00:00:02 VImalasara

I call Gabor the Ghostbuster, the story buster, the happy story buster, because he always loves to bust the story of a happy childhood. But I want to… If you’re listening now, Gabor, I want to say the reason why we say we had that happy childhood is because we wouldn’t have survived. We needed to hold on to those moments of that happy childhood so we could survive. Anybody who comes along to a Mindfulness based addiction recovery course is coming because they want to work with the triggers, they want to work with the activation because they want to stop. They want to stop using their choice of adaptive behavior. And so it’s important to really be transparent and be explicit to explore triggers. But I do want to say that we explore triggers through playing. When did you lose your play? When did you lose your aliveness? When did you stop being enchanted by your own story? When did you stop breathing? Teaching us to breathe through the experience of the body. Teaching us to breathe through the experience of feeling, to breathe through the experience of perception, cognition. To breathe through the experience of aging, sickness and death so that we can be awake. Being awake is being fully alive. One of the things I write about in my latest book is about coming home to the body, coming home to be alive again.

00:01:58 J’aime

This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast.Stories of Transformation and Healing through Compassionate Inquiry.

00:02:12 J’aime

This is J’aime. I’m so happy to be welcoming you, Valerie Mason, John, in the Compassion Inquiry community, we know you as Vimalasara. As we often get started with the grounding. I noticed in my research that you have a beautiful foundational practice called the Breathing Space. And I was really hoping that you would begin today and orient us and the listeners. This is a great way for us to begin to learn about you and also get settled for this conversation.

00:02:46 VImalasara

Sure. Thank you for having me, J’aime. So, yes, just becoming aware of your body in your seat. Become aware of the length of your body and the width of your body and take up space as we do this short breathing space together. 

Age. 

A stands for awareness, awareness of the body, awareness of feeling, tone in the body. An awareness of thoughts, becoming aware thoughts and any unhelpful thinking. 

G stands for gather the breath. We gather the breath to interrupt any of that unhelpful thinking. So becoming aware of the breath in the abdomen, rising and falling. No need to demonize thinking. Just going to interrupt the thinking to give us some freedom. 

Your E stands for expanding the breath in the body. So we continue to interrupt those unhelpful narratives, those core stories we can have by taking a deep breath in and expanding the breathing throughout the whole body. So let’s take a breath in together and expanding the breathing throughout the whole body. Then just becoming aware of your environment again. Environment that will support us as we listen to this conversation on triggers pain and shame. Yeah.

00:05:46 J’aime

Thank you so much for that. As you were orienting me, my thoughts were completely consumed with the gratitude I feel to be with you today. And I felt into my heart, I just feel a really great love for you. I just want to express that I come into this meeting you with an incredible respect for the path you’ve walked in your life. It was trembling in my voice because I really just so respect the ways that you have expressed and you haven’t ever held back in the ways and the dimensions of who you are. And I would love to spend time today talking to Vimalasara, the performance artist, the playwright, the author, the coach. But we are here oriented in the Compassionate Inquiry Gifts of Trauma podcast. And we’re specifically here to talk about the way that you have articulated and come to understand the way that triggers pain and shame move through our lives. For people who would like to know a little bit more, Vimalasara has an amazing website and there is so much to explore just there. And we are also going to post a few podcasts that I listened to. You can go there and learn about how they are articulating recovery through the Eightfold Path through the four Noble Truths of Buddhism. But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today. So I will release my words and I would just like to ask you, Vimalasara, would you like me to address you as Vimalasara or Valerie?

00:07:19 VImalasara

Vimalasara, we’re in the context of Compassionate Inquiry and I just want to say that I really feel your love and your warmth and it just reminds me of the power of working on Zoom because so much of Compassionate Inquiry is actually done through the black mirror, through Zoom. And just as you – just listening to you, I could just really feel your love, your world. So thank you.

00:07:47 J’aime

I hope everybody feels that and we can all bathe in this together for this short amount of time that we will try to stretch in presence together. How would you like us to come to know you today? Or you know, there’s so many ways as I as I expressed for us to understand and know you. What and how can we orient our understanding of you and the compassionate and create community in particular?

00:08:18 VImalasara

That’s a really interesting question because what comes to mind is, how do you get to unknow me and I think this is what this practice is about. You know, if we think about Compassionate Inquiry, and it is about excavating those past stories and letting go of those stories, letting go of those core beliefs that actually have shaped who we are. It’s all about getting to unknow ourselves. So in a way, how does one get to unknow me and one gets to unknow me? By letting go of any story that you had about me. Because all stories are memories. The past is memory. Yeah, it’s not happening now.

00:09:06 J’aime

It’s a beautiful answer. And it takes me right into a level of intrigue that I encountered and also, admittedly, a mirror for myself. As you were talking about self hatred throughout your lifetime. It’s something I really have struggled with. Y’all excuse my shaking. I’m just. I’m in a. I’m in a place right now, but…I need to take a  breath for a moment. The recurrent pattern of self hatred has been something that a lot of us struggle with. I came across something where you said you finally were able to really transform your relationship with that when you said there’s no self to hate. Can you just share a little bit about what that process of uncovering was like for you?

00:09:57 VImalasara

Sure, I suppose I kind of explicitly came onto the path of recovery in my mid-20s. And I say explicitly because I think those of us who have been in the hell realms of addictive and compulsive behaviors or adaptive behaviors, that all is about our recovery. It’s kind of implicit, you know, it’s not like, oh, you know, we’re trying to get ourselves better in that way, of that acceptable way. And so I say that in a. In an acceptable way to society. I stepped onto that path of recovery when I was like, 26, 27, and I remember leaving a meditation room. I got my recovery in the rooms of meditation. And I can remember I was living in England then, and I went to the tube station to go home. And I’m waiting for the train, and my fists are clenched. They’re clenched like this. And all I can hear is, I hate myself. Hate myself. And I can’t say it as far. So it’s like, hate myself, I hate this. So, you know, just as I say it now, the vibration, the vibration of refrain. I hate myself. And I wasn’t even aware of it. I think it was because of the meditation. I’d slowed down. I became aware of what was going on in my head and say, wow. So, first of all, I tried turning the volume down, turning the volume down, and of course, you know, I turned volume down, but I can still hear this refrain, hate myself. So I thought, well, let me match it with I love myself. And so that worked for a good couple of years. So it meant half the time I was hearing I love myself, but the other half of the time I’m still hearing I hate myself. It was like I was just beating myself over the head with a cricket bat and then really beginning to investigate this. Why isn’t this voice going? And at some point I realized, gosh, there is no self defeat. Because what I was hating was the negative stuff that was going around in my head. That narrative that was telling me that I was no good, that I was useless, that something was wrong with me. I was just, at that point, I just, like, there is just no self to hate. What is the self? And that gave me, when I just, that thought came into my head, it just gave me some freedom, a brew for fresh air. But it didn’t end, it didn’t end there. That gave me the window, the window of tolerance. When we think of that window of tolerance, it gave me that window of tolerance to look through into me and really see what was happening. And I realized at some point that actually when that refrain I hate myself arise or arises, that all that is going on is vulnerability. I am experiencing vulnerability in this moment. And because that vulnerability was so yucky, so messy, so mucky to stay with, I would turn away and say I hate myself so that I didn’t have to stay with the yuckiness and the muckiness and the smelliness of this vulnerability. And so now occasionally, sometimes that voice arises, I hate myself. And I say, oh, vulnerability is present right now. I just need to take care of this vulnerability. And it may be the six year old that has arisen, or it may be the 20 year old that has arisen. Yeah, but all that is going on is vulnerability has arisen. And I just need to turn towards it and take care of myself and give myself some love in that moment. And that is how that voice has become silent. And I just want to end with this. It’s really important because I think often when we have been working for years with this narrative in our head, we’re going for perfection. And it’s like, oh, when we hear that voice, I hate myselfl. I’m a loser. I’m not lovable. We can beat ourselves up. And I just want to remind people it’s that aphorism, before enlightenment is chopping the wooden hole in water, and after enlightenment is chopping the wood and hauling the water. And so what that means is, is that that voice still may arise, and we will interact with it differently. So when that voice arises, I hate myself. It’s not repeated. I hate myself. I hate myself. It’s like, oh, vulnerability is here. Let me just pay attention to what I am feeling in the body right now. Let me tune to myself. Let me take a breath and pause.

00:15:46 J’aime

Vimalasara. As you were speaking, I felt that second invitation from the breathing space open up for my body to expand, because it’s such a magnificent reframe to talk about these stinky thoughts as an invitation to recognize that there’s vulnerability happening. So let’s all do that. As you’re listening, I invite you to check in and notice what was happening, what is happening now, having heard it. Could it be vulnerability that’s really underneath all of the cloudy, mucky mess that we often create? Even an expanded, as you say, realm. Hell realm. And I think that term, hell realm is the most perfect way to describe the fullness, the running overness of negativity that we can sometimes indulge into. And I see this beautiful invitation that you’re offering to turn towards this other part of ourselves that’s feeling vulnerable and to identify it. So maybe just one last request of the listener is what part of you was activated, was invited, was inviting you to tune into yourself, a part of yourself in a moment of vulnerability. It’s just. It’s gorgeous. So I am very eager to talk about this concept that I find to be very sticky, very usable, stinky thinking. I heard you articulate it in a 2013 TED talk before, Compassionate Inquiry had really had a name for itself and a movement. You were talking in the space and realm of bullying and the bullying experiences you had and how you began to internalize and turn those same expressions and sentiments inwardly and upon yourself. And you created a name for this. Can you share with us a little more about that?

00:17:59 VImalasara

Sure. It’s just taken me back to my early 30s, and I really struggled with disordered eating. I was diagnosed as an extreme anorexic and bulimic. And that definitely, James, is a hell realm. Anybody who’s had disordered eating will know how much of a hell realm it is. And I can remember letting go of what I would say my gross addictions, letting go of the food, letting go of recreational stimulants, letting go of alcohol. And I can remember literally waking up in my bed sitting bolt up. It’s just remember I just like, bolt up in My bed and oh my God. My biggest addiction is my stinking thinking. I was just like. It was like a thunderbolt. And one had to start the process all over again. The easy part, in a way, was to let go of all those adaptive behaviors that had covered up my innocence, my playfulness, my love of life, my freedom. And we know working in the addictive field, and there are many people who struggle with alcohol and when they let go of the alcohol, they come face to face with the depression, with the thoughts, and basically realizing that the alcohol was the thing that just covered up all those thoughts, those stories that have demonized us. So again, I can remember coming across Epstein’s book Thoughts without a Thinker, and I say, thoughts without a stinker. Yeah. Is it? Because really, in a way, I think part of that work is not to demonize thoughts because we know that a lot of these thoughts, a lot of these stories have protected us, have kept us safe, have isolated us for a reason. But if we want freedom, we have to have thoughts without a thinker. We have to have thoughts without a stinker. And what I mean by that is, is that thoughts will arise because thoughts are just mental events. That’s all there is. They’re not solid. They’re just mental events arising and ceasing. And what we often do is, the thought arises, we identify with it, we attach to it, and we think it’s us. We think this thought is me, mine, I. It’s not me, it’s not mine, and it’s not I. Yeah, those are the words of the Buddha. “This is not me. This is not mine. This is not I.” And we think we are the thoughts. And my fist is clenched. And if we could begin to just open up and just allow the thoughts to arise, cease. 

I think we’re moving into triggers, but let’s take a pause here.

00:21:36 J’aime

A couple of things you’ve said I’m noticing that have come up. The clenched fists, the perfectionism, thinking about these kind of prosocial adaptive behaviors we acquire that are ultimately still very clenching. We go through life hard and clenched and balled up trying to be perfect. And you mentioned the eating disorders, which also are largely associated with a certain type of personality that wants to get it right, wants to be perfect, wants to be a good, a good person, a perfect person, the ideal person. This all to me feels like more of the hell realm. And I really appreciate what you said, Thoughts without a Stinker, because it makes me laugh. It brings a levity to what can easily become engulfing, to me. again, to find yourself in that, and then like you said it jumped. You jumped out of bed like a lightning bolt. And sometimes I catch myself in judgment and I get a little paralyzed in it. And I’m gonna definitely employ thoughts without a stinker. I’ll never forget that. So thank you. You said we were moving into triggers through this conversation naturally. So when I was looking in to the mindfulness based addiction recovery program, in session one, the very first thing you do is orient people. Getting to know themselves, their body, their sensations, all these things. But then in there is triggers. Day one, you’re talking about triggers. You’re helping people articulate their own triggers. So how do you teach people about triggers?

00:23:30 VImalasara

It’s one of my favorite areas to work in because how does one avoid being activated? You know, there’s so many things that can trigger us and not necessarily in a negative way. If we look in a dualistic sense. Negative triggers, positive triggers. And I just want to say that all triggers, we can all be activated. And so anybody who comes along to a mindfulness based addiction recovery course is coming because they want to work with the triggers. They want to work with the activation because they want to stop. They want to stop using their choice of adaptive behavior. And so it’s important to really be transparent and be explicit and to explore triggers. But I do want to say that we explore triggers through playing. So it’s very much an interactive course and there’s a couple of games that we do just to explore triggers. But let’s talk about triggers. As I say, I love this area because it’s work that I was exploring before I went into the addiction world. In fact, I went into the addiction world through accident. I didn’t choose to be working in the addiction world. So I was a senior trainer for an organization called leap, Confronting Conflict in the uk, which worked with gangs, worked with the police. And we really was looking at the triggers in conflict and really looking at that vicious cycle. And so that’s something that I kind of developed in the addiction model. And so let’s talk about triggers. I think it’s just, it’s a great place to explore. I love talking about triggers. So we have this body and we have six sense doors. The mind is a sense door. And so whenever one of the senses has contact with it, external or internal stimulant, there’s going to be contact and that’s the trigger. So let’s use an addiction example. I’ll use one of my own examples. I’ll speak from personal experience. When I was in that hell realm of disordered eating. I would be walking along the street and I would walk past a bakery and my nose would have contact with the smell – trigger and my eyes would have contact with the food in the window – trigger. And so when we had contact, there’s going to be sensations that arises, there’s going to be feeling that arises in the body, a hedonic tone, that arises in the body. And in the mindfulness world, there are only three feelings. This to me is just so liberatory. It’s just if we can just get the. Just free feelings. Often we say, oh, I feel abandoned. Oh, I feel unloved. Oh, I feel they don’t like me. And we know that these are stories, they may, that might be somebody’s experience, but it’s not feeling. Feeling is hedonic tone in the body. Okay? And so those three feelings are unpleasant, pleasant and neutral. And so going back to walking past this bakery, I’ve been triggered. My nose has had contact with the smell activation, and it’s a pleasurable, pleasant sensation arises in the body and I might salivate, might just be, might salivate or might get itchy palms or an itchy groin. And upon that pleasantness, thoughts arise, facilitated thoughts arise. Oh, I deserve that cake. Oh, I need something to eat. But thoughts begin to arise. And then in those thoughts, through those thoughts, an emotion actually arises, emotion of excitement, excitement. And then before I know it, I’m in the bakery, I’m buying God knows what, it was a long time ago, but I’d be buying cakes, blah, blah, blah. And before I’ve even left the bakery, I’ve started eating and somewhere I found somewhere to purge in the street somewhere. And it can happen that quickly. Okay. Which is why, as we know in Compassionate Inquiry, it’s so important to come back to the body. So this is a trigger. And if we think of Gabor, our teacher, our friend, he says, you know, the trigger is such a small mechanism, you know, such a small mechanism, and yet it unleashes so much. And that small mechanism is contact between one of the senses and an external stimulant or an internal stimulant. And people might think, well, what’s an internal stimulant? Well, we know that actually a thought can be an internal stimulant with the mind. Yeah, we know that. Yeah. It’s not just things that are happening externally. So contact, this is so important. When you have contact, there’s going to be feeling. You can’t avoid feeling. It’s impossible. And that’s the trigger. So we’re always being triggered, we’re always being activated. And we could see the emptiness.  for. I can see the emptiness in thought. Just surprising. I don’t have to identify and go into the story, into the narrative that gets me acting out these old tropes, these old stories.

00:30:39 J’aime

For me, that was a very visual story. I too, struggled with that in my lifetime. And I felt like I was able to go back to walking on the streets of Brazil where I had that issue. And it felt like you were an angel with me, just whispering into my ear that a sensation in itself is hollow. This trigger is so little. And correct me if I’m interpreting this in a different way, but when you talk about the internal mechanism, are you speaking about the meaning we assign to the sensation? For example, if it was me back then, so many years ago, there would be, yes, excitement by the smell, but I’d already be hating myself for indulging in it. So that would be the meaning. Tacking on that you’re weak, you’re going to do it again. Here we go. I have no control. So, yeah, I’m seeing you nodding your head.

00:31:40 VImalasara

And so those thoughts having contact with the mind and sensations arising, that tension, just as you were saying, your body was moving. Tension. Yeah. And we want to move, we want to move away from that. I mean, I’ll give another example. There’s one of the things we use in the Embar course is FIDO. Facts, interpretation, Decision, Outcome. So use an example. I’m in a relationship. I’ve been in a relationship for 30 years, and my wife has said, it’s either me or the alcohol. I’m done. The kids have left. I’m done. And I say, okay, I really mean it. I’m gonna go into rehab. I really, really mean it. I’ll go into rehab. So go into rehab. And, you know, and I had the conversation, I’m going to do it, all right? And I come out after six months and I come back home, and you just listen to somebody. I come back home and the first conversation I have with my wife is, I know you’re not an alcoholic. But I just want to ask you that if you do have a drink, please hide it. I just don’t want to See it? And the wife says, of course, you know, of course. Why haven’t we had this conversation before? Of course I’ll hide it. So it’s the second week, or the second or third week, I’m doing yard work. I’ve been out in the garden doing the yard work and I’m thirsty. And so I go into the house, into the kitchen, I open the fridge and I reach for some milk. As I pick the milk out of the fridge, I see a bottle of wine. And it’s like my wife doesn’t trust me. Yu know, I’m a piece of shit. This is a sign for me, you know, I deserve this drink. It’s. The drink is talking to me. Nobody believes in me. I’m a loser. And based on that I make that. What’s the decision I make? I’m asking what’s the decision I make?

00:33:56 J’aime

It feels like a reactive. Not even a decision. It sounds like an automatic behavior out of the shame.

00:34:06 VImalasara

Exactly. And that alternative behavior is what? What do I do?

00:34:11 J’aime

Drink it right out of the bottle?

00:34:13 VImalasara

Yeah, yeah. Pick up the alcohol. And outcome is a relapse. But let’s look at this again. We can go through that whole scenario again and go through the whole scenario. I mean, of course we know already there’s some kind of trigger, because actually we know that if you say, well, just hide it, there’s already a trigger in the mind of the fool that there is alcohol in the past. Person knows that there’s alcohol in the house, so they’re going to drink. But let’s go back to this. Thirsty. I go into the house, I open the fridge, I reach for some milk and I see a bottle of wine. What could I do? What’s the difference?

00:35:02 J’aime

Neutrality. We had this discussion. Oh, it’s. It’s there. Okay, it’s there. It doesn’t have to. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Grab the milk.

00:35:18 VImalasara

I could do that. Is there something else I could do?

00:35:20 J’aime

There’s something else you could do. You could get rid of it. You could take it away.

00:35:26 VImalasara

I could. I could do that. It’s still risky. Or something else I could do because what’s the fact of that situation?

00:35:35 J’aime

Leaving the house? You could leave the house. You’re going to. As long as you’re in the house.

00:35:41 VImalasara

I could leave the house. But let’s go back to what’s the fact of that situation? I go to the fridge, I’m thirsty in the fridge, I reach for the milk, I see a bottle of wine. What’s the fact of that situation? The fact of the situation is just a bottle of wine in the fridge. That’s it. What I could do is just close the fridge and walk away and leave the house, as you say. Now, we know, like, okay, that seems simple. And we know, of course, if there’s alcohol in our house, we know we’ve got to get the alcohol out of the house. But let’s just come back to this one more time, because what is happening is that when the person opens the fridge and sees that bottle of wine, there’s contact. That’s the trick. There’s contact. And there is a hedonic tone in a body. And it may be unpleasant. It may be so unpleasant because we’ve been trying to stop drinking and we don’t want to see drink, and it’s so unpleasant and we want to move away from it. And we move away from it. Going into the story of, you know, my wife doesn’t believe in me, nobody believes in me, nobody trusts me. Or it could be a very pleasant sensation and excitement and my teeth start grinding and my groin starts itching and my palms start itching and my gut again. And it’s this magnetic pull, this moment of like that magnetic pull, that bottle of wine pulling us in. And if we could just take a moment and shut the door. But what we do is what we’ve gone in. We’ve gone into interpretation, and that interpretation takes us into the decision to pick up or the automatic pilot to pick up, and we relapse. However, if we were able just to see the fact of that situation, it may give us the moment to pause to do something different. But again, just really seeing how contact is the trigger is the activation. Whenever we have content, we can look at somebody and that can be a trigger. We see somebody and unpleasant sensation arises in the body. 

But let’s talk about neutral, because I think, you know, often we think that pleasant, unpleasant are the most activating in the body. Neutral can be so activating. We know that actually the rate of death is so high in that time of when somebody’s been in rehab and they come out in that first month, and it’s because nothing much is going on. Nothing much is going on. And so someone wants to shake it up. There’s been all this input in rehabilitation and nothing much is going on. And it’s like, oh, well, let me go out and have a binge. And of course, our body can’t take that amount of binge and we end up dead. It’s so important. I Always say to people, you know, when a kid says, those of you who are parents and listening, when the kid says, I’m bored, I’m bored. Nothing much going on. And what does a kid do? Unborn? They act up. Yeah. And I remember that. I can remember myself. I used to think like, I did so much better in the chaos. And I would create the chaos. When nothing much was going on, I would create the chaos. Thank the gods and goddesses, I don’t do that anymore. Yeah, nothing much going on.

00:39:32 J’aime

Yeah, I just keep melting as I revisit this new way of again. Maybe this is an invitation to remember the vulnerable part of myself or the alive part of myself. Keep thinking about aliveness as you’re talking about the child who was bored and created chaos. And I’m just curious if there’s more there that we can explore around the aliveness part. Does that make sense?

00:39:59 VImalasara

Say a bit more.

00:40:00 J’aime

Feels like there’s a level of vitality or some kind of I am here, I am alive. The sensation, the overindulging of a sensation feels like a desperate urge to connect with aliveness that is misguided.

00:40:19 VImalasara

You know, that’s really interesting what comes up for me because I’ve just had this awareness of something. If you think of people who self harm through cutting and often it’s because they want to feel alive, they want to feel alive, they want to be able to feel. And you know, as I say, with disordered eating, there’s still some residue. And there’s times I realize. I realize there’s times when I might overeat and partly I overeat. I realize, wow, when I overeat, there’s this painful sensation in the body. And it’s like me wanting to feel a bit, me wanting to feel alive a bit, and just knowing that actually often these adapted behaviors are about feeling alive, feeling excitement, you know, people who use porn. You know, I work with people who have porn addiction and who have ended up in prison for porn addiction. And it’s all about feeling alive. The excitement, feeling, having to had some vitality in their lives. And so what is that about? You know, if we go back into. Into childhood, I think, yeah, as I say that, well, let me come to this. This teaching, this teaching which takes away the aliveness. There’s the teaching of the shamans, and it’s. It’s a really beautiful teaching. 

Some of you may have heard this through Gabrielle Roth. And Gabrielle Roth makes it very clear that it didn’t come from her. The late Gabrielle Roth. I smile because Part of my journey of healing was through the five rhythms. And I actually got to dance with Gabrielle Roth when she was alive. And in that whole journey of the five rhythms of finding your flow and moving into the staccato, the anger, the edges, and moving into the chaos and out of the chaos, into the lyrical, into the playfulness, into that whole wave that we can go through. So I’ve just slightly gone off on a tangent, but hey, this is a. This is a beautiful conversation. I’m really enjoying just your fire, your aliveness, as we enter into this conversation. And so again, what you prompted, what you activated in me, you know, when you spoke about that aliveness and I could feel that hedonic tone in my body. And I do want to say I’m going to give a shout out for my latest book, A First Aid Kit for the Mind. Because if you want to learn more about those three feelings, do get my book. A first date Kick for the Mind. Breaking the cycle for the victual behaviors. Coming back to the teachings of the shamans, it’s an important teaching because this is where our aliveness is lost. It’s said that when somebody is spiritually, emotionally, physically, psychologically sick, the shaman would ask a series of questions. And we’ve all had shamans in our cultures and a shaman would ask, when did you stop singing? So, Peter, when did you stop singing? And literally, maybe somebody said, shut up, you can’t sing. And maybe we did stop singing. But, we have to think out of the box. 

When did we stop singing? When did we lose our voice? When did we lose our aliveness? And many of us lost their aliveness, lost our voice in childhood. The shaman would ask, when did you stop dancing? Literally, we may have stopped dancing. I know Gabor loves dancing. I know that at all these conferences or day summits, have this opportunity to get some dancing. Dances is very big in my culture. In African descent culture, dance is so important. Actually, I would say that dancing was the thing, one of the things that saved my life. 

Coming back to this question, when did you stop dancing? Again, thinking out of the box. All of you listening, think out of the box. When did you stop dancing? When did you lose your play? When did you lose your aliveness? 

And the third question is, when did you stop being enchanted by your own story? And I know that many people who sit in my heart seat, and I call it the heart seat, when people come to me for Compassionate, Inquiry, or internal family systems, or healing or mindfulness, holding space. I call myself a space holder. Yeah. When did you stop being enchanted by your storyf? I think of my best friend. You never understand that she would always tell these lies. She’d always tell these lies about how she came from this wealthy background and, you know, her mother, her job was to pick up the trash on the streets. Yeah. Came from poverty. I met her in the orphanage and we were still very close. And I realized now the reason why she told so many lies when we were traveling, we did a lot of traveling together, that actually, she had stopped being enchanted by her own story and had to create another story to survive. 

And even myself, you know, I used to tell people I had a happy childhood. And as we know, I call Gabor the Ghostbuster the story buster, the happy story buster, because he always loves to bust the story of the happy childhood. But I want to… If you’re listening now, Gabor, I want to say the reason why we say we had that happy childhood, because we wouldn’t have survived. We needed to hold on to those moments of that happy childhood so we could survive it and carry on living. 

Because I did try to take my life several times. The last time was at the age of 18. Yeah. Just take a moment to pause. I’m happy to be here now. Yeah. 

And that fourth question is, when did we stop dwelling in the sweet territory of silence? When did we stop dwelling in the sweet territory of silence? And we know that stinking thinking hijacks that sweet territory of silence. And at the same time, that is the place where we have aliveness. It’s like, I can remember J’aime, I can remember when I used to say, I hate myself. There was some excitement, there was some pleasure in it, saying to hate myself. I hate myself. That was an aliveness. Yeah. When did we stop dwelling in that sweet territory of silence? 

And I add a fifth question to that. I do, because I say that actually for some people, the Buddha would have been a shaman. And we won’t go into some of the stories, but we do know that actually sometimes people would say, “Go to the Buddha. He might help you. He might be able to help the situation.” 

Kisugama, whose child had died and couldn’t come to terms with the fact that this child had died, was beside herself, and wanted somebody to make this child alive. Go to the Buddha. He might be able to heal you. And he was able to heal Kisugama. To me, to come to the realization, of course, everything is impermanent. That question that the Buddha was asking us was, when did you stop breathing? When did you stop breathing? Teaching us to breathe through the experience of the body, teaching us to breathe through the experience of feeling, to breathe through the experience of perception, cognition, to breathe through the experience of aging, sickness and death so that we can be awake. Being awake is being fully alive.

One of the things I write about in my latest book is about coming home to the body, coming home to be alive again. And yet it can be the most scariest place to be is to be in the body, is to come home to the breath. Because if we don’t come home to the breath, we’re going to be in continual, temporary brain damage. We know that if the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen, there is brain damage. And guarantee when we’re in the state of television, when we’re in the state of adaptive behaviors, when we’re in the state of distinctive thinking, the breath has become restricted. I even know if I overeat, the breath has become restricted and I can’t think straight. 

Okay, yeah, we know that if we’re walking along the road or driving a car and somebody cuts across us and the next minute we are saying, you doc, doc, doc, doc, doc. Cursing. So important to come back to the breath so we can fully be alive. Because when we’re in our adaptive behaviors, when we’re in that stinking thinking, we’re alive but we’re not fully alive. When we’re self harming, yes, we can deal again, but we’re not fully alive. 

Let me just end with just a small reflection with SHAME. Because there’s so much shame and shame may have arisen right now. And so just dropping into the body, noticing what you’re feeling right now. 

And the S stands for stop blaming yourself. Nothing is wrong with you. Inquiry is what happened to you. Stop blaming yourself.

H stands for have the courage that you did your best. Have the courage to recognize that you are doing your best. 

And the A stands for ask yourself, what do I need right now? What is it that I really need right now? 

And the M stands for make a safe space for your wounded inner child. Allow it to be here right now. And E stands for innovate yourself from survivor to someone living life to its fullest potential. Yeah, let it go. Let it go. And the fuller practice is in my book, First Aid Kit for the Mind, Breaking the Cycle of Habitual Behaviors.

00:52:46 J’aime

What a masterful weave of everything that we just touched. Beloved Vimalasara, our time has come to a close. It has been the fastest hour of my life.

00:53:00 VImalasara

Thank you so much J’aime for this conversation. Very touched and inspired by you. Yeah, I would love to interview you. Hey, so the client who is about to sit in my heart seat so I have a couple of minutes and just thank you to all of you who have been sitting in our heart seat with J’aime and I today. Thank you.

00:53:28 J’aime

May it all multiply. Beloved, I thank you. I thank you from the deepest part of me. Thank you.

00:53:42 The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma healing, transformation and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Please note this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for personal therapy or a DIY formula for self therapy.

We’d like to thank you for being here today and we’d also like to thank our guests as well as Gabor Mate, Sat Dharam Kaur and the Compassionate Inquiry admin team, marketing team and podcast team. Please join us again next week to hear more stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry.