020: Reclaiming Your Body as a Compass: Exploring Embodiment, Spirituality, and Healing, with Derek Sheahan
This is a generated episode transcript from Real Food Mental Health; it may contain errors.
Speaker 2
[00.00.00]
You're listening to Real Food Mental Health with Cody Cox. I had a great time talking with Derek
Shahan because I was hoping to find a guest like him who could speak more to the spiritual, not
necessarily the religious side of mental health, and he just happened to be the perfect guest for that.
Derek is the founder of the lenses that liberate a transformative model for embodied awakening and
personal growth. Derek brings over 23 years of deep experience in meditation, somatic work, and
therapeutic practice. His journey includes thousands of hours spent in meditation and training with some
of the world's most influential teachers, including RJ Shanti, Reggie Ray, Peter Fenner and Eckhart
Tolle. Derek's work is also rooted in extensive training in integrative psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy, and
somatic modalities like hokum and post-traumatic growth. Derek blends wisdom from many traditions to
help individuals and groups uncover their full potential and experience true freedom. His approach is
deeply integrative, combining spiritual, psychological, and somatic experiences into a cohesive, life
changing experience. Real quick, before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to remind you that last
week on March 3rd, I released a bonus episode on the Nutritional Assessment Questionnaire. This is a
service that I offer. Normally it's $99, and at least for the month of March, I'm offering it for free for
anybody who's interested. The nutritional assessment is really just kind of a quiz that you can take. It
doesn't require setting an appointment with me, but if you're curious to fill this out and see what kind of
data it generates, go to Beaver Creek wellness.com/nutritional-assessment. I will put a link in the show
notes. And one more quick note. Next week I'm releasing a very special episode for podcast Thon, which
is a worldwide event to benefit charities. My guest next week is a obviously a very special person that
I'm so excited to talk to because I really admire her and she is a very good resource for sound nutrition
information. So if nutrition is your thing, it probably is. If you're listening to my show, make sure you
stay tuned and don't miss next week's episode. Welcome to the Real Food Mental Health podcast, where
we explore the powerful connection between mental and physical health. My name is Cody Cox, a
holistic nutritional psychotherapist, and I'm here to guide you on a journey to true wellness mind, body,
and spirit. If you're tired of quick fixes and want real solutions that address the root cause, you're in the
right place. Let's. Let's get started on your path to lasting wellness.
Speaker 1
[00.03.00]
Welcome back to Real Food Mental Health with Cody Cox. Today's guest is Derrick Cheyenne. Derrick,
tell me about what you do.
Speaker 2
[00.03.08]
Yeah. Happy to tell you a little bit about it. Um, I'm a psycho spiritual guide, so that involves really, I
would say essentially the bridge between psychology and spirituality for me as the body. So bringing
people into this deep sense of their own awareness, moment to moment of the body. And so there's the
basics of that. I often a lot of my work is involved with therapists helping them avoid or if they're under
teetering on the edge of burnout, exhaustion, helping them to commit to their bodies in that way. But
also, I would say more advanced practice is called uncalled for. People coming into these deeper layers
of the body, recognizing that the body has these different archetypal layers. What I refer to in my work
lenses that liberate these seven different archetypes, that the more we can inhabit our body, the more we
can notice them. So I would say is the blend of two those both different threads, you know.
Speaker 1
[00.03.57]
So you work with a lot of therapists? Interesting.Speaker 2
[00.04.00]
I do. Yeah. I'd say 80, 90% of my work these days is with psychotherapists.
Speaker 1
[00.04.05]
And that is very much needed because as a psychotherapist myself, yeah, it's so easy to burn out in the
work that we do. Right?
Speaker 2
[00.04.13]
Yeah. So I have about seven years myself of training in somatic psychotherapy, different forms of that.
So that was a lot of my background before I got involved in, I would say, deeper spirituality in my early
20s when I was in Ireland. But I had a few years first of involved in that world, and then I did, I think I
was 22 maybe when I did my first ten days silent retreat, and it was just such a game changer for
relationship with the body that I went down that route and lived in monasteries and did a lot of practice
like that for a lot of my early to mid 20s especially. And, uh, yeah. And then kind of came back around to
that world and integrating it. So I agree with you. I think there's such a need or people actually have no
idea quality very often therapists, that there's a way you can work with people where it feels like you're
unmoving inside of yourself and at the same time, you're the best version of yourself. Most therapists
have no clue that that exists, whereas in so many eastern traditions and practices, they'll call that one way
or doing without doing. There's a whole tradition of understanding that, and I feel like that's my mission
in life in a certain way, is to teach therapists. There's a way of inhabiting their bodies, of being so present.
As I said, they're able to stay still at the core of themselves and still express all of the gifts they've learned
and everything else they've cultivated in life. You know,
Speaker 1
[00.05.32]
that's a difficult thing to achieve. Or if someone has achieved it, it's difficult to maintain. And I think it's
because of just our Western cultures, like we we think about, especially in the United States. We work so
much and we're so focused on the physical world that we we tend to lose sight of spirituality altogether.
And so what would be one of the first things that you do with, if it were a psychotherapist or somebody
else who who seems to be struggling with that kind of thing?
Speaker 2
[00.06.05]
Yeah. Well, and let me gauge your listeners as well as we're speaking in a very simple practice that we're
you can follow along with us as we're talking, but really following along with your own body. And the
first practice I normally teach people is paying attention to the felt sense of the hands. So just as you're
listening, see if you can tune in and away, even just for the first ten 20s or so, giving us much of your
attention, just the very simple, tingling, throbbing sensations of your hands. But every way they're
presenting right now. So that's very often where I start with people, is just getting people into that place
where we're back in touch with the very simple feeling of being us in our hands. I can speak in a minute
why? I talk about the hands above other places to start, but if you like. But then starting to pay attention
from that place. And I really recommend this to anybody who's listening, that it's you're really getting the
essence of what I want to say here is what I call 7030 awareness, where you're paying attention at least
70% of your attention as you're listening is staying with the felt sense of yourself. And nothing Cordier is
saying today is taking more than 30% of your attention. Like, see if you can listen in that rhythm. And
strangely, paradoxically, if you can start to do that, you actually have way more bandwidth in that 30% to
engage, to understand, to digest. If we can put ourselves first, not as an ego structure or psychologicalself, but as the actual felt sense presence of ourselves. If we can put ourselves first in that way, we really
are putting things in the right place. And so if there's one essential thing I'd like to convey to anybody
listening today, that's it. That by putting ourselves back in that order, that 7030 awareness, we can come
everything else in our life can start to come into a relationship in a different way around that.
Speaker 1
[00.08.03]
That makes me think of this might actually be outdated information at this point, but it makes me think of
the fact that they once said that we only use up to 10% of our brains.
Speaker 2
[00.08.15]
Right. I've even heard 3% of times. Yeah.
Speaker 1
[00.08.18]
Yeah. And think about all the all the things that we can do with that, that 3% or that 10% or whatever it
actually is. And let's be let's be honest, maybe the rest of that the brain is still being used for unconscious
things we don't actually know.
Speaker 2
[00.08.34]
Yes. Yeah, I think that's true. And we're actually at our best when like, here's a very simple question to
ask anybody that's listening as well. Very often we consider ourselves to be a mind that has a body. And I
would really just like to introduce that to people. The possibility that I am much more a body that has a
mind. I mean, if we look at it logically for a second, right, we have this little neocortex up here and it's
about taking up five, ten, 15% of the overall mass of the body. Mhm. If we just look at it like that it's like
what if it was possible to start feeling ourselves regularly, just the simple felt sense of ourselves, and that
the mind is this subset of ourselves. And again, the main, I would say the main insight from somatic
psychotherapy the last 30, 40 years is that the body itself is the unconscious mind. So when we're
actually in touch with the simple felt sense of ourselves, minute to minute, moment to moment, we're
actually expressing, I would say much more than that. 3% are were maximizing our output in the way.
But there's a paradox involved with that. And there's quite a price to pay from our ordinary culture,
because when we come back to our body in that way, it actually feels experientially that we don't have a
mind. And that's what most spirituality is good at pointing out. But there's a bridge there where it feels
like the more I pay attention to myself, we have to get used to something that feels slightly awkward. At
the start, it feels like I'm speaking what they often call flow states. But speaking from the unknown, I
don't know what I'm going to say next, but I'm trusting because I'm so connected to the depths of my
body. That that's where the attunement is coming from, that that's where the next thing is arising from. So
that's what I often refer to as the cost of paying attention to our body. We have to move through a little
bit of a bumpy patch inside of ourselves, where we reorient to something deeper inside of ourselves in
that way.
Speaker 1
[00.10.36]
Very interesting. I think a lot of us think about what we're going to say next, rather than actually paying
attention to the present moment. And exactly.
Speaker 2
[00.10.45]And I would often say to people, it's none of your business what you say next. It's your business to be so
rooted in the false sense of yourself that your body will organically respond and say, the next thing. I
often say, the therapist who, if you think you know what you're going to say to a client in three minutes
from now or two minutes from now, just drop it. It's not about implementing, not implementing
strategies, but doing it from a place that's organic, that's connected in limbic resonance to the person in
front of you. I think most psychotherapists, more than most other professionals, are comfortable with
awkward silences to the point that they are no longer awkward for us, because to us, we consider them to
be therapeutic, as we agreed. And maybe we haven't thought about what we're going to say next. Or
maybe we have. Maybe we're not really in tune with the spiritual self in that way. But to have that silence.
Speaker 1
[00.11.41]
Is so important.
Speaker 2
[00.11.43]
Absolutely. And I would say in a certain sense, when we really start to tune into the simple felt sense,
like I'm saying, and start to inhabit the body in an ongoing way, the label between spirituality and
psychology or psychotherapy, it starts to dissolve inside of us. The body knows a place where the bridges
were. Both of them become meaningless to us at the depth of ourselves. They're just labels. We're putting
on something, but the true intersection of them is actually in the depth of the body. That's where that
there's no more segmentation. That's really a lot of the work I do with therapists as well is very often
they're coming to me. A lot of people are more experienced with 20 or 30 years of experience as a
therapist, and they've had a practice for a long time. They've had a spiritual practice, but they're
segregated in a certain way in their lives. And so it really is about whatever practitioner you are in that
way, inhabiting the body regularly so that those worlds merge inside of us so that they become the same
thing.
Speaker 1
[00.12.41]
And was it? I think it actually was. Eckhart Tolle in his book The Power of Now, he said, emotions are
physical manifestations of our thoughts. Yes. And so you could essentially expand what you were just
saying to rather than saying we we are a body with a mind. The body is the mind. Absolutely. Because
the body kind of thinks for itself, doesn't it? And I would even say from a nutritional standpoint, yeah, we
we see that in the gut as well. The gut is known as the second brain as it it produces 95% of the body's
neurotransmitters. Right. So we've got a lot going on outside of the brain that still have to do with the
brain or our, our intelligence.
Speaker 2
[00.13.26]
Yes. And they've talked about that in so many different traditions. I can Daoism, they'll talk about them
as the three different brain centers essentially. Right. So they knew this long before they were able to
study it in science that these three different centers, they had the heart and the gut, that they're at least
equal, or they should be equal in the allegiance we place to them. But very often, whether it's
psychotherapy or in some kind of food health process as well, we're approaching it from a space where
I'm a little me. I'm up here in the kind of ivory tower of my head, and there's this thing down below that
I'm going to relate to call my gut or my heart, and I'm going to use it for my healing. That's like the basis
of where most, even most somatic psychotherapies that I've trained a lot in, that's usually the model
they're presenting to people. And that's a good model to start with. With most people, I feel. But to really
inhabit the way I'm saying, it's actually closer to say I am a body or the mind, and the body, as you said,
are actually inseparable in they say in Tibetan Buddhism, they're colorizing. It's actually impossible to
say where one starts and the other one ends, and that can sound like a theory. But I promise you, if youpay attention to the body in the ways I'm describing today, it's possible to understand that experientially,
to not set yourself up as an idea. I would say we have an idea of self as something constructed in our
mind, because we're segregated from the false sense of ourselves. The more we feel the simplicity of
ourselves, we don't need to segregate ourselves into one particular idea, or that becomes, at the very least,
a very secondary process.
Speaker 1
[00.15.04]
So do you find that there are certain lifestyles that tend to struggle with this? More so, like so
psychotherapists, obviously we struggle with that, but
Speaker 2
[00.15.14]
struggle with what? Specifically with
Speaker 1
[00.15.16]
spirituality or feeling? Feeling like the body. The mind and spirit are one.
Speaker 2
[00.15.21]
Well, I would say it slightly differently. I think part of the reason I've really been attracted to, like I said,
I've been on the intersection of spirituality and psychology for probably 20 something years at this point.
But I think what attracts me or is attracted me to start working more with therapists. Um, a lot of, like I
said, 80 something percent maybe of my work is with them is because they're usually is more awareness
of that bridge. So it's actually easier. So I would say like most therapists, even if they haven't done some
kind of somatic program, have some kind of training back to a certain resonance of how does it feel to be
me in this moment? What am I noticing? So I would say that probably most professions in a certain sense
are struggling more than that in a certain sense, because there is an at least some roadmap back for them
or just understanding like we're talking. Most people don't even know that phrase exists, right? That the
body itself, as we said, is the unconscious mind, or that the mind and body are actually two sides of the
same coin. I think if we polled most lawyers or plumbers or something in America today, right, I don't
think they would say, oh yeah, that's common knowledge. I think it's becoming more knowledge with
understanding of trauma and different things. But that sort of simplicity, I don't think it's quite online in
the culture at the moment, you know. So yeah, and thankfully we are seeing a rise in, uh, simple things
like mindfulness, which. That's right, which can send people down that row, or yoga practices that they're
Speaker 1
[00.16.45]
different aspects of spirituality. It doesn't quite encompass, encompass, I think you're trying to say, but it
it can definitely pique someone's curiosity to where they might. Go farther?
Speaker 2
[00.16.57]
Definitely. Yeah. I think that's a very good thing, you know, that. I think the fact that trauma has become
a common word in the vernacular the last 5 to 6 years, I was even just listening to some kind of Christian
radio a couple of months ago, an amazing, some older gentleman called in like 65, 70, and he started
talking about his trauma, like some guy from Texas was like, that is incredible. That word has made it
that deep into the culture, I think is a very positive thing. And I agree with you, the word mindfulness toand I do think it's a like you said, it's like leading people on this open journey. Very often. That first place
is like using the body as kind of a workhorse. As I said, I often use that phrase. It's like I want to heal
myself, but the more we can come into a relationship with the body, we're not just paying attention to
what's difficult, but that ongoing sense. As I said, if you're still listening in that way to the felt sense of
the hands that I get to inhabit, the simplicity of my body, not just looking what's wrong, but just feeling
into the constancy of me with the body as an ally in that. That's a deeper, um, we can call it deeper. We
can call it more simple way of engaging with the body in an ongoing way, you know? Um,
Speaker 1
[00.18.11]
so how did you get started doing this?
Speaker 2
[00.18.14]
Yeah. Um, I started doing therapy when I was probably 18 or 19, in Ireland. Um, I was kind of depressed
for a few weeks. I'd broken up with someone, and I was really struggling, and. I think from there I went
to my first session of therapy, and I think I cried for the first time in maybe 3 or 4 years. I just thought it
was incredible. Just to be able to speak with someone so open was far less accepted. I would say back in
Ireland, in that culture, maybe whatever, 20 something years ago. But I just found it amazing. I remember
leaving the the office of the therapist and walking back up the hill to my house thinking if that's what it
feels like to heal a little bit, like just sign me up for everything I remember. So I was already a fairly
obsessive person. I was a musician for a living as well, and I was writing songs. I was always that very
like, let me dive in fully and experience things. So I started going to therapy 2 or 3 times a week. I started
doing night groups that trained over and changed over in university and started doing psychotherapy
trainings. And I think I mentioned to you off camera at the start, I um, I think I was 22 or 23 and I did
this first ten day meditation retreat, and I'd been doing therapy at that point, you know, fairly regularly, 2
or 3 times a week, maybe for 2 or 3 years. And that was challenging just to stay with my body. The
whole retreat was about, what does it like to just feel like to be you moment to moment? What does it
feel like to be in your body? And I remember day 4 or 5 almost leaving, thinking, this is so intense, this is
too much for me and staying. And by day 8 or 9, just having this feeling of, oh my God, I have never
relaxed in my body in my life before like this. And I had a feeling almost no one I knew had ever even
relaxed like that. So I just went up to the person who was running the retreat. I said, where did you do
your training? And he said, he used to be a monk in Burma. And I said, just give me the address of the
place. And he said, no one there even speaks English. But I said, it doesn't matter, I'm going. So I went, I
went there like three weeks later. And that was like the beginning of on and off for many years, like a, I
think over a year and a half. At one point, I spent over a year in complete silence. I was just practicing. I
think I did 60 of those ten day silent retreats in my 20s or early 30s. I was just very, um. I would learn so
much just by sitting with the body day in and day out without a lot of theories or teachings or systems or
practices. Just like having just the body is an ally in opening to. That has been the main place I've learned
from, you know. So that was a little bit about my background, a journey with that. You
Speaker 1
[00.20.36]
so you said you spent a year in complete silence. I'll bet language can really get in the way of being in
tune with yourself. Was that kind of the reason for going in silence is
Speaker 2
[00.20.49]
to. Yeah, to be clear, it wasn't a it wasn't a complete year in silence. It was over about a year. I think it
might have been something like this, actually. It was I think over two years. I think I spent about a year
and a half of that time, over two years in silence, but I didn't spend more than 20, 30 days at a time in
silence, you know? So I had these little breaks of kind of coming back to the world. But to answer yourquestion. It's it's like it's asking for a different relationship with our mind, which is tricky and is often
only segregated to spiritual traditions. But I'm about to say here, but it doesn't need to be because there's
nothing spiritual about it. Essentially, that is very often the way we use our minds. We confuse the
symbols we're using as the actuality. A lot of people have heard Alfred Kosinski's phrase of the map is
not the territory. As long as we're clearer that as I'm using symbols, it's not the actuality. It allows me to
stay in a more unbroken way with the feeling of being myself. The moment I think the symbol is the
actual thing, I become mesmerized by that and I leave. I'll actually leave my own body. Hmm.
Speaker 1
[00.21.59]
That makes me think about, um, the Native Americans. Supposedly they had practices similar to these
where vision quests particularly. Yeah. And unfortunately we don't have a very accurate history of these
Native American tribes. But we do know that they had a deeper sense of spirituality than what we have
Speaker 2
[00.22.21]
now. I think that's more yeah, more than fair to say. Yeah.
Speaker 1
[00.22.25]
And I, I have to say I envy what they had and what we've lost since then.
Speaker 2
[00.22.30]
Yeah. Well, I think you're right. I think even just having more spaciousness, like the kind of curse of
modern technology is we have this. We're bombarded with something the whole time, and we have this
thing in our pockets that has access to pretty much everything we could ever imagine in any moment, in
any direction. So it takes something special to be able to slow down and not become mesmerized by that
in the world. So just the reality of having a lot more spaciousness, you know, imagine you're back 400
years ago in any culture, and you're walking to a village to go get water or something like that. You've
got two hours where there's no other stimuli except you paying attention to yourself and your
environment around you, and that's going to have a very different experience and impact the way you're
paying attention to yourself, you know?
Speaker 1
[00.23.17]
Yeah. And I live in Utah, which is known among therapists to be the wilderness therapy state.
Speaker 2
[00.23.24]
Yeah, because
Speaker 1
[00.23.25]
we've got a lot of wilderness therapy programs, particularly in southern Utah in the desert. It's just it's a
nice place for that. I mean, it's it does get cold, it does get snowy, but it's not as bad as you might find inother parts of this country. And so the idea behind it, though is to send usually it's teenagers or young
adults out into the wilderness in small groups. So they they are escorted by trained professionals, and
they are essentially learning to tune in to the stimuli from nature and and from themselves.
Speaker 2
[00.24.01]
Totally. Yeah. I don't know if I didn't say that to you before, but, um, when I was living in Durango,
before I was in Santa Fe, here in New Mexico, and I was actually part of a band, I started playing music
again for the first time in years, a few years ago, and I was part of a band, and everyone else in the band
was a wilderness therapist. They have a I think it might be shut down. I think it's called open Sky in
Durango.
Speaker 1
[00.24.21]
Oh, I've heard of open Sky.
Speaker 2
[00.24.22]
Okay. Yeah, yeah. So they're in Durango. I think they shut down last year, but, uh, but we ended up
playing a bunch of shows for their little office parties and everything. Lovely people. But, um, so I've
been around that world a lot and talked to a lot of people around that who exactly bring people out there
just harmonizing. Again, our bodies with the frequency of nature is so important, you know? I mean, it's
true in a deeper sense that everything is nature. But for a lot of people to be out in a space where it's
unhindered by any human frequencies that we've created is a very, very helpful start at being able to
recognize that in an ongoing way, no matter where we are, you know?
Speaker 1
[00.25.01]
So what would you say to the person who lives in a maybe they live in a large city and they don't have
much access to nature. What would you tell them to do?
Speaker 2
[00.25.11]
Yeah, well, as I said, that that first connection of the simplicity with the hands is such a beautiful
practice. The other place in the body is the feet. There are the two places I very often suggest where
people might know these what are called the K1 points in Chinese medicine, these what they're often
referred to as the bubbling springs, the center points of both of the feet, very often just putting the soles
of your feet and your ground on the ground and maybe standing at the same time. If you're listening to
this and just bending your knees ever so slightly until you can feel the pull of gravity, you can feel the
weight of the earth underneath you. And if you want, you can visualize with that at the same time as
you're doing that, just having the sense of anything that's stagnant, the dissonant that's in your body, just
being drawn down lovingly by the earth, bringing you back into harmony with that. Because even if
you're on the third floor of an office building and you never come down to the ground or whatever way it
is in your big high rise in New York City or something, there's actually through that connection with
gravity, we can reconnect with the Earth in that way, so we can really harmonize with nature through that
practice.
Speaker 1
[00.26.23]And. And that I think that's where people get confused. They they seem to think, well, I don't have nature
around me, so there's not really a way that I can do that. But this is pretty much what I was taught in my
yoga teacher training to where you're learning to just pay attention, pay attention to the body because the
body is part of nature. You have you have that everywhere you go, whether you're in a city or not.
Speaker 2
[00.26.49]
100%. And to recognize I said this to a friend of mine on another podcast a few weeks ago. She's a nature
expert, a spiritual ecologist, and she calls herself and she takes people on these retreats. And it was just
recognizing the reason people long to connect to nature, the people, the reason people love to be out in
nature is because what you just said there is the remembrance that we actually are in nature. Yes. And
and that's the most it's not about having a lovely camping trip with your friends or having a nice dinner.
You feel connected to the earth. That's nice. That's the first phase. But what's really possible there with
that connection with nature is to remember, oh my God, I am nature, my thoughts or nature. The feeling
of my body is nature. I'm immersed in nature. I can't separate myself from it. And that's the real healing
that can happen. Whether it's wilderness therapy, whether it's vision questing, whether it's being out in
nature, or whether it's just sitting in your office building and recognizing that deep connection to the
earth, that you belong to something greater than your idea of yourself.
Speaker 1
[00.27.50]
It's interesting to me how many people go out in nature and still try to distract themselves from nature.
So. So, for example, maybe you're you're hiking on a popular trail, you're passing a bunch of people, and
somebody's got a Bluetooth speaker in their backpack and they're they're blasting their music.
Speaker 2
[00.28.09]
Absolutely. But
Speaker 1
[00.28.10]
then it's like what you were saying. I think deep down, we still have that desire to be reminded that we
are a part of nature
Speaker 2
[00.28.19]
100%. If we're disconnected from that, that deepest longing is still inside of us. Well, in spiritual
traditions, they referred to it as the remembrance of unity that were part of something bigger than
ourselves. If it's a more nature based tradition, it's that we belong to nature, whatever way we want to
phrase that if we're sensitive in our bodies, we'll feel an aching or a longing to become part of that again.
And sometimes connecting with our body like there's a cost to it, as I maybe mentioned a little bit earlier,
and that's moving through some of that ache, some of that longing, some of that remembrance that I want
to connect with myself in a deeper way. So very often, what I often call the cost of slowing down is as
we first start to pay attention to our body and some of the ways we're talking about here today, there's
that sense, it's like, oh, I mean, if if it was easy just to pay attention to our bodies, everybody would do it.
People aren't stupid, you know what I mean? If somebody like some Wall Street exec or something heard
that, of course they would want to do that because they'd feel more connected to themselves. It's very rare
that somebody regrets meditating or they regret afterwards. Wow, I wish I didn't spend the last half an
hour slowing down, but to get somebody to slow down is difficult because they know there's a certain
cost involved. It's not all just going to feel pleasant, even though, as I said afterwards, almost inevitably,
everyone's going to feel like that was a good idea. Like, I'm not going to regret that, you know? AreSpeaker 1
[00.29.46]
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vibrant health starts now. I have had in in my clinical work. I've had a lot of people come back after I
suggested that they meditate. Yeah, they come back and they say, well, it's not really doing anything for
me.
Speaker 2
[00.30.38]
Mhm. And I, and I always point out the importance of slowing down on purpose. And even if, even if
you're not cognitively getting a benefit, you're at least getting that rest, which, which ironically can still
be productive. Yes,
Speaker 1
[00.30.53]
we live in this fast paced culture where we stigmatize rest.
Speaker 2
[00.31.00]
But we said, well said. Yeah. Well, it feels like that openness, that nothingness, that not doing anything in
a moment is unproductive. And it's true in a certain sense. If you're just judging by productivity, it is
definitely less productive in the short term. But as I started this podcast talking about today, it's like
there's a way of coming into this doing without doing, which is really the essence of the work I teach,
which is whether you're a therapist or anybody else is available to you to recognize. If I pay attention to
my body in an ongoing way, if I can feel the constancy of it, which may take a little bit of practice to
come into, there's a way in which I can express the best version of myself while still feeling deeply
rested, deeply in the center of myself, not being pulled out of myself. What they would talk about in
spiritual traditions is not becoming mesmerized by the five senses not becoming pulled out of that space.
It doesn't mean we're not honoring them, doesn't mean we're not open to them. It's not about receiving
them, enjoying them, but it means we're not pulled out of the depths of ourselves. When we do that,
we've left our home and chasing something else. And so that really is possible to come into a way that I
feel like, wow, I'm expressing the best version of myself, and I feel like I'm doing nothing. At the same
time, I feel like I'm just like laying on a couch in the center of my being. You know,
Speaker 1
[00.32.26]
that reminds me of transcendental meditation. I have training in that. But do you do very much
meditation with with your work or.
Speaker 2
[00.32.35]
Yeah. Everything I teach in a certain sense is based around these seven different archetypes. Maybe I can
go into some of those in a few minutes with you, but let's do that. Yeah, yeah. But just to say from theoutset there that meditation, meaning just being with ourselves allows these different qualities to open.
So, so much of the work I teach when I work with people, it's often one on one, like every week or bi
monthly. And then between that time I have a whole bunch, like a large library of practices I've recorded
over the years helping people to open these different archetypal qualities in themselves. Once, as I said,
they get a foothold or a handhold, depending on where you start with the hands of the feet as I started
there in the body, once we can establish the overall feeling of it, then we can work with the body in these
more nuanced ways and maybe we'll we'll talk about that a bit here. Yeah.
Speaker 1
[00.33.22]
So let's talk about the archetypes then. Yeah. Because I'd be curious to hear more about those. I've got
your website pulled up here, so I'll be referring to that as we talk. But what would be the first thing that
people need to know about this?
Speaker 2
[00.33.35]
Yeah. So if people want to look at this or references as I'm talking, you can go to lenses that liberate.
Com and you can see the archetypes as we're speaking about them. But to start with, very often, as you
can see in those seven archetypes, the third one being the warrior. So where are we in our center of
gravity? In the model that I teach, it's we're in this archetype of the warrior, but more this wounded aspect
of it. Right? That is, we're constantly pushing, our bodies are constantly tight. We're in this battle. We're
in a very over masculine society that whether you're a woman or a man, you're actually born into this.
You have to do a tremendous amount of work or awareness to not being operated from a wounded,
masculine space in society. So the first thing I teach people with these archetypes is just kind of putting
our hands up and recognizing, oh, I'm in this constant pushing of doing without being this constant. What
Wilhelm Reich, the famous psychotherapists, were called body armoring. My body is ripped up and tight
and tense and in a constant stress response. So the first thing we do with in this model is just drop
underneath that, that second archetype of the nurturer. Doing practices that restore connection with the
earth allow us to take little gaps, rest in the body. And that's the first thing we do is just recognizing I'm
not ready to do from a true place yet. I need to relax underneath that first. And so the first thing to do is
to come into that, as I said, that nurture archetype. I'm happy to go on from there if you'd like me to. Yes.
Let's keep going. Good. So from that space then to be able to drop down, most people have an
understanding. I would say in society that the feminine in a certain way, there's been a real rise of the
feminine, I would say the last ten, 15 years in modern psychotherapy, a lot of different things. Trauma
informed all of those things pointing to in the model I teach there, that lens of the nurture coming more
online. But what very few people know about, especially in the world of psychotherapy, is that deeper
lens, that first lens and the real ground of everything, what I call the lens of the sage, that aspect of us
that's never changing. That's actually the true medicine for the feminine. It's what the feminine illness
longs to have. So that to recap that the medicine for that wounded masculine is the feminine, that
holding, that embrace, that rest, that regulation of the nervous system, that connection back to Earth, to.
That little sacred pauses, being able to take a little breaks. So
Speaker 1
[00.36.10]
socially, it's finding balance between the masculine and feminine.
Speaker 2
[00.36.14]
That's right, a balance. And so the balance for that feminine is actually that space that's unchanging, that
it's actually they will talk about in Daoism as well, that, that that the true Dao is the devil that cannot be
spoken. It's that true ground of being that's actually holding everything that holds the masculine and holds
the feminine. So if we can touch that space, it allows the feminine to blossom up from that place inside ofus, that our bodies can be regulated. And then from there, that healthier aspect of the warrior, that sense
of doing in the world, of moving with purpose, that can express itself. And again, the way I teach these
archetypes is there's very specific places in the body that if you learn how to pay attention to them, these
different archetypal qualities can blossom in us. So that's probably the most interesting thing I've ever
discovered in my life, is that just by paying attention to particular parts of the body, these different
qualities can come forth naturally from the bottom up rather than from the head down. Mhm.
Speaker 1
[00.37.17]
And do you find that these archetypes align with chakras at all. I
Speaker 2
[00.37.22]
would say about 20% or so. I'd say there's some overlap in that way, but a lot of the practices where I
was, where I first discovered these different archetypal practices, some of them were from different
places, but I would say about 75, 80% of them are from the map of either Daoism or the practices of
higher Tibetan Buddhism. So that's where they knew. I mean, I remember being on retreat in my 20s and
looking at these maps that were like 5 or 6000 years old, these pictures and seeing these different
archetypal qualities depicted as pictures over particular parts of the body and just being like, wow, people
have known this for so long, and it feels like I've discovered some kind of ancient manuscript. And
because I was sitting so long just feeling my body, these things became known to me in the same way
internally, that I could see this person who had written this thing a long time ago. And that's possible for
anyone that these qualities have existed for a long time. And some of that is an overlap with the chakra
system. But I would say in the way I'm describing it with these archetypes, the chakra system is like a
subset of what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is actually much deeper than that.
Generally speaking, these these qualities actually are um, I've heard it described as like a quantum level
lower in the body than the chakra system. That's my experience as well.
Speaker 1
[00.38.43]
I mentioned how the indigenous people of America had had this wisdom. Yeah, we we don't have any
more. We've kind of lost it. And I think I think some people have it, some people don't. Maybe we're
born with a more of a spiritual gift, but I like to say our ancestors had it right all along. And for whatever
reason, with modern science, we think we know better than our ancestors did. But we're starting to
realize that that's not necessarily the case. We're starting to go back hundreds or thousands of years and
were saying, wait a minute, they had it figured out. Why were we ignoring this?
Speaker 2
[00.39.21]
Yeah. I don't know if you're familiar with Spiral Dynamics or Ken Wilbur's internal theory. Are you
familiar with those systems?
Speaker 1
[00.39.27]
Uh, I've heard of those. Yeah, you'll have to explain them. Sure,
Speaker 2
[00.39.30]sure. Well, I think that model really explained well, for me, I think what you're alluding to there, which
was there are certain stages. So let's if we talk about Spiral Dynamics, it was, uh, system by Claire
Graves. He was a psychotherapist from the Human Potential Movement in California in the 1950s. 60s.
And he would talk about he discovered that regardless of culture, people move through these different
social, evolutionary phases. And so each phase has its own benefit and different, different pitfalls and
benefits. And as, um, as we move forth in life, depending on the culture around us, an evolutionary
period we're in, these different phases tend to come online. And so to allude to what you were just saying
a minute ago, very often in what would be called a modernist world or a postmodern world that we're
often living in, in a certain way, to quote a couple of different phrases he would talk about, we've
abandoned some of the earlier phases of our development and think, oh, they're nonsense, or they don't
mean anything. And so what he would talk about as coming into what Ken Wilber would talk about, an
integral way of understanding this, is that each different phase of our development needs to be online,
inside of us, to be a whole human being. And so honoring those wisdom, those gifts of the ancestors, that
they're an integral part in the way we perceive life, that we reclaim those gifts. We're not idiots. We
recognize that the modern world has many advantages in so many different ways and the postmodern
world, but we integrate so many things, so we don't forget the secrets that they knew were in their bodies
as well. And I've said, that's a yeah, that's the best way I've ever heard that describe.
Speaker 1
[00.41.09]
Yeah. And you mentioned how we've decided over the years that these old ways are just they're
irrelevant. They're of little value. And I often think it's just because science can only measure the
physical. It focuses on the physical rather than the spiritual. And so when we're only looking at physical
things, of course, we're going to we're not going to see the value in a spiritual practice. But as we become
more spiritual again, we start to feel that value.
Speaker 2
[00.41.41]
I agree 100%. Yeah, I think that my senses science is moving in the direction of more and more
measurement and understanding. So I think those worlds will bridge more in the next 20, 30, 40 years. If
that works out. That's my sense of it that we'll be able to measure somebody's not just the true EKG
machines or different things in our head, but just moment to moment, somebody's limbic resonance,
somebody's ability to feel into their bodies. I think science will synthesize with that. But I think up to
now it's Pooh Pooh things in a lot of ways, as you're describing, that, they're not able to explain certain
things. If I can't measure it and see it with the instruments I have at my disposal, it's not real. And that's a
that's a real mistake. And you're correct. It's like the ancestors knew so much about attunement to the
patterns of the weather, the patterns of the cycles of the season, of the equinox, of so many different
things, of what it meant to be in harmony with nature, that we need to reclaim in ourselves. And that
aligns very well with my nutrition training, where essentially we will be the healthiest if we align
ourselves with nature, with with food, but also with the diurnal rhythm, circadian rhythm, cycles of
nature, the seasons, everything. We want to be one with nature rather than dominating it. Because as soon
as we start trying to dominate it, that's when we develop disease well, and that's that's what we see. Like
we look back over the last. Several decades or the last couple hundred years. And with every step of
technology advancement, we see another wave of disease coming. Mhm.
Speaker 1
[00.43.21]
Right. And so we we really just need to reverse that and go back to living in harmony with nature.
Speaker 2
[00.43.29]Yeah. I often say to people it's like versus playing God in our head. It's allowing God or nature back into
our bodies to hold us, to live through us. And so the mind has been obsessed in a certain way for
thousands of years. You know, they'll talk about different downfalls of man, whether it's the agricultural
revolution or whatever it was, but the sense of dominance over nature and the sense that I'm the one in
control or power, the human mind has been possessed by that for a long, long time. And if we get into the
deeper layers of the body or start to feel it, there's often a lot of fear that needs to process through our
system to that relinquishing of that perceived sense of control. In order to come back and to feel like
you're being lived by life, we have to work with that fear, that existential grip that's actually inside of all
of us. I've never not worked with anyone where I haven't discovered that if we work through the layers
that deep down, there's this grip. If I don't hold on to and try to control my life, something terrible is
going to happen. If I don't try to control my surroundings, control nature. And so that needs to be worked
through to really come into that deeper space of like, wow, I'm actually a part of life and I belong here.
I'm actually an intrinsic part of everything. You mentioned trauma earlier, and I can't help but think
trauma is essentially what teaches us that we need to be in control and and that that might be a false
lesson we
Speaker 1
[00.44.58]
need. We need to learn to let go of that need to control.
Speaker 2
[00.45.01]
It's tricky, isn't it? Because, of course, as children and in different ways. Right. We're going to we're
going to experience challenging things. And it happened so young. And in a way it's like the downfall is
so deep for all of us, whether we've experienced what people were called trauma in the clinical sense of
very difficult things happening to us, all of us from a young age, for one reason, or even if our parents are
lovely and beautiful, experienced these deep slights against the depth of us that feel like it is not safe here
to just relax in the openness and trust. The next thing that will come out of my mouth to trust when the
natural cycles. As you set up the body of my relationship with other people. So nobody makes it, as far as
I've ever seen, beyond the age of 4 or 5, without developing these different structures that start to believe
I'm the one in control. That's just part of our evolutionary cycle. But the sooner, the sooner we can start
to question that. You know what I mean? The wiser ones start questioning that are 12 or 13 or 14. If
you're fortunate, you know, you discover that maybe when you're 18 or 19, but the earlier you can start to
recognize something else happening, allows that process of coming into deeper harmony, to be softer, to
be smoother, you know?
Speaker 1
[00.46.16]
We are taught to over plan and over power.
Speaker 2
[00.46.20]
Nicely said. Yeah,
Speaker 1
[00.46.21]
but it seems like we need to take a step back from that. And yeah, we do need some level of power, but
not nearly as much as we think we do.
Speaker 2[00.46.31]
Oh yeah, I agree. So so I mean, for instance, if you're going to go to a university, obviously you need to
plan for that. You need to have a plan. But then if things don't work out according to plan, that's okay.
And we need to we need to let go of that. Yes, that
Speaker 1
[00.46.49]
disappointment or that frustration or whatever it is that comes up that feels so negative and unsafe.
Speaker 2
[00.46.58]
Absolutely. And so, like, where does planning come into all of this with the parties? Right. I think you're
correct. There's a place where we need to plan and be flexible in our plans, recognizing whatever it is. It's
definitely not going to work out the way I perceive it. Working out, that's definitely not going to happen.
It's going to be something different, even if it looks similar to what I planning. And often it doesn't. But
at the same time recognizing at the same time something else were able to experience planning from a
deeper experience of us the same way we go to the fridge when we're hungry, we go to the bathroom
when it's time to. Planning is actually the same thing as that. It's a subset of our being as opposed to
being possessed by it. It's a function of our being. It's actually not. So it's like there's a way of planning
where it feels like at the core of myself, I still stay open and myself where the core of me is not planning
anything. Nothing. It's like I'm just open. But planning and doing things, that's a natural part of brain
function, that's a natural part of being ourselves. And again, very few people in the world know probably
less than 1% that it's possible to plan from that place. Mhm. So it's not about not planning, it's about
where am I doing it from, where am I inhabiting myself from on my possessed by it? Or is it a subsection
of my being? And I
Speaker 1
[00.48.20]
have to say during this recording, I've actually been trying my very best to stay present and not plan
ahead. What I'm going to say, and it is so hard to to not do that. But in most cases it seems like the words
are coming. I have heard that before. Yeah, and I've been taught that at church.
Speaker 2
[00.48.42]
Yeah, but
Speaker 1
[00.48.43]
it's such a hard thing to to learn to trust.
Speaker 2
[00.48.47]
It is.
Speaker 1
[00.48.48]
It is. The words will come to you. You don't need to think about it ahead of time,Speaker 2
[00.48.52]
you know. And that was my thing, Cody, when I was 22 or 23, I came across some of these tests online
around free will and started reading these books. And a lot of people I brought it to at the time were like
stunned and horrified. They didn't want to hear anything about the sense you might not be in control of
your life in the way that you think you are, but for me, it was the most liberating thing. I was like, wow. I
would watch my mind a lot of the day and just being honest with myself, like, do I know the next thing
I'm going to think of or to just rise spontaneously? And I would do that religiously throughout the day for
a long time, like noticing those things. So I agree with you. And I would say one of the benefits of
working one on one with me or somebody in the same vein of exploring is we need to learn this
relationally. We cannot just learn this. Listening to a podcast are reading a book. We have to stay in that
awkward, liminal space where I really find out if I really stay with my body with the right next thing
arise. So that's been my learning and evolution ever since I was about 22 or so. Was recognizing wow, I
could feel intrinsically there is a way to live like this, and these days it's become very natural, I would say
after some years. But it's there's so many little deaths involved. I would say in a certain sense are letting
go of self, and they're in a way of recognizing, as you said, whether it's religion or anything else, I'm held
by something greater than the idea of myself. You know, what is that lovely phrase from Jesus in the
book or in the Bible? And look at the lilies that need our toil in our spin, but they flow. That's what I
think they're talking about. They've recognized I'm a part of nature and I can trust. That the next moment
I'll intrinsically flow in the way that I meant to. If I'm able to settle into myself. But just to be clear to
anyone listening. I came across this work when I was younger, but there was a lot of relational work and
a lot of awkward places being in the body and unwinding some past pain and things. That's really a
necessary thing. If you want to embody this day to day, it's very unlikely you're going to be able to do
this by yourself. We need help in there because the way we were wounded was relationally. And so a lot
of these deeper places need to be met relation relationally, you know. Yeah. And I totally agree. I put out
this podcast because I want people to get information that's that's good quality information on how to
holistically address mental health. But then I've even experienced this where I've listened to a lot of
podcasts. I've even gotten university degrees. But that doesn't necessarily make me an expert until I have
experience with
Speaker 1
[00.51.27]
that information. And that experience brings wisdom. But sometimes to have the right experience, you
really do need to have someone guiding you.
Speaker 2
[00.51.35]
You really do. And again. Anybody. Everybody listening to this will be at different parts of their journey
with that. So some people I, you know, it's appropriate you listen to a podcast like this, you read a whole
bunch of books like this and it doesn't feel right, like you're just tuning into the compass of your body to
take that journey further. Yet, maybe you need to spend some years really intellectually digesting this,
understanding this before it. It feels right to go into those deeper layers. I mentioned a bit about my
journey when we started this. First thing. I started a lot of my 20s and monasteries, and honestly, even
though I was doing a lot of therapy, deep down inside of me, I was a lone wolf. Like I was convinced,
I'm going to make or break whatever this is by my own sincerity or by my own whatever will or power.
But it wasn't until years after that where I have a mentor I've been working with now weekly for probably
about 11 years or so, and that relationship with her has changed my life. Being able to humbly connect,
being able to open all the spaces, being able to explore the 7030, awareness of staying with myself and
the awkwardness that's inherent with that in that change has been such a blessing. And so I can see my
own journey. Like I wasn't ready from day one to go low. Let's just be vulnerable and open in front of
another human being like that. But I think you're right. That is the evolution of that. To get to some of
these deepest layers, if somebody's ready for that, to find some support in that way is essential, you know.Speaker 1
[00.53.02]
Right. So we are coming up on the end of the episode and I wish we could keep talking, but yeah. What
would you say is the most important thing people need to know right now based off of what we talked
about?
Speaker 2
[00.53.16]
Yeah. I mean, if I was to summarize the most important thing that we've been talking about here, I'd say,
is to reclaim your body as your compass, moment to moment, day to day, to come out of that phase of
exclusively thinking if you're someone that's been around trauma and podcasts like this for a while of like
The Body is not just a place to try to heal your mind from. The body is a place to actually center moment
to moment in what it feels like to be you. And if you can reestablish that very simple question or that
very simple exercise of what it feels like to be you, it changes everything. It doesn't change the individual
things happening in your life immediately, but it changes where you're relating to everything from. And
I'm calling that, as I said before, 7030 awareness to see what it's like throughout the day. If you're
listening to this to practice for the next few days, write to me, write to Cody or whoever, and just have a
sense of like curiosity. Like what actually happens when I pay attention to my experience moment to
moment? What do I notice different? Differently about the way I'm relating to my partner. People at
work. And it changes everything. Whether we're talking about food, nutrition, therapy, understanding.
Should I take a new job? Who should I date? This one thing of coming back to having my own body as a
compass is the most essential thing.
Speaker 1
[00.54.46]
Well said. One last thing. Where can people find you if they are interested in working with you?
Speaker 2
[00.54.51]
Yeah. If you want to go to lenses that Liberator. Com I have lots of information there. I have free
practices up there. If you want to set up a free console, call with me. I do 15 minute calls. If you feel like
this might be good as a chance to deep dive in. And I also have online courses. I think I have three
different ones on there. I mentioned some of the archetypes earlier these month, long courses that are pre-
recorded that I've done over the last few years where you can really whet your whistle, so to speak, dive
in deeply on these different topics, a lot of background, a lot of practices on them, and really holding
your hand in that way. But as I said earlier, if you really want to experience this day to day working with
somebody like me, to be able to establish that in the depth of yourself is essential. So I'm happy to talk to
people. And even if it doesn't feel like a good fit. Happy to offer some suggestions or anything else that
might, but just to. Um, yeah. So anyways, lenses that liberate. Com if you want to find out more about it.
Speaker 1
[00.55.46]
Okay, great. And just to clarify for listeners, there are seven archetypes. We I don't think we've covered
all of them. Maybe we'll
Speaker 2
[00.55.52]
come back another time and do the rest of them. I think that was a good there was a good amount. We
don't want to be overwhelming too much information with people. Yeah.Speaker 1
[00.55.59]
Well, thanks so much for joining me, Derek. It was great. My
Speaker 2
[00.56.01]
pleasure. Good to be with you, Cody. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a review that
really helps me out and also subscribe to the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. Real Food
Mental Health is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The information presented
on this podcast is not intended to replace any medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. While I am a health
care provider, I am not your provider. Always seek the advice
Speaker 1
[00.56.28]
of an appropriate health care practitioner with any
Speaker 2
[00.56.30]
personal questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical
advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. Reliance on
information provided by this
Speaker 1
[00.56.41]
podcast is at your own risk.