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The Gift of an Interrupted Life with Jordan Kersten · Finding Treasures in the Trash

• 0:00
  Jordan Kersten: And I remember just spending two days in this Airbnb after I had seen the doctor, and I was, you know, out of the really scary zone, but just recovering from concussion. And I was there. I just remember hearing the birds chirp, and suddenly realizing, like, thinking of all the other people waking up in their beds who maybe they were also staying home with an illness or an injury, and that I hadn't thought of them before. I hadn't felt this deep connection, even though, even though I was isolated physically, I was far from everybody I knew. I was all by myself in a bed, but I felt connected to everyone else who was dealing with a health condition that made them have to be laid up? Basically,
• 0:47
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: what if real, lasting transformation happens when we're willing to face our shadows-the messy, uncomfortable parts of ourselves we'd rather not look at-and what if the things we avoid out of fear or shame are actually the treasures that wake us up. I'm Carrie Jacobs Corvetto, executive coach and meditation teacher, and this is finding treasures in the trash through raw, unfiltered conversations. I invite you to turn toward what you've disowned and begin integrating it back into the whole beautiful human you are meant to be. Your treasure doesn't always live in the light. Sometimes it's buried in the trash. So, grab your gloves. Let's go dumpster diving.
• 1:34
  Welcome, welcome, friends. I'm Kerry Jacobs Cravetto. This is Finding Treasures in the Trash, and today I have a guest named Jordan Kirsten. Jordan and I met in a very fun way, which was we were at the first ever Women's Health Summit held in San Francisco, and I believe I might have been wearing a fun fur coat. And Jordan came up and said, "I love your coat, and sat down, and we entered into a great conversation. I found her to be a brilliant young woman, and it wasn't long before that or long after that that I said, "Hey, I think you should come on my podcast. And here we are. So first of all, I'm going to talk about you, but welcome.
• 2:18
  Jordan Kersten: Thank you so much, Carrie. It's so great to be here.
• 2:21
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Wonderful. Well, so Jordan is three things predominantly, and when you hear these three things, you might think, "Wow, those are three really different things. But I think what you're going to learn through this podcast is what she does has a throughput that's really, really heart exciting to me. So she is a certified health coach. She is a voice coach, and she is a yoga teacher. She has multiple certifications in all of those things from all the national accreditations that one would need to be a certified coach, and she also did a particular certification in voice teaching from the Berkeley School of Music. She has umpteen yoga certifications and is continuing to add those to her portfolio. And we're just so happy to have you.
• 3:14
  Jordan Kersten: It's great to be here, Carrie. And I do remember you did have a fabulous coat that really drew my eye.
• 3:19
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Yeah, that's my thing. You know, I collect coats. My nieces are relatively young; they're like 20-two to 20-seven, and I'm like, when I die, do not throw away the coats because they are fabulous coats. Anyway, yeah, and they're often conversation starters, and then I end up with wonderful people on the show.
• 3:37
  Jordan Kersten: Definitely don't throw away the coats. No,
• 3:39
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: no, listen, nieces, if you're tuning in, so I want to start. When you and I began our conversation, when we met, we sort of immediately launched into. I think I asked you, like, why did you end up becoming a health coach? And I got to hear a little bit about your background. So I want to start there. Can you fill listeners in on why you're doing this and how you arrived at what you're doing?
• 4:07
  Jordan Kersten: Absolutely. So I think the reasons why I became a health coach and why I became a yoga teacher are the same, which is that I really was interested in helping people heal, and the thing that really awakened me to helping people heal was dealing with a number of different health issues and injuries that I had to heal myself through.
• 4:27
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Yeah, and this is something. By the way, do you mind sharing roughly your age?
• 4:31
  Jordan Kersten: Oh yeah, I'm 39.
• 4:33
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: 39. You've had a number of different let's call them health challenges in your short life, right?
• 4:39
  Jordan Kersten: Health challenges. Yeah, I think the first one was the the first serious one was age 19. Yeah, my most still at it, still going. My most recent one was breaking my knee last year.
• 4:51
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Okay, so it started at 19, and all the way up to 38 You've had a series of injuries, and I think what you shared with me.
• 5:00
  Jordan Kersten: When we met, which really stayed with me, as a meditation teacher, as somebody devoted to healing, is that with each injury, you almost found more aliveness in your life, and I was very struck by that. Yes, yes. I mean, especially having spent a lot of time in the world of mindfulness, it almost feels cliche at this point to say, but I really did find that each injury kind of expanded my experience of being a person on this earth. And I believe you referred to them a little bit as mini spiritual awakenings. I really loved that. I'm like, oh, you're right. Each one kind of pops some things open a little bit more.
• 5:41
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Why don't you take us through them? Yeah, because I think I mean what I remember about your story is like from like whatever birth to 19, you had a really reliable, strong, healthy body. Is that right?
• 5:52
  Jordan Kersten: So I'm very fortunate as a as a kid. I had a very reliably strong body. I loved being active. I loved sports. I remember always insisting on doing like black diamonds when I skied, which I just fell down the mountain. I thought it was a fabulous experience, and you know, seven years old, spring back up, do it again. I was a gymnast, I was a horse faulter, I was a dancer, and it was part of who I was. It was part of how I felt alive. It was part of how I existed, and I never had experienced having my body not be reliable, like I could just tell it to do this and it would do it, until I was 19. I was a dance minor at college, and I remember actually that day I was doing a modern dance class. For modern, sometimes you wear shoes, sometimes you don't. But I was not wearing dancer shoes, and so my foot stuck to the ground as I was doing a turn, and so my knee sublocked, which is kind of a mini dislocation, and I had never had that experience in my life. Like I could
• 6:47
  always walk it off. I we talked Carrie and I talked a little bit about my the family of origin culture, which is a kind of German like you're fine, like just get up, you know, you're okay, and that had kind of worked until I suddenly was like, I cannot ignore this. It's not allowing my body is telling me I cannot put weight on this, and I was kind of stunned, like at 19 that that your body could do that. I thought it just was your machine that you could tell it to do something. And with that first injury, I went through a lot of grief because I had expected. I mean, I didn't know if I was going to have that be part of my career as a performer, but it was a big part of my life, and I did it two to four hours a day.
• 7:26
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: So amazing, and I think you know many of us have this experience, right, where we're kind of going through life, and our bodies are just super reliable, and then all of a sudden something happens. Sometimes it happens at 19. Sometimes it doesn't happen to people until they're my age, like 60, right? Where all of a sudden a hip gives way, and guess what? You've got to go have a hip replacement. But this piece that you're talking about, where all of a sudden the very reliable,
• 7:50
  Jordan Kersten: yeah,
• 7:51
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: becomes unreliable, and I think that's such a metaphor. I mean, the thing that I love about you, Jordan, and what I loved about talking to you when we met was that you have these injuries, but inside every injury, I found there were these like golden nuggets of metaphor. And finding treasures in the trash is about you know how we go look at the hardest parts of our life, the disowned parts of our life, the experiences that we don't want to look at, and bring them forward so that we can have like deep learning lessons, and so this was like your first one, right? Like reliable turns unreliable.
• 8:30
  Jordan Kersten: Something gives way, and I had dealt with a lot of anxiety. I'd done some meditation to work with it, and the combination of exercise and meditation worked for me. And then suddenly, that leg of the stool was gone, and so I needed to expand my mindfulness practice. There wasn't really much of another choice unless I wanted to just be depressed and deal with this loss. First of all, it brought me to yoga because I needed to find another activity that was going to work for me when I couldn't dance seriously anymore. And I do remember going through a period where it like it really hurt to walk. You know, it took a few months before walking was okay, and I remember like my biggest feelings were, oh God, I can't dance, I can't run, I can't dance, I can't run, and then suddenly I was like, actually, walking is pretty cool. I took this so for granted, like I didn't think of it as an activity. It was is just how I got from here to there, you know. That wasn't the big
• 9:23
  deal activity, and suddenly I was like, you know, doing walking meditation in a forest without pain in my knee, and I was like, I just never thought I could celebrate walking like this. So that was the first that really certainly brought me deeper into my mindfulness practice, but it brought such gratitude to things that had seemed simple before, and that now seemed like a really big deal.
• 9:47
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: So beautiful and so young. I mean, you're talking like 19 to 20 to 20-one. I'm imagining as you're healing. Yeah. Okay. And so this was like mini awakening number one. Yeah. Which is things that reliable are not reliable. Things give way.
• 10:05
  Jordan Kersten: Things give way, and then
• 10:07
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: there's other paths that open up, which is so much of what this work is about. By the way, what I teach and what is like inner truth work is about what might feel in the moment just so destructive and so depressing. And you talked about like the will to move beyond that depression. Suddenly, new paths emerge.
• 10:28
  Jordan Kersten: Absolutely. I mean, that's exactly what happens. They do unfold, and I I think a little bit about what you referred to in when I listened to your story and when you weren't using your eyes, how multidimensional the world was, and that when we have a sense or a body part or whatever it is that is not online at that time, you actually get to access other portals.
• 10:53
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Yeah. So you're referring to for listeners who haven't listened to, I believe it's podcast one with Amy's interviewing me. I talk about that. I actually didn't really have clear sight or vision until I was almost six, and that when I got glasses, there was a contraction that happened in my space where, like, I had been in such broad feeling space, and then all of a sudden, I got glasses and things became clear and tight and small. But for me, there was the positive, which is I could see my mother's face for the first time, but also there was a loss in that my world sort of shrunk and contracted. So I hear what you're saying. Like there's there's sort of these ways to look at these moments and see them differently from maybe just sitting in the obvious pain or depression, a lot of people get injured really badly like this, and you've been living your life in a certain way, and they kind of succumb to the depression. Like, what made you push through?
• 11:55
  Jordan Kersten: That is a great question. I had been extremely fortunate to be introduced to Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness-based stress reduction program, probably about half a year before I injured my knee.
• 12:11
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Divine timing, right?
• 12:12
  Jordan Kersten: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Rose. Coming in hot. It was like you're gonna need this. We know you're kind of young, so here you go. Here's a nice training program set you up. When I did that program, at that point I had been dealing with insomnia. What caused me to take that program? And I recall the teacher actually paused me outside before I came in because when I took the MBSR eight week program, I was 18. You know, I wasn't yet 19. I was obviously looked quite young, and our the teacher said to me, "You know, Jordan, you're going to hear a lot of intense stuff in here, and I'm not sure if you're ready for it. You know, like if you try the first class and it's too much, it's okay. Like I'm not going to charge you. It's you can you don't have to come back. I remember thinking, "No, I want to hear it. You know, whatever it was, going into that room and having people talk about their experiences with cancer and depression and loss and aging and everything, I was
• 13:05
  like, "No, I want to be here. I'm not afraid. So I think that same quality was there, and I had thankfully already been given a couple steps up. You know, I'd really been set up with this wonderful guide, and then I'm sure I was like an annoying teenager. They were also kind to like a lot of people, a lot older than me, you know, let me be in that space too. So beautiful, and I want to point out something you just said, which is like, I want to be here. I'm not afraid. I don't know why I wasn't afraid, but it kind of reminded me again. In your first podcast, you kind of talk about I didn't have another choice. You felt like with anxiety, it's like, what else are you going to do? You're going to numb yourself and just be in horrible. You're already there in the muck, so you can you have no option but to go deeper. Is how I felt, and I also was very curious. I've always been extremely curious about what I can learn, and I saw that there was a lot to learn, and I was like, "Are you
• 13:59
  kidding me? Don't push me out of that door.
• 14:03
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Yeah, I mean, I can even imagine, like today, you know, sometimes 18-year-olds or 19-year-olds or 20-year-olds walk through the door in my meditation class or in my in the retreats that I attend, and I'm I always just have such like jubilance, like oh my gosh, like a young person who's already like something in their life said go through this door, and what a gift! And what a gift that you got to have this before the injury. Okay, so take us to the next big, next big
• 14:32
  Jordan Kersten: Jordan moment. And I realized like most of my injuries are due to the fact that I move too fast. To be honest, but like this is a whole other thing, but the next very serious injury I had was at 29 So yeah, decade later, I had a concussion. I had a concussion when I was solo traveling for the very first time. The first day I arrived there in Ireland, I hit my head on a low hanging beam, and it took me a full year to recover and to come back. To normal, and with that concussion, I remember lying there in my Airbnb. Like I went to sleep immediately, which is not what you're supposed to. This is not advice. This is
• 15:11
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: where you die. Don't do this. Don't
• 15:12
  Jordan Kersten: do not do that. But I was by myself, and I just was like, "Oh, I feel sick, and I feel tired, and I'm just gonna lie down. And thankfully, I woke up and I was okay. And I called my boyfriend at the time, who was here in America, and I was like, I hit my head. And he's like, "Oh no! He knew that there was a serious problem because he knew me, and he knew I was quick thinker, quick speaker issues. Like this is not normal. So thankfully, he set me up with you were gonna do this for the next three days. You're gonna go to doctor. You're gonna you know he gave me a plan, and I remember, and he also told me the first two days he's like just be still and rest. That's really important for concussion recovery. And I remember just spending two days in this Airbnb after I had seen the doctor, and I was you know out of the really scary sound, but just recovering from concussion, and I was there. I just remember hearing the birds chirp, and suddenly realizing, like thinking
• 16:10
  of all the other people waking up in their beds, who maybe they were also staying home with an illness or an injury, and that I hadn't thought of them before. I hadn't felt this deep connection, even though, even though I was isolated physically, I was far from everybody I knew. I was all by myself in a bed, but I felt connected to everyone else who was dealing with a health condition that made them have to be laid up. Basically,
• 16:39
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: talk about like mindfulness in action. I mean, you did it the first time with the first injury. Now you're doing it again. But I have a really random, weird question that I've always wanted to know, but I've never been able to ask someone who's a meditation practitioner because part of meditation is sort of tuning out the mind and tuning into awakened awareness, or tuning into-I call it like there's another location entirely than your mind. And so, my question is this: When the mind gets injured, does the other location of sitting in a wide awakened awareness stay intact?
• 17:16
  Jordan Kersten: That is really interesting. I'm going to take a second to think about it. I think it depends on exactly, you know, the level of injury to the mind. For me, at the time, it put me in a different space. I didn't have to say to myself, "Be mindful, or "Be grateful, or anything like that. It was very instinctive. My mind just said, "Like, well, here we are again. What is it? The wisdom of no escape. I think that is that Pema Chodron. I forget whose book that is. I didn't have an escape. I couldn't walk straight. Stuck in my bed. What was I going to do? My mind slowed down, and I just suddenly-it was almost like you talk about another portal. Is yeah, another portal opened up. I didn't go there. It was there, and everybody else who was concussed or terminally ill or recovering for something like I was there with them.
• 18:13
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: So suddenly, you had this. It sounds like this sort of deep moment of human connection.
• 18:19
  Jordan Kersten: 100% Yeah,
• 18:21
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: like I'm not alone in this. Not at all. What I what amazes me about both of these stories, and we're going to hear the next two because there are two more moments. What amazes me is like number one, your resilience, but number two, the part of you that fought somewhere to like not go down the path of the victim, because I, you know, I've been hurt. I had my first hip surgery when I was like 40-two, and I had this first surgery, and I also was like confined in my house. I was totally alone. I'm sure people are relating to like the COVID years too, right? But I. I really vacillated between using it as my mindfulness and my meditative practice, and like going into like full on victim, like why me? Nobody's helping me. I mean, it was really hard. There was no delivery service. Like I couldn't get groceries. I would have to hobble on my crutches. You know, it was just there was no parking in San Francisco at the time for like handicap, and I would just it was
• 19:27
  horrible. And I'm surprised. Like, did you have moments where you were like, "Woe is me, or were you?
• 19:34
  Jordan Kersten: Yeah, no, it's not like I lived on like a giant awakened spiritual plane for nine months and I had known. You know, yeah. I mean, that was in the first couple days. There was just a very strong instinct to rest, and it's interesting. My mother told me as a baby when I was tired, I would just return my crib. I just was like, "That's where I want to go. And so I think I don't know if it was a similar thing in my body where I was like, "I have to rest. I know I have to rest. I'm going to rest. I also, again. Kind of like the previous one, I had a little thing experience from the universe. So my ex partner, the one who helped me, his partner's wife had had a concussion three months before I got one. So I didn't feel like, oh no, it's just me. I'm like, oh well, now I'm good company. Like I know another person, and I'd already been teaching yoga for a number of years at this point. So I've seen people through various ups and downs and illnesses, and I meditated and seen
• 20:27
  people dying. It was I knew I was not alone. Like I knew from my lived experience that I was in no way alone. And my granddad, one of them was a doctor, the other was a minister. So I think there's a we care for people here. I don't know. It just was very obvious to me that I wasn't alone. I think there were times over the year that it took me to recover, where I was certainly got impatient, and I was like, "Okay, it's been four months. Why am I still concussed? Or just just the things that came with it. But I don't know. I think I just kept being like, "I know what I have to do, and I know I'm going to get better, and I knew that not everybody gets better, and we all die at the end, right?
• 21:05
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Right.
• 21:05
  Jordan Kersten: The answer is not always that you get to leave, go back to your previous, or that you get to a high healthier place. But I knew I was going to.
• 21:12
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: You knew you were going to, and I knew. By the way, just quick sidebar here. Can we talk about the word concussed? I don't know why, but it is one of my favorite. I don't know why. I think I learned it like only like seven years ago. Concussed. It just sounds like exactly what it is, right? Like I'm like I can no longer think the way I used to think because I am like concussed anyway. Sorry. Yeah. Moments where I love certain words, and that's one of them.
• 21:42
  Jordan Kersten: It was a great. I mean, I think I I was very fortunate. I was also in a partnership with a loving person who took really good care of me, and he he thought it was funny a little bit in the kind way in the kind way that usually I was like I'm
• 21:55
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: laughing at you, but with love.
• 21:57
  Jordan Kersten: No, really, and it was like because usually I'm you know quick and and and have a sense of humor and stuff. And he was like, "Oh my God, hearing you tell a joke while you're concussed is hilarious. Timing was so bad, and usually my memory had been amazing. And so I acted, and I would get impatient with actors who was like, "Why don't they know their lines? I know mine like the peck of my hand, and then go, "Oh, well, that's what this feels like.
• 22:21
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: So it also opened empathy. Yeah, I mean, like it's like you're really like walking us through. By the way, like if you were to study really many things, I'm sure from Christianity to Judaism to, but certainly Buddhism, when the predictable becomes unpredictable, which PS is all the time. Human connection. You're talking about human connection. You're talking about empathy. Okay, take us to the next big injury slash health moment.
• 22:52
  Jordan Kersten: It's like occasionally universe is like, oh, Jordan, you're getting comfortable. Here we go, another one. So this one was, let's see, I was 37, so it was two years ago, it wasn't fully conclusive, but a variation of Lyme of Lyme disease.
• 23:06
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Okay, were you a health coach already? I was not. I was okay. So this is all building up to like why you're doing what you're doing now.
• 23:12
  Jordan Kersten: Absolutely, the Lyme I think especially got me in touch because the other ones had been more nervous system, like anxiety or you know. So I mean, the Lyme got me more in touch with just health conditions, you know that systemic conditions, all that sort of thing, and the confusion of not having a diagnosis and knowing something was very wrong, and that it was not going away.
• 23:36
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Yeah, you told me you couldn't get out of bed or eat for seven to eight days, like you did not eat.
• 23:40
  Jordan Kersten: I think my mom force-fed me like a few 100 calories a day,
• 23:44
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: and you didn't know what was wrong. You had no answers.
• 23:46
  Jordan Kersten: I had no answers, and I had no energy to get them. If I hadn't had my loving mother taking care of me, this is how you waste away. Like I knew something was wrong, but I was just so exhausted I couldn't do anything, and I tried going to the doctor, and they they actually wouldn't test me for Lyme because I didn't have a bite or an obvious bite. And I even said like I'm a regular backpacker. I got back from backpacking, and suddenly I can't move or eat. And they kept trying to test me for Jarry, but they couldn't. And so I think I finally demanded antibiotics, which is not again, not that someone should do that when they are in a state of of this. But I basically just like I don't have another choice, and I've looked at like what is this going to harm versus like you need to help me. I can't eat, and so when I did get antibiotics, which there is a certain antibiotic you do use to treat for a long, it dramatically changed. I was like, oh my god, I can eat, I can
• 24:40
  stand up, I can live again, but then I would get these flare-ups, and I still didn't have a diagnosis. And so when I got these flare-ups, I would kind of call my doctor and be like, "Could you please give me antibiotics? Was the only thing that's helped this, and it kind of just kept going. So I think I was working with the Women's Vitality Clinic. I think that's what they're called, Dr. Amy Day. I believe they're here in the. East Bay, and I, one of them actually was like, you might want to look to see if this is Lyme. That was about a year later. I was still having like fatigue and low energy, and we were thinking it was hormonal. But then, when she heard my story, she was like, "Okay, you might want to get tested for that. And I've actually since worked with a really amazing naturopath, Dr. Mark Weil in San Francisco, who's basically I haven't had almost no flare-ups at this point, but that is actually, I believe, what did bring me to be a health coach is to to look at
• 25:26
  health from this other perspective of just navigating the medical system. You're dealing with things that are requiring you to explore when there isn't a diagnosis. I mean, that's one of the many ways health coaching can help. I did work with a health coach when I was doing the Women's Vitality Center work, and I was surprised how much it could just change my daily life.
• 25:45
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: So you work your way through that. You work your way through what is really kind of an ongoing, probably coming and going, right? With limes, and then you broke your knee running in the. Oh
• 25:58
  Jordan Kersten: yes, sorry, I keep forgetting my different maladies. Yes, Lyme. I'm finally like, okay. I have hardly any flares at this point. I just occasionally get them, and then I know what to do. I do my thing, and then I recover. It's fine. And so then I went backpacking in the Community of Santiago in Spain. It's amazing. No injuries there. Literally phased off a wild boar. No problem. Came home. Everything was great. I went running in the ocean with my good friend, and a combination of factors-the height of the ocean, the waves, etc. broke the outside of my right knee as a different knee than my first knee injury, and that's actually my first broken bone. Here we are, hit one. That's the first time I've thrown up from an injury, peeped on the sand. Anyways, a whole story. But I really, at the time, has did not want to go to the doctor. I finally got to the doctor the next day, and they were shocked that it was broken. The point is, I had broken my knee, and I
• 26:49
  had to be on crutches for six weeks. And in some ways, I was very grateful it wasn't a muscle or a soft tissue because bones heal faster. And also, I had never been on crutches for six weeks. Like I was like, oh my god! Like I can move around, but it makes a sound every time I move. Like I would stay with my mom, and she has a German Shepherd, and the dog would be like, "What? Like what? What is that? Click of the crutches. So this injury, in some ways, it was the least challenging because the crutches elicited so much social support. For in my experience, I got so many people telling me, like people supporting me on the street, insisting on caring stuff for me, or just this one random woman just giving me a compliment and saying, "You just look radiant. You know, your spirit shines through. You can do anything. I was like, I was so moved by human connection, but it also taught me, as an athlete, again a reminder of the experience I had had from the others. Like this is really
• 27:51
  hard. Your social world changes, your day to day changes, your identity shifts for a bit, and you have to be extremely patient,
• 28:01
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: patient and reliant on the kindness of others. Yes, you have to be in receiving.
• 28:06
  Jordan Kersten: You must receive, and you also have to dictate. I definitely had people come and help me, and some of my friends were amazing at it, and some you know just was aware. And I had to be like, I actually need you to get that for me. I I can't do it. So it's it's very humbling. But again, when I walk, I put my foot down and I was like, "Look at me go! Look at me walk! This is fabulous!
• 28:29
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Okay, so I want to just transition a little bit. So, listeners, if you are tracking, you know, there's the story and then there's the story, right? So, the story is Jordan here is 39 She has multiple injuries. I think there was also a vocal injury, which we'll get into. But what's really important to hear is the story under the story, which is all these moments which you could have seen as temporarily life destroying. You could have, like resilience, could have caved. And not only did you find your resilience, but you found something more. You pushed through to look at life in some way that's almost like gratitude fueled. When I hear these stories, and like I'm reflecting back to you and to the listeners here, all the lessons that have come out. I mean, you couldn't have taught another Buddhist life well lived without this. And you know, not to get into whole Buddhism thing, it's part of what I do, and it's part of my belief system, but the first noble
• 29:42
  truth in Buddhism is there is suffering, and everyone suffers. And suffering is like a tricky word, and we won't get into all that. But what we do know is to be human is to struggle in many ways. Right? It takes us what a. Year and a half, two years to stand up on our own two feet, whereas it takes like a small deer like less than a minute. It's true, right? Like we walk around in these bodies, and they're hard, and it's hard. And out of that, though, is if you're pointed in the right direction, is where the gold is. That's what I'm kind of hearing. That's what I take away.
• 30:21
  Jordan Kersten: Absolutely, we are in these bodies. They are going to change. They are. We are, of course, going to suffer. And I think I like to remind myself and my dear friends. Like I think if this is a wonderful thing, everything that we think we can hold on to is going to go almost everything. And isn't that freeing? You know, whatever you think you've you built, like at some point, like dust. Yeah, it's like roses. It's like when roses and you see the life cycle of them blooming, and suddenly the bloom is so beautiful because it's not going to be there forever, and you get to see each stage, the gloriousness of temporariness. yeah.
• 31:03
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I mean, you're very impressive at 39 years old to be able to have really transmuted life in these moments, and I get it. These are injuries, and you came back. Many people have things that they're living with, either depression or physical pain or physical afflictions that they're living with their entire life, and some rise through and and push through resilience, and others collapse into it. But what I hear you saying is you've used every moment as a moment to find more depth, more humanity, more connection, more emotional terrain to work with.
• 31:46
  Jordan Kersten: Absolutely, I mean, I've I've been very fortunate also to have. There's a number of wonderful books that whenever I've been injured or sick, I'm like, okay, whose memoir about struggling am I going to read about now? And so that's how much I know I'm not alone. I mean, I've listened to the book Wild. I think I've memorized it, where she goes through a hell of a breakup, which I went through a hell of a breakup with a person who supported me through the concussion, and I was like, "Well, she went through this, so can I. So I think I have a tendency to reach out, whether it is through literature, done a lot of reaching out through story, or mindfulness community. I just know I'm not alone. There's too many people going through it all. Yeah,
• 32:21
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: yeah. It's great to know that. It's great to know that even when you feel so alone, you're just pointing your intention in the right direction. Okay, I want to transition to talk about your work in voice because you and I talked in our prep call about this idea of voice, i.e. singing, and this idea of voice as in standing in your own self, self-expression, advocating agency. I spoke at the beginning about these three things that you do. You know, you're a health coach, a voice coach, and a yoga teacher, and how do they all connect? And one of the ways that we talked about them connecting is that it really, at the end of the day, is in many ways about breath, body, voice, and what you shared with me why you love what you do is that you unlock creativity and inner strength, right? So, talk to me about the voice part.
• 33:12
  Jordan Kersten: Yeah, so that's another thing that's been with me since I was tiny. Apparently, my parents just said I walked around singing all the time, and I started studying voice myself, a singing when I was 13, and I did a bunch of performing. I, you know, did a lot of musicals. I did some opera, a lot of acting, and I started teaching it seven or eight years ago. And so, talking about helping people unlock their creativity and finding their inner voice, you know, both the actual singing voice and their spiritual voice. Singing is extremely vulnerable, and I also think it is innate. You know, if you look at cultures all over the world, everybody sings. Like, is it chanting? Is it like it all sounds different? Doesn't have to sound pretty, but children love it. Like, it's just a human thing. What do you make of that? Why? Why do we express that? I mean, I even had a teacher-not a voice teacher. He's more of a spiritual teacher. He believes that actually we were as humans
• 34:09
  maybe singing before we had language. I don't know if that's true. That's that's his thought, but it is innate. Look at wolves howling, like birds chirping. I mean, there's a lot of different studies of like where is it speaking, where is it singing. But it's just how we connect. I don't know if it's how we connect with the divine, how we connect with each other. I think it's all of it. You see, in so many religious traditions, anything that's about bringing community together-it's-it's part of our memory. You know, you learn the alphabet on a song, so you can remember it. The bards in Ireland-they didn't have writing forever. They had poetry. They sang. That's one reason Ireland treasures the poet and the singer so much. Is it's their historians until I don't know, 1500 years ago. So I think it's part of being a human. And I've had so many students who will come to me and be like, "Oh, I don't know if I sound good. I'm like, "Who cares? That's not the point right now. Like, the
• 34:56
  point is not that. Like, the point is to move yourself and move." Others and I, I had this experience a couple years ago on this backpacking trail in the Camino de Santiago, where my Spanish is mediocre, and I was staying at this Donativo, like a place that you stay for free, and it's generally, you know, it's held by very Catholic people who believe in the power of this pilgrimage. Anyway, I was speaking to the man who is the host, and he was saying, "Oh, you're a voice teacher. You're a singer. He says, "Tonight you will sing. And I was like, "No, and I kept trying to be like, "Not tonight, because I'm on vacation. And he's like, "Didn't you say singing is good for you? So you should sing. And he kind of pinned me. Where finally I was like, "Oh my God, fine. I will sing opera in different languages to people who speak these languages when I've been hiking and breathing in dust and eating cheese and I'm going to sound awful, but you know what? They all seem to really want it,
• 35:46
  and I think they all recorded it. And I remember as an opera singer, where there's a lot of perfectionism in opera, as a whole different podcast. I remember just being like, I had this combination of like, oh no, it's not quite as good as I want it to be, and then this other part of me just knew like none of them care. None of them care. We're all sweaty, and we've worn the same outfit for seven days, and like they just want to hear this. And I had people coming out of their homes in this little village in Spain, being like, "Was that you? Like, I want to hear something. And it just reminded me again, like the perfectionism. Like, that's not what it's about. And I came home and I told my students who were nervous about their audition or whatever, and I said, "Listen, this is what we're doing here: is to move ourselves and to move our community and connect with what's divine for us.
• 36:30
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I love this throughput. I think the other piece about because I sing, of course, I did musical theater. I can remember, like around 20, where I suddenly, it's like I lost my voice. Like my throat began to constrict every time I would sing, and I had been so free as a young person. I could just belt it out with the best of them. I remember singing and auditioning, and like seeing the you know the musical director, the director of the play, like seeing their eyes light up, and I could tell that I had just moved the room and shook the room. And then what happened was I, it was the first time that I traveled internationally. I was 18, and I had to audition with people from all over the world for this like big chorus, choir, chorale, and it was the first time that I like had something on the line. You know what I mean. Whereas like before I was just singing, and I just kind of inherently knew I would get something. I would get the lead or the second lead or
• 37:38
  whatever. And this was the first time where I was competing with like a higher level of people, and I stood up to sing, my voice just broke. Like it was like I literally could not get sound, and it's very sad when I look back on it because I actually left. Like I just quit. I stopped because I was so heartbroken. Like two years later at 20, I just stopped because it kept happening, then I had this imprint right over and over again of, oh my god, this thing might happen. So I'm just kind of curious, and I've told so many metaphorical stories around that too, around losing my voice, around my, you know. But I'm curious what you hear in that.
• 38:18
  Jordan Kersten: Yeah, no, I'm just going to take a moment with that one. I mean, the first thing I think is I can relate, and another thing I think is I wish that our culture around performing didn't do this to people because I've seen it happen-not exactly like that, but a lot-and it makes perfect sense because we need to be vulnerable to sing, and so there's got to be some degree of security, and that it's okay to be whatever you're gonna be, that you can express. Because otherwise, the human instinct it comes in. It's like I don't want to express right now. It's like when we shut down any time in our lives. Like this is not a safe time to express. I'm gonna do the fight, flight, and freeze. Like, nope, not right now. I actually have just like, yeah, I can relate a little bit. And I guess what I'm thinking is, first of all, if that happened to anybody, anybody I was working with, I think the most important thing to get in touch with is like, it's okay. It's okay to have that
• 39:24
  happen. Who cares? Are they going to have like a heart attack and die that you didn't sing that day? You know, it's like, so yeah. So your voice didn't happen that way that you wanted it to that day. That's fine. That's not the main point of having a voice. And I think the answer there would be letting go of the perfectionism a little bit. I mean, there's there's more.
• 39:44
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Well, what I'm hearing in what you're sharing is a few things. One is I'm hearing the predictable becomes unpredictable again. Yes, I'm also hearing the concept of when we feel safe, and that's exactly what happened. I had felt very safe up until. That moment, and then all of a sudden, I felt very unsafe, and there was more at risk, and I literally lost my voice. Now you could hear this as like singing, but really, really, I just lost my safety. I lost my sense of being, and I feel like this is so much of what I hear when you know when I met you that first time when we talked in the prep for the podcast is like this idea that you're like a sherpa of people finding their voice in health, people finding their voice literally, people finding their voice in meditation, people finding their voice in struggle. I don't know how that lands on you. I don't want to put things on you that.
• 40:43
  Jordan Kersten: No, no, no. I mean, I think that makes perfect. I agree with that, and I, I do. The safety is so important, and I think, yeah, it's a sign that you're not feeling safe. It's a sign that it's not the right place for you at that second. And so maybe I don't know if it was the right thing for you to leave the program or to you know to whatever choice you made. But yeah, it's a signal to the body like I don't feel safe right now. So when the body doesn't feel safe, that's the first thing we have to attend to.
• 41:05
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Yeah, and I would imagine this comes up in non-voice clients, though, right?
• 41:08
  Jordan Kersten: Oh yeah, right.
• 41:11
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: People don't feel safe,
• 41:15
  Jordan Kersten: and that's one thing I think. I mean, certainly as a yoga teacher, comes up like when it comes to an adjustment. If I'm going to give anybody adjustment, you know, of course, these days, thankfully, in especially in the Bay Area, California, where we live, it's talked a lot more about consent, you know, before we touch, because that's a maybe people feel safe, maybe they don't, maybe they had some horrible experience. Who knows? It's the body keeps the score. So it's like all these things where when we don't feel safe, it's not a time to push or force. In fact, I don't think it's really possible. It's certainly not helpful.
• 41:44
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Well, and it's certainly not possible when you're trying to sing, right? Because if your muscles are frozen, it affects your voice. And this is the metaphor, which is like just why I wanted you to come on this podcast, and why I wanted listeners to meet you. Because in everything that you talk about, by the way, you should just write a book and then run the metaphor of everything that you talk about underneath it. Because the metaphor of feeling safe, of finding your voice, of looking for the new path-your life has been very well lived at 30-nine, and you know, I hope that people who are listening to you, who are inspired, who are going through hard health things or hard life things, will reach out to you for coaching because I think you've lived in such a way that you've had the direct felt experience. So
• 42:42
  Jordan Kersten: absolutely.
• 42:42
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Before we move to the final, final, which is my one of my favorite things, hint, it's trash can troy. How how can people find you? Do they go to your website, or what do you want people to know about how you'd like them to connect with you?
• 43:02
  Jordan Kersten: So, if you have my name, Jordan Kirsten, my last name K E R S T E N, you're going to find a lot of stuff that will enable you to connect to me. So, there's my website www. jordankirsten. com, my Instagram Jordan's Wellness and Performance Studio, and all those you can either you know DM me through Instagram, my website, you can do that, or you can email me at jordankristen@gmail.com
• 43:24
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Wonderful. Okay, reach out to this woman if you want some health coaching. She's wonderful and has, unlike me, have a lot more time on the planet. I mean, not like I am going to die tomorrow, you know, but you've got a lot of time on the planet to even get better at this. Okay, so we're going to do Trash Cantero, which is where I pick a random question by closing my eyes and pointing my finger. It's a very sophisticated show around here, and you will answer, hopefully without too much thought, that question. Okay. Okay, you ready? Here we go. And your question is, what's one shadow you've learned to dance with instead of fear.
• 44:04
  Jordan Kersten: Okay, the shadow that I've learned to dance with instead of fear is my sensitivity. I have come to realize that it is a superpower, even though it did not feel like it when I got scared easily at movies and concerts overwhelm me, and earplugs over my actually new best friend for EDM shows. I did not think it was a superpower, and especially in the American culture, where and my family of origin German culture, where there's a lot of like buck up and don't react and you're okay, just get up. And I came to realize that sensitivity is actually what brought me so much more deeply in touch with humanity as a whole, and not even just humanity, like the brilliance that is life in this universe. You know, like trees, like actual tree hugging and water, and all the really cool things out there that I can see more deeply and clearly whenever I've either in a deep meditation state or when I've had a wake up Jordan call from the universe. Putting me in a vulnerable mode,
• 45:02
  and it turns out it has actually made my life more rich, and it has helped me to help others who I really want to help them to. That we don't have to live asleep. We just don't have to. We we can do it today. You don't have to wait until you're something horrible happens. It is open to you now,
• 45:22
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: beautiful Jordan Kirsten. It's been so lovely a meeting you and b having you as a guest on the podcast. Thank you so much.
• 45:29
  Jordan Kersten: Thank you so much, Carrie.
• 45:32
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Thanks for spending time with me and for having the courage to listen inward. If you'd like to continue the journey, you can find me@bravedirections.com and there you can sign up for my newsletter and something really exciting. If you're ready to begin exploring your own inner terrain, I've created something called Five Days to Truth. It's a complimentary five-day meditation journey that helps you start gently digging into your own trash and discovering what's there waiting for you. So, until we meet again, be kind to yourself, and trust what's emerging, because inside the muck lives the gold.