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The Mother Wound with Arani · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
0:04
Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
0:11
Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
0:15
Speaker 1: So five four, three, two and one our folks, welcome
0:19
Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have as my
0:21
Speaker 1: guest today. Irani Irani, Welcome.
0:26
Speaker 2: Hi. Thank you so much for having me guy.
0:28
Speaker 1: Awesome, appreciate it. Irani is an author and guide whose
0:32
Speaker 1: work weaves depth psychology, sematic awareness, and embodied spiritual practice.
0:37
Speaker 1: She supports women healing the mother wound and seekers integrating
0:40
Speaker 1: transformative experiences through presence, relational care, and respect for the
0:45
Speaker 1: nervous system's pace. Her approach is grounded, trauma informed and experiential,
0:50
Speaker 1: emphasizing integration as a lift process rather than a peak
0:53
Speaker 1: moment or conceptual understanding. All right, Ronnie, just a little
0:59
Speaker 1: bit about you before we go. We share with the
1:00
Speaker 1: listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently.
1:05
Speaker 2: I was born at Boulder Community Hospital and I've lived
1:11
Speaker 2: in Bolder my whole life. When I was twenty three,
1:16
Speaker 2: i well, I had graduated from college and intended to
1:20
Speaker 2: move to northern California with a group of friends, but
1:23
Speaker 2: I got a real job, so I stayed and ended
1:30
Speaker 2: up moving up into the mountains above Boulder, and I
1:34
Speaker 2: am very happy here. These mountains are my roots. And
1:38
Speaker 2: so although I've traveled a lot and spend a lot
1:40
Speaker 2: of time in India and South America, Europe, all the places,
1:46
Speaker 2: I have never had the desire to leave the mountains here.
1:49
Speaker 2: So born and raised in Bolder and moving in the
1:53
Speaker 2: mountains up above.
1:55
Speaker 1: All right, so let's start here. How does all this
1:59
Speaker 1: start for you?
2:02
Speaker 2: Well, my intention for my own life has been sort
2:14
Speaker 2: of unfolding. I think my childhood was very difficult, and
2:23
Speaker 2: the way that I survived it was trying to fit
2:27
Speaker 2: in and be achievement oriented. And so I put a
2:36
Speaker 2: whole bunch of different hurdles, like if only I could
2:39
Speaker 2: graduate from college. Then it was like if only I
2:42
Speaker 2: could get a law degree. Of all of these hurdles
2:47
Speaker 2: to try to make myself feel better internally, And at
2:55
Speaker 2: some point I realized that that wasn't actually working, and
3:00
Speaker 2: that the outer kind of goals that I was setting
3:05
Speaker 2: for myself really every time the bar just got higher,
3:11
Speaker 2: but the healing wasn't actually happening for me, and so
3:16
Speaker 2: I had to take a different approach, if you will.
3:21
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, that's the big picture here, So we're going
3:25
Speaker 1: to dive in what was going on? Well, when you
3:30
Speaker 1: said you had a difficult situation, what was going on? Yeah,
3:35
Speaker 1: the extent that you feel comfortable talking about it.
3:37
Speaker 2: I'm happy to share. My parents were married when they
3:42
Speaker 2: were very young. My mom was in the early sixties,
3:46
Speaker 2: and my mom got pregnant with my older brother, and
3:51
Speaker 2: you know, by the time she was seventeen, she had
3:53
Speaker 2: a baby and dropped out of high school, which was
3:56
Speaker 2: kind of expected then in a way. Then I came
4:01
Speaker 2: along two years later. By the time I was four,
4:05
Speaker 2: my parents were divorced. They were young, alcohol, all the
4:11
Speaker 2: things that were happening in the sixties. And I lived
4:17
Speaker 2: with my mom for probably a short time, maybe for
4:22
Speaker 2: six months, and then she ran off to Dallas, leaving
4:27
Speaker 2: me with my father and older brother. So that was
4:32
Speaker 2: the first kind of primary abandonment, if you will. And
4:37
Speaker 2: then I was deeply affected by that because I thought
4:43
Speaker 2: that it was my fault. The morning before she left,
4:47
Speaker 2: I had been crying because my socks didn't match, and
4:51
Speaker 2: she was trying to get me to Kinderhorn, and I
4:53
Speaker 2: really there was some part of me that thought she
4:55
Speaker 2: left because I'm a bad person. I was, you know.
5:01
Speaker 2: I took that on as my own kind of if
5:04
Speaker 2: there's something wrong with me, if you will, that core belief.
5:07
Speaker 2: And so that was traumatic. I had nightmares, I wet
5:14
Speaker 2: the bed, I stopped speaking. I had for first and
5:18
Speaker 2: second grade. I went to a speech therapist. All of that.
5:21
Speaker 2: We moved to another school, kind of starting over. But
5:28
Speaker 2: my dad then met a woman and remarried, and she
5:33
Speaker 2: was a very unkind woman, if you will. She was
5:39
Speaker 2: deeply insecure and deeply angry. I wouldn't go so far
5:43
Speaker 2: as if you were going to ask me for a diagnosis,
5:46
Speaker 2: I would say she was a narcissist and possibly malignant narcissist.
5:50
Speaker 2: But anyway, so she took kind of control of our
5:53
Speaker 2: family and isolated us from our our cousins and uncles
5:58
Speaker 2: and aunts and kind of grandparents, and created this kind
6:02
Speaker 2: of place where I became the scapegoat of the family,
6:07
Speaker 2: which was harrowing. I never felt safe at home if
6:14
Speaker 2: I did something wrong. I never knew what exactly it
6:17
Speaker 2: was that would kind of trigger her. But then she
6:20
Speaker 2: would go for weeks with that speaking to me, or
6:23
Speaker 2: at one point she had my older brother and I
6:25
Speaker 2: trust tested because she was telling everybody that we had
6:29
Speaker 2: and I know this is a politically uncorrect word, but
6:32
Speaker 2: it's the word she used toward me when I was
6:35
Speaker 2: like in the third grade, which you're retarded, you need
6:39
Speaker 2: you know. So it just went on and on, and
6:42
Speaker 2: then of course the test came back that we weren't retarded,
6:44
Speaker 2: but that was never amplified. It was always anyway, I
6:48
Speaker 2: was the scapegoat, and so that environment was hostile and
6:53
Speaker 2: it felt extremely unwelcoming and unsafe, and so that was
7:01
Speaker 2: kind of the childhood trauma, if you will. And I
7:09
Speaker 2: had core beliefs that I was unlovable and that I
7:13
Speaker 2: was bad, and that I was stupid in all of
7:15
Speaker 2: these things. And yet at school I was going really
7:21
Speaker 2: high on the tests, and you know, there were all
7:24
Speaker 2: I was really athletic. I spent a lot of time
7:27
Speaker 2: outside running around. So there was kind of a disconnect
7:34
Speaker 2: in a way between my inner reality of what I
7:38
Speaker 2: thought was true and what the what I was actually
7:40
Speaker 2: presenting to the outside world. And then that became my
7:43
Speaker 2: way of surviving. It was just like, it doesn't feel
7:46
Speaker 2: good inside, but if I can make it, if I
7:50
Speaker 2: can achieve on the outside, well you know, at least
7:54
Speaker 2: I'm not disappearing or I don't know how to say it,
7:59
Speaker 2: but I think to understand what I'm saying.
8:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, So how do things unfold for you as you
8:05
Speaker 1: get older? Through high school? How are you managing? I
8:08
Speaker 1: guess this is how you're managing one way as things evolve.
8:12
Speaker 1: Do you go to college? What are you thinking? I
8:16
Speaker 1: want to be x Y or Z. Let's I want
8:19
Speaker 1: to get into How do you start thinking about or
8:24
Speaker 1: feeling into becoming a guide and an author and writing
8:28
Speaker 1: about these topics?
8:30
Speaker 2: That was I guess that's a reflection of my own
8:35
Speaker 2: healing path, if you will. And high school was difficult
8:40
Speaker 2: because my mom had moved back from Dallas. I moved
8:44
Speaker 2: in with her. That she didn't have the boundaries, She
8:50
Speaker 2: wasn't able to show up as a parent. It was
8:51
Speaker 2: more like we were roommates. That was a whole nother
8:54
Speaker 2: kind of abandoning wound. And at some point I went
8:58
Speaker 2: into a deep depress Rusian and I realized that I
9:02
Speaker 2: needed structure, so I moved back in with my dad
9:06
Speaker 2: and stepmother, which was a whole other, very difficult thing,
9:09
Speaker 2: but it was a survival decision. And from there there
9:15
Speaker 2: was no support for me going to college because everyone
9:18
Speaker 2: thought that I was just really not capable, if you will.
9:26
Speaker 2: So when I graduated, I took a year off and
9:29
Speaker 2: got a job, got my own apartment. All of my
9:31
Speaker 2: friends were going after college, and at some point there
9:35
Speaker 2: was some inner voice that said, I have got to
9:40
Speaker 2: get my college degree. You know, I was working in
9:43
Speaker 2: a ski's shop. I was really doing a good job.
9:47
Speaker 2: It was obvious that I was very capable, and I
9:51
Speaker 2: took myself into the admissions office and from there I
9:56
Speaker 2: paid my way through college. And that was like my
9:58
Speaker 2: first kind of hurdle life. I'll feel so much better.
10:01
Speaker 2: My self esteem is getting a skyrocket if only I
10:04
Speaker 2: get that college degree. Right. So, and it did it.
10:07
Speaker 2: It was helpful, and college was challenging. I think I
10:12
Speaker 2: I had episodes of depression throughout, but it was just
10:15
Speaker 2: like one foot in front of the other. And when
10:19
Speaker 2: I got my degree, it was an accomplishment, but it
10:25
Speaker 2: didn't change the way I felt about myself internally. I
10:29
Speaker 2: got a job, I got married to an older man,
10:34
Speaker 2: who already had three kids. And I think that was
10:37
Speaker 2: my way of, you know, finding finally safety and a
10:42
Speaker 2: place where I kind of had this sudden, kind of
10:46
Speaker 2: intact family. And I was a great step parent, and
10:53
Speaker 2: I was doing the brownies and you know, all the
10:58
Speaker 2: soccer games and.
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Speaker 1: All everything you're supposed to do.
11:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, let me showing up for them. And in
11:05
Speaker 2: a way that was healing for me because I had
11:07
Speaker 2: never had that. But it wasn't enough. And I said
11:10
Speaker 2: another hurdle, which was if only I had a graduate
11:14
Speaker 2: level degree. And so I was looking around, and I
11:19
Speaker 2: decided to go to law school, and so I got
11:21
Speaker 2: a degree in law.
11:22
Speaker 1: Wow, hang on, let me just around. Let me interject
11:25
Speaker 1: you for a second. Up to this point, how you
11:29
Speaker 1: sought out any kind of therapy or quote unquote help. Yes, okay, look.
11:37
Speaker 2: That's a good point. When I was in high school,
11:41
Speaker 2: I when I moved, when I was living with my mom,
11:46
Speaker 2: it was I was really in a I realized that
11:50
Speaker 2: I needed help. So that was I I sought out therapy.
11:53
Speaker 2: And I was working with a therapist at the end
11:55
Speaker 2: of my senior year just to get through high school
11:58
Speaker 2: because I just was so shut down. So That was
12:04
Speaker 2: kind of the first help and she was just helping me, Okay,
12:08
Speaker 2: you need structure, how would it feel moved back in
12:11
Speaker 2: with Dad and Kate even just get out of this,
12:17
Speaker 2: So that was really helpful. Then in college, I had
12:20
Speaker 2: a therapist for about a year and a half that
12:26
Speaker 2: I was working with, and that was also really helpful
12:28
Speaker 2: and supportive, and it basically was just having someone kind
12:32
Speaker 2: of say you're What I needed to hear at that
12:36
Speaker 2: time was you're okay, You're not crazy. You are having
12:40
Speaker 2: depression and it's an effective disorder that's caused by all
12:43
Speaker 2: of this stress and trauma that you've experienced in your
12:45
Speaker 2: young life. You know that kind of thing, rather than
12:49
Speaker 2: oh my god, you know I'm insane and this is
12:53
Speaker 2: a never ending, suffering kind of thing. So that helped
12:56
Speaker 2: define what was actually happening. And then throughout those years
13:04
Speaker 2: of that marriage, I also sought therapy, and it was
13:10
Speaker 2: never long lasting. It was always like I would wait
13:14
Speaker 2: until I hit a a downward kind of spiral and think, Okay,
13:19
Speaker 2: I need help, and then I get therapy. I tried
13:22
Speaker 2: antidepressants a few times, anything to just keep myself alive
13:30
Speaker 2: and afloat. If you will, and functioning. But when I
13:36
Speaker 2: was thirty, I started long distance running. I had my
13:40
Speaker 2: law degree. You know, I was working for legal aid,
13:43
Speaker 2: which is an extremely stressful kind of law practice because
13:48
Speaker 2: you're dealing with people who are being evicted or domestic
13:51
Speaker 2: on the civil side, domestic abuse, kidnapping, family law matters
13:57
Speaker 2: that are very difficult. And that that was also part
14:04
Speaker 2: of my giving of myself to feel better about myself.
14:10
Speaker 2: But it also taught me so much about human nature
14:13
Speaker 2: and how resilience actually is alive in people. But I
14:21
Speaker 2: think the first kind of awakening was I started long
14:24
Speaker 2: distance running. I decided to train for a marathon that
14:28
Speaker 2: led to a few kind of many triathlons, And during
14:34
Speaker 2: some of my long runs, I would get into that zone,
14:39
Speaker 2: if you will, they call it the runner's peak, and
14:45
Speaker 2: I could feel this different possibility within my being. You know,
14:51
Speaker 2: I was present, I was you know, every the mind
14:57
Speaker 2: stopped racing and trying to get ahead or fall behind,
15:01
Speaker 2: and I was just in the in this zone and
15:04
Speaker 2: at peace with myself. And I recognized that this was
15:09
Speaker 2: a possibility within me, and that it didn't have to
15:12
Speaker 2: only happen when I was running, that it was something
15:16
Speaker 2: that I could actually cultivate. So that started my journey
15:22
Speaker 2: with meditation and spirituality, if you will. I understood that
15:29
Speaker 2: that this possibility was in essence my true nature somehow
15:33
Speaker 2: on those those long runs, and I longed for that.
15:37
Speaker 2: I longed to not always be kind of striving to please,
15:41
Speaker 2: or giving myself away, or unable to set boundaries for
15:45
Speaker 2: fear of abandonment, all of those kind of childhood adaptive
15:49
Speaker 2: patterns that actually helped me survive. I'm very grateful for them,
15:53
Speaker 2: but they weren't working anymore, if you will. So then
15:57
Speaker 2: I started a journey of medita haiti. And as you
16:04
Speaker 2: start to kind of change your lens of what feels
16:10
Speaker 2: right for you, then the people in your life start
16:12
Speaker 2: to shift to right, and a lot of friends dropped away.
16:18
Speaker 2: I got divorced, had to kind of start over, and
16:25
Speaker 2: so that was the beginning of my actual healing journey.
16:28
Speaker 2: And I think it's fair to say that the therapists that
16:34
Speaker 2: I saw early on were super helpful, and it just
16:39
Speaker 2: felt like a band aid, like because then there would
16:41
Speaker 2: be another trigger and then I would fall right back
16:44
Speaker 2: into those same symptoms because I truly hadn't healed what
16:47
Speaker 2: was underneath. I was addressing what the surface problems more
16:53
Speaker 2: or less how to function. So I through word of mouth,
16:59
Speaker 2: I met an elder therapist who was also a spiritual
17:02
Speaker 2: teacher spent most of his adult life in India. And
17:05
Speaker 2: it was so funny because my first session with him,
17:08
Speaker 2: he said, well, tell me about yourself, kind of like
17:11
Speaker 2: we're doing here. And when I finished, instead of saying
17:16
Speaker 2: which is that I appreciate the therapist, I'm not knocking
17:19
Speaker 2: therapy at all, which is like, oh my god, poor you.
17:22
Speaker 2: Your childhood, how traumatic, he just looked at me with
17:26
Speaker 2: these really wise eyes and said, wow, why did you
17:29
Speaker 2: choose those parents? And I was like, what, you know?
17:34
Speaker 2: My eyes probably got really big, and I think I
17:37
Speaker 2: was a bit offended. But that became a con for
17:40
Speaker 2: me in my journey because ultimately it set me free
17:45
Speaker 2: of the idea that I was the victim of anything
17:49
Speaker 2: in my life. That ultimately this self responsibility, like I
17:53
Speaker 2: chose this, this is my path, And then you think, okay,
17:57
Speaker 2: well why did I choose this? It's something that I
17:59
Speaker 2: can heal, and when I heal this, you know I'm
18:03
Speaker 2: also healing. I didn't know this. Then this is hindsight.
18:08
Speaker 2: I should clarify it. But it was also very healing
18:11
Speaker 2: from my mom and I think for my lineage as well,
18:14
Speaker 2: So that's kind of that's a.
18:17
Speaker 1: Very interesting response. You know, obviously why did you choose
18:22
Speaker 1: as parents? And I mean, I think a lot of
18:29
Speaker 1: people you know might have a response to that of
18:34
Speaker 1: you did, but you know, you said, well that kind
18:40
Speaker 1: of switched things around or flip things around such that
18:44
Speaker 1: you know, I could take responsibility for it and then
18:46
Speaker 1: begin my healing. But healing can happen from any perspective,
18:51
Speaker 1: right absolutely in a sense. So what strikes me about you,
19:00
Speaker 1: Irani is your insight into everything that transpired and your
19:07
Speaker 1: experiences is growing up and the trauma involved, but they're
19:14
Speaker 1: all at these specific stages, and I think epitomize with
19:19
Speaker 1: your running, there seem to pop up these bright sunshine
19:24
Speaker 1: moments where you get to see like your essence and
19:27
Speaker 1: your power and your strength come through and you ran,
19:31
Speaker 1: not to make a little pun here, but you ran
19:35
Speaker 1: with it right, you took it, and those seemed to
19:37
Speaker 1: be really important triggers for or impetuses for your healing,
19:41
Speaker 1: which is really really cool. So let's kind of move
19:45
Speaker 1: forward a little bit. When do you decide I'm going
19:50
Speaker 1: to be an author. When do you switch into this, like,
19:54
Speaker 1: maybe I can be a guide and what does that
19:56
Speaker 1: mean to you to be a guide?
20:03
Speaker 2: Well, my my, my journey. I never set out to
20:10
Speaker 2: be a guide, and I think we should be clear
20:17
Speaker 2: when we're talking about a guide, we're talking about somebody
20:28
Speaker 2: who sits with someone in in in presence. That's that's
20:32
Speaker 2: how I would define it. What happened for me is
20:37
Speaker 2: I got mm HM tow to start to work and
20:42
Speaker 2: help support uh of Shaman in South America. I started
20:48
Speaker 2: doing Sacred Clant medicine down there and he asked me
20:51
Speaker 2: to support and so eventually that led to me bringing
20:56
Speaker 2: people down on two weeks takered hunt medicine what we
21:03
Speaker 2: call diatas, that healing process, and there was when you're
21:07
Speaker 2: bringing people, there's an entry point where you're talking to
21:12
Speaker 2: the people and making sure they're ready and they understand
21:14
Speaker 2: the experience that they're signing up for in essence, and
21:17
Speaker 2: then there's an exit point where you want to make
21:19
Speaker 2: sure you're available for them as they're coming back into
21:23
Speaker 2: the real world. So for me, it was just a
21:26
Speaker 2: natural part of being in service to this work, which
21:30
Speaker 2: is a tradition that's thousands and thousands of years old.
21:34
Speaker 2: And so I started having sessions with these people before preparation,
21:39
Speaker 2: setting intention, making sure they were grounded and aware of understanding,
21:45
Speaker 2: you know, how to breathe under pressure, like simple things
21:49
Speaker 2: like that. Really, but and then on the outer helping
21:52
Speaker 2: them land and ground. And as I was just meeting
21:56
Speaker 2: with these people who were friends or fellow travelers or
21:59
Speaker 2: you know, people who I was bringing to the work,
22:04
Speaker 2: the word of mouth kind of happened, and then people
22:12
Speaker 2: started reaching out and saying, Hey, I've heard from someone
22:15
Speaker 2: so that you're doing sessions and I'd like a session.
22:19
Speaker 2: And so from there I thought, oh, I was still
22:23
Speaker 2: practicing law a part time. I had an estate planning practice,
22:27
Speaker 2: but I was really enjoying these sessions of just being
22:31
Speaker 2: with people and holding space and allowing them to kind
22:36
Speaker 2: of I think that abiding presence is really the most
22:41
Speaker 2: important medicine people can receive in their process. It's like
22:45
Speaker 2: somebody is not trying to fix or change them, but
22:48
Speaker 2: just being with them and allowing them to hold whatever
22:53
Speaker 2: they're holding and share what is surfacing without judgment. So
23:01
Speaker 2: that was my initial approach, and people kept coming and
23:06
Speaker 2: so I thought I could use some tools. Many of
23:11
Speaker 2: my dearest friends are therapist. My partner, my beloved is
23:16
Speaker 2: a therapist. I have many friends who are se therapists.
23:22
Speaker 2: I've been in deep processes, a path of lovery treats
23:27
Speaker 2: staff path of lovery treats. Many of my friends are
23:31
Speaker 2: path of Love leaders and all of the things. So
23:35
Speaker 2: I have like this kind of random bag of tools.
23:40
Speaker 2: And I heard about gaber Matte's Compassionate Inquiry year long training,
23:46
Speaker 2: and I thought, oh, maybe that's what I need to do.
23:49
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, I'm not a therapist. I had
23:51
Speaker 2: actually thought about going back to school and getting a
23:53
Speaker 2: master's but at that point I felt like there was
23:58
Speaker 2: a It didn't resonate. It seemed like a logical mind
24:03
Speaker 2: solution to a problem, but it didn't land in my body.
24:07
Speaker 2: So I took the year long Compassionate Inquiry training, and
24:10
Speaker 2: in that training, I got in through the fact that
24:14
Speaker 2: I'm a Kundalini Yoga teacher. You have to be a professional,
24:17
Speaker 2: so I had a life coach certificate in Kundalini Yoga.
24:21
Speaker 2: Most of the people in that training are therapists. But
24:26
Speaker 2: so in the year long training, it was like all
24:29
Speaker 2: of these tools that I had kind of scrambled in
24:31
Speaker 2: my bag became cohesive and made sense. So from there
24:36
Speaker 2: I started offering the compassionate inquiry sessions officially, if you will,
24:44
Speaker 2: and from there, oh, go ahead.
24:48
Speaker 1: Seconds. So you mentioned the abiding presence and how important
24:53
Speaker 1: that was. When did that become clear to you how
25:01
Speaker 1: important that was that ingredient?
25:06
Speaker 2: Well, I think it was obvious to me from the
25:10
Speaker 2: get go, because I'm coming from a perspective of my
25:15
Speaker 2: understanding of meditation, and so there, since I wasn't coming
25:25
Speaker 2: in as a therapist, I never had the inclination to
25:29
Speaker 2: try to use tools that I didn't have. What I
25:33
Speaker 2: had was my deep, committed meditation practice, and so that's
25:40
Speaker 2: what I and when I was sitting with the people
25:42
Speaker 2: seeking integration, you know, that's what I had to offer.
25:46
Speaker 2: And then, like I refer to all of those scrambled tools,
25:49
Speaker 2: naturally the people coming to integration would want to say, uh, well,
25:53
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure this out, and this happened, and
25:55
Speaker 2: this happened, and this happened, and I would say that
25:58
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say this, but understanding was all of this
26:01
Speaker 2: is the mind trying to trying to define and make
26:04
Speaker 2: sense of possibly on something that's unknowable. So my natural
26:11
Speaker 2: inclination was to bring them into a state of more
26:15
Speaker 2: attuned presence, if you were, and just instead of trying,
26:19
Speaker 2: and so I would say, you know, this is your mind.
26:22
Speaker 2: You're trying to figure all of this out. But you
26:24
Speaker 2: have other intelligence centers, if you will, and this comes
26:29
Speaker 2: from the Kundalini yoga training and the Eastern teachers that
26:34
Speaker 2: I worked with. You have other intelligence centers that are
26:39
Speaker 2: probably more able to integrate than this perferring mind. And
26:51
Speaker 2: so working with people to tap into their naval center
26:54
Speaker 2: and open their heart center the emotions allow the subtle,
26:59
Speaker 2: neutral mind to actually have connection to those that's all.
27:05
Speaker 2: That's all part of meditation, if you will. So I
27:09
Speaker 2: guess I understood that was my role from the get go,
27:16
Speaker 2: that I wasn't trying to fix or change anybody, that
27:19
Speaker 2: I was trying to share with them my understanding of
27:23
Speaker 2: how I was able to integrate, because of course, at
27:26
Speaker 2: times I had the scrambling mind, but I knew that
27:29
Speaker 2: if I could go into my deep breath work and
27:31
Speaker 2: just be that the scrambling mind would stop, and on
27:35
Speaker 2: some cellular level, the answer was already there, not that
27:39
Speaker 2: it was quote an answer, but that sense of okay,
27:44
Speaker 2: you know right, yeah.
27:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. That resonates a lot with me
27:49
Speaker 1: and I think with a lot of other nope, uh therapists.
27:58
Speaker 1: Licensed therapists are people who call themselves were actually therapists.
28:03
Speaker 1: It gets to it gets to a point, and sometimes
28:07
Speaker 1: it takes a long time for I think the therapists
28:10
Speaker 1: to realize that, you know, just what you said. It's
28:15
Speaker 1: not always easy. But let's kind of I want to
28:18
Speaker 1: as we kind of wine down here, I want to
28:19
Speaker 1: kind of talk about your books. You've written four, let's
28:28
Speaker 1: pick one, and uh share with us when you decided
28:33
Speaker 1: to write it.
28:34
Speaker 2: How Why Well, I've only written two, okay, and the
28:41
Speaker 2: I wrote okay, Actually that's not true. I wrote I
28:46
Speaker 2: wrote a book on integration when I was and I'll
28:49
Speaker 2: be really quick with this, when I was starting to
28:51
Speaker 2: sit with people coming with me for integration, one of
28:54
Speaker 2: the things that I saw happening was they're trying to
28:57
Speaker 2: figure it out in their mind and they need tools.
29:00
Speaker 2: And so I actually had an agenda. It's like, do
29:02
Speaker 2: your homework, you know, here's a meditation, here's it, all
29:07
Speaker 2: the things. But I wrote it from the perspective of
29:10
Speaker 2: a kind of a life coach, yoga teacher, and I
29:13
Speaker 2: didn't talk at all about psychedelics because at that time
29:18
Speaker 2: I really wanted to still remain under the radar. I
29:22
Speaker 2: took that book off the market because it wasn't my voice. Actually,
29:28
Speaker 2: it was just like very kind of clever. And then
29:34
Speaker 2: as I completed my Compassionate Inquiry training and people started
29:38
Speaker 2: to come to me for Compassionate Inquiry, I noticed over
29:42
Speaker 2: and over again that all of my sessions with women
29:46
Speaker 2: were circling around the mother wound. And so I had
29:50
Speaker 2: a session with a woman who just wanted to explore
29:52
Speaker 2: why she wasn't sleeping, for instance, and then we came
29:56
Speaker 2: to a place in her past where she realized that
30:00
Speaker 2: when she was an infant, her mother was always waking
30:03
Speaker 2: her up to make sure she was still breathing. And
30:05
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, there's another example of the mother wound.
30:09
Speaker 2: So I thought, I'm going to focus my CI practice
30:14
Speaker 2: on this mother wound. Obviously I have my own experience
30:18
Speaker 2: of healing that, and in the course of that, I
30:23
Speaker 2: decided to send out at I sent out a little
30:27
Speaker 2: email that basically said, you know, I'm going to focus
30:30
Speaker 2: my practice on this if you could write a testimonial
30:34
Speaker 2: with some of the women I'd worked with, and that
30:36
Speaker 2: led to an editor of a publisher contact me and
30:40
Speaker 2: saying I want to talk to you about a book,
30:43
Speaker 2: and so I initially signed up to write a book
30:46
Speaker 2: on the mother wound, which I call the Mother Ach.
30:49
Speaker 2: And in the course of those negotiations, I met with
30:52
Speaker 2: the publisher and he said, we're really curious about your
30:57
Speaker 2: Integration book. Would you consider rewriting it? What would that
31:00
Speaker 2: take Because it's an important topic, right, I mean, psychedelics
31:05
Speaker 2: are exploding, but if people don't have the tools or
31:08
Speaker 2: the resources, the interior resources, well, so I said yes,
31:17
Speaker 2: and so I wrote the two books. I signed a
31:20
Speaker 2: contract for two books, and they suggested I do the
31:22
Speaker 2: Integration book first and then the mother Ache book is
31:27
Speaker 2: coming out next month sometime.
31:31
Speaker 1: So who's the mother Ache?
31:33
Speaker 2: For the mother Ache, It's I'm very passionate about this. Actually,
31:41
Speaker 2: the mother Ache is for all women, it's for all mothers,
31:44
Speaker 2: it's for all daughters really, and it's written from the
31:48
Speaker 2: understanding that there is no such thing as a perfect mother.
31:53
Speaker 2: When an infant is an infant and their caregiver is
31:59
Speaker 2: trying to meet their needs. That's not always possible. And
32:03
Speaker 2: so if the let's say the baby is crying because
32:07
Speaker 2: it wants to be fed and the mother isn't feeding
32:10
Speaker 2: it because the doctor said feed it on a schedule,
32:13
Speaker 2: all well intended, but the baby gets the message. For instance,
32:16
Speaker 2: maybe they're a core belief starts to develop that my
32:19
Speaker 2: needs aren't important, so they shut down their disconnect from
32:22
Speaker 2: the body, disconnect from those those internal signals, if you will.
32:28
Speaker 2: So regardless of whether you have a really difficult relationship
32:34
Speaker 2: with your mother or a healthy relationship with your mother,
32:37
Speaker 2: in order to survive our early childhoods, we disconnect from
32:41
Speaker 2: our own internal cues in one way or another, and
32:46
Speaker 2: then the adaptive patterns come. I'm pleasing, I'm you know,
32:51
Speaker 2: I'm perfectionist, whatever it is. And so the book is
32:56
Speaker 2: teaching about that. In it, I tell the story of
33:01
Speaker 2: my own journey with my mother, which is a very
33:04
Speaker 2: actually healing story, and it's honoring the mother. So we're
33:10
Speaker 2: looking at it from not just the fact that my
33:12
Speaker 2: mother was abusive to me, but also what did my
33:17
Speaker 2: mother experience in her life that would have caused this
33:21
Speaker 2: kind of rupture within her that then she couldn't show
33:25
Speaker 2: up for me in the way that I needed. So
33:27
Speaker 2: it's lineage based and the metaphor that I use is
33:31
Speaker 2: weaving a basket, because the healing occurs through kind of honesty.
33:40
Speaker 2: And I think the problem, particularly with the more subtle
33:45
Speaker 2: mother Ache, if you will, is that we've been conditioned
33:49
Speaker 2: to not question or kind of criticize our parents, and
33:54
Speaker 2: so we had this residue of self doubt or sense
33:59
Speaker 2: of not quite being whole. And in order to heal that,
34:07
Speaker 2: we have to look at the where the beginnings of
34:09
Speaker 2: that kind of blossomed within us. And when we heal
34:16
Speaker 2: that disconnect, we're also healing, you know, the relationship with
34:22
Speaker 2: the mother.
34:24
Speaker 1: The book is called The Mother Ache. It will be
34:28
Speaker 1: out by the time this goes live. All right, Ronnie,
34:32
Speaker 1: what's the best way for people to learn more about
34:34
Speaker 1: you and get the book?
34:37
Speaker 2: They can learn more about me at my website, which
34:40
Speaker 2: is www Dotdevaarundi dot com. And the book is being
34:46
Speaker 2: published by Sentient Publications and is distributed by Simon and Schuster,
34:51
Speaker 2: so it's available wherever people buy books and is coming
34:54
Speaker 2: out May twelfth.
34:56
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll have that link up here at the show
34:58
Speaker 1: notes page at the Trauma Therapies podcast dot com Aroani
35:02
Speaker 1: pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much. We'll be in touch.
35:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much. It was really nice to
35:08
Speaker 2: meet you. Thanks for having me