cells are all new. And so we're always changing. And to some degree, who we are and what we're doing is an idea or a habit that's working for us or not.

And what really made that particular concept sync in for me was I had a colleague years ago who had a patient, an acupuncture colleague, who had a patient who had multiple personalities. And that patient would come in and depending on which personality was in charge, their body would change. Their breasts would be more prominent or they would recede their one personality. head malargy to strawberries. The other one didn't. Just one of them was pre-diabetic. One of them wasn't. And we're talking about, like particularly with the pre-diabetes, we're talking about something on a cellular level shifting when that personality got in charge. And that's when I was like, oh, this is all an idea. We are all just making this up as we go along. And so, yeah, absolutely.

we're all we're all verbing it um and well okay how far do i want to go down this rabbit hole um it brings to mine two stories one um did you ever watch deep space nine i have yeah okay you know the character otto was he the phrengey no he's the guy that that dissolves into a puddle okay yeah yeah okay and he goes back to his home planet and he just pours himself into the ocean of his planet and then he pours himself back out into a bucket and goes back to the to start to the his role right at the space station um all right take that idea then take a conversation i had with my son when he was like two or three years old we had gone to the science foundation uh or the science museum here in baltimore um and they were doing in their big iMac theater they were doing a thing on

dark matter and he really wanted to go see it and i said i'm not not going to understand it. You were what, two, three years old? You were really not going to get this. And he's like, no, no, I want to go. I want to go. Fine. So we go in and we watch the whole thing on Dark Manor.

We see the rest of the museum, blah, blah, blah. We get in the car, driving home. He's in his little car seat in the back. It's all quiet. And then he says, I think I figured it out. And I said, okay. Now, bear in mind, he's being raised by an acupuncturist. So he has weird, like, but anyway.

And he says, I think that dark matter is the chi of all the plants and the animals and the people that's not being used right now

and when a new person's born a drop comes down and animates them but we otherwise it's just up there helping hold the universe together I think he does have it figured out you think And so back to this thing of us doing things, right?

We're really just ice cubes and water. I mean, we really are just the oneness solidified into this shape. And then I will desolidify into this shape. some point. And I don't know. I mean, I don't have a deep understanding of past lives and other experiences like that. However, you know, maybe, maybe running with this theory or this hypothesis, really, it's not a theory of maybe those people get more of that same drop, more of that original drop than somebody who gets like a completely different drop that, you know, doesn't remember anything. Maybe they get some of the drop that says, oh, yeah, I used to be, you know, Catherine

the Great or whatever, you know. Who knows? I don't know. Anyway, so that's the answer. That's the answer. You're a very short question. Yeah, this is the, yeah, okay. You, yeah, I, I, you let me run off leash and Yeah, that's how it's supposed to be. I love the idea of ice cubes in the water because sometimes it does seem to me as I'm moving through my life, like the rough edges of needing to be right or the jagged edges, the sharpness to my ideas of they're kind of being smoothed out and it's like, yeah, I can totally see myself on that person. You know what?

They probably do that because they had a bad day or you know what? I do that. Like, it's interesting to see yourself kind of being let out into the rest of the world like that. It's kind of wonderful, really. Yeah, it is. It's lovely. Also, it makes things lot less lonely. Yeah. Yeah, that's a, that's a big part of, it seems to me that's a big part, or perhaps that's one of the underlying mechanisms of so much anger or just trust in the world. It's just, I'm alone. Fear. Yeah. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit. What is the relationship between loneliness and fear? You can probably wrap that up in about a minute, right?

Yeah, no problem. I got that. Sit down. I'll take care of it. It's, well, I mean, okay, back to the medicine that I, the corner of the, the corner of the medicine that I practice. There's a strong connection between what we call the heart kidney access. And the heart is the center of all of who you are. And in the poetry of the medicine, the shin spirit descends into the heart and then it's refracted into all the other organs and parts of you by. like light through a stained glass window. And the emotions associated with the heart are joy and sadness and loneliness.

Sadness, not grief. Grief is another ball of wax, but sadness, loneliness. And the kidney is associated in the space between your two kidneys is associated with your jing or what you came in with your DNA, your imprint. It's said that your lower d'antien, which is about a hands width below your belly button and halfway between your hip bones and halfway between the front of you and the back of you,

is your lower energy center. And some say that it's where the first cell divides that grows into who you are. But there's a strong connection between there and your heart, right? Because those are the things that make you you. You can be brain dead and still be alive, but you cannot be heart dead and still be alive. And all of the rest of this is so that your heart can move around and experience the world. Your eyes are here so your heart can see the world. Your hands are here so that your heart

can touch the world, etc. But that heart kidney axis is really important. And the emotions associated with the kidneys are fear and courage. And so those two balance each other in a way that allows us to keep our center. And that connection can be broken with sudden divorce or heartbreak or trauma. And so reestablishing that heart kidney axis allows us to manage fear and courage and joy and sadness in a balanced way. Now, from an elemental standpoint, what you're thinking about is how fire, how fire, how, how, how, how, fire can be contained by running water around it. So the heart being associated with fire, the kidneys being associated with water.

And so it creates containment. That courage and even that fear to some degree creates containment so that your joy doesn't go completely off the charts. And you become manic and also your sadness. That courage helps you get through that sadness and contain that sadness in a way. So that's how I mean Yeah running with the paradigms and the stories that I use to see the world That's how that's how I think of those being being connected So that wasn't that didn't take too long I sort of I sort of get that in a short period

Yeah, it's fascinating to think about Your eyes being the way in which your heart sees the world and your hands being the way in which your heart can touch the world Like that's beautiful yeah it is I'll never be more never be bored. It's like watching. I also say, again, back to acupuncture, although it's to some degree true. It's actually is also true for the distance mind-body stuff that I've developed. But particularly with acupuncture, you know, people, when people find out you're in acupunctures, they always want to talk to you about the needles. And I always feel like somebody is saying, oh, you're a poet. What's it like to sharpen pencils?

that's hilarious because the whole because each point well each point is described by a character right whether it's a Japanese character or a Chinese character or a Korean character each acupuncture point is described by a character which is an entire world an entire story about the point and so it's a lot like doing poetry on people asking the different stories and pieces of poetry to work together in a way that allows the whole thing to tell a better story. I was just going to ask what the comment, the poetry of the medicine was, but that, if you can elaborate, like it does, it really weaves together the way in which one can heal someone, if they can understand a poetic story about what the, you know, is it a, is it a,

is it a, is it a, is it the hero's journey, you know, it seems, it, it, it, it, is it, it, is, Is it, are the points tied, the blockage is tied to different mythological structures like that? Or poetic stories? Not, not mythology. I have to answer that question. There's a lot. It needs to do. Well, it can be something as superficial as like the translation of a name.

Like there's an upper point up here on your chest that everybody has one. that some translations of the character into English, some translations of the character are Spirit Storehouse. My personal favorite translation of the character is by a woman named Deborah Katz in her book of points, point descriptions, which is Pantry of Dreams. They are both, they are both associated with that fire element. with the heart, but not just with the heart, also with the small intestine, also with the paracardium, which protects the heart, also with the sun jow, which is not in Western medicine, except it kind of plays into the indecrine system and the polyvagal system. Anyway, more stop. Moving on. So it can be something as superficial as an understanding of the character or an

understanding of the translation of the character or being able to language the character. it can be as multifaceted as understanding how the elements move, how the elephants move, how the elements move, and where things are getting stuck for that person. So how do you open that up? How do you connect the pieces so that the flow continues to happen? Because if you think about a piece of poetry, it flows. And it does it with the least amount of words.

I mean, even if it's an epic poem, it's telling you such a story that it really should take, you know, 12 volumes and it's telling it to you in, you know, 50 pages or something. Right. It's distilling things to just that. Which is also why I'm always in search of the one needle treatment. So I can just go, and then everything goes, because, again, fact, dude, they do all the work. I just make the suggestion. But, and their points, and each point you can do by,

you can do it because it has a physical response. You can do it because it's going to clear heat from their system and thereby stop them from getting yellow snot and, you know, and high blood pressure or whatever, right? you can do it because it affects the indecrine system you can do it you know there's a lot of sort of western ways you can draw analogies or you can do it because it's going to balance springtime and fall in them in a way that will allow them to not beat up on themselves as much or you can do it in a way that you're just going for that story that the point tells

and you're reminding that version of life of that story and lots of other I could rattle on. But it's, so that's what I mean when I say the poetry of the medicine. Is that it's always, there's a, it's a smooth full of chi.

I mean, poetry is not, even, even Billy Collins, who is one of my favorite poets who is rather irreverent sometimes. It's still got a smooth flow to it, even when it suddenly surprises you about something. Yeah, Sometimes that's the real clincher when it has a smooth flow, but it still surprises you.

That's like that. That's a pretty wonderful harmony or awful in the true sense of the word, right? Right. Awful. Yeah. Well, Thomas Hutchison asks him come in. Shout out. Let me just say thank you to everybody to Michelle.

Thank you for everything. Thomas, thank you for everything. It's so wonderful to be part of the Octopus community. I'm so thankful to get everybody in here and start talking a little bit. Look at Thomas just kind of messing with us right here. Yeah, that's a great idea. Why don't you guys talk about the belief system, magic you kick up?

Thanks, Thomas. No problem. Yeah, Michelle makes some wonderful points too. Like, would we ever know the whole picture, though? I feel we need to make peace with the fact that we'll never know it. Like, this is why Michelle is so awesome. And if you read her, all her points, they're so erudited. be talking to her soon.

I'm hopeful. She's great. You'll enjoy it. Yeah. Well, I've enjoyed this, Dr. Jennis,

and I've walked you right up to the 130 mark, and I'm really thankful for your time. And I feel like we just scratched the surface. It was all my conversations with people have just blown by. Oh, yeah. No,

we could go on for days. And, you know, there are the things that we could be doing, too. So, yeah. Well, before I let you go,

where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? Oh, goodness. You can find me at Dr. Janice Campbell.com, D.R. JaniceCampbell.com. Janice spelled I-C-E, not I-S, like Joplin. And the last one, do you spell that again, too? Campbell just like the soup.

C-A-M-P-B-E-L. And I'm also on LinkedIn under Dr. Janice Campbell. I'm also on Facebook. under Janus F. Campbell. And if you're curious about the distance mind-body integration stuff, you can find that on my website, both for individuals and also for groups. I'm moving into doing things for corporate groups

to help set the space for people to be in like a week-long or weekend-long workshop or something and be able to actually process the information and also be able to take real honest goodness breaks between ingesting all that. And so you can find me online in those places, things I'm excited about. Well, I'm excited about that.

I'm excited about the expansion of my distance, mind, body integration work. And I'm also excited about the official launching of Five Seasons Learning.com, which will be in January, we've released some courses to begin with, but there's going to be continuing education courses for starting with acupuncturist and herbalists and hopefully expanding to other modalities,

as well as community classes, all in some way influenced by this idea of the five seasons and how we move in them and how they apply to the way we live our lives and us being part of nature. So I'm excited about that too. I think it's going to be cool. And I'm sure there are other, there are other things. I have, I'm writing a book and there's some other things. Go to Dr. Janice.

I had to make the Dr. Janice.com, Dr. Janice Campbell.com website to like cover all my stuff. It saves time when having conversations with people. I'm like, go look at that and then tell me what you want to talk to me about. Which, by the way, most of which you got from George's introduction of me, he like did this amazing distillation of everything on my website. But anyway, that's what I'm excited about. And I'm also very excited about the octopus movement. I'm on the board for the American nonprofit arm of the octopus movement. And it's full of great people.

And we're going to do some wonderful things. So stay tuned. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes. Check it out. Reach out to Dr. Janice. Thank you for everyone who played along. and if you find yourself intrigued,

just go down and check out the show notes, check out all the links down there. And hang on, Dr. Jenison, talk to you briefly afterwards. But to everyone that was out there listening, I hope you have a beautiful day. I hope you realize that there's order and chaos and that the world is conspiring to help you if you just take a moment to recognize.

That's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha. Bye.