Slay Your Dragons - Malcolm Stern
Healing Ancestral Wounds: The Power of Embodied Practice and Deep Intimacy
How do we heal the wounds of our ancestors while nurturing the connections in our closest relationships? This episode of "Slay Your Dragons with Compassion" promises to answer these profound questions through the insights of Ya'Acov Darling Khan, a contemporary shaman and co-founder of the School of Movement Medicine. Ya'Acov takes us on an evocative journey from his formative experiences to his practice of Movement Medicine, an embodied approach born out of personal and ancestral transformation. Highlighting a striking shamanic encounter where he relived the trauma of a Holocaust survivor, Yaakov brings to light the concept of intergenerational trauma and how it can be transformed into creative contributions to the world.
In a heartfelt reflection, I share the enduring journey with my wife, Susannah, shaped by mutual trust and the practice of "embodied listening." Over 38 years, we have faced trials, temptations, and near separations, but our commitment to honesty and genuine communication has allowed our relationship to flourish. This episode also explores the sacred connection of intimacy, emphasizing that true sexual and emotional bonds can only deepen through unwavering honesty and integrity. Join us as we uncover the ongoing effort needed to cultivate a spiritually nourishing and intimate partnership, enriching our lives beyond the ordinary.
This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents
How do we heal the wounds of our ancestors while nurturing the connections in our closest relationships? This episode of "Slay Your Dragons with Compassion" promises to answer these profound questions through the insights of Ya'Acov Darling Khan, a contemporary shaman and co-founder of the School of Movement Medicine. Ya'Acov takes us on an evocative journey from his formative experiences to his practice of Movement Medicine, an embodied approach born out of personal and ancestral transformation. Highlighting a striking shamanic encounter where he relived the trauma of a Holocaust survivor, Yaakov brings to light the concept of intergenerational trauma and how it can be transformed into creative contributions to the world.
In a heartfelt reflection, I share the enduring journey with my wife, Susannah, shaped by mutual trust and the practice of "embodied listening." Over 38 years, we have faced trials, temptations, and near separations, but our commitment to honesty and genuine communication has allowed our relationship to flourish. This episode also explores the sacred connection of intimacy, emphasizing that true sexual and emotional bonds can only deepen through unwavering honesty and integrity. Join us as we uncover the ongoing effort needed to cultivate a spiritually nourishing and intimate partnership, enriching our lives beyond the ordinary.
This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents
Welcome to Slay your Dragons with Compassion podcast. I'm Malcolm Stern and I'm having a wonderful series of guests to engage in some dialogue about overcoming adversity, becoming who they are and often seeing that our lives have been moulded by the events that have happened in them. Today, I'm very, very happy to welcome an old friend, yaakov Darling Khan. I've watched his evolution as a very profound facilitator and as a profound human being, and so hopefully we're going to have a great dialogue today. Yakov welcome. Hello there.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. A real pleasure to be with you and to be with your audience. Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 1:Great. So our lives don't just happen, do they sort of? We get bored and we do our thing and then things happen. And I used to believe that the things would happen to bad people, but I was all right because I was a good person until my daughter died and then I realized that, you know, these things happen to all of us and your life will have been molded so you've. You've come a long way from your early beginnings, and perhaps you could tell us a bit about what you do first of all, and then what led you into that.
Speaker 2:Well, I work as a contemporary shaman not a word I use lightly, but one that I've been invited to occupy as a role by the indigenous teachers and shamans that I've worked with over the decades, and, together with my wife, susanna, we run a school called the School of Movement Medicine, and movement medicine is an embodied practice that is the result of our 40 years of inquiry, study and, as you say, making medicine from our day-to-day experiences, including what we call the lead of our personal histories, and doing the work of alchemizing that into gold. And that's the work we offer for people not just to feel good in themselves, but also to recognize the creative power that they have to make an offering that has value for them, that gives them purpose, that gives them a sense of dignity and helps them to take everything that's at their back and digest that and release what's not helpful, but really to make art from the past. And, of course, we only teach what we need to learn.
Speaker 1:that's great, yes, but also you'll teach what you've also. You're in the process, presumably, of mastering in yourself and that traveled through in yourself. We don't arrive as a fully formed package and I've noticed that. I believe that my psychotherapy training started when I had my first clients. All of the training was just preparation for the work and hearing something similar absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean I was 23 when I started holding groups and you know I was uh, you know. I look back at that young man I see he had a lot of courage.
Speaker 2:He was very young, no doubt in many ways had a lot to learn, probably thought he knew more than he actually did undoubtedly undoubtedly, as you say, it's the years and years of practice, of repetition, that have molded me into who I am and really taking my personal history, my ancestral history and the weights that I was carrying, and making the most of them, and in fact my whole offering is born of the, I would say, probably the most difficult experience of my life, which was memory, not even something that happened directly to me, but rather something that I experienced fully as if it was happening to me. But it was really memory, maybe because I was here before, maybe because it's in my ancestral memory, but my work was born of the transformation, of the pain of the Holocaust particularly, and really engaging with that in the best way that I could.
Speaker 1:That's been a fascination for me as well, of course. So, coming from the same line, and I can't stop reading books about the Holocaust, I'm constantly upping my knowledge about it. And Thomas Hubel, who has been one of my teachers, talks about intergenerational trauma and we do carry that through, I believe not necessarily because it's past lives, but because it's in our family line talks about intergenerational trauma and we do carry that through. I believe that not not necessarily because it's past lives, but because it's it's in our family line a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I should I tell you what the?
Speaker 1:please do yes. I was about to ask you that, yes absolutely so.
Speaker 2:Um, I was working with a woman called arwen dreamwalker and we were doing some work which was really traditional shamanic work lots of smoke, a candle and a mirror. And the idea was to look into the mirror and we had two companions, one of whom was my wife, susanna. Another idea man who was also a psychotherapist, called Nick, and they were sitting behind me at my shoulders and the idea is, you look into the mirror through the smoke and just concentrate on allowing what has not yet been seen to become visible. And as I was looking into that mirror, I had an experience which I think, in modern psychotherapeutic terms, we would say was a re-traumatization. What happened was that, first of all, I saw this slab of stone in the mirror, then my body froze, I became really freezing cold and then I disappeared from any sense of myself and I was inside the experience of a five-year-old boy who was going down this concrete path into a gas chamber. And I stopped and I saw the guard there. I looked at his eyes. I went in with hundreds of people, some of whom I knew, some of whom I didn't, and I died in that chamber. And it was. What was happening in the room was that my body was thrashing all over the place. I was trying to put out the candle, I was screaming, I was completely out of control. I wasn't at all present in present time. I was lost inside that experience and it took me maybe three or four days to come back from that memory, sufficiently to be able to witness it as something that had happened rather than something that was happening in the present.
Speaker 2:And working with Arwen at that time, we were working with some Native American traditions. That was her tradition, traditions that was her tradition. She was half Cherokee and half Irish and she asked me to make a pledge across her pipe. Now, the pipe is a symbol of prayer. It's not something that you're going to make a promise over that you're not intending to keep. And my pledge that I made was to do whatever I needed to do to prepare myself to go back to Auschwitz and to dance at that gas chamber for that five-year-old boy, but also for all the children that had died there. And it took me 13 years to prepare myself, to feel ready enough, to feel resourced enough to be able to go. And I went there with a group of, as it happens, german psychotherapists, and we went there during the day to Auschwitz, and I think you've been there, haven't you Malcolm?
Speaker 1:I haven't, but I've been to Yad Vashem. I haven't been to Yad Vashem. Well, they actually have a room that recreates some of our films.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's a museum and it's a horrific place. It's not true that the birds don't sing there, they do. Oh good, and I was really happy to see that, and I was really happy to see that. But of course, during the day it felt really really out of place to dance in that place and I really couldn't. So I decided the only thing I could do was to go back there at night and I went to the gates of Birkenau, which are locked at night, and the Polish guard came out. Now, I don't speak Polish, but I basically let him know that I wanted to go in and to pray and he unlocked the gates. I went there with two women. We went to the rail tracks, I danced where the tracks end.
Speaker 2:I was furious I mean full of fury and fiery, and praying in Hebrew and shouting and stomping, and then eventually made my way to that gas chamber and there I drummed and I danced and I prayed for those children, including the one that I had experienced dying, the one that I had experienced dying, and then, as I was leaving, this took. It was a very different place at night. During the day it's a museum, it's quiet, it's kind of peaceful, it's more like a graveyard. But at night all those memories are much more alive and that which hasn't been acknowledged or released is still very much awake. And it was terrifying, but really a very strong experience. And as I was leaving, the guard came towards me and in that altered state I was in, I saw him as the boatman over the river Styx. So I put my hand in my pocket and I pulled out all the Polish is Lottie I had I have no idea how much it was and I walked up to him and I said in English boatman, this is payment for the souls of these children, will you accept it? And of course he took the money and he opened the gates, unlocked the gates of Burkina, and I came out. And just at that point it was a very cloudy night, literally. The clouds parted and there was one shaft of moonlight and I said to all those children I'd been praying for, that's your way home. And I stood like tears streaming. I can feel my body responding to this now, watching these children dissolve into that light and be released. I thought that was it. That was the end of my work with Auschwitz and with that story.
Speaker 2:But that night I had a very powerful dream, a lucid dream that went on for hours, where I was in a festival called the Phoenix Festival and there were these posters, these symbols everywhere, and I was like I kept going up to people and saying what is this Phoenix Festival? And everyone I asked said well, look, it's your dream. And I could see that there were workshops happening and there was healing happening. There were people from Rwanda, there were people from Vietnam and Cambodia and Darfur and all these places where genocide has happened, and there was a healing space. And then I met somebody who said this is your festival, this is your work, it's called the Phoenix Festival and this symbol that you're seeing is the symbol of your work. You can just see it there above me, actually there it is, and you can see the phoenix at the center there.
Speaker 2:I didn't know what it meant, but I drew it in the morning of every human's capacity, given enough love, resource and support, to be able to rise from the ashes of their suffering and create a new story. And that was the beginning of our work. At the same time, Susanna had a dream where she heard very clearly your work is to be called Movement Medicine, and it took us about four years then to put that symbol and that title together into our work, and that mandala has 21 gateways and it now contains all the teachings of Movement Medicine. It took a long time to bring that through, but that is our work to offer that to people who have experienced trauma, both as individuals also as communities.
Speaker 2:I've done a lot of work in Israel and Palestine. Of course, that's a tragic situation right now. A tragic situation right now to offer that space where people can acknowledge the suffering that has been, but not remain identified by it to the extent that they feel they need to pass on that suffering to somebody else. And that's the purpose of my life and my work.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean I'm listening with rapt attention because a lot of people will talk about past lives or sort of racial memories or something like that, and it doesn't feel grounded. But in your case, I know that you have dedicated your life to penetrating the veil, to actually seeing behind what's going on, or what we see going on on the earthly plane. But you can see more than that and you've worked hard at it. I know you've done things like look, was it locking yourself in a box for for a month?
Speaker 2:I've done all kinds of um, weird and wonderful things and uh, that in order, but basically, yes, I've been very disciplined and dedicated to um bringing through you. I was hit by lightning in my 20s and which is actually a traditional in some cultures shamanic initiation. I didn't know that at the time, but it gave me a way of accessing relationship with indigenous shamans, all of whom have more or less immediately said welcome, we know who you are, we know what you are, we're going to share with you what we can, and your job is not to become like an Amazonian shaman or a Sami shaman. Your job is to translate your experience into medicine that's relevant for the people and the place where you live.
Speaker 2:And you know our core wounding in the industrial world is disembodiment, disconnection, which creates, you know, a separation from heart, a separation from earth, a separation from nature, a separation from self, from each other, from what we call the unbroken intelligence that we're made from, and so our work is really to help people embody themselves, embody their hearts, embody their consciousness, and that is an ongoing journey. It never stops, I feel. I just turned 60 and I feel like new beginning. Here we are again, a new decade. Life looks different at 60 than it did at 50. Priorities shift and, yeah, I feel very committed to, whilst this heart still beats, to being able to make as much offering as I can in the world, because we have a lot of suffering to deal with, don't we?
Speaker 1:Well, we do, and I know in your case it's real. It's like I know that this isn't just some fantasy of what you're doing. I think the other thing that impresses me was at your 60th party, of course, and that was beautiful event. Yay, it's lovely, fantastic amount of dancing and great people there. But but what I'm really touched by is your relationship with your wife, susanna, and and these things are hard earned we don't just go oh, I've fallen in love. Now we live happily ever after, and that's been a journey in itself. And you are. You have a true partner, from what I can see. Can you say a little bit about that, as much as you'd like to share about that?
Speaker 2:well I can let's start with this that without my relationship with Susanna I wouldn't manage to offer 10% of what I'm able to offer. Our relationship relationship we've come to understand is the source of our offering, and if we tend to that space between us, then that fountain of what we have developed is an enormous resource. And because I would, I often say it took me 30 years to really gain the trust of my wife, and it wasn't that she didn't trust me. Trust is not like a like oh, I trust you. That's it. Trust is a process Like the more we trust, the more we open, the more we're able to see the ways in which each of us in our relationships and certainly this is true of Susanna and myself we bring everything into the space between us.
Speaker 2:If you live with somebody for long enough, you're going to see everything, not just the things that you fell in love with, but the things that irritate that out of you. And then you have to. There is this opportunity either you go on with that modern way of relating, which is basically, I feel like this, and it's your fault that I feel like this, or we'd start to do the work of going. I feel like this, and that's my responsibility, these are my feelings, this is what my experience is. You don't make me feel this and it's been. You know we've been together 38 years. We have. You know we were kids when we got together, really in our early 20s. We've been through all different formats of relationship. We were young and experimental and adventurous and we tried open relationship and we did all kinds of things which I'm glad we did them and I'm glad they're in the past. Lovely, that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because basically any long-term relationship you're going to have to deal with. If you're alive and well, you're going to meet other people. You're going to feel attracted to other people. This is just part of life. If you're alive, life is, if you're in your body kind of life is, sexy Life. You know that's how it is. It feels good to dance and on the dance floor things arise.
Speaker 2:So then how do you manage that in a way which is honest, in a way which has integrity? And if you don't, then likelihood is you'll end up, like so many relationships, having some secret affair. You know, going off down a path with somebody else, falling in love with somebody half your age because they're adoring something about you that your partner doesn't see. All of these things are normal parts of relationship, and the key and I know Susanna will talk to you about this when you meet her is what she calls embodied listening, which is often in relationship. We think we're hearing each other, we think we think we're understanding each other, but usually we're not. Usually we're hearing what we expect to hear and we're already in conversation preparing our response whilst the other person is yeah yeah, so I, we are super blessed, but, as you say, it's not been um a fairy tale.
Speaker 2:It's been hard work and there were times when we really felt that our relationship, um was coming to an end.
Speaker 2:And you know, um we, we really walked along that edge for a long time and I think the key for us has been love can't exist without honesty.
Speaker 2:So if there's a part of the heart that's hidden without honesty, so if there's a part of the heart that's hidden, unconsciously hidden, as in I'm keeping secrets from you, there's no way that the intimacy between you can develop and therefore the sexual connection between you. Now, my belief is that the longer you're together, the better the sex should be, and that only happens if you develop intimacy. And the relationship that we have now you know I don't I've never read about it anywhere like the level of intimacy and nourishment and spiritual connection we have through our sexuality is, it's the source of everything good in our lives. Because in that meeting between, in this case, a man and a woman, woman where there is honesty, genuine intimacy, the sexuality is sacred, it's divine, it's a space of prayer, it's making love. Like to make love means to make something that wasn't there before we're making love. That wasn't there before and that's an offering that's part of the song of humanity on this planet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've often sort of mused on the fact that sex goes the entire spectrum from being the most violent, vile thing we can do with another to being something that transcends normal reality, where in fact, the two become one effectively. Is what the mystics say, yes, which I've experienced at times. I'm sure you are experiencing with Susanna from what you're saying I think those things are hard earned.
Speaker 1:I think what you've named about build the building of trust and the the essentialness of honesty and integrity within a relationship, and and also being willing to really meet another with all of their warts and all of the sides that you you may not love, take something it really does and it's ongoing.
Speaker 2:You know it's. You know it's not that we live in a happily, happily ever after world. We, you know, if you live with somebody, bound to be times when you irritate each other. We have in our, in our living room, we have these martial arts gloves, these big pads that you can put your arm through, and boxing gloves. So, every now again, because it's we recognize that fire needs to be expressed and if it's not, then that fire will go out. We look each other in the eye, you know, susanna, I put these on and Susanna looks me in the eye and she's like bam, bam, bam. I was like, yeah, come on, come on, come on. And then, okay, after she's had her turn, it's my turn.
Speaker 2:And because we know we can't and won't hurt each other, with that protection we can express that fury in a safe way. And that often leads to the waters of the heart, to the tears, to the sadness that we experience as human beings. There's a lot to be angry about, there's a lot to be afraid about, there's a lot to be sad about, and I think a healthy relationship or a healthy spiritual practice makes space for the heart. And, yeah, that's our ongoing work and you know, I I would say I I shed more tears now than I've ever done in my life. Um, there is I. I feel more than I've ever done in my life. That's not not always a lovely thing, it's not it's not, but interesting I did.
Speaker 1:I did a workshop with rum dust many years ago, um, but which was? There were 40 therapists in the room at brimstone manor in the olden days and, um, he did a meditation on grief and half the people were on the floor sobbing and and crying. And I'm sitting there quite smugly feeling, well, I haven't got a lot of this going on. And then he turned to the rest of us who were sitting there unmoved, saying and your grief is your inability to touch your grief. So actually, when I hear that you're actually dancing with your grief as well as with the other parts of your life, and you've become very successful in what you do and you've earned it and you've really sort of invested in who you are, there's a power in that as well.
Speaker 1:But I think one of the things, jacob, that most um touched me, um, and and also your response to it as well, was was then Susanna's father got too old to to be able to look after himself and you moved him into your house and you did that seemingly without any thought. And I went god, I'm so impressed with that, jacob. And you said I wish I were able to say um, that's, that's the, the offering of my heart. But it's difficult, and that was. I felt really comfortable with that because I thought, oh, you know, you're either a saint.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, susanna will say about her papa that he was a very wonderful man and a very difficult man as I am, as we all are, you know, we all have our difficult sides, and for sure he. He lived in our house for seven months while we actually did up this room that I'm sitting in now, which was his home. There's a little kitchen and a bathroom, and this was his space, so he was able to cook for himself and you were very blessed with that. But when he was living in the house, it was very challenging for him as well. I mean, it was a culture shock for both of us. But we really learned in the two and a half years that he was here to love and respect one another and we were very, very different human beings, different politics, different beliefs, different spirituality. But we really were able to bridge that divide and I'm really pleased I did it, that we did it.
Speaker 2:It was no, it was a choiceless choice. There wasn't, you know, it wasn't like I could have said no and lived feeling okay. The yes was obvious and then the work that came from that was actually of great benefit to him and to me and, of course, to Susanna, and it's one of the things that really built a next layer of trust between Susanna and myself, because she saw the, you know there were difficult conversations I had to have with him. Like you know, he'd lived by himself since his wife had died and he'd lost some of the let's call them social graces of living with other people. And so he, you know he, he often would, the way he spoke to Susanna. One time he spoke to her in such a way and I just went to him and I said, if you, if you ever speak to my wife like that again, you'll be moving into a home.
Speaker 2:And and and, and then he said oh, can you? He was very unusual in as much as he actually said I want to know if there's something difficult. And I explained to him exactly why. And he was, he listened and he thought about it and then he came back with an apology to Susanna and it was. We had lots of those things.
Speaker 2:He also challenged me about things that, of course, I was unconscious about in the way I was with him and, as I said, slowly we built this sense of respect and love born of honest, real conversation. I think that's the thing that seems to be the thread of what we're talking about, which is, you know, in spiritual work, there's such a pressure to be compassionate, to be kind, to be nice, to be all of those good things, that when we're not feeling like that, often we deny it, ignore it, try to bypass it, and that's deadly to any form of genuine connection with spirit. Like, genuine connection with spirit comes from being honest and responsible for what we're feeling and finding ways of owning and making use of and being fascinated by the weathers of the heart, rather than yeah, this is the good stuff, that's the bad stuff, I'm spiritual, I don't have anything to do with that deadly it's true.
Speaker 1:Well, that's, I mean, it's really lovely too. We're coming towards the end of our podcast, but it's really lovely to sort of hear your story and to um to watch. You know, I've known you probably since the 1980s, I think, um, so it's a long time when we were both young well, I was, you were younger than me, but it's it's really lovely to sort of connect with you and to hear you, and I know that you are walking your talk. I'm not saying you're a in a super evolved human being who never gets anything wrong, but you're walking your talk and you're in practice, and you have been for as long as I've known you. So we I always end with one question, which I don't tell people beforehand because I wanted to come spontaneously, which is um, what's the dragon you've had to slay, what's the difficulty you've had to overcome? The main thing to be who you are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really, really a good question. The dragon I've had to slay is what I took on about how masculinity was the problem that we all had to deal with in the world and that masculinity was the cause of the problems in the world and therefore my masculinity was wrong in its essence, in its being, in its essence, in its being. And the thing I've really had to slay is that thought process and learn to trust love and thoroughly enjoy my masculinity and to learn what it is. And this might be somewhat controversial, but I would say that the greatest achievement of my life is that Susanna, lovingly and with great heart, loves to call me her patriarch, and you know I'm. We are working with bringing the archetype of the positive patriarch back into the realm of human possibilities for everyone. Patriarch means original foundation, original structure, like the skeleton, and so I would say that's been the biggest thing to own the power and the heart and the sexuality of my masculinity. And that's been an ongoing process and no doubt it will continue.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. That's really great, and this you know. I know you've worked with 10s of thousands of people as well in movement and you've touched people's lives and I think the more we work on ourselves, the more we are able to offer others obviously as well. So I'd like to thank you so much for sharing with us here on the podcast and um.
Speaker 2:we'll meet up soon, hopefully I hope so, malcolm, and thank you so much for your invitation and for this conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed being with you, as I, as I always do- thank you likewise, cheers.