Episode 351 - Dr. Janelle Hallman, "Embodied Healing and Authentic Connection"

Welcome back to the Restoring the Soul podcast with Michael John Cusick. In today’s episode, Michael sits down in the studio with Dr. Janelle Hallman, a seasoned intensive therapist at Restoring the Soul and a longtime friend and colleague. With decades of experience leading therapy intensives, groups, and workshops around the world, Janelle shares powerful insights from her work, especially her passion for walking alongside women in their journeys of healing and transformation.

From memorable fishing adventures in Alaska to the profound privilege of witnessing souls come to life in the therapy room, Janelle opens up about what drew her to this vocation and why group work with women has been so transformative, both for her and the participants. The conversation delves into the unique healing power of supportive community, the importance of being truly seen, and the creative ways Janelle now facilitates online “Essence Circles” for women seeking authenticity, connection, and restoration.

Transcript

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Hi everybody and welcome to the Restoring the Soul podcast. It's Michael and today I have in the studio and we are actually in a studio, not over the Internet. Dr. Janelle Hallman, who is an intensive therapist at Restoring the Soul and has been doing intensives for six years here. Janelle is a longtime colleague of mine. I've known her for almost 30 years. We used to teach together at Colorado Christian University. She's a published author. She has done workshops all around the world and tremendous confidence and who she is as a therapist and as a person. Today we're going to talk about her work with women in both intensives, but especially in workshops and groups as she's worked with women. So with no further ado, Janelle, welcome to the Restoring the Soul podcast. Thank you. So glad to be here. I think you've been on the program at least two other times and it's been great because I remember the first time I learned things about you that I didn't know a little bit about your story growing up. So let's just revisit that just for a moment. You might not have been prepared for this, but you spent time in the Pacific Northwest. Yes. And as I recall, Alaska. Yes. Tell me about your favorite childhood story in the Pacific Northwest or Alaska. Oh, gosh. You know, what just came to my mind was actually not a childhood story, but was as an adult going back to visit. It's a great story. Can I share that, please? Yeah, absolutely. My dad and I went fishing. I was probably in my 20s and we went out in a boat that was probably a 15 foot boat with a little outboard motor, just a trolling motor. And we were right at some cliffs just down the beach from where my grandparents house was. And we were trolling along the cliffs and my dad's fishing line got a yank on it. And so he started reeling it in and nothing was coming up. So he goes, oh, darn, it's a snag. But he kept reeling, reeling. And then we were, you know, moving the boat around where he thought was a snag. He just keeps reeling. But he was taking in line. So it was a very odd thing because it was obviously a snag until at one point we both looked down in the water and There was a 10 foot flash of white. 10ft, 10ft of white under the surface. It was a halibut. It was about a 14 foot halibut. Oh my gosh. That he had pulled up. It was almost as, as the boat. Wow. And so we were not prepared. I mean we were salmon fishing. You know, we were not prepared and we didn't even have a gaff hook on the. On board because there's no, there's no 14 foot net. Yeah, no, I mean, we have little nets. And so we looked at the halibut. We were both rather freaked out and a little scared because if he started fighting, if the halibut started fighting, it could affect our boat and our lives. So he had to take out his pocket knife and cut the line because it's one of the best fish in the world. And what a great story. It was a great story. And it's one of those fishing stories it's hard to believe. So when he says he had a 14 foot halibut on the line with his daughter and a 12 foot rowboat. Nobody believes, nobody believes us. But you're there to actually testify to the fact that that's an amazing story. So how did you get from growing up in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska to being a therapist? Well, how much time do we have? S? We have seven minutes. No, go ahead and jump in with the story. Right. I think the story of moving towards therapy started with just my friendships and how across my lifespan I had friends who always wanted to talk to me and especially talk to me about their struggles and problems. And that just continued into my 20s and 30s, early 30s. It got to the point where I was involved in support groups, I was involved in doing some care work with people that it became extensive and it was taking up a lot of my time and it would have been nice if I could earn money. So it was one of those things. Where I might as well be paid for it. I might as well be paid for it. Exactly. But it was something that you were doing because that's kind of who you are. And you also have a background in the legal field and doing a lot of administrative work. So it's not like, you know so many. The joke is teachers, you know, teach because they can't do anything else. Therapists counsel because they're just going to sit around and talk to people anyway. But you've actually, you're actually very highly accomplished. You got your PhD while doing a private practice full time. You've written a book, you've spoken around the world. Out of all of that and now being an intensive counselor. And you don't have to say that my favorite thing is working at restoring the soul. But what have been your favorite things and the. Your best experiences as a therapist since you've been doing this as a licensed therapist for about 30 years. Like me. I think my favorite thing is working with people who I would call marginalized for very, you know, a lot of different reasons, where I become the first person who really gets to see them and hear them and encounters their soul. And so much goodness that's lost to the world because people aren't willing to see or to sit with. So that has just been amazing and profound and love it when also people just have breakthroughs and come to realize that they are beloved or that they are worthy. That is very, very, very satisfying and fulfilling. And many experiences in individual therapy as well as group work with women, profound change in transitions and transformations. I want to come back to the group work with women in a moment, but I don't know about you, but if you're on social media at all or even watching popular TV shows, this phrase, I don't feel seen or I felt so seen has become part of pop culture. And I think the reason for that is that as you talked about, when you see someone for the first time, especially somebody that hasn't had a lot of input with those four S's of being seen, soothed, safe, secure, they might have grown up profoundly neglected or traumatized, and especially the marginalized, the people that have been pushed out to the side, it's so powerful for an individual, but it's also powerful for me. And it sounds like this is the case for you to have that experience and to be an instrument for people to almost like wake up. Tell me about an experience that you've had with that, maybe with the marginalized. Maybe more recently. I'm distracted by the word wake up because what I used to call it is I think I am seeing or witnessing a soul being birthed. That's what. Because they came to life and discovered that they had something to offer. Wow. So big difference. Wake up is that they were actually conscious at one point. Birth is. It's like they're coming into being. They're coming into being being. I mean, that's what much of my work has felt like. So those experiences where people are coming into being, do you have a memory or a moment in your 30 year career where someone comes to mind where you were the instrument of them coming into being and being birthed? I have a memory of working with a gentleman at restoring the soul and I can't recall what the context was, except that I know the message that I was sending him is it wasn't his fault, it wasn't his fault, and that his value was not diminished by whatever experience it was that he was sharing and he broke into tears and just wept for quite a while. And when he was finally able to compose himself and look up, were around that he has value, that I have some sense of value or worth, that he was touching that inside of himself. And that's a waking up. I mean, that's waking up, but it's also a birthing. Because if you live with a sense of no value in life, there is no life, there's no abundance. That's right. Yeah. It's like you're beside yourself or not actually inhabiting your life, as Leon Payne used to say. Yeah. So let's come back to talking about your group work with women. That's something that's also been a passion, but you've also gotten a lot of post doctoral training and certifications in working with women. Why are groups such a powerful experience for you with women? Good question. I started group work early in my practice as a therapist. So it actually started about 28 years ago. And that was because I felt when I'm sitting with so many women who didn't realize the goodness that lived inside of them or their worth or their value, I realized that the individual relationship wasn't enough to affirm their worth and value. They were definitely feeling loved by me, but they needed community. And so many of them didn't have community. And so that was the first realization is I think I want to create community for these women. Well, I couldn't go out there recruiting friends, so I thought, I'm going to start a therapy group for women. And I did. And I ran those for a couple of them for about eight years. And they were based in Irving Yalom's theory around groups. He's a famous psychiatrist, the Social Microcosm, who has a book that's about 3 inches thick on how to do group therapy. But his uniqueness was to construct a group where you process here and now experiences. And that's how I ran my group, was here and now inviting the women to respond honestly and authentically to what was happening right now in this circle of group. And it was so powerful because often conflict would arise in the group and we would work through the conflict, which gave them an imprint or a corrective experience, as Yalom would call it, of something different than what happened in their family of origin. And they gained a sense also of mattering. We would acknowledge them if they were absent by keeping an empty chair in the circle so that we would know that she's still here with us, although she couldn't be in physical presence. Just so many different things that we did, just so powerful. And I think a lot of women got more healing out of those groups than they did in just the individual therapy. Individual therapy, weekly therapy is slow. And that's what I was doing back then. So very powerful. And then I led retreats for 15 years for women who had a common struggle. So these are women who all came in with a common struggle and the power of them just meeting each other initially on the opening night going, oh, you are like me. Oh, I'm not alone. So this universality of I'm not alone, where everything that we did over those weekends was around this common difficulty, you know, or confusion in their life, that was very powerful for them. Then they left with a sense of community, even if we would never gather again as a circle. Right. And then I've started doing the transformational workshops, which are experiential workshops that. That involve embodiment, which is as simple to explain. Embodiment is. I remember I was at a workshop years ago. It was a healing prayer workshop. We were learning about healing prayer. And we had an opportunity to actually receive prayer. So I went up and got some prayer. And what however the prayer person prayed, I started weeping. And they enfolded me in their arms and I wept on their shoulder. And that was the first time I had ever been held while I was crying. That imprinted on my heart. I will never forget that moment. That's what we mean by embodiment, where there's actually, we're using the body to track our emotions. We're moving our body into different posturing that affects our emotional world and learning about ourselves through embodied experiences. And you could have read a hundred books on the fact that it's safe to entrust your needs to somebody else, or it's safe in a safe setting like a therapy group or prayer, inner healing prayer group. To be held by somebody, but to have the experience of it. That's right. Is equal to, if not greater than reading 100 books. Yep. And then, as you said, something's imprinted. That's what we call secure attachment, or growing either out of an insecure attachment into a secure attachment or deepening and strengthening that secure attachment. I did groups with men around the same time that you were doing those groups. And I think you even had me come and speak at more of a programmatic thing that you did downtown. And men often describe those groups after a very short amount of time as this is what church should be like. Yes. And so you're right away Saying, yes. And your smile is showing that as well. Talk about that experience, how those groups can be like church. Well, I. I mean, it's amazing that people have a sense of this is what church should be. So the way I would describe the groups are vulnerability, openness, safety, no judgment, acceptance, a sense of belonging. And why. Why we don't experience that in church is a big question mark. Except that I know there's a lot of pretense, pretending, performance, being on your best behavior, not having the opportunity to really talk about the deepest aches in your heart. And that's sad. That's very sad. Yeah. And we've seen some churches over the years that, whether it's through a small group ministry or an inner healing program, or even churches that have celebrate recovery programs, that they work to create a context like that. But there's something very unique about, you know, when you go to a therapist, that's this sacrosanct place and person I'm aware of on social media, you know, watching clips of people saying very publicly, like, yesterday I went to my therapist and, you know, had this powerful session. And even 10 years ago, before and before the pandemic, people wouldn't talk so openly about that. But it's almost as if, and interestingly, Irvin Yalom said this, that the therapy office is. It is like a sanctum where it's a safe place where Yalam, who is. I believe he's still alive in his 90s, because I have a friend that actually called him up out of the blue about five years ago and said, would you counsel me? And he went, tell me a little bit about yourself. And like, Irv answered the phone. And he ended up working with him for several years and maybe still is. But Yalam once said in the Mars Hill Review journal that I used to write for, he was interviewed by a man who's gone on to be with the Lord now, Bruce Ramsay. And Yalam told him that because this was a Christian magazine, he said in this interview, almost confessionally, you know, I've never told anybody this, but I was in Japan once in Kyoto, which is filled with temples. My daughter just came back from there, and I walked into one of these temples and there was like this inner room that I imagine what a Catholic priest confessional would look like. And I went in there and closed the door and just sat down because for decades people have come into my room and confessed their deepest sins and pains and struggles. But he said, here I was in this priestly room. And he said it felt really interesting. And I felt a sense of transcendence, which is interesting that this Jewish agnostic, brilliant man was. Was saying that, all right, coming back to those groups, restoring the Soul has the blessing, not just of you being an intensive therapist here for the past six years, but a couple of years ago, you initiated and led a women's weekend similar to some of the women's workshops that you've led around the country. And that was called essence. And we've hit pause on that, and that's being, Lord willing, redeveloped, and we're going to reintroduce that. But in the interim, you've been doing groups called an Essence Circle. Am I getting that right? Yes, you are. I thought so. I wanted to say Essence Group, but I said Essence Circle. So what are Essence Circles? And they're very unique, so just lay that out for listeners. This is an online gathering, and I think the unique part of Essence Circles is the welcoming of wherever you're at, we welcome you just as you are. So this is a space for women to come into. And it's very related to what I just said about the church that there's so much pressure to be something that often we're not. And very few places in a lot of church communities for a woman to just be real, to be honest, to bring her complaints, to bring her pain, to bring her anger, to bring her sadness, to bring her questioning and doubts about her faith. So this circle is a welcoming of whatever you bring, you are welcome just as you are. And I want to hear more about it. But just some people might be. They might hear the word online and they might dismiss that right away. I used to be a cynic of online therapy and online groups, and although our intensives are so unique that apart from two months during the pandemic, we don't do online intensives. I've been a part of online therapy groups that are very powerful, and after a moment, you feel like you're sitting. In the room, you're sitting there exactly. With people, and you can actually experience what they're experiencing. And it's kind of uncanny. It really is. And with the online format, we can do a whole group share or process together, but we also break out into breakout groups. And so then you're sent out with a partner, and it is really like sitting in the same room with them. Very powerful. So these Essence Circles, is this a therapy group? It's not really a therapy group, and it's not. This is what makes it unique. It's not a support group. Support groups are where you Come and you all talk about kind of your lives and, and everybody nods and supports you in whatever journey you're in. This is somewhat of what we would call a process group because there is a focus on the here and now. But it is very related to what we would call experiential work, which is more of a coaching paradigm than therapy. Which fits well with people from all over the world, potentially. Yes, yes. So. So this is an opportunity for women to, number one, connect with themselves. Because we're so busy as women. I mean, this is something we just, it comes up all the time. We're so busy and often we lose our center, we kind of lose ourself in all of the tasks that women carry, all of the responsibilities. So we practice stillness. We have a time of stillness to allow women to just connect, to just feel their body, to come back to their breath, to notice what is, is stirring, what are their aches, what are their longings, what are their desires. And then there's an opportunity for the women to connect authentically with other women in the circle as well as partners, partner shares. So it's. And this is not psycho education. I don't do lecture or teaching. I introduce topics that we can explore together. What types of topics? Well, last month we explored control. And what is it in our lives that we try to control or what is it that we wish we could control? And so in that, that example, you can see where we're doing kind of a deep dive in terms of honestly admitting, yes, there are a lot of places in my life that I try to control. And then we may talk about and, and what's the result of that in your body, in your nervous system, in your emotions? Well, I'm anxious, I'm grasping at things. So. So a dive into what is real. Let's be honest, as women, what is real in terms of what, what we try to control or what do we wish we could control? And then after we kind of did that share, then we pondered, what would it be like right now, in this moment, if I let go of control? And so that's the here and now processing of right now. If I imagine, and we close our eyes, imagine those things that you try to control. What if right now you let go, you let go into grace. That's powerful. I find myself exhaling even in kind of my bodily settling as you talked about that. And that's exactly what, you know, we would share is. Oh, sigh of relief. Yeah. Oh, I feel the weight roll off my back. So, because I've known you for so long. I know this is not your approach, but this is not a group where people say, you know, I'm struggling with control. And you or anybody is going to say, well, Jesus wants you to let go of that control because that's sin. Right? So. But what I'm hearing is that this is a group in a circle where women can be guided to come home to themselves and out of that connection to themselves be connected to other women authentically. Absolutely. And that is what equals a sense of intimacy and belonging and connectedness. And again, I'm not alone because the pain. Anytime a woman does share her pain in a circle and we have short check ins, it's my pain, her pain is my pain. I can completely identify and relate. So there is this sense of encouragement and support that happens just in hearing another woman's authentic share. This reminds me so much about what we actually do in intensives. Obviously there's a different way that it plays out over two weeks versus I think the 90 minutes or two hours of your group. But it's this idea that we're not focusing on behavior primarily. We're allowing the behaviors and the external struggles to lead us into our interior world and space and to pay attention to our body and to listen to what those things are telling us. And when we get into that calm space or deep into the window of tolerance as we speak about that, then there's this capacity to let go. And if we connect to our truest self, there's actually, generally speaking, a desire to let go. And if we do that in a group where we feel safe, there's even more likelihood that that's going to happen. Yeah, and there's a synergy. You know, when you have a group setting, there's always a synergy. So while one woman's pain is all of our pain, we step into grief together. But her, her joy is also our joy or her share around. This is what I'm taking with me tonight because we'll also check out with what is your takeaway. And sometimes the takeaways are so profound because there has been a shift in that group session that then it ignites the fire under all of us. Oh, it's possible, it's possible to shift, it's possible to change. So very powerful, the group, the community. Because I don't think we're meant to heal in isolation. I think we need the community to heal. But we're wounded in relationships. We have to heal in relationships, we. Have to heal in relationships. But there's so many positives and benefits to the group. I imagine that a woman who is in therapy could do this only. And because it's once a month, there's not a huge time commitment. But somebody could be in therapy, therapy on a regular basis and this could be a way to supplement that or to enrich that. Absolutely. Especially if a therapist is not oriented, as many are not to experiential work where you're in the moment and paying attention to the body and that kind of thing. Yep, absolutely. So who would be the best fit for these Essence Circles? Who's the kind of person that would come to this group and go, yeah, this fits for me. I have a woman who's been communicating that regularly because she's so blown away by the groups. She was hungry for realness. Just, I want to be someplace where I can be real. I can be real. I can let down my Personas. I don't have to hold it together. I don't have to lead. I don't have to be the person that I have to be in the rest of my life. I want to be able to talk about what is true and real in my journey, in my heart, in my soul. So women who are hungering for that. Absolutely. Or, or hungering for a break from the routine or all of the demands, because this time in this circle is for them. It's not for their kids, it's not for their husband, it's not for their jobs, it's not for their parents, you know, it's for them. It's completely focused on them and them getting back in touch with, with, with themselves. And ultimately their truest essence, that I believe is gold made in the image of God. So yeah, or women just hungry for community and they don't have a circle. I think we all need, I think women especially all need a circle of some sort where, where we can be seen and loved on and accepted and respected. So women just hungry for that. And so how can women find out about the Essence Circles? I believe there's website information. I believe there is. So yeah. Restoringthesoul.com under resources. If you pick resources, there will be another selection for Essence Circles. We're working on updating that and providing more information. So if, if they want more information, they can contact me is the best way. And they can contact you through the website? Yep. Okay, so that's restoringthesoul.com. go to the upper right corner where there's all those pull down menus typically. And under resources it'll say Essence Circles. So Janelle, thank you for sharing today. From fishing in Alaska and almost catching a 14 foot halibut to talking about this amazing group that you're doing for women. Thank you.