Creating Meaningful Connections with Sah D'Simone | EP 32

We're so deeply debilitated by our distraction. It's so insatiable.
We don't want to feel what it's like to be in our bodies. We don't want to feel the discomfort that comes from being human.
So when we're talking about somatic tracking, we're bringing attention to the body, what we're asking you to do is to not engage with the stories. They're hardwired with the feelings.
Every feeling calls forth a story. It's a way for us to sort of create a self-feeling narrative, self-healing prophecy for us to stay in a miserable state.

This expense. with the feelings.
Every feeling calls forth a story. It's a way for us to sort of create a self-feeling narrative, self-feeling prophecy for us to stay in a miserable state.
This expansiveness of perspective, this widening of our lands leads us to see poetry, leads us to see beauty where it wasn't before. Welcome.
I'm Alyssa Nobriga, your host of the Healing and Human Potential podcast, a place for you to discover the multidimensionality of what it means to be human. Over the past 20 years, I've trained thousands of coaches in my methodology, leveraging my experience as a former psychotherapist, and I'm here to share with you all the wisdom and insights that I've learned along the way.
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Let's let the magic unfold. As society continues to spend more time on our phones and different screens, distraction and loneliness are at an all-time high, and I don't think this is a coincidence.
So today I'm sitting down with Saadi Simone to discuss this increasingly important topic. Sa is an author, a mystic, a healer, and a breath of fresh air.
You are going to love him. And he spent the last few years studying the science behind this epidemic, learning how we can make individual improvements in the hopes of a collective shift.
Community and friendships are hugely important. So if you're struggling with loneliness or find yourself feeling increasingly disconnected or just looking for simple pointers around adult friendships, this episode was created for you.
I am so happy that you're here. And I know that you are such a stand for community and connection.
And on our modern day life, there's a lot of distraction and like needing to fill this space, which is creating a lot of disconnection. And I know that in your new book, you've been doing a lot of research around loneliness.
Can you share some of the current stats since the pandemic or where are we at as a culture around loneliness? First of all, thanks for having me. And thanks for asking such a deep question to open the space for us to talk about the new book.
So the research that I'm going to share with you is most recent research. Some of these stats have come from the pandemic and some of them has come from my personal work and training at the hospital as a chaplain.
So one that's like the most alarming of all is that 60% of the young population in America report feeling seriously lonely, which is so eye-opening to think of. And then from there, we go to two out of every five people in America report that their relationships are not meaningful.
So this is a general population, all ages, everyone. Two in five report their relationships are not meaningful.
So when you are at a dinner party with five people, two of those people, let's kind of be reductionist for a second, don't feel connected to the rest of the people there. Or don't feel connected enough to unburden their heart or to ask for help.
You know, to say, can you drive me to chemotherapy? Or can you let me borrow $1,000 for rent? Like all the things that a lot of people feel like they don't deserve or they don't have the depth of connection to other people to ask these questions when you're really in the darkest of the darkest places, which is so inevitable for us in the human experience, you know? And then let's go a little further. There's two other statistics.
One that is like so close to my heart is the suicide rates. You know, I've been experiencing suicidal ideation since I was 16.
I haven't had it in maybe like five to 10 years, but when he visits, it's really intense. It's really textured.
It's very seductive as a way out. Yeah.
Yeah, because suicidality is really about wanting to end the suffering. It's like the best way that we thought at the time.
And it's an ideation, right? As a psychotherapist, people would say, help move somebody through the ideation. Because if you can help move them through, then there's more success or more of a chance for them to not want to hurt themselves or kill themselves.
And then there is even like something, this is a twisted look into suicidal ideation. It's what if the choice to end the suffering is an actual point of self-compassion, but it's twisted, it's misinterpreted, you know, because you are choosing to alleviate your suffering, but you're choosing a strategy that potentially does more harm than good, you know? Yeah.
And I want to bring to bring some of this back up to a little later because I do speak a lot about suicide. Suicide ideation being a call for something to die, not your whole self.
For a part of you. For a tendency, for a habit, for something that you ruminate on, something that you latch on, these aspects of your biography are begging you to put them to the ground, to burn so it can be fertilizer for something new to be born.
I think that's huge. I think I really want to highlight that because then there's nothing wrong with it.
Here's the intention that something in me wants to die or there's something that I want to end, but it doesn't mean my life and that there is another way. And that I could have friendship and connection.
You know, I'm a yes and I'm a yes and and learning the tools to navigate our inner experience and have the deep conversations and creative ways to ask for our, from our loved ones for support. So learning how to be with the loneliness inside of me, you know, and a big part of, you know, I think I always say life's a mirror.
So most of our society, if we feel lonely, we've been conditioned to say, let me get a partner or let me fill it from the outside versus how can I presence and be with the loneliness directly? Because if I abandon my loneliness, I'm only going to feel more lonely in the world. Yes.
So really doing that work when we have a trained specialist, especially if there's suicidality, to do that work with a safe space within ourselves. And then we can reach out for community, for connection to feel loved and supported.
I love what you're saying so much. And yes, and.
Yeah, that's right. There is something to be said about people who are reaching out for a partner reaching out for all the things um but let's use the partner yeah for example i do find that a lot of people will some people will do that but the kind of um the kind of depth that i'm bringing into the book is intimacy in connection.
People will have friends, they will have partners, but it's also superfluous. They may have been married or have a best friend for many years, but they don't know shit about each other.
It's this very topical way of getting to know each other. Sometimes they share more about the depth of their experience, more about their burdens, more about their deepest, darkest secrets to a therapist, someone that they're paying to listen, more so than they do to their best friend, more so than they do to their partner.
They've been together for 10 years or two decades, whatever it may be. So the exploration of relationship and loneliness in the book, it's very much about depth.
It's about intimacy. It's not about helping people to just have a friend.
Yeah. The book is not about making friends.
Yeah. It's about making a sacred friend.
Yeah. It's about really entering into that intimate space where all of it falls away.
You know, as Rumi talks about, it's that plane where the right or wrongdoing disappear. Yeah.
You enter the field of non-duality. Yeah.
We know it's no coincidence I have it tattooed on my finger for a reason because I'm really committed to continuously being reminded of this field, that it exists, that everything is a matter of perspective. That's right.
That's right. And for people that don't know the Rumi's field, it's like beyond right and wrong, there is a field.
I will meet you there. And then that field is what is beyond the mind that is labeling and separating things.
It just is. And that is the deepest connection and the depth.
And I love that you bring people to that. I'm curious what you found in the book and in your research.
What are the barriers? Why are people not able to create that? I'm going to get there. Let me just tell you two stats first.
Okay. So suicidal ideation has been up by 30% in the last few years.
Especially with teens, right? Yeah. Which is so insane.
And now let me go to the one that has just come into my life in the last eight to nine months. This statistic is not in a book because I had turned in the book before I started my training as a chaplain at Cedars-Sinai.

And this one is the one that to me feels also close to the suicide radiation, so alarming because I'm constantly looking to, I have these visions of me being old and what does that look

like? And I think for someone who has struggled with suicide radiation, having visions of being

old, it's such a nervous system soothe. It's such a relaxing thought.
It's such a relaxing

I'm not going to such a relaxing thought. It's such a relaxing visual to see myself old and wrinkly and gray.
It's a very beautiful thought. And with that in mind, I looked at the research and it says that 40% of the elderly population in America reports that they have no social support.
Social support is friends or contact with family. 40%.
Is elderly 65 and over? And above. Yeah.
Whoa. Exactly.
Now, think about this. This is a statistic, right? And I was like, and I brought that thought, that number to the hospital.
Yeah. And I went around and I was like talking to different social workers and different people in the medical team.
And I was like, hey guys, do you think this statistic is right? That's only 40% of the elderly population that comes into the hospital doesn't have social support. They're like, no, it's more like 60 to 70.
Maybe we're up close to 80% of the elderly population has no social support. The only people who are there with them are their caretakers at their pain.
That, for me, is so mind-blowing. When people ask me, what is the hardest thing about caring for people who are sick and dying? I say it is hard.
It is heartbreaking to be there. It is heartbreaking to hold a patient's hand who died while you're holding a link, holding the patient's hand and the daughter who's there in the morning death of their mother.
Yes. But what's more, what creates more suffering to me is realize that the daughter of that mother that just died doesn't have anybody else to be there with her except for me.
Yeah. Except for me.
And someone else who's going through a really challenging oncology journey has a room full of flowers, but there's not a body there. Someone is on the phone who just got off of surgery.
They're on the phone, on speakerphone, call after call, but there's not a body there. This is what breaks my heart.
It's the fact that people are not prioritizing taking time out of their schedule of consumption and accumulation to be with another human being. Forgetting the inevitability will happen we're all are you know we're all sorry to sound so morbid and kind of you know nihilistic but we're all doomed we're all doomed to die yeah all of us will die it's inevitable you know it's inevitable yeah and we're not thinking of that yeah and because we're not thinking of that we're not prioritizing connection yeah we are always putting to the background.
Oh, tomorrow. I'll reach out to her tomorrow.
I'll come to your house to have tea. Now I'm going to come to your house to have tea.
You better. Yeah.
I wanted to connect with you. We've seen each other at parties a couple times.
And I was like, wow, you're always so, there's always something so gentle about you. I like people with the sweetness and gentle personality.
Thank you. Also, there's a spice to you.
You know, I i love that so it's like you know i'm gonna do your show and i will get to dance a little bit yeah yeah but this is me prioritizing not only getting the book out there but getting to spend time with you because it's someone that i want to nurture and someone that i want to be nurtured by so i think the biggest culprit of the world in regards to loneliness, it's we're prioritizing consumption. We're prioritizing feeling good in the moment.
Dopamine hit. Yep.
Exactly. And we're prioritizing accumulation.
Yeah. We want to accumulate, accumulate.
We want the accolades. We want the status.
We want the zip code. We want the car.
We want the whatever may be, the cheekbones, the lips, the boobs. You plug it in.
We want to accumulate stuff in a way that can showcase to the world that we are enough. That's right.
And there's no way of getting against that ego trap. Either people need to dance their dance or they need to see through it and either run faster or have the courage and willingness to do the deeper work.
Or have a cardiovascular disease and die with your mid-age crisis. And regret.
Exactly. And so much regret.
And that's one thing that I do bring about in the book too. When I'm talking about grief and the work in the hospital, sometimes when a patient is dying, there's two things.
Either I just meet them there and that's it. And I am the loving warmth presence in the room.
And that's all I have. Sometimes they're asking me, what do you do with someone in my position? And I say, look, I can just be here with you like this.
And I can prompt you with some ways to relate to what you're experiencing a different way or if you want we can do an unburdening practice and they're like what is that oh cool you know and then i'm like you know we can we can kind of go through the people in our sort of uh black list and we can do a forgiveness practice forgiveness prayer you know And, you know, to be honest, a lot of you don't opt into that. They, they question, tell me more.
Yeah. Tell me more.
Yeah. They want to know about it.
Yeah. They want to know, but they don't want to know.
I am one of my, my former best friends was a hospice nurse and she would say that the way you live is the way you die. We listened to her.
And so just like hearing, you know, but at least giving people another choice and maybe even being by themselves in that room. And then you come in with this beautiful energy and invitation that might just be the very thing that supports them in doing the work.
Who knows? So suffering has an intelligence to it. Yeah.
Suffering has an intelligence to it. Oh my God.
That's some wisdom right there. Thank you.
Yeah. So then we use it.
And so I'm curious, some of these barriers to connection, what have you, what have you found so far? Distraction. Yeah.
Like literally I talk about the sort of a, um, capitalistic trap of accumulation and consumption. And the one that I see the most is we're so deeply debilitated by our distraction.
It's so insatiable. We don't want to feel what it's like to be in our bodies.
We don't want to feel the discomfort that comes from being human. It's painful to be human.
Can we just accept it and just navigate the grief the same way that we navigate the joy? Can we literally learn that? We don't have to only smile when it's sunny out there. Can we smile when it's raining? Can we smile when there's thunderstorms? Can we smile when we can't even get out of the house because there's so much snow? We are robbing each other of our full humanity because we only want to live in the sunshine.
We only want to live and engage with happiness. And it's so not the truth of being human.
It comes with all full spectrum. Day leads into night.
Summer leads into fall into winter. Inhale, exhale, all of it.
Exactly. Yes.
So there's the duality and then there's what's beyond it and and you know i'm hearing you say distraction which with social media it's so easy to do that i'm pointing to that uh-huh i bet because this is it's so easy to have that dopamine hit at the any moment we want it and i think and i love that you i saw this in some of the research you know helping people see in the dark helping people i helping people. I love that you said that.
I'm like, bless you, Saul. Because so many people in our culture are avoiding feeling their feelings because they've never learned how to feel them.
And so why don't we learn this in grade school? This is a big part of the podcast to help empower people to be like, I literally feel like I teach my coaches to, here's a surfboard. Here's how to ride your, the emotions to not get tumbled by them so that they can better navigate it, empower their clients to do it.
And so I think if people understood that avoiding doesn't work, it makes it bigger. It postpones it.
And you have to take it with you. So why not prioritize actually unpacking all of the rocks that you're holding in your backpack to live lighter and freer and more youthful, younger, like sooner.
So I love that you are a stand for this. And I read something you said, like good vibes only creates more loneliness.
Can you unpack that for us? It's technically this that we're just talking about. It's like good vibes only leads to loneliness because what happens if I bring you my grief and then what do you do? What's something that's so common that happens? Your mom's in a better place.
My mom just died and people have the audacity to say these really unsettling, unnerving, hurtful things at the end, but it's all like with pure intention, you know, where they will do, they will say things like, your mother's in a better place. Her suffering is over now.
Trying to take it away from you. Exactly.
Instead of meeting you in it. Can we just be two people uncomfortable together? Yeah.
Can you just hold a little bit of the grief with me? Yeah. For as long as it takes.
And we know the moment we sit with it, what happens? It normally naturally organically changes.

That's right. The problem is we're not patient enough with anything.
We're not patient enough with our feelings, which is our utmost intimate relationship. This is the main thing.
It's like our inability to just be patient with change. Yeah.
You know, and I noticed this good vibes only thing so much because during the first few months on social media guests but also friends will say to me um that i i had higher hopes for your vocabulary you know they would say the most outrageous things why because they were uncomfortable they thought if they fixed my feeling they would feel better that's right so we can both be feeling better but there's no feeling better without feeling that's right you know You know, you got to be real to heal. You got to feel it.
That's right. A hundred percent.
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today. And so I am imagining people are like, well, what do I say to somebody that is grieving, you know, or, you know, in, in a, yeah.
What, what do people say? Because I think say nothing, sit there, just say, I'm sitting with you. I'm right here, shoulder to shoulder.
Or instead of you sitting there, say, I'm going to make your chicken soup. Go to their kitchen quietly and make the soup and come back.
Or you go to their bathroom. You see that it's a fucking mess.
Clean their bathroom. Make the bed.
You know? Or don't say, this is one of the ones that I find the worst. It's like, I'm here for you, whatever you need.
Why don't you just go on your app and buy a gift basket of some ginger shots, of some soup, of some bone broth, of some chocolate, of some kombucha, send it to their house with a little card thinking of you. You're not alone in your pain.
You are not alone in your pain. Say that.
No thinking of, uh, I'm here for whatever you need thoughts and prayers. Please don't do any of that.
All of this for the, for the one who was mourning, it's hurtful. It's awful because you are literally making it, uh, making it something that they shouldn't be in it, but it's something that's inevitable for all of us to feel, you know? And the more we postpone it, the greater that barrier builds, and then we're going to have to face it at some point.
So I'm a big fan of digesting some of the energy. So stretching the capacity to just be with it.
So right now, one of my practices with all the eclipses happening and all the different energy, I am just, my intention is to pause before I want to react, to sit with the sensation that feels like I want to act, but just to breathe, just to be with it, and then let it integrate into my nervous system before responding or move. I know dance is a big part of your healing methodology, which is so fun and playful.
And, and I am a big fan of somatic work as well. I got licensed as a clinical somatic psychotherapist.
I love moving it through the body and I, we should dance together by the way, that would be so good. So good.
But tell, tell us some of the practices to kind of digest that energy so we can actually start. We don't have to have that damn build up.
We, we can feel freer. Cause it's building.
It is. It's building.
And it's, if we're going to use this sort of a, a funny little joke in America, it's like you have a U-Haul truck attached to you and it's filled with shit, you know? So one thing that I think people underestimate is the power of using your hand to put in the body where you feel the feeling. Where in the body is it feeling alive? Is it in your chest? Is it in your stomach? Is it towards the left of your body? Is it in your throats, in the back of your head? Where is it? So we start with the hand.
The warmth of the hand and your attention with the hand will start to move the energy that we call tension, that we call emotion, that we call feeling. Simple.
As you move through that, the next stage is for you to do it with eyes closed, without the hand.

I could travel.

Like right now I'm looking at you, but I'm bringing my attention to the place in my body where I feel a little bit of buzzing tension. Right there.
Left side of my corner. I feel a little bit of tension there.
You know? This is what we arrive at. Yeah.
It's to be able to feel our feelings as we are living our lives, to be able to name what we feel when we feel in the context of with other people. So often we are blaming somebody else for how we feel in our bodies.
We're not taking responsibility for what's going on here. But I want to trace the feeling thing.
Yeah. The feeling tone, the experience of feeling the need for connection, which is something that I opened in a book about, which is something that I was blown away about the research.
And I want to talk about dance and I want to talk about all the things. Yeah, we'll do it all.
We'll go there. But I want to talk about the feeling for connection, the need for intimacy, the need for friendship, for deep bonds.
It's something that I didn't know. It's scientifically proven that we are required to have friendship the same way that we are required to eat, get access to sun, water, sleep, some of the biological basic needs.
Friendship is one. I didn't know.
I thought that was just like a psychosomatic spiritual tool for regulating ourselves into feeling better. But it's actually a vital nutrient for the well-being of our bodies for the relaxation of our minds for the openness of our heart is connection and i was like oh my goodness why are we not teaching this why are our kids not being trained in this why are we allowing social media and technology to rob our society from connecting with each other this is the the part that I'm like, wait, this is so, to me, mind blowing.

So when we experience the need for connection,

which strikes in a body the same way as a cue for hunger.

Listen to these words.

These are not my words.

This is scientific evidence that we have in the book.

When you feel the need for friendship, what do you often do?

Not you, because I know you got your shit together. But the listener, what do you often do? Masturbate, drink, smoke a cigarette, social media, watch another show on Netflix.
Exactly, shop. You know, what do you do? Eat the sugar, whatever it is.
No shame in the game. You're speaking to someone who's done it all, girl.
Never forget, I smoked crack when I was 14 years old. So I know my way around distraction.
I know what it's like to feel like being in a spot is an unbearable experience. So I need to do anything I can to distract myself from being here.
Now, in the premises of where we're at in the world, we cannot keep going without friends, without intimacy. So when you feel the need for connection, don't think of it as like, oh, you're so needy.
You're weak. You're not independent enough.
You're not self-reliant enough. All these independent, self-reliant, these are all tools from a toxic, tools, no, I should say, symptoms is better language, better word.
Symptoms of a toxic capitalistic society. Capitalism has good things, but there is a toxic quality to it, which is what is exacerbating this isolation that we're in.
Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense. Yeah.
And I love that you were sharing some ways to start dropping in to feel the connection that we're longing for. And when you say to put it on your hand on that part of your body, I know, and I'll just give some words to what your brilliance is, is that it will help hold the attention.
If your mind is really racing, feeling it, maybe the heat or the pressure starts bringing your attention into it. And then also then you're saying the next step is to let go of the hand and just still feel what's there.
Cause then we're dropping the sensations deeper into the body rather than the mind, which is where the problems are created. And so feeling it in the body to let it start moving through.
And I know that most of like the heavy stuff happens in the throat, the heart, and the deepest stuff is really the gut. And in some ways it's safer to feel in our arms and hands, wherever it is, it's good to start doing some somatic tracking, because if you are in your body, then nothing else can get in there.
And so not picking up different energetics. So really learning that this is a safe place.
And I think the more that people feel safe, the easier it is to embody. Yeah, exactly.
And thanks for naming that too. And I want to add something to that too.
Our awareness has a quality of warmth. When we have anything facing warmth, what happens? It changes.
It transforms. It softens.
So the big ball of of of anger in your belly as as a compost you bring a little bit of of heat to a pile of compost now you have the greatest fertilizer now you're sprinkling the garden of your inner world with the greatest fertilizer so you can whatever seed you decide to plant as soon as that emotion passes through you and out of you, it is going to be grown in a beautiful new ground in ways that you never even thought possible. So keeping that in mind, no feelings too big that can hurt you.
And the quality of your awareness has warmth. We know what it's like to be seen by somebody who's really seeing you.
It's the same thing you're offering yourself. You're offering to your feelings.
You're offering to your emotions. You're offering to your sensations.
And arrive at a point where you can be with them for what they are, a passing sensation in the body without the need to say, these feelings are good. These feelings are bad.
Go beyond the dualistic approach to our inner world.

Arrive at a point where you're no longer holding on to the good feelings and pushing away the bad feelings because that's no way to live.

It just recycles it.

Exactly.

And people ask me, so what do you teach?

I'm like, I teach freedom.

I don't teach happiness because I don't think it's about being happy.

I think it's about being open.

And freedom comes with this openness.

So we can hang with the grief and the gratitude, with the despair and the inspiration. It's a constant set of paradox.
That's what being in a human body is. And the paradox is ironically, when we feel the thing that we're uncomfortable with, we ironically then feel comfortable, right? It's like, if I feel the thing that is painful, it actually leads me to what is pleasurable.
It's the, it's the last place that we'd be willing to look opens us to what we deeply desire. And so I want to just give a context to this because if somebody is feeling suicidal or really has big T trauma, it's really important to work with a trained specialist when you're doing this work, because if you go outside the window of tolerance, that can lead, that can lead to more dysregulation.
So it's just good that people, you know, find a trauma specialist, a licensed psychotherapist. I teach a lot of coaches.
And so this type, that type of traumatic work is not good for coaches. Coaches is more about performance-based.
So I just want to give people context. It is life-changing work.
It is so powerful, so important, especially given the current state of where teens, elders, most of our society is. A lot of this research was in America, you said? Yeah, all in America, unfortunately.
Yeah, and that may also just be a reflection of, and I think we can keep learning from other cultures. But it makes me, so I want to just leave that as like a caveat for people.
It is worth your time and energy. It does not have to be hard.
You can learn to surf the waves and get really good at it. So you don't get tumbled and, you know, having places, like having books, having resources, having community, you can drop into other people's communities too, to, to be available for people that have intimacy within themselves and to feel safe, you know, to nurture new friendships and learn the tools for ourselves.
And so share with us, I know we did the somatic tracking, share with us if there's like another tool that you have found powerful or that you want to give to people. I mean, yes.
Thank you, my love. The somatic tracking is game changer.
I want to name this because I had spent about five years in my path, in my spiritual path. I had been to India about 10 years ago to the date.
It was 10 years ago in March. So it was 2024, excuse me, 2014, March, 2014.
But I want to name the tool and I want to bring it back to my own experience. I had spent five years of my journey doing everything I could to distract myself from feeling.
And they were very holy practices. I was meditating on the feeling of the breath.
I was meditating as myself as the deity. I was chanting the mantra.
I was running. I was eating a vegan diet.
You know, I was, uh, you know, get working on my sobriety. I was doing all the holy things.
Anything I could to run away from feeling. And then it was one morning, I was living in Brooklyn in Bushwick, and the feeling came, the same old feeling, the same old friend, shame.
Left side of the belly, boom, pulsing, dull pain, hot. It's just there.
It has like an energy of like a creature that wants to like come out. And the stories wired with that feeling were, you suck.
You're a bad person. You shouldn't be here.
Why didn't you just end this? These were some of the daily stories that went with it. And then this morning I said, you know what? I'm going to do the thing that I've read in Buddhist scriptures.
I'm going to sit with the feeling and I'm going to let go of the story. I'm going to literally bring my attention to the body and I'm going to disentangle myself from the story.
So when we're talking about somatic tracking, we're bringing attention to the body. what we're asking you to do is to not engage with the stories.
They're hardwired with the feelings. Every feeling calls forth a story.
And when we engage with the story for us, it's, it's a way to like, it literally intensifies the feeling and calls for new feelings. And it's a way for us to sort of create a self-feeling narrative, self-feeling prophecy for us to stay in a miserable state.
It's also a distraction from feeling it. Exactly.
We keep thinking about it rather than feeling it. Exactly.
Yeah. So in that moment, I said, I'm not going to leave the house until I touch the feeling, at least touch the feeling.
So I brought my awareness to the place in my body right there. And I just remember as soon as I touched it, the more and more intense and I just kept I just kept disentangling myself from the stories and placing it on the feeling and slowly slowly it was it was literally like I said earlier like a creature started to move through my body through the back of my neck and out through the crown of my head not feeling not and I'm not saying that it's always this kind of snake-like feeling when I'm just walking at Whole Foods and I feel a big feeling.
No, or I'm sitting here and I feel a big feeling. It's not the experience.
It's because it was the first time I felt my feelings. So I remember that as a historical, monumental place for me in my healing journey.
So tracking, somatic tracking, and the mantra that we work with in the book, which is so talked about in Pema Chodron's work and so talked about in Buddhist teachings and Buddhist psychology, it's very much about let go of the stories and deal with the feelings. That's right.
Literally, just that simplicity of that. That's right.
Whenever you feel a big feeling in the body, or actually, oftentimes, we're not even aware of the body. We're so disconnected from the soul.
We're so disconnected from the body. A good way to know if there's a big feeling in the body that you're not tending to, look at the quality of your mind.
Can you see poetry around you? Can you still feel the sun kissing your skin? Can you still feel a look and experience the leaves dancing in the wind? Can you still experience people's humanities? Can you still see beauty in other people? If you don't have access to any of this wide, beautiful perspective, there's something in your body that's calling you to love, that's calling you to breathe's calling you to a deeper presence and the moment you touch that and you be with it without the stories look around again to the same place that you were like oh this place is ugly these people suck look around there again i guarantee you that beauty will be surrounding you because that's what that's what happens as soon as you as soon as you process a big feeling that's right you. This expansiveness of perspective, this widening of our lands leads us to see poetry, leads us to see beauty where it wasn't before.
So when you talk about a tool, this is like the number one of all. And obviously, in my work with the Somatic Activated Healing, which is the dance practice, you know, that

it's changed my life.

Yeah.

So really dancing on its own is wonderful.

It's entertaining.

It's fun.

It boosts all these great neurochemicals.

It does all.

It does amazing.

However, if you dance with somatic awareness, then it's not only fun, honey, but it's deeply

cathartic.

It's deeply healing.

You are literally unburdening yourself of all the emotions that have been residing in your body. So every twist, every turn, every stretch, everything you do on that floor, it's the past dancing itself through you and out of you.
So there's a safe space for the past to express itself. There's a safe place for the anger, the rejection, the grief, the insecurities, the shame, the hopelessness, all the stuff that we're like, I don't want to talk about that.
I don't want that to come up ever. There's a safe place for it all to be expressed.
And you are so self-aware that you can track. And I want to highlight some of the things that you said to help people make sure that they hear it.
Because there's, when you feel into a sensation, there are a lot of thoughts that go with it. So what I heard you say is if you're not tuned into your body, cause that's not a habit, you know, put a rock in your shoe and start to like drop your awareness down.
But you can also just check the quality of your mind. You don't trust your mind when it's in a dysregulated state because it's just going to find all the problems.
So if you're not watching poetry on your movie of your, your scene, it just means that there's some part inside that's looking for tending to, and you want to breathe into that part without a story, which is key. It is so important.
And to give people hope that maybe they're in the beginning of going in. And I always say there's three stages of awareness.
There's being essentially unaware or not aware. The second stage is, oh my God, all I have is problems.
And that's oftentimes because it's been built up. So there is a phase of like clearing out the dam.
And then the third stage and keep going because usually in the second stage, people are like, oh my God, it was better when I, you know, it was better when I was naive. And so I want to go back to being naive, but keep going because the third stage is there being either integration or space between you and the sensation, you and the story so that you can wake up beyond it.
And so I imagine, cause I know this work and I know you starting to presence and feel that energy in your core started to integrate it, started to lighten it.

Is that right? A hundred percent.

And the next time shame came to visit, which naturally it will.

Yeah.

And at some point they won't visit you so often.

Yes.

You know, which is so beautiful.

Because what happens is we, when we feel a big feeling in our bodies like, and we have those stories, we tend to do self-destructive things, you know? And if we do self-destructive things, what happens? More shame comes. So when we remove the self-destructive mechanisms, because we felt the shame without the stories, we weren't propelled or there was no, there was no catapult to the self-destructive things of like, um, overeating, over smoking or whatever, plug in your distractive tool.
Um, you're not, you know, the quality of your current state is based on the quality of your previous actions, right? The law of cause and effect, also known as karma, the way we feel right now is based on what, what has, what's come before us. And some of this stuff, we have to be honest, we have to look because the shame that I felt, it's important to name, it didn't start with me.
That's right. It did not start with me.
I did a TEDx talk that's really named around that. It didn't start with me because the way I feel in my body and perhaps the way a lot of the listeners maybe are feeling right now didn't start with you.
So in the book, we do look at the importance of knowing that the esoteric data talks about previous lives. The scientific data talks about trauma lingering through chemistry.
So everyone in your lineage, the abuse and the abuser, say what? Epigenetics. Exactly.
The abuse and the abuser, all in our lineage, we all have these as family members, are all living inside of us. Same thing if we look at esoteric data, natural love karma.
We can see that maybe previous iterations of us, previous versions of you, previous versions of I, have done things that created harmful consequences. So we don't show up earth side with a blank slate.
I think when you realize that, and I know it goes against some of the biggest mystical traditions in the world, but to me, it felt such a relief to be able to say, wow, the way I'm feeling, the way I'm relating to the world didn't start with me. I exacerbated and I cemented it by following up, by engaging with it, by reacting to it.
But it didn't start with me. The feeling that there's something fundamentally bad or broken or deficient about who I am, It's not something that I have created independently from my own side alone.
It's not self-existing independently of everything else and everyone else. It's such a, to me.
Yeah, really, for sure. And I think it's important to do some of the work around lineage.
So we understand the context from which we are born into. Not only like, your mom experiencing when she was when you were in the womb like there's so much around recent it used to be up until age seven so much is set in our subconscious but it's really from what i'm hearing and it's i don't can't verify right now but from what i'm hearing it's womb up to three years old and so and and things can go so much further epigenetics.
And I just want to name if people are self-harming in some way, I want to offer a compassionate lens because that's the best way you've known how to take care of yourself. So it's like, instead of saying, Oh my God, I, I am, I'm addicted and I'm all these things.
Cause that's the mind. It's not even you.
That's the mind trying to wrong you so that you change. And if the best ways that we've learned is to hurt ourselves in these addictive or distracting ways, it's like, okay, so I'm listening to a podcast like this so I can start looking at things in a different way.
So finding, just like you said with suicidality, it's like, this is how I'm trying to stop the pain. This isn't another story that I use to shame myself because the moment you can see that you can have compassion for the critic, the critic is looking for compassion.
So just offering ourselves that compassion can get us out of the right wrong dualistic narrative. We see from a higher non-dual perspective to say what, this is what is, and how can I change my life from here? How can I offer myself compassion? The other thing I want to mention is not having an agenda with this work.
So not having an agenda because these parts of ourselves, this energy can feel if we're trying to love it so that it leaves, because that's not real love. And so if we can really bring acceptance to them, they settle, just like you said, with a friend, you're not going to be like, you're grieving.
I'm going to try and take it away. I'm going to get you something.
So you stop. It's like really sitting with ourselves and our friends in the pain with an open heart, with full acceptance.
You brought something so beautiful to the table, which I love. I want to name this too.
With self-destructive tendencies, we have to realize it is a self-destructive tendency, but it didn't start with you. No one starts self-harming from their side independently of everything else and everyone else.
Yeah. We're not born with it.
Exactly. And then here's the thing.
We start harming ourselves as a symptom of something that was broken in relationship. So what's broken in relationship has to be healed in community.
This is the foundation of the book. This is the backbone of this new book is reminding ourselves that none of the ways we think, feel, respond are things that were, you know, self-existing from our own sides.
Everything we think and feel and do, it's all relational. Even the Buddha's enlightenment was relational.
You know, like we have to reflect on that. That it was, that it may seem like this isolated, independent experience, but it wasn't.
You know, when the demons came to visit him at the night of his enlightenment, what did he say? How do you know you're free? He says, Mother Nature is my witness. That, we can't forget that.
And I think a lot of Western Buddhists are practicing within a pure lineage, within the context of more tradition, right? Let's use that. I don't like the word pure lineage either, but just more traditional approach, which I'm such a non-traditional person, but behind closed doors, you know, she's very Orthodox.
I'm very traditional. Like I follow a lineage.
I follow a guru. I go to the place.
I go to the monastery. I go to the cave.
You, you know, do the things. I have the ritual, like all the things.
So it's important. And those are helpful too.
Those practices, those rituals. Yeah.
Yeah. Cause I can even see some people that are further along in their journey, judging themselves for being like, I do these very regimented things.
And those are actually really helpful too. There may be a stage that it just, that drops, but the, you know, cause I can hear somebody saying, well, I changed my addiction for, you know, shopping to meditating or for inner work.
It's an upgrade. Yeah.
So just compassion, compassion, compassion. And I'm the same boat.
I have only been able to achieve the crazy things that I've been able to achieve and not to talk about achievement or accolades, but because I shifted my OCD and my addictive compulsive behavior towards liberation, I am seeking to become free. That's the goal of my life.
That's the purpose of my day. That's the purpose of every moment.
That's the purpose of every single breath is how free can I get? It isn't about being high anymore as Ram Ram Dass would say so beautifully. You want to get high or you want to get free? Because it's a different road.
They all lead home, but one of them will take you a long way around the mountain over and over, but there's one that's a straight shot, the straight shooter, liberation, freedom. That's's what i'm seeking you know so i want to remind people that like we can try to do the psychosomatic spiritual work by ourselves and you have to 50 of the equation of liberation is that sit down in a meditation cushion in the morning and have a forgiveness practice between you and your story, you and your past.
Wonderful. Do a somatic tracking.
Beautiful. Now, you want to see if your somatic tracking and your forgiveness is actually working.
Can you track your feeling in your body when you're relating to your mother-in-law? Can you track the feeling in your body when you are at the coffee shop? Can you trace the feeling in your body when you are feeding your whatever may be, whatever people you're engaged in? Plug in the annoying person for you in your life. This is when the somatic tracking, the somatic realization has become actualized.
This is when the realization changes you and you're forever changed. That's the thing that happened to me in Brooklyn that day.
When I had the experience of feeling the feeling up and out of me, every single, every single, no, I shouldn't say that, maybe like seven out of every 10 feelings, you know? Or maybe I should say maybe six or five out of every feeling that I have, five out of 10, you know, so half of the time I'm radically aware. I can be driving and tracking.

I can be washing dishes and tracking.

I can be showering and tracking.

I can be taking a shit and tracking what's going on in my body, in my emotional body.

This is the work.

Now, can I do this behind closed doors?

Good girl.

Wonderful.

Now, can you do this out in the world?

This is the work where the liberation becomes no longer just between you and you and something that's kind of intellectual, but something that's embodied. That's right.
A big reason why I moved from therapy to coaching, and I liked transformation and practical, so spiritual and practical. To me, a real healing is a change of behavior.
And I know you say test your material, which is the same thing. It's like, how do we, we had this healing and how do we live it? What's different in our lives now? And I jam on this all day with you.
I just want to ask you, cause I know. Can we still, can we, can we just for a second, you said something that just came up to me.
It's like, pay attention to how you're living. Are you avoiding people, places and experiences because they trigger you? Yes.
They are. Are you doing everything you can to protect your peace? Because if you're protecting your peace, I'm so sorry, my darling, but you will create a lonely life.
Yeah. Because even your best friends, your partner, your community, everyone that you deem as beautiful, and I love them, they will go off the script that you wrote for them in your mind.
Yeah. They will not say the line you wrote for them in your mind when you want them to say and how you want them to say.
The nice people will become mean and unkind. It's natural that everything changes.
This is why you have to bring the forgiveness that happened in the bedroom, in the protection of your glass tower, of your home, to the street, to the friends, to everyone. That's where the rubber hits the road.
And that's when it's integrated and really lived. Yeah.
And I think, you know, triggers are teachers. So I think that I used to want to protect my kids or my clients from being triggered.
And then I got triggered. I remembered, I'm like, oh damn, this is a huge opportunity to get free.
Let me actually allow this fully because real freedom isn't saying yes to everything, not avoiding and

living in a monastery. I was the same with you.
I'm like, I wanted to live in Bali, which I love Bali, but I could feel there was a part of me that was a cop-out because this was like my Disneyland. This was like my ultimate wellness space.
And I will still go and love that. But for me, PhD version is living in LA and living a true and deep life with my heart and my mind open.
shit girl I. I feel like this is the thing I needed to love you more because it's so true.
That was the exact feeling I had in Bali. I was like, I can't do this long term.
It's like people don't really care about other people. And I'm being a generalist now and I'm being an essentialist, which is not my style really, but just in the space of us talking about this I was like wait it's so much it's so hedonistic it's so much about holding on to feeling good it's so much about holding on to pleasure it's so much about keeping the pleasure going so one thing to the next to the next and Bali offers you that but I was like hey this ain't for me honey like me, honey.
Like, uh, uh, I can't. Yeah.
Like I'm just not into it. You know, there was a season that I really loved running away from my body and into distractions to pleasure constantly, but.
And there's a place, there's a place for like a pause and to be nourished and all of that, but just being honest with ourselves when we're it's, when it's used as a distraction and when it's, when it's just genuinely a time off or just to enjoy your pleasure. I want to hear in the book, you talk about the spiritually we equation.
Yeah. What is this? So it's kind of like what I started talking about.
Okay. So 50% of the work has to be done between you and your story.
Yes. You and your body, you and your heart.
Yeah. Like rupture in a relationship needs to be

healed in the relationship kind of thing. Yes.
But let me get to it. Let me get to that.
Let's

say you had a rupture in relationship, right? And you say, I need some time and you don't,

you don't engage back for now. Instead of, let's say you're doing something really advanced now

and you say, okay, I'm losing the plot. I'm now seeing you as a bad person.
I'm now feeling like

a bad person. Pause this when you say your secret word, pineapple.
And you guys both go away or you

Thank you. that your partner doesn't have that kind of power to place the anger inside of you so you're able to be like oh this anger this huge anger it has to be historical because it doesn't match the context of my reality my partner showed up five minutes late and i am a rage monster yeah wow.
Okay. So if my emotions don't match the context of reality, there's something that is asking for my love, something that's asking for my care.
So this is important. Are we overreacting or underreacting? When mom dies, do we numb and we're like, I'm fine.
Or when we get a promotion or we get to go on a big trip, I'm fine. Or a small thing happens and the rage dragon comes out.
Overreaction, underreaction. Those are all sort of a, I'm going to use a word that comes very loaded, but for the context of the book and the context of what I teach, it uh hysterical you know this word has been used to weaponize women anyways but the point of it in aa this the the grand beautiful mantra of aa if it's hysterical it's historical that is something that i bring about on the book because when we are relating to other people we really get get to know what is hysterical about us, points us to what's historical about us.
So when you remove yourself, because you said pineapple and you went to the bedroom and you're like, wow, this anger is so huge. It does not match the context of reality.
This anger does not match what just happened to me and my partner. Okay, cool.
Let me be with the anger. And you're just able to track it and slowly, slowly the anger passes.
You're soft in your face and you're able to go to your partner. Okay, cool.
Let me be with the anger. And you're just able to track it.
And slowly, slowly, the anger passes. You're soft in your face.
And you're able to go to your partner and say, hey, I'm so sorry I overreacted. That was like out of context.
My bad. I'm working on this anger.
I know this anger didn't start with me. I know this anger predates me perhaps.
So let me work on it. Wonderful.
Cool. So that is where you have tracked, done the self-revelation work, able to breathe with it and be with it.
Now, outside of the friendship, outside of the relationship to the husband, when you see somebody, when you experience a triggering experience out there, can you relate to it in a different way? Can the experience that will normally lead you to a hysterical state bring you into presence? This is you know that the work is working so 50 of the work has to be done between you and you so you press your pineapple button going away and then having that change that transformation the shoulders soften the chin becomes parallel to the ground the eye gaze softens the breath deepens all the beautiful things that happen physiologically. And now test the material.
The 50% of the equation is that, is to test the material. That's right.
And I love how you have them do it inside and then out. That is the only way that it happens.
There's just so many gems in this book. I just want to say thank you for coming on I'm being so vulnerable and real.
I love your, your spiciness and your flavor and your depth. And I know this book, I know that you are so proud of this and that I'm hearing all of the gems and wisdom.
Where can people find it? How do they get their hands on it? Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Everywhere. Everywhere books are sold.
But to be honest, go to Amazon and leave a review. That's it.
Or anywhere that you buy the book, leave a review. It's like the more people that do the work, I know one of your missions is to do it individually so it can support a collective shift.
And I'm a stand for you in this work. So I just want to encourage people to, yes, keep reading, keep diving into the book, getting to communities, have these deeper conversations.
Thank you, Saul, for who you are. What a gift.
Thank you for sharing all your wisdom here. Thank you, my love.
Remember, community is the cure. Yeah.
You know, at the end of the day, when you are lying there lifeless at your last, you're dead. Yeah.
You know, and people are coming to your funeral. What would your eulogies sound? You know, who's filling up the room? You know, something I learned really beautifully, something aspirational.
It's my mom's funeral. Really showed me, this is what I want my funeral to be.
A place where people are reciting stories, singing songs about her and about how she lived. And it was one person after the next sharing these beautiful points of contact that they had with my mom.
Your mom helped me in this thing. She did that thing.
She showed up in this way. She was so loving.
Yeah. All of this.
So at the end of the day, when it all comes to an end, which is inevitable, going to happen to all of us, how do we want those last few days, the last few months, and that last moment to sound like, to feel like, you know? Community is what's going to get you through the other side, you know? Yeah. And after doing this work in the hospital, my discipline and my effort to friendship has already been wonderful.
That's why I felt qualified to, to write this book, but it's intensified to another level because there is nothing like carrying your pain alone. It's, it's really hard and you don't have to because in community you can unburden, you know, there's a, a famous, um, saying that says, and I'm going to close here, says joy shared is doubled.
Sorrow shared is halved. So this is beautiful, you know, and science proves that.
Yeah. That when you bring about a traumatic experience as it happens to someone in that very moment, there is a co-regulation.
There's an entrainment. You can soften or you can regulate, you can bring someone into a state of ease.
So we can't do it alone. Yeah, that's where I want to live.
Thank you. Yeah.
And I hear that we don't have to do it alone. And we're not meant to we're social beings.
Yeah. Thank you.
Such important work. I'm so happy that you are a voice in the world for this.
Thank you. You too.
Oh, my goodness. Thank you.
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world, starting with yourself.
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