Awakening the Soul of Power

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. At the end of the day, it's not about what you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what you've done with those accomplishments. It's about who you've lifted up, who you've made better. It's about what you've given back. Denzel Washington, welcome to inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Christian, Welcome to the show. How are you, hey, Doug, thanks so much so much for for having me. I'm doing great. How about God, I'm doing fine. It's a little warm here. It's about one hundred and five degrees outside, so it cats really hot, and I have to turn on the air turn off the air conditioner in the room because otherwise it would be hissing for this whole that you know, this whole interview. So anyway, I'm doing great though, enjoying life. So anyway, what I'd love for you to do is kind of share with the audience who you are and your story, because you have a fascinating story and to be able to get to

1:33 the point that you are now and what you're doing. I'd love for you to kind of share that story with the audience. Yeah. Thanks, thanks so much for the opportunity to share that story because I tell it, because I hope that it is inspiring to others, because I know self doubt, I know self hatred. My entire adolescence was one very long depression with with suicidal fans. And flash forward to today. No matter what happens in my life, no matter the circumstances, you know, whether a relationship works out or it doesn't, whether a project succeeds or it fails. In quotes, never ever, ever, do I question my sense of worth like that is established, unshakable, And I know if that can happen in me, it can happen in anybody. And that's what I hope my work supports people don't do I mean, I know it does I've been doing transformational retreats and workshops and coaching for the last over thirty years, and I use breath work as a healing modality, as a healing tool, and the combination of the teachings about understanding how the mind works, how we break free from the self made prison of the mind. It's a lot. It really makes a difference people's lives, and we all have that right, that desire, that longing to

3:05 be happy, to have relationships that have a chance of working, to have a sense of meaning of purpose in our lives. And that's what my work is intended and designed to do. Okay, So when you were a child, where were you living. I was born in Cuba, so I'm an immigrant. My family came over from Cuba when I was ten, and so we lived in a communist country for the first ten years of life. Or you know, for which I'm actually grateful. There's so many things that we take for granted here in the US, you know, just the freedoms, you know, to go to college and study whatever you want to go or not to go to college. Things that we take for granted are not available just anywhere around the world. And it really you know, it's kind of challenging to see that how many people just take it for granted and don't get involved and just kind of let things go depending which way the wind blows.

4:02 And it's not a good strategy because they're not guaranteed those rights that they're always going to be there. Yeah, and how what was your experience as a child? You know, part of what for which I'm grateful is that, you know, we had a TV, but there was nothing worth watching, so we grew up reading. And for that, I'm really really grateful because it teaches you how to think, how to how to imagine. You imagine these different worlds and different realities and and and we used to create and invent our own games and pastimes. So for that, I'm really grateful. You know that we didn't have that many toys because so there were just that many toys to be had, But I'm really grateful for that. But for those reasons, it really engenders and supports creative thinking. And was it a great childhood? Uh? You know, I know you had good parents. Was it a good childhood where the challenges that you faced? What what went on there? Well? I mean it was yes, and right, it was it was a beautiful childhood. And yet you know, living in a communist country, you're living in fear. And even though we as kids were kind of sheltered and protected, you still, you know, you couldn't notice what's going on. For example, I remember this this, and you know, my family had it better than most because my dad was a doctor and had connections. You could get stuff for friends that from friends who worked in foreign

5:36 embassies, or there was a black market. I remember my parents trading with the Russian soldiers who were based in Cuba at the time, you know, trading rum and cigars for butter or whatever it was that they could get from the Russians. And I remember one situation in which my parents had bought you know, like half a cow from some farmers somewhere and in Cuba, which is you know, goes to the point of taking for granted our freedoms. Here, like in every city block, there's a comet the defense side, like a defense committee, So they're basically spying on the comings and goings of everybody in that city block, and they're like stool pitches the report to the government. So I guess one of those noticed and they reported it to the g two, which was sort of like the state police, the Secret Service kind of thing, the Secret police kind of thing. And so there's my mom. I have this memory of my mom like stalling in the front door from the guards from coming in while my dad was out back throwing all the meat over the fence to the next door neighbors. So just little things that we take for granted here, like chewing gum, Like what's chewing gum tours in the US? Like nothing. We put it in their mouth and spit it out, don't even think about it. Well, we were kids, and again because my parents had friends who worked for embassies once in a while, we used to get a pack of chicklets, you know, the little checklates, and were large family, nine kids, and so we used to like you know, very fairly, spread the gum around and chew it all

7:10 day. At the end of the day, get a glass of water with you know, a couple of fingers of water, and we put our gum in there and toothpaste and stir it up so that it would be minty the next day, and hide it so my mom wouldn't find it and throw it out, and we could, you know, keep it going for days and weeks at a time until she found it and threw it out. That's funny. Well, so you know, you mentioned that you really did, even even with the experience and with your dad's connections and so forth, you experienced a great deal of fear as a child when you came here to the United States. Did you find that that immediately went away or did you find that you were still experiencing that sense of fear even though you were in an entirely different environment. Well, it was it was a different kind of fear that that surfaced because you know, it came to the States without speaking a word of English, and we landed in Georgia, and there's a small town in the center of Georgia because of a psychiatric hospital where my father could practice as he was going through the whole licensing process here, and you know, they didn't take very kindly to foreigners. So there was that whole other fear of fitting in, of being rejected, like struggling like so many people do, you know at that age to begin with, But in my sense, it was like even to communicate, and so yeah, I don't have very fun memories of that phase of my life. And you know, I think we

8:46 all experienced to wonder we're another fear, but obviously what you went through. I mean, I'm here in Thailand right now, I'm here for the winter. I'm heading back to the US at Land of May. But I can tell you not being able to speak Tai, which is one of the toughest languages to learn and to try to communicate with people. You know, I don't know if it's fear. I get so frustrated because I'm not being understood or I'm not understanding them, or I think I'm understanding them. I found a letter that it was totally an opposite thing they were saying, and so I can imagine how difficult that is, and that was for you to come into the US not being able to speak the language at all. And English is not an easy language to learn either. Oh my god, Doug, it's a bitch to learn. I mean, just the pronunciation. It's so difficult because there's no rules, like just think about the ou combination those vowel sounds. You can probably you know, pronounce it like ten different ways, and there's just no way other than memorization to learn it. It's not an easy language, for sure. I know. So how did you end up writing this book, Awakening the Soul of Power? You know, because I've been thinking about it for a long time. Why is it that so many of us struggle with issues around power? And why is it that we give our power away? You know, like why do we say yes when inside we really feel no, like it's not okay with us? And how many

10:18 times have we done that? How many times have we swallowed our dreams, our perceptions, our thoughts because of that fear of rejection or fear of whatever it is that we're afraid of. Well, and what's your definition of power? Let's stop for a minute and for the audience, your definition of power? Because people, you know, as you know, as we're talking about it, we all have this different perception and when we hear the word power, people are going to think different things based on their experiences. So with the book Awakening the Soul of Power, what is your definition of power? Yes? And that's a beautiful question. Thanks for clarifying that, because I'm talking about personal power, you know, our potential to be all of who we are. You know, power also comes is our ability to do like you know, words like poret or prouvoir in French mean not only power, but they also mean the ability to do so it comes to the same root of potential. And so to me, power is is agency, is being able to be who we are fully no matter what, and to express that in the world. And so so many of us confused. I are so confused about that word power, so and and there's so much conditioning about it, right with quotes like power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely so no wonder,

11:48 we have an ambivalent relationship to it. Part of us wants it, part of us is afraid of it. And what they didn't tell us about that quote is that Lord Acton was speaking specifically about political power, not the personal power that we're talking about here. And then we also fear that we might abuse it no wonder, like how many abuses of power have each of us witnessed throughout our lives. And so when you put all that into the mix, what happens is that we end up giving our power away because we have that conflicted relationship with it. And so what this book is about is like, how do we step into power in a different way, like, in a different way that's not about control force, fear, domination. You know, this hierarchical power which I knew very well from childhood, from living in a communist regime, you know, where powers abused constantly, like a tyrannical regime. Yeah, and so how do we do it in a way that doesn't require that we push anybody down? Right, that's the hierarchical part of it. If it, if I have to the only way that I'm gonna feel power is by pushing you down and putting my knee to your neck.

13:01 And that's the way that we have seen it and witnessed it, and I wonder we have an ambivalent, confused relationship about it. So how do we do it in a different way that your power doesn't threaten me? Like, if I'm in my power, why would I be threatened by you being in your powers? Like I can handle whatever comes my way. And yeah, it's a different way that is more horizontal about power with rather than power over. And you know, I used to teach a course on personality here, behavioral you know, type of things, and the model that I followed was one where we literally have three different types of personality. We have that innate personality of who we really are who we came here and we're born as, which has a lot to do with you know, our DNA and all of that. But then we have that social power or that social personality, and in that social personality, there are two options. Either we are at the effect of all of those subconscious imprints or the surroundings around us or whatever is going on, and therefore we have to act and be as we're expected to be, or we have the ability to control and if I'm going to a particular event, I can behave in a way that's appropriate for that and then go to a different one and behave that way. But I'm choosing to do that. And then obviously there's the third one, which basically is how

14:31 we really are coming across in this world. But what I find is when we get to that second one, which is the social personality, it really reminds me of people talking about how they never have been able to speak their voice, their true voice, And from what you're talking about with power, what comes to my mind is the power to be who we really are, exactly exactly, to be authentically a ourselves in whatever situation. Because we're so conditioned and we interpret what we think other people's expectations are of us, because a lot of it is we're just making it up in our own heads. And so we're show up this way at work, We're this other way with our parents. It's the other way with our kids, it's other way with our friends, it's other way with our partners or spouses, and it's exhausting.

15:22 And like what we're talking about is like I love the way you speak about it, because we just get to be who we are wherever we are, and of course not in a stupid way. We don't have to reveal every deepest dark aspect of us in any of those settings we get. It's like the word that you use, it's so important, which is choice. We get to choose, yes they are, and how much to say and in what setting, and rather than to make those choices from an authentic place, rather than because of some unsolved, unhealed trauma that happened to where we're five or ten or fifteen, and we've made some choices about that from that limited perspective, from those misunderstandings of your young minds that didn't know any better, and so we've made all these huge assumptions about who we are and how to be in the world and what the roles are according to society and societal expectations, and it's all made up. And I love your emphasis on choice, that we get to choose who we are, wherever we are and at any point in our lives. Well, yeah, I love some sayings that you know, we are either at the effect of things or we are in control, we are at cause. And the interesting thing is, I think more about it. If you know, if we are constantly at the effect of the environment and subconscious beliefs and all these types of things, we are literally living a life of victimhood. The only way to get out of that

16:55 is to be able to truly achieve what you talk about is getting that the power of the soul and becoming who actually we really are. And most people don't realize who they really are. I think there's a whole spiritual sense of that. As far as the divine is, I've interviewed a few people that use that word the divine within us, and most people really don't even recognize that it's there because they've been so hammered, as you say, with your experiences and others of this different type of situation where their perception about themselves is completely different than who they really are. Absolutely, Douga and you man, you're going right for the jugular right the whole thing about victimhood. In over thirty years of doing this personal transformation work and supporting people to get free and step into their authentic expression, I think that's the hardest thing to do, is to tear up that victim card because and it's so subtle and so insidious.

17:56 You know that poor me, woy is me if only mom had been this or Dad hadn't left to the teacher of the minister society, sexism, racism, homophobia, whatever it is. And not to deny that bad thing happened to us and challenging thing happened to us, and that the system isn't set up fairly, which it isn't. But the thing is, if we're on a journey of personal empowerment, as long as we're holding someone or something outside of us responsible for our state of being, we just gave our power away and often to the perpetrator. So so I don't see a way around that. If we want to have that sense of meeting and purpose and personal power and agency over our lives, we've got to tear up that victim card, and again without denying the stuff that happened, but it's basically saying it's like, all right, it sucked whatever it happened, and I really wish it hadn't. But here we are, like, here's here's the deck of cards that I was dealt. What am I gonna do? And response?

19:00 How am I going to show up in response to that? Given all of that and reframing it that way is incredibly just pops out a victim well and get to choose how we show up in response. Anyway, with all of the people in all the years that you have worked with people with you know, developing this message of power within themselves, have you noticed that there's a commonality of self sabotaging behaviors of other patterns that happen that have happened in their early childhood and maybe even their teenage years or whatever. Have you observed that there are some patterns that are there that are common among all of the people that you've worked with, And if so, what are they and how do they come about? Oh? My god, yes, there's definite patterns.

19:52 And you mentioned the word self sabotage, is like, yes, absolutely, And the tragic part about it, Doug, is how much of it happens subconsciously. We're not even aware of why we do the things we do and what's driving Why do we get triggered by certain people, the certain behaviors, or certain situations. Why do we keep repeating certain certain patterns, especially in relationships, Like sometimes it feels like, Wow, I've seen this movie before. This is a boring movie. I've seen it before, because we keep repeating the same old patterns, the same old arguments, and now we're just doing it with a different actor. It's a different colleaide, but the same crap coming up in relationships. And at some point we got to get clear, I get honest and see that there's one common denominator in every one of those arguments, in every one of those relationships, And it's right here, right, and it's tough, right, like to that's going back to the victimization. It's a lot easier to blame others and blame circumstances. And if only I had been raised in a different family or a different culture or different whatever. It keeps us stuck in that prison of perceived victimization. And like you know, in relationships. We keep recreating the same old patterns following for people who are not available, who are not a match, and again it feels like the same old, boring movie. And at some point in getting

21:26 in realizing that the upside of that is like, hey, then I get to make the choice. I get to decide why. In becoming more conscious of realizing why we do the things we do, we can bring choice back into the equation and that opens up the possibility for freedom and for personal empowerment. So how do you help people? How do you help your clients to number one, become aware that what they are experiencing is merely a culmination of all of those subcoms conscious or conscious experiences that have created their life. And literally that they are attracting the very experiences that many times they're trying to get away from. And yet because all of this stuff is just buried there in the subconscious, they keep attracting it. But how do you help people to become aware of that? Number one? I'm going to ask a couple questions.

22:19 Number one, how do they become aware of that? Honestly? And then number two, how do you help them to take that personal responsibility to say you know what, this happened to me and that was totally out of my control. It happened to me, this event, but I can take the responsibility to perceive it in two different ways as a victim or as an experience that is teaching me something that will help me to be better in life or help me to help others in a better way. Yes, and that's precisely the shift in perception right there. You just showed up. But how do you do it? How do you help your client's number one to become aware and then number two to take that personal responsibility because it's not easy.

23:10 No, No, it's nothing less than heroic. Now that I frame all this as a heroic journey, as a hero's journey, and I don't use that word lightly right, Coursing through life and feeling at the effect of feeling like we're buffeted by life's ups and downs and curveballs. Anybody can do that. React when somebody hurts us, splatter somebody against the wall, when somebody did something that we interpreted as painful. Anybody can do that, to take a pause and to go out that hurt. How do I want a response to have the presence to choose. It's a journey and nothing less than heroic. And it begins with how do we do? It becomes with aware, and it begins with awareness. We can't do anything about what we can't see.

23:51 So we've got to begin to develop self awareness or press us in practices so that we begin to understand these patterns and our triggers and why we do the things we do. One thing that I always begin with in my workshops in my retreats, it's understanding, like teaching people to understand what the ego mind is. Because if we want to have a relationship a chance, our relationships to have a chance of working, if we want to have that sense of meaning of empowerment, we've got to understand that because it's it's a it's our greater sabotager and saboteur and so's we don't have time to get into it. It's a long conversation, but here's a great visual that helps us understand.

24:34 If you put a baseball in the center of a stadium, that's what the ego is. Right. The ego means I in Latin, is that sense of iness. This is Christian, that's Doug right, that's our sense of individual personal personality, separate identity. And so that's the baseball, that's our sense ofness. Who we are is actually the stadium. And we've allowed this tiny, tiny, tiny part of who we are to think that it is all who we are and to make some really important, significant, consequential choices about what we do with our lives, what kind of relationships we say yes to, what kind of opportunities we participate with. We make all those choices from its very small, tiny, limited and always fear based perspective.

25:26 So that's step one. And and then you know, I have a whole set of teachings that go with that, the whole set of teachings that go about how to how to do relationships consciously so that again we're not like you say, at the effect of these subconscious patterns. And we'll get in we'll get into that night. Yeah, I want to get into that that more. But I want to talk about the ego because I think that's something that most people don't understand. That's fascinating. As I've been here for the winter and so you know, my curiosity has caused me always to study different things. I've really been fascinated by Buddhism, and as i've you know, as I've tried to understand a little bit more, there were items that you know, they talk about that I just could not figure out in my mind.

26:12 And one of those was to understand your not self. And you knows, as I've heard that, and I'm how do you do that? How do you do that? And all of a sudden you talking about it. I've had a few other people talking about it, talking about the ego and how the ego, our ego literally controls our lives, and not in a good way. And now I finally go, aha, that was that aha moment. That is like, what he's talking about is get rid of the ego and don't let it control you, because literally, that ego is the one that seeks for riches, It seeks for this, It wants this, it wants that, and as we keep wanting all of those things, it causes us to behaviors and so forth that or not necessarily who we are, but we feel like that's going to prove to people who we are, when in fact that's not really who we are, but the ego is telling us that's what we need to do. How how do you find you help people to break that, you know, as you call it, that self imprison that self imposed prison of limitations, that ego. How do they how do they learn to break that pattern so that they are literally not being controlled by their ego? Yeah, And it's it's a journey, right, It's a heroic journey. It's nothing less than that. And and so part of it begins with understanding, like, right, what is the ego? How does it work? Where does it show up in my life? Beginning to see it

27:42 in each other? Right, we start seeing each other over there first, because that's easier to see that. It's harder to see in our in ourselves and our self defeating patterns and all election that that's all the realm of the ego, a reactivity, which is what gets us into trouble. Right, somebody says something, we interpret it as hurt, which is also through the filter of the egos and all its past unresolved hurts. And so we have this false sense of self and which is also impacted by conditioning and societal roles and all those definitions and limitations. And so we have this false sense of self and we're coming from that. So part of the process of freeing ourselves has got to start with understanding how does it work. So I've got a whole set of teachings which are really helpful about understanding the ego and how it works. And it's and because we react and then we regret, right, that's the adrenaline takes over. We say something that hurts somebody back, and then the adrenaline dissiplates. It's like, oh my god, I can't believe I said that. It gets us into trouble, it harms our relationships, and it doesn't get us what we want. So it begins with understanding, and then I bring in a healing modality, which is the breath work that I started to talk about earlier, which my dad, as I said, was a psychiatrist. I studied psychology. I was on a track to get a PhD in psychology until I discovered breathwork thirty three years ago, and it changed my life. After one session Doug, I knew how to do it

29:17 again, and I knew that I had to make it available to others, and with all due respect to psychotherapy, in the right hands, with clear goals, it can be incredibly supporting and life changing. And we all know that you can sit on somebody's scouch or in somebody's office for five, ten, twenty thirty years at a time, rehashing the same old crap and nothing happens. And why is that right? Because that trauma no longer lives up here in the mind. It's been somaticized and now lives in the body. So talking about it is not really going to get to it, right. So we've got to find modalities like breath work that bypass the mind and go to with the source of the trauma, live and clear it and heal it.

30:03 And it's incredibly effective. And you know, it's hard to believe. I know that just from breathing so much healing can happen and provide these moments of non self that you're talking about. We helps us pop out of the limitation of the baseball into perceptions of the stadium or true nature. But I can't argue with the results it works. Okay, So you're talking about breath work, So are you talking about meditation? Breath work you could say is a type of meditation. Meditation has it's all other set of practices, right, breath work it's kind of a shortcut to high meditative states. It doesn't replace meditation. It's a lot to be said, you know, for that practice of even if it's ten minutes a day, three times, three times a week, you do that, and even start with five minutes a day.

30:56 Right, it's just observing ourselves, observing our breath, observing an accounting tens like placing or gaze in the candle. There's a lot of different types of meditation are that are taught to focus the mind and to increase self awareness. So there's a lot of benefits for those. Breath work is something else. And again, breathwork is a large umbrella term a lot of breathing practice, as anybody who's gone to a yoga clause has done breathwork. The one that I'm talking about is longer. It's like kind of breath work on steroids. You breathe in a certain way, in a circular, connected way for about an hour an hour and a half, and amazing things happen. Amazing, Okay things happen. So I'm fascinated by meditation, but I'm also fascinated by breath work, and I'm not really ever understood it. And as you say, there are all sorts of different things that they talk about breath work, whether it's yoga on the matter or whatever. So the breath work that you're talking about, could you get a little bit more detailed here if you don't mind, and really explain to the audience, what are you talking about this type of breath work, How do I experience it? What do I do in order to experience the breath work, and how do I do it in a way that I can sit there for an hour and do that and experience what you're talking about. Yeah, well, this particular type of breath work, I wouldn't recommend that initially people try it on their own because it's really powerful. Okay, I've had people and really stuff, profound stuff gets

32:29 healed, right. But part of the way that it works is like what used to be spiritual teaching that everything is energy. Now we know from quantum physics that it's true. Even what solid this chair that I'm sitting on, my body, it feels solid, but it's not. It's vibration. And we know from from physics that energy cannot be destroyed. For all the hundreds and maybe thousands of times that we have swallowed or emotions, right that we haven't given them voice because we didn't feel safe saying how we felt. That stuff doesn't go away, right, because energy cannot be destroyed. Emotions are energy too, right, so they get stuck in the tissues of our body.

33:16 And after years and decades and a lifetime of suppressing our emotions, we walk around with layers and layers and more layers of suppressed emotional crap and unhealed past trauma, stuff that we never work through, and we try to sweep unto the rug. And again, that stuff doesn't go away if we don't work with it, if we don't heal it. Right here, we are trying to have a relationship and in the present, and it's all getting filtered through that lifetime of suppressed emotions and unhealed past trauma. Yikes, because we then start projecting all that stuff on each other and and it's that no wonder. You know, our relationships mostly most of the time don't work. We haven't been taught how to hold them. We have been taught how to approach them, and we certainly haven't been taught how to heal ourselves from up this bag of bund resolved emotional crap that we walk around with. And so the beauty of breath work is that it clears up, and it's you know, it's because we're healing stuff from our past. Sometimes stuff comes up. You know, I've had countless people work through and sometimes remember like stuff like sexual trauma or sexual abuse. And so it's good to have somebody who's holding space, whether you can space for you, who can who can create help create that safe environment in which that stuff can come up. But I wouldn't recommend initially trying it on your own. So to work, you know, do the first five sessions, the first ten with a trained professional. Then you

34:47 can be taught how to do it on your own. Okay, and it's different. Yeah, it's not a difficult technique. It's just a way of breathing. The technical part of it is easy, but it's the vic eating the safe environment so that that stuff can come up from where it's been suppressed and subconscious into the conscious so that it can be cleared and like we were talking about earlier, so that we're not making choices because of our unhealed past and unexamined fears, So that we can make these choices from a place of consciousness and presence and freedom, not because of our unhealed pasts. So have you found you know, I do a lot of meditation. In fact, practically every morning I will do some walking meditation and listen to different frequencies and you know, go through that whole process, and oftentimes part of that guided meditation is some of them which I do. There is that focus on the breath and so on and so forth. So it sounds to me almost like what you're saying is, you know, there's there's that that probably you go from elementary school to middle school to high school to college, and you're reaching that level of college, but there's that PhD. There's that advanced you know, that advanced degree where you are now reaching this level which you know obviously you can't go from high school into a PhD program. But what you're saying, if I'm understanding you correctly, is the methodology that you teach on the

36:19 breath number one really does need some guidance in someone there to be with you. But secondarily that it is really that highest level of advanced type of quote meditation or whatever you want to call it, that for some reason brings forth all of these things and really creates the healing that needs to heal you know, there's so much science now behind the quantum field, the energy that's there, the meditation to whatever degree people do that, and the healing and literally being able to see the physical changes, the biological changes at the cellular level that are occurring because of that. And what I hear you saying is that your breath methodology is literally putting them up at that PhD level. You know, that's funny, Doug and I, but I hate to create a higherarchy of meditation or higherarchy of healing practices like the sitting meditation. There's amazing stuff that comes from it, right, and even again, if we're going to do it just a few times a week most of the time for the majority of us, it's gonna be boring, right, It's gonna be sitting there watching my thoughts. Oh, and there I go. Then I was suddenly futurizing about the argument that I'm gonna have. This is what I'm running when I see my colleague, this is what I wish I would have said to her, so rehashing the past and then projecting into the future. This is what I'm gonna tell them when I go to the office or you know, back to the breath, back to the mantra, and now I'm doing my

37:51 to do list or my shopping list whatever. Back to the mantra. Most of the time is that once in a while we have that moment of no thought and clear and in profound peace. But the benefit of being willing to do that work of going back to the thought of the mantra is going back to what we've started talking about, the self awareness. Right, So when the rubber hits the road and I'm about to go and say something or do something that later I'm gonna regret and it's going to go south and it's not going to end well, it's that's where that meditation practice of self observation, of watching our thoughts and our emotions, that's where it comes really helpful because it advise us that moment of grace and that moment of choice that allows us to make a choice rather than just react and regret. So, I mean, that is priceless to be able to do that. And what have you observed with your clients? And you talk a lot about relationships, so let's just talk about that for a short time. What have you observed with some of your clients as they go through this process and go through the the bread technique that you're teaching and so forth. What results have you seen, particularly in relationships, because I think that becomes one of the biggest challenges that we all experience to some degree, and you've brought it up a number of times.

39:14 Those relationships can be so challenging and oftentimes end up not being relationships anymore. What has been some of your personal experiences with clients where you have observed this helping them to the degree that it really has resolved and helped a relationship to get to a level that it's never been before. Oh my god, so many examples of that. Because once we understand why we do the things we do, especially when you've got both partners working together, and rather than blaming them and pointing the finger and you did this and you did that, it's like we're using all that stuff that comes up in our relationship to speed up our own process of work and healing and clearing and transformation, rather than blaming the other person, which is what most of us end up doing.

40:00 So if we use the relationship consciously and and you know, make some safe assumptions, if it's there, it's here, right, So how do, how do I do that? How do and it's going to look completely different. And again it's a huge conversation. Like I'm writing a whole book about this, my second book, it's about relationships. But here's here's a great example of what we were talking about, the ways that we sabotage our relationships, sometimes even before the get go. So this is a woman that came to several of my retreats. Highly successful, like vice president of a global multinational and like real vice president, not like you know, like in banking that you have every bank, every other person's vice president. It's like a real vice president. And yet in her personal life like had never and this is probably in her middle fifties when she came to me, had never had a relationship. Okay, yeah she dated, and yeah she'd had quasi relationships, but never a real authentic one. Through her work with breath work, she's one of these people that I was talking about who started recovering memories about sexual abuse and started making all these connections. Like she had moved back into the town of her childhood and hadn't realized that she was living down the street, literally like three blocks down the street from from the person from the perpetrator who had abused her as a child. Wow, And it's like mean that goes to show how much of this is driven subconsciously. And so through her work, you know, like I remember the last session of this last retreat

41:32 of like you know, we do multiple breath work sessions over a weekend. Retreating the last session, she realized that that she saw herself in a dark room and realized that she was the one that inside the room, and that she was the one who wasn't let herself out, and that only she could let herself out. And so there was a part of her because her father had been absent, that she identified this person that her abuser was also like a father figure. So she didn't want to completely let go of it, right because she had gotten interpreted so much meaning because of that of that special attention that she got from this man. And so in finally letting herself out and owning all of it, like that was on a Sunday on Tuesday, she was having lunch for the furnish and the friend goes, oh, I don't know what, I hadn't thought about this, but you need to meet my friend. So and so within two weeks, I had lunch. Long story short, I married them and they're still in this amazing kick has you know like relationship that's that's where their shirts passion not only in the bedroom, but outside of the bedroom and there and they're they're using that relationship to help each other grow and fulfill her potential. So how does how does that work?

42:52 From breathing? I mean, and I know it wasn't just the bathwork. It's but you know, it was a combination of all the work that she did with me before leading up to that moment. But that's the kind of freedom and empowerment that's accessible to any of us. Yeah, and it's you know, it's so miraculous and people don't believe it, and yet it is so true. And I have heard so many stories of that type of emotional healing, physical healing, all of those type of things that are just amazing. So as we come to a close, what I'd love for you to do is just take a moment and share with the audience. If you just could take all the messages you want to give and pile it into one short message, what would that be? That's a great question that don't matter what happened to us, and that no matter what happens going forward, one thing that we can know for sure that life is going to continue throwing curveballs our way. And so that no matter what happened, and no matter what happens, we get to choose who we are and that we can break free, and that there is a way that we can step into our personal power and to express all of our potential in a way that is a match for us and that we all have access to. That that is our divine birthrate.

44:15 Wonderful, wonderful. And so the book Awakening the Soul of Power. How do people find it? It's available wherever books are sold. You can order it at your local bookstore if you want to support them. It's also available on Amazon Okay great. And if people want to find you and are interested in these retreats or you know, whatever it is that you provide for people, how do they find you? Probably the best way is my website Soulfulpower dot com s o U L f U l pow r dot com. And from there they can access my social media and for your audience, Dog, anybody who comes to Soulfulpower dot com and gets on my email list, and we know how easy it is click unsubscribe down the road if it doesn't work for you, But anybody who goes, will send them a sample chapter of the book. And it's a book that talks about what it means to be a hero in the twenty first century, right, So going back to that heroic work that you and I've been talking about. It will send them some guided guided meditation that I created in the midst of the pandemic, which talks about how to achieve that place of of of self acceptance and trust even in the midst of chaos. And we'll send them some questions, some practices that are designed to integrate the teachings so that they don't stay at the level of information. We don't need more information, we get information overload. What

45:46 we need is transformation and that only comes from taking on and living from practicing from a set of teachings. And that's what that's what will send your audience. Yeah, well, thank you, and thanks so much Christian for being on the show. This has been enlightening to say the least, so I really appreciate it. And folks, I hope you're listening, and I hope you'll go and really get to his website, look at the book, look at what he has to offer, because I can tell you that from personal experience, these type of things can be of such great value to your personal development and to ultimately your happiness enjoying your life. So again, Christian, thanks for being on the show. Thank you, Thank you so much for having me on the show. Doug, and thank you for having the show because I know that in your willingness to do that, many many lives are being reached in a real way, in a profound way, and we're all in this together so well, So thank you for being willing to make a difference in so many lives through your work. Thank you well, thank you, and folks, we look forward to having you join us against him.

47:00 The camp and Trett returned Pretent and Britair