Awakened Conscious Conversations
Healing the world one episode at a time by offering realistic solutions to the journey of life. Both self hosted ( By The Gentle Yoga Warrior) and guest episodes.
Many of our guests have overcome significant obstacles and transformed their lives.
Rich with deep talks and solo endeavours, often offering tips on living a more conscious life.
Many episodes include a bonus optional meditation!
Awakened Conscious Conversations
A Love Story in Disguise: Rethinking Trauma as a Sacred Adaptation
What if the wounds that have caused you the most suffering actually contain the intelligence needed for your deepest healing? In this soul-stirring conversation, spiritual author Michael Stone invites us to radically reimagine trauma not as brokenness to overcome, but as sacred adaptation carrying wisdom needed for our evolution.
Drawing from his extraordinary life journey – born between atomic bombs to parents traumatized at Pearl Harbor, discovering his mother's suicide as a toddler, and enduring decades of suspicion following his wife's murder – Michael embodies the possibility of transforming devastating circumstances into profound spiritual awakening. With refreshing clarity, he dismantles conventional understandings of trauma, revealing it as "an intelligence that's been evolving for millions of years" designed to protect us in overwhelming situations.
The conversation explores Michael's powerful integration model: presencing (stopping, softening, slowing down), witnessing (raising awareness resolution), and embracing (welcoming whatever arises as a teacher). Through vivid examples from childhood development to intimate relationships, he illuminates how unintegrated past becomes destiny, repeating patterns until we create space for healing. You'll discover why traditional therapy often fails with trauma (it lives in the body, not cognition), how relationships trigger precisely the wounds needing healing, and why four-dimensional communication transforms our capacity for connection.
Most powerfully, Michael reveals how personal healing work ripples outward to heal collective and ancestral trauma. As he approaches his 80th birthday, his medicine for the world becomes clear: by doing our own shadow work, we expand our capacity to hold life's complexity and address the traumatic roots underlying our greatest societal challenges. Connect with Michael at welloflight.com to explore his courses, newsletter, or his transformative book "Traumatized: A Love Story."
Michael's contact details: https://www.welloflight.com/
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Hello everybody, I'm your host, the Gentle Yoga Warrior, and this is Awakened Conscious Conversations podcast, and shortly joining us at a bright and early 6am in California will be the wonderful Michael Stone, and I'm deeply honoured to have Michael on the show. Michael has had quite a journey, to say the least. He was born between the two atom bombs. His parents were in Pearl Harbor and, traumatized from that, sadly, his mother took her own life and he had the shadow of people thinking that he had murdered his wife for a long time, only recently, in 2023, being fully cleared by DNA evidence, and I suspect Michael could have chosen a path of feeling sorry for himself and also a path of feeling a victim. But from what I've read in his book so far and the stuff that I've seen about Michael, he decided to completely change his life around. We will learn more in, more elegantly put by Michael, I'm sure, because it's his life experience, he's going to explain it the best.
Speaker 1:But I did some research on Michael and Michael Stone is a spiritual author. His recent book Traumatize a Love Story by Michael Stone. I have had the grace to read about a quarter of it before this interview and I must say I cannot put it down. The way he writes makes me feel that I'm understood and even though our life stories were different, I can completely relate to the mother wound and the father wound and I particularly like the way he reflects after each chapter and how he's learned from his life's experience. On reflection, he did various things to kind of navigate through this difficult terrain to become the great spiritual teacher, leader and source of inspiration that he is now.
Speaker 1:And I'm deeply, deeply appreciative of this 6am start. It can't be easy to get up early, even if you're an early riser. And get up and do a podcast at six in the morning just goes to show that he's willing to put himself out to kind of mix in with um the time zones here. So I really appreciate the effort that has been put into that. So shortly we're going to be talking about rethink trauma as a sacred adaption. So, dear dear listeners, as promised, here is the wonderful Michael Stone kindly joining us at 6am from California, usa. So welcome to the show, michael.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it's good to be here with you.
Speaker 1:It's an honor to have you on the show today and I had the joy of reading some of your wonderful book Traumatized, a love story by Michael Stone and I get to read a lot of books over over the years, but with yours I just couldn't put it down because in so many ways I could even though your story is different to mine, because we've all got our unique paths I could really relate to a lot of the stuff that you had in it and I just found it to a lot of the stuff that you had in it and I just found it. If ever there was an example of someone who have kind of taken the um, the coarseness and difficulties of one's life and kind of used it as like fertilizer for life, to kind of to to lead this deeply spiritual life, it is yourself.
Speaker 1:um I I thought we would talk today about rethinking trauma, because trauma is something we hear a lot about these days, but I think the way that you navigated it, presented it and your understanding is going to be of deep benefit for our listeners. Firstly, michael, would you mind sharing a bit of your backstory so far and what's inspired?
Speaker 2:you sure I have to say, uh, so many people say the same thing that, even though it was my story that they uh can really relate in their own life and that was really part of the purpose I? Um, just to start with, uh, I had two purposes. One was my own healing. I've been dealing with trauma, teaching about trauma, talking about trauma, integration, for many, many years, and I love doing this, working with people. So the first reason was for my own healing, though the second was that we don't realize that we're all traumatized.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm sure some of your listeners are probably saying I'm not traumatized, I had a wonderful, happy childhood. Well, yeah, but when we look under which we will under the covers, we'll see that we're all traumatized. We will, under the covers, we'll see that we're all traumatized. If it isn't individual, it's relational, familial, collective, ancestral, geographic, historic. It's, you know, and it's at the heart of all the issues in the world. So I'm this is, you know, I'm turning 80 next month and this is kind of my focus right now and my medicine for the world, in a way. And so you ask, what is trauma? So it's probably the most misunderstood thing on the planet, because we think of trauma as an illness, a pathology, a brokenness, something we want to get rid of, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But in reality, trauma is an amazing intelligence that's been evolving for millions of years really, and its intelligence is to protect us in overwhelming situations. So there are many kinds of trauma, but the most important thing to realize at first is that it's not something to get rid of. It's something that's wanting to teach you how to be whole. I think that's really an important distinction to make. The other thing that's important to know about trauma is it's not the thing that happened. To know about trauma is it's not the thing that happened. It's what happened in us when the thing happened, whatever that thing was. And that's really important, because if it was the thing that happened, we could never integrate and heal it. So you, we have to, like, understand that this is an intelligence in our body that if we can tap into not try to get rid of it, you know, but to really embrace it. And I'll talk, we'll talk more about that. What happens? Just a couple of things. What happens?
Speaker 2:There is a number of symptoms that you know that you have trauma. One of them is a sense of separation, a separate self. Now you know, you're over here, jane, in London right now, and I'm here in California and it looks like well, that's a long distance, you're far away, but I'm seeing you. And one way of knowing person is I'm seeing this person that I'm with over here. But another way I think that's really important to see, and how we see another person is actually you show up in my nervous system and I'm showing up in your nervous system. There is no distance really between us. That my capacity to know you is exactly related to the circumference of my capacity to feel myself. So if I'm able to feel you, then we do a thing in my work feeling myself, feeling you, feeling me and the space between us, because that allows us to tune in.
Speaker 2:The other thing about trauma that's really important to recognize this is not a cognitive illness and traditional therapy will not integrate trauma. It's somatic, it's the body, it's the emotions. So we have to be able to allow ourselves. But what happens with trauma is it either becomes a numbing of our body. It's not a numbness, it's a numbing. It's like your refrigerator's plugged in and it's keeping things cool. Numbing is plugged in. It's a verb, not a noun, and tensing is part of the process. So we're really numbing and tensing as a result of the unintegrated past that we're carrying in our bodies.
Speaker 1:So that's a quick overview that's really refreshing to hear it put like that, because we're always taught or I seem to see is that trauma is a bad thing and that we it's. It's somehow kind of a weakness. But, like you said, we've all got trauma to to some degree and and trauma healing is an evolutionary path.
Speaker 2:Your show is about consciousness. Trauma is the thing to focus on the shadow. If we're looking for spiritual attainment, you know we look at spiritual awakening as a place to get to. There's no place to get to, it's all right here, right now. Material, you know what Jung called the shadow material? It's really the things that we don't want to feel, the things that we don't want to look at, and certainly the things we don't want somebody else right to know. Oh my god, they knew that about me. They think I was really up, whatever, and so. But working with a shadow, inner work, is what gives us a greater capacity to hold life, and so when we can do that, then we are. Every time we break a habit, whether it's a habit like smoking or eating or any disorder habits are crystallized structures in our body, and every time we change a habit, we make an evolutionary move forward as towards our wholeness and the potential of the human species.
Speaker 1:I've had that experience myself in few things and the awareness isn't it to kind of know, um, how we can change the habit and things like this? In your wonderful book it's, you had a quote by dr peter a levin who says the paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect. So I guess that leads on a bit from what you, what you were saying, where we kind of can change, like these habits, and, for us, change our ourselves. So I guess, um, what I'm trying to get to is the. The trauma is a gift in many ways, but I guess it's how we approach it. We can either let it be, um, destroy us, or see it as a way to improve ourselves. And if I'm a listener and I'm listening and thinking, oh yes, I'd like to go the improve myself way, how would, how would I approach that through your, your methods?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's a good question and it's, of course, a huge question. Uh, I do, uh, online, uh work with people, um, but my favorite thing to do is groups. I also do online groups, but I do private groups, and the reason I do it that way is we were wounded in relationship and so it always made sense to me that healing is a relational issue. So let's go back to early childhood development. How do we learn to self-regulate, to be able to walk in the world, have our emotions with people fully? How do we learn to self-regulate ourself? You only learn to self-regulate through co-regulation. So you learn to co-regulate with a caring witness, a mother, a parent, uh, a caring witness, you know, however, that was a foster mother, would or parent. So what happens is in early development, if we aren't felt, seen, held, heard and protected, we're going to be traumatized, and there are different kinds, and I won't get into all the different kinds of of impact that has, but, um, and it's very subtle. Let me give you an example. Let's say, uh, I'm a toddler. Now, how do we learn? We learn with curiosity. We go out, we go, oh, look at this, and I get curious and maybe I'm interested in the dog, and the dog barks and I run back and I say mommy, mommy, I'm mommy, I'm scared, the dog's gonna eat me. And mommy says oh, there's nothing to be scared about, sweetheart, yeah, I, I'm really busy now. Go on and play, don't be scared, grow up, grow up, you know. And that's one example. Well, that's a traumatizing event. Why is that a traumatizing event? Because an emotional question was answered with a cognitive response. The child is left then feeling I'm not supposed to be scared. My mommy says I'm not supposed to be scared, but I am scared, something's wrong. And we never say something's wrong with my mommy. We say something's wrong with me. And that becomes an adaptation. Then that I have to adapt to this break in my relatedness.
Speaker 2:Let's say and this is, I just switch genders all the time when I say this same same situation and the child goes out, the dog barks, comes running back, daddy, daddy, daddy, I'm scared, the dog's gonna eat me. And daddy says come here, sweetheart, come here. Do you know what? I get scared sometimes too, and it's okay to be scared and I love you so much. And the toddler goes, oh, and goes and plays with the dog. Now, that is a reaffirming sense of self. So now I've learned that, oh, it's OK to be scared, I don't have to push it down, I don't have to go fast and keep busy and keep running, so I don't have to feel those things because it's okay to be afraid that's a beautiful example and the kids they're going to be confident rather than thinking because you do as a child.
Speaker 1:Don't you think anything that happens with one's parents one we intend to blame ourselves or we've done something wrong, when actually the reality is not always, always, always that case?
Speaker 1:And I really respect how candidly you spoke about your um, your parents and and the situations and and also in your book, you you were able to reflect and from your, from your journey of how the gifts that were in this, even though there was all these traumatic and difficult events as I was reading, I could see you had you saw maybe it's with years of experience, but you're able to see like some of the gifts, like gardening, was a thing that really helped. You felt a good connection with your grandfather and father in that and it made me think again about the another quote I took from your book, which is when we stop running and stop listening, we learn to befriend the symptoms we once feared. Something powerful begins to happen and I found that really powerful. I don't know, I almost can't verbalize it. It was like, yes, we can befriend them instead of being scared of these symptoms of life. Could you explain how you came to that conclusion?
Speaker 2:Well, the first thing about that quote is you can see that it gives you permission to be the way you are and that's really important because mostly we we're in our, you know the the head has had a coup over the heart and mostly, you know, we respond, like I said, with the cognitive responses and we're just um. There's many levels of listening that I talk about in my workshops and and classes, um and uh the the first level would be two-dimensional, basically, I'm just projecting on you, I actually I'm just putting out there and you know we do that a lot, you know we have to if we really look, we do do that most of the time. Then there's three-dimensional and that's kind of like, oh, there's a real person out there and I can, you know, listen to her questions and respond to it, and that's three-dimensional. But the work that I do is learning how to uh be four-dimensional in my communication, which I mentioned early, feeling myself, feeling you, feeling me in the space between us. Four-dimensional means I'm in my communication, which I mentioned early. Feeling myself, feeling you, feeling me in the space between us. Four-dimensional means I'm in my body and I can feel you. So emotions connect with emotions, body sensations connect with sensations and mental connects with mental, but the real work of trauma is to be dropped into the body and that's a practice. And so I have a particular practice I do with my therapy clients as well as with, um, my groups, that I do, and um it's.
Speaker 2:It's a trauma integration process. Now it takes many different forms. You know I've been doing this a while, so it takes many different forms. You know I've been doing this a while, so it takes many different forms. But the first thing is presencing and again, it's a verb.
Speaker 2:I'm very big on verbs because verbs are emergent and most of our conversations are non-emergent. What do I mean by that? I mean that I speak to you from a story, like I have a story, but I'm not my story, but for many years, because I'm kind of a trauma poster child. You know I didn't write this out of what I learned in books. I learned this having gone through, as you know, reading the book, a lot of trauma, so, um, so to get into this this kind of three-dimensional place where I can feel you and I can feel that you're feeling me, that's, that's four-dimensional, that's a whole different way of relating, it's an evolutionary way and it and it's emergent. It's not my story is over here and I'm talking about my life like it's my story. It's emergent, it's not.
Speaker 2:My story is over here and I'm talking about my life like it's my story. It's emergent, it's what's coming through me, so I allow myself to really move through me. I have the capacity to speak, like when I do talks and now book. I'm doing all these book things for my book. I never use notes because I want to be with people rather than looking at a sheet, but there's nothing more boring than being talked to death, you know, with somebody reading their notes. You know I was with somebody yesterday that just read everything and it's like hello, I'm over here actually, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the model that I use and it sounds simple but it's not, it's the first step is presencing. Presencing means that I stop, I soften, I slow down, I listen to what's happening in my inner body, my inner space, and space is so important, so mostly we're kind of tight. Inner space is like the paper that the words in the book are written on. It's what allows me to create, to manifest. If I'm all cramped and tight, I have no space to connect with myself, let alone you. So presencing is about grounding. It's about, you know, coming into my inner body and feeling the sensations and the emotions Some of us aren't even able to feel. When I was very young you might have read this in the book I went to get Rolf. That was in my 20s. This in the book. I went to get Rolf. That was in my 20s and after a couple sessions my Rolfer said Michael, you're the first person I worked on that doesn't realize he has a body. And that was a shocking thing, you know. After that I met Gabrielle Roth and became a five rhythms teacher for you know, the last 40, some years or 50 years. But at that time I was moving because I didn't want to feel the things that I had suppressed in my early childhood. Just it was too much so. Then when you're, when you're, traumatized, like I was, I move fast, I adapt, I, you know, I I dance away from whatever it is that wants to come up. So presencing is what's really important.
Speaker 2:The first step is to get a conscious awareness of what's happening in my body, what emotions are here. And if the listeners are here right now, ask yourself you know what's happening in your body, you know what's happening with your liver right now, or your lungs or your heart. You know mostly we we have trouble touching into that. Or ask yourself what emotion is present for me right now? There's no good or bad emotions. I do a whole thing on emotions in my workshops. There's no good or bad emotions, but you know each one is a. So what am I feeling right now? Can I feel joy? Can I feel fear, physically in my body? And you know, the majority of us have numbed ourselves and we don't really feel that unless it's something that just blows up. And then you know that's usually. Usually what we blow up and get angry or upset about is not what we're upset about. It's something from the past, in what I call after time. It's something that, because here's what trauma you want a simple explanation yes, please.
Speaker 2:Okay, trauma is unintegrated past period. That's why I call it after time, because you know, you have a, you have an argument with your, with your boss or your partner or something, and it's like how could he say that? I can't believe that. He said that to me. I just you know and you wake up the next morning. I can't believe that. And 10 years later you're still having the same conversation and it's causing you illness, it's causing dis-ease, disharmony in your body, because trauma creates stress.
Speaker 2:60 to 90% of all illness is about stress and it it is, you know, a product of unintegrated past. So the first step, presencing I get here, I'm feeling that, ok, I deepen it and I raise the resolution of my awareness, of my awareness. So I call that witnessing. That's another level, when I can become able to actually witness. You know what's happening in my spleen right now. You know, in that area, when I can get to that level of witnessing which is very possible, it just takes practice then that deepens it and I begin to then tap into these traumas. I don't know if you know the poem by Rumi the Guest House. Have you ever read?
Speaker 1:that poem. Yes, yes, Okay.
Speaker 2:So all those sorrows and difficulties and all those things invite them in. You know, even if they're going to tear your house apart which it feels like when you're working with trauma. Sometimes it feels like you know, my house is going to be torn apart, but no, you're making room, you're creating space. Again, this thing about space is really important. So I'm witnessing that and I'm not trying to get somewhere other than where I am. That's the third step, because we always want to get past the difficulty, past the upset, past the trigger, right, but no, that's what you need to be with. You need to allow yourself to just be with that. Then the last step is embracing.
Speaker 2:I say I love my little anger, I love my shame, and it's a teacher, and I know that it's a teacher and I welcome it's a teacher and I welcome it in, and without force or without trying to get rid of anything, it automatically integrates it. What is integrate presence is integrated past. So I deepen my presence and create more space, the more I can be with what's ever arising. Unintegrated past is destiny. I will live it again and again and again, so like in a relationship.
Speaker 2:You know, I laugh sometimes because I do work with couples and I laugh sometimes because I have to tell people that you married your unfinished business, this is your work, what? But it's true, the body knows how to heal. It finds exactly what needs to heal, so I fall madly in love. What is falling madly in love with heal? So I I fall madly in love. What is falling madly in love with? You know? First we think it's you know, um, sex and attraction and he or she looks good and all that, or I like the way they think. But. But you know really what will? What comes up in the? In a good relationship, one of us needs to stay present so the other can feel their trigger so that's a really important thing.
Speaker 2:If I'm really triggered and I'm blaming you and I'm yelling at you and it's the 10th time I'm doing that you know it's a trigger from the past. It has nothing to do with what's happening right now. It looks like he's the one that's making you make me so mad. You know he's just triggering the anger in you that you haven't yet expressed and dealt with. That's all.
Speaker 1:So then if you stay present, if they're being triggered, then you're kind of not taking it so personal. You kind of allow them to like process it, rather than kind of thinking, oh, you're blaming me, it's more like I'm being present, they're really acting a trigger and I guess when you're in a relationship it's the ultimate learning ground in many ways, isn't it? Because it is attachment styles and that unmet childhood things we can work through together.
Speaker 2:You can't get present. It's presencing, presencing. Presence is a noun, saying presence is a noun, presencing is a capacity. So doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will get triggered, you know, you ever like. I drove to Tahoe recently, which is about an hour and a half drive from where I live, lake Tahoe and and I been in the car an hour and all of a sudden I was in trucking and I went. What happened? I don't remember anything that happened in that time. I was completely in my head driving along but I was not presencing. I was not so, you know, could say present, but but it's really for healing purposes. I bringing my back, self back.
Speaker 2:I noticed when I go away, you I'm bringing myself back. I notice when I go away. You know, I'm sure you notice. You know I was on the radio for 17 years and I began to notice somebody be talking things and I'd be thinking of something and I have to bring myself back. That's presencing is bringing myself back. You're for sure gonna go away. You know we live in such a fast-paced world that You're, you're going to go away. So presencing, witnessing and embracing is the model and that's what creates integration. It doesn't take force or Coercion, it's not hard. It's. It's challenging to stay present as a presencing witness, but in that witnessing state, that's the deeper presencing.
Speaker 1:Presencing. I like that Presencing.
Speaker 2:As opposed to distancing or absencing, which is also a verb I do a lot of. I teach a class called relational intimacy, which is not. It's more about intimacy with yourself than other people, but it connects with other people and, and again, we say my relationship. Now, if I say my relationship, how do I know it's my relationship?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't oh no, you do.
Speaker 2:But you can only know my relationship with my mother, with my partner, with my whatever. You can only know it by what you know in the past. It means you're not present. So there's a big difference between relating and my relationship. Relating is something you know. Let's say I'm in a relationship and we've been together for 10 years and we love each other and we wake up in the morning and I look over and I say, oh, good morning, honey. Would you brush your teeth? You know, please, it's like it's like it's. It gets kind of boring waking up with the same person. But what if I was laying next to you and and I woke up and I said, whoa, who is this person that's next to me? What amazing things are we going to discover about each other today? I don't know you, but I'm going to spend the rest of my life getting to know you. How can I get a relationship with that be? I?
Speaker 1:don't know of a spectacular one spectacular yeah, absolutely yeah, it's got. So it's a bit about um presencing, trying to see as much as possible things through fresh eyes, but also being in the moment and just letting things unfold by relating and understanding and not and understanding other people and slowing down. So if I'm a listener and I want to know all about, about your courses and your books and how I can reach out to you, what is, what's the-h-tcom? Uh, you can also write me, but it's I'm kind of overwhelmed.
Speaker 2:I usually have about 300 backed up emails in my personal mail at any time, so the best thing is, uh, you can go to my site, send me an email if you're interested in being in a course, sign up for my newsletter, the Well of Light. It's a monthly newsletter that's been going on for years, and you can also, if you're interested in actually doing some work together, there's a place on my site where you can set up a 15-minute call. It might take a while to get to me, but sometimes not right now, with the new book out. It's a little bit crazy with doing all these podcasts, but you know I love it. You know, as someone who was on the radio for 17 years, I kind of missed that, but I just don't have time to do that anymore. But I'm really committed to supporting people and being a mirror for them to see their amazing inner intelligence and capacity, which is so much greater than any of us realize we have. And so you know contact me that way.
Speaker 2:So just to give some background, both my parents were at Pearl Harbor. My father was a fighter pilot. My mother was the secretary to the person in command of the fleet of the whatever, the Pacific fleet. So they were both very much there. So they were both very much there when the bombing came. They were right in the middle of it. So my father was pretty much absent most of his life, absent with me certainly, which was of course a big thing. Trying to get his attention, which I did in many ways, as you know in the book, trying to get his attention, which I did in many ways, as you know in the book, uh, try to get his attention.
Speaker 2:But then also, my mother uh, became mentally ill. She, she actually graduated from stanford one of the you know she in in 1940. So pretty amazing to have a woman with a Stanford degree in 1940. And she was very heavily hit with all the death and destruction and was became mentally ill, tried to kill me for the first two years of my life and then I found her hanging when I was two and a half. So that's, you know, of course, a very, you know uh, baseline trauma, uh.
Speaker 2:But I had many other traumas, many friends uh killed and dying, um, uh and uh, my dog, uh, that was my savior as a child, had seven, one of my either my stepmother or father, tied him up. I came home and found him hanging on the fence, so my second hanging and then, you know, one of the big ones was in 1981. My wife was raped and murdered in Carmel, california, and they knew it was, but they had a hung jury, and so for many years 40, 40 years I was 42 years really I was under suspicion, not by the police, but by other people, and there was gossip and stories started. I live in a small town, and that was really challenging for me and had a huge impact on me and led me, though, to doing this work, deepening this work, and then, two years ago, they got some money for DNA evidence, and the evidence Proved that this person had done it, and he's now doing life without parole.
Speaker 2:So there's a few highlights of my life to give you a sense of that. I've always had this feeling of needing to be of service, so I've been of service to the community in spite of all these things, and it's what, like I said, my book is the medicine that I want to offer the world, and what you said in the very beginning I've heard from everybody that talks about the book is I thought that was about you, but when I read it, I realized it was as much about me as it was about you, and it's really about the process and the journey of healing fully recommend it.
Speaker 1:And and what good medicine to to give to the world and I'm very grateful that you you put together let me just grab a book here yeah, yeah, show me the book that would be lovely uh, because, uh, it's here we go uh it's called traumatized a love story, right, but the subtitle is really important.
Speaker 2:Now that's me and my dog and up in the air you see my father flying off here um, but the subtitle healing the wounds that separate, alienate, alienate and Marginalize Us. That was also the subtitle of my radio show for many years, conversations with the World's Known, so I invited all you know I was very committed to climate change issues, social justice issues and personal you know, personal issues, and so I had psychiatrists and scientists and all kinds of amazing people still connected with many of those people and I love doing that. But that's really kind of a mission I would like to give away to more people healing the wounds that separate, alienate and marginalize us.
Speaker 2:And how do you do that? By doing your own shadow work, your own inner work. So if you're interested in in doing that kind of work with me, please I often have openings and and and I am going to be starting another online group, uh, probably in the fall so people can join me online and if they're in california, they can, or anywhere they can fly here and do something. I haven't. I I would love to come back to london. I haven't done anything there for a long time. So, uh, maybe somebody will call me from your area and say I'll sponsor you to come and and do a program here.
Speaker 1:I'd love that. I'll tell my friends as well and see if anyone can help arrange that. Um, is there any final thoughts that you would like to share, because you know that there might be some that you're really dying to share with the listeners?
Speaker 2:yeah, I guess you know. The main thing is that what I said a little bit earlier you have no idea of the power and the capacity you have. And right now, in the face of so much change, you know we have every major issue, from racism, enslavement, climate change, war. You know there's like 35 different wars going on right now. We think of the big ones that are happening, the big three or four, but there, you know, there's all of this happening and at the heart of it is trauma. The heart of it is trauma.
Speaker 2:And I remember back in I'm not sure what year it was, but the riots in Watts, california, in Southern Los Angeles, and there was a guy named Rodney King who had been beaten up by the police. You might remember that and I always remember his question and I've lived with that question ever since. I heard you said it and everybody made fun of what he said, said oh, that's so naive, this is how we've normalized trauma. And what he said is why can't we just get along Now? Is that a question to live us or what? To me, that's the question. It's a walking question to me why can't we just get along? And the answer to that is we have a lot of unfinished past that we need to heal and integrate. So that's what I would say Very wise, I did say that, yes, you did Amazing wise words and I'm going to continue enjoying your book and I will.
Speaker 2:Why I'm appearing on podcasts and things? Because I really want people to to have this and to join together in being a social witness in a way, so that we, the more we do our inner work, the more capacity we have to hold life and that's what I'm trying to get out there to people is by our own, do our own healing. Every time we heal a part of us, it heals the collective and it heals our ancestral stream, which is a whole other thing we should do another show about, maybe definitely definitely I'm really into that because I'm doing shamanic training at the moment and the stuff like the ancestral stuff it's.
Speaker 1:so I don't know, I can feel it changing the family and the dynamics, but, like you said, that's another show.
Speaker 2:Well, that's part of, just to tell you, that's part of my roots. You know, I'm still on the on the shift network and I started out as a shamanic practitioner and I was the host of the shamanic wisdom summit for about eight years for the shift network. So I've I'm very, uh, familiar with that work and it's integrated into my own work uh, you've done so.
Speaker 1:So many amazing things, michael, and, and and what. What an amazing and honest story. So, dear listeners, the wonderful michael stone, who's got a very early to join us from california and, as always, do stay tuned as meditation inspired by today's show, but the one and only michael stone. Thank you, michael, thank you, thank you. Top tips for the meditation is either sit nice and cross-legged on the floor with a nice straight back always nice to sit on a block or a cushion or that's not available for you you sit in a chair with the back nice and straight. The important thing is you're not slouching and if you're doing something that requires you concentration, all you need to do is just pause this and you can reconvene the meditation at a time that is good for you. If you're doing the meditation, let's begin. This meditation was recorded live outside, so there may be some background noise, but I feel it adds to the depth of this meditation.
Speaker 1:So which path should you go and how to know as you embark through life? As you sit there with your eyes closed and start to breathe slowly through your nose, can you surrender to the moment? Whatever distractions come your way, can you always remember to have gratitude for this day. Can you be kinder to yourself, send more love, have more faith in the forces above. Find joy in what you do. Don't dwell in the past. Find joy in what you do. Don't dwell in the past. Let it go.
Speaker 1:Instead, allow life to flow. Allow yourself to be seen. Care less for what others think of you and sing your own song, whatever that is. No one knows that better deep down than you. There may be external distractions, noises, smells, things to look at, things to think at, things to touch. I invite you to find the time to switch off from all of these once a day. Allow life to unfold in its own magical way the smell of the summer, the comfort of the joy of spring, the beauty of letting go during fall autumn, the scent of the ground after a summer's rain, the comfort of drying yourself under the side of a warm fire in the winter. Whatever time of year, whatever the circumstances life is flow equally. We need to kind of ground that kite, take a deep breath and allow the joy of nature to be free. Allow life to unfold and allow yourself to truly see we are never truly alone. So come back into the moment, come back into the room, take some deep breaths and slowly go about your day night morning.
