Struggling with Anxiety? Feeling Disconnected? Discover the Healing Power of Wholeness Work.

Ever wondered if there's a way to dissolve the ego and unlock profound healing and unity within yourself? What if a groundbreaking technique could transform your anxiety and enhance your overall well-being? 

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Connirae Andreas about her groundbreaking work in NLP and core transformation through her innovative wholeness work technique. Connirae shared how this approach, focused on dissolving the ego to unlock profound healing and unity, evolved from her personal journey. We explored the concept of awakening to an undivided presence, highlighting the significance of experiencing this state firsthand rather than merely understanding it intellectually.

Imagine managing your anxiety and reshaping your personal narratives to foster deeper connections and enhanced well-being. 

By listening to this episode, you can:

1. Experience Profound Healing: Learn how wholeness work can help dissolve the ego, leading to significant emotional and psychological healing.
2. Enhance Well-Being: Discover techniques to manage anxiety and enhance overall well-being by being present and reshaping personal narratives.
3. Connect Deeply with Self and Others: Understand how sensing the self and awareness within one’s environment can lead to relaxation, emotional shifts, and stronger connections.

Three Benefits You'll Gain:

1. Emotional and Psychological Healing: Gain insights into techniques that dissolve the ego and foster profound healing.
2. Improved Anxiety Management: Learn practical methods to manage anxiety and improve your overall well-being.
3. Stronger Connections: Discover how to deepen your connections with yourself and others through enhanced self-awareness and presence.

Experience a guided exercise, learn about upcoming resources, and discover how this innovative technique can foster personal growth and improve interpersonal relationships. Start your journey towards healing and unity today!

Episode on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/Xi0uczAkBdM

Train with Connirae In Person in Amsterdam:
Wholeness Work Levels I - III, 22-29 June, 2024
https://wholenesswork.eu/amsterdam/

Live Online training here:
https://www.andreasnlp.com/trainings/the-wholeness-work/

Bio:
Connirae Andreas, PhD has been a leading teacher and innovator in the field of NLP for over 4 decades. She is best known for her groundbreaking work developing Core Transformation, a method through which our limitations become the doorway t

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Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:08] Back to It's an Inside Job podcast. I'm your host, Jason Liem. Now, this podcast is dedicated to helping you to help yourself and others to become more mentally and emotionally resilient so you can be better at bouncing back from life's inevitable setbacks. Now, on It's an Inside Job, we decode the science and stories of resilience into practical advice, skills, and strategies that you can use to impact your life and those around you. Now, with that said, let's slip into to the stream.

[0:36] Music.

[0:43] Hey folks, welcome back to the show. It's an inside job. I'm your host, Jason Liem. Before we begin and kick off this episode, I just want to do a little housekeeping and say that I will be on a more regular basis, uploading the video version of these episodes onto YouTube and I will be making them available as I get them done. It takes a little time, a little effort, but it's a labor of love.

[1:10] Well, with that said, today's episode, we are traveling to Boulder, Colorado. This week, I am joined by Connirae Andreas. Now, Connirae has a PhD in leading teacher and innovator in the field of NLP, that's neuro-linguistics programming, for over four decades. She's best known for the groundbreaking work developing in core transformation. A method from which our limitations become the doorway to a felt experience many describe as love, peace, presence, or oneness. Though the steps of the process, this felt experience offers a profound healing resolving many limiting emotions and behaviors. Now, Connirae's new wholeness work, which will be the focus of this episode, begins by offering a precise way to experience dissolving the ego, a long-time spiritual goal, in a way that releases stress and resolves many life's issues. This new work then guides us in finding the universal structures of the unconscious that hold problems in place, and offers specific formats to transform each of them. Now, Andreas' work is strongly influenced by her personal experience with the late Dr. Milton H. Erickson. I really enjoyed this interview and it added a lot and complimented my skill sets as a professional, as a coach, as a sparring partner. So without further ado, let's slip into the stream and meet Connirae, Andreas.

[2:35] Music.

[2:48] It's an inside job. I'm your host, Jason Liem. Today, I have a special guest all the way from Boulder, Colorado. Hi, Connirae. Thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to be here. It's brilliant. We could make this connection and make this time. I was wondering if we could kick off the conversation about you perhaps just introducing yourself and what you're about and what you do. Oh, wow. Introducing myself. Well, that's a tough one. I'm used to writing bios, but not introducing myself. But you know, I guess I'm interested in well-being. I really resonated with the things you have on your website, Jason. That's exactly what I'm about, too. You know, you have resilience, equanimity, well-being. That's what I'm about. That's what my life has been about. So my whole life, starting when I was a kid, I think, I was interested in better ways of living, communicating. You know, I could see in my own family, in myself, that we weren't as happy as I'd like.

[3:57] I was, and so I was successful. successful I did well in school all that kind of stuff and then in my adult life I did well too you know and but it was really through a crisis in my life that I came to what we're going to be talking today about today I hope which is wholeness work so I feel like life has sort of led me to deeper and deeper levels of transformation and that's what my life is about and then when I I find I've always considered myself my own worst client, my most difficult one. So I have a background in clinical psychology. Then I became an NLP trainer. You know, I trained around the world and people came to us in Colorado to train. So that's my background. But really, I was always having a difficult time applying these things to myself. They didn't work as well for me as with others. So that really led me to a search for what might make it possible for anyone to change, no matter how difficult a client they are. And I figured if something would work on me, it's likely to work for everybody.

[5:08] Body yeah you were kind enough to share me with me your book and that's what i want to kind of explore because for me the the book the wholeness work a complete self-healing system it was sort of the gateway into what you do and it kind of expanded you know my background has to do a lot with cognitive psychology and the clinical sciences and i thought after reading your book i thought it It was a very complimentary way of adding to my skill sets as a coach, as a.

[5:39] As someone who likes helping other people. And it was a very innovative and a unique way, a perspective, a way that I hadn't really given much thought to or invested in. And you articulated in the book in such a way that I thought it'd be great that we have this hour and hour and a bit today to kind of do a deep dive, have a long conversation to explore the idea. I was wondering, maybe we can kick off, like, what inspired you to develop the wholeness work? And what exactly is it, if you could perhaps define it for our listenership? Yes, happy to share that. Well, as I mentioned, it was really coming to the edge of my own limits. I was in a life crisis when I thought I was dying, actually. But I didn't have anything that the doctors understood. understood so what I was experiencing was this sort of bizarre set of symptoms bizarre to me anyway where I it felt as if there was electricity flowing up my central column you know obviously I mean as far as I know there wasn't but it felt like there was and it was so strong so intense it it seemed like if I look in a mirror surely I'll see a fountain of sparks coming out the top of my head. That's how real it felt.

[6:56] And it felt, it was so intense that I thought my body probably couldn't withstand it. Whatever was happening, it didn't seem like likely that I would live through it. So, but the doctors had no explanation. They had no help. And I, you know, I had, I was, I went to graduate school in clinical psychology. I knew all the methods of therapy that existed around that time. And I was an NLP trainer.

[7:22] NLP had a lot of leading edge methods. I had developed some of them, quite a few of them, myself or with my husband. And none of it was enough for me. It's like none of it could address what was happening for me. And so I started on a search for something, My hope was that I'd find something that could help me stay alive, basically, that could somehow settle my system. And so I wanted to live. That was my goal. I wasn't thinking that I would be developing some new method of change, but that's what it turned into.

[8:01] In my search for something, anything, I started exploring spiritual teachings. And that's real different than science, right? But I thought I was approaching it from a more scientific mindset, if we could call it that, because I was interested not so much in the descriptions people had, but the experience itself.

[8:26] So I didn't so much wasn't paying attention to the belief systems that people had about it. But when people talked about experiences that they called awakening, for example, you know, it sounded like this very fascinating and complete change in consciousness. So somehow people's consciousness would shift. And then as what I understood from the experience of it was, okay, when there's this a certain kind of shift in consciousness ordinary life troubles just sort of melt away and we can move through life with a kind of just that you know resilience equanimity well-being there's a deep feeling of peace within and i thought okay that sounds good i could use some of that you know and then so i began to explore but the spiritual teachers didn't have in my view specific ways to get there. They could describe the state and they could, you know, and then people wouldn't have these ideas about what this means and what's going on. But nobody seemed to have a method to do it. No recipe. You know, if you want to bake a really good cake and you've got a good chef, if you follow, you know, somebody watches them and follows the recipe, there's a chance you can make a really good cake too, you know. So I wanted that kind of ability for myself to be able to maybe it's possible to have a kind of precise procedure.

[9:53] Specific enough perhaps i can get there perhaps anyone can get there so that's what i began exploring and that's what's led what led to homeless work is one of the lines that really stood out in the book for me you wrote that it's not about mentally understanding something But it's through actively experiencing whatever it is that you're facing. So it's through the experience and not just to intellectualize, like sometimes what CBT does, cognitive behavioral therapy to some lens, where we try to constantly change cognition and to intellectually talk through things. As important as that is, from what I gather from your writing, it's actually experiencing. And that's what the wholeness work is about, is actually diving in and experiencing that. Is that what I understand? Yes.

[10:48] Yes, that's exactly it, Jason. And then if I could add, it's also about having a procedure so that anyone could follow it. Like, because my thought is, it's kind of like two metaphor. I have two metaphors for this. It's kind of like fire and matches. You know, if you see someone strike a match, and you don't know about matches, you think, wow, that's magic. How did they ever do it? And maybe you take from outside and you try like this, you know, gosh, it doesn't work for me. But if you understand the elements of what creates a match that will start a fire, anyone can do it. You know, you just have to have the right elements there. And or the other metaphor that I like to use for this is it's like a sunset. Sunset so if we if you've experienced a sunset you know that sunsets can be quite magical quite beautiful quite awe-inspiring and you can tell someone about a sunset and it might sound wonderful but if that person hasn't experienced it themselves they won't really get it so so then the question is is there a procedure so that everyone can experience a sunset for themselves that's the the question.

[12:01] And, and of course, we know that with experiencing a sunset, yes, we can make a procedure so that anyone can experience a sunset, we can say, okay, given where you are on the planet, you know, we know when the sun's going to be setting. So go outside, if you're in a place where there's buildings, get on top of something, you know, so you can, and then face, face in the direction of the west and then then watch and wait for the the sunset to happen now if it doesn't happen that's a reliable procedure anyone could experience a sunset then it's not just something you read about in poetry you can experience it yourself and if the first time you don't experience it then you can go okay well maybe it was a cloudy day you know maybe so so try Try it a few times. If you've got the procedure right and you try it a few times, it's inevitable that every single person can experience that.

[13:00] So that's what we're attempting to do with the experience of awakening. If we can understand what are the actual steps that someone can take that will make it reliable, can we make it open for everyone to have that experience? And so just to make sure we're, we're talking about this, we're using the same sort of definition of awakening. This is the sense of awareness or self-awareness to one's experience, ongoing experience, or is there a greater definition that's.

[13:30] To add to that um it's easier to understand it in the experience than than in the definition but if if i were to create a definition for awakening um i would describe it as the undivided the experience of undivided presence so if we have undivided presence if we think of a baby a baby you know a newborn tends to have this sort of wide open consciousness they don't have much functionality they can't take care of themselves you know but but if somebody else is caring for them and they're worm dry fed you look into their eyes and you see this kind of, wide open awareness and that is because the baby is just the baby is in a flow state we could call it a flow state, where it's just experience happening. They haven't yet created a separate sense of self inside.

[14:30] And then as we grow up, we create a separate sense of self. That creates inner division, which creates stress. And when we get to awakening, it's a return to this kind of bliss state, we could say, a kind of presence a full presence where it's not an undivided presence and where it's easier to, life becomes easier it's easier to find solutions to problems things that don't matter don't bug us you know we don't get irked by the little things and we have this feeling of unity with not just within ourselves but also with other people there's a sense of, of unity. Like we're all in this together. We're all in some, at a deeper level, part of the same thing. Does that make sense? Am I? Yeah, I'm getting closer because this, this kind of, um, this, this angle of thinking about this, this is quite fresh for me. So through this conversation, although I've read the book, it's, you know, it's like learning Taekwondo. You can read it from, you can read it from a book, but it's best to go to the dojo and learn from, from the, the person who's very skilled at it. And so for me, this is a conversation of discovery as we're going along.

[15:47] Because for me, for example, this call, this Zoom call that we're doing, I'm not actually experiencing the Zoom call, I'm experiencing my thoughts about this Zoom call.

[15:57] And so between the reality and between what my senses bring into my brain, there's this wall of thought, this narrative, this meaning that I'm giving to it, whether I'm conscious or not conscious of it my brain is assigning some sort of story to what we're talking about and that story may be oh i'm having a podcast with this this this woman in boulder colorado talking about her her practice and being an author and such about her book and so for me it's trying to bridge that connection between what you're saying this awakening and trying to filter through the narrative because i understand that most of us we have narratives that sometimes serve us and then we have narratives that don't serve us well and this create different types of dysfunctional thinking or what have you and so i i just find it very interesting to try to find a confluence of where this meets these two these two thoughts meet yes and then this is interesting how you're describing this um this narrative that we all have these thoughts that tend to go on and so on inside and tends to happen when people practice wholeness work um lots of benefits start happening in their lives unlike the baby state we're we're more functional than before we become.

[17:23] Our full capacities become go online so and what happens the part of the way that happens is a lot of the narratives just naturally melt away and we're more able to be present with what we might call reality as it is so it's easier if we're working in a business context or, you know, with our colleagues, it's easier to see here, to get what's actually happening rather than imposing our story of what's happening. And that makes us infinitely smarter in being able to find solutions that actually fit and that are well-received.

[18:07] I was wondering maybe we can, to ground this a little for the listeners, if we could maybe use a very relatable day-to-day kind of example that you face. Not you face, but maybe clients that you work with that face. Maybe it's like imposter syndrome or a sense of being perfect or being able to accomplish everything on the to-do list or dealing with anxiety. Perhaps we could find something we could use as an anchor point and to explore the methodology i can give you so many examples jason um i think what might help is to have a few examples and then maybe i can guide everyone in a simple experience to it's it's because the experience is what makes the methodology understandable because this is really a revolutionary method it's a breakthrough through method. It can't be explained in terms of the things that are already known. So it's like if you have a completely new food going on the market, you can kind of say, well, it tastes a little bit like that or a little bit like this, you know, but if it really is a new food, people need to taste it themselves to get what it what it is like. And this is this is that. So to give I'll give you a few examples. Somebody just recently emailed me from reading the book.

[19:28] He got both of my books and said, whoa, the results have been incredible. I just have had this two weeks. I've only been practicing two weeks. But already, you mentioned anxiety. He said, I've been working with anxiety since day one of my personal growth work. He'd already done lots of personal growth and was a coach, is a coach. He said, but it's never...

[19:53] It changed somewhat from my work, but it was hard work. And the change was slow and difficult, and it never was completely changed. And I worked with this two weeks, and it's like, I'm different. I'm completely different. I just feel this well-being disease. He said, I'm able to be present with my children and my spouse and enjoy them in a way I wasn't able to enjoy them before. So there's one simple example. Example many people have shared with me how their anxieties have cleared up and I can share that from my own experience too because this is something this whole notes work is something that I've used I didn't initially I didn't intend to teach it I didn't intend to make it into a whole I just wanted a way to survive as I was telling you you know and I was frightened by what was happening so some of the first ways I applied it to myself were to deal with my own anxiety about my health might would I survive and it really helped me with that a lot it would just like when I would use this with my anxieties whether it was about me physically surviving or later when I started using it when I started teaching it the first time was going to teach I got nervous.

[21:10] You know, because I thought, okay, this has worked for me, but I don't know if it's going to work for anybody else. It might, you know, they might think it's nuts, you know. My husband thought it was at least half nuts, you know. And so I thought, maybe I don't know if other people are going to relate to this or not. So I was feeling nervous. And so I used the wholeness work with my own nervousness before I started teaching. And it was quick. It didn't take me very long. I used this the night before. And the next day when I walked into the training room, I felt really fully, completely at peace. And it wasn't the kind of peace that is confidence. You know, sometimes people try to be confident. You know, it's going to go well, blah, blah, blah. But the thing is, that's fooling ourselves. We don't know if it's going to go well, you know. So, what happened for me was a shift into this kind of peace where I felt an open presence. I was okay with however it went. I was okay if everyone hated it, if everyone loved it, or something, you know, if they found it difficult, easy. So, it was the kind of being at peace where I could be open to these people in my room with me. And however they showed up, I could receive them. I didn't need them to like me, to think this was great work, for me to be at ease.

[22:35] So that's where we can get to quite easily, quite quickly with this kind of inner work. For me, it wasn't a one-time shift. You know, that was a small group. Then once when I was going to have a really big group, I was going to have like 120 people. I thought, whoa, you know, that somehow triggered again a little bit of anxiousness for me. So I ran and I discovered what it was doing was it was helping me find more looking back on it I can see more places of separation inside and heal them so again before the training started I used my nervousness with this process in a simple way to just come back to that feeling of peace presence where I'm just here I'm offering something I'm doing my best I'm open to the the people in my audience and we'll see what happens together maybe nobody ever likes it maybe I'll maybe I'll maybe then that's just a I need to notice that you know then maybe I shift my profession or do it differently so it's not really a problem if people don't like it it's just useful input for me, Yeah, when I was reading through the book, it is very sort of pragmatic. You go through these steps. And so I was thinking as I was reading it, I was going through it.

[23:52] And one of the things that kind of I was looking into was a sense of annoyance I sometimes have when someone does not take responsibility for their part in whatever played out, whether it's success or failure and what have you. And I was thinking, you know, your book talks about the experience, actively living the experience or experiencing that. And so you also talk about location. And so I was thinking, OK, and as I was going through the question set, I was thinking, OK, where is this annoyance sitting within me? You know, how is it embodied, where it is? And it was kind of in my chest, but it felt like the location was somewhere just in front of my chest. My in front of my my as I said in front of my chest but my pectorals and it was kind of there.

[24:40] And then part of what I went through the different questions and forgive me if I'm making this very black and white I know it's very nuanced but you talked good yeah yeah you talked about sort of what is the shape so I gave it a shape it was a was a sort of a circle um it was sort of a tar it was kind of sticky so I was thinking about the the texture per se it was the size of a bit of a baseball per se like a tennis ball and i was going through the i was feeling the texture and such and it felt sort of sticky like uh if i put my hands on it it would be hard to kind of remove it it was just that sort of that that that gummy feeling and then it was about the feel and the temperature and such and so this is what i took it was very very pragmatic in that sense, right? And so I was trying to give shape, trying to give it mass, trying to give it a location. And one of the things you talked about was the eye. The eye, I notice this, I am aware of this. And that we can have these separate identities of eye.

[25:48] And so at the first step, one of the questions were, and again, forgive me, I'm just sort of paraphrasing the question here, or trying to capture is like where is this sort of awareness of looking at this this feeling that have of annoyance where is it coming from and so the first eye or what i noticed my awareness looking at it was sort of down actually from my eyes down into it and you said something you wrote in the book the eye is a contraction of consciousness it's like having a fist and you've constantly having that fist there's always that tension i mean the fist serves a purpose but if If it's constantly that tension, then that's where the stress and that's where the annoyance and that's where things can – I could actually physically feel it as I was walking through your steps.

[26:37] I was wondering, can you elaborate what I've just said and kind of use your vernacular to explain how the wholeness work is in this very simplistic case?

[26:48] That's a lovely example. That's great. Yeah, thank you. So, okay. And I think you've done it quite nicely. We'll see if I can add anything to that or not. So, with wholeness work, we start, this is the first format. So, as you know from reading the book, this is just the first format. Met. But it's important to start with this. So we can start with any emotion, even any body sensation. And we notice where it's located, like you noticed it was in your chest, we noticed the size and shape. And what I would just one slight change, I would say it's more that we're noticing rather than we're giving it a size and shape. It's more that we're the intention is to notice Notice the size and shape it already has. Notice. And then we're sensing in and through for the sensation quality that's there. And you found quite lovely. You found this sense of tar, stickiness, beautiful.

[27:44] And now, then what we do, and this is where wholeness work begins to get very particularly unique. Unique um no other method that i am aware of has found this um in a clear way like we do with wholeness work before so this is the first one of what i would call a breakthrough that helps make change deeper change possible because if we try to change there are other methods that try to help us change the feeling okay it's tarry just try to let it melt or do something you know where we where we We try to do something with the feeling itself and that is work. That's the hard way to do it.

[28:23] But what I took a clue from the spiritual teachings about awakening, they said, if you dissolve the ego, then normal problems just melt away on their own. So I thought, okay, what happens if we now find, what is the ego in experience? You know, they were just speaking of it conceptually. So this is where I think I could bring it into more of the Western scientific sort of mind frame. Let's find it in experience. experience let's not just have conceptual philosophical discussions about it let's so so if we find this this feeling in the chest and then we go okay i'm aware of this feeling that's a key sentence that we use in wholeness work as you know i'm aware of this feeling then where's the eye that notices i just said i am aware so obviously that's true i am aware of this feeling so where's the eye that notices so we we travel with we use the true thought but I am aware of this, we find the location of the eye. So we don't talk about conceptually, oh, there's a self and a self knows that I have this feeling. We go, where's the eye located? And then when we ask for that, something very interesting happens because the answer that emerges is generally not at all like people would think consciously.

[29:44] And this is where, but it pops into awareness what I call an unconscious structure, or we could call it a universal structure of the unconscious, which is the structure of the limited self.

[30:00] So, you know, if you want to change anything, you need to start by noticing its location. So if there's a feeling, we know it's in the chest. If there's an, if the eye, we need to know where it's located. And that way we can we can you know i could talk about you know this cup i could talk about cups.

[30:21] Conceptually well it's something that's a container it holds water you know we can just we can define it but if i want to do something with the cup if i want to use it it helps if i know where it's located so oh it's here on my table top that means i can pick it up i can drink out of it you know i can do things with it if i know where it's located and the same is true with this experience of self, if experience of self remains just conceptual, we can't do much with it. But if we first start by noticing where it's located, then we can start doing things. So, so, and where did you, you said when yours was behind the eyes, right? Yeah, it just felt, you know, that first level eye, you know, it's almost like, you know, the eyes are not windows. I understand the receptors, but it's almost like that. It's It's like I'm actually looking is what's my brain naturally defaults to when I'm thinking of sort of the conscious mind or what I am aware of, what I am noticing, as you said.

[31:22] And here's where I would, for the listeners, I just want to expand that when we ask where is the eye located, it's the eye, it's not the seeing eyes. Sometimes it's located in the same place as the seeing eyes. That's happened for you. But that's actually rare. More of the time it's located, it might be in the center of the head. If I go, where's the eye that notices this feeling in my chest? Oh, it's in the center of my head. Or it's like it's this cloud above my head, or it's this bubble that's off to my right a little bit. It can be located anywhere, and it can be any size.

[31:59] And this is something that if you like, we can get into a bit of an experience of it. Yes, please. I think that's the best way for our listeners to actually experience it, right? And not just to intellectualize it. Otherwise, the listeners are likely to go, what is she talking about? This sounds too strange. um but i but one thing um i don't know if it what happened for you jason when you invited that to open rocks did anything happen um well it it felt when i when i did it just to make sure it wasn't the eyes as an eye it's i as in the pronoun i am right that's what we're talking about just to differentiate for those who may be uh using english as a second language so it's the i as the pronoun. And so, as I said, you know, I felt the feeling of the location of that annoyance just in front of my chest. And so when I was sort of being aware of it, it actually felt like the consciousness was sort of, sort of in the middle of my forehead. And I was like, yeah, kind of looking down at it, right down, just in that location, just in front of my chest. And so it It almost felt like a beam from a flashlight. It was very concentrated on that tarry ball I was talking about.

[33:22] So that's what I felt. Yes, yes. And then, so if you're up for a bit of a guided experience, we can guide listeners along. Let's do it. And then you'll see what happens. Because when we, what happens, I'll give you just a little preview. What usually happens is that when we do a particular, we offer a particular invitation to the I, the pronoun I, not E-Y-E, the pronoun I. When we offer a particular invitation, that shifts everything because these eyes that we find are an experience of limited self. And when we invite them to transform, so much changes that's beyond what we could even describe or define. And then often the starting feeling changes on its own effortlessly. So that's like I told you a little bit earlier, an example of someone who emailed me recently telling me, wow, this is amazing. You know, that's what he was describing. He said, you know, things are changing for me so easily. I've never had this happen before. And, you know, I start with something and I don't have to find the story about it. It just changes.

[34:35] Music.

[34:44] Now, in the first part of the episode, we explored the origins and the principle of Connery-Andreas' wholeness work, which was inspired by her own severe, unexplained health symptoms. Believing these symptoms were life-threatening, Andreas turned to Eastern philosophies and spiritual practices for insights. She explained the process of understanding and applying wholeness work using the metaphor of striking a match. To the uninformed, well the resulting flame seems magical, but with knowledge of the elements that create a flame, anyone can replicate it. Another metaphor she used is that of a sunset. While one can describe a sunset to someone who has never seen it, well the true depth of the experience is inaccessible without the first hand of experience.

[35:31] Now Connery argues that it's possible to develop a procedure for experiencing such profound moments, akin to a sunset of awareness, where one achieves undivided presence. This state is likened to a baby experiencing life in a flow state, without a constructed sense of self, suggesting a return to this state of unity brings a sense of bliss. Through wholeness work, one learns to dissolve internal narratives, becoming fully present with reality as it is. And that, in turn, well, it enhances one's ability to devise fitting, well-received solutions. Now, as we move into the second part of this episode, Conor Ray is going to walk us through the beginning experience of the first wholeness work exercise.

[36:21] And because of this, just a slight warning. If you're driving or operating heavy machinery or doing something that requires your attention I'd highly recommend pausing this episode till a time where you can kick back and truly listen and get the full of experience, So with that said let's slip back into the stream with part two with my brilliant guest.

[36:42] Music.

[36:56] You and I, we can do it, and I'll do it. If you'd like to do it, you can too, and our listeners. So this is a beginning experience of the first wholeness work exercise to give you a feeling of how this work gives us some more precise way to work with what is actually happening inside the black box, so to speak. You know, so that, and how can we change from a deep level from within in so that things are easily different that's what we're that's where we're going so easiest way to start um everybody can you can just get in a comfortable position perhaps take a deep breath and this by the way this is something to do while you're in a safe place not driving or operating heavy machinery you know in case there's any doubt because they're gonna be yeah they're gonna be to inward. So if you're driving right now, while you're listening, just, you know, you can follow along, but wait to actually turn inward until you have a time and space to do that. Okay, so taking a deep breath, and then sensing through the body, notice any body sensation. It can it can be positive, negative, neutral doesn't matter. So I feel this feeling in my stomach in the front of of my stomach right now, it's.

[38:22] There's not much to it, really. It's a very subtle sensation. It's not very strong, but just maybe a little feeling of flutteriness or warmth or something like that, like a vibratiness, warmth, that kind of thing. So what do you notice right now, Jason? In between sort of the midpoints of my clavicle, I can feel sort of a sensation. It's hard to describe, but somewhere in the clavicle here, I feel something here. Perfect, perfect. Perfect. And all of you listening, you find whatever you find. It can be anything. It can be a feeling of tension in the neck. It can be this strange sensation inside the head. It can be something in the abdomen, in the chest, in the legs, arms, even something simple like I feel the sensation of where my thighs touch the chair. It can be just something neutral like that sensation. And if you've noticed more than one sensation, just pick one for this exercise. Anyone doesn't matter. Okay. Okay. So I'm starting with this sensation in the front of my abdomen, and you've got the clavicle. And now we can think and it would be true, we can say to ourselves, and it would be true. I am aware of this sensation.

[39:41] I am aware of this sensation. and just notice as you experience the sensation and you think this thought, I am aware of this sensation. Now, notice, ask, where is the I located? So I am aware of this sensation and where is the I that notices? Where is the I located? And just notice whatever comes into awareness.

[40:06] And I'm getting something, this is kind of unusual for me, but I'm almost getting something, it's almost like it's in my left eyeball. It's like this circle and usually mine don't have anything to do with my eyes but that's how i just go with however it comes up in a moment and um last time i did this it was like this big bubble an invisible bubble out in front of me um but now it's this time it's like this sort of sphere in my left eyeball but it's not exactly in the place of my eyeball it's a little bit in front and to to the left. And so if it seems to be in a physical location, it's important to register the difference between the actual physical organ and what you're noticing. So it's sort of this round thing.

[40:53] A little bit in front to the left of my left eyeball. And what are you noticing, Jason? Actually, when you're talking about that, I actually felt as like I'm almost looking back onto myself. So there's a point in front of me, sort of, I guess, from the mid-neck out, where my Adam's apple is. It's about, I guess, it goes out about a foot or so. And I'm looking sort of directly at the mid-point of where my clavicle is. So it's sort of, I guess, a little down, sort of in front of my Adam's apple a little, about a hand width out, I guess, or a foot looking into it. So, again, it seems like a directed point, like a beam from the point of awareness. Perfect. That's beautiful. And so it's out in front and it's looking back. And I would just like also the listeners to know, sometimes these eyes, the experience of the eye, sometimes it's as if it's looking in a direction, sometimes it is not. It doesn't have to have a beam. I'm not surprised yours would, actually, Jason. Okay.

[41:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can say more about that later if you want to. but but i i uh these things all they relate to our personal styles and so on but we don't need to make any meaning or interpretation out of them just notice how they are because there is no right or wrong answer to these questions and there isn't even a better or worse answer the the very best answer is always exactly what you find inside that's always the best answer that's always the the doorway that we can count on for a transformation that we could start even calling wellbeing, but if you are awakening, but if you don't like that word, then you can use wellbeing resilience and equanimity.

[42:40] So out here in front. And so notice how the size and shape, is it like a ball? Is it oblong? Is it like a square? Is it fluffy and amorphous? It's almost like it's almost like a tangled mist it's kind of it kind of.

[42:59] It's like a clear, sort of a clear mist, but it's, it's, I guess it's within, again, the size of a, maybe a fist, like the size of a fist, but it kind of, it kind of changes. It's not a fixed, it's, it has a fixed dimensions per se. It doesn't expand beyond those dimensions, but it's, it's almost like, I guess it's almost looking like waves when you see waves, but it's, uh, it takes on the, that's, that's the, that's the sort of the sensation. If I had to give it some sort of physical mass or sort of description, that's what I'd say. It's almost like a ball of water that there's waves that kind of crest and dip. Yeah, yeah. So that's perfect. And that is plenty description for our purposes. Yeah, that's beautiful. And each of you listening, watching, you'll find whatever you find. The eye that you find when you start, if you're not sure, go back to the sensation, the body sensation.

[43:57] Again, say, think the thought, I am aware of this sensation. And then ask, and where's the eye that notices? Where's the eye located? And it might be in front of the body, behind the body, above, you know, to one side. It could be inside the body. It could be anywhere, really, literally anywhere. There's no possible wrong answer. so when you've noticed it notice the size and shape for yours like jason and i did for ours and then you're gonna i'm gonna invite you to do what jason already did which is sensing in and through what is the sensation quality you notice so for me noticing the sensation quality and this time it is.

[44:44] It's kind of, there's a darkness, a stillness, and yeah, a darkness and a stillness for me this time. And again, that is unusual for me, but I'm just going with how it comes up for me right now in this moment. Stillness is not unusual, but the darkness part is, but that's how it is right now. Yeah. Okay. So then we go, and by sensation quality, I mean, it can be fizzy. I think Jason gave you a great example of sensation quality. It might be moving, and there might be a sense of stillness. There might be a fuzziness, a roughness, a smoothness. It could be hard, soft. So it's almost as if you could touch in and through the space. What is the sensation quality there sometimes there's a feeling of denseness sometimes an airiness or a vibratiness even a moistness sometimes it could it really could be anything so i'm just inviting everyone as you're doing this what's the sensation quality there for you in this moment and again there's no right or wrong answer there's not even a better or worse answer.

[46:01] It's just the best answer is noticing what's actually there what presents itself to you and it can help to realize too that when we find these eyes sometimes it's just a sense of invisible space there might not be anything there you might just get a location so i if you're if you aren't finding most people find something with just the clues that i'm giving but if If it's difficult for anybody following along, there are more tips for how to find the eye in the book. And we do more in the trainings, too. I can always help someone find it. I don't recall a time when I couldn't do that. It's just changing the questions a little bit to help a person. So, okay.

[46:48] So we found the I, we found the sensation quality. So now we go back to that sentence, I am aware of this sensation. We know already what the starting sensation is in experience. We know where it's located. We know the sensation quality. We found the I in experience. We know where it's located. We know it's sensation quality.

[47:11] Now let's just explore that middle word, awareness. I am aware of this sensation. so what is awareness in experience that's what we'll explore next and what i discovered in guiding as i started guiding through this at first i thought everybody has the same experience of awareness i very quickly realized that is not the case so awareness is experienced very differently by different people and so i like to guide people in a kind a way to experience awareness that works for this purpose, for this exercise. It's easy. It's very simple. And it's basically to take a moment to experience the awareness that already exists through the body and the space all around. And if we think about it, we pause to think about it. It's easy to recognize that awareness is already present throughout the physical body. Because if we weren't aware that we wouldn't have noticed a body sensation it's because of awareness is there that we were able to notice body sensations and right now if something were to bump me on my knee bump me on my shoulder.

[48:21] There'd be an automatic receiving of the experience the sensation an automatic recognition, i wouldn't have to let it go oh maybe something's bumping me i better go send my awareness out whoosh you know we don't have to do that because awareness is already present through the body and you can just pause and experience that now, how awareness is already present through the entire body.

[48:47] Yeah, and it can be even kind of pleasant to experience that. And then we can also have a sense that awareness is throughout the space, all around in every direction. And it's easy to check that, because if somebody were to call your name from the left, there'd be this automatic, easy receiving of the sound. If somebody calls your name from the right, there'd be this automatic receiving of the sound. Same in the front, back, above, below, from any direction. There's this automatic receiving of the sound so awareness is this capacity to experience that is already present through the body and through the space all around.

[49:33] Simultaneously and there's really no edge or border to it in our subjective experience it's in reality we know that if somebody called me from the other side of the world i probably wouldn't hear them. But in my subjective experience, I can't find any edge where I would go, okay, if the sounds on this side of the line, I won't hear it. But if it's on this side, I will. So in subjective experience, there's no edge or border. So and that's what's what we can just register right now. No edge or border in subjective experience.

[50:09] Okay, so now we're going to go back to the eye that we found and we're going to do a bit of an experiment so we find if going back to the location of the eye notice the sensation quality there of the energy there and then just ask inside, notice what happens when the sensation of the eye the energy here the sensation of the eye is invited to open and relax in and as the full field of awareness that is throughout the body and all around and just letting that happen however it happens there's no need to understand it mentally just make the invitation let the invitation go in and then allow whatever happens to happen so again noticing the sensation of the eye yeah notice what happens when the sensation here is invited to open relax dissolve melt in and as the fullness of awareness that's all around and throughout and then there can be just kind of a letting go to whatever happens, and there's no right or wrong thing to happen there's just allowing whatever happens happens naturally to happen, whatever happens without effort, just letting that happen.

[51:34] So, and for me, what happened was that it's as if that little dark sphere, it's interesting, this also happened a little differently than usual for me. It's like it started melting out in a direction, almost like it was going in a beam direction, down, but out, down and out. And as it melted, everything turned kind of light colored. There was kind of a warmth and a bright, it was invisible, like an invisible brightness started flowing through in this direction. Yeah, I guess for myself, you know, when I was talking about it, it was sort of this ball of this water with sort of waves on the surface. Surface when you were talking about that it was almost like you know when you you have a water balloon and a burst and it just kind of spills all over a table all over a surface that's what it was kind of when i was kind of finding that sort of confluence of the idea of awareness like around the sort of omni-directional kind of thing and this this image of what it was this this, this point of the consciousness that i was looking back at my clavicle the sensation that's kind of what i got it was like a balloon almost bursting without the surface of the balloon the texture but it was just the the liquid kind of just spilt all over.

[53:03] The metaphorical table, I guess. Nice, nice. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. And to me, what's interesting is that every time I do this, and every time I guide someone else, or someone else does it along with me, you know, the experience tends to be, it's unique. It's unique to each person. And it's unique. Sometimes it's similar to how it went before. But there are so many ways that this can be experienced. It's kind of fascinating just how it actually unfolds. Yeah. And then the thing I'd like everyone to know, too, is like, when this happened for me, I felt this subtle shift of relaxation, the spreading through my body.

[53:47] And that tends to happen for almost everyone. That's a universal. I don't know, how was it for you? Was there anything relaxing in there? It's not quite universal so it's fine you know it won't have happened for everyone but it happens for most people that there's a relaxation i i i guess that might be the word i'd use i find it quite um challenging to articulate what it was it was like the the popping of the the balloon full of water and then there was a kind of a i guess a bit of a release maybe i would say, sort of you know like when you have stiff shoulders but you just like let them drop and you feel that there was an ease or um a release maybe those are the words i i try to i like doesn't hit it right on it but that's what i kind of articulated as those two kind of verbs that makes sense jason that that word release i think like likely fits for a lot of people of course everyone's experience is unique and fine just how it is um but okay so now what we do is we go back to the starting sensation and notice what's there. And.

[55:00] So, and in this case, we, in this case, it's, it might be the same, it might be a little bit different. We started with starting sensations that were rather neutral. You know, when you gave your example of the work, it was starting with an emotion that had a certain intensity to it. But when we start with an emotional quality that has intensity, once the eye releases, often the emotion is half melted, all melted. It tends to have shifted considerably, which is quite interesting.

[55:36] So when you say the emotion has shifted, is it because the emotion, because I've always talked about emotions as sort of chemical messengers from the physiology to the psychology. Psychology that's the the emotions are there to tell us something so there's not good or bad emotions but it's it's a it's a message and so why when you said the emotion shifted is it because the emotion has been addressed and there is a sense of relaxation that the message has been received heard and understood that the emotion makes the shift is that part of what you're speaking to is that what i understand here's how i understand it with wholeness work that's a great Great question, I think.

[56:17] And an interesting one, because I can't give you 100% answer, but I can tell you at least part of the answer. What I know is that when we have emotions, yes, on one level, they are signaled, they're positive and that they have value to us. And, you know, they tell us sometimes, sometimes maybe we're afraid. So maybe there's a reason to be afraid. Maybe we want to get safe. We're sad. Maybe that tells us we're lonely. Maybe that That tells us it's time to connect with some other people to reconnect, you know. So emotions have value in that sense. And at the same time, the emotional experiences that most of us have, I think really all of us have, they come from, they are created from these limited experience of self. So it is a small cell, these small eyes that create the emotional responses. And as such, they have misunderstandings and limited beliefs built into them.

[57:19] So when we start with a feeling of sadness, for example, now there we can work it more completely with one of the later wholeness methods. But if we were, you know, the sadness is built on the misunderstanding that we aren't already whole and complete.

[57:37] And so when we actually come to, when we release the misunderstandings and the limited self that has the misunderstandings, we tend to feel this fullness of life, of aliveness, where we don't feel alone and incomplete anymore. And it actually puts us in a better position to make connections with other people, positive connections. We tend to be more ready and able to make connections with other people. So we are able to sort of meet the positive purpose of the original emotion, but it's from a different place. It's from a deeper place of well-being rather than of limitation. temptation. Or if we take an emotion like anger, you know, oftentimes the anger is based on lots of misunderstandings and, again, limiting beliefs. Anger is generally based on lots of shoulds and shouldn'ts, how the world should be, how I should be, how other people should be. I might be angry at myself. I might be angry at other people. And once we do this kind of work, it's like the The shoulds and shouldn'ts, those tend to melt away.

[58:46] So we're, and we, again, it's the anger tends to come out of the need, a felt need to protect ourselves. And that tends to be because there's an inner child place, we could say, that feels good and needy. And once we process it with wholeness work, there's a really deep level healing for the wounded, needy places inside. side. So we, again, we feel this well-being from within. So we don't as much need the anger to protect anything because we are already whole.

[59:21] But then at the same time, we might have an easier time setting boundaries, limits, knowing what we are willing to do, not willing to do. Those become easier to do because we are less engaged in people pleasing or, you know, ideas about what we should and shouldn't. You know, it's more about, okay, I feel this well-being. I don't feel the neediness anymore. That feels healed. You know, so now I can just be present. But the fact is, this person has a lot of rough edges, you know. So now, you know, so now I have choices. I can, out of kindness and love rather than anger or retribution or revenge or anything like that, you know, out of kindness and love and even compassion, I might decide, you know, I'm not up for a relationship with this person because it's just, there's so many rough edges and I'm not happy doing this. So I just do it. Or if somebody already in my life, and I want a relationship with them, but I'm not so plugged in now, now I can go, you know, I can see you're really upset now.

[1:00:31] Let's take a little time out for both of us and wait until we're both feeling more resourceful, and then we can talk together. You know, so that's a kind of boundary where I'm going, you know, it's not okay if you yell at me, that doesn't work for me. But I do want to hear everything you have to say.

[1:00:47] You know, I'm ready to hear, I want to hear your ideas, I want to know what's important to you and valuable to you. So so when we do this kind of work we're better able to set our boundaries to have clarity about what we want what we don't want but we're expressing it so this made a huge difference for me in my relationship with my husband just a huge difference because i found there were things that had always bugged me about him you know after after the honeymoon phase after the falling in love you know he's the great you know i love him you know we get fall a bit out of love and we start not going yeah but he's got a lot of quirks that really irritate me you know and uh you know and other things where i just think he's limited he should change you know so i found that uh that i as i was changing myself i really had much more ability lots of the quirks just didn't matter to me i would just kind of be immune you know i just i'd tease him you know and he'd start teasing me back you know and so it was a more playful relationship about the quirks that had bugged me before and I would get irritated. Now it's just like funny, you know, it's just our humanness that we can joke about together. And then there were the other things that still mattered to me, not just quirks, but you know, this really matters to me. And there I could set my limits out of kindness rather than judgmentalness, which I realized in retrospect, I'd been judgmental before. I didn't even realize that.

[1:02:15] I just thought, he's a jerk, so he should change, you know?

[1:02:20] But then I started, after doing wholeness work, I got how, oh, that's actually judgment in myself.

[1:02:27] Even if we could categorize it objectively as rude, you know, it's judgmental of me to have that response.

[1:02:34] And it's more, there's more clarity and more flow between us if I can just more express, you know, well, actually, it doesn't feel good to me to hear that. Um but i'm willing to but i do want to hear what's important to you i do want to hear what you have to say um so um for me when i went through this you know when i you talking about the whole and wholeness you know when i was annoyed at this person not taking responsibility because for me that's a very strong value taking ownership and responsibility for our contribution or whatever it is to influence an outcome positive negative and so that annoyance when i when i was doing the work as we were walking through it i was going through it a second time so it came more readily to me this time because i it's a path i kind of already walked in my in my conscious mind per se and so there was this fragmentation this fragmentation where i was getting wrapped up in the annoyance the thoughts around the annoyance right and going through this work allowing to to create some sort of feeling sensation or sensation quality, you called it, sorry, the sensation quality. It allowed me to process at a visual level, like using visualization, not just one sense, but multiple senses to describe this awareness of looking at this annoyance per se.

[1:04:00] And I guess what happened is my mind kind of settled. It saw the sort of the the limited way i was looking at this particular situation at this particular person and my relationship to the situation in the person and so by doing this it settled my mind and settled my thoughts and so i wasn't so locked up in this limited narrative i could i could almost pick up the pieces of this fragment and kind of meld them together back into a, I guess a bigger picture. It wasn't just one jigsaw puzzle piece I was looking at. I was able to put the pieces together and to see the entire picture. And I could see myself getting wrapped up in noise with such little minute things that it allowed me to kind of step back and to have a greater perspective. With that, I guess, using your vernacular, there's a wholeness. There's a big picture quality about it. And that kind of settled me, right?

[1:05:01] Still a little annoyed. I'm not going to ignore it. I'm still a little annoyed, but I didn't get so wrapped up in the narrative. I didn't get derailed or feel that sense of sort of cognitive imbalance and going through the process that you just walked through. It was another way that complements my skills on a cognitive and clinical level that really complimented me to bring sort of a visual element, to bring perspective and location and the act of engagement and experience, I guess. Yeah, yeah. And I think what has happened for me, Jason, I like how you've described that. I think that's just lovely, this progression for you of widening the perspective, shifting that. And for what I want to just add or highlight about this is, wholeness work, for someone who chooses to use it, to learn it and use it, it's a journey. So, it's more than just a single issue changes. Our consciousness changes, and that's the journey. And it increases our emotional intelligence. It increases our well-being and resilience.

[1:06:19] That happens progressively over time. So for you, this initial step has to do with broadened perspective and not being attached to the narrative. And I think...

[1:06:33] That's a lot of people experience that kind of thing and then what i want to say how other people's first experiences might be a little different but it's all positive it's always it's always somehow bringing about a bigger experience of our own capacities and for a person who starts with experiencing more visual perspective there will inevitably be a shift where where it is felt more viscerally to through the body, no i i find it fascinating the idea because the the whole sort of element of the the location the experience the description talking about the sensation quality that adds a lot i mean because when we can visualize something because the brain is oriented towards visualization and

[1:07:26] if we're going to learn to do anything a lot of us can pick it up.

[1:07:29] Through just seeing someone do it as you said if the master master cake maker and you can follow him or her more than likely you're not going to create the same quality of cake that'll take several times but you'll get closer there that if you didn't if you just had a piece of paper with the ingredients sometimes it's the visual processing of things that makes it easier for us to pick up things um yes yes or if you had only the the results and i think like with the the teacher spiritual teachers talking about awakening they would be describing the result so that's like giving you the cake but you don't know how to bake it you know so so for that you need to know the ingredients where are they and how to put them together and then um i'm just gonna say a little bit more too about the the visual part with with um my background was probably my strength was visual um capability i think and often maybe that's partly why i did really well in school um i think school at western education caters to definitely visual developing visual capacities and utilizing visual capacities So, that was easy for me. And then, but for me, I was more, I started off, we could say, more disconnected from my body. My body type is really slender.

[1:08:55] And, you know, some people go, oh, that's cool. You don't even have to diet. But I had somehow within me this awareness that it also was a bit of malnourishment at the emotional level for me. So...

[1:09:12] For me, with wholeness work, it helped me discover ways I was disconnected from myself at the unconscious level. And what we did today was just a beginning exercise. And in the book and trainings, there are many more. It gets easier and easier. But it helped me to find these ways I was disconnected from myself and integrate them and come back to more presence. And then gradually what I felt happening was this very visceral, it's more a visceral sense of presence too. So that it's not just about having the big picture, which is important. It's also about gradually developing this fullness of being where I could feel, for someone like me anyway, and some of the listeners will relate more and less. What it does is help each of us find our own unique patterns of separation and limitation within, and they dissolve and melt, and we end up feeling more fully present. I call it present as awareness, fully present as awareness, which is more a presence in fullness, not malnourishment. I didn't even realize before that I was kind of out of touch with my body. I didn't know it until I started becoming more in touch.

[1:10:35] So, as I've started, at first, I started, you know, I talked about this charge along my central column that sort of initiated all this. As I did the whole of this work, I started experiencing that could settle that in a way that nothing else could. And it made it easier for me to sleep. It sort of like helped reset my nervous system. And then also as i the more i use things that irritated hurt me bothered me in some way or another stress the more i use the stresses in my life as an opening for wholeness work the more i started feeling this filling in of something invisible but press along my central column is it was this well i didn't even know it wasn't there before but it's like getting more filled in now and um.

[1:11:27] It was a shift in presence that felt good. And it continues to strengthen. It continues to feel good. So that I, and I, the experience of it is just more fully present. So I think all of our capacities are more online, more fully present viscerally, this feeling of well-being, even love, we could call it, or compassion, you know. And also the capacities, visually, sound-wise, and maybe something that we can't even divide up in the sensory systems quite. We talk about, in terms of the brain, the cortex that has to do with the visual.

[1:12:06] But then if we talk about, well, what's the brainstem? And what are all of the endocrine system and the different glands And the relationship of the different, you know, the DNA, there's so much chemistry and physical level that happens that we are just beginning to understand. But what if this all comes more online, it's not separated anymore. It's not like we, there's not just a small place in space. Space that's i didn't talk about this yet here and in our talk together but you know when we find these eyes inside and they're always smaller than this full field of awareness and that's because at the end that means it is like you were saying the fist you're describing that really nicely it's like a contraction of consciousness it's not our full being but it's like we're living as if that's our full being so we're living from a place of limitation rather than fullness.

[1:13:08] So as these relax, yeah, we just more fullness. Yeah, go ahead. One of the things about the practice I really liked was, you know, first of all, there's the ability to sit with yourself and have self-awareness. I think self-awareness is the beginning of any sort of, you know, sojourn towards, you know, improving ourselves in whatever way, professionally, privately, what have you.

[1:13:28] But what I also discovered about this is that it also helps with self-compassion. Because i think a lot of us it's a fist we create for ourselves that tension but i also i sometimes see ourselves hitting ourselves with a fist you know it just is we're compassionate to everyone else but are not ourselves and so for me one of the things that i try to encourage all the time when i'm helping people find their own direction is self-compassion because without self-compassion we can't learn develop evolve grow learn what have you now i think the wholeness actually.

[1:14:07] Encourages this and there's the third element that i always find very important is the ability to have self-efficacy the ability to not always focus on all the things that we can't control all the things that are influencing us that we can't have any effect on and by doing the self by imagining, by assigning location, by assigning sensation quality, by descriptions, by actively engaging with our experiences you've talked about. I think this really encourages self-efficacy. And those three things for me, awareness, self-compassion, self-efficacy, for me, they've always been three tools that are very pragmatic, very hands-on. But they bring a sense of, they connect people again with themselves in a sense, right? It gives them a sense, a level of confidence, a level that they can influence the world to some extent where their internal resources may be just much more than the demands of the situation where you have a little leveling, a level playing field. And that's what I kind of really liked about the practice of what we've talked about it. I may see it a little more nuts and bolts and that's my problem.

[1:15:24] But I see the greater picture in which you talk about. So I just wanted to give you that sort of feedback because that's what it kind of I've experienced or say for myself going through it a couple of times. Again, I'm only a white belt at this. I'm nowhere near sort of the seventh Dan Black Belt you are. But anyways, I think it's something that a lot of people could compliment in their own sort of self-development.

[1:15:49] I'm curious, if someone is sort of new to this wholeness work, they're inquisitive and curious, what would be some initial steps that you'd recommend, Conor, so they can start this sort of this sojourn, this going down this path if they're curious about it? Great question. It depends on how you like to learn. I really am in the book. The new book that I just came out with is now a great resource that makes this accessible. I'm getting good feedback on it. Lots of people are already emailing me saying, I'm following this and it's working great for me. So I'm attempting to put it into the book so that people can actually experience it to that level of ease and detail. So the book is called The Wholeness Work Essential Guide, Level 1. The wholeness work essential guide level one and then there's a colon the subtitle is healing and awakening but if you just type it into amazon it's on all the amazon platforms it's in print format plus ebook format i'll leave the link in the show notes for people so they can go directly into it after listening to the episode fantastic fantastic so that i think is the best introduction right now and the most accessible you can just get your hands on it right away and start in. Then if you like to learn by video, I have another free video at introduction at.

[1:17:17] Dreyasnlp.com it's under the resources tab under wholeness work introduction so that's a good video introduction and i will be teaching live in amsterdam soon in case an in-person training in amsterdam at the end at the end of june it's coming up so i only do one in-person training each year and this year it's going to be in amsterdam the the in-person approach it's great if you can do it, you know, because you get right on the spot help. And then I each year have online trainings to their live online. So they're very close to the value of in person. And so you know, in some ways, some people like some things about it better, because you get to the live, the online trainings, they're live online, we have staff there, you have breakout rooms for people to practice, I do demonstrations, you know, all that stuff is happening. But people learn one chunk, Then you can go home and practice it a little bit. Well, you're already home when you work.

[1:18:19] Exactly, yeah. So you can practice in between sessions and then come back with questions. So there's that useful aspect. And then the in-person training, there you get some extra things that are just really nice to be able to learn in person too. So those are the ways we have now for people to learn. We also have some people doing it as coaches, offering one-on-one sessions. So if you go to the trainings and you run to the, and you find, you know, this is great, but I'm having a certain obstacle here. There are coaches who can offer backup support for you, but the, the, to get the best benefit.

[1:19:03] Um, this is, of course, nobody would know at the front if they would want to

[1:19:07] do this. The first step is to just try it out. Find out, does it speak to you? Does it resonate? And, you know, am I experiencing shifts in myself when I do this that I like? Do I start liking myself more like you were talking about this self-compassion? And then, and do I want more of that? And then what I, I want people to know that those who get the most benefit, it's something think that can i think the wholeness can work can really take take it's a friend for life you know so far anyway for me it's a friend for life um so far and by that i kind of mean it it helps me flow through life it helps me meet whatever is happening in my life it continues to meet um whatever happened there there are four levels of training now so far so what we talked about is the beginning and then it goes farther in helping each of us sort of kindly gently finding that what i what i call the structures of the unconscious that hold suffering in place so once we find these structures of the unconscious we learn how to kindly heal them.

[1:20:20] This work is at a really deep level of experience so the the shifts sometimes they're subtle but but they can be quite profound. And I've had more than one person tell me, you know, I'm a different person now. I'm really a different person now than I was before I started this work.

[1:20:40] That's amazing feedback to get, you know, when you've developed something and you have, you know, scores, if not hundreds, if not thousands of people saying that it's made profound shifts in their lives. I mean, who could ask for that? I mean, that's great feedback. back.

[1:20:56] Connery, I just want to thank you very much for you sharing your time, your knowledge, you know, and you're very passionate about this and actually walking us through an experience. I will be sure to leave all the links to your free videos to the book and such for people who wish to, you know, knock on your door and discover more about this, because I would highly recommend because it will complement any school of thought, I think. Because it's something that, it's like Lego blocks. It's adaptable for many different practices, very different disciplines in this area. Yeah.

[1:21:35] I totally agree, Jason. And I'm glad you brought that up. I think this is, you're right, I feel this passion about it, because it's made such a difference for me. And I see it helping other people. And I, I think it can help our world, you know, it can help bring in a different quality of leadership, you know, a kind of leadership that is more harmonious, less hierarchical, perhaps where they can draw a kind of leadership where the leader can draw on the strengths of everyone rather than.

[1:22:05] Just run things you know and uh and more but anyway what you that point you made about it's the kind of thing that can complement and align to whatever you already find value, whatever whether it's a spirit including spiritual practices personal growth practices mindfulness whatever you find a value it can complement and hopefully enrich enrich rich yeah and thank you so much i really appreciate your uh this conversation jason it's uh and i um i respect and appreciate how you have taken this time to actually try these things out and explore it you know i i love it yeah i mean as you said you know you have to experience it right you someone can uh create a new brilliant dish and describe it but unless you taste it you You will not know what everyone's talking about. It's like also experiencing riding a bike. Everyone can tell you the mechanics of what you have, body balance and such. But until you experience riding a bike, you haven't experienced riding a bike. So that was the same thing with this methodology, the wholeness work for me. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, thank you, Conor Ray, very much for your time. I hope you have a brilliant time in Boulder.

[1:23:24] Music.

[1:23:36] So Conneray's wholeness work is a therapeutic and self-improvement methodology that's designed to help individuals achieve psychological and emotional well-being. Now, Conneray developed the wholeness work based on her own experiences with unexplained medical systems that led her to explore various spiritual and psychological techniques. Now, some of the key elements of wholeness work has to do with, well, number one, dissolving the ego. One of the core aspects of this work is the dissolution of the constructed sense of self or ego that many psychological discomforts well they stem from an artificial sense of self that separates us from our experiences. By dismantling these internal barriers well individuals can return to a more

[1:24:22] natural and integrated state of being. Another core tenet is experiencing the present. You know this methodology encourages individuals to fully immerse themselves in the present moment, akin to the unconditional awareness seen in infants. This practice helps reduce the dominance of past narratives or future anxieties by fostering a deeper engagement with life as it is. There are a whole host of benefits from using this wholeness work. Increased psychological resilience, enhanced emotional well-being, improved relationships, in the sense that as individuals become more present and less reactive, well, their relationships can improve. Characterized by greater empathy and understanding.

[1:25:05] For me, this was a brilliant episode. And for those of you who are interested more into this wholeness work, and I highly encourage you, feed your intrigue and curiosity, well, I will leave links to the books and to Conor Ray's website. But also, at the end of June, and the time of recording, that's June 2024.

[1:25:26] Conor Ray will actually be in Amsterdam running an in-person seminar slash workshop shop on the wholeness work. So if any of you are curious, I will leave the link in the show notes and I encourage you to show up and sign up. And Conor Ray, in the closing moments of this episode, I just want to thank you again for your generosity and your vivaciousness to share the wholeness work. I really found it interesting. And as I said at the top of the show, it has complemented the way I will do things moving forward. And so thanks again, Conor Ray. Well, folks, we are at the tail end of another episode, and I really appreciate you showing up and allowing me to be part of your week. And until the next time we continue this conversation, keep well.

[1:26:11] Music.