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Many people say that your life begins at birth, but what if your emotional imprint starts to take shape long before that? What if your emotions, behavioral patterns, and adaptability are formed in the womb?
This is the conversation Cynthia Marks, host of the And Now, Love Podcast, and I explore. We delve into the transformative work of her late husband, Dr. Bernard Bail, who developed the “Love, Dreams, Imprint” paradigm. This groundbreaking approach helps uncover and understand the unconscious emotional imprints formed early in life. We also discuss the importance of emotional healing and how our earliest life experiences, yes, in utero trauma, can shape how we engage with the world.
In this episode, you will learn:
- What is imprinting in psychology and how it develops before birth.
- How the Freud theory of psychoanalysis laid the groundwork for understanding the unconscious mind.
- The ways trauma is stored in the body and passed down through generations.
- How dream analysis can help uncover the wounds that need healing.
- The difference between living authentically vs. patterns of survival.
- Practical ways to connect with your inner self to develop deeper self-awareness.
- The surprising connection between your nervous system and emotional patterns that may have persisted throughout your life.
It's a unique conversation you won't want to miss! So grab your AirPods and join us as we discuss this innovative healing modality.
Much love,
Laurie
Free Guides
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Click here to fill out my questionnaire
Click here for my FREE “Beginner’s Guide to Somatic Healing”
Click here for my FREE Core Values Exercise
Click here to purchase my book: Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go
Cynthia Marks
***************************************************************************************
DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL, MEDICAL OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED THERAPIST IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING SUICIDAL THOUGHTS. YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN LEGAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL WITH RESPECT TO ANY MEDICAL ISSUE OR PROBLEM.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Laurie James (00:02):
Hey there. It's Lori. And before we get started
on today's episode, I have alittle housekeeping, two quick
announcements. I still do haveroom for a one on one. One spot
is taken, so I have one moreleft. So if that's something
that you're interested inexploring. Click the link in the
(00:24):
show notes, and you can schedulea free half hour inquiry. Call
with me. Second I mentioned thislast episode, but I'm working on
a new offering, and would reallylove to chat with any of you
that would like to share some ofyour feedback. It's a way for me
to create a new offering thatmeets your needs instead of what
(00:45):
I think that you might want.
There's two ways of doing this.
You can either schedule aninquiry, call with me, and I
will ask you a series ofquestions, or you can click the
link in the show notes andanswer the questionnaire, it
would mean the world to me tohave your feedback and thank you
(01:06):
in advance and enjoy thisconversation with Cynthia marks,
who is the host and creator ofand now love podcast as we
explore emotional healing andpersonal growth inspired by her
late husband, Dr Bernard bales,work that's rooted in love,
dreams and imprint philosophy.
So enjoy this conversation.
(01:33):
Welcome to Confessions of a freebird podcast. I'm your host.
Lori James, a mother, divorcee,recovering caregiver, the author
of sandwiched A Memoir ofholding on and letting go, a
therapy junkie, relationshipcoach, somatic healer and now
podcaster, I'm a free spirit,and here to lift you up on this
(01:55):
podcast, I'll share soulfulconfessions and empowering
conversations with influentialexperts so you can learn to
spread your wings and make themost of your second half. So pop
in those earbuds, turn up thevolume, and let's get inspired,
because my mission is to helpyou create your most joyful,
(02:15):
Purpose Driven Life, oneconfession at a time.
Hello, free birds, and welcomeback. I have to confess, I am
super excited about my guest andthe conversation that we're
going to delve into today.
Today, I am speaking withCynthia marks. She is the host
and creator of the and now lovepodcast, a platform dedicated to
(02:41):
exploring emotional healing andpersonal growth. She's been
inspired by the groundbreakingwork of her late husband, Dr
Bernard bale and she sharesinsights rooted in his love
dreams, imprint philosophy,which I can't wait to dive into
a unique approach to understandand reshaping unconscious
(03:04):
patterns. So welcome Cynthia.
Thank you so much for being herewith me today.
Cynthia Marks (03:12):
Thank you happy to be here. I've been looking
forward to it for many days.
Laurie James (03:16):
Good, good. So can you start by sharing with our
listeners a little bit moreabout yourself and how you
became the creator of thepodcast, and now love and to
carry on your late husband'swork
Cynthia Marks (03:33):
absolutely so and now love came about because my
husband was really struggling atthe end of his life to continue
to get his message, his work,known to the public. So for most
of his career, after hediscovered his theory, he was
fairly well shunned by hiscommunity, by his peers. He was
(03:57):
a renowned psychoanalyst, andcontinued to be that, even after
he was shunned, and he was quitethe rebel, he would not give up
trying to make his voice knownand to offer up the idea of
exploring his theory tostudents, to other analysts, but
(04:18):
he just struggled. I mean, whata tough guy Try as he might, and
it wasn't just that he wanted tocommunicate his own ideas. He
wanted to just enrich theplatform at large with the idea
that, wait a minute, maybe weneed to be open to ideas outside
(04:38):
of those that we constantlycontend with or appreciate or
respect, and in no way was hesaying, don't respect what you
know or what you've beenpracticing. But maybe there's
more to it. Maybe there'sanother avenue. And in fact, one
elder gentleman had said to himat a conference, you know, I
hear you. I totally get it. Ibelieve.
(04:59):
Leave you, but I'm too old ahorse to change this course, and
a lot of people were afraid tojust change it up here, perhaps,
as an analyst, you've beenspeaking to your patients about
how to improve their lives basedon certain theories, and now
you're going to say, I'm goingto add this to it. What does
(05:19):
that mean? Have I been tellingyou the wrong thing. How do I
incorporate this? So it waseasier to dismiss, which I
actually find kind ofinteresting, because in my
opinion, you know, I have a lotof friends who are therapists as
well, but in the work that I'vedone with my own therapist
through on and off through theyears, they try to get the
(05:43):
patients to be curious and openminded about themselves. Yet
these psychoanalysts weren'topen minded about maybe adding
because it didn't sound like hewas trying to change everybody's
mind. It's just maybe adding anelement to what they're already
(06:03):
trying to do with theirpatients. Tell me if I'm wrong.
I agree with you. When I firstlearned this, I was very
surprised, because I thought mygoodness, in my mind, I'm
stereotypically thinking of thisfield as being those who would
be open to hearing what theirpatients have to say, open to
learning about new ways oftreating patients, and it was
(06:27):
not so. Of course, his work waspretty revolutionary, because
whereas many of the analysts andpsychologists were treating
their patients via a Freudianmethod, which is great. I mean,
the dream work that Bernardworked with basically came from
Freud. And thank goodness thatFreud sort of introduced us to
(06:49):
the dream. But the idea of ourtrauma sort of beginning at the
age of three and starting toneed to deal with things then
and Oedipus and so forth. Hiswork said, Well, wait a minute.
You know, maybe things start waybefore the age of three. Maybe
we're talking about what's goingon in utero. And that was the
(07:11):
red flag for everybody, like, Ohno, that's that No.
Laurie James (07:14):
And how can it not be when you are connected to
your mother via umbilical cord,you are growing and living
inside another human being youknow, being a somatic
experiencing practitioner andcoach, like, how can your birth
(07:36):
mother's nervous system notaffect yours and your growth?
Yeah, and it's easy for us tothink of something as simple as,
say, a mother who, you know,unfortunately, is taking a
nicotine and knowing, knowingthat that's not good for the
baby. And if you think about it,you know, sort of on that basic
level, you can really then say,okay, I get it. Everything that
(07:59):
mother is doing has some effecton that baby? Yeah, absolutely.
So can you tell our listeners alittle bit more about your late
husband, Dr Bale, and how hiswork has impacted what you were
doing and how you're carrying onhis theory and legacy, and then
(08:21):
maybe we can jump into what histheory is a little bit more.
Okay, great. So we are carryingon, because at the end of his
life, the end of Bernard's life,he said to me, darling, oh, love
of my life, just a little bit ofcoaxing there, if there's any
way that you can move thisforward, because try as I may,
(08:44):
at 100 years old, I just don'thave the energy to do this
anymore. We were trying until,really, until he was just about
100 and his voice was too frail,his hearing was impaired, his
mind was totally together, butwe couldn't make a presentation,
you know, via an audio podcastor video podcast that would
(09:05):
suffice to tell the story. Andso I said, Okay, thinking, What
in the world could I possiblydo? I'm not a psychoanalyst. I'm
not trained in this. I'm not adoctor, and I let it be for a
good many months, because I justneeded to deal with the fact
that I'd lost this man that Iloved so much. So after a few
(09:27):
months, the gentleman who hadbeen working with us previous to
Bernard's passing, came andsaid, I've got an idea. I've got
an idea. Why don't you Cynthia,because you know so much about
this act as a lay person and askquestions of the professionals,
and ask questions of people whomight help others, other lay
(09:48):
people, find their way toBernard's work. And I said, they
said, I cannot. I could. I mean,see, I'm even stuttering
thinking about it. I can't dothat. And after another.
Cynthia Marks (10:00):
Months, I said, All right, let's just give it a
try. And it was so fascinatingand so much fun and so
heartwarming for me, and I knewthat that that feeling of the
warmth in my heart and ears, inmy eyes that I would have when I
would speak to these people wasto me, almost like Bernard's
(10:21):
spirit saying you've got thisand I mean, just saying that to
gives me chills, but it's been abeautiful experience for me, if
I just speak selfishly, and Ithink we've got a lot of
fabulous people that we'rehaving conversations with and a
great big audience now, so it'ssuper exciting, and as long as
(10:44):
it's fun and full of love andexciting, we're going to keep it
going beautiful. I love that,and I'm with you. I support you,
and I think from the little thatI have read before, as I was
preparing for our conversation.
A lot of it resonated with me aswell, just based off of the 15
(11:05):
plus years of healing work thatI have done. And I think that in
the therapeutic world, there ismore acceptance to the
importance of those pre verbalyears. So I'm hoping that as you
continue to put the word out andcontinue to spread his theory,
(11:26):
that it continues to catch onlike wildfire. Sounds like it
was a life passion of his. Oh mygosh. He couldn't really operate
from this space, until hediscovered that this
methodology, that this theory,served to heal him first, yeah,
can you say a little bit moreabout that? Sure. So he was,
(11:49):
even as a youth, always lookingfor, what was his reason on
earth? What was he supposed tobe? Feeling passionate about,
what was his path? And he keptcoming back through the course
of his first couple of decadesto I need to do something to
(12:10):
help other people heal. He'dbeen in World War Two. He had
unfortunately seen, you know,the horrors of war, and he said
to himself, you know, there isin no way, shape or form that
I'm ever, ever going to come tohumanity from a place like that.
In fact, I want to help peopleunderstand how we can have an
(12:33):
existence where we don't do thatkind of harm to each other,
either individuals talking toother individuals, being with
other individuals, orcommunities coming at each other
from these big, scary places.
And his work gets us to a placewhere we lead with love. So
(12:55):
ultimately, he became ananalyst, and as an analyst, you
find yourself in analysis andsupervision, which is a fabulous
thing, of course, and he wasable to work with some of the
world's best analysts, which wasfabulous for him. He doesn't
regret that at all, but still,he didn't come away feeling like
(13:19):
he was learning about hisfeelings, learning about his
trauma, learning about love, hecame away with this sort of
great intellectual idea of lifeand the meaning of life, and he
started to feel pretty upsetabout this, like, my gosh, I
just know There's more to thisthan this, and I've got to
(13:42):
figure it out. And I'm treatingmy patients. I'm feeling this
way. How can I treat themproperly? Well, I'm feeling this
way. And at this point, he had ahuge practice, and they stayed
with it. He basically abandonedeverything and said, we've been
working with your dreams. That'sall we're going to do, just
(14:03):
listen to your dreams. I'm justgoing to sit here and listen to
everything you tell me. And helistened to, you know, the
hundreds of dreams of many, manydifferent patients, and finally,
came to the conclusion that thisstuff is happening in utero, and
we have way, way back. Ourdreams are the keys to where all
(14:26):
that trauma is held, and let'sget there, and that's what he's
been able to do, beautiful. Andso what are the key principles
of this dream? Love, dreams andimprint philosophy. So the idea
is that we are all imprinted inutero by our mothers, and that
(14:51):
does not mean that our mothersare bad people. It's not to diss
our mothers, but our mothers.
Have. All of our mothers,basically have some amount of
trauma that they've had to dealwith, unknowingly or knowingly.
They've also been imprinted.
They are also the results ofancestral trauma, and we are all
(15:13):
carrying this with us fromgeneration to generation. And
clearly, it's not just womenthat are being affected, because
mothers give birth to boys andgirls, and even in you utero, a
father can still have an impacton that baby by the way he
communicates with the mother, bythe interaction he has for the
(15:38):
mother and so fathers are not tobe left out, either in the world
of happiness or the world of infrailty. So the idea, then, is
to get to that information, tofind out what that trauma is.
And the way to get there is viathe dream. The dream really is
(16:00):
door to our unconscious, and ourunconscious holds everything
about us, all of the positive,all of the negative, and the
dreams present to us the thingsthat we are struggling with. If
we're doing well in an area, weprobably won't dream about it,
(16:20):
because it because it doesn'treally need any work. And so the
key then to this is tounderstand those messages. And
once you understand the message,it begins to resonate with you.
You start to have a certainfeeling about that message, and
you can then begin to relate itback to things that have
(16:42):
happened to you, which you canthen start to recover from. So
we find ourselves in oureveryday lives operating from
this trauma rather than from ourtrue selves. So it could be that
in my case, for example, all ofmy life, up until the last
(17:04):
decade or so, my decisions alsomade by my father unconsciously.
But when I would think aboutmaking a decision, it didn't
even have to take one. I wouldhear my father's voice. I would
ask him the question and lookfor his approval. Oh my gosh. I
mean that, when I discoveredthat I was really doing that, I
(17:26):
thought that was so not my life.
That was my life. Still tryingto find the love of my father,
even after he passed away, andonce I finally said, You know
what, I love you, but I'm notdoing this for you anymore. That
voice went away. Yeah,
Laurie James (17:44):
that's a beautiful story, and it's so true. And it
could also come from if we haveto behave a certain way to kind
of keep the peace when we'reyoung, or if we have parents
that are volatile, right? And sowe're always trying to navigate,
because our survival counts onit like we need to do what we
(18:06):
need to do, because we're notcapable, as children, to fully
take care of ourselves. So wehave to find ways and
compensate, basically, to makesure that we survive. And so
then those patterns continueinto our adulthood, until we
become conscious of them andchange them. Tell me if I'm off
(18:29):
on that.
Unknown (18:29):
No, you're right, but I'm glad you brought that up,
because that was super importantto Bernard, that we all know
that even in utero,unconsciously, we understand
unconsciously, that in order tosurvive, we have to protect our
mothers. So he tells us that wetook the trauma that our mothers
(18:49):
were carrying and whatever madethem nervous or upset, angry,
sad, we piled that on ourselves,unconsciously to protect them,
because if they were not okay,we would not be okay without
them surviving to the best oftheir ability, we weren't going
to survive at all. So then wecarry that on into our
(19:11):
lifetimes, and we spend ouryouth being narrowed by those
elements that we are trying toundo for those people that take
care of us and they become partof who we are and who we were
really meant to be is long goneor so covered up we can't find
it, and his goal is to get tothe authentic self of each of us
(19:37):
so that we can have our ownlives without carrying all of
this trauma and by having ourown lives, we can honestly feel
love for others and loveourselves, and we can honestly
move forward in a fabulous wayin our communities, in our
families and as part ofhumanity.
Laurie James (19:58):
Yeah, I think that. That has been a goal of
mine through my healing journey,for sure. And I you said it so
well, because we can't be ourauthentic self when we are
trying to be somebody else orsomething else to keep other
people safe or for our ownsurvival.
Unknown (20:19):
Yes, and we just all do this on some level. Com,
unknowingly. I mean, how manytimes have I heard someone say,
Oh, your mom used to say that,and you don't even think about
it. Well, is that me speaking,or is that me trying to protect
my mom speaking? It's down tothe littlest thing. But I am so
(20:39):
encouraged that there is thisgreat way to actually be able to
enjoy being who we were meant tobe. I think that's
Laurie James (20:48):
a lot of the work that we do in the somatic world
is to really connect to the bodyand to really start listening to
the body and to those littlethoughts, to those little nudges
(21:09):
that we might experience. It'salways the whispers, right? It's
never the big, heavy, two byfour that hits you over the
head. I mean, that might wakeyou up, but it's really those
little What do I want today?
Like sometimes that when I'mworking with clients who really
don't have a sense of self, andthat's what I think we're
talking about here, is I evenwill start with really asking,
(21:33):
you know, what do I want forbreakfast? You ask the simple
questions, what is going tonourish me today, or what is
going to bring me joy? If I justdo one thing that's going to
bring me joy today and get areally ignite or make me happy,
doesn't have to ignite, but justbring some joy into my life. You
(21:55):
know, that's a really goodstarting place, in my opinion,
but also I love what you'retalking about, because as an
adoptee, it wasn't really untilmy late 40s that I really
accepted the fact that there wasbirth trauma that I experienced
right being adopted, being givenup. I know my birth mother
(22:19):
wanted me, but growing up, Ialways wondered why she had to
give me up. Why was I not loved?
Why was I, quote, unquote, notenough for her, right? Because
as children, we internalizethings and we think it's our
fault, right? Because the worldrevolves around us when we're
(22:43):
young, and it's really when youdo this type of work and really
understand that there was traumathere that and you know, it's
like, I know that my mother hadtrauma. I mean, she was having a
child in the 60s. In the mid60s, it was unacceptable to be
(23:04):
an unwed mother. She was sentaway. She didn't really want to
give me up, but she was told shehad to. So I know that she felt
a lot of angst and struggle andupset and frustration, and I
know that that affected me. Andthen the next step is when I'm
(23:25):
left in the hospital for threedays with no connection from my
birth mother or my adoptedmother. I was a private
adoption, so it happened fairlyquick, but still like that
initial bonding that so manypeople research is now showing
is so, so important, right? Butyou don't even have to be
adopted. I mean, I have lots offriends whose parents they were
(23:49):
an accident, or they weren'twanted, or the mother wanted to
be in a different place, orwhatever it is, or they were too
young, or they didn't feel likethey had a choice. And that all
affects all of us in differentways.
Unknown (24:04):
Yes, and may I ask, you can tell me you don't want to
talk about it. How did you cometo terms with what your birth
mom's experience was outside ofyours? Did you have to figure
out a way to forgive her, ormaybe you always had compassion
for her. How did you separateyourself from I'm not a bad
(24:27):
person? Yeah,
Laurie James (24:29):
you know that was definitely part of my journey,
and it's a little complicated,because I did meet my birth
mother. It wasn't on my terms.
It was people can read about itin my book. It was a decision
somebody else made for me, and Iwasn't really happy about that,
and separating that out from myown personal healing journey. So
(24:51):
one of the things that I did onmy healing journey, which. And
so thank you for asking thisquestion. I'm happy to share is
I went away to a very intensiveweek long therapeutic program
that's run by Pia melody, who'sa well known therapist and has a
program out in Wickenburg, andshe's written several books on
(25:17):
CO dependency. And so I wentaway for this week long
intensive training, and at thetime, my therapist said to me, I
want you to work on youradoption. So one of the things
that through that week, that oneof the many things I did, was
they gave me a doll, a babydoll, and I held it in my arms
(25:38):
as if I was the adult, and thatwas my younger self, my baby,
right? But I was looking atmyself and so having that
relationship as my adult selfnow and communicating to the
infant self, or part of me thatmay be still feeling and
(26:04):
experiencing some triggers ofnot feeling like I belong, or
not feeling loved or worthy, orthose were some of the issues
that I dealt With so by holdingthat baby, and talking to
myself, essentially, or a partof me, and really connecting
(26:24):
with that infant self, I, youknow, I had this dialog, and
then tears came. And, you know,they they walked me through this
whole process of, what do youwant to say to your baby, you
know, to your younger self, ifyou could do it over again, what
would you have wished would havehappened? And like, what are
(26:48):
some parting words that you wantto leave your infant self? And
that was super raw, super hard,but it was also a very healing
experience, because I'd neverconnected with that part of me
or with my younger self, and,you know, I've done a lot of
(27:11):
other work, a lot of nervoussystem work Around abandonment
issues and around belonging andthose types of things, but
there's always more, right?
There's always more that we cando. It's a journey. It's not a
destination. But I'm curious, inthat situation, what would Dr
(27:35):
Bernard bail suggested? Or doyou know in a situation like
that? Well, I
Unknown (27:40):
imagine it would be slightly different for each
person, given theircircumstances, but as you were
speaking about that experiencethat you had, where you
connected with your infant self,and how that brought about these
raw emotions for you, I imaginethat you know, most of us have
not really conceived of that asa thing to do you it doesn't
(28:03):
even enter into your mind. Sowhat a fabulous opportunity, and
how great that you were able toput so much into it. I think
that for Bernard, he believesthat many of us are really still
our baby selves, because ourbaby selves started out taking
(28:24):
care of the people who wereresponsible for us, or who
birthed us, or who we relied on,and part of finding who we
really are means connecting withyour baby self and discerning,
okay, how can I be a grown up ifI'm so busy operating as a baby,
and what do I do to undo that?
You know, embrace your baby selfand love that part of you. But
(28:50):
if we can figure out how to loveourselves, we can figure out how
to operate with sort of moreemotional maturity
Laurie James (29:01):
well, and when that baby self or that baby part
of us kind of shows up. I mean,I often talk about it starts
with awareness of recognizingthat first and then, how can we
as our adult self, and this canget into parts work and internal
(29:23):
family systems, if you'refamiliar with that at all, and
I'm I know very, very littleabout it, but I'm learning more
of you know how the adult selfcan care for that baby. And
that's also some of the workthat I did while I was there,
right? Like, how do we take careof that baby part of us that
(29:44):
didn't get its needs met anddidn't get taken care of in the
way that we ideally needed to?
And you know, we all have itlike there's nobody comes out
perfect, right with with aperfect parent that every need?
Is met because that would haveits own issues.
Cynthia Marks (30:04):
That's another topic, exactly.
Laurie James (30:08):
Are there two or three small steps our listeners,
you know, we've, we've jumpedinto this, I believe, like such
a rich conversation around theimportance of this imprint. And
are there a couple of smallsteps that our listeners can use
to kind of shift things awayfrom maybe some of our old
patterns, whether it's, youknow, the three year old, the
(30:31):
baby, the seven year old,whatever it is, yes. And
Unknown (30:36):
before I answer that question, though, in your work,
I wanted to ask you. Sosometimes when we are maybe
operating from the baby part ofus, so medically, there might be
something that's happening tosomeone physically that they
should say, Okay, wait a minute,I'm having this sort of physical
reaction. What does that meanfor me? Emotionally? Is that
(31:02):
right? Is that how that
Laurie James (31:03):
Yeah, so I think if I'm understanding your
question, right? So what happensis, depending on who you're kind
of talking to in in the somaticworld we talk about, our nervous
system will often dictate whatour thoughts are, because if,
if, let's just take an example,if your mother was always very
(31:25):
anxious, you will most likelydevelop similar anxious
tendencies, right? Because ournervous system, we co regulate.
So have you ever just been withsomebody and thought, wow, that
person is so kind and warm andcalm, and then you walk into a
room and somebody is like, hyperand active and fun loving, but
(31:47):
maybe a little phonetic is lackof better word, right? That's
different people's nervoussystems showing up. So when I'm
with a friend or my partner, Iknow when he's dysregulated and
his nervous system, or when he'sregulated. And so the idea is,
we co regulate each other,right? They talk about the 22nd
(32:11):
hug, and how regulating that canbe. Why do we want that hug is
to regulate our nervous systemto feel connected, because we're
humans, and we are meant toconnect. And so to answer your
question is, when we have aregulated nervous system and we
can regulate our own nervoussystem, then we can show up more
(32:36):
present and more authenticallyourselves. And oftentimes that
requires you to really kind ofconnect with the body, connect
with even just as we're talking,feel the chair underneath you,
feel where your feet aretouching the ground, and just
notice sensations in your body.
Sensations are the language ofthe nervous system. So I often
(32:59):
have a lot of tingling in mybody, but I I can, because I've
done this work now for over fiveyears, I can regulate my own
nervous system. It's hard forpeople to do that. So if
somebody has been in a verychaotic family, it is a
challenge to regulate their ownnervous system because that
(33:23):
chaos is so familiar, that'swhat feels normal to them. Yes,
yes, and answer your question.
Unknown (33:33):
Oh, totally. And it makes really good sense to me
and and I would think too, thenpart of why this discussion
about Bernard's work isvaluable, because is that this
trauma that we carry obviouslyaffects the nervous system and
causes us to react in sort ofunknowingly, to situations, and
(33:54):
that's not our trauma to beworking From.
Laurie James (33:58):
Yes, so the more we can develop that awareness,
the more we can connect with ourbody. And it's like, what is my
body telling me right now? Asyou know, because, from a
nervous system standpoint, we gointo a fight, flight or freeze,
typically when we getdysregulated, right? So what
(34:18):
does my body want to do? Do Iwant to run away? Do I want to
crawl under the covers, or do Iwant to fight? That will tell
you where you're going, and itdoesn't mean that those are bad
things, because we need those.
That's how we've survived. Yes,yes, right? But sometimes when
we stay in those places or wefeel like it's a threat, and
maybe it's not really asthreatening as it might feel
(34:40):
like to our bodies and ournervous systems,
Unknown (34:45):
which could be that you have trained yourself over the
course of your life to react acertain way based on how you had
to react from the verybeginning, and that reaction
isn't really applicable toreality, right? So. When you
sense that your partner, is itdysregulated? Can you help him
(35:06):
know that sometimes,
Laurie James (35:09):
sometimes I can, and sometimes it might be too
far gone, but oftentimes I can,and sometimes it's just giving
him space and for his ownnervous system to become more
regulated, and he's doing hisown work, and, you know, I do a
little bit with him, but I don'tknow that that's necessarily my
(35:29):
place, but as a partner, I canhelp to co regulate him, and
then I also can really triggerhim too.
Unknown (35:39):
I suppose that's true in all relationships, right?
Like
Laurie James (35:42):
we know people's buttons, if we want to push
them, we can't go there.
Unknown (35:48):
Well, you asked about a couple of tips, let's say so one
of the first things to do is tosort of think about this idea,
about finding your true self,about finding the love in you
because it is there. 100% all ofus have this core of love. Some
(36:09):
people relate that to spirit orthe universe or God, yeah, yeah,
so, but that love is the thingthat grounds us. And I love that
you said humans are meant to beconnected, and humans are meant
to be connected in a loving way,yeah, and we have become as as a
(36:30):
humanity, so we
Laurie James (36:32):
disconnected.
There's the word anddysregulated that too,
especially right now, yeah, so
Unknown (36:41):
we struggle to figure out how to treat each other well
and with love, and we have tolearn how to do that within
ourselves. So Bernard alwayssays something that I found
really viable and moving in thatwhen you look around the world
and you see the chaos and howoff the rails we continue to go
(37:03):
look inside yourself, we alsocarry a huge amount of chaos. I
mean, not all of us to the samelevel, of course, but to some
degree, what we are facinginside ourselves is what we see
outside. And if you can believethat, you can't help but want to
undo the trauma and get to thisspace where you're coming from
(37:25):
love, knowing you're lovable,knowing how to treat others with
love. And you know, as corny asit sounds, that's how we're
going to stop these wars. That'show we're going to, you know,
behave well and treat each otheras if we are equals and all
deserve to exist on a basiclevel, if your trauma is held in
your unconscious, and that ispretty well sealed off to most
(37:49):
of us, but there's an openingand you can get to it, why
wouldn't you experiment? Whywouldn't you try to go there? So
certainly, the very, very bestway to understand the
information that your dreamshold is to work with a therapist
who knows this work, and thereare very few of them at the
(38:09):
moment, we're hoping somedaythat Bernard's methodology will
be taught in schools ofpsychology, but we're not there
yet. But as a small step for anindividual human if you start to
buy into the fact that yourdreams are meaningful. They're
not just some weird thing thathappens to you on some nights
(38:30):
and not all nights. It'shappening every night. And you
say to yourself, Okay, I want toremember my dreams. And you sort
of settle in at night, and youask that of yourself, you may
start to remember some of yourdreams, and if you do, they're
sometimes fleeting, so the bestthing to do is to spend a moment
and write them down. And overthe course of having written
(38:53):
down a few dreams, you mightdiscover some commonalities,
like there's different thingsthat happen that create the same
fear in you, or there is thesame thing that happens that
creates an anger in you,
Laurie James (39:07):
right? Or you have the same reoccurring dream, yes,
yeah.
Unknown (39:11):
And why is that happening? And then, really, why
is that happening? What is thefeeling Can I think about things
in my past that have stirredthat same feeling, what were the
circumstances? And you can startto unpack some of the trauma by
getting to the source of wherethat began. Now it's obviously
(39:33):
hard for us to understand whatsort of trauma we may have had
in utero if we can't communicatewith our parents, or if we
didn't grow up with our birthparents like yourself, but
still, the the trauma can bepresent, like for example, you
mentioned maybe not feelingloved or not feeling worthy, and
that started in utero. If youwere to look at your dreams,
(39:54):
there would probably be manyscenarios where you found
yourself in a situation. Thatmay not be sort of very clear in
a material way, but if you spentsome time reviewing it, thinking
about it, feeling the feelings,you could get to that place of,
Oh, I get it. I can see inscenario, or after scenario, I'm
(40:16):
putting myself in a place whereI don't get love because I don't
deserve it, and then you can seehow you do that to yourself in
life, right
Laurie James (40:25):
by being with the wrong people or being in the
wrong relationships or the wrongfriend group, or maybe the wrong
career,
Unknown (40:36):
yes, yes and and even selling yourself out there is
this fabulous person. I'vealways wanted to be friends with
her, but you know what? I thinkshe's just too smart for me, or
she's too fun for me. So I'mjust, I'm not going to do it.
And that's not the case at all.
And I just it's reallydisturbing to me how often we
sell ourselves short. Maybe it'smore disturbing because that was
(40:59):
in sort of big in my past,
Laurie James (41:04):
yeah, well, but it's also scary, right? I mean,
it's scary to put ourselves outthere, the scary to feel
rejection, and so I think thatfear is what controls some of
those decisions, too, you know?
So it's the thoughts, it's thefear, all of that. But, you
know, oftentimes I talk aboutstretching the nervous system,
(41:26):
you know, let's stretchourselves, not stress ourselves.
Yes, in something that we'redoing, and when we're taking on
a new endeavor, or trying tomake new friends, or whatever it
is, it's stretch ourselvesenough, but don't stress
ourselves. Yes.
Unknown (41:44):
Oh, that's a lovely thing to remember. You're right.
You can't, sort of just jump in.
And we're behaving that waybecause we are protecting
ourselves like you say. We don'twant to put ourselves in a
position of being rejected inwhat we think is yet another
rejection when that's not reallythe reality of things. And
another thing that happens iswhen you kind of come to terms
(42:07):
with the fact that you'reoperating from a place that's
burdened by this trauma, oryou're carrying all kinds of
trash with you that's not yourtrash. I've been so busy
carrying all this trash. What amI going to do without it? You
know, now there's this big emptyspace. What falls in? Worse
trash, more garbage, betterstuff. I gotta tell you, it's
(42:28):
only better stuff.
Laurie James (42:31):
Yes, if you can recognize that and recognize the
trash from the treasure, I'llsay, and replace the trash with
treasure. Absolutely. You know,we talk about rewiring the
nervous system, rewiring thebrain by doing that, and it does
(42:51):
feel unfamiliar at first, butthe more you do it, then you
rewire, and then you're you'renot drawn to the trash anymore.
You're drawn to the treasure.
Unknown (43:02):
Yes, yes. And you don't have to have this sort of
unconscious conversation withyourself about worthy, not
worthy. Protect myself. Go forit. You begin to be able to feel
what is best for you. Becausenot everybody needs the same
thing. Not everybody's missingthe same thing,
Laurie James (43:23):
exactly. So as we come to a close, Cynthia, what's
one confession you'd like toshare with our listeners that we
haven't touched on? Ooh, a
Unknown (43:35):
confession? Well, this has to do with what I learned
from Bernard. I had no idea mostof my life that what I
considered to be love wasnothing but a giant fantasy that
I had built early on. As ateenager, I was in a
relationship that I won't gointo, but it was more than
(43:57):
unhealthy. But as a teenager, Ididn't have the skill to know
that, and I completely boughtinto what was going on. And
somehow in the back of my head,I turned this into the biggest
type of love that could exist.
And when it came torelationships, love
(44:17):
relationships, everythingunconsciously needed to compare
to that, and nothing could liveup to that. So I put myself in
that place, basically because myimprint told me that I wasn't
really very lovable, and so Ibecame that thing that couldn't
(44:39):
be loved by saying there wasthis greater love that nobody
could attain. So I would neverlet myself be loved by someone
honestly and through the courseof talking about our dreams
together, Bernard and I, again,he wasn't analyzing me. But as
you said, partners do decide.
(45:00):
Discuss the things that aretheir passions. When he first
started sharing with me, haveyou? Have you thought about
this? Is this maybe not reality?
I said, You're so wrong. I don'teven want to talk about it. I
was even angry, and it took agood deal of time, but I finally
came to know that that wasnothing but false, and when I
(45:21):
finally understood that I wasactually then even able to
wholly receive this love thatBernard had for me and I, prior
to that, I couldn't really lethim love me fully, because I
needed to be reserved. I neededto protect myself. Yeah,
Laurie James (45:42):
yeah, we all do some level of that at various
time. We do well. Thank you forsharing that. And so, how can
people find you and yourpodcast? And do you guys also
have a movie coming out too
Unknown (45:58):
well, thank you for bringing that up. There was a
documentary that was madeseveral years ago. So it has
been out. It's available on allthe platforms now, Amazon, et
cetera. It's called and nowlove. And it is about Bernard
and how he came to his theoryand what in his life transpired
to help him become a more lovingperson, so it's it's pretty
(46:23):
fascinating, and our podcast andnow love is available also on
all of the platforms, fromSpotify and YouTube and Amazon,
and you can also go to ourwebsite and now love.com and You
can link to any of thoseoutfits. Well,
Laurie James (46:42):
thank you, Cynthia, for this very rich
conversation and sharingBernard's work with all of our
listeners. And I look forward towatching his documentary and
learning more about this imprinttheory that he created.
Unknown (47:00):
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate our
conversation and learning moreabout what you do, too.
Laurie James (47:07):
Thank you for listening to this episode of
Confessions of a free bird. I'mgrateful to be in your ears and
hearts. If you're interested inbecoming a free bird, I'd love
to support you. Please check outmy website at Laurie james.com
to learn how we can worktogether, or to sign up for my
newsletter so you can receivetips on how to date and
(47:31):
relationship differently andultimately, find more freedom
and joy in your life. If youfound this podcast helpful,
please follow or subscribe, rateand review and share it with
friends so they can find morefreedom in their second or third
act, also until next time you.
Hey there. It's Lori. And before we get started
on today's episode, I have alittle housekeeping, two quick
announcements. I still do haveroom for a one on one. One spot
is taken, so I have one moreleft. So if that's something
that you're interested inexploring. Click the link in the
(00:24):
show notes, and you can schedulea free half hour inquiry. Call
with me. Second I mentioned thislast episode, but I'm working on
a new offering, and would reallylove to chat with any of you
that would like to share some ofyour feedback. It's a way for me
to create a new offering thatmeets your needs instead of what
(00:45):
I think that you might want.
There's two ways of doing this.
You can either schedule aninquiry, call with me, and I
will ask you a series ofquestions, or you can click the
link in the show notes andanswer the questionnaire, it
would mean the world to me tohave your feedback and thank you
(01:06):
in advance and enjoy thisconversation with Cynthia marks,
who is the host and creator ofand now love podcast as we
explore emotional healing andpersonal growth inspired by her
late husband, Dr Bernard bales,work that's rooted in love,
dreams and imprint philosophy.
So enjoy this conversation.
(01:33):
Welcome to Confessions of a freebird podcast. I'm your host.
Lori James, a mother, divorcee,recovering caregiver, the author
of sandwiched A Memoir ofholding on and letting go, a
therapy junkie, relationshipcoach, somatic healer and now
podcaster, I'm a free spirit,and here to lift you up on this
(01:55):
podcast, I'll share soulfulconfessions and empowering
conversations with influentialexperts so you can learn to
spread your wings and make themost of your second half. So pop
in those earbuds, turn up thevolume, and let's get inspired,
because my mission is to helpyou create your most joyful,
(02:15):
Purpose Driven Life, oneconfession at a time.
Hello, free birds, and welcomeback. I have to confess, I am
super excited about my guest andthe conversation that we're
going to delve into today.
Today, I am speaking withCynthia marks. She is the host
and creator of the and now lovepodcast, a platform dedicated to
(02:41):
exploring emotional healing andpersonal growth. She's been
inspired by the groundbreakingwork of her late husband, Dr
Bernard bale and she sharesinsights rooted in his love
dreams, imprint philosophy,which I can't wait to dive into
a unique approach to understandand reshaping unconscious
(03:04):
patterns. So welcome Cynthia.
Thank you so much for being herewith me today.
Cynthia Marks (03:12):
Thank you happy to be here. I've been looking
forward to it for many days.
Laurie James (03:16):
Good, good. So can you start by sharing with our
listeners a little bit moreabout yourself and how you
became the creator of thepodcast, and now love and to
carry on your late husband'swork
Cynthia Marks (03:33):
absolutely so and now love came about because my
husband was really struggling atthe end of his life to continue
to get his message, his work,known to the public. So for most
of his career, after hediscovered his theory, he was
fairly well shunned by hiscommunity, by his peers. He was
(03:57):
a renowned psychoanalyst, andcontinued to be that, even after
he was shunned, and he was quitethe rebel, he would not give up
trying to make his voice knownand to offer up the idea of
exploring his theory tostudents, to other analysts, but
(04:18):
he just struggled. I mean, whata tough guy Try as he might, and
it wasn't just that he wanted tocommunicate his own ideas. He
wanted to just enrich theplatform at large with the idea
that, wait a minute, maybe weneed to be open to ideas outside
(04:38):
of those that we constantlycontend with or appreciate or
respect, and in no way was hesaying, don't respect what you
know or what you've beenpracticing. But maybe there's
more to it. Maybe there'sanother avenue. And in fact, one
elder gentleman had said to himat a conference, you know, I
hear you. I totally get it. Ibelieve.
(04:59):
Leave you, but I'm too old ahorse to change this course, and
a lot of people were afraid tojust change it up here, perhaps,
as an analyst, you've beenspeaking to your patients about
how to improve their lives basedon certain theories, and now
you're going to say, I'm goingto add this to it. What does
(05:19):
that mean? Have I been tellingyou the wrong thing. How do I
incorporate this? So it waseasier to dismiss, which I
actually find kind ofinteresting, because in my
opinion, you know, I have a lotof friends who are therapists as
well, but in the work that I'vedone with my own therapist
through on and off through theyears, they try to get the
(05:43):
patients to be curious and openminded about themselves. Yet
these psychoanalysts weren'topen minded about maybe adding
because it didn't sound like hewas trying to change everybody's
mind. It's just maybe adding anelement to what they're already
(06:03):
trying to do with theirpatients. Tell me if I'm wrong.
I agree with you. When I firstlearned this, I was very
surprised, because I thought mygoodness, in my mind, I'm
stereotypically thinking of thisfield as being those who would
be open to hearing what theirpatients have to say, open to
learning about new ways oftreating patients, and it was
(06:27):
not so. Of course, his work waspretty revolutionary, because
whereas many of the analysts andpsychologists were treating
their patients via a Freudianmethod, which is great. I mean,
the dream work that Bernardworked with basically came from
Freud. And thank goodness thatFreud sort of introduced us to
(06:49):
the dream. But the idea of ourtrauma sort of beginning at the
age of three and starting toneed to deal with things then
and Oedipus and so forth. Hiswork said, Well, wait a minute.
You know, maybe things start waybefore the age of three. Maybe
we're talking about what's goingon in utero. And that was the
(07:11):
red flag for everybody, like, Ohno, that's that No.
Laurie James (07:14):
And how can it not be when you are connected to
your mother via umbilical cord,you are growing and living
inside another human being youknow, being a somatic
experiencing practitioner andcoach, like, how can your birth
(07:36):
mother's nervous system notaffect yours and your growth?
Yeah, and it's easy for us tothink of something as simple as,
say, a mother who, you know,unfortunately, is taking a
nicotine and knowing, knowingthat that's not good for the
baby. And if you think about it,you know, sort of on that basic
level, you can really then say,okay, I get it. Everything that
(07:59):
mother is doing has some effecton that baby? Yeah, absolutely.
So can you tell our listeners alittle bit more about your late
husband, Dr Bale, and how hiswork has impacted what you were
doing and how you're carrying onhis theory and legacy, and then
(08:21):
maybe we can jump into what histheory is a little bit more.
Okay, great. So we are carryingon, because at the end of his
life, the end of Bernard's life,he said to me, darling, oh, love
of my life, just a little bit ofcoaxing there, if there's any
way that you can move thisforward, because try as I may,
(08:44):
at 100 years old, I just don'thave the energy to do this
anymore. We were trying until,really, until he was just about
100 and his voice was too frail,his hearing was impaired, his
mind was totally together, butwe couldn't make a presentation,
you know, via an audio podcastor video podcast that would
(09:05):
suffice to tell the story. Andso I said, Okay, thinking, What
in the world could I possiblydo? I'm not a psychoanalyst. I'm
not trained in this. I'm not adoctor, and I let it be for a
good many months, because I justneeded to deal with the fact
that I'd lost this man that Iloved so much. So after a few
(09:27):
months, the gentleman who hadbeen working with us previous to
Bernard's passing, came andsaid, I've got an idea. I've got
an idea. Why don't you Cynthia,because you know so much about
this act as a lay person and askquestions of the professionals,
and ask questions of people whomight help others, other lay
(09:48):
people, find their way toBernard's work. And I said, they
said, I cannot. I could. I mean,see, I'm even stuttering
thinking about it. I can't dothat. And after another.
Cynthia Marks (10:00):
Months, I said, All right, let's just give it a
try. And it was so fascinatingand so much fun and so
heartwarming for me, and I knewthat that that feeling of the
warmth in my heart and ears, inmy eyes that I would have when I
would speak to these people wasto me, almost like Bernard's
(10:21):
spirit saying you've got thisand I mean, just saying that to
gives me chills, but it's been abeautiful experience for me, if
I just speak selfishly, and Ithink we've got a lot of
fabulous people that we'rehaving conversations with and a
great big audience now, so it'ssuper exciting, and as long as
(10:44):
it's fun and full of love andexciting, we're going to keep it
going beautiful. I love that,and I'm with you. I support you,
and I think from the little thatI have read before, as I was
preparing for our conversation.
A lot of it resonated with me aswell, just based off of the 15
(11:05):
plus years of healing work thatI have done. And I think that in
the therapeutic world, there ismore acceptance to the
importance of those pre verbalyears. So I'm hoping that as you
continue to put the word out andcontinue to spread his theory,
(11:26):
that it continues to catch onlike wildfire. Sounds like it
was a life passion of his. Oh mygosh. He couldn't really operate
from this space, until hediscovered that this
methodology, that this theory,served to heal him first, yeah,
can you say a little bit moreabout that? Sure. So he was,
(11:49):
even as a youth, always lookingfor, what was his reason on
earth? What was he supposed tobe? Feeling passionate about,
what was his path? And he keptcoming back through the course
of his first couple of decadesto I need to do something to
(12:10):
help other people heal. He'dbeen in World War Two. He had
unfortunately seen, you know,the horrors of war, and he said
to himself, you know, there isin no way, shape or form that
I'm ever, ever going to come tohumanity from a place like that.
In fact, I want to help peopleunderstand how we can have an
(12:33):
existence where we don't do thatkind of harm to each other,
either individuals talking toother individuals, being with
other individuals, orcommunities coming at each other
from these big, scary places.
And his work gets us to a placewhere we lead with love. So
(12:55):
ultimately, he became ananalyst, and as an analyst, you
find yourself in analysis andsupervision, which is a fabulous
thing, of course, and he wasable to work with some of the
world's best analysts, which wasfabulous for him. He doesn't
regret that at all, but still,he didn't come away feeling like
(13:19):
he was learning about hisfeelings, learning about his
trauma, learning about love, hecame away with this sort of
great intellectual idea of lifeand the meaning of life, and he
started to feel pretty upsetabout this, like, my gosh, I
just know There's more to thisthan this, and I've got to
(13:42):
figure it out. And I'm treatingmy patients. I'm feeling this
way. How can I treat themproperly? Well, I'm feeling this
way. And at this point, he had ahuge practice, and they stayed
with it. He basically abandonedeverything and said, we've been
working with your dreams. That'sall we're going to do, just
(14:03):
listen to your dreams. I'm justgoing to sit here and listen to
everything you tell me. And helistened to, you know, the
hundreds of dreams of many, manydifferent patients, and finally,
came to the conclusion that thisstuff is happening in utero, and
we have way, way back. Ourdreams are the keys to where all
(14:26):
that trauma is held, and let'sget there, and that's what he's
been able to do, beautiful. Andso what are the key principles
of this dream? Love, dreams andimprint philosophy. So the idea
is that we are all imprinted inutero by our mothers, and that
(14:51):
does not mean that our mothersare bad people. It's not to diss
our mothers, but our mothers.
Have. All of our mothers,basically have some amount of
trauma that they've had to dealwith, unknowingly or knowingly.
They've also been imprinted.
They are also the results ofancestral trauma, and we are all
(15:13):
carrying this with us fromgeneration to generation. And
clearly, it's not just womenthat are being affected, because
mothers give birth to boys andgirls, and even in you utero, a
father can still have an impacton that baby by the way he
communicates with the mother, bythe interaction he has for the
(15:38):
mother and so fathers are not tobe left out, either in the world
of happiness or the world of infrailty. So the idea, then, is
to get to that information, tofind out what that trauma is.
And the way to get there is viathe dream. The dream really is
(16:00):
door to our unconscious, and ourunconscious holds everything
about us, all of the positive,all of the negative, and the
dreams present to us the thingsthat we are struggling with. If
we're doing well in an area, weprobably won't dream about it,
(16:20):
because it because it doesn'treally need any work. And so the
key then to this is tounderstand those messages. And
once you understand the message,it begins to resonate with you.
You start to have a certainfeeling about that message, and
you can then begin to relate itback to things that have
(16:42):
happened to you, which you canthen start to recover from. So
we find ourselves in oureveryday lives operating from
this trauma rather than from ourtrue selves. So it could be that
in my case, for example, all ofmy life, up until the last
(17:04):
decade or so, my decisions alsomade by my father unconsciously.
But when I would think aboutmaking a decision, it didn't
even have to take one. I wouldhear my father's voice. I would
ask him the question and lookfor his approval. Oh my gosh. I
mean that, when I discoveredthat I was really doing that, I
(17:26):
thought that was so not my life.
That was my life. Still tryingto find the love of my father,
even after he passed away, andonce I finally said, You know
what, I love you, but I'm notdoing this for you anymore. That
voice went away. Yeah,
Laurie James (17:44):
that's a beautiful story, and it's so true. And it
could also come from if we haveto behave a certain way to kind
of keep the peace when we'reyoung, or if we have parents
that are volatile, right? And sowe're always trying to navigate,
because our survival counts onit like we need to do what we
(18:06):
need to do, because we're notcapable, as children, to fully
take care of ourselves. So wehave to find ways and
compensate, basically, to makesure that we survive. And so
then those patterns continueinto our adulthood, until we
become conscious of them andchange them. Tell me if I'm off
(18:29):
on that.
Unknown (18:29):
No, you're right, but I'm glad you brought that up,
because that was super importantto Bernard, that we all know
that even in utero,unconsciously, we understand
unconsciously, that in order tosurvive, we have to protect our
mothers. So he tells us that wetook the trauma that our mothers
(18:49):
were carrying and whatever madethem nervous or upset, angry,
sad, we piled that on ourselves,unconsciously to protect them,
because if they were not okay,we would not be okay without
them surviving to the best oftheir ability, we weren't going
to survive at all. So then wecarry that on into our
(19:11):
lifetimes, and we spend ouryouth being narrowed by those
elements that we are trying toundo for those people that take
care of us and they become partof who we are and who we were
really meant to be is long goneor so covered up we can't find
it, and his goal is to get tothe authentic self of each of us
(19:37):
so that we can have our ownlives without carrying all of
this trauma and by having ourown lives, we can honestly feel
love for others and loveourselves, and we can honestly
move forward in a fabulous wayin our communities, in our
families and as part ofhumanity.
Laurie James (19:58):
Yeah, I think that. That has been a goal of
mine through my healing journey,for sure. And I you said it so
well, because we can't be ourauthentic self when we are
trying to be somebody else orsomething else to keep other
people safe or for our ownsurvival.
Unknown (20:19):
Yes, and we just all do this on some level. Com,
unknowingly. I mean, how manytimes have I heard someone say,
Oh, your mom used to say that,and you don't even think about
it. Well, is that me speaking,or is that me trying to protect
my mom speaking? It's down tothe littlest thing. But I am so
(20:39):
encouraged that there is thisgreat way to actually be able to
enjoy being who we were meant tobe. I think that's
Laurie James (20:48):
a lot of the work that we do in the somatic world
is to really connect to the bodyand to really start listening to
the body and to those littlethoughts, to those little nudges
(21:09):
that we might experience. It'salways the whispers, right? It's
never the big, heavy, two byfour that hits you over the
head. I mean, that might wakeyou up, but it's really those
little What do I want today?
Like sometimes that when I'mworking with clients who really
don't have a sense of self, andthat's what I think we're
talking about here, is I evenwill start with really asking,
(21:33):
you know, what do I want forbreakfast? You ask the simple
questions, what is going tonourish me today, or what is
going to bring me joy? If I justdo one thing that's going to
bring me joy today and get areally ignite or make me happy,
doesn't have to ignite, but justbring some joy into my life. You
(21:55):
know, that's a really goodstarting place, in my opinion,
but also I love what you'retalking about, because as an
adoptee, it wasn't really untilmy late 40s that I really
accepted the fact that there wasbirth trauma that I experienced
right being adopted, being givenup. I know my birth mother
(22:19):
wanted me, but growing up, Ialways wondered why she had to
give me up. Why was I not loved?
Why was I, quote, unquote, notenough for her, right? Because
as children, we internalizethings and we think it's our
fault, right? Because the worldrevolves around us when we're
(22:43):
young, and it's really when youdo this type of work and really
understand that there was traumathere that and you know, it's
like, I know that my mother hadtrauma. I mean, she was having a
child in the 60s. In the mid60s, it was unacceptable to be
(23:04):
an unwed mother. She was sentaway. She didn't really want to
give me up, but she was told shehad to. So I know that she felt
a lot of angst and struggle andupset and frustration, and I
know that that affected me. Andthen the next step is when I'm
(23:25):
left in the hospital for threedays with no connection from my
birth mother or my adoptedmother. I was a private
adoption, so it happened fairlyquick, but still like that
initial bonding that so manypeople research is now showing
is so, so important, right? Butyou don't even have to be
adopted. I mean, I have lots offriends whose parents they were
(23:49):
an accident, or they weren'twanted, or the mother wanted to
be in a different place, orwhatever it is, or they were too
young, or they didn't feel likethey had a choice. And that all
affects all of us in differentways.
Unknown (24:04):
Yes, and may I ask, you can tell me you don't want to
talk about it. How did you cometo terms with what your birth
mom's experience was outside ofyours? Did you have to figure
out a way to forgive her, ormaybe you always had compassion
for her. How did you separateyourself from I'm not a bad
(24:27):
person? Yeah,
Laurie James (24:29):
you know that was definitely part of my journey,
and it's a little complicated,because I did meet my birth
mother. It wasn't on my terms.
It was people can read about itin my book. It was a decision
somebody else made for me, and Iwasn't really happy about that,
and separating that out from myown personal healing journey. So
(24:51):
one of the things that I did onmy healing journey, which. And
so thank you for asking thisquestion. I'm happy to share is
I went away to a very intensiveweek long therapeutic program
that's run by Pia melody, who'sa well known therapist and has a
program out in Wickenburg, andshe's written several books on
(25:17):
CO dependency. And so I wentaway for this week long
intensive training, and at thetime, my therapist said to me, I
want you to work on youradoption. So one of the things
that through that week, that oneof the many things I did, was
they gave me a doll, a babydoll, and I held it in my arms
(25:38):
as if I was the adult, and thatwas my younger self, my baby,
right? But I was looking atmyself and so having that
relationship as my adult selfnow and communicating to the
infant self, or part of me thatmay be still feeling and
(26:04):
experiencing some triggers ofnot feeling like I belong, or
not feeling loved or worthy, orthose were some of the issues
that I dealt With so by holdingthat baby, and talking to
myself, essentially, or a partof me, and really connecting
(26:24):
with that infant self, I, youknow, I had this dialog, and
then tears came. And, you know,they they walked me through this
whole process of, what do youwant to say to your baby, you
know, to your younger self, ifyou could do it over again, what
would you have wished would havehappened? And like, what are
(26:48):
some parting words that you wantto leave your infant self? And
that was super raw, super hard,but it was also a very healing
experience, because I'd neverconnected with that part of me
or with my younger self, and,you know, I've done a lot of
(27:11):
other work, a lot of nervoussystem work Around abandonment
issues and around belonging andthose types of things, but
there's always more, right?
There's always more that we cando. It's a journey. It's not a
destination. But I'm curious, inthat situation, what would Dr
(27:35):
Bernard bail suggested? Or doyou know in a situation like
that? Well, I
Unknown (27:40):
imagine it would be slightly different for each
person, given theircircumstances, but as you were
speaking about that experiencethat you had, where you
connected with your infant self,and how that brought about these
raw emotions for you, I imaginethat you know, most of us have
not really conceived of that asa thing to do you it doesn't
(28:03):
even enter into your mind. Sowhat a fabulous opportunity, and
how great that you were able toput so much into it. I think
that for Bernard, he believesthat many of us are really still
our baby selves, because ourbaby selves started out taking
(28:24):
care of the people who wereresponsible for us, or who
birthed us, or who we relied on,and part of finding who we
really are means connecting withyour baby self and discerning,
okay, how can I be a grown up ifI'm so busy operating as a baby,
and what do I do to undo that?
You know, embrace your baby selfand love that part of you. But
(28:50):
if we can figure out how to loveourselves, we can figure out how
to operate with sort of moreemotional maturity
Laurie James (29:01):
well, and when that baby self or that baby part
of us kind of shows up. I mean,I often talk about it starts
with awareness of recognizingthat first and then, how can we
as our adult self, and this canget into parts work and internal
(29:23):
family systems, if you'refamiliar with that at all, and
I'm I know very, very littleabout it, but I'm learning more
of you know how the adult selfcan care for that baby. And
that's also some of the workthat I did while I was there,
right? Like, how do we take careof that baby part of us that
(29:44):
didn't get its needs met anddidn't get taken care of in the
way that we ideally needed to?
And you know, we all have itlike there's nobody comes out
perfect, right with with aperfect parent that every need?
Is met because that would haveits own issues.
Cynthia Marks (30:04):
That's another topic, exactly.
Laurie James (30:08):
Are there two or three small steps our listeners,
you know, we've, we've jumpedinto this, I believe, like such
a rich conversation around theimportance of this imprint. And
are there a couple of smallsteps that our listeners can use
to kind of shift things awayfrom maybe some of our old
patterns, whether it's, youknow, the three year old, the
(30:31):
baby, the seven year old,whatever it is, yes. And
Unknown (30:36):
before I answer that question, though, in your work,
I wanted to ask you. Sosometimes when we are maybe
operating from the baby part ofus, so medically, there might be
something that's happening tosomeone physically that they
should say, Okay, wait a minute,I'm having this sort of physical
reaction. What does that meanfor me? Emotionally? Is that
(31:02):
right? Is that how that
Laurie James (31:03):
Yeah, so I think if I'm understanding your
question, right? So what happensis, depending on who you're kind
of talking to in in the somaticworld we talk about, our nervous
system will often dictate whatour thoughts are, because if,
if, let's just take an example,if your mother was always very
(31:25):
anxious, you will most likelydevelop similar anxious
tendencies, right? Because ournervous system, we co regulate.
So have you ever just been withsomebody and thought, wow, that
person is so kind and warm andcalm, and then you walk into a
room and somebody is like, hyperand active and fun loving, but
(31:47):
maybe a little phonetic is lackof better word, right? That's
different people's nervoussystems showing up. So when I'm
with a friend or my partner, Iknow when he's dysregulated and
his nervous system, or when he'sregulated. And so the idea is,
we co regulate each other,right? They talk about the 22nd
(32:11):
hug, and how regulating that canbe. Why do we want that hug is
to regulate our nervous systemto feel connected, because we're
humans, and we are meant toconnect. And so to answer your
question is, when we have aregulated nervous system and we
can regulate our own nervoussystem, then we can show up more
(32:36):
present and more authenticallyourselves. And oftentimes that
requires you to really kind ofconnect with the body, connect
with even just as we're talking,feel the chair underneath you,
feel where your feet aretouching the ground, and just
notice sensations in your body.
Sensations are the language ofthe nervous system. So I often
(32:59):
have a lot of tingling in mybody, but I I can, because I've
done this work now for over fiveyears, I can regulate my own
nervous system. It's hard forpeople to do that. So if
somebody has been in a verychaotic family, it is a
challenge to regulate their ownnervous system because that
(33:23):
chaos is so familiar, that'swhat feels normal to them. Yes,
yes, and answer your question.
Unknown (33:33):
Oh, totally. And it makes really good sense to me
and and I would think too, thenpart of why this discussion
about Bernard's work isvaluable, because is that this
trauma that we carry obviouslyaffects the nervous system and
causes us to react in sort ofunknowingly, to situations, and
(33:54):
that's not our trauma to beworking From.
Laurie James (33:58):
Yes, so the more we can develop that awareness,
the more we can connect with ourbody. And it's like, what is my
body telling me right now? Asyou know, because, from a
nervous system standpoint, we gointo a fight, flight or freeze,
typically when we getdysregulated, right? So what
(34:18):
does my body want to do? Do Iwant to run away? Do I want to
crawl under the covers, or do Iwant to fight? That will tell
you where you're going, and itdoesn't mean that those are bad
things, because we need those.
That's how we've survived. Yes,yes, right? But sometimes when
we stay in those places or wefeel like it's a threat, and
maybe it's not really asthreatening as it might feel
(34:40):
like to our bodies and ournervous systems,
Unknown (34:45):
which could be that you have trained yourself over the
course of your life to react acertain way based on how you had
to react from the verybeginning, and that reaction
isn't really applicable toreality, right? So. When you
sense that your partner, is itdysregulated? Can you help him
(35:06):
know that sometimes,
Laurie James (35:09):
sometimes I can, and sometimes it might be too
far gone, but oftentimes I can,and sometimes it's just giving
him space and for his ownnervous system to become more
regulated, and he's doing hisown work, and, you know, I do a
little bit with him, but I don'tknow that that's necessarily my
(35:29):
place, but as a partner, I canhelp to co regulate him, and
then I also can really triggerhim too.
Unknown (35:39):
I suppose that's true in all relationships, right?
Like
Laurie James (35:42):
we know people's buttons, if we want to push
them, we can't go there.
Unknown (35:48):
Well, you asked about a couple of tips, let's say so one
of the first things to do is tosort of think about this idea,
about finding your true self,about finding the love in you
because it is there. 100% all ofus have this core of love. Some
(36:09):
people relate that to spirit orthe universe or God, yeah, yeah,
so, but that love is the thingthat grounds us. And I love that
you said humans are meant to beconnected, and humans are meant
to be connected in a loving way,yeah, and we have become as as a
(36:30):
humanity, so we
Laurie James (36:32):
disconnected.
There's the word anddysregulated that too,
especially right now, yeah, so
Unknown (36:41):
we struggle to figure out how to treat each other well
and with love, and we have tolearn how to do that within
ourselves. So Bernard alwayssays something that I found
really viable and moving in thatwhen you look around the world
and you see the chaos and howoff the rails we continue to go
(37:03):
look inside yourself, we alsocarry a huge amount of chaos. I
mean, not all of us to the samelevel, of course, but to some
degree, what we are facinginside ourselves is what we see
outside. And if you can believethat, you can't help but want to
undo the trauma and get to thisspace where you're coming from
(37:25):
love, knowing you're lovable,knowing how to treat others with
love. And you know, as corny asit sounds, that's how we're
going to stop these wars. That'show we're going to, you know,
behave well and treat each otheras if we are equals and all
deserve to exist on a basiclevel, if your trauma is held in
your unconscious, and that ispretty well sealed off to most
(37:49):
of us, but there's an openingand you can get to it, why
wouldn't you experiment? Whywouldn't you try to go there? So
certainly, the very, very bestway to understand the
information that your dreamshold is to work with a therapist
who knows this work, and thereare very few of them at the
(38:09):
moment, we're hoping somedaythat Bernard's methodology will
be taught in schools ofpsychology, but we're not there
yet. But as a small step for anindividual human if you start to
buy into the fact that yourdreams are meaningful. They're
not just some weird thing thathappens to you on some nights
(38:30):
and not all nights. It'shappening every night. And you
say to yourself, Okay, I want toremember my dreams. And you sort
of settle in at night, and youask that of yourself, you may
start to remember some of yourdreams, and if you do, they're
sometimes fleeting, so the bestthing to do is to spend a moment
and write them down. And overthe course of having written
(38:53):
down a few dreams, you mightdiscover some commonalities,
like there's different thingsthat happen that create the same
fear in you, or there is thesame thing that happens that
creates an anger in you,
Laurie James (39:07):
right? Or you have the same reoccurring dream, yes,
yeah.
Unknown (39:11):
And why is that happening? And then, really, why
is that happening? What is thefeeling Can I think about things
in my past that have stirredthat same feeling, what were the
circumstances? And you can startto unpack some of the trauma by
getting to the source of wherethat began. Now it's obviously
(39:33):
hard for us to understand whatsort of trauma we may have had
in utero if we can't communicatewith our parents, or if we
didn't grow up with our birthparents like yourself, but
still, the the trauma can bepresent, like for example, you
mentioned maybe not feelingloved or not feeling worthy, and
that started in utero. If youwere to look at your dreams,
(39:54):
there would probably be manyscenarios where you found
yourself in a situation. Thatmay not be sort of very clear in
a material way, but if you spentsome time reviewing it, thinking
about it, feeling the feelings,you could get to that place of,
Oh, I get it. I can see inscenario, or after scenario, I'm
(40:16):
putting myself in a place whereI don't get love because I don't
deserve it, and then you can seehow you do that to yourself in
life, right
Laurie James (40:25):
by being with the wrong people or being in the
wrong relationships or the wrongfriend group, or maybe the wrong
career,
Unknown (40:36):
yes, yes and and even selling yourself out there is
this fabulous person. I'vealways wanted to be friends with
her, but you know what? I thinkshe's just too smart for me, or
she's too fun for me. So I'mjust, I'm not going to do it.
And that's not the case at all.
And I just it's reallydisturbing to me how often we
sell ourselves short. Maybe it'smore disturbing because that was
(40:59):
in sort of big in my past,
Laurie James (41:04):
yeah, well, but it's also scary, right? I mean,
it's scary to put ourselves outthere, the scary to feel
rejection, and so I think thatfear is what controls some of
those decisions, too, you know?
So it's the thoughts, it's thefear, all of that. But, you
know, oftentimes I talk aboutstretching the nervous system,
(41:26):
you know, let's stretchourselves, not stress ourselves.
Yes, in something that we'redoing, and when we're taking on
a new endeavor, or trying tomake new friends, or whatever it
is, it's stretch ourselvesenough, but don't stress
ourselves. Yes.
Unknown (41:44):
Oh, that's a lovely thing to remember. You're right.
You can't, sort of just jump in.
And we're behaving that waybecause we are protecting
ourselves like you say. We don'twant to put ourselves in a
position of being rejected inwhat we think is yet another
rejection when that's not reallythe reality of things. And
another thing that happens iswhen you kind of come to terms
(42:07):
with the fact that you'reoperating from a place that's
burdened by this trauma, oryou're carrying all kinds of
trash with you that's not yourtrash. I've been so busy
carrying all this trash. What amI going to do without it? You
know, now there's this big emptyspace. What falls in? Worse
trash, more garbage, betterstuff. I gotta tell you, it's
(42:28):
only better stuff.
Laurie James (42:31):
Yes, if you can recognize that and recognize the
trash from the treasure, I'llsay, and replace the trash with
treasure. Absolutely. You know,we talk about rewiring the
nervous system, rewiring thebrain by doing that, and it does
(42:51):
feel unfamiliar at first, butthe more you do it, then you
rewire, and then you're you'renot drawn to the trash anymore.
You're drawn to the treasure.
Unknown (43:02):
Yes, yes. And you don't have to have this sort of
unconscious conversation withyourself about worthy, not
worthy. Protect myself. Go forit. You begin to be able to feel
what is best for you. Becausenot everybody needs the same
thing. Not everybody's missingthe same thing,
Laurie James (43:23):
exactly. So as we come to a close, Cynthia, what's
one confession you'd like toshare with our listeners that we
haven't touched on? Ooh, a
Unknown (43:35):
confession? Well, this has to do with what I learned
from Bernard. I had no idea mostof my life that what I
considered to be love wasnothing but a giant fantasy that
I had built early on. As ateenager, I was in a
relationship that I won't gointo, but it was more than
(43:57):
unhealthy. But as a teenager, Ididn't have the skill to know
that, and I completely boughtinto what was going on. And
somehow in the back of my head,I turned this into the biggest
type of love that could exist.
And when it came torelationships, love
(44:17):
relationships, everythingunconsciously needed to compare
to that, and nothing could liveup to that. So I put myself in
that place, basically because myimprint told me that I wasn't
really very lovable, and so Ibecame that thing that couldn't
(44:39):
be loved by saying there wasthis greater love that nobody
could attain. So I would neverlet myself be loved by someone
honestly and through the courseof talking about our dreams
together, Bernard and I, again,he wasn't analyzing me. But as
you said, partners do decide.
(45:00):
Discuss the things that aretheir passions. When he first
started sharing with me, haveyou? Have you thought about
this? Is this maybe not reality?
I said, You're so wrong. I don'teven want to talk about it. I
was even angry, and it took agood deal of time, but I finally
came to know that that wasnothing but false, and when I
(45:21):
finally understood that I wasactually then even able to
wholly receive this love thatBernard had for me and I, prior
to that, I couldn't really lethim love me fully, because I
needed to be reserved. I neededto protect myself. Yeah,
Laurie James (45:42):
yeah, we all do some level of that at various
time. We do well. Thank you forsharing that. And so, how can
people find you and yourpodcast? And do you guys also
have a movie coming out too
Unknown (45:58):
well, thank you for bringing that up. There was a
documentary that was madeseveral years ago. So it has
been out. It's available on allthe platforms now, Amazon, et
cetera. It's called and nowlove. And it is about Bernard
and how he came to his theoryand what in his life transpired
to help him become a more lovingperson, so it's it's pretty
(46:23):
fascinating, and our podcast andnow love is available also on
all of the platforms, fromSpotify and YouTube and Amazon,
and you can also go to ourwebsite and now love.com and You
can link to any of thoseoutfits. Well,
Laurie James (46:42):
thank you, Cynthia, for this very rich
conversation and sharingBernard's work with all of our
listeners. And I look forward towatching his documentary and
learning more about this imprinttheory that he created.
Unknown (47:00):
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate our
conversation and learning moreabout what you do, too.
Laurie James (47:07):
Thank you for listening to this episode of
Confessions of a free bird. I'mgrateful to be in your ears and
hearts. If you're interested inbecoming a free bird, I'd love
to support you. Please check outmy website at Laurie james.com
to learn how we can worktogether, or to sign up for my
newsletter so you can receivetips on how to date and
(47:31):
relationship differently andultimately, find more freedom
and joy in your life. If youfound this podcast helpful,
please follow or subscribe, rateand review and share it with
friends so they can find morefreedom in their second or third
act, also until next time you.
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