Julie Brown Yau Transcript

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Julie Brown Yau Interview

Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually Awakening people. I’ve done over 520 or 30 of them by now. And if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to bat gap comm bat gap and look under the past interviews menu. This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and would like to support it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site. Obviously today I’m not on Skype with somebody I’m interviewing Julie Brown yow in person. Welcome, Julie. And we’re out here in California for the science and non duality conference. And this is the first of a number of recordings that I’ll be doing out here and releasing over the next couple of months. Julie has a 30 year background in psychological, somatic and spiritual traditions, providing her with unique depth of knowledge and direct experience. Julie’s unified approach for addressing developmental and complex trauma includes the latest neuroscientific and psychosomatic findings, depth psychology, and Eastern wisdom. Julia is an author, speaker and has a private practice in Laguna Beach, California. She works on Skype worldwide, do I? Julie supports those on a spiritual path to embody realizations and assist those going through spiritual emergence, emergence and emergency I would imagine sometimes those are interchangeable. Yeah. She’s also the director of education and Program Development at compassionate care ALS, helping families and individuals through trauma and the dying process. Julie’s latest book, The body awareness workbook for trauma, released trauma from your body, find emotional balance and connect your inner wisdom. And our website is Julie Brown. yo.com. So welcome, Julie. Thank you. It’s good to be here. Right? Yeah. And it’s nice to be able to do this in person, rather than over Skype if I could I do them all in person. Yeah. But there’d be a lot of travel involved in that. So but it’s fun coming to San once a year and, you know, interviewing a bunch of people in person and meeting people in person that I had interviewed over Skype. So I really enjoy this some kind of energy or chemistry or something that happens when you can do it in person as opposed to over Skype.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, it’s a little different. Yeah.

Rick Archer: So as I began thinking about this interview, and you know, looking through your book, The question occurred to me, I wonder if, you know, Julie, is so interested in trauma because she herself experienced a lot of trauma at a younger age. And maybe that is true, and you can talk about that. But I also overheard you in the car last night talking about how you seem to have the capacity to tune in to the collective consciousness when a major traumatic event happens in the world, such as 911, or the tsunami in Indonesia, or, you know, maybe some of these shootings, I don’t know. But so it really seems like you are this is your dharma, you know, you’re wired to have an attunement to the collective consciousness that most people don’t consciously have. And probably that’s how you got into this whole field. But you think,

Julie Brown Yau: I think you’re probably correct. And it probably began from a meditation practice. I began when I was about 15. So I began an aikido practice with my father, my father was an Aikido master. Fifth, then, you know, he lived and breathed and ate his practice, and I would go to the dojo with them. And before we would practice, we do a very short meditation. And in our tradition, we’d connect to the earth below, connect to the heavens above, and these energies would meet in the physical body, and then we would practice and I just was able to feel these subtle energies that we were working with. And it was very natural because my father was teaching so I never questioned it. I thought it wasn’t a normal thing to be able to feel. So very short meditation, but I really remembered that when I was a teen, I was in a difficult period in my life. I left England at 17. After high school, I’d come to California for a year, and I went back to England, my parents had left the country my family home was gone. I really had no idea what I wanted to do with life. So it was a bit of a struggle. What got me through that struggle was remembering the meditation practice that my father taught me. So I sat down and felt my body connected to the subtle energies in energy. extraordinary phenomena began to occur from that. So first of all this energy came up from my core. And it seemed to open up the top of my head. And that was the cosmos. And I had no contact I was the cosmos is that we just know I was it was a different I could see the cosmos. So at that point, I didn’t know we were the cosmos. That was just this extraordinary expanse that seemed to be alive and vibrant. It looked like space. And it was out of the crown of my head. And I was fascinated. So every day I would sit down, and I would explore by connecting with my body, I could feel these energies moving within me and all kinds of phenomena would unfold from that. So I feel because I was meditating from a young age, maybe I was just wiring my system naturally, for these phenomena to begin to occur.

Rick Archer: Yeah. And it seems like you had a proclivity for that kind of experience, because not all people do, right? I mean, I know my sister started meditating when she was 13, or 14, and she still practices it, you know, 50, something years later, but she, she often laments that I don’t I have all these profound experiences, like all these people you met you interviewed. So, and I always play that down with, you know, flashy experiences are not necessarily the acid test of anything. Now, you know, we know people who’ve had all kinds of flashy experiences, and then go off the deep end in some way or another. Yeah. And we’ll probably get into why that could be. So one thing I often encourage her and others is not to belittle yourself, or compare yourself with others, or having, you know, profound experiences, because ultimately, they’re not, you know, a clear indicator of your level of consciousness or necessarily of anything else. I mean, maybe somebody sees auras fine, but doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily more evolved spiritually than somebody who doesn’t it

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, absolutely. Right. And as I was going through all of these phenomena, I really wasn’t. I mean, they were fascinating. And it really built up an intense sense of curiosity about what was going on. But there was no grasping onto them. There was no Oh, my gosh, you know, this psychic phenomenon nuts like, No, it was fascinating. What it gave to me, I believe, was the dismantling of belief systems of fear and separation in, you know, unhealthy or unhealthy. But maybe it allowed me to go into this field of trauma in a way that allowed me to hold a space in a different way. Because ultimately opened me up to this profound sense of interconnectedness and compassion that we all are, and not, you know, that pointed the way I believe, to trauma, I never thought I would be a trauma therapist or a psychologist, it was by exploring the body that got me really interested in emotions, and then got really interested in the mind. And then this sense of suffering that we all carry in, in, in our beings, that led me into trauma.

Rick Archer: So one thing led to the next Yeah, yeah. And initially, as you just said, it wasn’t trauma, it was more like you’re having these profound experiences. And this is interesting. And yeah, but you sort of,

Julie Brown Yau: but, and I remember, think I, these aren’t the words that I was thinking, but I have the the words, now I was more interested in the ground, of which everything was happening in. So when I was seeing and experiencing all of this phenomena, what is this spaciousness, and maybe this came from this, you know, experience of the cosmos? What is the space that everything is experiencing? So why I had that thought, or that longing, or that that’s what I was interested in as a pot, as opposed to all of the phenomena? I don’t know.

Rick Archer: I think that’s a good orientation. Because one can get caught up in Z experience, you know, and get all enamored of them and, and sort of lose the forest for the trees.

Julie Brown Yau: It can be fun, it can be exciting. It’s, you know, there’s lots of paths you can follow. I wasn’t really that interested in doing that I wasn’t interested in doing

Rick Archer: Yeah. Now on the other hand, some people belittle experiences like that, they say, Oh, it’s just illusion, it’s just my you shouldn’t pay it any, any attention, you know, just focus on the ground. And I have more of a both end kind of attitude like, not that you need to pursue those kinds of experiences. But if they occur, they’re natural, and they probably are occurring for a good reason. And, you know, all the saints and sages throughout history have reported having all kinds of interesting experiences, in addition to being well established in the ground.

Julie Brown Yau: Exactly. Yeah. It didn’t get gives us a lot of information and knowledge and allows us to hold the mystery of being and mystery of, you know, the whole cosmos.

Rick Archer: Yeah. And some sages have actually advocated, you know, culturing certain experiences as long as the ground as you put it is your first priority or is the foundation of it. For instance, Patanjali devotes all chapter of the Yoga Sutras to developing certain cities, certain so called supernormal, or unusual experiences or abilities.

Julie Brown Yau: I think it’s amazing the potential of the human mind. Yeah. When you go through something like a kundalini experience, I think that’s partly what was happening to, you know, my own body, which I didn’t know at the time, because I knew nothing about that, you know, something would happen. And I would go try and research what on earth is this? Yeah. So in retrospect, I knew I was going, I know I was going through a kundalini experience for about 15 years, is very slow, and very beautiful progression. So it wasn’t like I hear a lot of people in a spiritual emergency, where these, you know, deep, volatile energies are coming up and they feel it’s a Kundalini and have traumatic experiences with it or brings their trauma for me was is very gentle, sort of these doors opening wider and wider and wider into the mystery and a potential of our human brain. So that I thought was fascinating.

Rick Archer: Yeah, some people say, such as Jones, Shiva, Peter Harrigan, who runs the Kundalini Care Institute in Tennessee are used to that. She says a lot of things, but one is that if Kundalini experience is traumatic, it can very often be because there are blocks and obstructions, and perhaps we could say, buried traumas. And so it’s sort of stirring things up in there. But if it’s smooth for a person, then very likely, they don’t have too much residual trauma. And so therefore, you can take an easier course, and it doesn’t have so many, you know, roadblocks to plow through. You agree with that.

Julie Brown Yau: Seems to be the way you know, if I look back at my early life, I don’t think I had, you know, so much trauma. You when I was 29, I look back, I wouldn’t have said I had any trauma. But now understanding what developmental trauma is, which we can talk about later. There was of course, trauma, but when his energy moved, I believe it was moving in a very gentle way. Yeah, I mean, it was it was big energy. But it wasn’t traumatic. And for whatever reason, maybe I had that proclivity, as you said, I didn’t say, thank you

Rick Archer: very much for being a candidate.

Julie Brown Yau: But anyway, so I just was able to hold that energy for whatever reason, and and I would see flashes and images of all things, all kinds of things moving through me that seemed to be from my own life, other lives, who knows the collective. And I could just sit with this energy moving through me and all of these visions and say, This is fascinating. Interesting. Yeah. Well, that was happening. Did you feel like you are serving as a kind of a filter or washing machine to, you know, these things weren’t moving through you just sort of arbitrarily but it was actually a process wherein you were neutralizing or resolving stuff. Yeah, back then. I didn’t think that at all, I had no idea why this was going on. It wasn’t something I was seeking, it was all spontaneous, other than the fact that I was meditating. But I had no idea that meditation could possibly possibly lead to these, you know, phenomenon, these openings, or this, you know, expansive awareness and consciousness. Later on, it changed because I change and through many years of dedicated practice, I think we can shift to where then I became aware of the energies that were in do move through me, are somehow cleansing or transformative, outside of my own individual being. And that becomes very clear sometimes. And again, it’s not something I’ve talked much to talk too much about. Because I haven’t really found any value in talking about it. But as I’m talking more to an audience about my work, and trauma and spirituality, if people really want to know who’s talking to them, and you know, where sometimes I may get my information, as is something you read in a book. Now, this is something that I experienced directly, and if I can experience it, we all can. And so it shows the potential of us all to be able to heal, heal ourselves and heal, you know, part of the collective if that’s what we choose to do or choose to do us. Yeah. One thing I hear a lot from people is that they feel that their process often involves, you know, initially a stage of self healing. And when that has completed itself to a sufficient degree, then they naturally begin to serve as a as a instrument for more of the collective healing. It’s like they begin to sort of not take on but process or dissolve stress or trauma in the collective consciousness. I hear that from people and I see that but I think the the opposite. Another way can happen is when we have a lot of trauma. When we’re younger boundaries are ruptured. And we feel we have more access maybe to the collective consciousness. So I work with a lot of people who are trying to work on their own trauma. And they can’t separate it out from the collective, in they have a profound sense of pain because they feel as if they’re feeling everybody’s pain, and it’s just simply too much, and in some way that interferes with their own healing. So in my case, we try and work with boundaries and grounding and coming back to the body and being able to work with just you know, what is mine, as opposed to the to muchness of the collective trauma or pain that might be coming? Yeah, that’s

Rick Archer: interesting. So obviously, this is one more example, there being no, Pat formula that applies to everybody. This is true of everything. But what you’re saying is that the boundaries do get ruptured through traumatic situations, in many cases, yeah. And so sometimes reinforcing or rebuilding those boundaries might be the first step, you know, whereas for somebody else, they might have reached the stage at which dismantling the boundaries or allowing the boundaries to relax and dissolve might be appropriate.

Julie Brown Yau: And it’s always important to have our own energetic boundaries. So not wanting to dismantle or collapse that I think that’s important. We had very early trauma disrupts our ruptures our boundaries, and I think that is really important to begin to, to heal, you know, and strengthen. Yeah, in the beginning of trauma, but I would say in the very beginning of healing trauma, what is most important is a sense of safety. So creating a sense of safety in our environment, where we are working to heal, but also some kind of sense of safety in our body. Because trauma lives in our body, it doesn’t feel safe, it’s trauma is frightening. So how can we begin to cultivate some kind of sense of safety within, that allows us not to go diving into the awful experiences when we’re healing, but to allow some more pleasant experiences, to feel that first. And that’s giving our body the environment feeling safe feeling, okay, which allows our body to move on its natural path of its own wisdom and healing, and also gives us some ground in our own body to feel okay, and allows a sense of organization in our body systems to come about because trauma is so disorganizing. So rather than just diving into disorganization, we want to cultivate some kind of organization, some kind of some kind of ground or pleasantness in our body first.

Rick Archer: So I want to get into talking a lot about things we’ve just been elaborating and embellishing the things we’ve just been saying. And I have a lot of questions about trauma. And later on, we have a small audience here. And towards the end of this interview, we’ll see if anybody in the audience would like to ask some questions. But um, I want to before we get into all that, I want to just pick up on what I alluded to in the introduction was, which is you seem to, at some point along the line have developed this capacity to quite spontaneously not looking for it. Tune in to, you know, traumas and collective consciousness. It’s like, last night in the car, I was reminded of that line from Star Wars where the death star blew up the planet Alderaan I think it was. And Obi Wan Kenobi all of a sudden, said, I, I just felt a great shock in the forest as if a million voices were crying out in alarm. Yeah. And you’ve had experiences when, you know, 911 and tsunami, and perhaps some other things you can tell us about? Where some you just like, Oh, what was that? So talk about that a little bit.

Julie Brown Yau: The first large collective experience that I went through, I was in Virginia on a meditation retreat. And in the middle of the night, I woke up because I was freezing cold, and it was in Virginia, and it didn’t seem to be any reason to be so cold. And the room was very, very dark. And I just sat there, you know, curious, what is this coldness. And then my vision opened up. And first of all, I could hear voices, and I could hear Help me, help me help me know, which is quite alarming. And I could hear like the depth of the alarm, or the concern or the pain and voices that I could hear. And now my vision opened up, and I could see hundreds of men walking through the room in front of me, very transparent, but I could see the clothes that they were wearing and their dark hair very clearly. And I really had no idea what was happening or what this was and I remember just thinking, you know, what do I What do I do here? What what is this and kind of cliche, but I heard this voice they tell him to go to the light. And then he was on my right side this extraordinary. Right Light is extraordinary. What was so extraordinary about it was I could feel it. This incredible sense of love like beyond anything I’d ever known at that point in my life. And so I knew I could communicate with whoever these beings were, who were moving in front of me, when I thought, go to the light, because there’s some kind of telepathic, you know, information being passed between us. And I saw them move them towards the light was outside in our ordinary time space, it was, yeah. So off they went. And then the room got warm again. And I sat and it was a really, really profound experience. And I had this deep longing inside myself to also want to move towards that light, just the feeling of it was so was so profound. So I sat for a little while in the darkness, and went back to sleep. And I woke up in the morning, it’s actually before I woke up, I had this dream of this beautiful being standing over me with these blue ocean eyes, and just looking at me, and like, as if he was stroking my forehead and just pouring compassion. And to me, as if knowing when I woke up, I’d be feeling something deep inside my heart from what I just witnessed. And sure enough, I woke up. And I was very teary. And I went for a walk outside just to contemplate what had happened. And a lady who is running the retreat was coming back from town. And she gave me a newspaper, and she said, Oh, there was a huge earthquake in Turkey last night, you know, and 1000s of people died. And I had no doubt that that’s what I was experiencing. And again, it was fascinating, and it dissolved some belief systems. But I wasn’t, I didn’t really tell many people I told, you know, my partner and a couple of friends, it didn’t seem to be some spectacular thing. Somehow, it just seemed to be the ordinary for me, sort of the extraordinary and ordinary, oh, that was fascinating how, how beautiful to see and how beautiful to participate in some way, you know, and then I let it go. But after that, that began to happen very, very often. And then after a few years, one or two more, if it was a couple of tsunamis where I could, then I would actually see what was happening, I could hear some really harrowing and upsetting sounds, what happened in one of the tsunamis, then I’m surrounded by what I call a light being who’s just feels like pure compassion. So you know, I am her and I’m me and ordinary me sort of out of the way a little bit. And these beings are the energy of these beings who just died seem to move through the heart center, because of course, when heart sent to opens the vastness of space as there’s a cosmos. So there’s some kind of clearing a channel of moving of energy, through the heart center that we all have the capacity to do. That is in service in some way. You know, I don’t know exactly what happens. How do I take it? I experienced it. It’s beautiful. I don’t doubt it in any way. And then it’s over. And I let it go.

Rick Archer: Yeah, I was gonna say something similar, which is, I don’t know exactly what’s happening with this. But it’s fascinating to contemplate. And there, it sort of gives you a, if you didn’t have it already, I’m sure you do. But it enhances your respect for the sort of divine orchestration of life, you know, and how there are dimensions of things going on, that we don’t ordinarily perceive or know about, but that are very much involved in our lives and our welfare, and so on. And that, and that sometimes, people can be used as instruments or AIDS in helping to affect a certain influence.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, yeah. Possibly. One of the elements that I believe is that human emotion needs to be processed through the human body or through the human heart or heart mind. So oftentimes, emotion is too much for people to bend, he has the trauma side of it, and they’re unable to process that emotion. And so people may, you know, live the whole life, and not have been able to process the traumatic energy or emotions from their lives. And here, we can touch into intergenerational trauma. We know that trauma then can be passed on to the children and enter children’s children and so forth. But it doesn’t necessarily have to go through a path of an actual family, right? We’re all the human family. So we can possibly, or certainly be able to process a whole field of energy through our own heart mind because this isn’t an individual space. This is the cosmic space. So there’s a way in which we can then process a field of emotion and that gets healed and liberated. And so you know, somebody else doesn’t then maybe have to do that.

Rick Archer: Yeah. I was involved in the TM movement for many years. And one of the things that Margie emphasized was that trauma or stress, as he sometimes called it, collect in the collective consciousness, much like static electricity in a cloud, you know, and eventually, when the static electricity gets strong enough, or the polarity is strong enough, between, you know, the cloud in the ground or two clouds, you have lightning, because static electricity can only get so out of balance before it has to neutralize. And so his explanation of war, for instance, and perhaps some of these other kinds of cataclysms that take place in the world, was that it’s a sort of a release of an excess of trauma or stress in collective consciousness. So at one point, we had this project where we went in large groups to the most troubled areas of the world, as close as we could get to them, I spent three months in Iran, just before the Shah left, I remember vividly standing on the roof of my hotel, watching all the banks and the movie theaters go up in flames getting out of hand, and they were trying to eliminate western influences. But in any case, a lot of research was done as we were doing these projects, and they did seem to be an indication that the larger the group, and in one of these areas that the the more there was a correlated reduction in undesirable social and economic factors and, you know, war deaths and crimes and, and stuff like that. Yeah. So you know, so I just say that illustrate the point that you’re making, which is that either an individual or even better, yet larger groups of individuals can have a neutralizing effect on collective trauma. If they’re doing something which, you know, can have that effect. Did

Julie Brown Yau: you feel in that experience that that emotion itself was being liberated? I just dissolving in some way?

Rick Archer: I’m not sure. But one thing I did notice is that when there was some kind of incoherence in our group, then into heronswood sprang up more in society as a society around us, for instance, at one point, there was a bunch of disagreement among some members of the group. And we also had to split up and stay in two separate hotels. And it was it disrupted the the group that we had been in a nice routine. And as soon as that happened, you know that things got Wilder in, in the areas around us and terrorizing. And that’s a very unscientific observation. But it was Maya, it just seemed that it worked that way. Yeah. And it did also often feel like a battle. Like, you know, we’re in the midst of this very chaotic place. And we’re just doing deep meditation, in hopes of neutralizing a lot of that chaos. But it wasn’t like meditating in the Himalayas or something.

Julie Brown Yau: Different, yeah. rarefied air.

Rick Archer: But anyway, it’s interesting. So the point, we’re the reason I went into all that, and the reason you just said and we were discussing the idea that there is trauma, not only in individual nervous systems or psych psyches, but in the collective nervous system or the collective psyche, yeah, absolutely consciousness.

Julie Brown Yau: And we can touch into our own and we can touch into the collective and heal both. Yeah.

Rick Archer: So I would assume that maybe we can get into defining trauma a little bit more precisely, but I would assume that however we define it, everybody, all 8 billion of us are traumatized to some degree. Sometimes just a little tiny bit, and sometimes huge. And there’s a spectrum. Yeah. Is that correct?

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah. I’m being traumas part of the human condition. Yeah. Getting born. Yeah. Yeah. You read out a picnic, and we are wired to be able to heal that trauma. But sometimes the events are just so much that we are able to so just because something like a traumatic birth happens, doesn’t mean we’re going to be traumatized. It depends on the environment that holds us through this is just talking to a lady this morning about my daughter’s birth. So she almost died in childbirth. In fortunately, I had a beautiful deep bond with her through pregnancy. So when the evening before her birth, I was I knew she was going to be born the next day, I hadn’t had a contraction and I was sitting meditating. And I heard her and she said I’m dying. i And wow. So I didn’t doubt it for a moment. I got my family and we rushed to the hospital. And I think the nurse thought you know crazy first time mom rolled her eyes and I said no, no, you really how many contractions if I had known? So they put the heart monitor on me and sure enough, heart wasn’t there. And then I heard a little bit so straight away into the emergency room in an emergency C section and a whole time I just stayed really connected with her and just calmed my answers down because I knew. And I was so grateful that I knew about trauma in this instant in so many incidences, so I could stay as calm as I possibly could and let go of any idea of a natural drug free birth. You know, and as they were trying to pull her out, you know, they were saying we can’t get her and she’s dark blue. And I just just staying with her letting go. I was conscious. Yeah. They gave me an epidural. So it kind of fell below your waist. And then eventually they pulled her out and they suction her mouth. So she took a breath straightaway. So she knew she was okay. And then I said in the deepest Mother Bear voice, which I couldn’t even say now it has to be in that moment, said, put my baby on me. And they did. They put a raid on me. And then she went to my breast. And I felt that was what really helped prevent that entanglement with death as she came into life from had been traumatized. So I was able to hold her and nurser. And just I held her in that hospital for three days. And the nurse would come in and say, you know, we’ll take her to the room now in the evening, and I laughed, there’s no way you’re not taking her anyway, you know, wow. So she stayed with me. And I was very aware that, you know, her body could have been a very terrifying place to be in because she may have almost died, you know, in my womb. And so I needed to nurture and hold and love and compromise too. And yeah, just just to give that love and that safety and use my own nervous system, as a place of safety and calmness. So the first year postpartum, so we’re getting into developmental trauma. Now the first year postpartum of a baby’s life, they don’t have a capacity to self soothe. So when we’re born, we can’t calm ourselves. So this is why if you put a screaming baby in a room of screaming babies, all the babies are screaming, nobody can calm themselves, there’s nobody there to act is that system to teach the baby how to, to calm itself. So I was that for my daughter. And you know, we had a beautiful, like, it’s 13 years now. But those initial three or four years, I was very aware of just the presence and the calm states and the love, that she would need to feel very safe in her body and very safe in a world.

Rick Archer: That’s beautiful. That’s an amazing story. As you’re telling and I was reminded of some things I heard you say on some recordings I was listening to about how, you know, in years past decades past, there were certain psychologist that advocated this letting babies cry, and you’re going to spoil their personalities, if you coddle them when they’re upset. Yeah. And so they would like you know, parents would like cower in the doorway while their baby screamed self, ours and afraid to touch the baby for fear that, you know, ruin its personality or something completely the opposite of what they should be doing. Yeah, I also heard you mentioned foundling homes, because a lot of babies were abandoned, especially when there was such a stigma against unmarried pregnancies. And babies would get left someplace and be found and put in foundling homes. And they were sort of like in isolation, each baby,

Julie Brown Yau: I put them in isolation, because there was a lot of germs being passed back and forth. And it was around the time of germ theory. And they thought, what if we separate the babies from one another, and other people, they won’t die, they won’t get germs. So of course, they isolated the babies and a death rate went up higher, because of the isolation that the child didn’t survive. So it wasn’t necessarily the germs that were killing them, then it was then isolation when we come into the world, so dependent on other people, right, we need other beings to help us learn how to soothe ourselves. So if something horrible happens in the environment, or in our own body, we learn that it’s okay, because love then comes back to us. And that’s how we build resilience. So people will say, you know, babies children are so resilient, they’ll be fine, no resilient, is nurtured and cultivated, and built within us by the love and the holding and the safety of the environment. So when something awful happens, something nice happens. And we say, okay, you know, I can get through this just because something bad happens doesn’t mean I can’t stay connected to my body, or the world, I can actually feel better, right, that builds resilience and allows us later on in life. Maybe when more troubling events or challenges come we can stay with them and are less likely to be traumatized by it because we’ve built that resilience. But if that doesn’t get built in childhood, we’re more likely to get traumatized in adulthood. In a in a frightening events.

Rick Archer: That would make sense. So, you know, obviously the baby has the proper kind of upbringing with the proper kind of touch and, and closeness and affection. It builds a much more invincible personality. Yeah. Whereas if you’re damaged From the outset, then you’re going to be susceptible to new damage later on,

Julie Brown Yau: or more if we are disconnected from our body because the body becomes a really frightening place to live out of the fact with our body is traumatized. It doesn’t feel good, right, we contract in the face of trauma. So being really deeply in this contracted, restricted body doesn’t feel good, you know, so we disconnect from the body or completely dissociate. So it’s not necessarily I don’t like to use a word damaged, it’s more It does, doesn’t feel good, it feels so painful. But when we begin to address that pain in that contraction and allow ourselves to open and soften, there’s many ways to do that, then we naturally will reconnect to the body, and and come home,

Rick Archer: are reminded of, you know, indigenous cultures, Native Americans, and so on where the mother will basically where the child Yeah, and one of those what I forget what they call them. But remember, either, either on the back or on the front, that basically the kid is part of the mother’s body.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, I really believe we should wear our children’s

Rick Archer: pa corner, whatever baby is right there. Yeah, it must have had one, you know, I guess modern mothers are hip to that idea. More and more, you see that thing?

Julie Brown Yau: We do see, and I think that’s wonderful. What we also see though, is a mother holding a baby, which is beautiful. But looking on the phone. The the experience of the infant and the mother’s arms is lovely. But if a mother wasn’t looking at you, you look, you look away. Look, you look away, you know, but if you’re just continually on your phone, the baby has this sense of Yeah, yeah. The baby knows that. It’s tuned to the mother. It knows it’s been ignored. And it doesn’t know why. And the experience of an infant of a child, and the environment not being pleasant and helping them is it’s their fault. Yeah, so the baby isn’t thinking about mom’s on her phone again, for goodness sake, look at me know, the baby’s like, there’s something wrong with me, this is really frightening. I need to disconnect. If it’s, you know, severe enough, I mean, just an occasional look at your phone for a few minutes is good. But that continual repetition, of not really paying attention and attuning you know, and having eye contact with that infant and child is really detrimental to the well being of the infant and child to know themselves.

Rick Archer: Yeah, as love isn’t generally understood and accepted these days that babies are as conscious and as cognitive as you are saying they are. I mean, in our case, we don’t have kids, we have a couple of dogs. And we have to talk in code language about taking the dog for a walk, because, and actually not even put out any kind of a feeling or a vibe that we might be doing that, because the dogs pick up on it right away. So even like, going in going out for a shopping trip or something and not wanting the dogs to come we have to be so nonchalant because one dog in particular, is like, uncanny. He knows when we’re going shopping, and he he’ll go outside and stand in the garage and not come back in because he knows you’re going someplace I know it. And I’m going to get in that car. So I mean, if a dog can do that, it seems like babies must be

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, I mean, with this with this relationship is built, when a baby goes in distress, distress, you know, crying, the, there’s something in the mother, right, that feels distressed to bring the baby and child back together. And oftentimes that distress is is ignored. And then the baby goes into high state of arousal. If that keeps going, then. Yeah, yeah. So we’re designed to be with our children is just society and culture and so forth, right now, often doesn’t allow for that. So it’s not that a mother or father, parent doesn’t want to be with the child, they have to work or they’re really busy.

Rick Archer: And so then that’s probably don’t provide the kind of one on one that

Julie Brown Yau: they don’t, you know, and then depending what the birth was, like, what the time in utero was, like, you know, is going to give something or not give something to the child who then in daycare, and how safe that feels to be away from the parent. So there’s so many considerations to look at. But there’s just not that much time for parents to be able to do that. So I find incredibly fortunate that I could do that with my daughter that I could, you know, I didn’t have to work right away. And then when I did work, I was doing some retreats, and people would come. And I say this is part of life. My daughter’s nursing. She is going to be in a room with us. This is just the way that it is. Yeah, yeah, it’s good. Some of the more I would say. Intelligent countries in the world actually have very good policies about people being able to spend time with the kids after they have a baby. Yeah. That’s important because that’s, that’s the ground right of the human being, to be able to grow up in a way where they feel connected. So we Disconnect from myself as a child is gonna be really hard to really connect with other people when we grow up.

Rick Archer: I assume that trauma has both a sort of neuro physiological component, and more of a subtle, or you could even say astral or, you know, kind of something in the cloud kind of component. You know, I mean, I bet you, if it were thoroughly understood, and I’m sure it is understood, to a certain extent, there could be identified various chemical or structural abnormalities. So, I assume that trauma has both a neuro physiological component, and a subtler one, just as we have sort of a mind and then maybe a physical instrument, which enables the mind to function. And so theoretically, you know, scientists could look into the, the biochemistry of trauma and how impressions are left in the nervous system. And I think in Sanskrit, they call them some scars than these deep impressions. But I think even the the Vedic tradition, which would use that word, understands that they’re not exclusively physical, the results. So some scars that are somehow deeper in whatever the subtle body is, and we actually carry those from lifetime to lifetime, they say, you know, so you can be born with a whole packet of traumas that you incurred in previous lives. In fact, there are contemporary stories of kids who no wake up screaming, because their, their their jet fighter has is going down in flames. So what do you have to say about that?

Julie Brown Yau: It’s a great possibility. I know I read some of Ian Stevenson, who did it was mandus. Yeah, a tremendous amount of research on that. So it’s a great possibility. The work that I do myself, people come in and often will share some information of what they feel is a past life. It’s not necessarily my job to believe that or not believe that. It’s really just to hold the space of what it is they want to explore. But certainly, we have imprints in our psyche that we could carry from lifetime to lifetime. And I, you know, seems that that’s what shows up sometimes. And maybe that’s why, you know, I had this What’s that P word? For meditation that I have, the more I couldn’t say it earlier, you know, when we were talking earlier, I have, I’m gonna mess it up if I say it, because I can’t get over the Yeah, meditation. Maybe that was an imprint that came in with me. So you know, maybe that’s why some of us are more prone to be able to sit and open up that way. Some people mathematics, music, things like that.

Rick Archer: I definitely get the sense with a lot of people that interview and when I hear some of the experiences they had as children that they did a lot of spiritual practice in past lives. I mean, I just, to me, that whole past life thing is not a big mystery or a problem. It just seems kind of logical. Yeah. But

Julie Brown Yau: you know, I don’t know if there’s so much wisdom in dwelling on it. They were here now, let’s be in this life. But if there’s imprints that come up in this life in the year right now, then we work with them.

Rick Archer: Yeah. But even the knowledge that our lifetime consists, our life consists of much more than the span of a single lifetime, can I think relieve great fear and trauma? Because if you think that this is all you are, and when this body dies, that’s the end of you, then as that time approaches, I would think, unless you really want to check out and not exist in any way, shape or form anymore. In which case, sorry, you had such a rough life, I would think that you would, you know, take find comfort in the notion that there’s an ongoing process of evolution. And I’ve just, you know, just like education, I’ve gone through fifth grade. Now, I’ll get a chance to go through sixth grade, you know,

Julie Brown Yau: yeah, yeah. Yeah. For some people that may bring comfort for other people that might evoke a little bit more fear. Where will I go next? You know, a lot of people don’t like the unknown anyway, so an unknown other life?

Rick Archer: Yeah, a friend of mine, who’s sitting here was saying how he was raised in a Catholic family and his earliest trauma was being told that he was going to go to hell for all eternity if he thought a bad thought or did a wrong thing or something like that. Yeah. Imagine drumming that into kids heads.

Julie Brown Yau: And then there’s another perspective, what you know, there’s an individual consciousness that goes from lifetime to lifetime. And then there’s a larger consciousness that is all of that. Yeah. So we could experience ourself in a, what seemed like a past life, right in this construct of time as all of the beings that are experiencing that. And I say that I was speaking at breakfast this morning with with some of the people here about exploring My own intergenerational trauma, I was looking at sort of the masculine side of my family, and looking at my own life, and how that shows up in the world around me. And I sat down just to contemplate that in a meditation, and what showed up kind of a vision, but it was more than a vision because it was if I was in that vision was World War One. And I was I was really taken aback in this huge scene that the consciousness was in, but it wasn’t as if I was remembering a past life. And I was one person, I was all of those beings. In that scenario, which was absolutely horrifying, to see, these young men do 1819 and 20, with these guns and the buttons, and, you know, tears and screaming of horror, but what they were doing in checking out and then being in the, in the trenches, in just what they possibly could have done to that masculine or male side of my lineages over the generations. So, you know, is it we have past lives, you know, future lives and so forth? Or is it all one body experiencing all of it, and we just tap into an individual consciousness? Again, it’s, it’s, it’s a mystery? Do we know for sure, these are, you know, amazing things sometimes to explore?

Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, as many people say, it seems that the deeper you go, the more universal it gets, you know, and so we’re the ocean analogy, where a bunch of waves here, and yet deep down where it’s all just invite ocean, you know, Whatsoever you do unto the least of these you do unto me.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah. But one of the beautiful aspects of that experience that I had, right, it’s just an experience, it came and went, but I was feeling the pain of or what I felt was, I was feeling the pain of these young men. And I could feel it go through me. So my knowledge, some of that pain was being released from that intergenerational trauma, from the male lineage of both my maternal and paternal sides. And there was a subtle sense of then freedom with my own self, as I’d acknowledged that pain, right, and felt that pain and seen that pain, and maybe some dissolution of it.

Rick Archer: One thing that remember earlier, I was talking about the idea that perhaps stress accumulates or trauma accumulates in collective consciousness, then when it reaches a breaking point, we have a war something. One thing I never understood about that, and I think I asked marshy about this one time, but I forget what he said. Is that it seems like if the war is the expression of the release of the accumulated tension or stress, it seems like wars generally create more than they release. Yeah. You know, I mean, they would exacerbate the stress and collective consciousness, it would seem, maybe not, I don’t know, a lot of times there is a sort of a beautiful reconciliation after a war. I mean, look at how Germany has evolved since World War Two compared to what it was like beforehand. So perhaps, despite all the trauma incurred, the bombing of Dresden and everything else that happened, there was some purging of something inflict the collective consciousness of Germany. And now it’s a much brighter place than it used to

Julie Brown Yau: possibly, yeah. And then we see, and the work of intergenerational trauma, individuals still pressings processing some of their emotion, you know, from their ancestors, as it travels down intergenerationally. Maybe that’s, you know, part of that cleansing or part of that healing is that even after the war, and the generations after continue to do that healing.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Thomas hibel works on that a bit. Yeah, Thomas, he speaks at the same conference, and he’s been on bad capita, he is specifically works on the collective trauma between Israel and Germany. He does things to try to help reconcile it and neutralize it. I have a note, you know, think about when I see the news and what’s happening in Syria, for instance, and the children being the victims of chemical warfare and bombings and everything else, I think, what is happening to these kids, I mean, compared to any trauma I may have ever experienced. You know, there’s a whole country full of children who are experiencing something so horrific and we’re kind of breeding a whole country, at least, of severely traumatized people. And I’m not sure if there’s any conclusion to the thought I’m expressing here but it’s just like I I’m kind of lament the what’s happening to those kids.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, the likelihood of them growing up is healthy, loving, connected beings.

Rick Archer: work that would have to take place. Right? And speaking of that, have you ever you know, you said you sometimes see stories of people who were severely traumatized, they were sold into sex trafficking or, you know, seriously abused by their parents or something. I mean, I’ve interviewed a woman, Shelley Ray, I believe her name was who was sexually abused by her father at a young age. And but then they somehow despite the horrific nature of their experience, blossom into these amazing people. You know, have I don’t know if they would, in some cases, people even say things like, I’m almost I’m still ungrateful for everything that happened in my life, despite how bad it was. Because look, I’m look, I’ve kind of turned out, it was actually conducive to the spiritual awakening that ended up resulting maybe

Julie Brown Yau: becoming who they are now, right, we could call that post traumatic growth, you find yourself becoming more than who you were prior to the trauma taking place. In some ways, it builds resilience, it creates greater connection. And I think that feeling of that, you know, hidden gift, and trauma comes later on once trauma is beginning to heal or heal, it’s very difficult to, to feel that or to know that in the midst of the pain of trauma. But I see that all the time. You know, people who’ve gone through just such a rendus trauma, his children just horrendous. And yet, there they are in my office or in a group. And they’re just these beautiful loving beings who are doing this courageous work to heal. Typically, what I find is there was someone, even for a moment that looked at them with love, that resonated within them at some level, that they know who they were, right, they knew who they were, one of the things that I talk about is, as children, we really need to be seen, we really need to be heard. And we really need that beautiful eye gaze, of course, there’s possibilities that somebody is blind and but there’s other senses touch, sound, smell, with eye gaze will pull love, right, the delight of the parent, seeing the child or the caregiver, seeing the child, just pause that love into the child. And that resonates with who they are, yeah, this is who I am, I am love. When we don’t get enough of that, you know, then we forget, we are love. And we separate from that. And we block the heart from the pain of the loss of that. So these people, individuals and groups, if I just such horrible, horrible trauma, somehow, either have had that experience of somebody looking at them with love or caring about them, or seeing them at a level that touched them, or there’s imprints that we were talking about earlier. And our own psyche that allows them to, to grow up is what we would think of as as good loving human beings. Yeah.

Rick Archer: I’m wondering thing I kind of have one of my bedrock beliefs or assumptions or understandings, or whatever it is, is that if you zoom out large enough, or far, to the big enough picture, then the universe is a benign place. It’s very, it’s a big evolution machine, in which ultimately, the welfare of all beings is the is the concern, or is the prior is the agenda. And that, you know, if you don’t zoom up far enough, you have, it’s very hard to come to terms with things like Auschwitz and other things we’ve been talking about. But if you could zoom out far enough, take the God’s eye view, so to speak, then you would actually be able to see that everything that happens, however, atrocious is in the big picture, in the interest of the ultimate enlightenment of all beings concerned, all beings involved. And you sometimes think of it that way, or is that a little bit too? Topical for

Julie Brown Yau: it? No, no, I don’t think it’s philosophical. I’ll experience something similar. Where I can be sitting with an individual doing some trauma work, and then all I all that is seen is that I’ll use the word God right now. Right? All I can see is that expression of that that’s what that individual is. So is the so is the carpet so is the wool so is this. i There’s an individual here looking, but there’s a recognition of everything as spirit itself. And it’s a then there’s no agenda, to heal or to fix or anything for this individual. There’s just this pure expression of light and love, I would say just expressing itself in a sort of luminous glow.

Rick Archer: Nice. Have you can you give us some case studies, so to speak, of different people you’ve interacted whether, you know, helped dealt with, and some of the things they’ve gone through, however you want to tell it, but some examples of the means through which trauma is discovered, healed, and the outcome of that healing

Julie Brown Yau: might see what comes. It always want to honor the people that I you want to speak about confidentiality? Of course, no, no, of course, but a number of people have number of people will say to me, you can share my story, because it, it gives meaning to them. That gives hope to others, that gives hope to others. But it also Yeah, it also gives them something because that pain is being heard. Yeah, I’m actually showing a few pieces of art on Saturday at the sand conference, from a lady, you know, and she, she paints after our sessions. And I asked her, I said, Would it be possible to show one of your pieces of art? And she said, Oh, absolutely. And she said, It’s really meaningful for me that people witness my pain. No. So in the same thing, as sometimes people say, you know, it’s important that my pain has been witnessed, maybe even more than just by you, but by a lot larger audience. So I just I wasn’t prepared to I’m going to talk about, I’m just going to see what comes up. But I always like to say, I’m just not going to talk about anybody’s story, it’s always one where I have that permission, because then it’s, it’s important. So I work with a number of people who are born and a war zone, or a revolution, or an uprising. And that seems to create a horrendous amount of trauma, because, first of all, they’re wanting to a collective experience of fear. And, of course, their caregivers or parents are going to be in some kind of fear, because there’s a war or revolution or an uprising happening around them. And you know, then the whole environment is disturbed. And so a number of people that I’ve worked on, from that kind of background, have disconnected from their bodies, I’m just going to sort of group it into a few people disconnected from their body so severely because there was just nothing safe here, the parents weren’t a safe container to help themselves Sue, because their bodies were feeling disruption, you know, the fear itself. And so they’ve either gone into their mind, and the intellect and become incredibly brilliant intellectual beings, and a number of them very highly successful in what they do. Because this has just become such a focus. Others have gone into deep spiritual practices. Okay, so now it’s coming to me to people at all, I’ll speak to you directly. So one individual who became very bright, incredibly successful man, everybody would look at him and, you know, say, what an amazing life, you know, all of the riches you could imagine, and so forth. And everything that you know, in some places in our society, places success, and, you know, so good looks and money and all the bells and whistles. But inside a such profound suffering. Here’s an individual again, who grew up in a, in a revolution. And he said, his teacher, one of his teachers, when he left his home country and came to America would look at him with such love, that he remembered that resonating within him. But it didn’t shift the trajectory of his life until later on, he decided he knew what he wanted to do. And he knew he was going to get there, which was meaning getting, you know, this huge corporate job, and then owning a huge, you know, Corporation. And he said, It didn’t matter what I did what I did to anybody to get there, because I couldn’t feel it. He said, in retrospect, he said, I couldn’t feel it. So even though I had those thoughts and those drives, I didn’t have the empathy or compassion, it cultivated through healing his trauma, that he, you know, back then, so of course, he he thought that having that great success would bring him happiness. And of course, it brought him moments of happiness and luxury and this and that, but inside he said, I’m just tortured, and nobody knows I’m tortured inside. And so we you know, we begin this trauma work, and it’s a really a courageous path to to face. The horrific things that happen inside ourselves because I think we spend a lifetime Avoiding feeling that. So being just so disconnected from the body is to avoid the pain that’s living there. And the disconnected emotions that go with that trauma. And of course, the fragmented, are split off parts of our consciousness that are frozen in time or outside of time as we grow. So it’s like going back and touching into those places, or kind

Rick Archer: of symptoms as experiencing that motivated him to come in for therapy, that

Julie Brown Yau: misery including my own misery. So he was fortunately physically that he didn’t have any physical symptoms. And he’s only in his mid 40s. So he gained a tremendous amount of success, relatively young. So in his mid 40s, he just recognized, I’m absolutely miserable. There’s nothing else that I could get externally, that could make me happy because I have everything I could possibly want. Perhaps it

Rick Archer: wasn’t until he was, you know, where he had hoped to get that he realized that he was miserable, because I, okay, I’ve gotten all this and I’m still not happy. So there must

Julie Brown Yau: be. So he wrote his life, and became that success with a sense of false sense of pride or traumatic pride. So he was better than everybody else. You know, he looked down on everybody else, he deserved more than everybody else. And he said, that was my drive. And I kind of believed it, even though there’s a ton of part of me that didn’t, stable genius. Yeah, he got that. So through our work that he had to face, usually what’s under that type of pride is profound level of shame that a lot of people just won’t even go there. So I admire this person so much, because he turned around, and he would experience that shame. And the neglect that he went through, in the horror that he went through a feeling so bad inside of himself, because he didn’t know it was his environment that was failing him, you know, with the war and his parents and neglect and a lack of love. He just thought there was something wrong with him. It’s like that gets embedded into our system, another person I work with, for you and somebody else. So how did you work with this guy, too? And how, what kind of healing did he undergo? And how did his life change afterwards. So his life has sort of work backwards, that his life is changing, to where where he was very isolated before. Now he’s very connected with other people, he feels a sense of joy inside, he’s enjoying the fruits of his hard work in a way that he never had before. And then he’s connecting with different types of people. Like, you know, he was very limited and who we wanted to associate with, because it had to fit with this particular view of himself. And now he’s open to, you know, all kinds of people. And he undergo that shift in orientation just through talking to you, or did you have him do something some kind of particular practice or so it’s, it’s the way that I work is always organic. So we see what shows up in the moment. And so it’s he’s expanding his awareness by bringing awareness to what’s going on, and both to his body and what’s going on inside of him. At first, he had no connection to his body. So his body wasn’t really in the picture other than I don’t feel anything. Yeah. So the first thing was cultivating some kind of sense of feeling something, you know, and you said, you know, what do you notice in your body? You know, there’s like, a little bit disturbing, because there was nothing there. So we learn what do you notice in your experience, and it becomes less disturbing?

Rick Archer: Every time you say that, I’m reminded of a line from Good Morning Vietnam, where Robin Williams is going to the radio station for the first time, and he has to get up really early. And he’s walking down the hallways. I’m not even in my body.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, yeah, well, who would be right there? I mean, it’s terrifying. So it’s not that there’s not a 123 step, you know, that we could write down do this, this is it’s all what you know, it’s, I find it it’s like this weaving in and out from different places, you know, touching on sadness, touching on grief, touching, on longing, touching, on re touching, on annihilation, touching on all of these aspects of our being and gathering them and weaving them back into us, until we begin to feel a greater sense of, of wholeness. So sometimes it’s as if I can do a deep dive with somebody into the what feels like the underworld, one lady would talk about it as the underworld, it’s like, you come down into the underworld with me, you know, and she meets all of these dark forces within herself. And then we come back up, you know, some people say, I go down here on my own and you throw with a rope. You know, there’s different metaphors and analogies of how people experience the work.

Rick Archer: There must be a good reason why a lot of stuff does stay hidden from us, must be my there must be either protective or just a, you know, it’s, it seems to me nature’s way of how we’re wired that we’re not necessarily aware of all this buried trauma, but obviously, it’s kind of like, I don’t know what metaphor to use, but it’s sort of like we can never sort of rest easy, as long as that stuff is down there, it’s kind of like trying to push a beach ball under the water. And it’s always trying to pop up, and you have to keep pushing to keep it down there. So but, but obviously, don’t want to mix my metaphors. But obviously, at a certain point, when you realize it’s there, and you need to release it, there must be a way of artfully releasing it. And there could perhaps be ways of two reasons to abruptly or prematurely or isolate. And also, I thought, what comes to mind is psychedelics and ayahuasca and all that what if somebody has all kinds of buried trauma, and they do that stuff, and it’s too much too soon as a result,

Julie Brown Yau: yeah, they I’ve worked with people in that scenario, or have done like, some deep profound breath work and things have come or gone to a meditation retreat for 10 days, right, and as a gently soften and relax, comes from, you know, the conscious awareness, all of all of this traumatic memories or feelings or emotion. So there is a, I believe in working in a gentle way, you know, creating safety, creating connection boundaries, in allowing pacing, pacing it. So every little piece of work that we do is done, right, it’s integrated, it’s finished, and we let that settle in. And then the next piece, and I allow the wisdom of the individual in their psyche to show what, what comes next. But we have this mechanism mechanism within us that we can split off, right, so we don’t have to feel what’s too much to bear. It’s nature’s gift, if you will, because sometimes these horrifying experiences that we can have as a human being, to have to feel all of it with with Checkout. So we can we can disconnect from the body, we can disconnect from the emotions. The problem with that is the emotions don’t go away, they’re still affecting us the below our conscious awareness, but we’re still being deeply affected by them. So maybe we’re going to stay isolated, because we’re, you know, we’re too afraid to connect with other people. I mean, there’s all kinds of ways it can show up. And so we want to gently explore, and hopefully explore before too many symptoms begin to come up because at some point, symptoms will show up. And it’s not always obvious that it’s trauma or developmental trauma, because people don’t understand the subtleties or the nuances of early trauma. They think it’s just, you know, there’s no just about it. They think, you know, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, death of a parent or surgery, some big event, you know, that’s obviously traumatic. But oftentimes, it’s not enough nurturance holding love, comfort, connection. Yeah, sort of stuff, subtle stuff that feels it’s really essential, right as human beings to have, it feels too much for the infant, a child in their body, because it elicits a sense of threat, right? There’s a threat. And an infant child, we can only experience so much threaten our body, it almost feels like death is approaching, we’ve got no way to escape, other than to leave our body. There was a frank Putnam, who was a psychiatrist said it is yes, the escape when there’s no other escape, right? We disconnect from our body, and we split off the emotions. And so we really want to gently collect those and bring those back.

Rick Archer: I’ve heard that people with multiple personality disorder are usually traumatized, and that it’s almost like it’s not even enough to have one personality disassociated from the bodies like they’ve got, I don’t know, maybe half a dozen.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, yeah. It’s an extraordinary phenomena to, to witness that. Yeah. Um, with regard to spirituality, I mean, the main theme of this show is spirituality. And most of the people who are listening, are interested in awakening and they read Ramana Maharshi. And, you know, they’re, they’re the one they’re on the kind of seekers path. So how does, let’s talk a while about how all this relates to spirituality and what its significance is for the spiritual aspirant. I see healing trauma as a spiritual path. I don’t separate them. writers don’t maybe always speak that way. Because that’s not always the audience,

Rick Archer: or perhaps as an important or even essential component of a spiritual path that might have other components.

Julie Brown Yau: Okay. So we are connecting back to ourself, right? In trauma, often that self is is hidden away. And we are living from it a sense of self that’s inauthentic, because our expression is children. And I think so much trauma goes back to our childhood. So that’s why I really always, you know, lead my conversations prior to developmental trauma. So our authentic expression of who we are gets squashed. Maybe our core essential self gets hidden away somewhere. And so we have to develop strategies and patents. To live in the world that are really not really who we are, you know, we’re attending to other people’s needs rather than our own. And it’s, it’s a subtle and sometimes not so subtle way of suffering. And sometimes we go into a spiritual path of seeking to find something was seeking something was searching for something. But if, if we haven’t, if we’re seeking without our core essential self or nature of being connected to that, and we’re not being authentic in our expression of connecting, then maybe this a little something missing, or if not missing, receive another way of putting it, I work with tremendous amount of people who have profound realizations and spiritual openings. And then something comes up some kind of pain or memory or emotion bursts through into their awareness. And it’s as if that realization becomes obscured, maybe this faster awareness or expands that they were living with, all of a sudden, this guy, and then shame comes up, right, and then depression, and I’m not good enough. And, and my teacher is gonna shout at me and all of this, right? It’s, it’s all fun, it’s real. What I find that is, is the unresolved early trauma, finding its way through, yeah,

Rick Archer: perhaps as a result of the spiritual awakening that took place that becomes sort of a solvent, which enables the embedded trauma to loosen up.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, so it’s beautiful. In one way, it’s very valid, of course, the experiences are very valid. But when they seemingly go away, and of course, nothing goes away. When it’s obscured, it’s it’s giving rise, or it gives rise that expands gives rise to the unresolved trauma. So a becomes, but there’s because it’s in the body, and maybe the person hasn’t been so connected to the body, it feels really frightening, you know, and, and they get overwhelmed maybe by the shame, or the disappointment, or the sadness, or the grief and other lies. And so a lot of those individuals will come in to me and work with that. And so we’ll work with with whatever is present. And then of course, awareness of the expanse opens up again, and but there’s a different sense of it. The experience, if they’ve been disconnected in their body in this spiritual opening, or realization, when it’s grounded in the body, the experience of it is different. And attends to be less transient. Because it’s grounded in this vibrancy, right, the body becomes this vibrant expanse of feeling of being home.

Rick Archer: Yeah. I think a lot of there’s a syndrome that a lot of people go through, I got it, I lost it, I got it. I lost it. Yeah, it’s sometimes that can go on for years. And but I think that there’s a kind of a, in a development taking place, sometimes with that cycle, where, you know, when there’s some dawning of clarity, and expansiveness, it enables another batch of embedded trauma to loosen up and be worked out. Yeah. And then when that one’s pretty much process, boom, expansion again, and then that allows a deeper level, the end, but eventually that cycle seems to play itself out. And people get into more of an abiding state, and which doesn’t get disrupted by

Julie Brown Yau: and which is beautiful. It’s the recognition of something emerges, that feels difficult, ah, let’s, let’s resolve this, let’s see what this is, as opposed to being overwhelmed by it and hiding away and feeling shame or pretending it’s not happening. Now, which I, which I see a little bit because then there’s some spiritual pride comes in, and we have to pretend and not be authentic, you know. So it’s really finding that balance of being able to recognize and work with whatever comes up in our experience is here to be met with a certain amount of presence or because trauma is relational, it really helps to work with another person, whether it’s a therapist or a friend, or somebody who can witness what’s happening for you to help it resolve itself or the fear, dismantle whatever might be.

Rick Archer: This afternoon, you and I and about 20 Other people are going to be in a meeting about that was being hosted by the Association for spiritual integrity, to basically a discussion among a bunch of teachers about the sort of the spiritual community and you know, how there have been so many examples of spiritual teachers behaving badly, and causing all kinds of new drama in their students and all sorts of disruption and so on. And yet many of these spiritual teachers have a reputation for being in some highly evolved state and apparently not none of the I got it, I lost it phase, and yet still really off kilter in terms of their behavior. Maybe we’re defining, I don’t know how broadly, we’re defining the word trauma can A person be relatively free of the residual effects of trauma, and yet still be seriously undeveloped in some aspect of their personality? Or do you think that if one were trauma free, then correspondingly, all facets of the personality would be nicely developed?

Julie Brown Yau: So is there assumption then that a spiritual teacher, is trauma free?

Rick Archer: Is there, right? Yeah, I don’t think so. Being a drama free if anyone ever gets

Julie Brown Yau: it exactly. I think we’re all awake. I don’t want to my teacher said, well. So I see this in different in different ways, with different people, that I’ve witnessed a lot of teachers in spiritual traditions and trauma and psychological traditions, as presenting a particular image of themselves. And that becomes very destructive. And there’s so much projected onto a teacher, so much projected, and you know, everybody’s human. And there’s this point where I see that certain teachers stopped doing their own work, right. So they no longer work in progress

Rick Archer: in the believe the vision that some of their more starry eyed students have of them.

Julie Brown Yau: Exactly. And as if that underlying trauma that they may not know is there begins to come out if it’s there. This is the bursts of anger whipping out Yeah, right. This is the condemnation that they do, or this is a sexual behavior, whatever it is, that is really disturbing, in breaking that trust and confidentiality of the students. I mean, it’s heartbreaking. The other story that I was going to tell you and you asked about around a person who went she went to India to, to work in a an ashram, so she went on a spiritual route to avoid the pain of her past. And fortunately, she didn’t get so involved in this Ashram to where she gave everything up to the guru. And that Guru right now, in this last year or so, all kinds of horrific stories are coming out about him. What he had all of these cities that you were talking about earlier, so these powers he he was exuding some energy that people would feel and then they would feel out within themselves and have bless. But he was clearly manipulating people’s minds, to take that money to take that possessions to take their bodies to bow down to him. And in my discussion, and work with a number of people who’ve had similar scenarios, it’s not always as big as an ashram and so forth. But gurus and teachers, is they have some of them have an ability to attune cognitively or cognitive empaths to tune in to this underlying early trauma, again, taking it back to trauma and spirituality. Maybe not on purpose, but maybe who knows, and becoming the parent becoming the loving mother becoming a loving father becoming everything that that child didn’t have, or couldn’t receive as a child. Now, somehow this guru, or this teacher, is giving them that in a very clever, sometimes sublime way. And it then becomes very painful. Because it’s not resolving something it’s repeating. So I would say everybody in that scenario, who I’ve worked with, who’s worked with a teacher who has had some mishap in that relationship, or the Sangha, or the community is working on resolving it’s a repetition in some way of their early trauma. And the teacher, the guru, mentor, becomes the person becomes the parent or becomes the person that’s going to help this person resolve if they’re able to see it that way. But I it’s there’s a problem. Clearly,

Rick Archer: yeah. And it’s not limited to gurus. I mean, people can, you know, politicians can, of course, play those mind tricks.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, it happens everywhere. But yeah, I trauma and spirituality is a conversation and it’s, I see that.

Rick Archer: Yeah, one thing that I, I think that will have to happen. If this tendency for these, you know, guru disciple, ashram type train wrecks, is going to end is that it’s going to have to be a kind of a greater upsurge of self confidence among the students, and among the sort of greater collective mentality of spiritual aspirants and seekers. Because there’s this tendency for people to think, with kind of alluding to what you just said, to think, Well, this guy seems so flashy, and I am just a schmuck. And you know, he’s doing these weird things, but who am I to judge? You know, I mean, he’s supposed to be enlightened, so maybe that is okay. If you’re enlightened, you’re doubting your own common sense. You know, so if people could just get a little bit more confident, and if there could be a greater collective appreciation of what is and is not appropriate, such as has happened in the me to movement, you know, people no longer putting up with this kind of crap, that I think that would go a great way to, you know, clean up the, the the weekly scandal announcements.

Julie Brown Yau: But if we look inside is, what is what is it within us, that thinks this person is so fantastic and when I mean, it’s a lack of self worth, or self esteem, they can I can only this person can give it to me, my life, I would say, and I, the certain teachings that I loved, I love the teachings, not the teacher, you know, the receive teachings, but, you know, seeds look inside, what are you projecting onto that human being who’s the teacher even. And in looking, you know, I really feel that within ourself, we can find that, of course, with the assistance and helps of others teachers come and go, but to to give everything and your, your whole being and your possessions to somebody, of course, that’s his extreme experience, but people do not very uncommon either, but we have it inside. And I feel when we heal those traumas, right, those subtle nuances of trauma that actually don’t feel so subtle, where we have unresolved anger that contenant against us, which gives us self criticism, self loathing, self hatred, then we’re more likely to search out the goodness and the brilliance and radiance that we have in our self in another. It’s

Rick Archer: yeah, but unfortunately, it’s a bit of a catch 22 Because a lot of times people seek out a teacher or because they have those traumas. It’s not like Okay, I gotta fix my traumas, then I’ll be able to find the good teachers, like, I’m broken, you saved me.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah, well, that’s why I, you know, I don’t particularly love going out in public and talking and talking about my experiences in this. And the reason I do it, I think it’s important for us to understand more about trauma and developmental trauma, how it distorts our sense of self and who we are, and how we see the world and how we see others. So just this awareness of how trauma can affect us in any path in life, and just being aware and taking a peek. And let’s see, you know, what is the dialogue that goes on in my mind about my own being? How am I with other people, you know, I always trying to please everybody, you know, or am I actually confident and upright and secure in my own being, that I can receive a teaching, without worrying that the teacher might not like me, or I’m not doing a good enough, I’m not doing it well enough, or I might get kicked out, or she’s not gonna like me, all of those are aspects of that lack of our own self esteem and worth, that can come from not having that nurtured in childhood, which is a form of earlier developmental trauma. So rather than seeking out somebody to save us, because we really don’t need saved, we can resolve the pain that’s within ourself, and find our own way to our own way of confidence, and uprightness, this strong sense of agency and self and I say self, and love on separate, so it’s not. Now I have self love, rather than self hatred. It’s no, we are love. You know, there’s not this self existing entity running around, we are love. And when we know that is a direct experience, we’re much more likely to see that love in the world around us, and to be less affected by those who may not experience that within themselves and be mean or critical or awful. You know, we don’t want to enable that, but we’re not going to buy into it so much.

Rick Archer: All right. Any questions from the peanut gallery?

Julie Brown Yau: I think the questions might stimulate him. Okay. Hello. I’m

Bonnie Collins: Bonnie Collins from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And I’m really very privileged to be here today. And to have met Rick Archer and Julie Brown, and everyone else in the room. I feel very privileged. And I’m very heartened and touched by the story that Julie told of her daughter and how she pulled the daughter she asked that the daughter be put on her chest when she was when her daughter was born. And I’m just really so touched by that on and I feel. And I actually know, I guess I should say, I’m someone who is caught in a paradigm of that, that the very trauma and who believes that we You’re born either blessed or cursed, as in Deuteronomy in the Bible. So it goes way back deep into that. And it’s almost to the point of it’s a cult, and they aren’t really open and willing to discuss that with a therapist right now. They feel they’re cursed. They feel they’re, they were born into a cursed family. And so they’re not open to any of that change. But I, knowing them, do I want to save them? Although, as you were discussing that you can’t really save someone else. So do you need to let them fall on their own? Or can you send them subtle energies? Because you were talking about the subtle energy bodies? And I read somewhere that the past can be healed. But one must be willing to do it, do the work. And their own right. And I don’t know how that plays. I don’t know how that works. And I guess it brings back this spiritual, what you’re talking what both you and Rick were talking about, about the guru disciple relationship. And that the teacher, have a say a call in a cult can lead the, quote, disciple. And I think they’ve pulled this person downward and downward and downward. And so this person you were talking about was in a cult is probably now called Yeah. And communication is sort of limited, but it’s on and off, and, and I feel like they want to do something. But I’m wondering if you could speak to that a little bit?

Julie Brown Yau: Maybe they don’t know, the exact circumstances are tied to speak directly to it, of course. I mean, we can always offer some thoughts or our feelings to individuals, you know, is our thoughts and feelings. I don’t know if it’s our job to save people. In that sense. Your question about subtle energies, and traditions that I’ve worked in, or studied in, practice, and work and talk about subtle energies, and how that can help heal. But the piece about that is to always ask permission. So if we are in touch with those subtle energies, and can use those for healing, or feel like can be used for healing, like prayer, and so forth, to maybe put with it, if this is, you know, accepted, if this is okay, at some level, some form of practice. So we’re not putting our ideas and our beliefs and our life experience on somebody else. Because we really don’t know, if somebody comes in and chooses something as an experience. Or if this is their karma, or if this is, you know, what they need or don’t need, we really don’t know. So I always try and stay away from the saving somebody or having an agenda to do anything for somebody. I’ll always if you know, in my work, it’s if somebody comes and asks and wants to explore something, we’ll do that. Does that answer that enough for you very much. Thank you, Julie.

John Cowhig: Julie, thank you very much, and your insights on all the different things you’ve been talking about. But my question is simple that Tom have always had a sort of default kind of contraction, sort of in the back of the neck, say the brainstem area a little bit in the front. And it’s almost like I was going to define it, it would be like what you get is you have stage fright, or impotence or insomnia, or golfers Yips, and it’s just this, this sort of little contraction, what if I don’t, in what if I hit it the wrong way, and then I will hit it the wrong way. And so it’s sort of like a default kind of thing. There’s always some, maybe you could say a two to 5% flight or fight mechanism and advice later with body awareness, which I understand No, I can feel it doesn’t overshadow me or anything, but it’s always it’s like a huge wasted energy. Because something is going on that. It’s like is there there’s a blind spot or something on this one thing I’ve never been able to figure it out. And sometimes they feel as though like say I’m a I’m a balloon, and I want to be free. Go I want to be free and then just float up into where I could be. And maybe there were 50 ropes holding me down. And it’s just this one rope left. I’ve gotten the doneness, I’ve done it, but there’s this one thing. And whether it’s one row per 50, you know, you still can’t float in the sky. So why don’t do with your understanding of trauma and body awareness, if you had any comment, or any insight or suggestion on that?

Julie Brown Yau: What if we were in session together? I’d be so excited to explore everything that you’ve just said, because it could go so many ways with your languaging. You know, this floating up for freedom? Is that leaving the body freedom, you know, are you going up with your body into an expanse, I mean, we’re not our bodies, we’re more than our bodies. But we’re here to be, you know, dwell in our bodies in this lifetime, I believe the contraction at the back of the neck and the brainstem area is really interesting, I find more often than not, that my may have to do and again, I don’t know, your story, I’m just, you know, speaking, could have to do with very early trauma, often as a deep contraction at the diaphragm at the back of the neck or the diaphragm here to with very early trauma. And because it’s so early, when it’s very early, it’s trickier to reach, if you will, because of the development of our brain and our awareness and consciousness and so forth at that time. But it can elicit some sense of fear and wanting to get away. But where do we go, when we obey because we can’t fight or flee? Because the, you know, the motor apparatus isn’t on yet for us to be able to do that. So therefore, if there was some frightening experience, as an infant, and I’m not saying wise, again, this is just bouncing other words, actually, okay, yeah, then it could be that you needed to disconnect. And this is often a place where I find people disconnect from. And so then, that could possibly make the sense with this is what’s holding me back from freedom. Like there’s a sense of completely disconnecting from the body as a sense of freedom. It’s, it’s one way to ask, but it’s not, you know, let’s be in this body in this life to have this grounded, vibrant sense of aliveness and joy in this vehicle. So you could possibly explore whatever that trauma was. Sometimes they find with very early trauma touch can be really helpful. Because let’s say the infant isn’t receiving the touch that he or she needs to feel safe in the body and connected. And so just a simple touch with no manipulation in any way, just as simple holding and presence can begin to help the nervous system, relax and downshift from that little fight or flight that might be in there. And if there’s any disconnection, dissociation from the body, then allows that beingness to gently naturally come back in to the body because all of a sudden, there’s a sense of safety in the recognition of how long this non safety is being even though you might have very connected places in the rest of your life. And a lot of safety other places this this one place is very early consciousness might not have integrated enough to know that it’s completely safe to be here, which could then possibly explain what you were talking about Tommy the words you said again, it makes me feel as if we are afraid of something when this little contraction happens.

John Cowhig: It’s sort of like a record. One scientific way would be to say that the the conscious mind is interfering with something that’s just automatic. It’s kind of done by the autonomic that’s why I use those metaphors like insomnia golfers Yep, sir. impotence or for stage fright. All you have to do is walk on the stage and see what you’re saying. But then there’s this noise going on in the background. And so it divides the energy and then you become a natural and you should you know, and but, but I understand it clearly. And no, I had a good childhood. I had a very loving mother, but I was born traumatizes at some disorder. So I screamed for the first three months of my life I couldn’t hold down her mill. Yeah, and there was a little miracle actually, she put a card that she had gotten from his blessed at Fatima lady have had image with this card and my tell me I was lying on my back screaming and then she said the prayer and the card and I stopped crying. never cried again until I was about one and a half and learn to walk and fell Oh, my goodness, but some something was going on. Maybe I was killed in a knife fight or something in my last life but

Julie Brown Yau: but Well, I think screaming for three months. is enough. So even if your mom is holding you in loving you, the distress in your system that’s causing you to scream is enough to have to disconnect from the body possibly, and in some way. And I hear a lot of people come to me, they’ve been referred to me for one reason or another. And they say, Well, I’m not traumatized. I had no drama when I was a kid. My parents were great. But again, it’s those nuances of trauma, that we don’t recognize that maybe the mum was afraid or angry or depressed in some way. And that transmits in the baby through her eyes, not in any way that she meant it or understood. But but that can happen. But just your experience of screaming for three months can leave an imprint, that can be embedded in our system that can create that division. So there’s not that complete sense of unity, that creates that little bit of stage fright in life sometimes that we doesn’t quite make sense. Because, you know, you’re confident you know, who you are, you’ve done so much practice. Why, why is this thing still happening, where there’s a little bit of fear coming up? That could possibly be something to explore from an early trauma perspective. Thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for coming up.

Rick Archer: As my old friend, John, we met in Belgium in 1974. I just remember this trip when you first showed up, I was there. That’s right. Yeah, had some wonderful adventures together.

Angel Marcloid: So there are a lot of people, a lot of teachers and a lot of, you know, therapists and stuff that, you know, mindfulness based ones that say that if you if you can see your trauma, if you can, if you can face it, then it will dissolve, you know, you just need to, to see it or feel it and like once you notice it, you know, once you’re really noticing it, then it just kind of melts away. And there I feel like there’s a lot of people that sort of have that sentiment and then there are other people who might tend to agree with that. Sometimes that is just not enough, obviously. So in my talking to let’s see, the last professional I talked to do the kind of a non dual therapist but I’m very grounded and embodied and great nothing nothing sketchy there. It she was really helpful. And she and I would explain to her my experiences and how much of this, this trauma and this this energy I feel in my body, like all the time, mostly right here. And and and she was saying like, you know, we need to we need to get in there, uproot those core beliefs and everything. And I’m like, No, you’re right. But I feel like, I don’t know if these are the right terms. But my heart I think, doesn’t even believe the core beliefs that the trauma energy seems to have. I hear what the trauma is saying, I hear those fearful statements, I hear the worries, but something just knows that they’re not real. And it’s almost like my higher self knows. my higher self is okay is confident is not is not so affected by that fear, but but I’m still carrying around the sensation in my body. And it still has things that it says it still makes statements and I hear him and I’m just like, No, that’s not quite really, you’re fine, things are going to be fine. And you don’t want me to keep saying they’re going to be fine, because that assumes that we know the future and we don’t we shouldn’t be totally open to whatever comes up. But there seems to be just this weird, it’s almost like a different entity. And in this teacher, I was talking to this therapist, he was telling me it’s kind of you could think of it as your inner child. It’s like your your adult portion of yourself as you know, very sort of evolved and you know, with it, but then there’s the child that is screaming and crying all the time making these fearful statements. And I think I might be kind of trying to tell this child, it’s fine. It’s fine. Just, it’s gonna be okay. And I think that there needs to be maybe a more I don’t know, motherly, nurturing approach. Maybe I need to listen to the child more maybe Can I

Julie Brown Yau: just be like, it’s okay. Okay, I love what you’re saying, Please bear the night I wanted I wanted to hear but a lot came up. And so I don’t necessarily think of the sense of as having an inner child and that we run around with these inner children. My view is that when we’re growing up in this trauma, parts of our consciousness, it’s as if they split off and are encapsulated at that time. Right and then don’t reach the psychological maturity that we are today. So you know, that you’re safe and you know that you’re okay and so forth. Right? As his highest self that really knows all of that, but let’s say parts of your consciousness are remaining it, two, and then three and a half and then five. And that consciousness doesn’t know you’re okay. And that’s also informing you. But it’s informing you you in a way where sometimes it might, it might get triggered, and then you view the world in that way, and then you feel more fear, or more upset or act out and a little bit away if that does happen. So sometimes, the so the split up parts of our consciousness, there’s different ways to access that, but not to think of it as a separate entity, or sometimes it is, does work, and it is helpful to see it as a young part of ourselves. And just like mother would do to a child, you know, we’re in the middle of a horrific event, you say, Oh, be quiet, you know, go to your room, you’re fine. Oh, stop crying, it’s gonna be okay. Right? It’s like, Hey, what’s going on? What’s happening? What are you feeling? What’s going on right now, you know, inquiring, and attuning to those parts of yourself, right? That part of your consciousness, or parts of yourself that are trying to get your attention that don’t know that the danger is past. I mean, it’s still the nervous speaking, the nervous system body’s speaking to you, it’s don’t know some of it doesn’t know that the danger is over. So we want to communicate. And there’s different ways to do that, to that consciousness to see what’s needed. So for instance, three and a half, what you may have needed more than anything, was for someone to come over and put their hand on you and look at you and say, It’s okay. You know,

Angel Marcloid: and that feels really good in that. And when people do that now, especially in vulnerable moments, where they know I might be upset or something, right. It’s like, it’s incredible how healing for someone to respond to my upsetness. With compassion, it’s like instant, like, it just the shell just breaks kernel. So there might be a lot of crying or whatever. But it’s like, it’s like, the tension just disappears. Yeah,

Julie Brown Yau: yeah. So then the invitation would be to not just say, Okay, this feels great, and then move on. But well, how does that feel in my body to be without that tension, and to really anchor that experience within you. So that becomes a more familiar experience, than the tension in the pain and upset that might be stored. So you’re giving yourself these very pleasant experiences that the body can then anchor and become more used to, which allows the body to become a safer place to be, which might allow the next layer, if there’s another layer of trauma to come up, or maybe the emotion to be able to come in, so you can begin to liberate that emotion that got split off, because at the time of the traumatic event, it was too much to feel. So the emotions gone, you know, parts of your consciousness are split up, and it’s exhausting holding that down. So very gently, we begin to bring it in piece by piece, not in one big cathartic scream, because that’s really traumatizing, but in a gentle, compassionate, nurturing, sometimes feeling the shakiness it’s like I say, we have to work just beyond the edges of our boundaries of our capacity. Right? So there’s this dance occurring, where we’re taking risks to feel a little bit more, it’s like exercising, like lifting weights. Exactly. So we can feel more and more and more. So let’s say anger or rage got split off, when you begin to feel those if they come in. It’s not this terrifying experience where you have to whip it out at somebody or whips back in against yourself. But you begin to transform that energy, that vital life force of anger and rage back into your system, where you become more empowered, upright and confident, which we’ll be talking about earlier. But But yeah, all right, well,

Angel Marcloid: just a really quick to before we move on is there. I tend to get a little annoyed at questions like these almost, but I’m about to ask one. What, what is maybe one thing that I can just take with me back to my seat that I can do, or, or keep? Keep in mind, maybe when I’m having these feelings, like palms are sweaty, this feels really contracted. But I know everything is fine, like in those moments. Besides, you know, maybe, you know, just noticing it and being being okay with it, that it’s there. Is there is there something, there’s, I mean, there’s probably a million things, there’s

Julie Brown Yau: a few things so I’ll give you a couple. One would be to connect with somebody else if you’re with somebody else. And you trust them in that kind and you can make eye contact. So kind loving eye contact is often what’s missing in trauma, because that’s what would help sue this in commerce and prevent that. Maybe trauma from embedding in our system, it stays out there in the event not in us. So if you feeling you know uncomfortable sweaty palms if there’s somebody safe around, and you can look at them and have that nice experience. And notice what happens in your body. There’s nobody around, sometimes just looking around. Like do it right now just look around the room taken, taken what’s around you, but move your head, neck and eyes, you just moving your eyes and see if you notice your ear, it’s your breath starts to move, you see, sort of in this frozen stuck place with your head not wanting to look around you Okay?

Angel Marcloid: Oh, no, that’s I go through my whole life, like, especially on public and around strangers and stuff. Like, you know, I love all of you and uncomfortable with you. But simultaneously, I’m absolutely terrified.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah. So sometimes to tell that it’s that fear experience with a part of you or your nervous system, that there’s no danger, right? How do we know there’s no danger? Really, to the nervous system? Might we look around?

Angel Marcloid: That’s beautiful.

Julie Brown Yau: That’s kind of scary. Sending messages to your body to you never system actually was safe, because I can look around and nobody’s coming. And then you can maybe put your hand on your heart. Yeah, this is a little oxytocin bonding.

Angel Marcloid: I found out that doing this to myself sometimes. But um, but I think my mom used to, like, roll my tummy. Kid, and it kind of invokes that feeling. But it’s very soothing. Yeah. But I can’t always just be walking on public like touching. Especially because the warmth of my hand is helpful feeling it on my skin. So it was like, you know, it can’t do that all the time. But that’s really beautiful and helpful. As I like that.

Julie Brown Yau: Yeah. And I know, you’re gonna promote my book, you I know, you said you were gonna buy but there’s, there’s a lot of exercises in the book that help with just what you’re saying. So there’s five or six, that, you know, in the right environment, we can use one but not the other. And it talks about collecting resources. So when I’m in a place that feels uncomfortable, is there an image that I can bring to mind is something with my breath, I can do you know, something with another person. So there’s all kinds of exercises that can help people who may not have the resources or the access or, you know, time to reach out to somebody, you know, to to help them, but they can do it within themselves, which is really empowering.

Angel Marcloid: That’s great.

Rick Archer: There you go.

Angel Marcloid: Oh,

Julie Brown Yau: yeah.

Angel Marcloid: Oh, what was the shutters or something?

Rick Archer: It’s well, she said it too. But now it’s yours.

Angel Marcloid: Oh. Well, thank you. Um, yeah, a million more things I can say and ask everything. But I’ll leave it at that. And that’s, that’s great. I’m excited to walk away with that.

Julie Brown Yau: Thanks for coming up. Yes. Yay. So the book, the body awareness workbook for trauma. I wrote it because

Rick Archer: I’ll hold it up again.

Julie Brown Yau: I wrote it because I was asked to write a book. Actually, before I was asked to write this book, I was asked by a different publisher to write a book on trauma. And I was halfway through it. And a horrific, traumatic event happened externally to me, that shook me up, it was something so beyond the sphere of my own existence that happened, that I don’t think there’s any way anybody couldn’t be traumatized by it. Because I had a 10 year old at the time, I had to navigate what was occurring in the environment, with my daughter, so I let go of writing the book. And through that six month period of really, of making sure I didn’t become traumatized, and my daughter didn’t, because of these events, I was so grateful that I knew everything that I did about trauma, so I could work with my own being I could work with my daughter. And so on the other side of that, then you Harbinger came and asked if I would write a workbook. And first I thought, well, I don’t really want to work write a workbook, because it’s trauma, and it’s relational. And I said, Well, I don’t want to miss this opportunity. So I decided to write a workbook that would really work and that it would be relational in a sense that I would put myself in it as much as I could, that people might be able to, to feel that I, you know, I know trauma, I’ve gone through trauma, I feel trauma, and so forth, and put in what I feel are some of the really important parts of healing trauma, the initial steps, which is safety, and connection and boundaries. So a lot of people that I work with read come in, and they’ve done a tremendous amount of healing work, psychological, spiritual work, but they haven’t created these foundational structures of safety in connection within themselves. And so often these other pieces of work that they do, don’t integrate enough for them to actually dismantle or dissolve. So I begin with a lot of exercises that set a great foundation, and then go on to deeper exercises and deep deeper experiences and practices that we can do. And you can go through the book step by step, you can flip through it, and just choose exercises that might feel good for you in the moment. You can keep coming back to it as I say what? A work in progress. So we might do one exercise and come back a few months later. and do it again. And just go deeper and deeper and deeper into the core of, of the trauma if you are resolving Great, thanks, Julie. Yeah, thanks. So thank you for the whole thing. Thanks. Yeah, really enjoyed this. And our little audience has enjoyed it. I think our bigger audience will enjoy it. So it’s really, I’m glad we got to do it in person. Yeah. Me to audience. Yeah. Thank you. So to those who have been listening or watching, this is another episode of Buddha at the Gas Pump. And if you feel like it, click the little bell next to the subscribe button on YouTube. And clicking the bell tells YouTube that you want to be notified every every time I post a new video, which is about once a week. And if you’d like to be notified by email, there’s a opportunity for that on bat gap comm. There’s also a place to sign up for the audio podcast if you’re the type of person who likes to listen to things while jogging or commuting or whatever, and a bunch of other things if you explore around the site. So appreciate your time. And we’ll see you for the next one. And thank you again so much, Julie. Thanks. See you later.