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Since You Put It That Way
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Since You Put It That Way
Managing Your Emotions and Intuitive Field with Lynn Swearingen
In this episode, Dr. Louder speaks with Lynn Swearingen, a teacher at the Psychic Horizons Center in Boulder, CO, and a massage therapist and practitioner of acupressure with twenty-nine years of experience in holistic medicine. They discuss, through the lens of indigenous practices and other holistic theories, emotional and mental wellness and the power of connection with one's own self and others to promote healing from trauma, grief, and anxiety.
Intro for "Since you put it that way" podcast.
Outro for "Since you put it that way" podcast
Well, good day to everyone, and thank you for joining us on our next episodes of our podcast called Since You Put It That Way. And you know, what we're driving for is looking at topics, ideas, maybe from a new perspective that would cause us to pause and say,"well, since you put it that way." So I'm excited today we've got a great guest, good friend of mine and colleague, Lynn Swearingen. And Lynn lives in Boulder, Colorado. And Lynn and I have known each other for a number of years and were colleagues there and I had a medical practice in downtown Boulder and, and where she worked was just down the road from that. And Lynn currently works in both administration and teaching at the Psychic Horizons Center. And the Psychic Horizons Center is located in Boulder, Colorado, and it's been a fixture there for many, many years. And that's also affiliated with the Church of Inner Light, which is also there in Boulder, Colorado. So Lynn, welcome today to our podcast.
Lynn Swearingen:Thank you very much, good to be here.
Mary Louder:Good. So we start today, we're going to have a topic that we're going to discuss about a course that you've provided for us. The course is about understanding your intuitive field, and understanding your personal space, and what that means on multiple levels. So before we get into that, I'd like to hear from you what your story is, where you came from, how you got to where you are, what you studied in college, all the things that make up your interesting and exciting experience being a human here as our doggos would say, a human here on planet Earth.
Unknown:Thank you, excellent. I have been studying healing and spirituality since high school. And also studied history and anthropology and then kind of angle--angled me right back into the healing world when I took a course in acupressure massage therapy, so I learned Chinese medical theory and five element theory and acupressure while I was creating a special major called, quote unquote, "holistic health practices," because I was interested in non-western modalities of healing, didn't want to be a doctor, didn't want to memorize everything, but I was still interested in what and how people heal and use their spirituality. So it goes hand in hand. Most cultures' spiritual traditions, also include healing. That's, they're not separate. And so I have been a massage therapist for twenty-nine years and then I joined the Psychic Horizon Center to learn more about managing my own energy and exploring more of the intuitive side. So I've been with us since 2004.
Mary Louder:So that's just shy of 20 years.
Lynn Swearingen:Yeah.
Mary Louder:Wow. Wow. So you mentioned spirituality, interestingly, kind of a Western bent for medicine and spirituality is, they don't often collide. They would be like the science of the doctor, and the science of medicine. And then there's a patient who may have beliefs, but I see things like where a patient may say, if they're in a tough situation,"well, I'm trusting God." And so that's a very western thing. How do we look at that maybe from a maybe more global perspective, or an integrative perspective, which actually means a wholeness perspective?
Lynn Swearingen:I would say that the term worldview, like how you view your environment, is what I I think I like most about looking at, like tribal cultures. So I was and have been still interested in indigenous cultures around the planet and usually smaller tribal groups and some of those groups are much larger now and, but they look at their community and their world and their interaction with nature in a different way than our huge wealth, Western, you know, economic political system. And it's much more of a ground--in a way, grounded in the belief system is that is family. So that's one way to look at it, your nuclear family or your immediate group in your tribe. And, and how you interact with each other and with nature to be able to survive. So this is kind of gets back to a maybe like, prehistoric way of looking at humans and the way we developed is that, in the beginning, humans relied on each other a lot more to survive. And then we started relying on stuff, and weapons, and agriculture, and things that were systems of creating food, or shelter, or trade, it's like, kind of go off on the rails when I think about this, the the, the web that we have woven, to be able to create a life for ourselves. And so happiness and health and survival sometimes get taken apart. And it's like, for all just surviving, just to live through the day that it gets kind of separated from happiness. And what wholeness and health means, and there's no reason they can't all be together.
Mary Louder:I think that's really interesting about relying on tools and weapons, thinking of the wheel, fire, you know, a knife, things that we develop to make our lives--I don't know if better is the right word, but to make us be able to take advantage more of the environment around us--but at our core, We're hard wired for love and connection.
Lynn Swearingen:So it's so interesting, because I think the tools help us create connection with our environment. So they're very useful there. It's our art, artistic, it's creative, it creates things that then help people live more comfortably, like can you imagine before beds? So I, you know, I love my bed.
Mary Louder:Yes, yes, I do to, mine too.
Lynn Swearingen:We like to be comfortable in our beds. Someone had to invent it and create it and like all the, the ramifications of trial and error and experimentation based on your physical comfort. And yeah, the the tool aspect is so interesting. Because I don't think that there's any other way in our world to progress without creating an--without our creative sense, as well. So that's something endemic to who we are as humans on the planet. We're constantly creating, and innovative, and--does that answer your question?
Mary Louder:Yeah, it does. No, that's a very interesting point. Because I think of too, you know, we think of the fight-or-flight response. It's actually fight, flight, freeze, and now there's another component called fawn. So that's the autonomic nervous system getting triggered for survival. Anxiety as an emotion, or even as an experience, is looking for more information for us to make a decision about what's going on. And we're always seeking safety. All those things are super primitive, and come from super primitive parts of our brain, the midbrain and the lower part of the brain, but primarily the midbrain. So now that we've got tools, and we've industrialized, and we've agriculturalized and we've civilized, that basic need of love and connection is there, using our creativity and our tools for a better life. I wonder if that's how we just get beset from being connected to one another, using our tools and and the things we've created, filling that same gap, then, for the love and belonging?
Lynn Swearingen:It's distractions.
Mary Louder:Yes, I love my truck. I don't have a truck my husband does. I bought it for him, but I love my truck, or I love my you know, whatever it could be. You know, and yet maybe relationships could be challenged, communication is challenged. We feel isolated. We get traumatized because you know to face it, it's a difficult--life is not easy nor for the faint-of-heart. And so things always happen. Yeah.
Lynn Swearingen:And we identify with the stuff.
Mary Louder:We do.
Lynn Swearingen:Or identify with the things and with what the things can do, rather than what's going on inside of us. Or rather than even the connection with friends and family. Sometimes that gets supplanted by our distraction by our job by busy. Whatever the laundry list of excuses that keeps us separate, not only from each other, but from our own heart or intuition.
Mary Louder:Right. Yeah, I have my patients and clients do a particular exercise. It's a guided image imagery, but I have them visualize their ideal day. And I have them use all their senses. What's it look like, sound like, taste like, smell like, feel like, so they get kind of this concept. No one's ever like so excited that they're jumping off a mountain or building a bridge, they're all things like I'm walking through the woods, I'm meeting with my loved one, I'm having this beautiful meal that tastes like or smells like, and then I do some work. And so interestingly, those are the very same things, when we create our ideal day that you're talking about. Nature, connection to one another, and really living, I would say, kind of simplistically with that connection through that, which is, was there before all the tools and the industrialization and civilization wasn't it.
Lynn Swearingen:And what's interesting, though, is that you can also get to live that simplistic, and then simplistic doesn't mean diminished by any means. It's, like a basic level of goodness, I guess. You can live that way with the tools with the iPhone, with the computer with the truck. With each other, with the knives and, and, you know, really see the value, it's almost like reconnecting with what the value is of what the tools are, and how we use them and what we can create with them without it diminishing our own sense of self.
Mary Louder:Yeah. And we, I think about too, you know, healing, because that's one of the things we're going to talk
about:our intuitive field, medicine. And, and, you know, there's a lot of things that we use in modern medicine came right out of the earth. You know, I meet many patients who have been challenged and diagnosed with cancer, I refuse chemo, it's poison, they're going to put--well, all things at certain levels are poison. Oxygen, if you have too much oxygen, it knocks out your ability to breathe, because it hits certain sensors in your, you know, the core of your brain that tells you to quit breathing, because the oxygen/carbon dioxide level is flipped, cancer and treatment for there comes out of the ground, a lot of the elements is platinum, and other things are used. And then we have refined those. So I always think that there is--there are tools around for us to engage with, no matter what we're faced with, with our health, no matter what we're faced with with a diagnosis, and that the key that I use with folks, really brings them back to their ideal day when I'm taking them through deep healing around a chronic illness. And that comes back to the connection to themselves, connection with others, and understanding the environment and connecting with nature.
Lynn Swearingen:Y-E-W, fairly recent studies of the properties of the yew tree have been used in AIDS drugs. It's in cancer, I believe. And so, you know, just remembering that every aspect of pretty much every aspect of medicine has come from a plant originally. Just straight out of the ground. Weeds in the yard and eons of experimentation and usage to find what does what what helps what in the system, that when we are then become this kind of pill-popping society maybe not as much but not in my circle goals because I'm much more focused on the alternative aspects and alternative supplements that even if you are taking a aspirin, we kind of forget. So that's this is kind of where the spirit to me has been disconnected, we've forgotten that that little aspirin actually originally came from an aspen tree, aspen and birch and other trees that have that same analgesic properties to it that science has identified, which is, yay science. But it separates the energy in a way. It separates the, our awareness that yes, this tree and this planet, that is where the healing property originated. And it gets so refined into the little molecules that they put together and then create this little pill. That then yes, works. But then like you were saying, it can also be a poison, too much of that, too much or in the wrong situations. And that I just love. I love it. But it's so interesting to watch where we've been so disconnected from nature in that way, like forgetting that. No, it's like a, what's that called? Mass. What's the word for forgetting? Oh, great.
Mary Louder:I forgot the word for forgetting.
Lynn Swearingen:Thesaurus! Amnesia.
Mary Louder:Oh, amnesia, okay--okay, that can be done, yes. That's true.
Lynn Swearingen:Amnesia--what, where things come from, what they're for, how to use them for the betterment of our being? And not necessarily for the betterment of the drug companies.
Mary Louder:Right. So we've reduced a lot of things, haven't we? There's been a reductionistic approach to medicine, whether, you know, you look at-- let me, it's one of the things we learned in osteopathic school is how the patient functions in their entire environment. And that's what drove me to want to be an osteopath, because I was going to be able to learn things holistically from that perspective. But you've got--you can't take them out of their environment. And yes, you get a pneumonia. Yes, it could be community acquired, where you get respiratory droplets, and things like that. But then there is also this concept of are you run-down? Have you been stressed? Are you sleeping well? Are you, you know, what's happening in your personal communication world that may disrupt that and then have impact upon our body, our immune system, and our ability to fight things off? Yeah.
Lynn Swearingen:Which is interesting, the going into a doctor's office, into the cube of the room, and it's cold, and you sit on paper, and it's impersonal and sterile? To then be asked questions about your life. And then you have to create your story to the doctor about your life. And whether they're listening to you or not, there's a lot that gets missed.
Mary Louder:There is.
Lynn Swearingen:So, yeah, it's very interesting. To not have the bigger perspective, which is why I like my clients come to my home, most of them, to, here's the massage table, I work on them here. I, you know, they come into my world, and then I just give them all kinds of space to tell me everything that's going on with them. Including "Are you sleeping? What's your stress level?" You take all of those questions that come up in the course of what I do with people. And I just love that. Because none of it's wrong. None of it is wrong. It's just where we are. And that's where I like to start. Like, I'm not into--I'm not going to delve into you know, the long checklist of questions, it's like, they're just going to show me what they want to show me in the moment and more gentle.
Mary Louder:Present to you what could have healing at the time. I was thinking today as I was driving home from a meeting of how layered and textured healing is, and thinking about something that occurred way back when, when I was a kiddo. And now it feels like during this season, that it's a time to really have a healing about that. And it wasn't something that totally knocked me off my rocker or, you know, displaced me, it was just something, a pattern that kept occurring that as I look back as an--as an adult, that probably wasn't a very favorable pattern. But it was in my family, it was in my family of origin. Nobody's fault, it just was. And I thought how grateful I was that I could reach back, identify with that, identify the emotions, and then even while driving, apply healing to that. And just let those hurtful feelings, because that's what it was, and things that disrupted my connection with my parents, and with my loved ones, could have that healed. I mean, I think that's really how simple healing can be. And again, we're using the word simple a lot here. But to think to how that gets distilled down to simplicity, you know, so many things go into that. It's not reduced, but it's distilled, which is different. To make something simple, or to become simple, that's something that's really layered and complex.
Lynn Swearingen:With things like childhood trauma, or PTSD, or all the layers of everything that we live through in the world we're in. Which is has all these amazingly, bigger facets in the last few years. And, by no means unusual to the course of human existence at all. And that's kind of where my mind goes, which was one of the things that had created for me, major anxiety in my life. Because, say things like, I remember watching the news about the Vietnam War in color, and it was traumatizing. Pretty much that's like my baseline, and, you know, to me, nothing's changed on the planet. Being a history buff doesn't, you know, it totally reinforces that. But, so that's why I like, I love these tools that I teach, is that it helps me get back to something that's easy to do. It's easy to do, and I don't have to discount my whole life experience. It's just in-addition-to.
Mary Louder:Right. I think it's, we don't discount our whole life experience, because it's brought us this far. So that reminds me of how resilient the body is. It reminds me that somehow, God, the universe, love, is not yet done with us, or we're not done with it. And we have other things to yet explore in our life. And so there's reason and purpose, and, you know, reason and purpose for every day, and reason and purpose for transformation. And that's really what I think being connected to ourselves brings each day. And, you know, it's to me, that's one of the most exciting things about being a human is being able to transform and learn and grow and, and be curious and have that fulfilled, and that's one of the things I like the most about being a human, I think.
Lynn Swearingen:It's like emotional maturity.
Mary Louder:Yeah, I not sure, I don't know that I've got that but- [laughter]
Lynn Swearingen:The M word. I realized that that's what I have I just thinking, now that I'm sixty, I know enough. I don't been feeling. But it's, it's--it's a funny thing for me to say about myself because, yeah. Most words know. I give up. I've been seen in here somewhere, all the time right. But it's a--it's a, like a plateau, like a leveling of my emotional being that to me is so exciting. Because I've gotten to this place of, I'm so excited there's so much to do, right? There's so much yet to do and not "Oh my God, there's so much to do," like you've been presented with the, you know, four foot stack of papers you need to deal with and yeah, that is all just always going to be there. But it's more of a--yeah, like tapping into that enthusiasm about what else there can be for me to experience and how to be open to those connections that we're talking about. Open to a clearer connection with my friends and family or the medical establishment or whatever. One of the things I tell people when they're either, you know, venting about something uncomfortable about what they have to do, or where they're going, or who they're dealing with is I just say, "hey, you know, you can go ahead and vent about that, but also, and, yes, and like in comedy, you can also put into your imagination, that there's someone that's going to give you a big smile." And it's just gonna kind of light that hope again, right? Someone out there is looking for you, you're looking for whatever it is you're looking for. And they're looking for you, too. And so why limit our perspective of the world by doubting that--anything?
Mary Louder:Right, I think that's a good point, I think just be open, open-hearted, and just really expect good things to happen. I do feel that the universe is--is bent towards us. It is keen on meeting our needs and giving us a beautiful, loving, and fulfilled life, even in the midst of some of the things that occur that are more challenging and difficult. And that's not to gloss over things, it's just at the end of the day, I think there's more good than not. And somebody said, "Well, if you believe that, you know, what about all the bad stuff?" And I said, "Well, I can still believe that the bad stuff will occur. But to stay in that mindset to expect the good things. That's what you're going to see then." It's like, okay, I think I want to buy a red sports car, so everywhere you look, somebody's driving a red sports car, right?
Lynn Swearingen:So I just in this book I'm reading the line just came up. Don't--do not be afraid of the universe, don't let the universe make you afraid. It was kind of that same thing of you're just going to let--don't let everything be a fear. Don't respond to everything in fear just because it's different. Or you don't know what's going to happen. And it is, it's that the universe, the world we live in, which it can be--some people might call it spirit, or the overarching energy of the whole planet isn't all bad? Don't be afraid of it.
Mary Louder:Yeah, I agree. To believe that way, without a set of rules and regulations, how to behave, that--you know it certainly, there's more uncertainty. You don't have rapid fast answers to life's questions and you live with more And that universe, you know, the perspective of putting the words mystery. And having tasted both sides of that equation, I choose the mystery. I choose to have the great love and benevolence of the universe support and lead me every day. And the more I do that, the more I open my heart, the more, literally, magic occurs, just, you know, and a miracle I see defined as a change in perception from fear to love. So anytime there's less fear in my life, and there's more love, there's miracles happening. And, you know, I love that as--and when I started in medicine, I could always kind of see that, and I could always see just working, you know, independently, individually with folks. And that was always kind of the force that was around me with that. And now 30 years later, after being in every type of clinic and, you know, encounter known to man through medicine, that's what I'm doing now. And that's really my happy place. to it, the universe, the world. We are a piece of it. So that's all within you. And I think that's where some people if they have some different religious views are always going to see that outside of themselves. Which is what our history in this Judeo-Christian society we live in has reinforced that it is outside of you. And also, and, yes-and, there's a huge part of the world that believes that it is within each of us. And that's what we're creating it. We're creating the miracle every day. As we're creating. Yes. Yep. I think that's great. Now in your, the studies that you did, because what university did you go to?
Lynn Swearingen:San Francisco State University.
Mary Louder:Right. So you're out there kind of in that really fun time during, you know, in California.
Lynn Swearingen:And, you know, the interesting thing is, I couldn't afford to go to like Naropa, which I always wanted to go to in Boulder, or the other couple of other big schools in there that were interdisciplinary and dealt a lot more with exactly what I wanted to do. But I created my own path, at--at the state college level, that included a bunch of different disciplines equally, which I loved, because I was able to kind of get almost more of a holistic perspective, because I was still studying history, anthropology, philosophy. We had a, like a biofeedback lab. And that's where I first learned about Chinese medical theory, Eastern and Western meditative traditions. And then anatomy lab and physiology like sciences. So I got to have my fingers in every aspect of that holism that I wanted to look at. Yeah. And energetically just watching where--and I didn't even know what I was doing at the time, but since like all the psychic horizon stuff--recognizing what was, I was resonating with and what I wasn't, and I just let my, I let it sort of naturally pull me where I wanted, where I felt more comfortable. So I was definitely more comfortable in the the philosophy, religion studies, religious studies and hands-on learning acupressure. Because I was, it was my body responding to the connection.
Mary Louder:Yeah, that's exactly what, it's exactly what it does. Because, you know, the body mirrors what's happening on, what's happening in the spiritual and emotional world, the mental, emotional world. And the body has the body heals. Boom, end of story. How is amazingly, you know, if I cut my finger, I don't have to say well I'm sorry, I can't come out on Tuesday night, because I'm watching my finger heal. Sorry, you know. But it goes about its business. And so maybe I put a bandaid on, certainly I might keep it clean, you know, that type of thing. There's some basics. And that's the same thing we can present to our nervous system, our emotional issues, our trauma issues, the nervous system just heals them because it knows how to do that. We know the pathways now. The vagus nerve, there's more pathways that go up to the brain than come down. We know the midbrain is where a lot of the action occurs in the repeat loops. And we have ways that if we present to the nervous system, and engage the energy centers, which are known as chakras, which are found embryologically in our development, and is well documented, you know, centuries and millennia ago through Chinese medicine that now matches up with what the Osteopath called Chapman's reflexes, the allopaths call trigger points. All that nomenclature is just different nomenclature is saying the same thing, different perspective saying the exact same thing. So the body heals. So when you were doing your studies, did you look at like the, the indigenous people and how that influenced the doctor patient relationship?
Lynn Swearingen:To kind of talk about that in terms of the emotional connection between people, when in the North American Native American traditions if you have you've done something wrong, or hit somebody or did something against the rules, or got really mad, instead of being ostracized and told that you were wrong, you would be surrounded by your peers and your family.
Mary Louder:You weren't pushed away, you were pulled closer.
Lynn Swearingen:You were pulled in, you, they held space for you to be able to work through it.
Mary Louder:Wow.
Lynn Swearingen:So there's no shame. You know, the--I'm sure there's some concept of that, but you weren't shamed for being angry. You weren't shamed or ostracized or told you were wrong and needing correction. Instead it was--and I, you know, was I'm saying that in terms of the body of work I studied doesn't have, you know--it's so, it was more about helping the person, the individual work through the energy and the emotions, in, back into wholeness and not discounting what had just happened. So the same with say, grief, you know, grief, is something that a lot of people can't handle. If I'm sad or grieving about something. A lot of people are like, oh, so sorry, pat, pat, pat, you know, here's the casserole, bye. Other people, and what I've learned to do, is like, grieving? Sure, great. Come on in, here's some Kleenex. Let's cry, let's do it. Own it, have it, right. And in Western medical traditions, it's like, oh, you have an emotional issue, you I'm going to send you to this person, or you need to talk to somebody, or you need to do something, is a term that I've heard a lot around a lot of different things. And it's really in the smaller, I don't even know a better word for that anymore, cultural traditions is like, you don't need to do anything, you are doing it. You're doing it, you're doing sadness, you're doing anger, you're doing grief. So let's do it. Just needs to be done. That's why it comes up in our system.
Mary Louder:We tend to pathologize those emotions. So if you grieve too long, and we've come up with an arbitrary length of time, somewhere between three and six months. Mind you, this is a you know, first degree relative that's died. If you're grieving longer in three, six months, it's called protracted grief, pathological grief. And, you know, boy, I'm going to, yeah, mm-hm, now I got lots to say about that. And you'll be and everyone, even myself will be going well, since you put it that way--because it's a complex emotion. And it's a complex series of emotions that include anguish, hopelessness, sadness, anger. And so it's very, very complex, this whole concept of grief, and it's not linear, nor did Elisabeth Kubler Ross ever intend for it to be linear. And so I think that that's just super important, the concept of bringing the person closer when they're struggling. You mentioned shame. Yeah, shame means I'm bad. Guilt says I did something bad, but I'm still good. So we have to be really careful about understanding what shame is, and if a person goes into a shame spiral. And really understand and help them come to the point of well, you know, seemed like a good idea at the time, but that probably, it turns out that it wasn't, something didn't go right. But here you are, stay with us. And all of trauma pushes a person away. Not only from one another, but from themselves because it causes a person to--to dissociate from themselves because it's too painful. And then that gets compounded because you do something in another person who's in that same arena pushes you away because of their perspectives and fears and things that they bring to the table. And parenting, I'm not a parent, I have a dog, who's very well behaved. I bring her close when I want her to do something different. When I want her to--and that's something I learned. I didn't do that right away. And I learned that, and oh my goodness, to see the difference in her. She actually, you know, just a little dog story, goes to dog camp a couple of times a week--they use her to help dogs who are traumatized. Tell me she didn't learn that as a modeled behavior. You know, because dogs pick up on all of that body language, that's what they're just champions at. So it's just kind of amazing to see that type of connection. But to think of that, from indigenously, how we've lost that in medicine, I mean, I'm envious of the things you got to study while you were looking at those different healing components. You know, versus just only science in the reductionistic thought, and and you know, pharmacologics and stuff like that. So, it would do us well to kind of come back to bringing the person who's struggling closer. And, you know, that's another thing to in--when patients get well,"Okay. See you next year. Bye. Thanks for coming in, you're doing--", you get punished for doing well.
Lynn Swearingen:Yeah, or you get, "You don't need to see anybody." You've got a clean bill of health, and then you're gone. And then. I find it very interesting. I've a lot to say about the mental health crisis, so called, that keeps coming up in, you know, Facebook, in the news and whatever, that there's not enough money, there aren't enough practitioners. We're, everybody's got to be a volunteer for the suicide hotline, I could think that the structures in place are awesome. But they're, they, we do the same thing. You know, we send people to a facility to deal with whatever their anxiety thing is with drugs or electrical treatments. And then deem them better and send them back on their way. And, and not that the--I know that there's a lot of mechanisms in place that are great, but we are begging for mental health help.
Mary Louder:We're begging for connection.
Lynn Swearingen:Yeah.
Mary Louder:That's what I think.
Lynn Swearingen:I like to say, You know what? Your so many mental health practitioners in your world right now. Anyone who can make you a cup of tea, any friends that you can call and say, you know, I feel like shit. My roommate came downstairs in tears the other day and just needed to talk and we did it. And just be able to reach out to each other, not necessarily with a huge psychotherapy session. But it is that connection. We get our mental health from connection. Yeah, I get my mental health at the grocery store by trying to go to that guy's lane, because I've known him for 30 years. We have a little chat when I'm buying my stuff. And that is like this big--it's a heart gift. And he remembers me, we don't remember each other's names all the time, but it doesn't matter. Made that little connection and made that part of ourselves shift. It's like a dynamic, energetic shift in our space. When we do that.
Mary Louder:Yeah, we're opening up and we're connecting. And we're I think we're connecting with the connections that--that is there where you just were unaware that the connection was there. Because we are, all are connected. So taking that into your course, because you've created for us, for not only our podcast listeners, but your crowd that works with you individually, and your tribe and people and then all the people that are going to come in through the website in the podcast, about how to maintain and unfold--before you maintain, first identify and understand your intuitive field. I mean, how do you define what your intuitive field is? What is it? You're talking about boundaries really, aren't you? You know,
Lynn Swearingen:I--sort of a way to talk about it simplistically, back to that word, is simply the energy that you feel in your body. Your body, your whole--we have five senses that are already sensitive. We're already registering information from our world: light, sound, smell, taste, feel. Heart sense, felt sense. You can feel your body when you've just run 10 miles feels different than when you're sitting in a hot tub or sleeping. Those are all awarenesses that I consider part of your intuitive field. And also the energy around us. We have a ionosphere, an atmosphere around us that some people call a aura field that is there science has recorded, it knows it's there. We know it because understanding where you begin, where others are. And then not our, our senses of our, in our hand, we can feel heat two feet away from the heat source. Right? That's pretty magical. Or only, because it's the collective, you've got your farther, depending on, you know, the heat source, right? So the intuitive feel, to me is also about managing it, recognizing the input and what it is and how to identify what's yours and what's not yours. Because we take on a lot of stuff, like you were saying there, your dog knows a lot. Your dog is so aware of--animals do this, a lot of animals--so much more aware of, of energy, because they have a kind of a different lens. So your intuitive feel, to me is like fine-tuning, focusing your lens, that how you perceive the world, as well as perceiving and understanding what is going on internally for you. boundaries, but other people have their boundaries, but then we're all one, but yet we're separate. We're individuals, we've individuated. So it's just understanding how to--feels like how to just function within that type of environment. And would you say that having an understanding your intuitive field would give you improved emotional and mental health? Improved emotional and mental health is, to me, working on it, you improve by being aware of it. If I'm sad, I don't need to necessarily then be happy. I want to, I want to know my sadness. You learn from it. But the more you can have that--it's a healthy river. It's a healthy flow of energy, even when you hit spots, you know, ripples in your emotional fields.
Mary Louder:Right. So what do you think, folks, when they do your course, what's the biggest takeaway, the number one goal takeaway they would have from your course?
Lynn Swearingen:Yeah, I think remembering the permission to come back to yourself. Again, fine tuning that perspective, not necessarily on to what the chaos is around you, but to be able to look at what you're presenting, being this in a way. So the tools, the first tool is grounding, it's how to just ground right into who you are. And just being and then have certainty over how you manage your being in this your space. And that just allows, it's like balance, like knowing your own balance and your own boundary, and then allows any that's kind of a magical thing. It allows anything to happen, meaning, you're ready to do whatever you need to do next. You're gonna run from the tiger, run from the tiger or go get in the hot tub, you know, either--either way, you're doing it from your own space of truth.
Mary Louder:Yes. Now, you were one of my teachers in the year long course, I took at Psychic Horizons. And I learned these tools that you're teaching us, and I can say it changed my life. I can say that, that, you know, even going from patient to patient throughout the day, dealing with their different concerns or different diagnoses, different problem-solving all day, I would just get exhausted. And what I learned was, as I And also, probably a lot of people in the healing fields learned to understand my own own intuition about things, my own boundaries, my own beingness as we call it, that a lot of that fatigue went away, because I could be there together with the patient, listening, caring, being empathetic, bringing ideas, solutions, diagnoses, treatments, but it still wasn't hung on me to get that all done. Because it just changed how I presented in that situation. And it took away what I would call, you know, compassion fatigue, or battle fatigue, or, you know, we call it physician or medical fatigue. It took away it took that away, and it took the burnout away as well, because I just managed who I was differently. have--are what we call out-of-control healers, meaning I need to get in there and fix you, I need to help you, I need to give you everything I am in order for you to get better, because that's my big heart. Yep, I've been there done that, I got the t shirt, in fact, I have a few T shirts about that. So yes, yes.
Lynn Swearingen:And it really doesn't diminish any of your healing ability by not giving all yourself away. So that's the other aspect of these tools is being able to have all of you, all of your energy.
Mary Louder:So this could make you a better mom. When I say better, I mean, you know, survivability, resiliency, a sense of self, a sense of wholeness, a sense of peace and contentment, which we're all, you know, we all get to have. It could make you a better teacher, it could make you a better person who works in retail, could make you a better manufacturer, a better you know, whatever it is that you're doing in today's world, and culture, really only could add to what you're doing and help you.
Lynn Swearingen:It goes back to that use of the primitive tools when we started making tools and knives. It is that--it is everything has a purpose and everything you do with your--in your life, with your energy, with your creativity, with your job. It--you're creating--you're creating your role, even as you also fill the role. Because, yeah.
Mary Louder:Got it.
Lynn Swearingen:And it's kind of that to me is really exciting. So I, to tell you a kitchen story, is that I am a sort of amateur foodie. And I have pots, and pans, and knives, and implements, and an oven, and ingredients and all this kind of stuff. And it's like, you know, a kid in a candy shop. It's like, oh, what do I do with all this? And if something didn't work right, in the beginning, we sort of talked about this before, it's like the first cake was really horrible. And instead of giving up, I just did it again. But then when I learned some of these energy tools, I got into my space. I grounded, I focused on how I was presenting my beingness in the kitchen with the cake ingredients and I was able to get to this amazingly calm space of following the recipe and breathing and feeling really good about it. And it was--the cake was fantastic.
Mary Louder:Excellent.
Lynn Swearingen:It was amazing. And so that's when people say they cook with love, well, I was actually feeling that happen. Yes. And so that that kind of perspective can go into every action we do in our lives, regardless of our job.
Mary Louder:It absolutely. And I did that today, because I was in a meeting this morning and the same sense was there, of connection, of discernment, of beingness. And then after that, I had to run an errand to the store. And I took that same energy right to the store and I engaged with every single worker there in that same manner, and it was absolutely one of the most delightful errand runs I've ever had.
Lynn Swearingen:And everything flows, everything flows more easily.
Mary Louder:You know, people carry things out to my car, they had great conversations, I was up and down the aisles and they kept wanting to give me ideas. I mean, it was just just a absolutely pleasant, wonderful day. You know? And it could have been, I've got a drive to get to this meeting. I have to hurry. I've got to find my way. It's all new. It's any of any of that. It was just wonderful.
Lynn Swearingen:That felt sense, I think, is one of the core joys in this course. And all these energy tools is allowing you to have the felt sense of your, of your own flow. So it's really a embodied, embodying yourself, embodying the tools, and then being able to access them without it being difficult. So that's the other thing is that when you get into that amazing flow, where everything's going, going your way, you're going your way, everything becomes easier.
Mary Louder:Yes. It feels almost like slightly magical in that space.
Lynn Swearingen:It does.
Mary Louder:And it's, it's just really, it's fun to be a human at that time, you know, despite whatever things you're dealing with. And then that gets you back to that ideal day. That gets you back to that sense of connection, using the tools that we then reach into those primitive emotions, connection, loving, and belonging. And that's living from, you know, your sense of presence and beingness. So, well, then I thank you for being our guest today on since you put it that way. I think we put it that way, and a few different topics today. And really had fun doing it, too. So I'm going to just put a commercial plug in for your courses, which they can access on our website, drmarylouder.com. And it is a free course, it's a master level course, though. This is something that's well put together with Lynn's, you know, 20 years of experience of teaching and learning these tools. So this is not, this is well defined. This is not something that, oh, I hope it works. It does work. So avail yourself to this tool. And if that work really seems to float your boat Lynne also works individually with folks for developing more tools and, and more sense of beingness and things like that. And she's doing that from her location there in Boulder. So, thank you for joining us here, Boulder to Michigan. I miss being in Colorado, and I miss being able to see you frequently, but I sure enjoy our connection today and our ongoing connection.
Lynn Swearingen:Thank you Mary, this has been fun.
Mary Louder:Yeah, thank you for being being with us today and sharing who you are and what you bring to the world. I really appreciate it greatly.
Lynn Swearingen:Thank you.
Mary Louder:All right. Well, everybody, have a great day. Thanks for joining us on Since You Put It That Way. See you next time.
