Robin Landsong Transcript

Robin Landsong interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the gas pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. I have done over 550 of them now, and if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to Batgap.com B a T G a P. And look under the past interviews menu.

This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the website. My guest today is Robin Ayesha Landsong. Robin is a transformational speaker, a visual artist, medicine singer and medical health intuitive.

She had two near death experiences during the Rhodesian war in 1977, when she was eight years old. When she was called back to life by the medicine song of a rural, rural Zimbabwean woman, it opened her intuition and her own medicine songs. She has had the privilege to give medicine, singing medicine, to over 14,000 people. Her specialty areas as shamonic craniosacral therapist, are trauma resolution, understanding illness and healing injury. She sees inside each person, their gifts and strengths, as well as underlying cause of their physical, emotional, or spiritual distress. She helps people restore the natural rhythms in their body for their greatest health.

She loves to help people integrate their own near-death experiences. She has helped thousands of people regain their sense of wholeness, creativity, intuition, embodiment, self-confidence and mindfulness in the present moment. And I just want to say that Robin has quite a story. So that little introduction didn’t really do justice to it.

So you’ll see, as we get into her story and I was just telling Robin, this is the only interview I can remember ever having done, which brought me to tears several times during the, just listening to her story and some of the things she went through. So it’s really, really something. And Robin, at points during this interview, I’ve heard you tell your whole story four or five times now at some length and read the whole account of it, but there are several points at which I thought “I want to ask her this because there’s some little gap there I didn’t get.” And it’s not that I’m questioning the legitimacy of your account. It’s just that there’s a little leap, which took place in the, in the telling of it, which I wanted you to fill in. So we’ll probably do that as, as we go along.

Robin: All right. So thanks again for inviting me on this. I think we’re going to have a great time.

Rick: Yeah, me too.

Robin: Yeah. So I’ll share my story. So when I was eight years old, I was growing up on the east coast, in the U.S. and I was, my parents, unfortunately were not mentally well. And so I wasn’t being protected or fully cared for. And so I got exposed to a lot of other pedophiles. And one of those, one of those men chose to, spotted me as an unprotected child and chose to adopt me. So he came to my school at the end of the day, at the end of the school year and took me, and it was 1977.

So post Vietnam War, and unbeknownst to me, the Rhodesian Bush war was happening and have been going on for years and that they were actually sending out kind of calls for mercenaries to come help and with, for that, with the white government side of that, a civil war, a three-way war. And so he took me and, he drugged me.

And so I can’t really say, you know, details about the transport. It was near the Philadelphia airport, which is an international airport. And when I became conscious again, I had to reorient and figure out where I was.

Rick: Okay. I have two questions already, based on what you’ve said. These are the main two questions that came up when I heard you tell your story. One is that it wasn’t clear to me what this guy’s motivation was. In your book especially you give a very chilling account of what type of person he was, and you were able to see that just by looking at him. And he proved to be that kind of person by kidnapping you like that.

But if he was a pedophile, it seems like he never did that, at least not in your telling of it. So that’s question number one. Why don’t you answer that before we go on to question number two?

Robin: And it’s interesting because a lot of people do ask that question. So it’s a great question. And so we’re trying to make sense of somebody who’s not mentally well when we’re mentally well.

So any, any, of course, anything I say about like his motivations are going to be

Rick: Speculative

Robin: speculation on my part. So it is possible that he was, had maybe been in Vietnam, and one of the things that happened that was odd about that war was that so many of the soldiers fathered children. And that when they were brought back, they left those children behind, called war babies.

So one of the things that he said to me kind of, once we were over in Zimbabwe was kind of why can’t you be more like her? And, and so my theory is that maybe he had fathered a child over there and he felt he had, and he lost that child. So he felt that he had the right to just get, get another child.

Rick: So you were going to be his surrogate daughter or something

Robin: umhm, because that was his big thing, was I am your father. 6:05

Rick: Huh. Okay. But it was very twisted guy and the account in your book was much more detailed. And then the second question was that it was unclear to me how the heck he got you over there. You mentioned something about a duffel bag, but you know, you can’t carry an eight year old in a duffel bag in, in your carry on luggage.

And if you put someone in a, in the regular check through bags on, on a long flight like that I should think you would have suffocated or, you know, had things had big suitcases thrown on top of you or something in the baggage hold.

Robin: the back of the, if people have questions. I don’t think he would’ve put me in the, in the cargo part that either, so kind of the two possibilities are, remember it’s 1977.

So this is well before child abuse is even on people’s radar. And it’s certainly well before abduction and is, you know, that’s a very recent thing that that’s become on people’s radar. And so when I’ve talked to people who were kind of in the. You know, airport industry, they said one, the seats were way bigger then, so like keeping your kind of luggage at your feet would have been much easier option.

There wasn’t the security that we are now used to. He’s also very intimidating man. Like, you know, authority figures didn’t question him because he was so intense and intimidating. So either he, you know, in my drug state here, there

just said she’s asleep and you know, somehow got me through or the other option is, you know, I was in his devil bag and I was hidden and they just didn’t check.

Rick: Yeah. And that’s the people in those days, especially like soldiers and all, they would carry these great big duffel bags. So I forget what they call them.

Robin: Right. And they just, you know, they wave military through and, and, and then other people have kind of given me research on like the abductions that would happen in an airport, even that they would walk up drug the adult bearer with, and then even take the child, you know, when it wasn’t

Rick: so out with a syringe or something, and then just take

Robin: different accounts like that.

So just many people have, you know, giving information that, especially in that time period, cause this is even before child protective services existed in many states.

Rick: Yeah.

Robin: A lot of that didn’t happen until 1980

Rick: Okay.

Robin: there was no laws nationally about child abduction until early eighties.

Rick: Yeah

Robin: So there wasn’t even nationally a place to report a missing child. So this was so not on people’s radar.

Rick: Yeah. Okay. So let’s resume your story.

Robin: So when I woke up, I had to, you know, keep in mind, I was used to figuring out, you know, mentally ill adults and how I was going to survive abuse. So I was, I wasn’t like a kid who came from, you know, a nice family and was suddenly shocked.

I was already very skillful at survival. And so I had to kind of figure out what kind of crazy is he and how am I going to survive it. And, and I think I was born with high intuition, but it became hypervigilant in terms of reading people’s

danger and reading and anticipating their behavior. And the thing that was so terrifying about him is that he was so defended.

So blocked off that I couldn’t read him as easily as I could read other adults. And, and so what happened is I was just really surviving. I was, you know, on a military base, you know, in his, I don’t know if there were to be quarters and, and he was going and doing off, you know, doing his training during the day and coming back at night and abusing me.

And at one point I, I really didn’t care whether I was gonna live or not anymore. It was that

Rick: He was abusing you. He was,

Robin: yeah. The physical violence, the threatening me with guns. Yeah. And. And so one day I did defy him and he ended up kicking me in the ribs and I thought I’m going to finally going to get to go.

Cause my only way that I’m going to escape from him is to die. And at that point I was coughing up blood and I made it out to the hallway and amazingly enough the person across the hall where I heard the commotion opened the door, pulled me in, closed the door. And so the MPs came and military police came and he took me to the nearest hospital, which I’ve been able to go back and find.

And I went back and found the exact bed that I was in. And we even found the military base. They, of course they wouldn’t let us on, but I was able to stand there and kind of say yes, all the buildings at one level. And it was very barren. This is the Cantina. So it’s been incredible for me to actually go back and retrace everything that happened.

So I was hospitalized. I’m not sure how many days I was there, maybe like three days or so. And he came and got me and no one stopped him. And so again, remember in 1977, children are not avid, you know, children are not being advocated for, especially in that time period in a war and. And so he took me with him and we drove for a while and we went to a market.

And so he did arrangements with other military people. And he basically handed me off to another man, a black African man. And I don’t know the nature of their exchange. Many people have said, there’s no way a black man would have bought a white girl, but he, he gave, he gave me over to him and we went on a bus and that bus broke down.

And when the bus broke down, we were all instructed to get off and, and finished getting to the station by walking. And I couldn’t keep up. I was just newly out of a hospital bed. My ribs are broken. I didn’t really want to be alive anyway. And so the man who I was now in his care, he kind of pushed me from behind on, on my ribs and I did what any animal would do and I bit him.

And so he was kind of, you know, I want nothing to do with this girl anymore. And, and for all I know his job was to take me out to the Bush and lose me. I don’t know. So he left me behind the other people had gone ahead. And so I thought, now this is how I’m gonna die. I’m just going to die of dehydration and starvation in the sun.

And it’s going to be mercy. I’ve had a miserable eight years and this is going to be, this is going to be the end. And what happened that in a couple hours was a military truck came by and there was fully armed soldiers. And I thought, no, this is going to be a quicker death and this is how I’m going to go.

But instead of shooting me, they picked me up and put me in the truck with them and took me to another place. And the whole time I’m my whole nervous system is convinced. They’re just taking me somewhere to shoot me. And, and so I’m starting to go into paralysis and shutdown and, you know, I can barely hear, I can barely breathe.

And when we get to the destination, they, you know, they take me off the truck and and then two men have an argument over me and, and one man is standing on one side and this other man, and he is obviously, I can’t understand the language it’s in Benda, but one man’s arguing. Like he does want to kill me and the other man’s arguing as if he is, you know, wanting to protect me.

And so I just, from the stress of that, my nervous system is just done and I just collapse. And when I wake up, I’m in a hut and there’s a woman there. And she’s, you know, I can feel she’s kind of a capture of this situation too. And what happens is that the man who I now know and his name is Luca, is that he takes me out of there and he drives me and he drops me off near a village.

It’s near the river and it’s near the village and he sets me down and he kind of is like, again, I can’t understand them. And he is kind of gesturing, like go their little girl. And, and what he has done is taken me to a village where he thinks that there’ll be sympathetic to a white child. And it’s not unusual in this war that there would have been orphaned white children, because one of the tactics was they’re trying to get white farmers out.

So sometimes they were killing white farming families and, you know, I’m assuming they presumed I was from there and that I was, you know, had escaped. So I spend the night in a tree by myself and, and it’s finally peaceful, you know, finally nobody’s arguing over me, nobody’s trying to kill me. And I, and it’s actually peaceful.

Rick: Yeah. You found this big fig tree and you slept in the crook of the branches and

Robin: Yeah. And when I went back, I potentially found that exact tree. And so in the morning I hear singing. And then my singing is a little different than the women, but I’ll just give you a sample, just this joyful

hmmaya hi ye hum hmmay ye hi yum ho (singing). Oh boy. And so I’m drawn in to go find this singing, the women and I, and I hide behind trees because at this point I trust no one. And so I’m getting closer and hearing their singing and watching that they’re grinding corn and they have these kind of pounding sticks and they’re grinding corn. And it’s this joyful singing

hmmayyahiyehumhmmayyehuyo hum (singing). And I want to be closer to this

Rick: When you sing those little bits, are those actual words in some language, or do you, you just kind of make up the sounds right now.

Robin: That’s kind of what I embodied from them. Like when I go back, like they’re singing is actually different than what’s coming out of me.

But what I feel is that they taught me how to listen to the song in the land and the song that people carry inside them. And so, because I’m now back here in Washington state, it’s more influenced by where I am. And kind of the songs as they come through me. So, so yes, it is different than their Benda songs, but this kind of the inspiration of listening to the song in the land.

And so I get closer and they see me and they’re like, you know, where’s this white child come from. And so I kind of creep closer and they bring me some food and they bring me some water and, and I just watch them and they watch me. Yeah. And then

Rick: In the book, when you tell the story, it’s, it’s it takes much longer than that.

It’s a very, very tentative, like, you know, one little tiny step at a time because you’re so freaked out and untrustworthy and they recognize that and they don’t

rush it. You know, they sort of deal with you very gently and diplomatically. So as not to spook you.

Robin: Exactly, exactly. There was a real wisdom in their approach of is, you know, they would bring me food and I would run away and come back and get it.

And so over the day, you know, more people come and see me and I kind of see them at the end of the day, they set out an animal skin for me to sleep on kind of in the, what I call the food grinding area. And so they invite me into the huts, but I’m just too scared. I don’t, I can’t see inside the huts. I don’t know what.

So I sleep on the animal skin and in the morning I’m a little less you know, like a wild animal running away and the children come and gather around me and keep in mind, there’s no mixing of race there. Like the, these children have never been close to likely been close to a white child. So they come over and they’re touching my hair that was more blonde then, and they’re touching my face and, and I’m feeling welcomed in.

And so they take me to the fire circle and one of the eldest girls begins to tell a story and it’s, she’s proclaiming. And I get the sense that she’s telling the story of how I arrived to them. And what she’s doing is she’s taken kind of some of the black ash from the fire and she’s rubbing it on my skin and she’s rubbing some of the charcoal on my skin.

And she’s basically drawing on me. As it is. I’m kind of a map and she is saying, and then she arrived to us. And so there’s this celebration and the other children start putting the black ash on my face and in my hair and it’s fun. And for the first time in my life, I have a sense of belonging and I let down some of my defenses and I’m actually having joy with them.

And one of the women that was, you know, from the, what I call the food grinding area comes over and she starts calling to me to come over to her. And very, very cautious. You know, I still have, my ribs are purple from, you know, kind of the pot top to the bottom on one whole side. And so I’m very protective of my body, but she’s calling me over and she’s calling me in and she’s her song is like a songbird.

So songbirds, can’t be scary (singing) And I go over to her and her song is nourishing me and I’m so exhausted from trying to survive on my own. And I’m, I’m letting her fill me up. (singing)

I and she’s calling me to come in closer to her and I’m very cautious, but she’s melting my defenses. Like I’m an iceberg and she’s softening me and I want shelter. I want, I want an adult to protect me and her song just keep softening me. (singing)

And when I she’s calling me to look into her eyes and when I do look into her eyes, it’s the first time I see the eyes of a mother. And I can be a child and I leaned forward and I collapsed in her arms and she’s singing me whole again, and she’s melting me and she’s holding me in her arms and I just let her be my shelter, let her be my mama.

And, and it’s the first time I’ve been held in this way. And I, and I stay with her that night. I hold onto her dress, always making sure I know where she is and they welcome me in and I start to become part of them. They teach me the songs, they’re teaching me how to plant food. And I, I even get to be part of a ceremony where they give me the name, Ayesha.

Rick: You know what, Ayesha sounded very familiar to me.

I thought, is there something in Sanskrit, some name in Sanskrit, Ayesha. So I looked it up and it’s a name for girls, meaning divine Supreme, Regal and related to Lord.

Robin: I haven’t read that one.

Rick: Yeah. Which actually you’re going to touch upon later in the story until then, but well, maybe leave people in suspense until you get to that part of the story. But I thought you’d like that.

Robin: This is my favorite part about sharing my story is that people give me insight back.

Yes. When we get, when we get further in the story, I’ll kind of share like how people have educated me on what some of these symbols meant.

Rick: Yeah. And by the way that woman who held you and he’ll do, is that mama Eaton?

Robin: Yeah. And we’re still looking for, you know, that’s the name that I gave her and we’re still looking for somebody who might remember the names of everybody from the village.

And even though I’ve been back twice, people are very reticent to talk about kind of what happened in 1977. So it’s a little hard for me to sometimes get stories. So, so yes I was. And it’s interesting too, because because I, Ayesha is a more Northern African name. And so it’s also possible that they were calling me shy and that the greeting for a young female is ah.

Rick: So, so like a SHA SHA.

Robin: Yeah. And so I saw I was becoming part of, they gave me the naming ceremony, which was the most extraordinary healing, you know, an abused child could possibly have. And it helped me clear more of what had happened during the abduction and the assault and the, and, and really the, the mind distortion that happened during the abduction.

And then I did begin to have Stockholm syndrome with him of like thinking he really was my father. So they’re letting me belong, letting me be part of, and, and, and one of the things, the healing things that happened too, is that the two women, my mommy Act-On and another mama, they took me to this river and they put clay on my, on my broken ribs and they sang to me until I could sing back to them.

And they considered me well again, when I could sing. So one day I wandered too far from the village, kind of to that little Creek by myself.

Rick: And you had been living there about a month by this time, I think.

Robin: Yeah. That’s kind of our best kind of a timeframe we can put together, like maybe three weeks or so

Rick: because you mentioned the moon looked similar to when you first arrived there.

Robin: Yeah. Right. Because you know, no, one’s speaking English to me at this point. So I, the best I can do is kind of go by the moon and. And so when I’m at this Creek and normally it’s a very positive thing for me. It’s where the women had healed me with the clay. It’s where the children and I would come to play.

And unbeknownst to me, a battle was starting to ensue in the field next to there. So soldiers were starting to gather and I was close to that edge. And one of the soldiers spotted me. And when he spotted me, he immediately brought up his

rifle, took aim. And when his gun barrel became just a circle, I knew that it was aimed directly at me and that there was no place for me to run.

There was no shelter, there was no adult. And I was frozen in fear, but I had just started to turn my body when I heard the gun go off. And the bullet grazed the top of my head. And I went down and, and in my heart, I thought you look just like the people I’ve done ceremony with. You look just like the men who are, you know, being good and teaching me how to plant in the field.

Like, why, why am I so worthless to you when they’re finding me valuable? And so I go down and my, and my whole body is starting to be like a city going into a blackout. Like I can just feel my life force outside of me. And my perspective goes out above me. And I’m seeing my life force go out in me, come back in and go out.

And I think. If that doesn’t go back in, this is the end. And so all at once, my life force does go back in and my perspective comes with it, but it goes out a portal at the back of my heart and I’m transported. So held I’m transported to a place where I come out and at first I’m totally disoriented. I don’t have any perception.

And and eventually I begin to remember, oh, I have a face and I can see. And the first thing I feel is touch and it’s feminine and the hands are loving. And when I can see her she’s black and, and it feels like my sister that I’ve known for lifetimes. And then I can see her sister behind her and they gesture over to the side and they’re showing me there’s a huge golden sphere.

And I know I could go into that golden sphere with them and be totally restored. But then I think I’m going to lose my new found African family. They, I finally have family and I don’t want to leave that family. And so that wanting to still stay with my African family takes me away from that scene. And I start falling backwards.

And I’m falling and I’m falling through layers and layers and where I land, it’s like, it’s a stone stairwell and it feels cold and damp and kind of like Ireland or Scotland on a cold cloudy day. And, and I’m looking around and there’s a stone stairwell next to me and another stairwell down in front of me and I’m trying to get up and I feel so weak.

And all of a sudden, there’s an older man there. And I think where did he come from? And he looks kind of weak himself, like, and he’s offering his hand that I to help me up. And I think, oh, he’s so rickety. I’ll pull him over if I pull on his

hand, but I can’t find another way to get myself up. So I, so I take his hand and he’s far sturdier than I ever expected.

And he helps me up and he gestures that we should go down the next stairs and I don’t know where we are and he seems to know this place. So I go with him. But again, I feel so weak and there’s something dripping on my shoulder and I think it’s rained from above. And I put my hand on it and I look at it and it’s my own blood.

And I realize I’m bleeding to death and I show him and I’m panicked and he nods his head. He knows he can see, and it seems to encourage him even more that we need to get down the stairs. So we get down the stairs and there’s an archway of a dark into a dark cave. And I think. I think I had it better before this is getting worse.

You know, why would I want to go into a dark cave, but he’s gesturing that I should come with him. And so again, I put my hand on his, his arm and he’s sturdy and he’s walking forward. And even though it’s perfectly dark, he seems to know his way forward. And I’m very untrusting in like each foot testing my way forward.

And when I get in there, it’s all my own fears. It’s all the faces of the people who abused me and all my own repressed, screaming that I never let out because as many people who were abused, know it makes it worse. If you let the abusers see your fear. And so all this is coming at me and I want to run out, but he keeps me there.

And all of a sudden I can see myself through his eyes and I’m kind of like a cat with all my hair raised up, but I can see that there’s nothing wrong with me. He’s not trying to fix me. And I suddenly understand that the abuse wasn’t my fault. There was nothing about me that was so terrible that made the adults abuse me.

And when I understand that, kind of all the ghosts of all the abusers and my own screaming, it just stops and gets peaceful. And we continue walking and we come out the other side of the cave and it’s like, the night sky is full of living stars. They feel like relatives. And I look at him and I realize he came there just to help me through my dark cave.

He could go anywhere. And he came to, you know, be my bodhisattva, be my help to help me through my, my confusion. And my trust in him is absolute. And so I put my little hands in his big hands and I telepathically, we don’t need

to talk, ask where are we going next? And he looks at the cave next to us and he says, kind of nods, we’re going there.

And so I say, okay, so together we leap off this cave and it’s not like falling fast.

Rick: Do you leap off a cave or do you leap off a cliff?

Robin: I’m sorry. We leap off the cliff. Thank you for the correction. And so we’re gently falling and we go from night sky where these stars are like living legend relatives into sunrise. And there again is the golden glowing sphere.

So, so much bigger. And he, again, telepathically tells me go there, go inside that sphere. And you’ll, you’ll be returned home. And so he flies on and I have this new found confidence that he had inside him now inside me. And I think, oh, I want to tell my African family all about everything that’s happened so far.

And then I, when I, as soon as I remember them, I remember my attachment to them and I want to be with them again. And I think, well, I could go to the golden, glowing sphere, but I need to find my family. And so I looked down and there’s a green grass field below me. And so I direct myself to land there. And when I land there, I get very scared that something has happened to them.

And I start running around, calling out for them and the grass is getting taller and taller. The more my confusion and my panic gets, the more the grass becomes like a forest for me to get through. And I call out to them and I’m scared that maybe they’ve been hurt and they’re down on the ground, maybe they’re bleeding and they need me to help them.

And so finally, I just get struck by such a huge wave of panic that I fall over. And I cry until I’m like a storm cleared out. And when I’m cleared out, when I’m peaceful, I hear a rustling and I get up and I go search for that rustling. And as I search the grass is getting shorter and I come out to this open field.

And there I see a being and he is like royalty, even though he has no crown. And he has like a simple um felted coat on and he has a sheep herder staff. And I run to him wanting to ask and how can I get back to my African family? And in his presence, I feel no disturbance. In his presence I can’t even remember why I would ever be disturbed. And his face begins to change.

I’m trying to look at kind of what he looks like. And he starts out with a beard and kind of a narrow face. And then his face changes to someone I don’t know. And then as to face changes to a lion and, and I think, oh, I would love to show

this lion to Atto, one of the men from the village. And then his face changes to Atto and my heart blooms open with all this love and his face changes.

Again, just again, to someone I don’t know, but I still have the same amount of love. And I thought I’m more capable of love than I realized. And he switches back to his original face and he puts his forehead to mine and I can see as he sees. And it’s like, all of us are a gem and we’re connected by living lines like gold and spiderwebs.

And it’s this huge matrix of living lines. And we can strengthen those lines of connection with our focus and our loving kindness. And he takes his forehead back from mine and I can see his face again. And my trust in him is absolute.

And again, I asked, you know, where are we going next? And he shows me kind of this portal, this tunnel.

And so I lean my being, my essence into his, and I begin to reside in him with him. And I’m closer to the divine source that created both of us than ever. And we travel through this portal and we come out and we’re looking down on the

scene where I was shot. And my mum Yet Tan has found me and she has brought her body, my body up onto her lap and she’s stopping the blood flow and she’s wailing into the sky and I’m looking down from above and I think, oh, I want you to know that I’m okay, I’m guided, I’m peaceful.

I’m not in pain and I’m perfectly fine. And I want someone to be able to comfort her. And, and so I turned to my, my, I call my Royal shepherd and he looks up and we begin to rise up. And I rise up and I’m getting more free of my form and any limitations I had in this lifetime. And I continue to cross over and there’s beings that are continuing to purify me and I’m going through veils and becoming lighter.

And it’s thought that connects me to every living thing around me, even when the tunnel has a life force. And I know I’m going home to the great heart where I will be received and I trust all beings are received there. And I continue on towards the great heart and becoming softer. There’s, it’s even harder to discern, like what’s me and what’s everything else.

And right then I hear singing and I recognize this seeing as my mum Yetun her calling song. And when I look back towards this direction as the great heart, and when I look back to the source of the singing towards, you know, where I was in this lifetime, I can sense that she’s called on the ancestors in the land to make her songs so strong that it has reached through the veils to where I am now and her calling song, her medicine song reminds me that I haven’t done my purpose.

Which is to sing medicine songs like she has done for me. And I remember that I’m part of this choir of medicine singers, and my desire to be part of that choir again, turns me around and I start heading back. And when I am at the closer to

returning back, I meet another being who shows me all the art that I will draw in my lifetime.

And she says, I will be the keeper of these art images until you are safe. And then you will be given this kind of treasure chest of images to draw from the other side to help people remember that we are divine beings. And when I get back just to the veil between the living and the, and the other side of the veil, I meet what I feel is the great grandmother of all of us.

And she sings to me like as if I’m a cathedral and she’s singing this blessing and she’s telling me it is going to be hard when you go back. And I want you to remember that you are from this source, no matter what happens to you, you are made of the great heart. You are a drop of that divine source. And so I go through the final veil and I returned back to my physical form and I returned back to pain.

I returned back to that my head has been shot the bullet grazed my head and it’s my mum Yetun holding me that makes me feel like I can even stay here. Cause I feel so fragile. Like the wind could blow through me and the others from the village arrive and they’ve, they take, gather me up and they take me back to the village and put me in a, in one of the huts.

And they’re singing blessings to get the hatred from the bullet off my head. And they’re singing blessings and putting medicine on my chest to make me feel more solid again. And it’s several days that they’re taking care of me. And what happens next is that the soldiers come back and I’m inside a hut.

And one of the other mothers from the nation, they’re in the hut when the shooting begins and I hear the cries of the people I love and she hides, you know, set, throw something on me to hide me and, and I’m hearing and I make myself go numb. I make myself go deaf. I make myself shut down, but I’m still calling on the ancestors.

We need you. Now. We need your help. And when the shooting stops, she grabs me and puts me on her hip and we step out of the huts and everyone I see is lying down. And when she steps forward, I see Atto is down and bleeding and he’s hit and she keeps, she starts running and maybe makes it about 10 feet and we hear another shot and she’s hit from behind.

And we both go down. And when I recover from, you know, being taken down onto the ground and I’m disoriented, and I look at her and I think I’m going to be able to maybe like pick her up or, you know, have her come with me. And she’s yelling at me to keep going, just go, go run. And she’s never yelled at me before.

And so I do what she says and I keep running and it’s, I feel like I’m betraying her, I’m leaving her behind. And so I keep running and it’s a slight downhill. And, you know, I’m just recovering from my blood loss. And as I’m going down this hill, I go down, face down myself. I pass out again. And when I land, you know, the whole world is kind of spinning and I cross over again, my bleeding has started again and I cross over again.

And this is entirely different. I, when I become aware again, I’m in just an entirely white space and there’s again a singing starting, but it’s kind of words on a horizon and it’s a song in English and it says “You will live. You will live.” And it’s to the song of three blind mice. And that’s a very positive association for me because the kindest thing my other, my brother ever did for me was when I was very sick.

He sat in bed with me and read the entire set of three blind mice to me. So I innately trust. Who’s ever seen the song to me and I’m want to get closer to this. And so I’m drawn closer, this horizon line, where there, I see through a veil and there’s the words “You will live”. And, you know, I have a brain injury, so my comprehension is kind of low, but I finally realized, oh, this is a message to me.

I will live. Did I die again? And I look around everything is white. I don’t have a body. Oh, and I, and then I want to know who’s singing this to me and I’m trying to see through the veil. But what I see first is like a, a record player and, and that the song is being played on this record. And the record gets shown to me close

up and the record has gouges in it.

And I think this record is broken. It should be thrown away. It’s damaged. And the voice says to me, the injuries, the wounds is how I find you so I can recognize you. And that’s where the love gets led in.

Rick: Reminds me of that Leonard Cohen song. I’m sure you’ve heard that the cracks are where the light gets in.

Robin: Yes. And so, and so I’m saying what I’m damaged. So I’m worthy. I’m not just going to get thrown away. And again, like kind of have the, you know, the broken places is where I can get the love to you. And so then I

can see through the veil and I see this being, and he’s got a blue purple tone to his skin.

He has a black button on top of his head. There’s kind of all kinds of ornaments around him, but he’s so intense. I sense that like with one hand he could create a mountain and with the other hand he could destroy it. And I kind of think like, who am I to be in the presence of this being? And, and he starts showing me a vision inside my mind and he’s showing me two landmasses being crushed together and its destruction.

And you know, all this mayhem is happening, but in the end there’s a new mountain that’s made. And he’s showing me all the new life on the mountain and the plants and the flowers and the animals that are now there. But then the mountain starts to erode bit by bit grain by grain erosion, little landslides.

And I’m, and I’m wanting everything to stay the same. And, and what he says to me is destruction makes available the ingredients for new creation. And what looks like total destruction to you now is the beginning of a new creation. And, and I say, well, you know, I like things to stay how they are. And he says, well, shall we bring down the mountain?

So you can have the beaches? I’m like, can I have both? And, and so, you know, through these visions, I say, I understand now, you know, something has to be broken apart in order to have the ingredients available, to make something new. And he says, you understand now, but you will forget again, but it’s okay, you’re human and I’ll hold the big picture for you.

And so with that, he returns me to my body and I wake up and, you know, I have dirt in my mouth. I’ve been on my arm, which is now numb and I’m completely weak and disoriented. And, but I can hear him, still. He’s speaking to me and he’s saying crawl forward now. And he’s giving me the image. You have to get away from the village before nightfall because the animals are going to come.

And he’s showing me that I have to get to the well

Rick: They’ll smell the blood. The animals.

Robin: Yeah. And, and so with, and so I don’t really want to live. I’ve just lost everyone I loved. I don’t, I don’t have any will to there, but it’s his will that fills me up. And it’s his will, that makes me crawl forward. And I pull myself forward and I get three inches and he says, crawl forward.

Now pull forward now. And he’s giving me direct instruction, every pull forward. And so I spend the next several hours pulling forward until I get closer to the Limpopo river and closer to the well, and his plan is that somebody will come to the well in the morning and find me. And so I spend the night, I kind of cover myself with sand to kind of block the wind.

And in the morning, I, you know, kind of the same thing, I get directed by divine source to get closer to the well, and in the morning, a woman named Mia, Lucy comes,

Rick: Incidentally, we mentioned Lord Shiva earlier, but the guy with the Shepherd’s crook. You eventually felt that, you know, that was Jesus or may have been. And then the, the, the guy with a bun on his head and, you know, the tremendous power who was talking about creating and destroying mountains, you felt might be Lord, Lord Shivah didn’t mention that in the telling.

Robin: Right. Right. And, and what I, what I love is that I’m a white girl from the east coast having my near-death experience in Zimbabwe, and wasn’t raised Christian and I see Jesus and Shiva.

Rick: Right. Very multicultural.

Robin: So when people say, you know, well, people have their near death experience based on their religious training.

Like I wasn’t exposed to anything Hindu growing up on the east coast. So,

Rick: So you wouldn’t have interpreted it as Lord Shiva at that time, but maybe now.

Robin: No, I had to look that up later. And, and as I’m writing my book about all of this the whole scene about the being in the field, I was kind of saying to my husband who was my content editor in the beginning of my, you know, really drawing the story out.

He was raised Christian and I was not. And he said, well, tell me more about this character. What was he wearing? And I said, well, you know, like kind of a felted robe with like wide sleeves. And he had a sheep herder staff, and he kind of looks at me and he, and I said, does that somebody important? And he says, the Lord is my shepherd.

I was like, oh, so I did not have any preconceived ideas.

Rick: Harry, would you get me some kombucha?

Robin: So, so Mia Lucie came and she put me on her back and she took me back to her homestead. And it was an incredible risk for her to take in a wounded white child. Because on one side she could be accused of siding with the enemy, the white government.

On the other side, she could be accused of abducting, a white child, which for a black family would be a terrible crime.

Rick: Okay. Now, this is a new woman that you hadn’t met yet. She just found you

Robin: at the well, yes. She found me at the well, and I now know her name is Mia Lucy. I see. And so she hid me and they actually even kind of covered my face.

They say, I put, they should put shoe polish on my face to hide me and dressed me in indigenous clothes. And when you know, somebody, one of her neighbors saw that she had a wounded white child. They said, don’t bother with her. It’s too dangerous. And she said, I won’t throw her away. She’s a living human being.

And so it is that courage. That is the reason I’m alive. She could have left me at that well, and I certainly would have died. And, and so it’s her valuing of me, even though it was a terrible risk to her family. And I did find out later, so her granddaughter is myAmmo. In, in, in my book, I call her girl who smiles like the sun, because I didn’t knew, I didn’t really comprehend everybody’s name at the time.

And so they took care of me and they eventually got me. They kind of talked to some white people across the river and they said, we found this wounded white girl, where, what should we do with her? And they said, well, you know, we’re

the closest white people. So give her to us and we’ll find out we know where her parents are.

They had no idea it was American. So they actually took me across the Limpopo river, gave me to a white farming family who took care of me for you know, maybe like four days or so. I became very sick. I probably had an infection and they ended up taking me to a hospital in Poliquani. And from there, the I was treated for my infection and they got me to tell them, you know, who my parents were in America.

And we haven’t figured out what agency contacted them, but then another someone, a man came and took me and got me from the hospital and was my transport on the plane, back to the Philadelphia airport.

Rick: Yeah, I take it that Landsong wasn’t your original name? You’ve adopted that name, right? I mean, as a child, you weren’t Landsong, it sort of fits what you do now.

Robin: Yeah, it was interesting. I came about with that when I was in total crisis, when I started having memories of the trauma, when I was about 19, like it literally just came through I could no longer function. I had to go into a trauma treatment unit. And when I was in a women’s shelter after I did two trauma treatment centers, I just did prayer.

And I said, what’s my name? You know what, show me my name. And I just did prayer for night after night and like kind of wrote different things down. And then finally, when I wrote down, I had kind of a vision of kind of a whole council. And they said, your name is Landsong. And I didn’t, I didn’t even sing them.

And so I said, okay, my name is Landsong. And I went and changed my driver’s license and changed my bank account and kind of began my new life.

Rick: Okay. You just got us back to Philadelphia. I think it was WC fields who, on his gravestone, it says “All things considered. I’d rather be in Philadelphia”. Okay. So you ended up coming back to your original family after this.

Do you have any idea how long you were gone?

Robin: As best we can put together, I think I was abducted like probably the around the first week in June, or maybe I think we’ve decided like June 12th is about when school ended. I tried to look up the records, but I couldn’t find school records for when the last day of the school was.

And then I know I was around for the beginning of third grade, so I had to back by September. So I think I was brought back like mid August or late August.

Rick: So that would have been winter time in South Africa.

Robin: Yeah. The dry season.

Rick: I’m asking kind of trivial questions, but I like these little concrete details.

Robin: You know, but it’s, it is very important because, the rivers would have been dry when I was there and we would research that it was a flood year, the year before and in 1977.

So that’s why there was water in that creek and then certainly in the Limpopo.

Rick: Yeah. Hmm. I had a record when I was a child that was Rudyard Kipling stories. And I remember there was one story about crocodile or something and they kept saying the great green greasy Limpopo river.

Robin: Yeah. And it is murky and there are crocodiles in it. So.

Rick: Yeah. How was your homecoming and like, what did you ever learn? Like what your parents had thought about your disappearance and what efforts they had made to locate you or anything like that?

Robin: My homecoming was very traumatic and, you know, as many people who have gone through, I have a generational abuse that there’s a lot of silence and, and kind of the rule was if we don’t talk about it, it never happened.

And so, you know, here I am, I’ve come home. I have a brain injury, you know I have broken ribs still. And when I tried to talk about it and I might have said something inflammatory to my mom, like I have to get back to Africa, to my real mother. And she, she hit me across the face and, you know, and I, I ha like, my brain is still inflamed.

And so I just call under the bed. And I just remembered, I just have to not talk about the truth in this family. And so I went under the bed and I put it all away.

Rick: Wow. So they were never even curious about what you had gone through or anything like that.

Robin: And they are both deceased and they never asked me about it.

Rick: Okay. So you were still eight years old, you getting back into third grade? That too, must’ve been kind of a surreal going back into a third grade classroom in Delaware where you had just been through this incredible

experience all summer long. Like I can just imagine, show and tell it, you know Okay, kids, what did you do this summer?

Robin: Right. And that’s where dissociation saved my life and that I just put it all away and I just was very good at pretending and kind of being a good girl and just saying like, yes, I had a nice summer. I had no memory whatsoever. I was just an entire blink. And, and so that’s, you know, what the healing process has been, has been bringing it back.

And, and that’s the beauty of having written this book is it took me 11 years to write this book because I had to keep pulling out information from that dissociative state. And one of the things I really love about all my research on trauma healing is that when a traumatic event happens, it gets stored, separated out.

You know, here’s the smell, here’s the sound, here’s the emotion, here’s the visual. And so that’s part of why it took so long to bring it back together was, you know, doing therapy, my husband, working with me on bringing it back into not only it being cohesive, but in something that would be, I could make meaning of it.

So I’m giving people not my raw unprocessed trauma, but I’m giving them a meaningful story that I’ve metabolized through my body. And I’m now giving the resolution and the gift part of the story.

Rick: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it might be worth mentioning some of the stuff you went through as a, as a means of healing, I’ve done a number of interviews about trauma.

There was one with a woman named Julie Brown Ya who specializes in helping people who’ve been traumatized. But you know, your degree of trauma’s pretty high up on the scale and to put it mildly and I can’t imagine what you must have had to go through in order to heal it, you know, it might be I think, inspiring and helpful for people to hear some of that in more detail.

Robin: Yeah. And I, I would say I used, I tried out so many things too. And so first of course, was inpatient trauma treatment unit that I went to and I went, actually went to, I went in one and then I went into extended care and then I went back into another one and I had even more memories. And

Rick: What was your behavior like that convinced you or others that you needed to go into this?

I mean, how, it seems to me your behavior must have been handicapped or, or compromised not only your outer behavior, but your, your sort of inner state.

Robin: Yeah. That’s a really great question because it was all when my nervous system was expressing. And so the catalyst for it is that I was going into what’s called dorsal vagal shutdown.

So I was literally going into what would look like a catatonic state and my heart rate was undetectable and my breathing was undetectable.

Rick: Wow. For how long?

Robin: Let’s see, I’ve had my heart started twice.

Rick: They had to use the paddles on you.

Robin: And I just want to say, just in case anybody has to watch that when you’re actually dead, it feels good.

Just so you don’t feel bad for the person when they start coming back. And they started being in their body. Again, it starts to feel bad, but when they’re actually totally out, like I was, you know, in the tunnel and they were, you know, using the paddles and it would, it would bring me back more and bring me back more and it felt great until I was back in my body.

Yeah. So when I was, when I was in college, like when I was a teenager, it happened and they had to resuscitate me. And then also when I was in college I went into that dorsal vagal shutdown and I had to be paddled back to life. And what happened was when I sat up before I was coherent myself, I started just spilling verbally the abuse, trauma and things.

And nobody was, everybody was so

Rick: You were saying things?

Robin: Yeah. And everybody was so horrified. They wouldn’t even tell me what I said later. So that, you know, that was the beginning of what sent me into, like, I was no longer a college student. I was you know, inpatient trauma treatment. And so when I got out from that, I relocated across the country and never went back to my family.

And so I did therapy like three times a week. And eventually when I could tolerate a bodywork, I did cranial sacral therapy, you know massage with a very informed trauma informed massage therapist. I did yoga. I did continuum movement acupuncture, um felled in Christ guided meditations were really great thing because I had kept control over it and kind of when body treatments were too much.

So I really, and then of course the big thing, and I really like to get this across to people because it’s not as commonly known is when I started taking herbal adrenal support. That was a huge key in transforming my post-traumatic stress because the adrenals and the kidneys get very exhausted by trauma. And our therapy isn’t going to go as well. If we’re on this really shaky platform, so people can look up our herbal adrenal support, there’s new Rhodiola, licorice, there’s different adaptogens. They can see an herbalist naturopath and that’s been huge for so many people and especially other near death near-death, as I’ve talked to who had, you know, physically traumatic event that they got ground underneath of them, once their adrenals started to be nourished by summit adrenal support.

Rick: And I was also impressed that you actually got into college. I mean, you know, it must have again been sort of handicapped by everything you’d been through and obviously you’re, you’re a very intelligent person, so that must have enabled you to get in, but it was impressive that you were able to be that functional as to, as to get in there.

Yeah. Did you not finish it because, because you ended up going to the west coast and all that stuff?

Robin: So I had two years when I had my breakdown and then I did like my, you know, my trauma healing just took all my time and then it’s, and then I finished my two years after I was kind of functional enough and, and the interesting thing is for a lot of people we flip into overfunctioning we flip, you know, we’ve flipped into being high achievers overachievers, which has detriment to it too, in terms of, you know, exhaustion.

But so that’s what I did. I was an honor roll student. I was an A student and I did overachieving. And so that’s actually taken me years to dial that down and

Rick: Yeah. Do you still have any residual traumatic incidents, you know, stuff still bubbling up?

Robin: You know, I’m definitely very careful with my nervous system.

I kind of consider that I’ll be on adrenal supports for life. You know, my ribs are still a bit of a problem. My low back is injured, my knee was damaged. But I’ll tell you when I go to near death conferences, I’m like, I look around like, who I ha I got a good, I have all my limbs. And so yeah, so I definitely always, you know, I meditate about an hour a day just to really continue to invest in my nervous system.

I do things like hyperbaric oxygen chamber. You know, I spend a lot of time in nature. So I think I’m always going to have a kind of a high-maintenance nervous system in terms of always needing to invest in peace. And, you know, I don’t watch scary movies. I do rock climb. That was actually really, really helpful in reclaiming being able to be scared and move rather than scared and freeze.

So there’s all kinds of programs of rock climbing, helping people from trauma or soldiers recover.

Rick: Well hope you do that really, really safely. No free soloing.

Robin: Yep. I, I’m not one of the risk takers, no free soloing. I’m on a rope. I don’t lead climb. Yeah. I’m the more conservative end of it.

Rick: And incidentally, you mentioned your art and that lion behind you was something you did. It’s woven right into the fabric is it? Did you do something with needlepoint or something? How did it get in there?

Robin: You’re giving me a little more credit. So I did the drawing and then I make a high resolution file of the drawing, and then I sent it to a weaving company

Rick: and they are able to weave it in with computers. And so,

Robin: yeah. And so it’s like, if you flip it over on the back, it’s got the reverse of it. So it’s not printed on, it’s actually woven.

Rick: Cool.

Robin: So it’s kind of fun for me to discover like all the different, you know, like I have mugs and you can have it on t-shirts you can have it on your iPhone. So it’s kind of a fun time period to live in, in terms of being able to print art and all kinds of things, which actually is available on my website.

Rick: I’ve seen some of those. There are some good artists. Did you ever have any formal training in art or did you just figure it out?

Robin: That’s what I did my bachelor’s degree in. Okay. Finished my social sciences and fine art.

Rick: All right. So now you ended up well, eventually you met your husband, John, and at a certain point, and there was an interesting story about how you, wrote seven pages of this book and you thought that was it.

And then you showed it to John. He took two hours to read seven pages, and then he started sort of egging you on and relentlessly getting you to unpack it more and more and more and more. And now you’ve ended up with a whole book that there might be a bit more, you want to say about that, but I thought that was kind of nice and um wise of him.

Robin: Yeah. And he even says, you know, he feels like it’s part of his soul contract to bring this book into the world. And that, and it’s a big part of, you know, supporting each other in our purpose. And our mission has been a big part of our relationship. And, and I believe he could interview me in a way that, you know, if I had just hired somebody to help me, that they wouldn’t have had the same level of permission because he knew that, you know, if we, if he interviewed me on something that was going to bring up more traumatic content, you know, he was then my support.

So he could kind of like turn rocks over that somebody else might be more tenuous about turning over.

Rick: Do you have a thing on your website where people can put in their email and get notified when the book finally comes out?

Robin: Umhm. Yup.

Rick: Good, good. Cause I just want to say, I mean, I’ve read half the book would, I’ll probably I’ll try to finish it.

I’ll see each week as a whole new thing I have to prepare for it, but I’m really enjoying it. And it, it has much more detail than Robin has been able to give us in an hour. It’s just, and she writes very well. So it’s, it’s worth if this story interests you, you might really want to read the book also.

All right. So now eventually you and John went back to Africa to check out this place where all this happened to you and to see if you could find some of the people whom you knew these. So do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Robin: Yeah. So we did it kind of an epic search of trying to find like precisely where I was and then finding people.

And, and again, that’s all in the book. And so when we, and it took us, like, at least I kind of, it was kind of a two year effort on that. So we ended up finding Vanessa and Digby Bristow who are kind of the closest white family. And then she found she would just put the story out there. Does anybody know about this wounded white girl in 1977?

And so Miamu came forward. And so she’s the granddaughter of me, Lucy. And, and so we purposely, when we were doing our search, didn’t tell anybody where I was shot so that we didn’t want kind of false stories coming, coming through. And so Vanessa was interviewing my Miamu and when my Miamu did this, you know, the gesture of where the wound was, we knew that she had to know that directly firsthand for herself.

And I got to watch this video and it, you know, obviously her face was different from, you know, 40 years later, but I recognized her gestures and heard that, you know, her smile and when we met it was just this incredible reunion and. And talk about divine alignment of like coming together. We hadn’t even kind of formally arranged when we were going to meet.

Like we literally, John and I were just driving in Vanessa, picked us up and we were driving in and who’s coming out on the road, but Miamu and two other women and three children on a donkey cart.

Rick: Do you want to play that?

Robin: Sure.

Rick: We’ll play that clip now. (clip plays, hugging, “This was a chance meeting on the donkey cart. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, this is John. Hello. Can I give you a hug? Hi John. These are really old friends. Other side here too. There we go.

This is very real for Robin right now? Chance meeting. I don’t know. This is more than chance. I don’t know. Yeah. Are you happy Miamu? Very happy, I am very happy. Yes. Thank you.”)

Rick: Very sweet. And it was, Miami was the, she was one of the little girls that was painting you with charcoal and stuff earlier.

Robin: Yeah. So my Miamu, is Mia Lucy’s granddaughter. So that’s not from the first village. That’s from the people who took me in after.

Rick: Okay. It gets confusing with all these different villages, different people.

Robin: Yeah. And, and, and honestly we had to kind of piece it together and figure it out too.

Rick: Yeah. And then there was a clip of your, your reaction after having just had this meeting. Okay.

Robin: Yeah. So, you know, again, this was completely unplanned. That we were just coming in. We thought maybe in a couple of days we would see her.

And so she was just coming out and it was John who had just from the video clip said,”Isn’t that my Miamu?”, you know, he recognized her. And when, as I said, yes. And so that’s, you know, that’s the resulting, that’s why you hear Vanessa’s voice and John’s voice. And so, so we get done that and we say, you know, okay, well, we’ll meet again in a couple of days.

And so I get back in the car and this was the first validation of my entire life. You know, my, my family’s total denial of anything that happened. Like my siblings still won’t acknowledge any of it. And not that any of them know because we never even discussed it. And so Miamu is the first human person living person that’s ever validated me, who also was there.

And so I get back in the car, you know, my teeth are chattering, I’m shaking and I just start sobbing. And just, you know, John and Vanessa look at each other, like maybe we should pull over. And, you know, John just sit with Robin. And so we get out and, you know, Vanessa is kind enough to kind of film the conversation of, of this next moment between John and I.

“And you’re inside my world now. And it’s not words anymore. You saw her love. And you know, now I’ve been trying to say it and then, you know, and just the way she held me just took me right away and like no time had passed.

It’s real. It’s been living inside me for so long and now it’s outside me too. And if this grass and little black stones and these trees and this land and her, and these people. And it’s not, oh, inside me, it’s out here and (crying) and in a way I’ve never known (crying) you helped me. I don’t have to just keep it inside me because it’s all out here.

I’ve not known this feeling before. I’ve had to keep it alive inside me. Now it’s so much bigger than me. There’s so much bigger than me. You saw, you saw.”

Rick: That one really gets to me every time. Can’t watch it without starting to choke up. It’s beautiful.

Robin: Yeah. I’m so grateful for, for Vanessa for, for, you know, thinking enough to record that so we could share that with people. Yeah.

Rick: So the whole. Just have your story, the whole kind of flavor or theme of your story is that you have a purpose, you know, and that’s why the beings that you met during your near-death experience said, you know, you, you will live, you have to go back, you have something to do.

And a lot of near death experience people get that message. When they’re on the other side, you know, you’re not finished here. Some of them are given a choice

and say, okay, you could stay here if you want, but you know, you have things to accomplish back there. And usually the way you hear it, well, you hear this from people who actually have come back.

So perhaps that’s why they chose to make that choice. But it’s always like they kind like to stay. And in fact, they’d really like to stay in many cases, but there’s this thing they’re supposed to do. And they think, oh, okay, I’ll, I’ll come back. I’ll do it. So you know, you are doing it and a large part of what you’re doing is you were almost kind of initiated and initiated into it in those African villages, you know, all the singing and the, and the healing through singing, you know, you experienced that firsthand as a recipient of that healing.

And now you, you are doing that too for others. So it almost seems like, you know, you could have had a near death experience in the United States for some reason. And but that wouldn’t have been the right introduction to what you are, what you actually going to end up doing with your life.

Robin: Yeah. And, and doing the same is such a privilege.

And obviously it’s not about, it’s not about me, like when I’m doing singing medicine ceremonies and, and there’s this real surrender, this being the hollow bone, just letting it come through. And, and sometimes I’m hearing it. I hear it inside my mind kind of before I hear it outside of me, but there’s this real aspect of allowing, allowing it just to come through and I can feel when I’m singing to someone like when I’ve kind of hit the bingo, like I can feel that like, Ooh, that’s good spot.

Just do that again. Just do that again. And one of the things that I’m really enjoying about doing all the online sessions is seeing to people when they’re in a different place in the world, Australia and New Zealand and Africa and Europe. And, and so I’m trying to listen to what’s this medicine song that’s relevant for them.

And so when I, you know, and I’m doing one in live in person and going around to each person, every song is really different. Like some are going to be the sweet little lullaby. Some are going to be a fierce calling people into their power and every time is unique and different. And I, and I’ve forgotten to learn too, that it doesn’t even really matter that much if it sounds good.

And I kind of liked to joke that we had just arrived to a near death conference in Texas and literally just got off the plane. Somebody drove us to the conference,

we walked in and then the announcer person who had the microphone at the moment was a friend of mine. He said, oh, Robin Landsong just got here.

Will you come up and sing and called John up to. And so we had, you know, we hadn’t even sat in her chair for very long yet. And so we went up and it wasn’t really that great. We weren’t quite in sync with each other. We’d just done a five-hour flight and I thought, oh, well, you know, we’ll do better later when it’s, when we’ve actually settled.

And I look out and people have tears streaming down their face. And I think apparently it doesn’t matter my opinion about whether it sounds good or not. It’s about the, the medicine and the intent coming through. And so sometimes we’re even singing the sound of somebody’s illness and it is discordant and it is like a kind of a dying wolf sound.

But we’re what we’re doing is, is saying, I see you, your internal world is real, your internal world matters. And so even if there’s illness there, it’s saying this too belongs and I see you and I’m just going to sing to that and then see what else is possible. Is there a, is there a sweeter sound next to that illness that can be of support to your body and what it needs. So it’s been an incredible discovery process and I just, I just get humbled every time I have the opportunity to do it.

Rick: What kind of results have you seen? What kind of testimonials?

Robin: Well, my, my favorite is when it helps people get more embodied and I you know just worked with somebody yesterday in Ireland.

And so I, so I’m also trained as a craniosacral therapist and being an empath I can feel people’s cranial rhythm across distance. So, you know, even if I’m working with somebody in Ireland, I can feel their brain, I can sense their cranial rhythm. And so, and so ideally the cranial rhythm is doing this (hand gesture) when there’s a trauma spot, it’s kind of like scritchy and doing this (hand gesture) when people have dissociated or left their body, it’s sort of like a skip.

Like there isn’t any cranial rhythm. So I sense that, of like, you know, her rhythm was kind of a little bit tight and then it was gone and then it came back in and, and then, so I thought, okay, we’re going to revisit that spot. Cause she’s not even an incarnated in that area. And so I was focusing on that, doing the singing medicine, doing the empathic craniosacral, and she heard “It’s okay to come in now.”

And she experienced a huge light. Coming in, you know, so much so that she wondered, like if there was like headlights coming in or window or something, which is my favorite people are like, did you turn the lights on what happened? And I was experiencing this incredible, like surgeons of like occupy her life, force her vitality coming into that part of her brain.

And, and what happens is, you know, dissociation helps people survive. But when people don’t come back in afterwards, whether it’s a near death experience, a trauma, you know, extreme stress when we either compress our life force inside ourselves or it’s in our field, or whether it’s further out or whether it seems still on the other side, we don’t have that life force, that vitality to fund our physical body and we get sick, or we have some area of low function.

So we have to bring home that life force. Some people call it a soul retrieval. I’m not fond of that term because I think our soul is fine. I call it a life force retrieval. And it’s our, it is our energy that animates our physical body and that we need that here. And I’ll share one more story. And that’s one of my favorite, again, it was at a near death conference in Texas and we did a singing medicine and I met this woman earlier in the hall and she, she had her near-death experience when she was a girl and she had drowned and she said to me, and she was maybe late sixties.

And she said, I’ve been waiting to go back ever since. And it kind of broke my heart cause I could feel, you know, she just was kind of disengaged and you know, I’m sure that affected her relationships and you know, maybe even her work or, and so fortunately she came to the singing medicine group and when it came her turn and I approached her and so I read each person that I, and I’m asking myself, what’s medicine for this person today, what are they ready to heal today?

And what increment and what dose? And she felt like a ghost to me, she felt like a shell. And so I just did prayer and I was like, okay, this is going to be a big one. Like I called in all my, you know, green Tara and Avalokiteshvara and I called in everybody and I said, this is going to be a big one. And so I asked her if I could hold her.

And so I was hugging her and I whispered in her ear. “We need you here now. It’s time to come back.” And Rick, it was one of the more incredible moments in my life. I felt her life force just land down in her body and I was holding her and it felt like she was born again. And, and I sang to her a lullaby and I had tears

streaming down my face and I felt well, that went well, the first time I’m going to do it again.

And I said, “We need you here. Now. It’s time to come home. Here. Now.” And she did it again. Like the rest of her vitality came back in her body. And, and when I kind of leaned back from her a little bit, like I looked in like the whole room felt it and was in tears. And I, and I said, are, you know, are you okay? Do you need help back to your chair?

And she said, where am I? And so I helped her back to her chair and like one of the other near deathers I came over and sat next to her and was like, you know, kind of petting her shoulder and helping her ground. And I thought it might actually be a difficult integration for her, but I saw her later in the hall and she was hugging people and saying hi to everyone.

And like, she had this light in her eyes and I just thought, how lucky am I that this gets to be my work? Like what a privilege. And, and so I just really love, like I said, the online groups, the in-person, you know, so looking forward to  COVID being done so I can tour around again. And cause you know, of course the in-person is even better than online.

But the online allows me to get to travel, you know, from Australia to New Zealand in an afternoon. So and so just to answer more of your questions, so there’s the trauma resolution. There’s really educating people that PTSD and trauma response, isn’t your personal fault. It’s just human biology.

This is what human beings. This is what mammals do in response to trauma. So I’ve just done tons of training myself, Peter Levine, Bessel van Derkolk, tons and tons of readings. Linda Graham that Dana just polyvagal theory, all kinds of things about how do we resolve trauma in the nervous system. And one of my teachers said “Trauma isn’t in the event in the past, it’s in the nervous system and the present until it’s resolved.” So that’s some of the work I really, I really enjoy doing so that people can feel whole again, and they can have freedom to connect, especially if they have abandonment and neglect that, you know, we’re here as mammals to connect to ourselves and to connect to each other.

So, and a lot of people get drawn to me because of the story of connection with my mama in Africa. And they want to know how did, how do you connect to somebody? what’s a loving relationship? How do we, how do we meaningful be vulnerable and strong with each other?

Rick: I have a friend in London named Dan who fields the questions during these interviews and sends them to me.

And he just sent me an email saying no questions yet, but I have been crying a lot. (laughter) Yeah.

Do you want to do a singing thing now during this? Okay. What do we do?

Robin: Would it be okay if I sang to you? Sure.

Rick: Should I close my eyes or what?

Robin: Whatever’s comfortable for you for your nervous system. Yeah. And so it’s just an opportunity to check in with your breath and practice self sensing, because what I’m always looking for is what do people feel in their body?

And, and, you know, cause we know emotions by physical sensation and then of course our spiritual experiences go from there. One of the statements I love from Daniel Siegel is his definition of intuition is “wisdom in the body”. And it’s that self sensing. That’s the place where we know our intuition.

[Robin Sings]

Rick: Thank you. That was nice.

Robin: And was there anything that you did notice in your breath or?

Rick: Well, I do have a headache today. I’ve had it all day. It was soothing to close my eyes and settle in.  I’m used, like you, I’m used to meditating a couple of hours a day, so I’m used to kind of tuning in and settling down and, and so on. But, you know, I could sit for an hour and have you do that.

It’s just very you know, it’s nice and yeah. And it’s also pretty universal if you think about it. I mean we can think of indigenous cultures and ancient, spiritual traditions. They all utilize song and ceremony of some kind. And you know, that’s not just to entertain themselves. I mean, it’s because they have a wisdom about the effects of these things, right. And and I’m sure that, you know, and, and, and different ceremonies and songs for different effects, you know I know this is true of South American cultures, native American cultures, Indian Vedic cultures. They have all these elaborate Yagi as they call them and Vedic ceremonies, which are supposed to produce very specific influences either, you know, in a broad sense, or even for some specific individual on the other side of the world. So there’s a science to this stuff.

Robin: And, and what I really like that I see happening in America is that people are starting to give themselves permission to use singing as medicine. And, you know, obviously it can be very different from what I do, but just all the different variations of sound healing.

And again, this is nothing new. Humans have always been doing this. And so I just love that there’s you know, more communities, more, more sound healing events happening, whether that’s the crystal bowls or gongs or people using their human voice, that it’s always been a way for humans to celebrate to mark ceremony, to mark transitions.

And you know, how many people will tell me like, oh, why am I sitting in my car by myself? And I say, great. And then I said, can you add going out into nature and doing that. And, you know, can you just listen and just leaning against the tree and sing and see if it feels any different? So, so many people just need permission to do that kind of exploration of, of dropping into themselves.

And, and one of the things that happened for me about three years ago, we were doing a singing medicine and I realized I was starting to get medium information, meaning I was starting to kind of get a sense and, and directly hear, her mother who had died and I thought, huh, you know, I can get that information when I focus on it, but it seems like the singing opens up the window even more.

So I started exploring that, offering that. And then I started watching other mediums because I honestly, I had to kind of get my own stereotype and kind of negative associations with that out of my own head. And I went to an afterlife conference and I got to see the healing that can happen through medium work.

And that really helped. And honestly, I do see people doing it in a way that I don’t feel ethically good about. And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do that model,

Rick: The hokey phone things that you can call up for so much per minute and have some supposedly medium tell you things, you know, that kind of stuff,

Robin: because it’s very, you know, I think there needs to be a tremendous amount of ethics around it.

And obviously, you know, being a craniosacral therapist, I have lots of training and professional ethics around touch and and I think the mediumship, it needs to be profoundly held. It’s very intensely personal information and it’s very delicate information. So I don’t see myself ever doing like, you know, a TV show where I’m reading an audience that just doesn’t feel like it can hold the intimacy and ethics closely to enough from my standards.

But as I started doing this, I, and I was kind of watching other people and I was actually watching Tyler Henley, Henry who scribbles, that’s his way of kind of opening up his brain and I was watching his scribbles and I thought, what the heck I draw, I can do this. And so, so I got back into it. And so I do my free hand kind of spiro graph.

I did spiro graph a ton as a kid. And so all my drawings start as a, as kind of the skeleton of this free hand spiro graph. And so I started trying it in my sessions where I kind of started getting medium sessions and I got way more information and I got information that were messages for other family members.

And, and so I started doing it where like I draw for a while and then I hold the picture up to the camera. I’m going to get a second camera where I can, people can see me draw as I do it. And I, and it was just an avenue again, to open my

awareness to even more information coming through. And I think there is no more sacred work than, than being that conduit.

Like there’s one thing. If I get information what’s even better for me is I am the facilitator to help the person who I’m reading for sense their loved one and get their own direct experience because I get to have spiritual experiences and, you know, visionary things all the time. What’s important where the transformation happens for people is that they have the vision or they have this sensation or they have the direct contact. So that’s, that’s the highest calling for me is to be the facilitator of people having their own experience.

Rick: Yeah. And and it’s not just that, okay. I know my mom’s doing okay. Or, you know, some information you get from somebody on the other side.

I mean, the very fact of shifting somebody’s perspective, such that they realize that we don’t cease to exist when this body dies is huge. You know? I mean, cause there are a lot of people who go through life thinking that this is all I am this structure and it’s when the structure dies, that’s the end of it.

I mean, it’s, it’s a very cramped perspective and it, in my opinion, doesn’t resonate at all with the actuality of the situation. So, you know, anything which can facilitate having the broader perspective, the realization of what a vast timeless affair life is is extremely enlightening for people.

Robin: And I think, again, that comes back to the embodiment.

If we’re not connected to ourselves, to what we eat, you know, where our food comes from to our neighbor, how we affect others, how would we possibly make the leap that we’re connected spiritually? So that’s why I’m always emphasizing embodiment and self sensing, you know, and getting aware of like, you know, what do I eat and my harming myself, or am I helping myself?

And you know, where does my food come from am I harming the planet, or am I helping the planet? So those kinds of grounded, because everything I do is about connection and, you know, in the neurobiology of connection, and when we can sense ourselves, then we can do it. Daniel Siegel says sense the other person’s internal world and, and see that, you know, everybody else has their own experience going on.

And can we relate those two, and those to me are the building blocks for the bigger spiritual picture and the bigger being able to even understand. Cause cause you know, we’ve met different people who are up and out, but they’re not down and in. And you know, and I was very much one of those people who was extremely dissociative in my twenties.

And so I spent my whole twenties coming back in, you know, through exercise, the rock climbing was huge through getting bodywork. And, and what I love too is the analogy that in New York City, they cannot build skyscrapers where they’re shallow bedrock. They can only build the tallest buildings where there’s the deepest bedrock.

And so that’s why I encourage people about the grounding, the coming back into your root chakra, because then you can actually make, you know, bigger spiritual experiences when you come back home and when you’re rooted and you can do that skyscraper on, on bedrock.

Rick: Yeah. Good analogy. It’s literally true. I once saw a presentation by the, the designer of the, the architect who built the World Trade Center and he showed how, how deep they had to dig the foundation in order to, to raise it up.

The question came in, this is someone named Yael, Y A E L from North Carolina wants to know you mentioned a soul contract. Can you say more about this and the relationship with, and role of karma in a soul contract? Do, do you remember a soul contract?

Robin: That’s a great question. And so I like the definition of karma as, you know, kind of our learnings and, you know, and if we didn’t get it the first time, then we get to get it in another form.

And my, one of my Buddhist teachers Ghe Shea, John Young, he says don’t rush through your lessons. Cause then you’ll just have to go back and do them again. Don’t try to get to B and C so fast. So. So, yeah, just really slowing down and observing, like what, what are the patterns in our life? Like what are the things we keep repeating?

And are we getting it a little bit easier? You know, are we getting it like kind of a less intense kind of consequence? And really, and from there, again, it gets into the soul contract question of just noticing our patterns with people and just wondering why, like, there was somebody I dated before I was with my husband and I kept thinking, why am I doing this relationship?

Like this doesn’t make any sense. And my friends were like, why are you dating this guy? And. And there was one point where we were, where we rock climb together and we were driving past a rural area. And I just, all of a sudden he said, oh, we should buy that house and farm together. And I was like, no, we already did that together. And it was terrible. We’re finishing this out in a better way in a short, you know, kind of dating relationship rather than being married to you in a farmhouse, you know, a couple of generations ago. Right. So to me, it’s all about whatever needed to finally get resolved there. Say, I’m sorry, I’m sorry too. See ya.

So just watching for those patterns of, you know, kind of what’s true in our life, what are the important themes and you know, what are we working out and what are we helping other people work out? And that sometimes, you know, we are the presence that helps another person get their lesson. And it doesn’t mean it’s pleasant even, and it doesn’t mean that they thank us or they even like us.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, think of some of the people whom you could easily call scoundrels who have been in your life, you know, starting with your parents and your, your, some of your siblings and, you know, the guy who abducted you and the guy who shot you and all this stuff. Not people you would willingly and, you know, sign up for.

Right. But nonetheless, look at you now. Look how you, I once said to my mother you know, I had a bit of a troubled childhood, myself, alcoholic, father and mother in and out of mental hospitals and all. And she, she really tried hard to raise us, but I once said to her when I was kind of doing much better, having

been meditating for a few years and she came over to Switzerland and joined me there for a while, I said, mom, you know, whatever you, whatever you may feel about our growing up and whatever role you played in it, I, you know, I really want to thank you because I’m really happy with the way my life is turning out. So you must have done the right thing.

Robin: Yeah. And, and just like, like you’re saying that it doesn’t mean that you know, sometimes it is the difficulty that breaks us open to find out what else we’re made of. I kind of, and, and here, I want to say an important thing that when I was early on in my trauma recovery, I did not appreciate when people told me I chose my parents.

Rick: Yeah.

Robin: And it’s just not the right timing to present that idea to somebody. And I was just, it was important that I was good and angry for a while. And that, that anger is what kind of forged my self-esteem again. I went from feeling totally worthless, not even a person to my anger said I am worthy of being treated well.

And so I think there’s real value in anger. Sometimes in some spiritual groups, like anger is bad, but anger is about when it’s done well, when it’s in alignment, it’s about standing up in your dignity and saying, I’m not going to be treated that way. And I’m worth more than that. And then, and then of course, from there, we learn to refine it because when I was in my twenties, there was nothing refined about it at all.

But I just want to say if people presented the karma idea or like, oh, you got interesting lessons to learn. When I was in that really gritty years of trauma healing, that was not of service to me. And that was only something I could embrace much later on my own. And you know, now I can kind of joke like, wow, I must’ve been really competitive when I was incarnating, standing next to somebody who was saying like, well, I’m gonna, you know, have a whole, these difficulties nine upping the ante. And our guys are like, whoa, you’re two separate.

Rick: Yeah. It can be very heartless and glib for people. Sometimes, sometimes spiritual people, somebody will get cancer and they’ll say, oh, you know, it must be your karma or you, you wanted this, you signed up for this and all this. It’s really not compassionate speech to speak that way.

Robin: Right. And I think some of that comes from wanting to distance ourselves from suffering and that when people flip into that blame, that they’re saying, oh, I must be immune. I’m not going to get cancer. And you did something wrong. Therefore, you got cancer and it kind of you know, it’s kind of an illusion that we’re safe, cause we’re all vulnerable to illness.

We all have physical bodies and, and there I think is a really great point to make about the difference between empathy and compassion. And so empathy is when we’re doing what we, what I said before about feeling the internal state of another, like being able to the sense their brain sends their nervous system, sends their emotional body.

And if they’re in distress, we will go into it’ll activate our amygdala, our fear center, and we will go into distress also. When we shift over from empathy, which is just feeling the state over into compassion, which can be as simple as I wish the relief of your suffering, or if we’re able to take action, you know, I take action for the relief or the prevention of your suffering.

We shift into dopamine and oxytocin. So oxytocin is the chemical of connection. Dopamine is the reward-pleasure chemistry. And so, so for so many people who are highly empathic, it’s about the practice of shifting over into compassion. And so if I drive past, say you know a teenager, who’s looking, you know, really distressed. 142:07

I can sense their distress. And then I just do a little prayer. I wish a safe person in your life. I wish someone who really gets you. I wish you the shelter and the resources need that you need. And then I’m done. And I’m not empathetically, still taking them with me. Cause cause so much of what people come to me for is learning boundaries around, you know, sensing others or being an empath.

Rick: Yeah. You know, I was impressed in re in reading your book about how perceptive or empathic you were even as an eight year old in terms of, you know, sizing up the people you would encounter. Often within seconds, you’d sort of read the person and get a, get a real accurate sense of whether they were safe or not safe.

And, and even things like, you know, there was some woman who you, you immediately sense that she had like three children that she was responsible for. And so, you know, if you were picking up on that stuff, when you were eight, you must be picking up on a lot more now.

Robin: Yeah. And, and I have pretty good choice around it most of the time.

And what I’ve found is that the more people disown their issues, the more it’s out in their field and kind of the louder it is to me. And so I remember, I remember one time early in my, probably my second year, my practice, somebody sat down and I usually kind of start reading people. And when they sit in the seat and I couldn’t get anything, and then I realized she was so owning her own issues, that they weren’t jumping out at me.

And so the more we do our personal work, the more we kind of, you know, look at our shadow and examine, you know, what we need to look at, the more actually energetically safe we are. And, you know, when it’s people who are projecting out their unowned self, that they’re actually it’s messier life and they’re actually more vulnerable to kind of being read by somebody who doesn’t have good intent towards them.

[01:40:14]

Rick: Interesting. Yeah, it’s certainly just as an aside speaking of rock climbing and near death experiences, I did an interview with a guy named Peter Pan Aghori who had a near death experience, well, ice climbing on ice wall in Canada. And it may be, there may be a movie coming about his whole experience.

But you might want to watch that one on, I think you can find it.

Robin: Yeah, yeah. He and I are good friends.

Rick: Oh, good. You know, Peter. Okay,

Robin: great. Yeah. Yeah. It’s the beauty of the near death conferences.

Rick: Yeah. You meet these people, right?

Robin: Yeah. And I just want to say a statement on that too. The first one I went to, I think it was in Orlando, Florida through IONS

Rick: IONS the international association of near-death studies.

Robin: Yes. Right. And so there was a dance party and, and they were Anita Moorjani was there and they were playing dancing queen, which is the song that they played for her when she was in ICU. And so, you know, everybody knows each other’s story. And so like everybody formed a big circle around Anita Moorjani and it was just this super fun celebratory thing.

And, and I was laughing and I was looking around and I thought, you know, Peter died of hypothermia. That person died of a medical error. Brother Ed died of several things, but like falling in the pool. And, and so, you know, that person died of a kayak accident and I just thought this is the funnest party I’ve ever been to because everyone here is so grateful to be alive.

And, and later on, I was meeting with a bunch of them at, we were having lunch together and Brother Ed was talking about he was wanting to do the thing that ended up killing him again. And then another person who died of a kayak accident was like talking about wanting to go kayaking and I’m preparing to go back to Africa for the first time.

And and Jeff Olson was there talking about taking a long drive somewhere.

Rick: and Danny and Brinkley wanted to go fly a kite in a thunderstorm.

Robin: Right. And I just thought part of the, part of the reason that we come out with each other is because we were willing to re-engage in life. We were willing to try these things again.

And so I’m just really appreciating kind of the resilience that can oddly happen when we’re broken open.

Rick: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, maybe it makes you more confident because first of all, you know, you can’t die. And, you know, if you do die in the ordinary sense of the word, you know, that it actually gets even better than worse, which is not to say you become reckless and suicidal, but you know, you just, it must have dispel a lot of fear having had that broader perspective.

Robin:  Umhm. And, and that brings up an interesting point too, in terms of when people are getting medically revived that like, you know, when I was a teenager and I was, went into the dorsal vagal shock, there was kind of like a, you know, they did resuscitate me in the oxygen, certainly helped. And I was very grateful for that, but I was going to come back.

Cause there was times I went into dorsal vagal shock when I was by myself, you know, and I would like wake up on the floor and I, who knows how long I’d been out, but I’m meant to be here. So I was going to be brought back. So yes. Thank you very much to the ambulance crew crew for reviving me and, you know, spirit had me.

Rick: Yeah. A couple more questions have come in. This is from Anjan in Barcelona. What message does Robin have for the current challenges in the world we face today? Black lives matter, COVID-19 et cetera, but black lives have certainly mattered for you haven’t they?

Robin: Yeah. So I’ll do the COVID one, cause that’s a little bit simpler sort of.

So again, everything that I, my training and, you know, my mission is all about connection. So I’m just really aware for myself personally, you know, how I just haven’t had enough touch and, you know, I stopped having people over in my office for in-person sessions and, and just the absence of touch is a really big deal.

And that so much of what we’re doing with each other is co-regulating and that we’ve all been in the presence of somebody who can calm down our nervous system. We’ve also been in the presence of somebody who’s agitating to be around. So my hope in this is that where are we going to be, hold even more precious, our privilege to get to gather.

And I can remember at one point when I was just watching a video of some conference I’d been to, and just watching everybody hug each other, and I thought, oh, I can’t wait till we can do that again. You can just walk up to somebody you don’t even know, you know, in a room of 100 people and hug them because there’s going to be so much traumatic stress after this because we haven’t been able to co-regulate with each other because we haven’t gotten our needs met.

And, you know, certainly all the financial implications for our, you know, our different situations for different people. So. It’s a little bit hard for me to comprehend like our world coming back into this. But my prayer is that we hold sacred, the ability to gather, to do ceremony, to just meet new people.

And I, again, our own food co-op, you know, of course the rule of stay six feet apart. They have it marked on the floor about how to stay away from each other. And just like, I, I came around the corner and like almost ran into somebody and we both jumped back and I thought, and I said, well, I’d really like to hug you, not jump back from you.

And she said, I feel the same. You know, we have masks on, we can’t see each other’s facial expression. So just really honoring that our nervous systems are going to take some time to recover and get our nourishment needs met from seeing each other’s facial expression from hugging, from touch. And that that’s just going to take some, some time.

And as far as black lives matter, honestly, it’s so personally heartbreaking for me that it’s hard for me to know how to respond and, and that, I just hope that publishing my book is my contribution and, and just, I feel all I can do is be the ethical, awake person that I can be. And I don’t know how to solve this on a social level, but I’m hoping that sharing my story of my Miamu she took a risk and Mia Lucy, they they said, I won’t throw her away. She’s a living human being. And that my hope is that sharing that they did that for me, is going to help educate some, some white people. And the truth is, you know, I see everything from a nervous system state, and when people are in limbic survival, they see another person as other.

And when we see someone as other, we judge them more harshly and we give them more harsh punishments. When we see them as part of our clan, that a member of our cave, we are more generous. We don’t give them punishment as quickly or harshly, and we will far extend our resources to make sure that they are well.

So I hope that my contribution can be helping people move from limbic survival, up to frontal resourcing, where we can make better decisions and see, and we make categories about putting somebody as other, for all kinds of reasons. And so when we can be safe, when we can be in safety in ourselves, reduce our own trauma response, then we’re more capable of not putting people in the other category so quickly.

And I think it was reading Bessel van der Kolk’s book. And I took a five day training with him in person, and I said, you know, what do you see kind of being my greatest contribution? He said, Robin, if you can give people hope that trauma is you can actually heal from it. That’s your big gift. And that for the people who are in a position of sending out so much hate, they are so much in their limbic survival brain. They can’t see, you know, black lives matter doesn’t mean anything to them. Cause they just go into well you’re saying, “I don’t matter” because there’s so much in just this limbic fight or, you know, fight state. So it’s really about healing as many nervous systems as, you know, as we can and that, you know, maybe there’ll be 10 people around that person to help them co-regulate into a less survival state into a less hostile defendant state because cognitively they can’t get there. They have to get there through the nervous system being safe.

Rick: umhm. Good. Here’s here’s a question that I bet you, you’re going to knock out of the park. Natalie from London asks, “Why do we incarnate when there’s so much suffering? Wouldn’t it be better if everyone just stayed in the loving light all the time?”

Robin: I was just having this conversation yesterday. I totally agree. And sometimes I wonder what the heck I did. Why did I incarnate. And again, it’s why I work with so many people who are up and out is because it’s not that fun to be here sometimes.

You know, we get sick. We a splinter hurts us terribly, like really where this huge person in like an ant bite can hurt. What does that? So I just think that if we stay where it’s comfortable, we don’t get to evolve and it is the grit. It is the being broken down. It is the, we don’t pray hard when we’re comfortable.

We pray hard when, when we’re desperate, when we don’t know. So if we stayed in a place where, you know, the answers are there, where the golden grapes are there, we don’t have the challenge to break us opened. And it’s just like, exercise. You start out doing exercise and it doesn’t feel good. Like I did a long bike ride last week and the first five miles don’t feel good.

It’s kind of like all the sludge in my system, you know, sitting at the computer too long has being moved through. By mile 10, I started to feel good. By mile 20, I felt euphoric, but you know, it’s not hard to, I mean, it’s, it’s effort to go bike 30 miles and, and I felt sore the next day. So, but it’s a, it’s a challenge that I chose to keep myself well.

And I guess the tricky part is life throws us challenges that we don’t feel like I didn’t choose this. I didn’t choose to have somebody abusive to me, but when we can do the healing work, when we can do the embodiment, then we get to make meaning of it. And then we get to be of service to other people.

And to me, that is the glory. And you know, if you asked me when I was face down on the dirt, is anything gonna come, could come from this? I would say, no. If you asked me when I was, you know, having to leave college and I was 19, I was going into a trauma treatment center. I wouldn’t have said this is great.

But now that I have gotten to be of service to thousands of people, I am grateful for it because when people are in trauma recovery, this isn’t something I just intellectually relate to. I know this, I know this in my, every cell and I have total faith when other people don’t because I’ve done it. And I remember when I was giving a talk at a to shelter staff and they said, “how can you have faith that healing is possible?” And I thought, because I’m doing it because it’s working. And because I do have love in my life and because. You know, my, my health has gotten better.

Rick: Hmmm. I’d like to give Natalie an answer too and reword her question slightly like this. Why does God manifest the universe when there’s so much suffering in it?

Wouldn’t it be better if God just stayed in the unmanifest state, you know, in a state of totality and completeness, why go through all this fuss and bother? And it’s because in my understanding or opinion that there is an evolutionary process, which results in something that’s more than, than the this is like two infinities end up being created.

That’s more than just one infinity. And God, as a living reality, which is what we are, which is what we are experiencing has, is more fun than God in merely an unmanifest state. And Irene is making snorting noises. Fun. Well, you know, it’s like, why did Shakespeare write both tragedies and comedies?

Because the, you know, the diversity of life, necessitates polarity and this, this, and there’s, if you’re going to have one extreme, you have to have the other extreme. And so somehow, or other to have a universe, you need all these polarities. But the, the whole thing is this sort of evolutionary machine that ends

up evolving something much more than existed in, in the beginning or in the ground state.

[01:53:26]

Robin: And, and I guess kinda the, the wrench, some people throw into that is like, well, why do we keep repeating the same mistakes? You know, like, why are we not, why is evolution not more evident? Why do we still keep harming each other in the gross ways we did 500 years ago or a hundred years ago? So that’s kind of the, the argument that I’ve heard kind of like, are we evolving?

Rick: I think we’re evolving as a culture. I mean, if you look at even back to the 1960s or fifties and, you know, speaking of black lives, I mean, go back to the 18 hundreds. There has definitely been evolution in, in, in that particular example and in many others, but also we are not the same people. I mean, new batches of people come along and maybe they have to learn the lessons that we already learned some lifetimes ago. We, we, we go onto new lessons.

Robin: Right, right. I agree. Because I worked with one young man who he had an crazy amount of concussions and cause he was doing things like extreme skiing and jumping out of planes and fire jumping. And, and I went out, I put my hands on him. I thought this is his first time being human.

He’s been a bug before. And he thinks he can still jump off things and be fine.

Rick: Interesting.Yeah. Here’s another question that kind of relates to some things we’ve been saying. This is from Lisa in Mount Shasta. Are you able to read if someone has unhealed trauma that they are unconscious of, or have repressed, how do you work with repressed memories?

Robin: That’s great. And hi Lisa.

Rick: you know Lisa?

Robin: Yeah.

She’s made my website beautiful along with John’s help. Oh, good. So very much that’s, that’s kind of the beauty of using my abilities in intuition as an empath. Is that not only am I able to read people’s trauma this lifetime of in the past couple of years, I’ve been able to trace back generational.

And so, you know, I can sit with somebody and say, you know, okay, this happened in your lifetime. And two generations ago, grandfather maternal side, you know, this happened, like I just worked with somebody who their grandfather had a brain injury and he became violent, aggressive because of his brain injury.

And I realized it was showing up energetically for the grandson and it really helped decrease the blame around, you know, why he had mental health issues. So, so I’ll just give an example of one person I worked with her her son had come back in her life and he had also had trouble with drugs and she started getting headaches and she couldn’t figure out why now that he was back in her life, she was getting headaches.

And so I looked at her and I can see inside and people’s anatomy. And I saw the base of her skull, her occiput right side. And then I saw contraction there. You know, I won’t do all the anatomy, but, and then I saw a little movie of her being pushed backwards and falling onto a wooden porch. And I said, “So was there a time where you felt unsafe and you got pushed and you landed on this porch and it was wood and you hit the back of your head?”

And she said, oh, that was the kind of break of my son’s mental first violence from his mental health issues. And he pushed me and I did get a head injury. And so, so we talked about the key for her was having boundaries now that he was back in her life because the truth is, even though it was her child, she didn’t feel safe with him because he was physically bigger than her and, and that her headaches were giving her information to remind her he was violent towards you once.

And you do need to have a safety plan here.

Rick: Huh? Interesting. Well, is there anything that we have left out? Anything that you didn’t get a chance to say that you think you’d like to say before we wrap it up?

Robin: I just want to kind of complete that thought in terms of working with repressed memories, it’s all about the pace that is appropriate for each person and that there’s no rushing and in any of this, because it’s all about nervous system stability and nervous system resolution.

And that if somebody is not very resource, I’m just going to make sure they’re eating better first, you know, that they have more support first. So it’s all about the, you know, really knowing what’s medicine for this person today. And then I just have my little notes to mention the Near Death Experience Summit that’s coming up in August. Trisha Barker is the organizer of that and that’s an online event. And if you. I’ll put it on my website at some point. And also if people want to I’m on Facebook, if they want to say, hello me on Facebook, then you’ll see the Near Death Experience Summit. I’m on my Facebook page.

Rick: Okay. And this is 2020 right now. So, you know, people you’re watching this years from now. So, but in any case, your face, your website is Robinlandsong.com, right?

Robin: Correct.

Rick: And I’ll link to that and to your Facebook page on your page on batgap.com so people can find it.

Robin: And my book is I’m in the final stages of being edited.

My next thing is to get a an agent and publisher, and then I hope to get it out to people who’ve been asking for it, which I super appreciate.

Rick: It’s good. I’m enjoying it. Okay. And I read a lot of books. That’s a good one.

Robin: Good. I’m glad.

Rick: Yeah. Well, thanks Robin. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you and having this conversation with you.

Robin: Yeah. Thank you so much for doing your work and, and bringing all these people to get to meet the world.

Rick: Yeah. It seems to be my, my function, my Dharma.

Robin: Beautiful.

Rick: Yeah. All right. So thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. Go to batgap.com and check out the menus and you’ll see some things there you might want to do, like sign up for the audio podcast or check out past interviews, make a donation, if you want to. There’s some various things. If you look under the various menus, so appreciate your time and stay tuned for the next one.

Next will be a fellow named George Middleton. And the week after that will be a guy who has been working to with a whole group of people.

I think it was at the University of Arizona to actually build some contraption of some kind, which enables some sort of communication with the other side.

Robin: Mark Pitstick

Rick:  Yeah. Pitstick he’s he’s come up, you know him

Robin: I’ve met him at conferences too. Yeah. Yeah. So he’s an interesting guy. I think you’ll enjoy that one.

Rick: Yeah, I think so. It’s fun every, every week is a new package. New Christmas present to open.

Robin: Yeah. Well this has been a total delight and I’ll say thank you in Benda which is rhodi bhuya

Rick: it’s almost sounds French

Robin: might be my through my American mouth.

Rick: Great. Well, thanks Robin.

Robin: All right, bye. Bye.

Rick: We’ll be in touch.