Ep. 31 - Finding Connection and Belonging by Building Self Trust with Elise Bish Investment of Self
Kathy Washburn: [00:00:00] Today we are talking to Elise Bisch about transgenerational conditioning and how it creates experiences of connection and disconnection, often a loyalty towards disconnection. We have so often been conditioned out of our own needs. This results in a denial, maybe even a cutting away of our own body's internal connection.
And when we disconnect from self in order to feed a sense of belonging, It is taxing to our immune system. In this one hour, you will learn how to build a conscious self care practice as a way to build back self trust and move beyond those old places we might have once abandoned ourselves in order to belong.
This episode is for you if you crave more joy, pleasure and care in your life, if you are wanting to build a new relationship to your body and you're seeking some gentle [00:01:00] connection, if you're always giving to others and rarely do things for yourself, or if you're feeling overwhelmed, under resourced, or uninspired.
May this podcast be the catalyst you need to become the version of you that is just bursting to step forward.
Kathy Washburn: I am super excited to introduce [00:02:00] my dear friend and a co pilot for my own transformation on so many levels. Elise Bish
Bish and
I invite her today. She is a conscious sexuality educator. I just love that.
I love that title. A systematic family constellations facilitator, a folk herbalist, and a desire coach with over a decade of experience in the field.
Elise believes that sex is sacred, pleasure is healing, and desire is our motivation to grow. And I have been on the receiving end of all of Elise's genius, and I continue to soak it up whenever I can come in contact with her. So here it is, Elise, we're here. Is there anything else that you want to add, share, what you're working on, who you're working with, what you're bringing into the world? What's [00:03:00] going on?
Elise Bish: Yeah.
Elise Bish: Well, thanks for that beautiful intro, Kathy. I'm really excited to be back with you and have another chat. Yeah, I think the things that I'm into right now I've spent a lot of the last few years also really diving into sound healing as a somatic practice.
First kind of for my own curiosity after experiencing some sound and energy medicine, but that's just been a real kind of pleasure place of exploration for myself and my own expansion of curiosity and studies. So I've been studying sound healing for the last three years and weaving that into my practice as a way to really kind of work with what's moving through the body and bring the nervous system back to a place of rest and restoration.
So that's one thing I've been weaving into my work recently, [00:04:00] and I'm also offering in Providence, a lot of sound baths and live sound and herbal experiences or breathwork and sound experiences. And it's been just a really joyful way to get out into my community, to meet people, to offer this kind of soft space to land and surrender and be present to what's moving through your body and your heart.
so much. So that's been a really joyous place to expand my work and find other avenues of connection.
Kathy Washburn: I, sense that a lot of people are Googling where Providence, Rhode Island is from where they are to see how they can get to you. It's fun here. It is a beautiful place. And I you introduced me to sound healing.
I don't think that it was intentional as the way that it happened, but It was quite magnificent and magical. We won't get into it super deep right [00:05:00] here, but, let's suffice it to say I found myself standing in. A what is that vessel of, Oh,
Elise Bish: that was a standing, a foot singing bowl. So you actually put your whole body and this Nepalese style singing bowl brass bowl.
And then we played that bowl to help get the energy moving through your body and activate your throat chakra and kind of give you that space to express some of the things that you were holding.
Kathy Washburn: Yes. And that I did, I stood in that bowl among a beautiful group of human beings that helped me tap into anger that was living really deep inside me that I had yet to be able to express.
Kathy Washburn: So we might tap into that conversation during this conversation because we are going to talk about connection. Or [00:06:00] more importantly, maybe disconnection to oneself. And, a lot of people know this story about me. Elise, you certainly do that. As a child, I like Elise, probably I was born to feel it all.
I was a highly sensitive child. Very expressive, emotive, very sensual. There are lots of things that I could see and hear that I felt like my siblings could not. And I just didn't understand it. I could sense others feelings and being raised by emotionally stunted parents they couldn't really figure out how to love me into being.
And so I adapted myself and I learned. As a very young child that to live through others feelings, I really, I could [00:07:00] add that Spidey sense. I could read the room. I knew what was going to make somebody happy, not happy, and I could adjust myself and that survival tactic. I perfected in my adult years and was in relationships with people who were very similar to the people that loved me into being.
And this disconnection with my own feelings further got exacerbated by a culture that teaches us how to numb ourselves. So alcohol, work, social media, you know, fill in the blank. But as an adult now understanding like, oh yes, I was and am a really sensitive person. Human being who learned how to feel through others.
And now I know that's called others directed and others directed identity. And so for the last seven years of which you've been apart, [00:08:00] I've been trying to redirect. my identity, to myself, like create basically a self identity. And the biggest part of that is learning how to feel again for myself, feel my own feelings and act on those needs and desires.
But it took a whole lot, long time to figure out I even had needs. Like I couldn't even tap into them. That anger, you know, anger. after my marriage ended, everybody was like, aren't you angry? Don't you want to hit something? And I just couldn't tap into that emotion of anger. Just didn't know how to do that.
So this whole type C, way of being, and many of us who identify as type C or even can identify as a people pleaser,
Any kind of others directed way of being, we can turn it around and actually allow it to [00:09:00] serve us because we really do want to help other humans because we really can feel empathy for other humans.
Kathy Washburn: So it all starts with reconnecting with ourselves and your doorway through that is so fascinating because it's through pleasure. And you've had from the very beginning when I met you, you know, you sensual care is that place to begin learning how to reconnect with oneself. But it's the pleasure principle.
And I'd love for you to just talk a little bit more about that gateway into connection.
Elise Bish: Yeah. Thanks for that invitation into your experience, Kathy. I think I definitely share a lot of those conditions of upbringing and did grow up with a lot of people pleasing [00:10:00] tendencies, a lot of You know, oh, you're so mature for your age, a lot of caregiving as a way of receiving love and finding a place of belonging.
And with that, often comes a space where we're putting down our own needs. In service of that place of belonging and safety that's created from fitting into the expectations of those around us who are meant to meet those needs when, you know, there are only access point often for getting those needs met.
So I have found that sensual care and generally pleasure is a really powerful place to reclaim our own desires to learn more deeply. What's going on in our own internal landscape to support our nervous system into coming back to a place of safety so that we are [00:11:00] able to connect. From a resource place and not from a place of kind of need or want from others and creates a landscape of trust within ourselves to be able to connect with what is it that I want or need in this moment.
And then, how can I find my own kind of internal locus of control in order to get that need met? So, I find sensual care as a place of really reconnecting with our internal sensory landscape. And oftentimes, if we're conditioned out of our own needs, you know, something as simple as I know for me, I had like a lot of anxiety about going to the bathroom often.
I had to go to the bathroom often, and It was a place of turmoil on road trips or when you're out in public with your parents. And something as simple as I need to make sure [00:12:00] that we're close to the bathroom, or that I, you know, it's a safe time to ask for that need to get met, or, you know, I don't want to walk away from my parents because I might be in trouble if they can't find me, but there's this kind of way we're navigating our internal needs, something as basic as, oh, I have to go to the bathroom, and this external need of feeling like we're kind of caretaking the emotions of our caregivers.
And something as simple as that can lead to a lot of denial of our internal sensory needs. And kind of cuts away those places of connection between like our body's nervous system response to something very simple and natural and our kind of controlled response of the external world. So, sensual care, and like, there are so many ways that we do that, right?
When I'm hungry, I don't go get food because I'm focused on making sure I get this thing done for my job so that my boss is happy with what I've done. Or something as simple as like, you know, when we're [00:13:00] navigating a group experience, where do we want to go to eat? Right? I might deny my own desires or needs for food in order to make sure that the group has a positive experience.
So these little ways that we're really disconnecting from ourself as a way to reconnect to belonging, we're kind of cutting off. That flow of sensory information in our bodies. So when we turn to sensual care, what we're really doing is kind of slowing down the needs of the external world and creating a space of reconnection and listening to the sensory experiences in our body to help reconnect some of those neural pathways.
Open up some space to really hear what our body's telling us it might want or need or find joyful or find relaxing or find safe. And when we do that consciously in a self care practice, a sensual care, self [00:14:00] care practice, That might look like, really consciously having a cup of tea or doing a heart massage with your favorite herbal oil, or it might look like simply laying down and watching the clouds go by.
All of these sensory experiences. That give our body time to connect with a sense of safety and understanding within ourselves that then create this kind of open regulated space to feel our feelings and to connect with what's good, what's joyful what's lovely, what's helpful in the moment.
So the central care practice is really a practice of kind of listening and responding to our body. And kind of building back up that space of trust for all those moments where we've maybe abandoned ourselves in these other moments of kind of [00:15:00] finding belonging outside of ourselves.
Kathy Washburn: I really appreciate that sense of belonging.
I don't often. Attribute it to that sense of belonging. I think my mind just goes directly to the safety or, security, but belonging, it really is about belonging.
Kathy Washburn: And, I often invite clients to, to learn how to cultivate more granularity around their emotions. You know, that often people come to me and they say, Yeah, I just, that's just not feeling great.
I don't know. I just feel off. And we, I keep doing that child like, why just to get deeper and deeper so that they can actually align with this. You know, what you were just saying, this denial of feeling, you [00:16:00] know it first starts out, I guess I'm really tired. I think I'm really exhausted.
And then it goes a little deeper. I'm really lonely. You know, and then with the more granularity, you have more information so that you can actually do something about it, but staying disconnected, we're, we are denying that bolt, that sense of belonging. I really love that.
Elise Bish: Yeah, and we're, social beings.
We really need social safety. We need social connection in order to thrive. So there becomes this kind of interesting interplay between do I choose the safety of belonging or do I choose the Expression of authenticity and so often that sense of safety that comes from belonging overrides the need for us to express our own authenticity.[00:17:00]
So I love that practice of getting really granular with emotions. I think that helps so much with expressing why you might want or need something, especially if it differs. Or kind of challenges that place of belonging, whether it's belonging kind of in a partnership with you and your significant other, belonging in your family of origin, belonging more deeply in your community, it's risky sometimes to really go against the grain, right?
And there are consequences of belonging that happen when we express a need that differs from the group.
Elise Bish: And what I find with sensual care is One of the things that's happening is you're really expanding your capacity to hold high sensation experiences. I can hold myself more skillfully in a moment that feels like conflict, where my safety in my relationship, like my perceived, [00:18:00] Unsafe day, right?
In my relationship is, being tested or, you know, brought into being the, my capacity to hold that moment of feeling afraid or feeling alone. Nervous or feeling unsafe can be really you know, can be the skill that helps me get over that hump to ask for what I need, to kind of have a dissenting opinion.
And that again, that trust that's built up when we have that awareness of like, what's really happening here, what do I need and how can I trust myself to create safety inside of this situation? Maybe that means being vulnerable and moving in and asking for what I need. And maybe that means setting a boundary that I might not set if I was worried about how it would land, right?
So that movement towards or movement away and in that navigation of connection and reconnection and disconnection can be really, supported by my capacity to stay in a space that's connection and [00:19:00] whole, but connected to myself, my own needs, my own desires. And just hold that high sensation of that moment in so that I can stay present to what's possible when I find that connection or that need is met, or my friend or my, partner witnesses me in that moment of vulnerability and actually shows up to care for me in the way that I need, which is really can be a totally different experience if it's Really powerful, really really vulnerable and really important.
If it's something that not used to doing can feel really scary. That safe, that lack of safety can get really ramped up within us. and
Kathy Washburn: See, Yes. And I can see, you know, I've been in this new relationship where it is different. I am with this, lovely human that can hold that space. But I don't think I could have leaped there without the work that you helped do, which, which was really [00:20:00] understand how I am feeling, what my needs are and actually feeling it.
And at first when we started working together, I was, part of, we were both part of this. Sexual empowerment, group, you were one of the leaders and I was a participant very disconnected from my body, very disconnected from my sensuality, even though I was a highly sensitive person and highly sensual person.
And this gift, one of the gifts that you gave me was the sensuality didn't mean that I had to be having these. You know, really intense masturbation sessions connecting with myself that it could simply mean laying in a field and looking up and watching clouds go by that was as sensual. As ultimately deeper sensual work, but to understand [00:21:00] sensuality is sensory.
It doesn't mean grand thing that, felt really hard to get to started just tapping into regulating my own nervous system.
Elise Bish: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's this
Particularly when we talk about pleasure, we think about these peak pleasurable experiences where, you know, we're at the top of that roller coaster, just about to go down the hill and while those are like really great experiences to have, there's actually an interplay that happens in our nervous system.
That in order for us to fully sink into a pleasurable experience, we first have to be in a relaxed and open state. So, to get to that peak, we have to find the surrender, we have to find the breath, we [00:22:00] have to be able to feel the Landscape of sensations in our body where we're feeling open and possible and interconnected and the places where we might notice that we're feeling bit contracted or closed off or disconnected and welcome those places to kind of find, to find a a space of safety and surrender and openness.
So.
Especially when we're really building the muscle of connecting with our pleasure centers or reconnecting with our body. And, you know, there are a lot of very real and challenging reasons why we feel disconnected from our body. Trauma, pain, health challenges. You know, lots of environmental factors of safety and [00:23:00] disconnection.
So in order for us to build up to those peak experiences, having that space of trust, safety, gentleness, opening, expansion, presence, those things are really going to be what opens the door to these kind of lovely peak experiences. But I find that still to this day, and you know, I'm an edge walker. I like to find those peak experiences.
I I'm an adrenaline junkie. I love to have those kind of big moments of high sensation. And so I do seek them out. But some of the most transformative moments that I've had where I've felt the breakthrough in my heart and in my body have been simple, a hand on my heart you know, feeling that feeling of overwhelm and taking that step back to have a few breaths by myself in a corner or going to [00:24:00] my garden and just smelling the herbs that these, moments of sense, sensual reminder of connection to presence, connection to earth.
Connection to self connection to a safe person are the things that rewire us into that trusting place of connection.
Kathy Washburn: Yes, and that's exactly what I had experienced. Doing this work is building that trust in my own body, that trust for myself, understanding that it was my respond ability. When I'm in that safe place to be in relationship now with this.
Other human that can meet me there and then after the experience really savor that this is different and that's the work of Rick Hansen that I help people with is rebuilding those new neural pathways and really landing in that [00:25:00] positive experience. And actually recalling an old experience when you didn't feel that way and reconnecting them and then just letting that old experience go.
And what happens in the next hour is you keep recalling this moment of, you know the good feeling of how it feels to be trusting in your own body, how to feel, how it feels to be belonging in a relationship. And what happens over time. is you disrupt the window of consolidation of that old memory. And so that's how that new neural pathway is built.
But it is that this, as you and I both know, this is not a quick fix. This has been for me, seven years. And the making, and I would say the first two years was really just learning how to wake up. I [00:26:00] was just so dead to myself for, you know, trauma for radiation, which felt like it just separated me into two pieces.
So really two years of waking up and then all of a sudden you're like feeling all the feelings and that's, not a place you want to be alone. You need people like Elise. And our other good friend, Leonor, to hold you there because feeling all of it, like really feeling it and not being numb to it, it's a little overwhelming.
Elise Bish: It's totally, it can totally be overwhelming. And you know, I would say I have a pleasure centered practice that's the invitation is to find that access point within yourself and let it be a place of self discovery. And a way to expand and deepen your relationship with yourself and others. That's like really that place of interconnection.
But so [00:27:00] often we say yes to that place of pleasure and, you know, we want to feel better because we're usually feeling kind of bad when we show up in these places. And so we want to feel better. And oftentimes it is about just showing up in like a devotional practice to the sensory care to, to pleasure, because oftentimes the first, like we say, yes, and then we meet the polarity, like we say, yes, we start to feel, we start to get in touch with some of our sensual expressions and then everything Been repressing or that has been pushed away or that we haven't had permission or safety to feel Shows up for us to look at now that we're in a place that's a little bit more resourced So it can feel really overwhelming.
It can feel a lot to hold and the more practices and, you know [00:28:00] it's a great opportunity to ask for what you need to ask for that support to kind of reach out for something that might feel like resourceful in the moment, but yeah, it can feel like a lot and on the opposite end of the spectrum, you know, the more that we feel in those moments, the more we give ourselves permission to feel The more access we have for the kind of beautiful and lovely and delicious, central experiences as well.
Kathy Washburn: It's so true. And you so vulnerably shared recently, you have, had been going through a health experience yourself and you know, all this stuff. You know, that being resourced is important for people. You help people become resourced. You help people give themselves permission to feel and you shared that when you found yourself in that very vulnerable place, you came to a [00:29:00] crossroads and you chose a path.
And I would love it if you would share with us the path you chose and what happened because of it.
Elise Bish: Yeah, absolutely.
Elise Bish: So earlier this year, much to my surprise, I found out that I had breast cancer. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was showing up for some routine screenings and I really had a lot of fear show up.
I mean, it was a terrifying moment. It was completely unexpected. Dad? I did have the privilege of supporting my mother through her two experiences of, two diagnoses of breast cancer. So, you know, that was helpful to have as, as a reference point. She's well, she's, You know, she's in remission and I had a lot of trauma from supporting her through those experience and witnessing what she went through and then [00:30:00] feeling it in my body, feeling kind of the fear of what was possible in my body.
So it was such a moment of uncertainty. And anxiety and where I was felt, you know, a lot of duress to make life decisions that felt really big and really urgent and to take care of my body in a way that felt less like care and more like suffering in a lot of ways. So there was this need within me. I like needed support, right?
I knew that I was going to need to lean on my community. And this is something that I've been working on, you know, over, over the last decade of reaching out and ask, asking for support. Part of my identity was very much being super independent, and figuring it out on my own and. You know, doing all the research [00:31:00] and following through on all the decisions and in this process, I found that my cancer diagnosis really, in so many ways, expected and unexpected, really took me to some of, like, my core wounds my core needs these places within me that I had done some work on, but this was just another healing spiral back to like, is this really a pattern or an experience that you want to take with you through this journey?
And so there was an experience of surrender. Where I really felt like my only way through was to really allow people to care for me, to kind of put down that armor of making sure that, you know, my mother wasn't blaming herself or that my partner felt like she had what she [00:32:00] needed to show up to care for me, or that, you know, I was the only one that could make these types of decisions or call this doctor or schedule this appointment.
And That kind of place of control within myself that had often been an experience of me trying to find a place of agency in a world that felt out of control, really showed up as this place of like, okay, what's possible here? And. And because of the circumstances and because of how everything was unfolding, I really just needed to lean into this place of I'm surrendering totally to this place of I'm deserving of love, that I can ask for help with these things and not only ask, but really receive that, like, there's this I had this kind of wind ceiling, maybe the ceiling of expectation that I'm allowed to ask for this much, but I'm not for that.
There was kind of a [00:33:00] totality of possibilities that I felt maybe I was deserving of or that, you know, there was a, maybe if I asked for this, I was going to be disappointed, right? Kind of tendering my desires based on what I thought I could receive from the person I was interacting with. And yeah, because of the surrender of the situation and the trust that I needed to have to just fall into this larger container of community care, I was really able to just take back that sense of like, actually have very little control over what's going on.
I have my agency, I can ask for what I need, like, that's where my, Locus of control needs to be is what can I need and what do I need and how can I really resource that as a trusting process surrender from, my family, from my community, from my partner, from my, you know, my spiritual resources from the earth.
And it really kind of shook me to the core to be that vulnerable, [00:34:00] first of all, and to really have my needs met in a way that I was never able to partially because I was keeping myself from asking from what I really wanted and needed. So I have just received so much love, so much care, so much support throughout this journey.
It's really cracked me open. In such a big way and challenged some of these really deep seated places of worth and conditioning and expectation and deservingness and trust that I think I've been carrying around for my whole life. So you know, it was a terrifying process. I'm well now I'm cancer free.
And I have just a new depth of understanding for what it means to, be. to ask for that kind of care and not limit myself, on receiving it to really open [00:35:00] up to receiving it fully and trusting that is an experience that I can have again and again.
Kathy Washburn: Wow. I hope that everybody not only just heard you, but can rewind and listen to that again.
It's such an inspiration. And the two lines that really just struck my own heart was when you said, I had agency, I had my agency. I could ask for what I need. And I realized I had no control. Like those two things are the crux of it. I can't control. But I still do have agency. Those are two separate things.
I have agency to ask for what I need. I can't control anything. And I, anybody. But I can control myself. And this idea, I just got the goosebumps. This idea of having these ceilings of expectations for [00:36:00] self and others. I mean, you had people show up in droves with skill sets and love and caring that you needed, that it was exactly what you needed at the moment that you needed it.
And limiting your expectations of yourself and others would have closed that off from happening. It reminds me of this poem, I don't even know where I found this. I should really do a better job about noting people who wrote these things, but you just reminded me, it says, people pleasing me. You know you have always been one of my most sensitive children.
Always aware of what others need. Always trying to be helpful. Offering a joke to lighten the mood. You so rarely put yourself first. I am proud of your sensitivity, but living to please others, I imagine, it can be wearing at times, painfully [00:37:00] perhaps so. I do not blame you for putting on your armor, but you must be careful that your armor does not rust and set you so that you might never be able to take it off. And as you were talking, I just had this just amazing image. I think your celebration was at Mata's Vineyard, is that right? I just had this amazing image of you just taking the armor off,
Elise Bish: Yeah,
Kathy Washburn: throwing it into the ocean.
Elise Bish: Yeah, really. It really felt that way.
And
I am so grateful. I think there, that there just was such a deep belief and, you know, for a lot of reasons that that, just care wasn't there for me, that I could show up for others in this like deep well of care, but, you know, somehow just not, available for me. And [00:38:00] that was just totally dissolved in this experience of.
Just really receiving the care that I had cultivated, you know, I've spent a lot of time cultivating community as in a place of leadership and working on these patterns of people pleasing and, you know, giving more than I'm receiving. And I thought, you know, I had done a pretty good job. I mean, I will say, you know, done did a pretty good job of moving through those things.
But, you know, I think that there are levels of somatic remembering and deep seated belief systems and particularly in Martha's Vineyard, I was really looking at the transgenerational impacts of, that space of receiving care and receiving support and was able to really see that I actually need to receive 100 percent if I'm going to give 100%. And whatever that little, whatever that armor [00:39:00] was that was keeping me kind of stuck in that place of kind of keeping myself safe for fear of that vulnerability just really completely dissipated.
Kathy Washburn: So stunning.
Kathy Washburn: Now, that is a great segue to your, skill set and genius around family constellations and, and in particular, this transgenerational conditioning and how, like, how does it create experiences of connection or disconnection?
That we don't even without help from people like you, or even without awareness that we don't realize is pushing us in a certain direction. Can you explain more about that?
Elise Bish: Yeah, for me, diving into the systemic family constellation world was a real worldview changer for me. I think that was the biggest thing that happened is [00:40:00] I really saw connection and interconnection and disconnection in this systemic lens in a way that I hadn't really been thinking about it before.
So, In constellation work, we're looking at how intergenerational patterns get passed down from parent to child. But beyond that, how the larger system of interconnection has its own conscience, I would say kind of talk about the conscience of the family system and that there's inside of each family system.
So your biological family, but you know, it also expands out to commute to include your chosen family. If you're adopted, your adoptive family, your communities you are in connection with your, maybe your religious upbringing, all of these things have a place of belonging inside of [00:41:00] your system of understanding.
And they all inform this idea of the family conscience.
And
It's not necessarily connected to ethics, like good conscience and bad conscience. It's the beliefs in the system, in the family system. And they, this kind of idea of belonging is that in order for me to belong in my family system, I have to be in agreement with the good conscience of that family system.
So if there's. A belief or an energy or a pattern of hiding feelings right of silence, your feelings are too much. Your feelings don't matter. There's a lot of invalidation. There's a lot of secret keeping. There's not a lot of trust in the family system. And, you know, we could go into for hours to talking about why or how that happens.
But you know, there, there becomes this way of being [00:42:00] in a intergenerational connection that exists between people, and that will kind of end up. in a loyalty to that family conscience. So when I disregard my own feelings, when I don't say that I was hurt by the way I felt criticized by you, I'm actually holding, upholding that good family conscience. And if I speak out, if I say I was hurt or that was really hard for me to hear, or that felt really disrespectful, if I'm using my voice, I'm going against the good conscience of that family system, and when we do that, we jeopardize our place of belonging, right? We find ourselves exiled, or the black sheep, or the one who just always, you know, never You know, can never shut up about their feelings, or they're too emotional, or whatever the kind of judgment that goes into upholding the [00:43:00] loyalty of that, system kind of ends up on your head.
So there's a lot of gravity in these expectations and the conditionings and the beliefs in the dynamics of a family system that we hold in our physical body and our DNA and the way that we were taught how to connect or disconnect. And so when we show up in partnership or in relationship or in community, that's chosen, that's wanted, that fulfills our needs, our desires, and in some way, the gravity, we're bringing with us the gravity of that family system.
And certain relationships, challenge us to step out of that space of belonging with our family system and certain relationships reinforce those dynamics and they're all interconnected. It's an interwoven web of all of us bumping, bumping up against these patterns of belonging [00:44:00] that are part of our survival mechanism and our place of interconnectedness with all that is.
So Yeah, finding support or looking through, like, what are some of these places of conditioning? What are, what is kind of the accepted place of the conscience of my family system? And, where do I, where can I look within myself to find the resource, the place of authenticity, place of an integrity?
To say, actually, my place is to belong to myself, and that's a place where we often need some support or some some, perspective or finding a system that works in relationship to something that feels authentic to us. So it's a complex interweaving of connectedness, but it absolutely affects every single one of our [00:45:00] relationships.
Kathy Washburn: And especially if we are completely unaware to it, like you don't even know that is what is. Driving a certain, behavior. I think that is the most stunning thing. The other thing that I would highlight just having done this work with you is it's so there's such a desire. My mom is still alive.
My dad passed away a couple years ago. But there's such a desire to just be like, okay, mom, we're sitting at the table. I want to have a chat with you about, you know suppressing emotions or this rigid, cold sexuality. Like where did this come from? And I know it's not possible. As many of many people have heard on this podcast, that's like going to Home Depot for milk and eggs.
Not going to find it there. She is not going to be able to have that conversation with [00:46:00] me. And I show up for a consolation with you and I get the answers that I need from the consciousness that exists, which is just a different energy level than we're used to. And it comes through. And it's very validating.
It's, I can't even explain it. I'm not even doing a good job. People are probably like, what the hell is she talking about?
Elise Bish: Yeah. I think it's hard to explain because in a lot of Western culture, we've been completely disconnected from the idea that our ancestors are a living part of our life, that we have a living connection with them.
You know, we kind of, Think about our ancestors as, you know, just some dead people that, you know, had a hand in creating us. But what's more true and what I've seen than my direct experience of this work is that it's actually much more nuanced and complex than [00:47:00] that. And that we can look beyond the first person kind of interaction that we're having.
Turn around and look at our system and there are like multiple points of interconnection that exist in our hearts and in our bodies to understand like what we're carrying forward and why we're carrying it forward. So, like I said, it's that worldview shift in how connection, how interconnection, how human interconnection, how, you know, humans connect with the ecosystem.
There's all these invisible spaces of connection to consciousness and awareness that we're coming to. So it can feel confusing when we're thinking about this as, you know, from a perspective where we're not looking at that broader space of the ecosystem that we carry with us in every interaction.
And there is, there [00:48:00] is a lot, you know, we all hold a place where our vulnerabilities and our limitations show up to create disconnection, which shows up in a lot of different ways in our relationships. And I think it's particularly pronounced in our families of origin that the gravity of those dynamics are just so strong within the family system.
That even if we're practiced at asking for what we need out in the world, when we turn around and ask that from our parents, or from our siblings, or from our families of origin, it just feels automatically kicks us right back into those deeper patterns. So I find that doing this type of collective ancestral work, I think very importantly for, for folks who have been disconnected from their ancestry for the myriad of reasons that we are in Western culture.
Can be completely eye [00:49:00] opening the shifts that it can make. So if you are experiencing the same thing over and over again in your relationships, in your romantic relationships and your work relationships, if you've tried the therapy, if you tried the the workshops, you know, you've gone the workshops, you've done the therapy, you tried the online classes and that thing.
That that pattern shows up for you again and again In my experience, that's a great place to dive in to do some of the deeper intergenerational work.
Kathy Washburn: And I almost was gonna ask you if you had a recommendation for a book or something to help people get started, but I don't want you to answer that because I think if you're at that point where you just.
Highlighted where you've been dealing with this thing and you just can't seem to break the for me. It was sexuality. That complete disconnection. And I read [00:50:00] all I could about it. I took lots of classes, but it wasn't until. Honestly, it wasn't until that session in Woodstock, New York are standing in that singing bowl and screaming my lungs out, surrounded by women.
I barely knew that we're also screaming and feeling like we were all screaming from my ancestors who never, ever could scream. I don't know if that went on one minute or a thousand minutes. It felt like a lifetime. It was the most stunning shift. It was almost as if there was a celebration of my whole ancestral line just reveling in the fact that I could move past this thing that was Literally like a yoke around my neck, but I realized it was [00:51:00] around the necks of so many of my ancestors.
Yeah,
Elise Bish: absolutely.
Kathy Washburn: Yeah,
Elise Bish: so so glad that you were there. And that was a really beautiful moment of just, Catharsis and surrender and truth and power. So I'm so glad I got to witness you in that, moment. There's, this is why I do the work particularly around sexuality. So for looking at like, where in our family conscience do we have beliefs around what's right and what's wrong?
Sex is absolutely one of the biggest places. That we have those kinds of beliefs or traditions or expectations or traumas ancestral traumas. And so when we show up to try to connect authentically with ourselves, with our sensual bodies, with our [00:52:00] desires. We just really, the gravity of the shame and the stigma and the taboo and the years of cultural oppression around sexuality show up when we try to make the first move, or initiate an erotic experience, or talk to our crush for the first time, or tell our partner, I actually don't like that thing that we usually do.
So there's so much power. This is exactly why I started. Getting the training in the family systems work because it really allows us both somatically, emotionally and energetically to go to the, kind of deep root of those experiences and have that moment of reconnection. And so often ancestrally, it's an experience of exile, an experience of disconnection from their bodies, from their partners, from their families, and.
You know, it shows up [00:53:00] in those moments of tenderness or vulnerability in our relationships and our connection to self. So I'm so glad to have facilitated that experience for you. And, you know, for me that's the place of service in my work that I find has the most impact to not only change an individual's experience, but also change our collective landscape of erotic liberation.
Transcribed So if you have some questions about this, like show up, I could talk about this all day.
Kathy Washburn: Yes. And like I said, I was going to ask Elise to share a book or a reference, but I would strongly suggest if this resonates with you at all, that you get in touch with Elise because the experience of it is, this is not an armchair adventure.
This is a, you must experience it for yourself, reading about it, intellectualizing. I tried all that for years, but it [00:54:00] wasn't until that felt experience and I remember driving back. I live in Woodstock, New York Vermont. We were in Woodstock, New York for that event. And I remember driving back and, you know, in hindsight, it really was for the first time a place where I felt I belonged to myself.
It was almost like I handed back this shitload of stuff that was handed to me, whether it was in my DNA, in the consciousness, however that worked. I handed it back and all of a sudden I just belonged to myself and it has changed my world. I think it has, it definitely teed me up for this relationship where I can express myself in a safe way and receive and, you know, I mean, it's just, and I know several other people that I've [00:55:00] sent to you that have had different issues not the same as mine, but different issues have had the same experience.
They're just like, Whoa,
This is a life changing. And, there's a, there's an element of that, of honoring ourselves, which I want to just highlight because I think so often when we do, when we are reading the books and intellectualizing and trying to gather knowledge about how to change, we often make these promises to ourselves.
That we quickly, don't follow through with, which then just makes us feel more awful about ourselves. There is often this element of consciousness that is holding us in that space that we're not even aware of. I don't think allows us to honor ourselves. Is Is that true? Yeah.
Elise Bish: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had.
What I've noticed in, my [00:56:00] nearly a decade, I walked through my own ancestral path for many years before I got training and started offering this as part of my, as part of my practice, partially because the work was so deep and I was really seeing myself and the world around me and my place in On earth in a really different way and what I've seen and what's been my direct evidence is that we're born into our, we all have our own path and part of our expression in this lifetime is to evolve. The family to evolve the patterns of our family system to do something different, you know, to create more diversity and more experiences and to be present to what's emerging in the collective between all of us [00:57:00] big and small. And so. Through the family constellation work, when we hold our own intention, sometimes that intention
That kind of place of connection with our desires or ourself or our movement forward, or something that we're hoping for or wishing for in our life is deeply connected to an intention that was held in with somebody else's heart or their mind or their body in our ancestral lineage.
So oftentimes there is a shared experience of resonance. Which is why we get pulled into the gravity of these, what are sometimes called entanglements or these experiences of remembering the patterns or the dynamics of our ancestors. And the beauty of the systemic work is that we get to look at that ancestor's unfulfilled intention [00:58:00] or their fulfilled intention, whichever way it goes in our particular experience.
Thanks. And have that moment of reconnection, put down the entanglement, which was how we were staying connected in the first place, I can't remember you because you didn't have, like, because I don't have that sense of experience or connection or it's been lost in some way, but that energetic connection of, like, wanting the same thing or You know, trusting that we have the same experience is showing up as a way of remembering as a place of loyalty.
So if I can put down your experience and say thank you for my life, I see you, I witness your experience, and when I turn towards my future, I actually have a different path and having a different experience that there's something else that's emerging for me to grow and to learn and to shift and to transform and to alchemize, we get to evolve that con [00:59:00] that family conscience that I was speaking of, we could evolve what's true and possible within our experience.
So, yeah, there is that, sense of. Interconnected connection or like, you know, there might be a really valid reason why we can't honor why it's hard for us to like honor what we're promising for ourselves and we have this opportunity to really forge our own path and to find
you know, it's
kind of part of our job to look at the conscience of the family system and say, actually, I'm belonging in this different way and there's space for me too.
Kathy Washburn: Yes, this belonging in a different way and, to kind of give an example of what you just highlighted. I remember our work, we were focusing on my maternal grandmother and, she had a really hard life and, this [01:00:00] idea of me being selfish ever I was receiving because I was supposed to give, so.
Even as I was trying to shift and allow myself to receive, were still these big blocks that were like no, you must give in order to receive. Like there is no, no receiving without. A thousand percent giving and I remember there was this one moment where you just invited me to turn around and just give it back like give back that selfishness and in that moment really realizing
that.
she wanted to receive and she just never was able to receive she didn't have that skill and certainly didn't have that experience and so for me to turn and it was such a weird thing it's just You just said, turn your body around and give it back and then turn back [01:01:00] around and step into your future.
Just, it's feels so subtle and, a little wooey. It is simply the consciousness that I believe that we all must start stepping into in order to heal this, in this moment of. what's happening in our world. So I am so grateful for your gift and your genius and how you share it with the world.
Kathy Washburn: I often think whenever I look at somebody, I can almost, Envision a map of they touch this person and then that person touches these five people and those five people touch and you just have this huge explosion, almost like a star filled sky with how you help people in this lifetime and and heal the past. Thank you. Is there any, anything else that you want to add before we wrap up? And, I'm just noticing the time we could talk [01:02:00] forever and all day about
Elise Bish: this. Yeah. I think the thing that's just really striking me is just this, sometimes it's as simple as following that sensation to the root of the experience.
And the larger web of possibilities and interconnection and expansion and the weaving that happens together in, in the simple experience of following a sensation and allowing it to be present, giving it permission and acknowledging where it came from, like listening to that deeper sense of understanding can open up the pathway to these bigger places of interconnection Intergenerational understanding and all of it is really so that we can find that place of connection with ourself and when we [01:03:00] walk towards connection with others, connection with our community, connection with our work in the world that we have that place of resource within ourselves to show up to deepen the connections that are possible with others.
So it just feels like a portal kind of in into ourselves. Into the depths of connection in our lineage, and then back out into the world in a really lovely way. So, thanks for inviting me here to talk about this weird space of connection and disconnection and sensuality and deep wisdom.
Kathy Washburn: You
are such a pleasure to be around.
I, I've asked you this question before. And I know a lot has changed in the world and a lot has stayed the same. I'm going to ask it again, just for giggles. If I were to crush you up and put you in pill form, what effect would your essence have on someone taking that pill?
Elise Bish: I [01:04:00] think my essence would really Be that place of self acceptance where you can expand the capacity to feel. What the landscape of your feelings,
There's
that permission to be with the sensational to find the kind of desires that are yours and the container to create the opportunity for those things to come into being. So I'm thinking that would be the pill just to a heightened sensory experience with no judgment.
Kathy Washburn: Wow. I think people are trying to find that online right now. They're Googling and they will find Elise.
Elise Bish: What is your website? Yeah. You can find me at desirecatalyst. com. [01:05:00]
Kathy Washburn: Brilliant. Brilliant. And you are such a thing. Thank you so much for your gift of time. It was such a pleasure. I can't wait to do this again.
Thanks,
Elise Bish: Kathy. It was
really a joy
Kathy Washburn: diving
Elise Bish: in with you Today.