Become One Living
Welcome to the BecomeOne Living Podcast. While yoga maybe the entry way into a deeper understanding of self, we invite you to dive even deeper into your practice. Here we will explore the transformative power of yogic philosophy, anatomy, and mindfulness.
In each episode, we embark on a journey through the rich
tapestry of yoga, drawing from various traditions and perspectives. From the ancient
teachings of The Gita to the mystical insights of the Akashic records, we delve
into the timeless wisdom that has guided seekers for centuries.
We bridge the gap between science and spirituality, exploring
the fascinating intersection of neuroscience and anatomy with yoga. Discover
how understanding your body's inner workings can enhance your practice and
overall well-being.
We also explore cutting-edge techniques like Internal Family
Systems and Neurosculpting, offering practical tools for personal growth and
self-discovery. Our goal is to equip you with a holistic toolkit for navigating
the complexities of modern life.
We’ll share our endless hours of study and insights, providing
you with a deeper understanding of yoga's core principles and how they can be
applied in today's world. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or just
beginning your practice, there's something here for everyone.
Delve into the world of challenging entrenched beliefs, welcoming fresh perspectives, and unraveling unnoticed habits through our podcast. Join us while we discuss a wide range of topics and how yogic principals can weave its way through all facets of life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Join us on this enlightening quest for self-discovery, healing,
and personal transformation. The BecomeOne Living Podcast is your guide to
unearthing ancient wisdom for modern-day living.
Subscribe today to embark on a thought-provoking journey towards a more enlightened and informed self.
Become One Living
What Will Rise? An Open Discussion with Jody and Dan
In this episode Jody and Dan wanted to take a minute to not just reflect but be open to what the mind pushes to the forefront.
Self-awareness and the intricate dance of duality shape our relationships and experiences in life. The discussion unfolds the concepts of personal responsibility, Lila, and the importance of presence, encouraging listeners to embrace their journey without fear.
• Exploring the interplay of duality in personal and relational dynamics
• The role of relationships in shaping our understanding of responsibility
• Introduction of Lila, the playful nature of consciousness
• Understanding that responsibility is not equivalent to control
• Navigating between the concealment and revealment of life experiences
• Emphasizing presence and awareness in the journey toward self-realization
• The importance of techniques in creating safe exploration
• Personal anecdotes showcasing mutual inspiration as partners
• Advocating for openness, acceptance, and healing on the path to growth
• Encouragement to engage with one's consciousness for deeper self-understanding
Did any of these topics spark something for you? Is there anything you'd like us to explore more?
We would love to hear from you! Email us at becomeoneliving@gmail.com or reach out to us on Instagram at BecomeOne Living.
welcome back to another episode of become one living where me and joe, my wife, jody domerstadt, we're talking about stuff yoga bodies, bodies, awareness, consciousness, a whole bunch of stuff and today we're really just going to see what rises, what comes up Of all the things yes, of all the things that there is to talk about. It's like I don't know. I honestly couldn't tell you which way we're going to go today, because it's like emotion, it's like I don't know, I honestly couldn't tell you which way we're going to go today, because it's like emotion, feeling, scripture, body.
Speaker 2:I mean, what's coming up for you, what's coming up for me? Me and you, in conversation, have been discussing this concept of duality. I would like to start the discussion on duality. We were talking about it's both.
Speaker 1:Yeah this is you and me, like in a nutshell, because you'll talk about, like the concept of well, it's all you, everything's you. You have to take responsibility because everything in your life is you and it's about you. And immediately, because it's yoga, I say yes, yes, it's very important to take responsibility for everything. But also, you are in relationship with me and you are in relationship with family and you are in relationship with people that you work with and you are in relationship with that microphone and you are in relationship with if you're going to ride a bicycle, you're in relationship with the bicycle, everything, and so that that there is. It's like, yes, I want to take responsibility for my life, my actions, my interactions, my relationships, and there is also the thing that I'm in relationship with.
Speaker 2:That you have no control over. Yes, I agree. Well, what you're speaking about to me is Lila. Lila is the play of consciousness in yoga, and Dan and I definitely have different views, or we come at it with different views, and, ironically, today I'm dressed in all white, which is very ironic because I usually come at it from the darkness and Dan is in black. So we are completely opposite of what we usually are.
Speaker 2:And I have to say that when Dan just shared that I speak about 100% responsibility, that was a trauma response. And that is a trauma response. And that is a trauma response Meaning people that want to take a hundred percent responsibility, want to think that if they can control their behavior, then they could impact the outcome of what's happening. So there's, there is that dance of saying, hey, I've shown up, I've done what I can do, I've participated in the way I can in love, in consciousness, and then you have to let the cards fall as they will yeah, yeah, I remember back in the early days of us where it's like I I can't remember some some.
Speaker 1:It was like almost like a car was in the roadway and then a car came the opposite way and they knew each other and they stopped and we came and they were talking in the middle of the road and you were ready to get out and start a fisticuffs and I'm thinking, ok, we could do that, but we could also just back up and go and be on our way. So we definitely come at it from different angles, but, um, wait a minute.
Speaker 2:That was definitely how I was and that was again a part. So when, when dan and I talk about our lives and my behavior, I'm okay with my behavior and that part of me that would want to get out and flip the guy's car because that was the part that kept me alive and kept me in business and doing things my whole life and I want to encourage people listening, and even you is. I'm proud of that part that would want to kill someone or want to fight or push, because that's all I knew until I could learn something else on every level.
Speaker 1:My nervous system was stuck yeah and hey look, I'm not, I'm so. So if we put the ball back in in my court, you know, uh, through through the course of my life early life, and into to, to, to the middle it was like I would just avoid things, and so so that that, to an extreme, is not healthy either. It isn't into the last decade, whereas I was willing to draw a boundary and make a statement just to say, hey, this is where I stand, versus just avoiding everything, Because there are things that if you're alive that you need to address. Right, it's just a part of being alive. You can't go around fighting absolutely everything unless that's your truest nature, and you can't go around avoiding absolutely everything unless that's your truest nature. And you can't go around avoiding absolutely everything unless that's your truest nature.
Speaker 2:No, but I tried both. I tried to fight, and what I couldn't fight I tried to avoid. And I want to go back to that word, Leela, for a moment.
Speaker 1:Leela is the play of consciousness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, leela is the play of consciousness. In this way, in this way, in philosophy, in some yogic philosophies, life is a game, it's playful and there is concealment and revealment. So those are the two pieces I offer today in our discussion is at any time you will experience concealment, and in concealment you forget completely who you are and most people spiral out, and you can spiral for days, weeks, years, lifetimes, and then concealment happens. The sun comes out and you come back and you're like, oh my god, and you pendulate right, you go back and forth and the swing is really big, like I. I used to be really calm, but when I lost it, man, I would lost it Right, and now I don't lose it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you've remained consistent metaphor. You can either be the bus stop or the bus. Whichever you choose, there's a consistency there, right? So you've been consistent in your pursuits.
Speaker 2:Yes In. I don't want to be reactive, I don't want to be angry, I don't want to fight or defend, because that's not living, that is surviving, and surviving is exhausting. If you're continually arguing what you do, defending and fighting people or ready to fight, you're in survival mode. I was in survival mode most of my life and that was due to complex traumas. And at a point when I say you got to take responsibility is okay, things happen in my life. I altered myself to survive from those I was. I changed so I could survive, but at a point the responsibility to me is well, what are you going to do to heal? How do you want to live? I don't want to be mad at everybody, or angry, or judgmental, or cranky or in physical pain. That's Lila, though. You have the pulse, and the pulse also doesn't take you out of pain forever, because it's a pulse.
Speaker 1:Absolutely and just like everything.
Speaker 1:I think you can say this for just about everything.
Speaker 1:There is a time and a place for everything, and in one way, what I'm thinking about right now is I had a person in my life who was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, and I'm not a big fan of labels, like I think you are are not either. However, if you dig, begin to dig a little bit and by dig I mean take the time to understand. As I got to know that person, I realized that each of the personalities really was an adept, it was a well-versed, it was an advanced evolution quickly with regards to overwhelming experiences and environments. So it was like with this environment and this person, the person figured out how to survive with this personality, and over here it was a different personality and over here it was a different environment, and so a different personality came and rose and that person survived. By this technique of creating personalities, I began to see that it was an evolutionary piece rather than a diagnosis and a title to be given Right. So, and I think on the other side of that is like not to label that.
Speaker 2:Well, ifs you just spoke about, ifs internal family system, sees anything as parts of someone that do something to help you survive, to take care of you, to tend to your needs right, I mean in a multiple personality disorder diagnosis, though it's really.
Speaker 2:They're almost like completely different personalities and so highly evolved to me right like extremely, yeah, um well, dick schwartz shared a study that when he worked with multiple personalities, that one part would have diabetes and another part wouldn't incredible and that's why I share with people. If you have chronic pain, that's a part. Your part is what part of you is here that experiences that pain, because it's not here all the time, and that's what I would say. For me, what's helped is this concept of play.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:That the universe longs to co-create. The universe is not moral, it's not ethical. It wants to generate energy and create things. So whatever you do or I do, it will be created, whether it be life enhancing or not. And the repetition over time creates habits, and then these habits turn into us, believing that's who we are. And so, leela is these two words concealment and revealment. The concealment is I'm lost, I don't know anything. How deep do you go into that depth of being lost? In the beginning you may go very far and hard, like I did, and the revealment is brief in the beginning, these little Glimpses yes.
Speaker 2:Little flashes, and Deb Dana, who talks about the polyvagal theory, calls some of these things glimmers instead of triggers. And you have to hook into the glimmers, hook into the little glimpse of light, of different than you're doing now, because that reminder helps get you out of it so that you can sustain a different level and a different energetic awareness longer than staying in the other one. That's what I did when you said I committed to change. So anger or frustration was my go-to and pain until I learned a different go-to.
Speaker 1:Sure, and you said learned. But learned was informed by experience and openness. You know, there's like a whole bunch of ingredients that allows for that that you created or was open to incorporating into and synthesizing into your approach and way of being and living.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, first part was and you all may have heard this if you're listening to an episode before, episodes before that I realized something was wrong and luckily I started studying yoga when I was young, so I knew there was more possibilities than what I was doing right now. And this play of consciousness also, I find, when you hear the word play, it allows me to say, wow, is this real? How much am I adding to this? Because when you play, you make up, imagine.
Speaker 1:You improvise.
Speaker 2:Yes, how much am I making this more than it is? Who's adding this stuff? That's what I ask myself. Who's making up these stories? Who's making it harder than it is?
Speaker 1:Than it needs to be.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gosh, the thinking mind I I when you take me, take us there. You know the reflections in nature. The way that a lightning flash moves through the sky is the path of least resistance, and why can't we, we? We operate like that, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, you do that skillfully. You move your life. I witness through the path of least resistance, where I'll run through a wall Not not so much anymore, but if I wanted something, I just I'm going for it and that helped me witnessing you the gift of Dan being my partner and my husband. He inspired me from certain behaviors that you have and qualities, the way you listen to people, when I would watch him listen. The other day we were at Yoga Bohemia in Long Beach Island in New Jersey and Dan was speaking to a woman and they were in it. We were.
Speaker 2:There was 12 of us all around him talking loudly, giggling, laughing, eating. He didn't even blink. Those two looked like they were in a bubble alone. And when he left I said he was really present, right, she goes. Oh my God. She said. It was as if everyone in the room dissolved. And when I saw you do that with someone be that present, years ago, I said I want to do that, I want to be that present and, hopefully, everyone listening. You have someone in your life that inspires you to raise up, to do something different, to try something different. You, you've inspired that and you do go the path of least resistance, which is yoga. It's saying this is unfolding. How do you be with it? Not how do you change it? I was a changer, right, I would want to smash it.
Speaker 1:And and and I, I, the. The experience of myself is that I know that I love luxurious things too. You know, I love having like rich experiences, I love new experiences, I love things that money can buy, but I don't remain attached to them. And it's like, it's almost like if you're driving down Ocean Boulevard, and for me it's like if the sun's setting. It's like, oh my God, pull down to the bay and sit and watch the sunset, because that's the moment, that's what's going on, there's this whole solar system and all these things going on, and we don't take time.
Speaker 2:I wasn't able to do that and some listeners might not be able to because that's not safe. So the right and the left side of the brain we, me and Dan this is really our real life discussion is I share with him that, that he inspired me and it was scary when he would say, joe, let's go to the Bay, no, I don't want to. Or there was a. There was years where we would walk in town, a specific walk, and he would say, can we go here? No, I don't want to, I just want to walk. And it wasn't controlling, it was controlling to feel safe. I felt so unsafe in my body, my mind, my spirit, my soul. Trauma changed the way that I think. So pulling over for a sunset was unsafe because it wasn't planned and I don't have control over it. And people in the world don't.
Speaker 2:Some of you listening might not realize you are running limbically. Everything in your life is through a fear lens and about how can I not feel this? Or stay so rigid that nothing else happens. I live that way and it took a lot of time for you to get me and not even get me. I invite those things but sometimes I don't Like. The other day we were bike riding and Dan said you want to go see the sunset? I said Nope, I just wanted to get my bike ride in and and so, but I'm also aware of that now, where before we couldn't take a different route. Do you hear that? And I hope you hear this and that opens your heart to have compassion, because some people can't regulate. I couldn't regulate, I was stuck in a fear response.
Speaker 1:Yeah, being open to that conversation, being open to learning you, you you'll also realize that just this, this little piece, is so rich in that. Uh, let me, let me think of how I want to say this. So, so, whether you're learning something on the computer, or learning to play the piano, or learning a different language, or learning yoga asana or learning yoga mantra, the piano, or learning a different language, or learning yoga asana or learning yoga mantra, there's techniques, and so techniques are a critical piece of learning. It's like if you find a technique, you do it over and over and over and over again, and then you do it over and over and over again until it becomes you, and then the technique almost dissolves away. So if you have a technique that allows you to feel safe, an approach to life, and you keep doing it over and over and over again, you can create enough safety.
Speaker 1:Where then you can expand from that? So I'm always cautious not to take a snapshot. You can create enough safety where then you can expand from that. I'm always cautious not to take a snapshot and lay everything on the line for that, because that snapshot is a glimpse, it's fleeting, it's not going to last. So allowing people in your life. I don't want to sound redundant, but allowance.
Speaker 2:It is redundant To be who they are. It's repetitive. Yeah, the allowance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for me, what's critical in relationship is that to honor and respect people where they are so that they can blossom from that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know meeting life and people where they are. And I want to go back to what you said about technique, technique, technique. That's why you have to have practices. When, when people say they do yoga or teach yoga, what do you? Go to yoga class and leave?
Speaker 2:That's that's taking a class. Where are the practices every day, because there's 23 other hours. And practice is this in IFS and in yoga and in neurosculpting and a lot of the things I study. This is why I study them, and Akashic Records, sculpting and a lot of the things I study. This is why I study them and Akashic records. All of this is about relationship with self and knowing I'm not those other little selves, small S meaning. When you're stuck in trauma, you're stuck, frozen in time. So, uh, some people get arrested at a certain age, right, you get stuck. So clients I work with are sometimes 10 years old.
Speaker 1:That's who I'm talking to, even if they're 60. Yes, chronologically.
Speaker 2:Yes. And what happens is when you're frozen in time and you're behaving from that 10 or 12 year old or five year old, you don't even know that you're older. So you're behaving from that 10 or 12 year old or five year old. You don't even know that you're older, so you're still afraid to experience anything because you think you're four or you think you're 10. So the goal in IFS is to build self energy and trust.
Speaker 2:To say what helped me Jodi the most is realizing I am old enough, wise enough, strong enough, intelligent enough to take care of myself, no matter what. I'm not five, I'm not 10. But when I, years ago, I thought I was still the five-year-old or the three-year-old that experienced severe trauma and she was living my life to try to keep me safe, didn't know, didn't ask for her needs to be met, didn't know how to meet her needs, didn't state anything, people pleased, lied, manipulated to get needs met. And what happens is that comes into real time now and you and your partner, me and you are talking and meanwhile you're talking to a three-year-old and you don't know it. So how do you get beyond that?
Speaker 2:The practices are saying, yes, I'm safe now, but not now as a three-year-old. I'm 50. We're not there anymore. Come home and that part might not want to because it doesn't know us. So that's why it goes back to yoga and relationship. You're building an intimate relationship with all of your memories, all of your stories, all of your parts, so you can co-create your life with the divine intelligence in the present moment, as you are in your highest potential yes, and then when you accomplish or attain or somehow feel like you've arrived there, guess what?
Speaker 2:there's more and, and this could take some time yeah.
Speaker 1:I think patience, understanding, approaching with love they're all supportive of self-realization. What's the big deal about like so? Why would anyone want to be self-realized? It takes work and effort and um, but I get the feeling that when you realize yourself, you feel calmer, more in the moment, more present Things affect you less. You can't be rocked.
Speaker 2:Yes, Life happens and you stay. You don't get pulled by life Victimization and living externally or sensory wise, like living according to external stimulus. You, I had no idea who I was. You won't know who you are, because if someone farts, it stinks. If this smells good, it's great. Oh, I love Dan because he played this music. I don't like Jackie because of this or this. If you live continually according to what's going on in the outside, you lose yourself. It's like you're in outside. You lose yourself.
Speaker 1:It's like you're in a washing machine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you think who you are according to what the outer world tells you, and it doesn't happen until you get to a certain age and a certain practice and a certain place where you don't listen to the outside.
Speaker 1:You ask who am I? All the tools that you share and from your experience in life and yoga, those are the tools that bring you closer to a self-realization.
Speaker 2:Yes, yoga is self-realization, ifs is self-leadership, meaning capital S is leading the way, not my parts In this podcast. Before it starts in mind to myself, I say I ask my parts to back out. I ask them to take a seat to join us so that I can be in self, in my heart, and not ego or story or try to prove something or try to be something I'm not, or to say something. So you all like me.
Speaker 1:That's behind me there, all my parts or whatever's here is sitting with me, so I can share what authentically comes through that's from yoga yeah, I feel incredibly fortunate to have pursued this relationship with you, because I remember, way back when we would, we would have little disagreements and I would say to you, I said to you, joe, I'm not, I'm not trying to be right here, you know, and that I feel like was was a a little good brick that that we built on that we came to an understanding that if we were disagreeing on something, I was really just trying to make something productive or get to a certain level where it was copacetic, where things were in harmony, you know, versus trying to win a fight or getting more check marks on.
Speaker 2:You know, winning something it's just and this is beautiful to share with everyone is I didn't understand that I didn't come from a household of conversation that Dan offered.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't come from a household of that either.
Speaker 2:No, but you. I was still in trauma. I had the brain tumor growing. I had multiple health concerns when I met Dan, when I met, when me and Dan reunited, I was in the hospital having five bone amputations, possibly losing a limb. A toe is a toe. It's not me, let's not exaggerate, but still I was not well and also I was still in my addiction 15 years ago. I just stopped my addiction 15 years ago and this was all with Dan. And Dan brought this new conversation to my life and I watched my parts want to reject him because he was unsafe, he was unfamiliar, he wasn't predictable. I never knew, and I still don't know, what the heck this man is going to say. Oh my God, in yoga class he'll walk in and I don't. I don't know what's going to happen. And it's great sometimes, and other times it ain't anyway.
Speaker 2:Uh, but I, I invite you all to hear this, because when they see us together, they think we people, we work together and everything's peachy. It's not. We work at conversing. And it has taken me years to understand that you aren't looking to win, you aren't looking to be right. I didn't understand that because if I was wrong, it meant I'm going to get in trouble or something bad's going to happen, and that's.
Speaker 2:I was stuck or frozen at different ages of time and it takes a lot to thaw out. I want to share that too. We now have this new somatic yoga or the polyvagal theory, and everybody wants, and now everyone is talking about I'm so collapsed, I'm just shut down. Um, you can't go from shut down to kumbaya, my lord, that's not how the nervous system works. It's. I was so completely shut down that it took years to thaw out to to rage, and then from rage it turned into sadness, depression, sorrow, and then it turned into I'm able to regulate myself and feel all the feels and not fly into a habitual pattern of defensiveness or shutdown or fighting or arguing. There really is a process to come back to wholeness, and not that you're not already whole, but I forgot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I get the feeling that it's almost a knee-jerk reaction for somebody to want to define themselves with a certain word like that. It's kind of like the concept of you know, if somebody says, yeah, I'm a shaman it's like then run I was just going to say run. None of my greatest teachers call themselves by anything like that.
Speaker 2:It's like, it's like they, because they're being it yeah, and when we share these words being, and even when me and you talk about being, it's like, yeah, man, I'm here, I'm being. There's so many steps to get to being. One of our friends said you Americans like all these steps. She said you Americans like steps. Yes, and they're important because you also took steps to get enlightened, like this person's enlightened in this lifetime, but you did do things to get there. That's what we share. I don't want people to think you wake up one day and you're enlightened.
Speaker 1:That's not the truth. There's a process. Even if you're not writing it down as you go for a book, there's a process that happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's an inquiry, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's an awareness, there's an allowing.
Speaker 2:That word you like, that it's hmm, who's here now? Who needs to be right? Who, who doesn't want to be neutral, who doesn't want to let it go, who wants to consume Right, right, or who's so afraid to do this or that? It's when, when I finally settled in to to me, I realized how afraid of life I really was due to all the things I experienced. I contracted so much I almost lost myself in that contraction. I did, I almost died because I didn't want to live, because it was so uncertain. I didn't think I could regulate it, regulate myself.
Speaker 2:And now it's not, I'm not stronger, like, yeah, I can do this. It's really this gentleness of wow, I'm so aware of all the skills and tools I have and that I've become and I can use them to navigate, lila, navigate the pulsation of consciousness of I'm lost. Or wow, we just spent $20,000 on the dentist. There goes our savings, right, that's true, that's what, listen, y'all are going to go through that at one point in time. Dentists are expensive. It's like one minute you have a little savings and the next minute there goes the dentist. And to not feel cheated or punished or sad or scared, because that's money, is a pulsing, it's an energy, it's like it comes, you have it and then thank God, we have it for it to go.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, you almost want to celebrate the going Bon voyage.
Speaker 2:Arrivederci. Don't forget to write. Oh my God, wow. Thank you, dan. Thank you, jo. Forget to write. Oh my god, wow, uh thank you dan thank you, joe. Become one living at gmailcom. If you hear something, if it stands out, if you want to share something, yeah write us yeah, please.
