00:00:03 Allison

Life is happening. Life is going to keep happening. As challenging as it may be to open our heart to ourselves and open our hearts to each other, that’s the place where the magic happens. And we can take that with us, take our balance point with us as we move out through the world. What does the world need to know? The magic, the potential, the possibility of all life force lives on our bodies, and it’s there for us if we tune in. I have a visceral, felt sense awareness of that presence. It’s flowing, there’s connection, there’s life. It’s very visceral and palpable, and you feel it when it arrives. And I love that space. And really, for me, it all comes back to this intrinsic healing energy that I know we all carry within us, and it’s in our cells and it’s in our hearts. One of the things I love about CI is that I feel like it’s a really effective way to connect in to that authentic space of being and reflect it, resonate it, help people feel safe enough to step more and more into them. This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. Stories of transformation and healing through compassionate inquiry.

00:01:46 Kevin

We’re back again for another episode of the Gifts of Trauma podcast from Compassionate Inquiry. My name is Kevin Young, and as I say that, and as I look at the person in front of me, I can already feel my nervous system settling. And that is because I’m here with Alison Creech, who is, let me just say, a comparison inquiry person, because I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself a little bit. Alison, I’m really delighted you’re here, and I sit in a real space of curiosity. Thank you for coming on the Gifts of Trauma podcast.

00:02:21 Allison

Thank you for inviting me. I look forward to the conversation ahead. It’s good to be here, Alison.

00:02:28 Kevin

I was saying before we came on the show that I really am here in a place of curiosity, because when I interview people beforehand, I love to scurry around their private life and find out things about them and ask them to talk about them. And with you, that wasn’t really an option. There’s not a lot of you out there. Really. What I know of you is through personal experience, I’ve watched you work, I’ve watched you teach. I see how people respond to you, and I’m really keen to get to know you, more about you. Would you be willing to just introduce yourself in whichever form seems appropriate to you?

00:03:08 Allison

Yeah. Thank you, Kevin. I’ve navigated the online world having limited presence. Really there a voice in Places and spaces where that’s my intention and quiet in other ways. So I’m smiling. As you said, there was not much to see. That was a quite intentional choice some years back and I’m glad for it in many ways. So what to know about me? I am a person who is really interested in health and well being. I’m a person who feels deeply connected to nature and the life force energy that runs through all living things. And it was that value that brought me many years ago into naturopathic medicine. I started out studying traditional or allopathic medicine, conventional medicine, pre med, minored in psychology and education. At the same time I was going through university with a pre med focus. So those three things, psychology, education and medicine have really been threads woven through my life. I can trace it all the way back to being a little kid, being really curious and aware of healing and the power that we hold within ourselves to evoke change. So those are the threads that have really woven through my life and have led me to present day where I work as a professor teaching naturopathic medical students, graduate students. We focus in health, psychology and mind body medicine and I’ve been on faculty doing that for 20 years. Love it. Love the diversity, love the room for eclectic knowledge. I have a love of learning. I enjoy supporting other people in and finding their ways to wellness, whatever that might look like and teaching the teachers. I’ve been really grateful to have those opportunities in psychology, in naturopathic medicine, and now the last five years in compassionate inquiry. So coming into CI felt like a really natural evolution for me out of or in addition to the work I was already doing. And it doesn’t feel like work, it feels like an extension of who I am and I’m really grateful for that. It’s humbling. Every day when I sit with people and I’m in groups with people, it’s just really humbling. And I feel genuine gratitude for this community and the ripples that it has in the world. So that’s a little bit about some of my professional pathways. I’ve been interested in mind body medicine and have studied mind body medicine for many years, 25 plus years, formally, informally. I have a love of things mind body, epigenetic psychedelic medicine is a as an area that I have some deep roots in. And really for me it all comes back to this intrinsic healing energy that I know we all carry within us and it’s in our cells and it’s in our hearts. And one of the things I love about CI is that I feel like it’s a. A really effective way to connect in to that authentic space of being and reflect it, resonate it, help people feel safe enough to step more and more into themselves. And in that, my understanding, my experience, and I try and come from my direct experience is that’s our natural state of being is healthy, peaceful, vibrant, connected in our bodies, feeling our feelings, aware of our thoughts, and expressing ourselves from that very generative place where life force exists. Not to get too woo, but it’s not really woo.

00:07:14 Kevin

It is truth. And the reason that I’m very excited to speak to you and in a real space of curiosity is because of that. Because when I watch you work, I don’t know if you remember, recently you showed a video to Gabor in one of our workshops, and you were working with a gentleman. And at some moment, there was this thing that happened in that video. And when, when asked to comment, I don’t know if you remember my comment, I said it, it. It looked like you and this client were absolutely flirting with each other. But I didn’t mean that in a sexual way. I. What I meant was this thing just lit up, Boom. And I. My, I’ve got goosebumps on my arms right now talking about this, the space between you and this client. Something happened. There was this illuminating presence, love, attraction. There was this thing that happened and it nearly made me scream. And that’s why I’m excited, because when I watch your work, that’s what I see. And I want to really lean into that in this conversation, if we can. So let me pause that there. How does that land with you when I say that? How do you receive that?

00:08:32 Allison

Yeah, that. I remember that video. And it’s presence. For me, it’s presence moves in, fills up the space between. I have a visceral felt sense awareness of that presence. It’s flowing, there’s connection, there’s life. It’s very visceral and palpable, and you feel it when it arrives. And I love that space. I was in a biweekly group a couple of weeks ago, and it was a group experience of presence. And we all just sat there acknowledging and having that shared experience and smiling into that shared space. And that’s our natural state. That’s our natural state. One of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had with a patient or client was somebody who was moving through some really deeply bound emotional energies. And it’s almost like a wave came and then presence. And we sat there in silence, in presence together for almost 10 minutes. And finally she just Broke out in laughter and delight. And that moved us along. But that was one of the most profound experiences I’ve had in working with people. And that to me is just the core. It’s the core in the doctor patient relationship. It’s the core. And the client therapist relationship. It’s the core in the human to human connection, which for me is what it really all comes down to, the human to human connection.

00:10:20 Kevin

Alison, could I share a couple of my own perceptions of you before I ask the next question?

00:10:26 Allison

Sure.

00:10:27 Kevin

And their only perceptions. I see a woman who is meek, and I use that term with love and compassion almost in a biblical sense. Someone who is very meek, very humble, unassuming, quiet. And I noticed just as you were chatting just now, I see a woman whose heart is huge and the emotion is never far away. The emotion that flows across your eyes all the time is inspiring to me. How does someone get to be the steward or the holder of this ability to create that presence? How do you get there? Because that’s not available to everyone and that’s not to judge them. But you seem to have it. And I’m aware that I’m bigging you up and noticing that you’re a humble, meek, shy, quiet woman. So I’m aware of the oxymoronicness of that statement. But how do you. How is that available to you?

00:11:33 Allison

It’s a really thoughtful question. For me, it has been a process of coming to peace with myself and it has been a process of lived experience for me. Psychedelics came into my life early, not early on, but many years ago, and were always an instrument for me that felt sacred, that amplified something that was already in my field of consciousness. I think I’ve been interested in non ordinary reality since I was little. My mom laughed. She’d tell me I would. I read through the entire paranormal section of the library. By the time I was 8, she was doing her master’s thesis on mermaids while I was about that same age. So there was. There is an opening to the mystical and the magical in my upbringing, which I’m really grateful for. I wasn’t. That wasn’t a door that got shut for me. That was a door that stayed open. I’ve always connected with plants, with nature, and just again, that kind of energy that animals and being the language of today would be being an empath, right? But I didn’t. All I knew was I. I felt people’s emotions and I felt my own emotions. And at some point I was like, no, let’s not do any of that and pretty effectively shut it all down. And then over time, as I got older and now into my 20s, and again reconnecting in communities where authenticity was encouraged and the magic of the world was brought alive. I’m fortunate to have had some really amazing mentors along the way and people who encouraged me to just be who I am. And I fought really hard against that because I was sure I was supposed to be somebody else. And if only I could figure out what that was, then everything would be okay.

00:13:39 Kevin

Alison, could we pause? I’m curious, because I get to see you. Our listeners don’t. What’s happening for you right now? What’s going on for you?

00:13:49 Allison

There’s energy. It seems like it’s emotion, but it’s just. It’s energy. I feel alive in my whole body. I feel big in my heart. I feel tears behind my eyes, but they’re not tears crying out of sadness. I feel fluid, and there’s some joyfulness there, too.

00:14:14 Kevin

I’m very aware as well, that when you’re in that place, the same thing’s happening for me. And I really love how that presence in you is illuminating presence in me.. And I know we were talking about you and how you got to this language is clunky, isn’t it, Alison? Because you don’t get to possess present. And I get that.

00:14:38 Allison

I think of it as clearing out the space so that it flows through me, and it is life force, essence, spirit, use whatever word you want to use. But there’s a something that brings life and vibrancy and life force and energy, and it’s clearing out the space for that. And I hear, like, musicians talk about this, right? Like they’re playing the music, and then something shifts and the music is playing through them. And I experience presence, expansiveness. My assumption is it’s similar because it’s not me doing anything and it’s not about me at all, and yet it’s me, and it’s me who’s holding this space and leaning into that rather than trying to push back against it , saying, yes. And even that doesn’t feel quite right.

00:15:39 Kevin

I get it. I get it. When I was thinking about this conversation with you, when we talk about presence, when we talk about safety, when we talk about attunement, we’re starting to move into a realm that language doesn’t work in. And yet here we are trying to have a conversation about a thing that language doesn’t really grasp. So I get it that these are difficult things to speak of. Are you able to Honor that in yourself. Are you able to celebrate that for yourself whilst remaining humble and meek and shy and quiet like you? Are you able to accept and acknowledge that is a special thing? Can you do that? Can you celebrate that on yourself?

00:16:21 Allison

Yeah, that’s something that. It has taken me a long time to get to that point to actually say this is something special or it feels special. I also know that this is something that’s innate within everybody. And it’s taken me a long time and dedicated practice and a lot of work in my nervous system to un. Hijack my nervous system and clear that space so that then I can relax and just see what happens. I used to do these really cool acupuncture based consciousness journeys once a month in a small group, and that really taught me a lot about trust, because I had a plan and I had a script, and I had this kind of backbone of what I was going to say, and yet it was totally an emergent process, and it taught me just to let go and trust the process. And this energy arrived and it flowed, and I would talk in a stream of consciousness, responding as I was putting the needles in and creating this verbal journey. And people would often, oh, do you have. Can I get that? And I’m like, it was nothing that I was reading. It was just. I was speaking it because I was leaning into that body based awareness of energy. And that taught me a lot.  I did that for years and years in a studio where I used to have my naturopathic practice. And it taught me a lot about trust, and it taught me a lot about the somatic experience of that energy. I’m really grateful for those years. I miss doing that sometimes.

00:18:02 Kevin

You said something, Alison. I would love to zoom in on it a little bit in just a second, but I wonder how this reflection from myself lands with you that I used to want to know. What is this presence thing? I need to know how it works. I need to know how to control it, I need to know how to implement it. And I can. You know, the tension in my jaw right now, I really wanted to know, how does this work? And then something shifted where I didn’t need to know how it works, I just needed to trust that it did. And I can see in recent years that I am no longer surprised when these moments of presence arrive or these little nuggets of wisdom, or you’re. You’re searching for an answer and you pick up a book and open ph167 and there’s the answer. I used to really know how does that work? Whereas now it doesn’t surprise me anymore. I just know that it does. It hasn’t stopped. Amazing me. I am full of awe for that. But when that happens, when I pick up the book and open page 167 and the answer is right there, I just chuckle to myself, like, oh, yeah, there it is again. How does that little mini story land with you?

00:19:23 Allison

Yeah, absolutely. We are. It sounds cheesy, but it’s like we are interconnected and we’re part of the web of life. And there’s an exchange always. There’s this dynamic flow of information happening all the time that we just completely tune out of. And so I think part of that attunement is actually tuning into that and being open to playing in it and receiving it. Jung talked about this with synchronicity. People have talked about it with flow states we could look at. There’s a hormonal profile. People have tried and have investigated it, but ultimately, I kind of land in maybe like a quantum physics kind of awareness where really we’re all just molecules floating around and there’s constant communication happening. And if we’re open to play in that and delight in it and be curious about it and open to the language of the universe on page 167. Or you turn on the radio and there’s a song or a sign catches your eye or a phone call, a ride, like whatever the little coincidences that happen all the time when we tune in. And so I stole on that big question, how do we, it’s like opening ourselves to be the receiver that we are. Thomas Hubel talks about our nervous systems are our instruments of attunement, and opening to that conversation between our bodies, our hearts, our minds, our physical self, other people, and nature itself, kind of consciousness itself. I know that just kicked it out really big, but it is really big.

00:21:03 Kevin

I agree with you there. And this then, Alison, maybe helps us move into a place where this conversation is easier to have. You talked about attunement. You talked about that this is our true self, that this presence is our core. It is what we actually are, yet it is so unavailable to us. And this then maybe puts us in an indirect conversation about presence, which is maybe easier to have because we can discuss then what gets in the way. What gets in the way of presence. And given that we’re here on the gifts of Trauma podcast, I would love to hear you talk a little bit about, firstly, what gets in the way, what blocks that or what takes us away from self and presence. And then for our listeners, what can we do? What can we do to help remove those blockages so that what is left is presence, authenticity, true self. So talk to me first, if you will, Alison. What gets in the way? What takes us away from this thing that we actually are?

00:22:11 Allison

I’m laughing because everything, everything I think of a baby being born and it’s in its authentic experience and all of life force, little by little, we’re taught how to be. Very few of us experience, even with very loving families, very few of us experience unconditional love. Like we. We pretty much are taught conditions on how to be. We are domesticated, right? We are domesticated humans. And so I think some of those conditions start to get in the way. And as a doctor and a naturopathic medicine, one of the things that, you know, that philosophy dovetails is that there is this vital force within, and the body is what heals itself. And one of our roles as physic physicians is to remove the obstacles to cure, which is your same question, you know, so what are those obstacles? And there could be physical obstacles, the way our bodies handle toxicity, for example, or toxic elements in our environment. You know, they can be emotional obstacles which are one of the things we. We really look at in CI. And again, the gifts of trauma, those places where we are wounded can become the very places that our doorways into true self. I really see that and have felt that experience that to be true. Every place we disconnected is a route back into connection. And I think we step out of that natural state because we have to. Our environment isn’t making it safe for us to stay connected in that way to ourselves and to express ourselves.

00:23:46 Kevin

Hi, my dad. Alison, if I just interrupt you there, our environment might not allow us to stay in that state of true presence. How might that show up in families, in relationship, in child parent relationships?

00:24:03 Allison

So many places I think of myself with my own child, and I certainly am not parenting the way that I imagined myself to parent conditions come on. Beliefs about how things should be get in the way, needs and the stresses of the day and the things that need to get done. Expectations, everything, like everything, becomes the focus. And I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s possible to. I’d like to believe it’s possible to cultivate a space where children are met with love and encouragement to be who they are. I’m thinking it’s Toni Morrison who in the beautiful quotation about what a child needs is to see someone’s eyes light up when they walk in the room. And yet so many of us didn’t get that and don’t get that.

00:24:52 Kevin

So what does that, in your opinion, Alison, what does that do for a child when they don’t get that?

00:24:59 Allison

My sense is that it forces us to start looking for ways to get what we biologically, emotionally need. And so if I need somebody to look at me and see me, and I’m not getting that, I’m likely to start trying out different things to see what gets that attention, connection.

00:25:23 Kevin

Tell me more. I’m really keen here, Alison, because I’m conscious that we have people listening. And I don’t mean to dumb down the conversation, but I’m conscious that people listening don’t have the experience that you have. And when you say that we might look for other ways to get that attention. If my parents eyes didn’t light up when I came in a room, what might somebody be looking for in themselves if they’re trying to decide, do I do that? What are the ways that someone might try to get that attention?

00:25:53 Allison

It’s a really thoughtful question. I think it could go any direction, but it could go in escalating emotions and needs as a way of trying to demand that our biological, our nervous system goes into fight or flight as a way of trying to get somebody’s connection, somebody to connect to us. So we might get really big and demanding and loud and create or demonstrate our need. Or we might get really quiet and kite away and minimize those needs and pretend to ourselves or tell ourselves, this isn’t really always conscious, right? This is happening. This is conscious choice. This is, it’s just like you were cold, how would you try and get warm? Right? You would have this variety of ways of trying to get warm. Or if you were too hot, how would you try and cool yourself down? If you’re hungry, how do you deal with, and you can’t have eat, how do you deal with that hunger? So it’s, we all have, I think, very personal and creative ways, but I think ultimately it lands as a wound again back to what gets in the way. I think this is one of the big things that get in the way where we decide that we’re not good enough, we decide that we’re not lovable, we decide that we don’t deserve better. We decide that we don’t have any value, we’re not important. We decide that if only we could do something better or different, we would get a different result. We’re overestimating our ability to manipulate the environment to give us what we need. And as a child, we have no way of knowing that it’s not about us. That environment existed before we stepped into it. Those things were in place before we showed up in it. We don’t know that as a kid. We think it must be about us. Well, and I know I spent many years in what I later identified as dependent patterns. I had no idea it was codependent patterns. It was just me trying to navigate the environment. And so for me it was, oh, I’ll be responsible for what is going on for you. And then if I can make you feel better, I’ll feel better too. My body will relax. So I know I was very motivated to appease and be responsible for other people’s emotions. And that pattern carried me through many decades of my life before I finally recognized it for what it was. Then started to explore some other options where I wasn’t responsible for how everyone around me was doing and feeling back to parenting. That was a big one to be really aware of because as a parent, I do feel responsible for my child’s experience, and yet my child is having their own experience.

00:28:46 Kevin

I think that’s a really big one, Alison, for a lot of people. And I sit here conscious of some of my own privilege. I’m white, I’m male, I’m middle class, I’m reasonably well educated, and I imagine for those that define themselves as female, that responsibility to please everyone else, to make sure that everyone else is okay. And if they’re okay, then I’ll be okay. I can imagine that’s an even heavier burden for those that aren’t white, male, middle class, and privileged like me. And I’m curious about the opposite side of that. So if I can make everyone okay, I’ll be okay. What happens if I can’t? What happens for people who can’t?

00:29:32 Allison

Exactly, exactly. Because we’re going to fail at that task..

00:29:40 Kevin

Yeah.

00:29:41 Allison

So then what do we make it mean about ourselves? Either I’m a failure and I need to try harder. If only I were perfect, if only I did this, if I studied that, if I did this, if I’d said it that way. So we continue to take responsibility and try and fix, heal, change, improve ourselves into some version that will be better received.

00:30:03 Kevin

And just as you’re talking, Alison, I’m realizing that with each one of these creations or manifestations of a better self, work harder, achieve more, learn more, dress different, lose weight, gain weight, build muscle, whatever it might be, with each one of these manifestations of a self, to try and get that acceptance, we’re moving further away from this true self.

00:30:30 Allison

Exactly. Exactly. All those layers of us trying to get to what we want is actually taking us further away from our true selves.

00:30:45 Kevin

That’s really sad, isn’t it?

00:30:47 Allison

It is sad.

00:30:48 Kevin

I feel myself quite sad now at that. All of the, and I’m sure I don’t speak for myself, but all of the work that we’ve all done to be better, get accepted, learn more, achieve more, that each one of those efforts is actually taking us further away from the place where we started from and ought to be.

00:31:05 Allison

Exactly. I could success my way into it, perform my way into it, achieve my way into it, whatever. And that’s been a big point for me through these years of CI, is really coming to a place where this is not about fixing, healing, changing, improving anything. You’re not broken. There’s wholeness there. It’s an opportunity to maybe play around with shifting perspectives, and it can be scary to shift perspectives. It would be much easier to actually believe that there was just something wrong with me, and if I could just figure out what that was and fix it, then everything would be okay..

00:31:45 Kevin

Or, Alison, maybe there’s something wrong with me and I don’t have the ability to change and fix it, so I’ll just sit in addiction or sit in some other state to try and numb that thing that I believe is wrong with me?

00:31:57 Allison

Yes, I will never be able to. So therefore, and I feel we all adapt, we all have these layers of adaptation and it takes courage to turn back towards yourself and begin reclaiming some of those spaces that we set apart, inviting connection in some of those places we disconnected all those places where we judged ourselves and decided we needed to fix, heal, change and prove to actually go, wait a minute, let me turn towards myself in that space and in those feelings and in that experience. And can I meet that with a capacity for tenderness? First can I meet it with neutrality? Maybe I don’t. Maybe first I need to meet it with animosity and then move through that and then meet it with neutrality. But can I more and more move into just accepting, being inclusive of myself? Yeah, I fuck up. Oops, excuse me, I mess up.

00:32:50 Kevin

I mess up, swear words are welcome.

00:32:55 Allison

I rage, I lose my temper. I do stuff I didn’t want to shine, didn’t do. It’s humanity and so it’s being inclusive of ourselves as human beings. And can we let the light shine through our humanity? Can we let that presence shine through our humanity? Can we not discount or dis include ourselves because of our humanness and in fact embrace our humanness because that is the vehicle for presence to flow through in a body here as a human being.

00:33:26 Kevin

So when I look at you right now, Alison, I see someone that is in their element, they’re in their space. And this links two things up for me. In this conversation we talked about what removes us from presence. So what are the obstacles to presence? And earlier on I was talking to you about when I see you work, I see someone who is able to facilitate or create that space where someone can make the backwards journey. So I find myself here. I’m addicted, I’m people pleasing, I’m in an abusive relationship. I’ve got these things that are going on in my life that I want to speak to a compassionate inquiry practitioner or I, any practitioner or I want to heal, I want to get better, I want to change this thing in my life. So talk to me and our listeners about how do they do that? How do they, as you just spoke about there, turn and face themselves with either animosity or neutrality? What’s that process like when someone, and I mean from personally, just for you, when someone comes to you to work and says, here’s the shit that’s going down in my life and I want to make that different, where does Alison take them then? 

00:34:45 Allison

I think first start meeting them exactly as they are where they are with openness, open heartedness, acceptance. So many of us are not met with that. And when we’re not met with that, our nervous systems are in a state of. We’re already in a state of survival. And now we’re in contact with a person who’s amplifying that state of survival because there’s not a sense of acceptance. So for me, that’s the first starting point. Curious. This is a person who’s before me, and all of these things are going on, and that’s okay. So having that openness and acceptance and really being in my body, in my nervous system, open and regulated and responsive, so that it’s a little bit like a tuning fork, right? That there’s a. There’s at least a possibility of sensing that. So I think the acceptance and non judgment is crucial, and the being really settled in our own bodies is crucial. And not trying to convince anybody of anything, because everyone is on their own path and in their own story. So when I meet someone and hear their story and hear where they’re at to, it doesn’t preclude me from seeing them in their wholeness and their limitations. I’m going to quote somebody who’s a mentor to me now, but their limitations aren’t my limitations. I can sit there and be present with them and inclusive of them in ways that maybe they can’t be inclusive of themselves yet. And the more that inclusivity is mirrored to us, then the more possible it becomes for us, I think, to be more inclusive of ourselves. There is a part of me that was so raging for so many years, and I hated that part. And I hated it when I raged. And when I raged, I would go into real strong self punishment, self judgment, self hatred, self loathing, shame, all of those things that we all carry. It’s something that I had given lots of attention to on my own. But it was only in relationship that I really gained an ability to be with that energy within myself in what became a tolerant way and eventually an inclusive way, and eventually a way where my body could hold that energy differently. The energy of that emotion or that self hatred and self loathing didn’t become all consuming in the same way. And I don’t know if I could have gotten there without the help of others. I think it took that witnessing of, I’ll say, the self hatred and self loathing, because I think, again, what gets in the way, I think that’s a big piece of what gets in the way. The places where we really reject ourselves harshly and judge ourselves so harshly. I think it takes somebody to hold us in this space of acceptance and inclusion and unconditionality of wholeness to begin creating that as a lived experience for ourselves. That’s been my experience anyway. And just like a child learns to be self regulated by tens of thousands of repetitions of having a loving adult regulate on our behalf, we learn to regulate for ourselves. Same thing. These places that we have cut out of ourselves or attempted to cut out of ourselves, I think it is in the presence of someone who can see us as more than that or as beyond that. So your self hatred doesn’t bother me. Your self hatred doesn’t keep me from holding space with you. Your self hatred doesn’t stop me from seeing you in your wholeness. That, for me, was a game changer.

00:38:50 Kevin

And that, Alison, is what I see you do when you work with people. That someone said something about me recently and I say this with humility as well, but I was really flattered by it and really cherished that they said it. I imagine it inflated me a little bit, but I want to say it with humility because I recognize that’s what I see in you. Someone told me that I have a great ability to love people back to themselves.

00:39:20 Allison

Yeah.

00:39:21 Kevin

I thought, wow, that’s a cool thing for someone to say about you, isn’t it? It is. And that’s what I see you do when I see you work with people. And you just hold them in that space. You just hold them in that. Yeah. Your anger doesn’t bother me. Yeah. Your self hated doesn’t bother me. It’s a beautiful thing to see you do. I just want to read you something. You said something earlier on and you’ve said it a few times. Alison and I think it’s really important for our listeners to appreciate you keep referring to each individual’s individual journey and that we’re all walking our own path and we’re all doing our own thing and we all have to move through this and the ways that we have to move through it. And in that there’s an inference that it’s not Alison CI practitioner’s job to dictate how fast that journey happens. And I hear that. And in a little book that I love, there’s a very long, not a very long. There’s a long blessing, but in it there’s just three lines. And I’d like to read it to you and see what you think about it. It’s from John O’Donoghue. And the book is. Oh, he’s tremendous. And the book is called To Bless the Space Between Us. And the little blessing is for someone awakening to the trauma of his or her past. And I don’t want to read out the whole thing. And he says, only you know where the casket of pain is interred. You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering, and according to your readiness, everything will open. Not my readiness, or Gabor’s readiness, or Dan Siegel’s readiness, or your doctor’s readiness, or your mother’s readiness or because it’s been five sessions or five months or 10 seconds or two years or. Exactly. Exactly.

00:41:10 Allison

Because it’s been five sessions or five months or 10 seconds or two years or. Exactly, exactly.

00:41:18 Kevin

So how do we hold people in that? Do you ever get asked the question, how many sessions? When will I know that I’m healed? How is this going to work? When is the end? How do we hold people in that, that they have to walk their own journey?

00:41:31 Allison

Yeah, I really believe. And authenticity is such a great word because to me, it means being connected to your body, it means being connected to your emotions. It means being present in the present moment. That’s authentic. And when we’re walking our way towards authenticity, we have the opportunity to really discover these unique gifts that only we, by virtue of our lived experience, have the ability to bring forward into the world, and not to negate the pain, the horror, the suffering, the trauma that people live in their lives, and also not to. Everything happens for a reason. Because I don’t buy into that. But what I do buy into is that by virtue of the unique life that we have lived and what we have experienced, we have the potential to be uniquely empowered as we make peace with our lived experience, as we make peace with ourselves. Those gifts come forward not only to help us connect, but really to be in service to others. By virtue of the unique path that we have walked. We are uniquely qualified, uniquely empowered to then offer those gifts to others when we have reconciled and made peace with our own experience, when we have come back to ourselves. I’m thinking of someone who very tragically lost her child, died very tragically while they were in elementary school. And of course, the grief there, and all of the what ifs and all of the regrets and all of it, it was. There’s so many layers of deep emotion and very entrenched thoughts that kept her in suffering. And little by little, incrementally, because it’s not like turning a light switch on and off, right? This is revisiting again and again and again until something new begins to emerge. And for her, a peace began to unemerge, an acceptance began to emerge. No, this is not what she wanted, but this is what happened. And so can she accept that? And can she let herself off the hook with all of these ideas about how she could have been different, how anything could have been different? She was the way she was, her child was the way her child was, the situation was the way the situation was, and it happened. And so the bravest, most courageous thing she could do was find acceptance for that without attaching blame to herself in this case. And as that became a new embodied reality for her, and this is over a span of years, she then found that she had a voice where she could share with other parents who were grieving. And she could see something that they couldn’t see. She knew something not in her head and not because she read it in a book, because she lived it through her life. She knew something that they couldn’t possibly yet know. But her knowing was reassuring. Her knowing was supportive for them. Her knowing gave them a possibility that maybe one day things would be still different for them, too. That the suffering that they were in didn’t have to be permanent. And always and forever. And to me, That’s a really powerful example of what we’re all doing with our own lives all the time. And it doesn’t have to be something so big as the loss of a child or resolving an addiction or healing a physical illness like it’s. It can. That same quality, I do believe, can be present in the micro moments. The softening, the receiving, the connection, and that’s that just very gentle calling out the possibility for something to happen between us. That’s that presence again.

00:45:48 Kevin

There’s a couple of things I was observing as you were telling that story. The first thing is I was remembering a few nights ago, there was a little slug, a little tiny slug inside my bedroom. And I went and found a little piece of paper. I pushed it onto the card with another little bit of paper. I wanted to be really gentle with it. I didn’t want to hurt it. And I brought it outside and I put it into the garden. And so when you say it doesn’t have to be healing and addiction, it doesn’t have to be death of a child. It doesn’t have to be these momentous things. Sometimes lifting a little slug from inside the house and putting it outside, we can drop into that presence. So that was going on for me. Something else I noticed, Alison, as we were having this conversation, that every time you speak of presence and what it does and what it can do and how it can heal, I perceive, or what I believe that I see is this well of energy that rises up in you and it lands in your eyes and. And it almost looked. It almost looks like tears, but it’s not. There’s. Would you agree. Am I seeing something that isn’t there, or would you agree with that?

00:47:00 Allison

No, I do. I agree with that. Yeah. There’s an energy that wells up, and I feel that, but. And yet it’s not tears in the way that, you know, tears are sadness or crying. Yeah, but there’s an energy there.

00:47:14 Kevin

There is. I see that, Alison. I’m really. I could. I could sit here and I would love to sit and chat to you for hours and hours about this stuff, and maybe we will sometime. I’ve got one question left. I’m also conscious. We didn’t talk about a few things, and I just want to check in with you. Would you like to. We didn’t talk about your journey to CI. You talked about coming through school and medical school and neuropathic doctor, and you’re a professor at the Canadian Neuropathic School of Medicine. Is that the right time?

00:47:48 Allison

Canadian College of Naturopathic medicine, yes.

00:47:51 Kevin

Thank you. So you’re a woman that has an academic accolade or two under her belt, so to speak. And here you are in compassionate inquiry. Is there any desire in you to talk about how that happened, how you landed in compassionate inquiry?

00:48:08 Allison

I don’t need to. It’s Gabor. For me, when he. The book, when the body says no in the early two thousands, put language to something that I had yet to put language to, but knew, and again, his ability to, in very medical language and in a medical context, bring in the power of emotions. And we know emotions affect our immune system, they affect our hormones, they affect our neurotransmitters. We are an emotional being and the energy of those emotions is biological currency. And when I first met Gabor in the early two thousands, he was one of only a few people at that time that was really writing and talking and publishing about mind body medicine from a medical perspective. And so that book in particular, when the body says no, was pretty pivotal for me. I used to include it as required reading in the courses that I taught. There’s a big interface between naturopathic medicine and the principles of naturopathy. We see the body as a whole. There’s this intrinsic healing power. The body does the healing first. Do no harm. Doctor, heal thyself vis medicatrix naturae. There we go. The healing power of nature. Vis medicatrix naturae.

00:49:28 Kevin

Naturally, my goodness, well done.

00:49:32 Allison

And really, like in the most simple terms, whether it’s medicine, whether it’s emotions, whether it’s body, whether it’s the things we’ve been talking about today, it’s bringing us out of survival and into safety in a very physiologic way. If we’re in a state of survival, our body is not in a regenerative state of healing. So for me, that is root cause. Naturopathic medicine looks at what is the root cause. For me, that is root cause. And that’s often based in emotions. Unresolved trauma, our unresolved emotional experience, those places where we invalidate ourselves, that’s, to me, is at the level of root cause. And so if in the most simple terms, this is an invitation for people to step out of survival and into safety, to step out of that place of self judgment and disconnection, into a place of inclusivity with ourselves and human to human connection with other people, why? Because we’re good enough. We’re lovable, we’re worthy, we’re deserving. We are intrinsically worthy of love and belonging simply for being alive. Brene Brown talked about that so beautifully in her first TED talk that it’s really just the belief that I’m worthy of love and belonging that makes all the difference. And so how do we help people connect with themselves again? Step out of survival where we couldn’t believe we were worthy of love and belonging and into safety, where our innate, innate life qualifies us as worthy of love and belonging. So out of survival and into safety and into an inclusive relationship with ourselves, where then, you know, the light, the presence, can shine through our humanity. We’re not invalidating ourselves for being human. In fact, it’s through the humanness, an integrated experience of our humanness. That light, that presence comes through. You know, it’s with that energy that then we can live our lives on the planet and create and connect and go grocery shopping and drink coffee.

00:51:39 Kevin

Alison, I have no doubt that the people listening to this will have heard the beauty, energy, joy in your voice just as you were speaking just over the last few minutes. I wish they could have seen you. You just lit up when you moved into talking about that, and I’m really grateful that you did. It was beautiful to watch again. It’s. It’s like. It’s just watching Presence, and you were in full flow. Our presence was in full flow, and it was a delight to watch. Let me. Can I ask you a final, maybe playful question? Playful. Maybe not so playful.

00:52:15 Allison

Yeah.

00:52:16 Kevin

And maybe if we can remove, maybe even removing the humility from you for a moment, let’s step into your full power. Let’s step into the full power of presence and your full being and answer that, this question from here. If you would, for me, please, what does the world need to know?

00:52:34 Allison

Life is happening. Life is going to keep happening. As challenging as it may be to open our heart to ourselves and open our hearts to each other. That’s the place where the magic happens. And we can take that with us, take our balance point with us as we move out through the world. What does the world need to know? The magic, the potential, the possibility of all life force lives on our bodies, and it’s there for us if we tune in.

00:53:08 Kevin

Alison, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. From. From the bottom of my. Right now, from the bottom of my very open heart. Thank you. I really appreciate you coming and spending some time with us on the Gifts of Trauma podcast, and I would be delighted if you would come back soon.

00:53:26 Allison

Thank you, Kevin. It was really a pleasure to talk with you. I appreciate it.

00:53:30 Kevin

You’re welcome. Thanks, Alison. Take care of yourself.

00:53:37 

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, Satoram 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.