You've met Teresa and John, but have you met the new cast of mystics?
Meet all 12 at the Modern Mystics School!
The Neurobiology of Presence
with Bonnie Badenoch
Have you ever been struck by someone’s depth of presence?
Like when you meet a wise, holy person. The depth of their presence overwhelms us, floods our body with their peace.
Have you ever wondered what's going on on a biological level when this happens?
Or, wondered why it's so much easier to feel grounded when we meditate with others vs. on our own?
Or maybe been curious about how life's traumas impact the contemplative life?
Get ready, everyone - this is one of my FAVORITE intersections. 🤩🤩
Neuroscience and the contemplative life.
Embodiment and spirituality. The mystical and the muscles, minerals, and membranes.
In today’s episode I speak with Dr. Bonnie Badenoch, who specializes in precisely this intersection. Bonnie is an interpersonal neurobiologist *and* a contemplative!
She has spent decades researching how that connection, and most importantly, presence, impacts our bodies.
You might think of her as the Brene Brown of presence-- combining lots of heart with accessible research.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:14
Kelly Deutsch
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Spiritual Wanderlust podcast. I am your host, Kelly Deutsch, and today we are airing an episode that we recorded two years ago, but remains one of my all time favorite conversations. It's all about the neurobiology of presence. So think about this. Have you ever been struck by someone's presence like the depth of their presence?
00:00:23:21 - 00:00:49:00
Kelly Deutsch
You might meet a wise or holy person, and the presence just seems to overwhelm us and flood us with their peace. But have you ever wondered what's going on on a biological level when this happens? Like, how is their body, their presence, their spirit affecting my body, my spirit? Or maybe wondered why it's so much easier to feel grounded when we meditate with other people versus on our own?
00:00:49:02 - 00:01:22:01
Kelly Deutsch
Or maybe you've been curious about how trauma impacts the contemplative life. I freaking love this intersection of neurobiology and the contemplative life embodiment and spirituality, the mystical and all of our muscles and minerals and membranes. In today's episode, I speak with doctor Bonnie Badenoch, who specializes in exactly this intersection. Bonnie is an interpersonal neurobiologist and a contemplative interpersonal neurobiology.
00:01:22:02 - 00:01:46:07
Kelly Deutsch
For those of you who might not have heard of this before, it's not as complicated as it sounds. It simply studies what happens in our bodies when we are in relationship. You know, the neuroscience, not only our brains, but our nervous system and interpersonal, you know, when we're in relationship, how my biology affects your biology. Because when we're deeply present with another person and.
00:01:46:09 - 00:01:46:17
Bonnie Badenoch
They.
00:01:46:17 - 00:02:20:10
Kelly Deutsch
Help us feel safe, a whole myriad of biological reactions and changes happen inside of us. And this science is showing that we are wired for connection down to our brain cells and synapses and sinews. So if you want a really approachable book on this topic, I highly recommend it. Bonnie's is the heart of trauma. I used her book as spiritual reading because she just blends together her decades of contemplative experience with all of her interpersonal neuro biological research.
00:02:20:12 - 00:02:48:23
Kelly Deutsch
You might think of her as like Brené Brown of presence research and a lot of heart. So I'm nerding out hard on this one, and I can't wait for you guys to listen to this episode. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Bonnie. Bad. Wonderful. Welcome, everyone. My name is Kelly Deutsch, and today we have with us Bonnie Badenoch and I have been so looking forward to this conversation.
00:02:49:10 - 00:03:21:19
Kelly Deutsch
Bonnie is a therapist and author, and she's written extensively on the intersection of interpersonal neurobiology and the art of therapy. But the thing I think I like the most about you, Bonnie, is that, you are an intersection in many ways. There's there's the intersection of of head and heart and a lot of your writings. I was just looking at reading your book last night, and I love how it's almost a spiritual practice, going through a lot of the neuroscience that's in there.
00:03:21:26 - 00:03:42:16
Kelly Deutsch
I found that I was using it almost like Alexios Divina, you know, and just savoring the words, which is a beautiful thing. And I love the intersection of all the various types of research in psychology and neuroscience, and how that has come together in your work. You are in some ways an intersection between east and west. I know your background.
00:03:42:16 - 00:03:59:26
Kelly Deutsch
You've, spent a lot of time in the yoga world, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about that. as well as, just like humanities and mysticism and all sorts of different things. so I can't wait to, hear more about your background.
00:03:59:29 - 00:04:25:11
Bonnie Badenoch
Well, thank you so much for for inviting me. This just feels delicious in a lot of ways, because spirituality is really, really important to me. And I don't think I've ever seen therapy as separate from spiritual development. So it's wonderful to get to talk about it that way because, like, it's tricky to do that sometimes in our field, which often kind of excludes the spiritual dimension.
00:04:25:13 - 00:04:29:06
Bonnie Badenoch
So anyway, I'm just really grateful to have this opportunity and.
00:04:29:09 - 00:04:42:24
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, absolutely. To start, would you mind sharing with us just a bit of your background, like did you come to therapy first or to spirituality first? And how have those things intersected in your life?
00:04:42:27 - 00:05:07:00
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah, I, I come from a really severe background of abuse and early on. because my parents were both very ill and, and they both had been just destroyed in their childhoods. And of course, they found each other, and it made for great difficulty for me and my sister. But, but I also can really have compassion for that was all they had to give.
00:05:07:03 - 00:05:29:19
Bonnie Badenoch
But as a result of that, there was really early, really traumatic experience. And I my first spiritual experience. And I think every spiritual experience that's come is by grace. And so, I don't know, I was 2 or 3 years old and feeling like I was again at an intersection of whether I would let myself live or not, whether my soul would leave my body.
00:05:29:21 - 00:05:52:23
Bonnie Badenoch
And I had this sense of I've never been clear about it, of either Mary Magdalene or Mother Mary being there, just being there, you know, just being there. And somehow the message was to say and that everything would be all right. And I think that that helped me hold on through what was a really rough childhood mental variance.
00:05:53:26 - 00:06:25:01
Bonnie Badenoch
and also, I had a grandfather who was a mystic who was a Rosicrucian. So from the time I was three until he passed away when I was 11, I had some sense, even though he wasn't actually teaching me anything, but I had a sense from being around him of this greater world that's unseen world that I believe was extremely important to him, due out his life, because of his traumatic history, you know, that it was something that had helped him be able to kind of hang on through all of that.
00:06:25:01 - 00:06:55:07
Bonnie Badenoch
So, so those those questions and those, you know, well, I don't even know if their questions, those assurances stayed with me. And when I was 11, my grandfather passed away. When I wasn't there, I didn't know he was even ill or anything. And I was at school and I had, you know, I'm 11 years old and I had the sensation of my grandfather coming, like at about 11:00 in the morning and holding me and kind of saying, it'll be okay, which was the same message from early on.
00:06:55:09 - 00:07:24:15
Bonnie Badenoch
And when I got home, I learned that he had had a heart attack and died at 8 a.m. in the morning. so since that experience, though, of him coming to me, I really don't have any fear of death particularly. I have a lot of fear about feeling awful going toward death. But sure. But the actual, the actual sense of of going on after death in that transition really was has just stayed with me since that experience when I was 11.
00:07:24:16 - 00:07:47:18
Bonnie Badenoch
So that's a piece of, of goodness. that then I went off to college and pretty much forgot about anything but being in college and, you know, doing that kind of stuff and being out of an abusive situation for the first time in my life. So I really I the part of me that was fostered by my family, my my dad and my grandfather in particular, was that I was a good student and all of that.
00:07:47:18 - 00:08:05:16
Bonnie Badenoch
So getting to go to college and being away from the abuse for the first time, I loved it. I was but I didn't think about anything else. You know how it is at that stage in life. And then shortly after leaving college, I started to have a lot of emotional problems, and I really wasn't even clear about the source of all of them or anything.
00:08:05:16 - 00:08:37:03
Bonnie Badenoch
And I, I got to a place, where I started going to Self-Realization fellowship through Paramahansa Yogananda organization. And a friend took me there one night, and I really was close to taking my life, and we couldn't get into the main sanctuary. So we were downstairs and there were the room, there was the pictures of all the gurus from that line, Sri Aurobindo, and I'm not sure I think of Sri of Schwa, Babaji and all these beautiful pictures.
00:08:37:06 - 00:09:02:05
Bonnie Badenoch
And I was thinking I would die that night and all of a sudden all this light came out of Yogananda's picture and just bathed me. and I lost any interest in taking my life. Wow. I've had these wonderful moments of grace that then don't last. And I've come to understand a lot more about why they can't last.
00:09:02:05 - 00:09:27:19
Bonnie Badenoch
So if you're if our minds are just fractured by my experiences that we've had, I feel like my my being has been for, for a lot of my life has been a sieve because of the way that my neurobiology was in pieces and fragments, because of the things that had happened to me and my nervous system was very prone to becoming the autonomic nervous system, to becoming afraid.
00:09:27:19 - 00:09:57:07
Bonnie Badenoch
And all of these things that have a history of trauma or even neglect or, you know, any way that were not met with love early on leaves a mark on us and makes it harder, I believe, to have this kind of continuous sense of the presence of the divine. like these drops of grace come in and are wonderful and are never they can't ever not have happened, but they don't stay at a felt sense level very well as my personal experience.
00:09:57:09 - 00:10:09:29
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, yeah. Neurologically or I mean, what's going on in the body that that might cause something like that. I mean, because that's a fascinating intersection of, you know, biology, the physicality and the spiritual.
00:10:10:01 - 00:10:32:06
Bonnie Badenoch
Yes. Which I don't think are two separate things at all. I think they're very they're all they're very intertwined. Because it's also true that that by the design of who we are, that everything we need to heal is also part of us. And so it isn't only that there are these other other, kind of catastrophic events, and some of them are very quiet, like a parent hating us.
00:10:32:06 - 00:10:58:28
Bonnie Badenoch
Maybe we're never spanked or touched or yelled at or anything, but we just feel this terrible rejection from a parent really is a worse wound than abuse, as it turns out. what happens for us is that we have an experience, and when we haven't experience, it's overwhelmingly frightening or overwhelmingly painful. In its wisdom, our brain is able to segregate that experience from the flow of daily life.
00:10:58:28 - 00:11:24:25
Bonnie Badenoch
Because if it was up in our awareness, either emotionally, physically, in any way, all the time, we couldn't function in the world. And so our our brains have all kinds of ways that they take it away, almost like, like holding it, waiting for healing. And the result is, is there's a lot of danger in getting quiet. as if we get quiet and we get connected and we start to really relax inside.
00:11:24:27 - 00:11:33:20
Bonnie Badenoch
All of this stuff may come up, and without sufficient support, it could really be overwhelming for us.
00:11:33:22 - 00:11:43:08
Kelly Deutsch
Is that why sometimes you'll hear of those stories of people who went on like a, you know, silent retreat or something. They came out just like they cracked open and were never the same.
00:11:43:24 - 00:12:06:02
Bonnie Badenoch
yes. That's that that would seem to be the reason why is because there is this, I think, very sacred protection for those experiences. But it requires us to not spend so much time in quiet. And then I think the other part of that is I believe that there's a certain amount of wholeness to our neurobiology that's required for a sense of continuity of spiritual experience.
00:12:06:29 - 00:12:32:27
Bonnie Badenoch
because over time, I mean, I was at a then so a little later on, I went to I was part of a yoga center, a beautiful, wonderful yoga center, welcoming of all religions and, you know, just filled with all this good stuff. I eventually became a teacher. There and all of that. But again, I would have an experience of some sort, whether it was one of peace or the presence of, in this case, Ramakrishna or something like that.
00:12:33:00 - 00:12:56:06
Bonnie Badenoch
And after 2 or 3 days, it was just like it was gone. And this underlying sense of, of for me, kind of a, I don't know, a kind of hopelessness and the kind of underlying pain would be there in my belly and in my heart and in my emotions and all of this and that other experience. Again, I would of course, know what happened, but I was so sad it wouldn't stay.
00:12:56:27 - 00:13:11:09
Bonnie Badenoch
I just don't think it's possible without a certain amount of wholeness within us not to. I think we can have the experience, but to have continuity of experience is a different matter. I think.
00:13:11:12 - 00:13:38:10
Kelly Deutsch
In working in a lot of contemplative circles and people who are hungry for, you know, these depths of the divine, maybe they don't even have words for what it is. Mysticism or something else. I find a lot of people who have survived trauma or some sort of major crisis. Why do you think that is that? I mean, is it one finds the other or, is it how we cope with our trauma?
00:13:38:12 - 00:13:55:20
Bonnie Badenoch
You know, I suspect it's a little different for every person, Kelly, because I do think we're all very unique and individual. So, you know, as I tell my story, it might match pieces here and there for people who are listening. And their experience may be quite different than mine was. So I think that there are different reasons why that is.
00:13:55:20 - 00:14:29:00
Bonnie Badenoch
But I also think that a depth of wounding calls us to have, oh, what do I want to say? It calls us to have some kind of need for some kind of reassurance. I think, I think we have a tendency then to reach out. I also believe that, God is always reaching out to us. and then perhaps when we are at our most desperate and at our most hurting, we're most available.
00:14:29:22 - 00:14:50:25
Bonnie Badenoch
Richard Rohr is someone who I adore deeply. And Jim Finley is a good friend. And so their their work really, really touches me a lot. And I love how, how Father Richard says that God never forces him or herself on us, but is always there and available. And I do think when we are deeply wounded, we may have we could have.
00:14:50:25 - 00:15:23:17
Bonnie Badenoch
We don't all have, but it's possible we could have greater availability, to that. And then sometimes there are these unexpected moments of grace, that come in the midst of things that let us go on, when otherwise we might not be able to stay in our bodies because of what's happening. Yeah, I also know people and I this is a total mystery to me who pray and beg and yearn for God in the midst of trauma, recovery or the traumas themselves, and don't feel like anything happens.
00:15:23:20 - 00:15:55:00
Bonnie Badenoch
So I don't, I don't I don't have any answers. It's a big it's a big mystery. And I just feel, you know, really, really, really grateful for the pieces that came, that sustained me and also for all the years of therapy with really good therapy, that helped me get whole enough so that it's not so much of a about a but in and out kind of thing, you know, like big experience and then nothing and back and then both and I think both in general both are really helpful.
00:15:56:09 - 00:16:18:22
Bonnie Badenoch
Important that we work on our, on our woundedness in order to have a physiology that is more likely to be able to sustain spiritual experience when it comes. Yeah I think it always comes by grace, I don't think it comes because we do X or Y or because I sit down and do this or whatever.
00:16:18:22 - 00:16:35:11
Bonnie Badenoch
My, my experience I love which I think this is what and probably Father Richard says this too, but I know that Jim says this, which is it's very important to do spiritual practice, but that isn't what has that is what makes the experience come.
00:16:35:13 - 00:16:38:11
Kelly Deutsch
I like the analogy of surfing.
00:16:38:13 - 00:16:39:05
Bonnie Badenoch
But.
00:16:39:08 - 00:16:43:02
Kelly Deutsch
Like you can take the board out but it's not up to you if the wave comes or not.
00:16:43:02 - 00:16:50:10
Bonnie Badenoch
That's right, that's right. And thank heavens, I mean imagine the arrogance we could sustain if it weren't that way.
00:16:50:12 - 00:16:51:15
Kelly Deutsch
Right, right.
00:16:51:21 - 00:16:59:27
Bonnie Badenoch
And I'm just in charge of this and God will come at my beck and call and, you know, you used to always say, God is not a bellhop.
00:16:59:29 - 00:17:18:29
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, indeed. And that's I feel like such a hard lesson for those of us who do experience those moments of grace, because oftentimes we will try to recreate the environment, you know, like, okay, I was sitting this way, I was focusing on my breathing, you know, or I was reading this thing, but for whatever reason, we can't recreate it.
00:17:19:01 - 00:17:21:01
Kelly Deutsch
It's as hard as we try.
00:17:21:03 - 00:17:37:14
Bonnie Badenoch
You know? Thank heavens. I mean, I, I think this sense of, of my complete incapacity in that regard is like the greatest gift. you know, it lets us it lets us have a humility that otherwise as a human being is hard to sustain.
00:17:37:16 - 00:18:12:17
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah, I like that. It's like the gift of our incapacity. in my convent days, I was in the convent for a couple of years and calling that spiritual poverty and understanding. You know, when Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit, you know, I don't think I really understood that until probably the convent and then after, when my life fell apart with illness and recognizing the gift of spiritual poverty is having essentially being blown open and having this new carved out capacity to receive those gifts.
00:18:12:19 - 00:18:20:18
Kelly Deutsch
And I think if it wasn't for the help of a really great spiritual director and a really great therapist, like, I don't know where I'd be.
00:18:21:29 - 00:18:43:26
Bonnie Badenoch
yeah, yeah, me too. And we do. We need each other here. We need we need that support. I mean, that that to me, if there's anything that I wanted to write about and have written about is the importance of our interdependence. And, again, we can't do that by ourselves either. Deep healing has to come with the support of others.
00:18:43:28 - 00:19:05:21
Bonnie Badenoch
At least it comes most easily. I mean, we can try to force the issue alone, but it's so much harder. And for me, with the depth of trauma, there is no way I could have visited those places inside myself. Without support, it wouldn't have been wise. It would be possible. And early on, and in my mid-forties, I got some good, really good therapy.
00:19:05:21 - 00:19:28:14
Bonnie Badenoch
Finally, after some weird stuff, it didn't really help very much so. But I got some. I got some really good therapy, and what I found was in the early part of the therapy, everything got so close to the surface that I had to stop meditating for a while, because it was too much when if I would get that quiet, the stuff that was beginning to really bubble up would be overwhelming.
00:19:28:14 - 00:19:37:24
Bonnie Badenoch
So I had to leave my practice for about three years because it was really dangerous for me to go into those places by myself.
00:19:37:26 - 00:20:00:27
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. What do you recommend to people who experience that? Because I think that's pretty common, especially how our nervous systems have adapted to the chaos of the world, you know? Is that like, I'm basically always in sympathetic like fight flight, you know, there's a lot of mobilization in my limbs, in my mind. And so when we try to settle down, it can be very difficult.
00:20:00:27 - 00:20:18:12
Kelly Deutsch
And your brain's like, oh, I want to be anywhere but here. Oh, instead, shame themselves because, oh, I can't even sit for 20 minutes of silence, you know. So how do you help people who or what would you recommend to those who do struggle with settling into the silence? And their bodies and minds are.
00:20:18:15 - 00:20:18:22
Bonnie Badenoch
So.
00:20:18:24 - 00:20:20:12
Kelly Deutsch
Overactive?
00:20:20:14 - 00:20:40:23
Bonnie Badenoch
Well, I think that I'll tell you the studying of the neurobiology has been so helpful for me, and I really trust the wisdom of our minds and our bodies. And if it starts to feel like it's overwhelming to them that that's our body saying, don't do that now. Maybe go for a walk in the woods, maybe breathe with the trees if that feels good to you.
00:20:40:25 - 00:20:46:16
Bonnie Badenoch
If that's too much, watch Netflix. If that's too much.
00:20:46:18 - 00:20:54:01
Kelly Deutsch
I love that because that's exactly what I recommended to people. I'm like, your spiritual practice needs to be watching Netflix right now.
00:20:54:03 - 00:21:31:27
Bonnie Badenoch
That's right. Because if our system is already overwhelmed, the, the, the even, the effort to try to force settling in our nervous system happens when we feel safe. safety is a prerequisite for really settling into a space where we feel, and can receive. And our world has not felt safe. I realized even on Wednesday, the day of the inauguration, my body was still so tied up in knots that I didn't feel the the I, I knew, I, I knew it was wonderful and I was crying with joy, but my whole body was still tied up in knots.
00:21:31:27 - 00:21:56:24
Bonnie Badenoch
And it wasn't until I finally slept well, which I hadn't done in two weeks and woke up the next morning. But I got to enjoy what had happened. because in the wisdom of my body, my body needed to still be holding on. And like this pretty much from the insurrection through the end of the inauguration and then and even the even, even the, you know, the more playful stuff in the evening.
00:21:56:26 - 00:22:24:05
Bonnie Badenoch
But somehow the transition in the night let me really sleep deeply and well and that reset my system. And so that allowed me then to flow into the joy of what had happened, but also allowed me to get back into a deeper sense of connection. and, and the ability to really start to have, because I was finding my, I try to meditate a half hour in the morning and then twice a week I do an hour and a half.
00:22:24:08 - 00:22:48:06
Bonnie Badenoch
And, there was I could I mean, I could certainly sit there, but but there wasn't any way anything was going to be happening except fireworks going off in my mind. And which seemed again, that's the wisdom of how much had gone on and how our bodies just can only hold so much. Yeah. Demand our attention to say, okay, what's going on with you body?
00:22:48:06 - 00:22:55:24
Bonnie Badenoch
You know, you are just so impacted right now. Maybe I just need to attend to you.
00:22:55:26 - 00:23:07:16
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's where the. Yeah that concept of embodiment is so important, especially in the West where we tend to grow up very disembodied.
00:23:08:15 - 00:23:25:24
Kelly Deutsch
Listening to that wisdom because even in our spiritual practice we're like, no, no. Like I need to be able to do my 20 minute sit every day. You know, I need to be able to do, you know, whatever your spiritual practices and trying to force that instead of that curiosity, it's like, oh, I wonder what of my body is doing that?
00:23:25:25 - 00:23:29:03
Kelly Deutsch
You know, what? What do you need? And attending to.
00:23:29:03 - 00:23:54:26
Bonnie Badenoch
That? Well, yeah. And having an expectation of what's going to happen during that quiet time is instead of, I mean, you know, if the practice, if one of the core practices in just about every path is surrender, that's also surrendering to the day that my mind is just like fireworks. Yeah. And so I've, I've heard the I think the Dalai Lama say that, that your job is to get your rear end on the cushion and the rest is not your business.
00:23:55:00 - 00:23:55:22
Kelly Deutsch
Right.
00:23:55:24 - 00:24:20:25
Bonnie Badenoch
What's going to happen is going to happen. You will focus, you won't focus. you'll notice that your body feels like, you know, a thousand knots or and maybe that spiritual practice, the noticing. Yeah. Where I am today. And it doesn't mean God isn't here even though I can't have any felt sense of it, you know, but that I, but that this is what, this is what is in this moment.
00:24:20:25 - 00:24:24:09
Bonnie Badenoch
And maybe if I can be with that, that's honoring in some way.
00:24:24:14 - 00:24:45:12
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah. I love Teresa of Avila, one of the Christian mystics will say, yeah, she's one of my favorites. you know, her definition of holiness is just doing the will of God. And that's where I think we often get tripped up, is understanding what the will of God is, because a lot of the mystics would say the will of God is what is.
00:24:45:15 - 00:24:46:27
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah.
00:24:46:29 - 00:24:47:15
Kelly Deutsch
If you can't.
00:24:47:16 - 00:24:48:27
Bonnie Badenoch
Step outside it.
00:24:48:29 - 00:25:10:29
Kelly Deutsch
Right, right. And so that that might be accepting that your mind is ping pong ball today, or it might be accepting some delicious grace that just fills you from the inside out and you feel like you're radiating. Or it could be 2020 and like there's nowhere to run, you know? I mean.
00:25:12:10 - 00:25:12:27
Bonnie Badenoch
yeah, but.
00:25:12:27 - 00:25:16:11
Kelly Deutsch
Accepting even that, that to me is holiness.
00:25:16:14 - 00:25:35:15
Bonnie Badenoch
Yes. Yes, I think so. So, so if we can even on a day where we can't feel that is holy, we can kind of remember it in some way. That's something else. Father Richard says, you know, once you've had an experience you can't have it. You may not be able to feel it again, but it did happen.
00:25:35:18 - 00:25:36:22
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:36:29 - 00:25:48:17
Bonnie Badenoch
How much doubt or whatever else comes in at some cellular and body level. You're you that experience lives on whether we can come in any contact with it or not.
00:25:48:19 - 00:26:02:26
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what a lot of us, what has sparked our pursuit of this contemplative path is we had some sort of a taste somewhere and then we spend the rest of our lives pursuing or being pursued.
00:26:03:23 - 00:26:34:04
Bonnie Badenoch
probably being pursued and learning how to make room. It was like to be learning how to make room for, for all experience. in starting when I was about 65, I, I've had the wonderful grace of having cranial sacral, practitioner who also became like a close, close friend. And we did some teaching together, but we also became just able to be with each other around a kind of mutual love for the divine.
00:26:34:04 - 00:26:59:25
Bonnie Badenoch
Even though he and I are different in some ways about the path. But in the cranial work, what I what I found so helpful part, part of it for me is a one on one relationship, because I seemed to need that I could be part of a group and that's fine, but it's not the same to me as kind of being in seeking the, you know, of seeking to open to the presence of the divine one on one.
00:27:00:11 - 00:27:36:12
Bonnie Badenoch
and I think what I learned because of the stillness inside of him that gradually was flowing into me, even though my mind would still be busy. It was a stillness of the body, and into that space could come either implicit memories of trauma that needed addressing, or this sense of presence that one would come and it was almost like that infinity symbol, you know, you dip down into the implicit world and these old things begin to come up, and my body would shake and I would cry and, you know, feel his presence in his comfort.
00:27:36:12 - 00:27:55:09
Bonnie Badenoch
And then we could round that out. There would be a deepening sense of spirituality. And then the next time we would meet, I'd have no idea which way it was going to go or how many different ways. So it became a practice of surrender into whatever was next. and I have no way of knowing what it is or he wouldn't either.
00:27:55:09 - 00:28:20:17
Bonnie Badenoch
I mean, neither one of us would know what was next, but to be present to what's next, but really sensing the importance of that whole loop, the probably our whole lives will have these embodied, implicit memories coming up, even if, like you said, if we've had good upbringing and all of that, the world's a tough place. and of course, 2020 was like almost beyond belief, a tough place.
00:28:20:20 - 00:28:48:21
Bonnie Badenoch
But that's been true for a long time. I one of the other pieces of neurobiology that has been really important for me to hold on to in this regard is that there is so much, glut of information and activity and left brain focus where we get all tense and, and goal focused, that, that really it's traumatic to just be alive in a developed country.
00:28:49:15 - 00:29:13:28
Bonnie Badenoch
too much for our system. There's too much information, there's too much speed. And because we take in the implicit surround in a big way, it really doesn't matter. Even if we are trying to be more contemplative and more quiet and slow down, we're still being impacted in a big way by what's around us. Yeah. And so we are all are holding more than our systems can manage.
00:29:15:06 - 00:29:25:04
Bonnie Badenoch
one researcher says we're taking in about 174 newspapers worth of information every day, and it's beyond what we can process.
00:29:25:06 - 00:29:36:12
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, yeah. And that makes so much sense. I, I also discovered the work of, Elaine Aaron in the past year or two, about highly sensitive persons. And.
00:29:37:02 - 00:30:06:28
Kelly Deutsch
I find a lot of folks who are in the spiritual world, the contemplative world tend to have very sensitive, nervous systems. So all the more so, you know, being in the world, we just feel bombarded by all this stimulus and information. And it doesn't even have to be, you know, like literally newspapers like looking at social media, you could be completely off of social media and still just the sounds outside your house and like the flashing lights of the TV screen or, you know, just whatever the pure stimulus is that can be.
00:30:06:28 - 00:30:10:00
Kelly Deutsch
So jostling to our systems.
00:30:10:03 - 00:30:38:24
Bonnie Badenoch
And the nervous systems of other people, and then we are with other people that are also feeling upset. We have so much resonance with each other. like being with you feels very calming to me. But I could talk to a neighbor who's really upset about XYZ, you know, and come away from that and really feel how much my inner world has taken on that person's upset as well, because we can't help but have that resonance and that internalization of others, too.
00:30:38:27 - 00:31:02:09
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah, it's a tough it's it's a tough world right now. And in more so in the developed countries by which we are very, very fortunate to have close connections with some people and some indigenous people, my partner and I, and just even getting emails or, you know, get receiving something from them. I can feel the difference in the way they relate to the Earth.
00:31:03:05 - 00:31:28:19
Bonnie Badenoch
and the pandemic has been disastrous for their community. And yet there is still this beauty and this connection and this sense of wholeness, just radiates from from them. Yeah. Also from a woman. We met, we were in teaching in Australia a year and a half ago and and being around this woman, this indigenous woman and who was just incredible.
00:31:30:00 - 00:31:39:24
Bonnie Badenoch
so there are people in our world also that are carrying something that a lot of us white folks don't know much about. And,
00:31:39:27 - 00:31:59:29
Kelly Deutsch
I think that's why there is just such a movement towards all of that, that earthiness, whether it's Indigenous or Celtic or, you know, some of those other forms of spirituality, where we want to get in the dirt, you know, and just, find that relationship with the rhythms of the earth. There's something that's so humanizing about that.
00:32:00:01 - 00:32:15:25
Bonnie Badenoch
Yes. Yeah. And direct connection to the divine, it seems to me that sense that that has it radiates something. I don't know the way the trees are connected and all of these kinds of things feel so nurturing to kind of immerse in that.
00:32:15:27 - 00:32:16:29
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
00:32:17:02 - 00:32:19:29
Bonnie Badenoch
Because we get so disconnected from each other and.
00:32:20:00 - 00:32:20:11
Kelly Deutsch
Right.
00:32:20:16 - 00:32:26:04
Bonnie Badenoch
So like this all the time. Yeah.
00:32:26:06 - 00:32:45:24
Kelly Deutsch
How does that happen or what is going on on a biological level? Like a we can speak about how we can, you know, catch each other's frequencies or energies and such. But surely, you know, there's something happening in my in my body and in my nervous system that's causing that, you know, it's not just some like, woo woo.
00:32:45:27 - 00:33:12:00
Bonnie Badenoch
Oh, no, nothing about well, there may be woo woo about it also, but in addition to that, I'm we have mirror neurons and resonance circuits in our brain that are, that are in our brain and connected also to our embodied sense of things. The circuits that the whereby we have a sense of what's happening, often below the level of conscious awareness of what's happening in people around us.
00:33:13:02 - 00:33:37:03
Bonnie Badenoch
and it allows us to have empathy for people because it resonates like if you had a very sad face, these mirror neurons would wake up from for a time when I had a sad face. and it would generate in me that same feeling of sadness that then would then after that, it would ignite a sense of care, reach out to you and your sadness.
00:33:37:05 - 00:34:01:06
Bonnie Badenoch
And all this is built into our neurobiology, which is lovely, you know, that we can do that. But if I have a lot of unprocessed sadness, and my seeing your sad face opens that sadness in me, and it's too much for me, I might turn away from you. I might make fun of you. I might do anything because I would have to protect myself.
00:34:01:08 - 00:34:38:25
Bonnie Badenoch
And so again, this is why our own mental health and working with these trauma wounds is so important, because it's very hard for us to be human with each other when we're so wounded. so imagining these people that are struggling with violence that, you know, feel they need to be violent or need to be racist and all of that that they have internalized through their culture, they've grown up in and through the kind of, hatred and all of that that they've grown up in, in the midst of, or terribly wounded people who then are protecting themselves that that's what they're doing by doing the things that they're doing.
00:34:38:28 - 00:34:40:01
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:40:03 - 00:34:55:06
Bonnie Badenoch
It's you don't have to, you know, put them in jail because it's not okay what they're doing. But I but I can still feel like it's very sad to me when it, you know, turns to racist or other kinds of violence because of our wounds.
00:34:55:08 - 00:34:58:20
Kelly Deutsch
Right? Yeah. It's like that adage hurt people. Hurt people.
00:34:58:22 - 00:35:21:28
Bonnie Badenoch
And it's really true. really, really true. And I so yeah, I yeah, so, so scary for us that we can also when you know, get them far away, get rid of them as well. But I which is completely understandable. But but again there, there's one of the things Jim Finley says, you know, is it's all love.
00:35:22:00 - 00:35:46:15
Bonnie Badenoch
And then if God stopped loving you right now, you would simply disappear. Everything is loved into existence. So I try to hold on to that and think, you know, those people that that building out of love is, is part of everybody. I'm, I can ease off the, the natural human tendency to feel really defensive about those things somewhat.
00:35:49:08 - 00:35:57:19
Kelly Deutsch
How does all of that I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about, Stephen produces work with all of that and how.
00:35:57:21 - 00:35:58:14
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah.
00:35:58:16 - 00:36:05:20
Kelly Deutsch
Facial expressions, tone of voice, how all of those things impact us on such a fundamental level.
00:36:05:22 - 00:36:42:03
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah, they they really do. I've been so Stephen Porges and Ian McGill, Christy are two people who really informed, really helped me understand. And again, this goes to goes to informing spiritual practice as well I think for really probably for all of us without even knowing about it. Because what porges what Steve Porges talks about writes about it's called Polly vagal theory and it's about our autonomic nervous system, which below the level of conscious awareness, is always sensing whether someone is with us or not, with us.
00:36:42:06 - 00:37:16:08
Bonnie Badenoch
And he has what we call what was built into our genetics, that that connection is a biological imperative. So we're always scanning without, again, even knowing. We're doing it to get a sense of where the other person is in relation to us. So, and that that information partly comes to us by if they are in a state of safety themselves, they'll be in the branch of the nervous system that is open to being with us in a non-judgmental way and just receiving us, and that makes us feel safe.
00:37:16:29 - 00:37:50:11
Bonnie Badenoch
And it can come because I sense that your ears are open to me. By the by the way, you're listening to me and I sense that we're really together because there's a softness around your eyes and there's a quality in your voice that telegraphs to me that you're in a state of safety. And so you're welcoming me in, so we're always talking to each other beyond the words we speak, but by how our entire system is being tuned by our nervous system to, to sort of say it's safe for us to connect now.
00:37:51:14 - 00:38:10:06
Bonnie Badenoch
So let's say there's a really loud noise outside and all of the sudden it scares me and I don't know what it is and I can't resolve it immediately. So my ears will begin to change their the tension in them and relax it so I can listen to the whole surround because now I don't feel safe. So now I'm not listening to you anymore.
00:38:10:24 - 00:38:28:04
Bonnie Badenoch
And my eyes will tends to focus on where, where the danger might be coming from. And they get tense. And just that tension around the eyes tells you I'm not here anymore. With you my voice will change. And all of that is intended to say to you, Kelly, we're not safe, right now. We have to attend to danger.
00:38:28:05 - 00:38:29:16
Bonnie Badenoch
We can't be together.
00:38:29:19 - 00:38:45:22
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. And we I mean, I've definitely sensed that before, you know, whether it's talking, like when my partner or a friend or a client and, like, all of a sudden you're like, are you with me? Like, you know, where'd you go? And whether or not either of us are aware of what prompted it?
00:38:46:16 - 00:39:06:09
Bonnie Badenoch
because often it's just something welling up inside. you know, like, if I'm making if I'm with somebody and I'm wanting more intimacy than they're comfortable with their whole system, they just shut down because it's I scared them. Or I can get distracted. Something can come over me. And all of a sudden I'm talking to the person but I'm, they know I'm not there.
00:39:06:17 - 00:39:38:14
Bonnie Badenoch
We really can tell. And when we lose connection with somebody it scares our whole system because connections are biological imperative. Yeah. So this also happens with God if you think about it, if we consider God to be a fearsome, judgmental, terrifying, put you in hell kind of presence. However that developed for us, our system can't relax into this open receptive state to the divine because we feel endangered.
00:39:40:13 - 00:40:11:27
Bonnie Badenoch
Or if my system is is wired up into fear because of external circumstances or because something scary is waking up inside of me, it would be very, very difficult for me to relax into a surrendered state, to be open to grace, because I feel like I need to take control of something that's scaring me. And so I have to jump in and willfully try to control and not be able to relax my that my system be relaxed where at least the possibility of surrender to the divine lives.
00:40:12:00 - 00:40:34:22
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, to be intimate, whether on a human level or on a divine level, requires so much vulnerability that surrender. And understandably, your body wouldn't want to, you know, just open itself up to whatever it sensed as danger. Even if, you know, a lot of times it's not like we're conscious of it, you know, like, oh, I'm in danger or I feel unsafe.
00:40:34:22 - 00:40:42:12
Kelly Deutsch
It's just that felt sense, you know, when you open your body or show, you know.
00:40:42:14 - 00:41:10:10
Bonnie Badenoch
Yes. Yeah. And so we've had a lot of trauma as children. We feel we can feel perpetually not safe. Because underneath is all this fear. And it changes how we see the world. Our perceptual lens is colored by fear. So what you were saying about highly sensitive people who have been injured. Then there's a possibility that everywhere they look there will be a felt low level felt sense of danger.
00:41:10:10 - 00:41:34:03
Bonnie Badenoch
And it really makes it so hard to let go into a state where grace can come and not only come, but stay where it can stay. So we might break through everything, which I feel is what happened to me at times. Grace broke through everything, but my underlying state was one of fear and tension because of all the traumas I had.
00:41:34:06 - 00:42:00:08
Bonnie Badenoch
And so I would I would not be able to maintain my state of openness to it. Yeah, and there's no blame about it. I mean, what else could happen to me? It's not like we're doing something wrong at all. And it's not like, oh, it's all my fault. It's like my life experiences left me in a place where my mind was in sympathetic arousal, rather than in this open, receptive state.
00:42:01:04 - 00:42:20:19
Bonnie Badenoch
Good reason. You know, and then over time of working therapy and releasing that trauma and having it bathe and acceptance and care and all of that kind of thing because it takes both. It isn't just opening the trauma, it takes receiving with this called a disconcerting experience, which is what we needed at the time but didn't have.
00:42:21:14 - 00:42:22:13
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
00:42:22:15 - 00:42:25:24
Bonnie Badenoch
So I finally see your care. Something like that. Yeah.
00:42:25:26 - 00:42:34:15
Kelly Deutsch
That's really striking. I mean first of all that your upbringing like however you grew up as a child can impact your prayer life today.
00:42:34:17 - 00:42:35:17
Bonnie Badenoch
Absolutely.
00:42:35:20 - 00:42:47:00
Kelly Deutsch
And how deeply ingrained that can be. You know, it's not something that you can just find the right technique and suddenly you'll be able to surrender.
00:42:47:03 - 00:43:04:02
Bonnie Badenoch
No. You know, and I know from me, I have felt like I wanted to be on the path of surrender. I think since I was pretty young and I would, I would try, but there wasn't any way my system would let me be in that kind of state for very long. Yeah.
00:43:04:05 - 00:43:24:27
Kelly Deutsch
So talk to me more about the the healing portion of that, because just as you were saying there, you know, I mean, it's part of it is in therapy and it's not just in bringing up the trauma otherwise. I mean, every time we got triggered, you know, we should be receiving healing, but we're not. No. How do you move from when the trauma bubbles up or the discomfort?
00:43:24:27 - 00:43:29:02
Kelly Deutsch
You're sensing something in your body to feeling safe?
00:43:29:04 - 00:44:04:18
Bonnie Badenoch
Well, again, connection is a biological imperative. So if my therapist is able to stay in that state of open receptivity of the nervous system, it's called ventral, for we can use that for short. If he's if my therapist is able to stay in that ventral state, while all this sympathetic activation and pain and fear and often the memory itself is coming up, then it's as though bigger arms are holding it and that person is able to provide what wasn't there at the time, which is a sense of safety, a sense of goodness and all of that.
00:44:04:20 - 00:44:27:17
Bonnie Badenoch
And that is it's the arrival of both of those, both the awakening of the memory and the arrival of this experience of what I needed at the time that actually heals and changes the memories. Changes the felt sense. So the other day I was talking with working with someone and at the end of it she said I'm having the strangest experience.
00:44:27:19 - 00:44:52:10
Bonnie Badenoch
She said I can still see this traumatic experience. I know that it happened. I can feel myself both as an adult, as an and as a child, but I don't feel any fear of that now. We've been working a long time. This is not one time sure fixes everything kind of thing, but we've gotten to the place where she was really where her her nervous system, her belly, her heart, her emotions.
00:44:52:10 - 00:45:19:15
Bonnie Badenoch
You know, all of this neural had changed enough so that that young part of her felt held by me and by the adults in her in a way that the that the meaning and the trauma and the pain and the felt sense of of this really horrendous experience was finally like completely gone. And she just felt held and contained and and safe, deeply safe for that, she said.
00:45:19:15 - 00:45:28:08
Bonnie Badenoch
This is the first time in my life I've ever felt safe. And just now you're used to both of us. Oh, wow.
00:45:28:10 - 00:45:28:19
Kelly Deutsch
Wow.
00:45:28:19 - 00:45:56:11
Bonnie Badenoch
That's powerful. But it was a long journey. I mean, we've been seeing each other for quite a long time and kind of, you know, nibbling away, nibbling away and nibbling away. That's like. That just happened to be the day that was the last bite of the rope, you know? Yeah, really let go. And I've had those experiences both in the therapy I had in my 40s and then later in the cranial sacral therapy, where, where, when I would go back at the memory, I could see it, I could know that it happened.
00:45:56:13 - 00:46:18:15
Bonnie Badenoch
And yet I had no felt sense that I was part of it any longer, as far as in my body. But it's still part of my history, and I can still feel sadness that any child would go through that. But it's not that visceral sense of gripping terror and pain. so instead I could say, see the face of my therapist.
00:46:18:18 - 00:46:29:02
Bonnie Badenoch
You know, I could feel the surroundings in the room, and I could feel this sense that it was okay now and I wasn't. I was no longer physiologically caught in it.
00:46:29:04 - 00:46:35:22
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, right. When you have that felt sense that somehow it's happening all over again. I mean, that's.
00:46:35:24 - 00:47:00:10
Bonnie Badenoch
And that's what when we, when it's hard to sit still and be quiet, that's part of what we're trying not to have happen is to feel that again. Yeah. Yeah. There's room for these things to come up and you know it's hard was for me to not have my practice during that time. Therapy I look back on it and I think wow that was the smartest thing my body ever did for me.
00:47:00:12 - 00:47:09:18
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that's one of the reasons why some of us find it easier to do like meditation or practices with others versus alone.
00:47:09:20 - 00:47:30:21
Bonnie Badenoch
Well, I think it's probably that. And also I had done 17 years of spiritual bypass. I've gone from losing from having breakdowns every few years to not after I went to the yoga center because I was building a whole spiritual world of practice over here of chanting and music and, you know, devotional kinds of reading and all of that.
00:47:30:24 - 00:47:49:02
Bonnie Badenoch
But it was keeping me away from this other stuff inside of me. And my father died. And when my father died, I think I began to be able to be allow myself to be more aware of what he had done to me, because I did love my dad. Yeah. And I couldn't know what happened to me with him.
00:47:49:08 - 00:48:09:10
Bonnie Badenoch
I knew stuff about my mom, but I didn't know what happened with my dad. And when he died, like it gave me permission to go there, well, then it became so alive that if I tried to meditate, it all came up. So instead of spiritual practice keeping me away from it now, it became the doorway into it. And I just couldn't go, wow.
00:48:13:01 - 00:48:19:05
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah that's remarkable. And it, it reminds me of I mean a parallel.
00:48:20:11 - 00:48:40:22
Kelly Deutsch
Of when I came home from the convent with illness and I had this like trauma surfacing that I had no awareness of and really didn't even know what trauma was. You know, I'm like, I mean, it wasn't abuse that I know of. I wasn't in a car accident. You know, I was thinking of all the capital T traumas, versus all the other things that happened to us.
00:48:42:07 - 00:49:01:27
Kelly Deutsch
and how radically unsafe I felt in my body and panicky all the time and didn't have any concept for what was happening to me. And, at the time, I had my first serious relationship, you know, I mean, I'd been on a path to be a nun my whole life, so never really pursued, any serious relationship.
00:49:02:00 - 00:49:21:16
Kelly Deutsch
And, I dated this guy for three years, and I think a big part of my healing experience was that relationship and feeling so safe, like I could, I could be falling apart and be like, just hold me, you know? And he would hold me or like, I can't see you right now. Can you just go home and be like, yeah, no problem.
00:49:21:16 - 00:49:29:11
Kelly Deutsch
Like, and I could just be. However, I needed to be. And I felt like my body was finally like, oh, okay, you're safe.
00:49:29:14 - 00:49:32:14
Bonnie Badenoch
Here is what safety is like. Yeah.
00:49:32:16 - 00:49:42:21
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. It was so beautiful. And I'm so thankful for that gift, you know, because I never experienced that, especially on such an embodied level.
00:49:42:24 - 00:49:43:07
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah.
00:49:43:14 - 00:50:02:07
Kelly Deutsch
Where all of my muscles and nervous system and everything could be calm. I think the only place I've experienced that before was in spiritual practice and in prayer, like the divine intimacy that I had, but not a more co regulated with God than I had with another human being.
00:50:03:03 - 00:50:16:17
Bonnie Badenoch
well, right. And you were building this whole beautiful spiritual practice over here and it wasn't yet waking up. This stuff that needed also to be to be worked with and I didn't.
00:50:16:20 - 00:50:17:19
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:17:23 - 00:50:30:05
Bonnie Badenoch
Circumstances conspired to wake this up. So that, so that again so that this parts of you that hadn't been able to be in the divine intimacy and to have access to that.
00:50:30:08 - 00:50:30:26
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
00:50:30:26 - 00:50:53:07
Bonnie Badenoch
Part of that came through your partner who was able to offer that feeling of safety, which I think as we heal more, we're more open to the depth of love and safety that God offers. And when we're so wounded, we we can't let that all the way in. It's in so much conflict with what the rest of us is experiencing.
00:50:53:10 - 00:51:04:23
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah. Because these parts heal. They get to also begin to participate in that sense of utter trust and safety and love and goodness.
00:51:04:25 - 00:51:21:26
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah I and I the part that gives me hope too is that we can offer that to each other. Like it's not just like, oh you got to go find the magic therapist who happens to, you know, be settled enough in their bodies, to offer that to us. But yeah, that that's something that we can all offer.
00:51:21:28 - 00:51:31:14
Bonnie Badenoch
Yes, yes. And as we're all pursuing our healing so that we have this bigger and bigger window of receptivity for others without it setting us off.
00:51:31:16 - 00:51:47:25
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah. What would you say are some, some ways that you would recommend to practice settling into safety ourselves or into presents. are those the same thing. Safety and presence. How are those really.
00:51:47:25 - 00:52:19:21
Bonnie Badenoch
I mean I think that, that, that this is why poor justice work has been really important. And it also ties in with the in my Gilchrist's work, too, about the two halves of the brain is that is that in my Gilchrist talks about how the right hemisphere of the brain is really devoted to looking out on the world and create when we are healthy and that side of our brain, when we have had enough healing that it's what allows us to be connected and empathic with each other, and that the left hemisphere is more about tasks and all of this.
00:52:19:21 - 00:52:47:12
Bonnie Badenoch
But it's pretty dead relationally. so when we're really hurt, one of the things we can do is run into the left hemisphere of the brain and work on success and money and, you know, these kinds of things. But we're pretty emotionally not there kind of thing. So when poor just started looking at this ventral system of safety, what he discovered is, is that when we are in that state, we are leading with our right hemisphere.
00:52:49:00 - 00:53:27:11
Bonnie Badenoch
and our and our open and available then to relationship. So in order to stay there, though, we have to be healing all of these things. So when you ask, you know what are the conditions? I think one of the best things we can have is somebody who's a listening partner, somebody who also wants to do the work, somebody who has already a big enough window of receptivity that they can hear us speak to whatever it is that's troubling us without losing their capacity to continue to be present and to hear, and then we can become the listening partner for that person.
00:53:27:18 - 00:53:47:21
Bonnie Badenoch
So maybe it starts out that we can only listen to this much, but as we hear heard this much, it gets to be this much, has to be this much. And so these beautiful listening partnerships are a way that that healing can happen. Some people like me, I needed more than that because of the depth of the trauma I'd experienced.
00:53:47:21 - 00:54:11:06
Bonnie Badenoch
And I needed therapy. I needed a therapist who needed absolutely nothing for me. Yeah, I could just be there. And it cultivated for a long time the ability to hold the kinds of things and the depth and the length of things that had happened in me. So I think sometimes we need a dedicated relationship. But then at this point I don't go to therapy, but my partner and I cannot really hold each other.
00:54:11:08 - 00:54:32:21
Bonnie Badenoch
Arise. that is of just infinite, beautiful value. And I have a couple of other friends that I have that kind of relationship where it feels like we can just listen and hold one another. And if I start to get stirred up, I can say, wait, I need to pause a minute. I need to be here, you know, and see if I can settle this.
00:54:32:21 - 00:54:54:04
Bonnie Badenoch
And then she might say, well, so should we listen for you for a minute or two? And I can sense that, you know, it can be very flexible, I guess, is what I'm saying. and develop capacity by not demanding too much of ourselves and starting from wherever we are and not being perfect listeners, which will never be, but listening a little bit and then a little bit more and a little bit more.
00:54:54:07 - 00:55:14:21
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah. But trying to do it all on our own is not how we're built. Connections of biological imperative. so if we try to do this self kind of thing, self regulation and all that, I suppose it's possible, but but why should we have to work so hard when we are built to be with one another?
00:55:14:23 - 00:55:22:14
Kelly Deutsch
Yes, I love how you've called that a myth, the myth of self-regulation. I was like, oh, tell me more.
00:55:22:16 - 00:55:33:26
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah, but self-regulation, I mean, if we have some pretty good regulation, it's because we've internalized other people who have regulate who co regulated with us and they live on inside.
00:55:33:28 - 00:55:35:26
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:35:29 - 00:55:50:13
Bonnie Badenoch
That's where somehow doing this autonomously that, that that circuitry does not just happen autonomously. It happens because of, of the way that we are with others. And so starting from before we're born.
00:55:50:15 - 00:56:18:16
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. And it gives me hope that we don't just have to internalize like our mother's voice or mother figure because that I think is what feels like some of us got the short end of the stick, you know when we just didn't have nurturing childhoods. And it's like, well, guess stinks to me. Me then. Because I didn't get to internalize that, but that that's it's not like our brains are set or something from a young age.
00:56:18:23 - 00:56:21:19
Bonnie Badenoch
No. You and I are internalizing each other right now.
00:56:21:21 - 00:56:22:20
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
00:56:22:23 - 00:56:56:22
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah. And I and who people who might see this or hear this will also internalize our conversation in some way. there's all of, all of these beautiful pathways to these interconnections, but our society has so much left shift in it, so much shifted into the left hemisphere, and then we're cut off from that resource and live perpetually in sympathetic activation of of having to control and having to meet goals and having to so the left hemisphere can be really valuable in the service of the right.
00:56:56:24 - 00:57:07:23
Bonnie Badenoch
But when it is the dominant thing, we are so cut off from the most important things in our life a sense of meaning, a sense of connection, a sense of being with each other.
00:57:07:25 - 00:57:36:09
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. And I remember and I can't remember how you said it in your book, but I remember reading something about how control is such a telltale sign, you know, that you're in that state because you know, whether you're left brain sympathetic, whatever is going on, we naturally want to grasp something concrete, control it. even the other day, I had a zoom call with somebody who normally has curly hair, and I was like, oh, you straightened your hair today?
00:57:36:09 - 00:57:41:12
Kelly Deutsch
And she's like, I had to be in control of something today. It's like.
00:57:41:14 - 00:58:03:04
Bonnie Badenoch
Amen. Yeah, yeah, gosh. Yeah. And so again, we don't need to criticize ourselves. It's just helpful to notice of right now. Something's scaring me. my belly's tight. I want to lean forward. I want to grasp on to something like. Okay, so. So what's scaring in there? You know, really to pause and and invite because it's all communication.
00:58:03:04 - 00:58:29:21
Bonnie Badenoch
It's not something to be fixed. It's another reason to, asking for attention. And that to me as one of my favorite one Rumi is like my Bible love him. And one of my favorite poems is the guest house where it basically says invite in everything because this has been sent. He says a visit from bye Bye Bye has been sent from beyond.
00:58:29:21 - 00:58:50:22
Bonnie Badenoch
And I always say it's also been sent from within. Divine lives within and outside and is always speaking to us. And so there is no form of speech, whether it's shame or violent impulses or whatever, but isn't asking for our attention in some way. Yeah. It's a legitimate request.
00:58:50:24 - 00:58:52:05
Kelly Deutsch
And that makes it something I.
00:58:52:07 - 00:59:11:19
Bonnie Badenoch
Didn't get rid of it because it's a bad emotion or a negative emotion. I, I don't have a lot of patience for people calling any emotion negative. because it's a sending away. It's like oh you should get out of here. I shouldn't, you know, shame, jealousy due to whatever it is that you should leave. Well, that's probably where it came from.
00:59:11:19 - 00:59:36:06
Bonnie Badenoch
Was being banished in the first place. So how, how do we open to say. Well I can be, I could be with, you know, I could be with this feeling of I think he talks, I think when he talks about shame, malice, things like that and, and things that we generally are like. I'm like that about myself.
00:59:36:09 - 00:59:53:09
Bonnie Badenoch
How could we welcome him and say how what are you sharing. What pain and fear is causing me to feel malice or jealousy or. Yeah. Neath that you know and again this is we're listening partners. Fabulous.
00:59:53:12 - 01:00:10:01
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. I was just going to say I feel like a surely the reason that I am able to do that oftentimes and just look at these things with curiosity is because I've had the experience of someone else doing that with me, like, okay, you know, instead of like, oh, that's awful. And I feel such shame for feeling these other things.
01:00:10:01 - 01:00:19:20
Kelly Deutsch
I call that having double reactions. It's not just that, like, I'm anxious, but I'm anxious about being anxious or I'm depressed, that I'm depressed. I'm angry that I'm angry.
01:00:20:11 - 01:00:22:23
Bonnie Badenoch
being judgmental of myself for being judgmental.
01:00:22:25 - 01:00:29:24
Kelly Deutsch
Right, right. Exactly. And it's like one layer is enough. Okay. Oh, you need like.
01:00:29:26 - 01:00:32:17
Bonnie Badenoch
Yeah.
01:00:32:20 - 01:00:46:09
Kelly Deutsch
As we are drawing to a close, I'm curious what would you, what would you say in from your research and from the, all the inner work that you've done, how do you define wholeness.
01:00:46:21 - 01:01:11:21
Bonnie Badenoch
That's really, that's really a very interesting question. because I, what I know is with all the internalizing we do, we aren't a single self. We've internalized others, we have many parts of our own self. And I think as through our therapeutic work and by God's grace and by opening ourselves to that, and there's healing that happens.
01:01:11:23 - 01:01:43:29
Bonnie Badenoch
What we have is a sense of of peace and cooperation in this inner community that gives a feeling of wholeness, and that that wholeness includes also my relationships with people on the outside and includes relationship with feeling a part of and connected to, and one with nature, or that includes a sense of the divine, however that comes for us, and that these layers of wholeness just keep expanding through our whole lives of a greater and greater wholeness.
01:01:43:29 - 01:01:54:12
Bonnie Badenoch
As as by grace we are, you know, granted the ability to to have this sense of belonging everywhere and with everyone.
01:01:54:15 - 01:02:02:18
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, that sounds delicious, but belonging and and also that, that, that spaciousness.
01:02:03:18 - 01:02:27:00
Bonnie Badenoch
and that there is a bigger love that holds it all. I mean, for me, that is the the wholeness that holds all these different polarities. can no sacral person those big about polarities. And you would feel the extremes of that, you know, and then like, what's the bigger thing holds all of those. Which is really important right now because there is so much division.
01:02:27:00 - 01:02:36:07
Bonnie Badenoch
And so if we can align with something bigger that holds it all, even if we don't know what it is and quite what it looks like or feels like it, it seems like it's important.
01:02:36:09 - 01:02:40:29
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, right. But there's something greater than the seeming paradox.
01:02:41:02 - 01:02:44:21
Bonnie Badenoch
You know,
01:02:44:23 - 01:02:49:27
Kelly Deutsch
Bonnie, if people wanted to learn more about you and your work, where should they go?
01:02:50:08 - 01:03:13:04
Bonnie Badenoch
our website is nurturing the heart.org. And so we have all the information there about, about we do year long courses. And for it's mostly therapist. But we have spiritual seekers. We have body workers that com we have people just wanting some growth and all of that. And we meet for regularly because it's something we have to culture and develop.
01:03:13:04 - 01:03:31:09
Bonnie Badenoch
It's not let's learn for three hours and everything will be all better. Yeah, it's not like that. So, you know, we would certainly welcome hearing from people, both my partner and I teaching partner, but also my wife is on there as well. And beautiful. Yeah. About that.
01:03:31:11 - 01:03:58:09
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. And I have your book here that I've been reading. Highly recommend The Heart of Trauma by Bonnie. yeah. Beautiful. Just the neuroscience of presence. And I love how that brings together that intersection of the world of biology and science and our nervous systems into the. And this is the contemplative life and all of this, that the things that we often naturally intuit.
01:03:58:09 - 01:04:01:16
Kelly Deutsch
And then to see that there is, yes, science behind it.
01:04:01:18 - 01:04:19:19
Bonnie Badenoch
Yes. Yes, absolutely. And maybe science that lets us be compassionate and kind to ourselves about all our different states. you know, instead of feeling like we're broken and need fixing and all of that, but to understand the wisdom of all of it, that that's been the journey for me is this deep sense of the wisdom of our systems.
01:04:19:19 - 01:04:26:19
Bonnie Badenoch
So I'm just so grateful to get to be with you. It's just lovely to to be in your presence. Yeah.
01:04:26:19 - 01:04:40:09
Kelly Deutsch
Thank you, thank you. It's been a real gift. I've. This has been a very juicy conversation, so I'm thankful to be able to share it with everyone. So thank you for your time and sharing both of your head and your heart.
01:04:40:11 - 01:04:40:27
Bonnie Badenoch
Thank you.