Episode 8 - Lobsterbird: Trauma-Informed, Holistic Financial Planning

Lobsterbird is a multiprismatic artist, healer, and wormhole coach devoted to collective liberation through energy alchemy, somatic embodiment, and transformational journeys. 

As a conscious finance educator with Vortex Financial, Lobsterbird helps spiritual creatives embody their wealthiest potential and achieve financial freedom through soul-aligned strategy. They are currently training the next wave of trauma-informed financial professionals to change the system and fund world-changing endeavors. 

As a co-creator of the NeuroEmergent Life movement, Lobsterbird cultivates ecosystems—virtual and physical—where neurodivergent beings, caregivers, and Earth can thrive. Their work bridges personal liberation with planetary healing, inviting us all into deeper embodiment, purpose, and possibility.

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Discover what conscious trauma-informed finance could look like for you: The Wealth Vortex

connect with Lobsterbird:
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https://www.instagram.com/thelobsterbird
https://lobsterbird.com/

Transcript

Welcome To Hip Talk

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Hip Talk. I'm your host, Catherine H. I'm a certified hypnotherapist, MLP practitioner, and chair of a senior certified professional in human resources. After spending a decade working in the music industry, my path led me into the world of the healing art, where science, energy, mindset, and transformation all meet. Each week, I sit down with a different healing practitioner to explore the many powerful modalities available to support our growth, well-being, and personal evolution. So come with me on this journey of discovery and learn about all the opportunities for healing and transformation that are available to all of us.

Meet Lobsterbird Yee

SPEAKER_02 1:21

I am your host, Catherine Hinchy, and today I am so excited to introduce to you Lobsterbird Yee, who's our guest today. Lobsterbird is a multi-prismatic artist, healer, and wormhole coach devoted to collective liberation through energy alchemy, somatic embodiment, and transformational journeys. As a conscious finance educator with Vortex Financial, Lobsterbird helps spiritual creatives embody their wealthiest potential and achieve financial freedom through soul-aligned strategy. They are currently training the next wave of trauma-informed financial professionals to change the system and fund world-changing endeavors. As a co-creator of the Neuroemergent Life Movement, Lobster Bird cultivates ecosystems, both virtual and physical, where neurodivergent beings, caregivers, and earth can thrive. Their work bridges personal liberation with planetary healing, inviting us all into deeper embodiment of purpose and possibility. Wow, that's an amazing bio. Okay, Colf. And so I'm so excited you're here. Welcome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

I'm so happy to be here with you as always.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

And let's go right into it. This is a lot of different things that you're doing here. So tell us about that. What what kind of healing work are you working on right now?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Well, in order to get to a bio like that, it is a long and windy path, as you can imagine. And usually uh sometimes my bio is that I'm a multi-prismatic being and I've lived about a thousand lifetimes within this one already. And so a bio, like words are not enough to really describe who I am and what I do. And I appreciate being able to presence with people and have an experience of what that is. And yeah, I have been on my path for quite a while. In fact, you and I met in the early days in New York City as actors and performers and writers and creative beings.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Um we were in that women's creative group, and that was quite a group of awesome women.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah, and it was a very early catalyst to everything else. Because actually, when I was younger, when I went to school, my undergraduate work was in psychology and sociology. And what I very quickly intuited, even at a young age, was that the system was messed up. And that the common way, the model of diagnosing and prescribing, it did not feel helpful to me. It did not feel like actual healing. And at that time, I had no framework for what healing meant. I came from a very small town. We didn't hardly travel, I didn't know any shamans or whatnot. I had a very conventional childhood growing up. So I had no real context for that. But even while I was learning that diagnostic model where, you know, like we figure out what is quote unquote wrong with a person, right? We label that, and then we prescribe either medication or some kind of behavioral therapy to fix or change it. That to me just felt inherently not right. So that's what kind of took me on my path

Creativity As A Healing Path

SPEAKER_01 4:54

out of that. And for the first time ever when I was in college, I went and studied abroad in Florence, Italy. And during that time, I realized what living was. I became friends with all these native Italians, and we were like a group of young girls, and then there was this group of young Italian men that lived on the floor below us, and we were riding motos around the piazzas and living. And of course, when you're in Florence, it is Italy, everything is a living work of art. And I just realized, like, oh, life can be art and art can be life. And this is actually super healing for something inside of me that I didn't even know I needed healed. And so that really took me all my path to the deep belief and conviction that our creative spirit is inherently healing. And then it was like many, many years, many years of like study and practice and trying things. I remember around the time when we were in that group together, I was practicing on some of my closest friends. I was like, I have this idea for a thing. Back then, coaching, right, was not a thing. It was like not like online. You couldn't like hire a life coach in five minutes, right? It wasn't a thing, like there was no real word for it. But I was making what I was calling the human potential project. And essentially it was a coaching and teaching container about how to allow our creativity to unfold everything in our lives. And at that point, a lot of the people that were closest to me were complaining about their jobs. They were like, I hate my job, I hate my job, like I don't want to work for nine to five. That was like the mantra of our generation and this big change. Because again, this is before the huge boom of online entrepreneurship as well. And I really was like, if we can free and unlock our natural creativity, our most vital resource, our life force, then that will radiate out into our lives, into our health, and and then especially into our work and what we're doing in the world. Around the time meeting you was a very spark of something that somehow or another led me on this whole gigantic healing path, which maybe we'll dive into. And then the outcome of that was totally surprising to me. And I think that is what happens a lot, and something to share and maybe see if your people resonate with. Once you get on your healing path and your spiritual path, it will oftentimes take you to places that you did not before imagine it would take you. And that is because, you know, the limited sense of self prior to the healing and the awakening, right, had very specific ideas about what life was. And suddenly those are stirred up. And then if we're really on the path, you know, there's so many different aspects of that, but one of them is surrendering to the path. And as my surrender took me along, in the most recent years, it's really allowed me to apply everything that I have been learning and practicing and studying and embodying and working with clients into a whole other field that I never would have thought that I would even do potato in, which is the financial industry.

The Surprising Turn Into Finance

SPEAKER_01 8:08

And so that's what I'm doing now is I am working with a conscious finance firm. We specialize in trauma-informed, holistic financial planning. I really don't think that there's anyone else on the planet that's doing it. At least I haven't found anyone doing anything remotely close. And so we're working within the traditional financial services industry. We're licensed financial professionals. So this is different than just like, oh money coach, you know, or um healing your money wounds. That's a huge part of it, right? But the other part of it is actually developing a financial plan. And the way that this also differs from the traditional financial services industry is that a lot of financial planners aren't really looking at things holistically, aren't looking at finances as an entire ecosystem. Unless we're looking at it from that point of view, then there are definitely holes in the financial plan. There's things that aren't being tended to. I'm also one of the many other things is that I am an earth worker. I'm a permaculture designer, I have a citizen scientist, mycologist, I'm an herbalist. And so I like to think about things in the context of nature and the planet. One of the things is that without that ecological thinking, even within our personal finances, we are not tending to the entire garden, right? So, for example, if you have a garden but you are not restoring the soil, then your plants are not going to thrive, right? You're going to be using chemical fertilizers that then are depleting the soil and then are like creating a bug problem and like it creates all kinds of things. And so that's one part of it. And so that's what I'm doing as part of the work for Tex Financial. So I literally help people and can you give an example?

SPEAKER_02 9:54

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Can you give an example of one of those holistic tending to the garden, looking at the soil in sort of like real life terms financially?

Six Steps To Financial Independence

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

One of the ways that we do that is we look at the six steps to financial independence. A lot of people, you know, and I also want to say part of what we do in our process is unshaming this process, because the reason I got into this actually was doing my own deep healing and shadow work around money and realizing at the same time that the system set up in a very specific way for us not to think about it this way, not to know these things, right? But financial literacy education, which is like primarily actually what we do, and then helping people with their own independent plans, is that we should really be taught this in school. If we were all taught this when we were young, the world would look very different. Right. So before I answer your question, I just want to like unchange, like if anything is popping up for anyone as you're listening, know that I understand and it's not your fault, right? It's none of our fault. And this is a moment, though, where we can tune into a new frequency on this and really understand it in this holistic way. So when we look at a holistic plan, we look at these six steps of financial independence because a lot of people are saying, I want to be financially free, I want to be financially free. Or like even a very specific example is retirement, right? So at some point, our bodies are going to slow down. We won't be able to work as much and possibly not at all. Like one of the big things in life, and again, this is something in our culture that we are not conditioned to think or talk about. It's really taboo. There's a lot of shame around it, is sickness and death. And these things are inevitable. And it is also a fact that in our increasingly toxic world, which hopefully we are healing and regenerating, but as it currently is, it's very toxic. And so sickness is happening more and more frequently. The statistics on it are jarring. It's about at this point that 50% of people like have cancer, basically. And then that's like a whole other thing to impact because it's really more. But that's just one example of the many kinds of things that are happening in people. And when something like that happens, now to relate that to finance, if you if one were to get sick, right, and then not be able to work, what would they do financially? And most people don't even haven't even thought about it, let alone have things in place to cover that. As I was saying, there are these six steps because really what it means to be financially free is looking at things that probably we're not looking at. So the six steps are cash flow. Most people are in some way aware of their cash flow, right? Income coming in and expenses going out. We know that is happening. But getting clarity on that, right? Really refining that so that we do have discretionary income to work with so we can address the other uh five steps. So the second one being debt. Debt is a huge topic and issue, but we want to work to consolidate or eliminate debt. And if we are going to utilize the debt system, which again is not it's there are reasons why we would do that. And in some cases, it's actually great to do that. But we want to make sure that it is being used in that way. And if it's not, to really be able to clear debt. So we're not stuck in this perpetual cycle that we're constantly owing something, right? And then it's too hard to build. So this third step is what I call freedom fund because most financial advisors call it an emergency fund. But I think that we have enough emergency and neuroses put into our operating systems on a daily basis. So I like to call it a freedom fund because you could use it in an emergency, but you also could say if you needed to take a sabbatical for your mental health, you have that fund there and you can utilize that. That to me is just as much of an emergency. And so the fourth step is proper protection. That's making sure that everything that you've worked so hard to build is protected, but it's also making sure that you, the human, the most valuable part of the equation, is protected as well. Like I said, in case you couldn't work, you still need money coming in. How do we protect you so that that happens? The fifth step is building wealth. And that is, you know, that's basically starting to invest, right? It's getting your money to work harder for you, not the other way around. We need to be outpacing inflation. So the dollar is worse less and less as time goes on and things get more and more expensive, right? So if we're not actively doing things that are making our money make more money on its creating a scenario where we're not constantly um having enough, right, to pay for our existence, then we're always going to be in that cycle. So we really need to look at building wealth, and that's not something that you need to wait to do until everything else is perfect either, by the way. And then the sixth step is preserving that wealth. Once you're building that, we also want to minimize taxation. It's a huge thing. This is like a huge. We are basically giving away so much money to the government, unnecessarily, and they're doing questionable things with it. When in this is my passion, is that there are people that could be using that money instead of giving it away for who knows what, using it towards things that are really helping to better their lives, their communities, and the planet. And so we want to make sure in preserving that wealth that we're minimizing taxation and all of what we're building is protected so that it remains, so we're able to steward it, right? And use it for these things we care about. You know, one specific example would be the so heart attacks. Also, so one person is having a heart attack every 34 seconds. Isn't that crazy? Like that's so many people having heart attacks every minute. And so the call average cost of a heart attack is a million dollars in medical fees, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So now with those six steps, say someone does not have their proper protection in place, right? They don't have anything in place that if that were to happen, they're still covered. Then even if someone is building wealth, step number five, right? Even if they're building wealth, say someone has a million-dollar portfolio, guess what? That heart attack just costs you a million dollars, right? That portfolio now needs to be used and now cannot be used, say, for retirement, right? Or for your dream life or for helping your community, right? And so that's one very specific example, how if we don't have all of this holistically being tended to, then one thing, and you know, things happen so suddenly. Like that's the other thing, right? Out of nowhere. Someone could get sick, or you know, something could break down, or there could be a like a climate weather event, right? That destroys that. There's so many things happening all the time. So if we don't have all of those things tended to, then we're not truly financially free because one of those things can take out everything in a moment.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

I have been listening a lot to Kathy Haller, who is I don't know if anybody knows her, but anybody in the podcast world probably does. But she's on this Kabbalistic Kabbalah journey and sharing what she's learning about money and abundance in that spiritual sense. So when you talk about cash flow, I immediately started thinking about what she's been saying, how money really needs to flow both in and out like a river and not get stuck. But to your in your world, how do you help your clients reconcile spirituality and money with these things that often seem at odds and are they related?

Money Spirituality And Energy

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Absolutely. On the kind of highest, most meta level, everything is related, right? Everything influences everything else and everything works together in the symbiotic way. So of course, you know, what is going on for us spiritually, energetically, emotionally, even our physical health is related to our finances in the sense that just 99.9999999% of everything on the planet is made of energy, including our bodies, including a hundred dollar bill, right? All of it is really energy. And so if there is anything that is wonky in one's finances, or if there's anything that's wonky on those other levels, mental, emotional, energetic, spiritual, they will reveal themselves either in the finances or vice versa, right? So that's one of the big things because And there's a lot of shame in that.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Of course that's where people can hold a lot of shame about money, is because you're because it's the imbalance in other things in their life.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

And that's why there's no shame in it either, because we all to some extent have that. Like I just want to, no one has their stuff together. Even those people with million-dollar portfolios that I've been looking at, because they're my clients, they don't have all their stuff together. And it's just as important, even if you have that, because it eventually will catch up to you in some way or another. This is why we see billionaires who are incredibly unhappy and unfulfilled and creating havoc on the planet, right? Because mental, emotional, spiritual, energetic hygiene is not really happening, right? To that extent. So that's one example on the flip side. And then on the other flip side, for people that maybe feel like they're behind or don't have their money stuff in order, wish they were in a different place, you know, or maybe even just struggling to pay the bills. It is so important to tend to both the energetic and spiritual and healing components of that while you're doing the practical and the physical. Right. So we just address like the very practical physical aspects. But so as I'm working with clients and going through those, we also are simultaneously looking at mentally, emotionally, energetically, spiritually, possibly even physically, what is going on beneath the surface that is either creating that or contributing that, or that a lot of times, so when I say I'm a wormhole coach, basically what that means is that I'm obsessed with quantum physics and I know that wormholes are real. I have gone through many of them in my lifetime, and I've coached many of my clients to go through them in this lifetime. And essentially what it is is I don't know, have you ever read the book A Wrinkle in Time? Oh, yeah. It was one of my favorites as a kid, and they show the picture of the Tesseract, right? And they show the ant walking across the little string. I don't think your podcast listeners can see me, but if you know that image, the ant's walking across, and on a normal timeline, it takes the ant however long it takes to get from point A to C, which is from one side of the string to the other. But if you take point B, which is right in the middle, and you pull that out and you collapse it, then A and C are right next to each other and the ant can just hop over to the next place. So if we're looking at a hole in one of someone's six steps to financial independence, then we can also simultaneously look at what is that point B, right? Like what is that obstacle that if we remove that or transmuted that in some way, then this wouldn't be an issue. Like this would actually be easy and fast, you know, and be able to remedy this.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Wow. Wow. Okay, you're blowing my mind a little bit here. So really the people you're working with, yes, the focus is this financial um focus, but it sounds to me like you're also really, again, going back to what you're saying, really holistically coaching them through other blockages that they may be having in their life to ultimately have this financial freedom. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Exactly. And that's why when I say I never imagine myself to be working in financial. Services. If you had asked me that a couple of years ago, I would have literally laughed at you and ran off into the forest and like forged mushrooms. But like I was interested. And I thought that this field was incredibly toxic and extractive for the planet, which it is, right? Currently, we are working to change that on a more epic collective level. But what really got me into this and hooked on this is that I saw how, like when I started to receive some of the financial education from the people who have already been doing this work, it activated this sacred rage

Deconditioning Shame And Gatekeeping

SPEAKER_01 22:35

in me. That I was like, we should be taught this. Why is no one teaching this and talking about this? This is so messed up. And so I had my own financial strategy done. And then after that, I just couldn't stop sharing these concepts and talking about it and like letting everyone know that like we do not need to be in the situations we're in at all with some small changes. And so out of that sacred rage was born this conviction. And then I basically was just like, can I do this too? I was like, I don't have to know the qualifications to be a financial professional, but like I feel like I have to do this. And you know, it was like such this symbiotic, synchronous, synchronistic thing that happened, this unfolding that happened that got me to the place where it's like, all right, I don't know, I don't know if I can do this, but I'm just gonna keep leaning in. And this to me, again, goes back to the spiritual path, right? The universe does not give us something that we are not able to hold or work with or through, right? Like whatever it is that's appearing is pro is in some way part of the next part of our path. And so I just continued to lean in. And as I did that and I sat with clients, that was how I realized that oh, actually, I get it now. All of my healing work, all of my gifts, all of the creative work I've done, all of the everything I've done on this planet in this lifetime and in past lifetimes, right, is contributing to my ability to be able to do this because like financial literacy and planning actually is not really that hard. And that's why I get so mad. It's been gatekeeped from us. And the hard part is doing the unconditioning work, right? To understand that yes, we can do this, yes, this can be easy, it can actually be fun, right? We can actually generate and steward and hold and move great resources for our own life and for the lives of others. Like these are things we've been basically conditioned to think that we cannot do. So the hardest part of it is deconditioning all of that, which is such a huge process. But that's how I learned in working through my clients. Like, I was like, whoa, we're doing massive healing work, like more than even when I sit with a client and it's not geared towards their financial freedom and liberation. And often I was like, oh, cool. So I can do this because this is basically just everything that I have been working on. And then on top of that, like I know what to do to make your money make money.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Oh my gosh, that's amazing. And I'm thinking as you're talking that yeah, that makes so much sense because we're not just talking about financial wealth, but literally abundance in everything. Right. And so if you're healing all of these other aspects of yourself, I think to be able to bring in that abundance so that you have a very fulfilling full life and you're safe in this lifetime. All right. Well so we have a little bit of an idea of how you got into this latest uh uh part of your healing journey, but uh let's go back a little bit. You tell me where to start, but I'm very curious to know about how the name Lobster Bird came to you and what it represents for your journey.

The Lobsterbird Origin Story

SPEAKER_01 25:46

That does go back to our New York City days. It's been a very long time. That is a fuller story that I I have a podcast. So my podcast is on hiatus for who knows how when, but it's called Bridge to Being. If you look up Lobster Bird, you'll probably find it. And I have a specific one that's titled What the Heck is a Lobster Bird. So if you type that in any of where you listen to podcasts, you can get the full fuller story. In fact, it's evolved since then, even. But I will say that this name I feel was gifted to me by spirit. It was not obviously always my name. And I it really came along while I was deep in the trenches of my artistic work. I so I was in grad school and I was working on my thesis. And at the time I was so blessed to go to a grad school that allowed me to actually, so I had a lot of work coming in, actually. So I was a puppeteer professionally. I was a multi, what do you call it? I'm now gonna call it multidimensional. There's a word for it. Multidisciplinary. That's in the art word, that's what they call it. Multidisciplinary arts. But one of the things I did was puppetry. And then the other one was basically bridging technology and performing arts. I was making these experiences for people. So instead of people going to the theater and sitting there and watching our performance, they would go to something that changed them because they moved through it and the performance happened around them and with them. And so that was my thesis. But I was also super blessed to be a part of other projects that were not mine that were getting a lot of um work. You know, they were brought to major festivals around the world, like the Singapore Arts Fest and the Edinburgh, the main stage at the Edinburgh Arts Festival, like huge opportunities. And so my grad school allowed, not only allowed me to go and be working, actively working in the field while I was getting my degree, but they were like giving me college credit for it. And then they were like, but what you have to do is you have to create a like website and a blog. Again, this is like before these were things that people really did. And so I was like, okay, I guess I'll figure that out. And so I remember very vividly, actually, I was this was mimage was coming to my mind just yesterday because I remember sitting in the Brooklyn College computer lab and being like, wow, like naming a website feels like a really big thing. Any like entrepreneurs with that. I'm like committing myself to a virtual home. And I had no idea. I was like, what would I even call this? And so at the time I was working, I was doing so many things as usual, but one of them was I was working in my friend's karaoke bar in the East Village, and it was Halloween. I didn't have a costume. I met up with my friend Tom. I was like, I don't know what to do. It's like tomorrow, and they make a big deal about this. They're gonna be freaked out if I don't have a costume. And Tom said, I have a lobster costume. Do you want that? And I was like, Yes. And so the next day it was Halloween, and as I was bartending, it became a thing because I had these like giant claws and arms, and they were like knocking everything down over the bar. People thought it was hysterical. People started dedicating songs to the lobster, like under the sea in Octopus's garden. They ran out of theme songs. So they started changing lyrics like Hells for Children became Hells for Lobsters. It was like the whole night was like about this lobster, and then it spiraled from there. And then like people were like wanting to collaborate, but like with the lobster, like not with me. They're like, can we do this performance? But you as the lobster kind of thing. And but it started to become a thing on its own. So now I'm sitting in this computer lab. Oh, the one other piece to this puzzle is very early on when I moved to New York, I did another art project, an art installation, an immersive art installation called Fishbird. And that project was about humans who were basically mixed race, mixed race identity. And so it comes from the Hawaiian people, the Hoppe people have a saying, a fish and a bird could fall in love, but where would they live? One can't live in the sea, the other can't live in the sky. And they always feel, you know, that some part of them, especially with the culture in Hawaii as it is, most of them are Japanese and American, and that it does, there's this sense that I'm not quite this, I'm not quite that. And where do I belong? So I'm sitting in the computer lab and I'm like, all of the themes of my artistic work were around merging things that didn't seem like they could go together, right? Like art and science, like performing arts and visual arts, like how do they go? Science and spirituality. Everyone at that time was like, those aren't, you know, those are different. So many different things that it's been the context of my entire life that I've I embody all of these different dualities that felt very hard to reconcile. And so I'm sitting there, I'm like, what am I gonna name this? I just like it's a bringing together of things, it's finding home and belonging. And then I remember that project, the Fishbird Project, and I was like, Oh, I'm not a fish bird, I'm a lobster bird, right? Like everyone wants the lobster. That is now a part of me for some reason. And this is who I am. And you know what started as a way for me to express and process and share my creativity, which, as we started saying, right, for me was a portal to great deep healing and realization and ability, ultimately. So that was like the very start, me and the computer lab being like, okay, WordPress, I'm gonna have lopstar.com. And I guess that's gonna encompass everything that I'm doing. And it evolved as I went on my healing path and spiritual path to understand that actually, and so back to my psychology background, um, also a huge fan of Carl Jung. Right. Carl Jung, one of his main things that all of a lot of us, there's a lot of memes about the secret, that's the third thing, right? And that's when you take two things that are polarities and you bring them together, and it's instead of finding like the balance, like a lot of people talk about finding balance in your life, but instead of this quest for balance, which does not exist, right? Because in nature, when something is completely balanced, it's stagnant and it's it dies, basically. But what if we're able to bridge these things? And out of bridging these things, it creates a secret third thing that's a transcendent third, you know, that when you bring these things that people are like, oh no, those can't go together, but then you find a way that actually they do. They create this whole new dance and they create this whole new way of understanding and being. As I was on my path, I realized that, oh, this is everything, this is everything on our planet. And so it's just like finances and healing, right? Those things don't they're not talked about together like super often. Catching on that we have to do a lot of money healing, right? But actually, like the financial industry itself and all of the systems and industries on our planet need great and deep healing. And it's up to us to do that internal healing first, then to do that in our relationships and our communities, and then that ripples out into the systems. So, anyway, to close this saga, like on this path, I realized that essentially we're looking for two things. We're looking for that transcendent third thing, right? Which is like the enlightened aspect of, oh, there's this thing we haven't discovered yet, right? And it brings us closer to who we truly are. And simultaneously, it brings us down and in into our humanity and into our belonging, right? Because all of us have these things within us that feel like they're at dissonance, right? That feel like they can't coexist. We all have this wounding, and then we all also, I believe, have this seed and this desire and this capacity within us to create and expand and grow. And so what I realized is that actually we have utter capability and therefore I think utter responsibility to literally co-create the world all around us. We have the ability to do that. We have been taught that we cannot, right? We've taught that this is the world that's in handed to us and we have to behave a certain way within it. And that is so opposite of the truth. That lobster bird name that came to me that was literally an assignment, was given to me as an educ, like an academic, but also a spiritual assignment, became my quest to figure out like how can we do that with everything that we've been taught that shouldn't coexist? How can we find that other thing? Because to me, being in that space is how we're going to co-create a new world where everyone can thrive all together.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Wow. Okay. Um that's why I don't often tell this together. No, it's a great story, and I definitely will go back and listen to that episode because it it's just it's fascinating. Talk to me a little bit about like your I know this is also very uh long for you, but uh maybe just the cliff notes versions of your like spiritual healing journey. I know at one point I think when we back when we met, you were just studying to become a Reiki practitioner. And I wondered like what are, you know, when you had this group that you were working with clients with, what sort of modalities or was it intuitive? Or talk to me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

So interestingly, the whole obstabird thing was the catalyst to the rest, obviously, but not at the time. Uh because as I said, you know, my artistic career was really exploding in a very beautiful way. And so as I was ending grad school, and now I had this seed, this this name and the seed of a thing, is that I I basically started

Japan Collapse And Shikoku Pilgrimage

SPEAKER_01 35:52

this work. So towards my the end of my uh academic career, what I was focused on was robotics, basically. This is this is where it takes a sideways elevator turn. Um my thesis was that technology was developing super rapidly, which as we know now, right? Like we have Chad GPT, or then that didn't even that like again was like a very seed of an idea. But I saw what was happening in robotics and I thought it's just because the way that technology moves is exponentially, right? So it doesn't just progress like linearly over time, it actually compounds. This is interesting, it compounds, much like our money can do. Um, it compounds in its ability to for us to develop it and for it to develop itself now. And so there's going, there's the law of accelerating returns, which is essentially like it's a curve. So it's like it develops, and then as to important, it shoots up and then the word it's like technology looks completely different, like in a moment. That's the trajectory. And so I thought, oh wow, if that's the case, then we need to prepare for that upswing and understand for ourselves as humans what our relationship to technology is. And so at the time there was a lot of developments going on, especially in Japan with Android robots and like how they were using them. So they were like developing them to have in homes as people are aging to have robots there who they can relate to and touch and talk to that might enhance their quality of life. And I was so fascinated by this field of HRI, which is human-robot interaction, right? Because to me, again, the psychologist and the sociologist in me was like, okay, developing the technology, like that's cool and everything. But how we develop it is going to determine what the technology becomes and who we become as a human collective, right? And so I really got super interested in researching this. And so I had this project where I was also at the time doing this art form called Bhutto. It's B-U-T-O-H. It's not Bhutto, it's not martial arts. It is Bhutto, and it is a Japanese post-war avant-garde performance discipline. If you look it up, you'll get a taste of it. It is very strange and uncanny. And essentially, like what it was doing, um, it's like this is a whole other topic, but it was really my one of my first very deep, intensive dives into what embodiment work is. So I also doing somatic embodiment work with my clients. I think uh embodiment work is the work right now in our healing that we need to be doing. We've been doing so much of the spiritual, mental, emotional, all that stuff, and we need to bring it down and in. Our bodies have so much information and so much capacity, and it actually all starts with our bodies anyway. So we might as well root and ground all of that in. So as I was working in robotics there and Bhutto, I was bridging again, right? These things don't seem like anything to do with each other, but I was bridging these two disciplines, and then there was one other human on the planet who was a direct descendant of the first Bhutto masters, and who most of them had passed at that time, and he was interested in the exact same thing. Long story short, of going to Japan pretty much immediately after getting my MFA, and and everything was on the up and up. We had this exhibition at what was like the modern museum of Tokyo. Like it was like it was huge, and there was a lot of interest around this work. And suddenly I was in Japan, and now this is an important part of the story because my mother was born in Osaka, Japan. Longer story for another day, but that was where she was born. And so I was essentially in my ancestral homelands too. And I was so this was like my first taste of unconscious ancestral healing. Not many people were talking about that then either. So that healing was happening at the same time, and so was this deep embodiment work that I was doing. And suddenly my body started screaming at me. It started screaming, like I was paralyzed, like a lot of days, like literally like in my mind and in my body. And it just the message I kept hearing was you can't do this, you need to stop doing this. You have to stop doing. And this was the whole shenanigan of a project, the robotics and the photo that I'd gone over for. And my human brain could not rock, but oh my life, like this is what it's been building up, and it's successful. Why would I still go on? Ah, it doesn't make sense. And so, what happened in that moment of I like I feel like a robot when they short circuit? It's like when I was like me and my Tokyo apartment, I like short circuited, and then literally I was paralyzed in my body for two weeks on the floor. This had happened before once in New York, but it was for much more of a brief time. But this time, like my body kind of knew I wasn't gonna listen. Like, I wasn't going to listen to what it was saying, and so it forced me to lay there. So I wrote a couple books, a few books, actually. And my first book, Phase Out, The Secret Guide to Finding Work That Frees Your Soul. I tell this full story, so I'm not really gonna tell it, but I'm gonna fast forward to the end of it, which is that after the paralysis, I came out of that. And immediately the first thing I did, uh, one of my friends was doing a puppetry show in New York, and I met up with her, and then the next they were like the next sign on the path, basically. They were like, oh, like my whole life, oh, once my body broke down, my whole life imploded as well. So my partner and I that I went over for that ended. The work obviously ended because I was like, I can't do this project. And it was like in a couple of weeks, and it was a whole mess. Like, I'm a very responsible person, or I consider myself to be, you know, and it was a whole mess. My finances didn't exist anymore because I was now wasn't working, and everything fell apart. So they were like, Oh, then you have to go on this pilgrimage. And I was like, I have gotta do what they're like, there's this pilgrimage on a small island in Japan, and you walk around and you like make these offerings, and you're gonna receive all these blessings. So I was like, okay, I guess that's what I'm doing now. And I'm like, people train, so it takes 40 to 60 days to walk this whole Shikoku pilgrimage. You go to 88 different temples on an island about the size of New Jersey. And I just got on a night bus. They gave me a stick and a book and a hat on the night bus, and I started walking. And so that was really like the beginning. I'd already been doing a lot of things. I had been doing yoga, I'd been dabbling in meditation, I've been doing this embodiment work through the different performance and artistic practices. I had been doing a lot, but this pilgrimage really clarified for me that oh, all of that and all of everything moving forward is part of this spiritual path. It's part of this deep healing that I need to do, and I'm not even sure what it is, but through walking the path, I will continue to find out with each next step. And so where that led me after that, I won't spoil the ending. Go read the book. But after that, I was still in Japan. This is what happened. I was in Japan and I was with one of my friends who was a Bhutto teacher in Awomori in the northern part of Japan. And my sister came to visit. And my sister was having this huge back, lower back pain. Like she really she couldn't like walk around that much. And she, and this was her first time ever in Japan. Also, and she was only there for two weeks. And we're like, oh no. Mari has all these connections. Let's so take you to someone who can help. So she takes us to this Japanese man, and then I was I think I was just like, I want help too. I was like, I was just paralyzed. Last month and I didn't do anything. I should probably do something. So we go to this guy who, for all intents and purposes, I thought was maybe like a chiropractor or an acupuncturist. I don't almost remember, I don't remember which modality it was, but it was something pretty conventional, like some something we're familiar with. But as I was laying on his table, he asked me, and it was interesting because Mari was in the room with us and he spoke Japanese. And I at that point could speak Japanese, but I was like, Am I hearing him right? And he said, Can I put my hands on you? And I was also a little freaked out because I was like, Is this normal? Like, I just do doctors do this. But thankfully Mari was there. I was like, Yes, that is what he said. And are you okay with that? And I was in full surrender mode. So I said, okay, sure. And he

Reiki As A Gateway Practice

SPEAKER_01 44:47

did. And I experienced something on that table that changed me. Like I just I could feel energy, like for the the really first time, maybe, really consciously and really like connected with consent. So I think him asking was such a huge part of that because I was able to piece together like, oh wow, there's this whole other way to heal things that most of us have never experienced before. What is this? I need to know what this is. And what he was doing was Reiki, as you alluded to. And so after Japan, I came back and I was in crisis because my whole life had imploded. I didn't know what I was doing. And three different people reached out to me, seemingly apropos of nothing. I had never heard of Reiki before. They were not energy people, they were like other artists. And they were like, Have you heard of this? And one of them was one of my mentors, Gerald Busby at the Chelsea Hotel. Um he actually, oh, so I actually had heard of Reiki because he, and he has told his story many times, but he was diagnosed with AIDS, and basically he's like in his 80s or 90s now. Healed himself through Reiki. But he reached out to me during this time and was like, Hey, have you considered actually learning it? And I was like, that's so strange because something just came through my like someone was like, You need to go to this healing center in New York. And they were having a Reiki training like the next weekend. And then at the same time, one of my dear friends asked me to come and house it or place in East Harlem and watch her pets. And it was that same weekend. Like, okay, so I'll be there. There's thing, and that was the catalyst. Like Reiki for me, I feel like energy healing is it's like a gateway drug. It's like alcohol or cannabis. But it's once you start to consciously work with energy, and this is like the life force energy that exists in all things that all of us can have access to. And once you start to work with it, feel it, move you, move it through, feel what it's doing to your body, mind, and spirit. And then if you start practicing with other people and then see how they can, and especially my favorite skeptics, right? I worked with so many people that were like, I don't think this is a real thing, but I'll let you do it. And then at the end was like, I was feeling so much. Oh my gosh. And then having huge healing realizations, once you tap into that, really, I think it just unfolds. Like, how can you not learn more about how to heal on these levels we've never been taught? And then once you start to heal on levels we've never been taught, that activates the very real, it's like a concept, but it is a very real practical application that we can utilize that energy to literally change the quantum field all around us. And when we work with the field affects form, not the other way around. Right. So once we start to work with the field, we start to see how our bodies respond and change, our relationships grow and evolve. Literally, the world around us becomes different, and the experiences and opportunities we have flow to us in ways that we could have never imagined before. So Reiki was a gateway. But from there, like I studied so many other healing modalities. And the last thing I will say on this very windy path is that pilgrimage, also that pilgrimage was a catalyst. And so for me, I was like, oh, pilgrimage is a wormhole. Like that, I think I had 27 days. That 27 days, like I learned more than in my entire life. Like I'm excited. Like more and I know more and I can do more than ever before. So I committed to that for a long time, basically for seven years as a way of life. And I didn't consciously do seven years, but it just naturally ended. In our human biology, after seven years, pretty much every cell in our body is different. It's shed and regenerated, right? And it like hysterically happened at seven years that it ended. But for seven years, I was going on my own and I was making these huge discoveries. I was learning healing modalities, I was learning about my spiritual path. And then at some point, that's how my business really came to be because I didn't have a business. I was an artist, I was, I had bartended, I'd done all these random jobs working for other people. And suddenly people wanted to do things with me. And then I was like, okay, well, then that's all I need paid for that. And then I felt like a coach came out of the ether and reached out to me. And I was like, I'll try this. And one thing led to another. And business as spiritual paths to me is super important, just as finances at spiritual and healing path are really important. But eventually, while I was on these pilgrimages, I started to work with other spiritual creatives because I was like, this is my like hill I will die on. I can say this and be done. Is that for me, and this is why I work in finance right now, and this is why I started everything I started way back in the day, is the people who are, you know, we're all creative, right? We are all like God spark in human form. Let me make that clear. But there are some people who came on this planet and chose this path, which is a really hard one, which is to be a creative or a healer or a visionary or, you know, um, a care worker, an earth steward, right? There's these people that are here because they know that things can be better here and they're gonna do everything in their power, right, to have that be the case in their lifetime. And those are the people that are my people. And so I realized then those are the people that I want to help. So back then I was like helping them build their businesses, but I was doing it from a spiritual perspective, from a healing perspective. And now I'm doing that with people in finances. But what that led to me was then bringing those people on pilgrimages because I was like, you'll get more in these 14 days about how to run your business and heal your life than any other way. So I started guiding other spiritual creatives on pilgrimages, and that was when a lot of the other healing practices and gifts seemingly dropped in. You know, like I started doing things on those trips that just came to me. It was like, do this now. I was really connected to spirit, I was really listening, wide open. My whole intention was to be a service, right? So I was like, show me how. So things would drop in. And then I had someone who was one of my clients, and she um taught shamanism. And she was like, Are you aware that you're actually practicing shamanism? I was like, not really. Things like that happened and unfolded. And so, you know, I want to also just not just, but totally honor and appreciate all of the amazing lineages and teachers that I've learned from, including like my Buddhist teachers and my Reiki teachers, so many incredible teachers connected to pure lineages in this life that I have learned from. And also acknowledge that every single one of us has the capacity to connect with universe, source, God, great creator, whatever you conceptualize the thing that's making all this happen as. We are that. And so we do also have this connection to our inherent intuitive way of being, right? That we can really bring things through in our own way. I don't list my credentials actually ever, because it's like they would take three years and eight pages on a resume. But yeah, it's been a long path. And that's why, you know, it's important to me to continue to explore what this means through the financial lens.

Funding Visionaries For Planetary Healing

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Because for me, when the creatives and the healers and the visionaries and the stewards and the caregivers and the people who are heart-centered, who are born with the inherent capacity and desire and drive to create, right? When we are well resourced financially, as well as all the other healing ways, that to me is the way that the world is going to change the fastest. Like to me, that's going to be the law of accelerated terms on our capacity for collective change to turn around what is going on in our world, which is incredibly dire. We are at a dire time, right? Now, literally the planet is screaming and dying, and so are we. The rate that people are getting sick is an indication of that. And it is happening on our planet, and we have this chance to turn this around. And for me, the only way that's going to happen is if we get resources in the hands of people that are going to implement things that are going to actually create change. I know that one billionaire, I know as a permaculture designer, one billionaire could make things happen on this planet that would feed the entire world. World hunger does not have to exist, actually. And if there are any billionaires out there, I challenge you. Like, let's work together because you could actually change that if you wanted to. And yet there's all of these people with huge hearts and great spirits who are like crying, you know, to be able to do something. And if those people had the resources, then they would do it and things would change.

SPEAKER_02 54:00

Oh, that's so beautiful. Amazing. Okay, so we now I have to have you come back. We have to do another episode because now I want to go deeper into this whole the humanity of robotics and AI. And I want to talk to you about energy healing through the Zoom world, and I want to talk to you more about shamanism. So, can we have you come back?

SPEAKER_01 54:27

Podcasts are my favorite thing. If anyone is coming to talk about crazy stuff, I'm so happy. I love to be able to drop in these moments because I feel like I do so many things. And I'm so grateful to you, Catherine, for your presence and asking me to come because again, this for me is part of the spiritual path, right? As I get to articulate what I've done, where I'm at, where we're going, things become even clearer and clearer. So I so appreciate this opportunity. And I hope that if anyone is listening and inspired, that they connect, you can find me everywhere, and we'll do another one. Yes, no, do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:09

Literally, how do people find you?

SPEAKER_01 55:11

Do they lobster bird? Literally, so there's been some people who were like felt weird asking me like what about my name. And so they Google it and they're like, interestingly, the only thing that comes up is you. All right. So you can go that route. I'm on social media everywhere. So you can find me. I'm either at Lobsterbird or the Lobster Bird, depending on the platform. Lobsterbird.com, as you know, it's like no and still my website, although it does not even reflect what I'm doing. But I would say, yeah, just find me on one of the channels, reach out to Kat. And I would prefer to like text each other at this point. I think we kind of need to get all this again. We'll touch on this in the next one. But I am really also about divesting from some of these other platforms and getting more in real and human and deep together. So yeah, reach out in some way. We'll find each other and I will love it. Awesome. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 56:06

So I know it's like a little bit after, but do you want to lead us through something? Do you have a few moments? I'm ready. Let's wormhole

Guided Wormhole Clearing Meditation

SPEAKER_02 56:17

practices. Hey everyone. If you're listening while you're driving or operating heavy machinery, please hit a pause at this point and come back when you're safely somewhere where you can listen and go into a nice trance state.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

As I said, yeah, I'd like to take a few moments. You can go ahead and close your eyes if that feels good to you, and not if you're driving or something. If you are, come back to this later, close your eyes and let's just take a few deep breaths. That was like a whole download. So you can exhale everything that you've heard or even everything that you've experienced today. Taking another breath in into anything that's like that's been dredged up, like in your thoughts or feels or anything and exhaling that. I want to note you can inhale and let something, if something crunchy arose, and you can exhale that. But also, even if something like exciting arose, inhale in and let that go too, and let that go into the ether to come back and transformed into new breath and information. And as you continue to breathe, I want to take a moment to firstly surround ourselves in protection. So imagine yourself surrounded in something that feels totally protective for you. For a lot of people, it's light. For you, it could be like a wall of roses or small dogs or metal spikes or just something that's protective and setting the intention that this layer that you're bringing through, right, from the quantum into your imagination is actually then creating this layer in your physical realm that only allows in the 100% most beneficent, well-meaning, abundant, joyful, healing, spiritually rejuvenating energies into your space and anything else cannot get in. And from this place of protection, I'm really called to do a prayer, actually, and an invocation that for anyone that is here and listening to connect to your source energy, right? However, you conceptualize that, connect to that above the crown of your head and have that energy go up above your crown, into the sky, into the atmosphere, up into the cosmos, up past the cosmos, and into source straight itself. And imagine that light pouring down all the way back through the cosmos, the atmosphere, and down through the crown of your head, as if you're in a waterfall of liquid light. Remembering that this light energy is you also, as you're allowing it to flow down, you're gonna allow it to flow down over your physical body and in your physical body so that it's clearing out anything that you no longer need or want, any obstacles. I want to give you this moment here to think for yourself. Think about, we've talked a lot about money and finance, right? Is there an obstacle that you have in your life? Allow that to arise on your psyche to acknowledge and be aware of that, and allow the light to clear whatever that is from your system. This is your wormhole light. We're clear right now, we're like clearing out the one thing that you need to clear that will move the needle in the direction that you want to move it in. So really breathe has these energies. Setting the intention is enough. If you can see or feel or hear, you know, what this light is doing, that's also amazing. Really allow it to clear from your system what is no longer needed, and imagine it moving all the way down through you from the crown of your head, straight down your central channel, down your spine. If you're into the chakras, imagine it clearing out all those chakras. If you don't know what that means, set the intention that it's doing it, and it will be done. And allow it to flow down, continue down through your hips, your legs, down through your feet, down through the bottom of your feet, and down out. So your root at the bottom of your torso. Imagine this light flowing down and out. So it's taking away what you no longer need. It's flowing down into the earth, like down through the roots that are coming down from your feet. Imagine that there's a root coming down from your root center and everything is leaving. And this is where I want to bring in this prayer and this invocation that every single person that is clearing out what no longer serves also simultaneously receive on that very same light energy all of the healing, all of the connection, all of the wisdom, all of the grace, all of the allness of anything and everything that they need to remember, for you to remember who you are, for you to remember what you are capable of, for you to remember that every single moment and every single breath is you on your spiritual path in this glorious human form where you can do so much, you can do so much good with what you have and who you are, and really allowing that to flow in, allowing that transmission to permeate with the light that's coming into your body, into every cell of your being, knowing that within every nucleus of every cell, there are biophotons that you are charging up right now in every single cell of your being. They're going to radiate out into the rest of your body, into all of the spaces in between all the cells, all of the waters of your being. As Kat said, creating this flow of light within you that is vibrating and radiating. And taking a breath here and feeling in your body, where do you feel this sensation? Do you feel like a buzzing, a tingling, a numbness, a temperature, a something? Logging in your embodiment where you feel this. And if it helps, you can put your hands there on your body. You could also move that part of your body. This part of your body is waking up and remembering that you are source itself. You are God's spark itself. You are part of the great creator. And take a moment here to set an intention for yourself that you will utilize this energy that is flowing through you right now to do the one next, best, most aligned, and inspired action that you can do today that is going to co-create the world that you want to see.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

And so it is, and so it shall be.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:14

And thank you to all of our spirit allies, our well-healed ancestors, all of the earth, and all the spirit beings, all the people who have been stewarding these lands. All of everything, seen and unseen, that is contributing and regenerating this beautiful life that we get to be a part of. And thank you. Whenever you're ready, and blink your eyes open and look at the world around you and see if it looks any different than it did before you did that.

Closing Thanks And Listener Support

SPEAKER_01 1:03:51

And taking a moment to thank you and acknowledge you for being here, for being in this transmission, and for being on this glorious planet together.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:07

Thank you so much, Lobsterbird. This was really incredible, and uh I know it's going, people are gonna be re-listening to this one over and over. So thank you again, and I can't wait to have you back.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:19

Thank you. I will talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:22

You've been listening to Hip Talks, original music by Tracy Moore, and the Jazzy Fat Nasties, podcast editing and sound engineering by Zachary Trainer. If you like what you heard, please like and share and follow us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you make a comment, I promise I will respond.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:46

Kid would love to live, you give to give.