May 9, 2025 • 55 mins
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What happens when a Juilliard-trained perfectionist faces chronic illness and complete physical breakdown? For Nathan Hirschaut, it became the doorway to a profound spiritual awakening that transformed his relationship with dance from an achievement-based practice to sacred medicine.
Nathan's story begins with childhood dance competitions and a single-minded focus that took him to the pinnacle of formal training. But beneath the technical excellence lurked a punishing inner critic that eventually led to collapse. "I was a major perfectionist, a massive control freak, and very hard on myself," Nathan shares with disarming honesty. "Take that equation and put it into the highest expectation dance school in the world, and you get a break."
That breaking point initiated what Nathan calls his "journey to the underworld" – a path deepened by his father's sudden death, the loss of his spiritual teacher, and eventually, a debilitating illness that left him bedridden for months. In his darkest moment, isolated and in excruciating pain, he reached the surrender that would change everything. "I was dealing with ideation at that point... I just didn't want to be alive in that body anymore."
What emerged from this crucible was Temple Dance – a practice Nathan now teaches alongside his partner Sah. Unlike performance-based dance focused on external validation, Temple Dance uses movement to release feelings without attachment to identity. "When we lose the possessiveness and grip of our identity, that's when freedom happens," Nathan explains. "The dance becomes joyful when we let go. That's when it becomes worship."
Drawing from Buddhist philosophy, somatic awareness, and his extensive movement background, Nathan guides others to discover what he calls "the vastly intelligent body" – one that knows exactly what movement it needs for healing. His work stands as powerful testimony that our greatest breakdowns often become our most profound breakthroughs, if we're willing to surrender.
FIND NATHAN: Instagram, Substack, Temple Dance L.A.
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CREDITS:
Introduction script: Jessica Tardy
Introduction mix and master: Ed Arnold
Theme Song: "Heart Light" by Jenee Halstead and Dave Brophy
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This podcast is presented solely for entertainment and education purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. We shall in no event be held liable to any party for any reason arising directly or indirectly for the use or interpretation of the information presented in this audio. Copyright 2024, Heart Light Media, LLC - All rights reserved.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jenee (00:06):
Welcome to the Heartlight Sessions, a podcast about
lightworking your way throughdark times.
I'm Jenee Halstead.
I'm a singer-songwriter,holistic vocal coach, intuitive
guide and plant medicinefacilitator.
I'm also a survivor ofchildhood abuse, autoimmune
issues and my 30s.
I'm on a lifelong healingjourney and autoimmune issues
and my 30s.
I'm on a lifelong healingjourney and, along the way, I
(00:28):
want to share the ideas andteachings that rock my world.
Every week on HeartlightSessions, I call in artists,
healers and thinkers to explorewhat's helped them live and
thrive from a heart-centeredplace, because the heart, it's
where the best things happen.
If you've ever wondered how tounlock your biggest
(00:51):
breakthroughs or how to comeback from that stuff that tried
to kill you, you know the stuffI'm talking about, the stuff
that's supposed to make youstronger.
Or if you've ever wondered howto just do you straight from the
heart, you're in the rightplace.
So join me, won't you?
Let's turn on that heart light.
Hello, hello, hello, hi, hi,hey.
(01:23):
I'm so happy, I'm so excitedabout this conversation.
I have Nathan Herschel with meand he is one of the most
beautiful dancers and I lovewatching you express channel
through movement.
He's teaching dance as aspiritual practice and he's
(01:46):
Juilliard, trained, trained Ilike the tagline.
It's trained in Juilliard,transformed in temples Exactly
20 years of movement experience.
So let's just dive right inwith what you're doing right now
and maybe we can kind of flowthe conversation from there.
Nathan (02:06):
I mean, my whole story and life has been the dance.
I found the dance when I wasseven.
I was watching my sister'sdance recital and a guy came on
and he wore these white longgloves and he was sort of doing
this Broadway routine and I wasjust completely enamored by it.
(02:29):
I came home and I could notstop dancing and so my mom was
like okay, we're going to puthim into the classes and it was
like one class a week.
The next week I was like inanother class.
The next month I was in fourclasses.
The next month I was in fourclasses.
The next month I was in eightclasses.
(02:51):
By the time I was 10 years old,I was competing.
By the time I was 12, I wascompeting internationally by the
time I was 15, I gotemancipated to move to Arizona
to live on my own and trainthere for two years in like the
best competitive dance school inthe country, and then I went to
Juilliard.
So my life was horse blindersdance.
(03:15):
I was a major perfectionist, amassive control freak and very
hard on myself, extremelycritical.
And so take that equation andthen put it into the highest
expectation dance school in theworld and you get a break.
(03:36):
You know, you get a completefracture of when I am not
achieving the perfection that Iexpect of myself.
I am not worthy, I'm not valuedand I don't value myself.
You know, and so I had a massivemoment of being like is this
(03:58):
why I do this?
yeah do I do this to be the best, because the original spark was
not that.
The original spark was there isa love and there is a joy, and
there is an experience beyondthe day-to-day life, an
experience we could say anecstatic experience that that
(04:22):
person was having, that I wasyearning for An expressive
experience, that I was yearningfor an expressive experience
that I was yearning for and um,and so I had a real moment and
that was the spiritual awakening, that was the turning point,
when I started to realize that Iwas not my identity, that had
been built up, that was thisperfect thing and had to be.
(04:44):
You know, make no mistakes,yeah.
Jenee (04:48):
Yeah.
So you've been writing a lotabout that lately and I'm
wondering when, because I feellike you've had several like
kind of initiations in the pastfew years.
But when was that that firstone, and did that coincide with
illness?
No or was there something earlyon earlier?
Nathan (05:07):
Yeah, so I was 18 when that first one happened and I
read Be here Now by Ram Dass andI started doing just basic
asanas and meditation.
And I had an amazing friend atschool who was a massive
inspiration for me spirituallyand you know we always have that
person who sort of is like theinitial hand into the path.
(05:31):
Bless them, bless them, blessthem, bless them, bless them.
And I started just learningthat you know, I was not my
thoughts and gaining thatspaciousness to be able to then
change.
(05:53):
And then I found Guru, jagat andKundalini Yoga and was studying
with her for six years.
You know very intimately a verycontroversial personality, but
she helped me tremendously.
Jenee (06:02):
I would not be the person that I was without her Me
either.
Nathan (06:07):
So I started I was at Juilliard and then I would
finish classes and go to Ramaand then go home.
So I was almost like doingsimultaneous schooling and
education, where I was gettingthis like very sophisticated
dance training and then I wasgetting this very sophisticated
spiritual training.
Jenee (06:25):
Yes.
Nathan (06:26):
That was kind of then like created the backbone to
what I do now.
But, so in 2019, I was gosh, Iwas 20 years old and my dad died
suddenly in like a freakaccident, and that was sort of
like the next catalyst, the nextinitiator.
(06:49):
I went to Egypt with my momjust as sort of a way to find
solace, and I went into theTemple of Philae, Isis's temple,
and I had a massive awakeningthere where I heard her say you
know, I am your mother and youare my son, and it brought tears
(07:14):
to my eyes.
I was sitting in betweenHarijivan and Guru Jagat the
sort of two teachers and theywere just like holding me in
this embrace as I was just likecompletely breaking down, and I
would say that was the pointwhere the healing journey really
started, where the deeper sortof you need to go into the
(07:37):
underworld now all of thesefractured pieces of yourself,
and it's no longer about justthe spiritual high right.
Jenee (07:46):
Which it is in the beginning, where, like I love
the spiritual path, I feel sogood and you're like searching
for that high all the time.
Nathan (07:55):
Yeah, then it became really a journey into the
underworld.
And then Guru Jagat died a yearor two after my dad died, and
then I got chronically ill withsort of a long COVID, you know
multivirus strep infection thatjust would not go away.
(08:19):
It was like I got sick in themonth in 2022, in like March,
april, just cold after coldafter cold, after flu, after
food poisoning, untilessentially I broke.
I had this massive migraine, Ihad shingles all over my body
and I mean I was overworking forsure.
Jenee (08:39):
I was not.
Nathan (08:41):
I was not living the life.
I am now where I was listeningto my body and following its
cues I was totally still incontrol freak.
I did not want to let go of myambition.
I was like, no, you know, I wasthis very ambitious kid.
I will be successful.
I will achieve all of my goals.
I will control my life.
I thought I was going to be achoreographer.
I thought I was going to godown this path in this very
(09:02):
specific way.
I still had so much resistanceto fully giving in to the Dharma
, to fully giving in to thedeeper purpose.
I really thought this otherlife was going to give me
everything I wanted, and likethe fame and the attention and
the recognition from theinstitutions and the art world,
(09:24):
it was so seductive to me.
I was like, oh, this is goingto make me whole.
This is going to like, bring methe salvation that I've been
looking for.
Little did I know, and we bothknow now that you know it's not
and the body knows actually somuch more about what we really
(09:44):
need.
Jenee (09:45):
Right.
Nathan (09:47):
And it was a two year journey with illness really of
massive fatigue, sometimes inmonths spent in bed.
I was pretty much in solitaryisolation, realized that I
didn't have true friends.
Jenee (10:02):
You know, everything was.
That's so hard.
Nathan (10:06):
Everything was about what I could get from my friends
, how they supported me in mycareer yeah, and that was then
when the deeper teachings reallystarted to settle in and I
ultimately had no choice.
It was like if you want to getout of this, you have to um,
meet these false gods and seethrough it.
Jenee (10:30):
Did you have a moment during that where you were just
on your knees, like where youfinally had that, that surrender
moment where you were like,okay, all right, I'm here, I'm
here for it, like that oh yeah,I for sure had the rock bottom.
Nathan (10:45):
I was.
My mom had kicked me out of myhouse, um, because I wasn't
following her medical advice,and so she said you can't live
here anymore and I'm not goingto financially support you.
And so I used my savingsaccount to get an Airbnb five
minutes from my mother's house,because I had no energy to go
(11:08):
anywhere.
I couldn't move, you know oh mygosh Went to this place was
completely alone, you know like,did not know, Like it was where
I grew up, but I left home whenI was 15.
So I didn't really have friendsin that area.
So I didn't really have friendsin that area and living there
(11:32):
alone for a month and justdealing with the obscene pain.
I deal with a facial paincondition and it was so extreme
and I one night just lost it andI was dealing with ideation at
that point.
Jenee (11:48):
I just lost it and I was dealing with ideation at that
point and I just didn't want tobe alive in that body anymore.
Nathan (11:51):
I was like the body was such a torturous experience
living in that body and I triedto make peace with it.
But the pain was so intense andI was really also in a place of
like that hyper independence,of just like I have to go
through this on my own.
I wasn't willing to get support, I wasn't getting like the
(12:11):
medication that I needed, andthen it just sort of crumbled
and I reached out to my friendand I was like look, if you want
me here, you have to tell menow.
And she did.
And then everything startedshifting when I started letting
people in and getting supportand getting help.
(12:33):
And we started doing three JoeDispenza meditations every day.
Jenee (12:37):
We would like get on Zoom .
Nathan (12:39):
She would get on every day with me like talk about a
friend.
It's totally saved my life,turned my life around.
40 days later was in acompletely different place.
Jenee (12:50):
Which meditations did you do?
Nathan (12:52):
I did body parts space in the morning, Then I did
generous present moment, Then Idid um.
What was the one I did at night?
Oh, the blessing of theblessings of the energy centers.
Jenee (13:02):
What was the one I did at night?
Oh, the blessing of the energycenters, blessings of the energy
centers, yeah, that changed me,my life.
I mean, my thyroid does go upand down, but the blessing of
the energy centers took mythyroid numbers way down and I
didn't stick with it, because ittakes a while.
But if you're chronically illlike that is an incredible
(13:26):
meditation.
Nathan (13:27):
You have to learn how to regulate your system and those
meditations gave me sort of theinitial, just to get out of that
crisis.
Jenee (13:37):
Yes.
Nathan (13:38):
Those meditations became the perfect stepping stone.
Jenee (13:41):
Yeah, when you start to reduce inflammation in the body,
you know, when you start toreduce inflammation in the body,
you know when you start toregulate, it's like then you can
actually start to like peerthrough the blinds and see.
You know, okay, there's somehope yeah, exactly and so from
there, after 40 days, what wasyour next step?
Nathan (14:04):
gosh.
Then it was um.
I started learning buddhistdharma and I went to land of the
medicine buddha and I workedand lived at a retreat center
for three months and wascontinuing to study buddhist
philosophy and budd psychologyand from that point then I
(14:28):
started working with abiochemist in Nashville.
I was finally humbled enough toaccept the help that had been
offered.
And also, when you're acceptinghelp, you are accepting
something beyond your control.
You're having to trustsomething outside of you, and my
(14:48):
trust was so broken that Ireally had to like restore that
trust, because I had tried a lotof different medical medium and
different sort of healingmodalities and they didn't work.
So I was very brokenhearted andkind of was like well,
nothing's worth it, likenothing's going to work.
(15:09):
Nothing's going to fix me.
I'm not going to heal, you know, it's very in that place of I
can't do it.
And then I went and I startedworking with this biochemist and
within four months my entirelife changed and my body was 70%
healed.
I had enough energy to move toLA.
(15:30):
And then, my first week in LA, Imet Saul, which is literally
going from living alone, sick inthe woods with like no friends
around, to like meeting this manwho was going to completely
change my entire reality.
(15:51):
So meeting him was like theboon at the end of the tunnel,
to be like there is someone whois so loving, who wants to work
with me and do this work, andsaw what saw did for me, because
he became the permission slipfor me to fully embrace myself
(16:15):
as a healer and as a spiritualteacher I have goosebumps yeah,
as at that point I was stillholding on to my identity as a
dancer from this sort of likeyou know concert dance world,
but it wasn't serving me at all.
It really was actually not thelife I wanted to live and I had
(16:37):
to fully give that up.
And that was so hard.
There was so much grief in thatthere was like so much loss.
There was so much of like did Ifail?
Am I?
Jenee (16:47):
a failure.
Nathan (16:48):
And it's like no, wait a second.
And so I saw the life that Saulwas living and I saw that he
was like I want to do this withyou, I don't want to do this
alone anymore and you're totallythe perfect person for it.
And I was like so resistant inthe beginning.
I was like no, I want to do myown thing, I don't want to work
together.
Jenee (17:10):
You know I want to.
Nathan (17:11):
I'm still in that control space and just
eventually I softened and I gavein and I was like wait, we had
the LA fires actually and weleft.
And that was the moment where Iwas like this life with Saw and
teaching the dance as aspiritual practice and as a
healing modality, this is such abetter life than anything that
(17:32):
the concert dance world couldgive me.
Jenee (17:34):
Like.
Nathan (17:35):
I'm so much happier, I'm so much healthier.
I just feel way better, I feelaligned, and so it's like
releasing.
That was like the mostliberating piece of my story
that is so beautiful.
Jenee (17:48):
I know we cling, it's so hard.
I was talking to my husband theother day about it too and I'm
like there's just remnants of methat are still kind of clinging
onto the side.
You know, of the wall but it'slike, but I actually let go a
long time ago.
You know, it's just, it's likeit does take a little bit of
time to sort of get it out ofyour system.
(18:10):
You know I'm being like I'mstill just wanting that
reflection from the, from themusic world, the song, you know,
but it's like, but I'm nothappy there.
Nathan (18:20):
Yeah.
Jenee (18:21):
I was never happy there.
You know, I had my moments, butyeah, it's just, I don't know,
(18:44):
like you're saying, there's this, this bigger universe and the
beautiful someone can like hopon and see you in like high art.
You know, I mean I I pouredthrough your videos today.
I was just like, oh, can't evenimagine having the opportunity
to learn from you, you know samefor you.
Nathan (19:03):
I mean, it's like that vocal training that you have it,
it, it, pieces of it come in.
You know, I haven't thrown thebaby up with the bath water.
I really loved learning Gaga um, which was the movement
language by Ohana Harin, and Igot to study with him personally
and uh, it it's still all ofthat wisdom that lives, lives in
(19:26):
me.
I think it's just like we haveto.
We have to go where we're meantto go and where we're planted
and where the doors are open,some people.
They're really able to do thehealing work in the industry, um
in the dance industry, in themusic industry, because for some
reason their aura is able tolike um to work in that space
(19:47):
yeah, but for me it was veryclear that I was like this, this
just there's so much frictionhere and I just need to go and
sort of do my own thing, but Iwould love to teach temple dance
at juilliard um so, juilliard,if you're watching knock, knock,
I think yeah, exactly, I thinkthat um artists having a
(20:07):
connection to their spirit isessential for an artist's
creative development, religionor belief system, and the fact
that that could happen throughdance or through music, or
through the medium that theseyoung dancers are trained in, I
(20:31):
think that it's essential fortheir creativity and I think
that it could benefit themtremendously.
So it's.
Jenee (20:37):
I think it's, it's a missing piece, and I think this
is actually the wave of thefuture, you know, because how
many dancers leave school andthey're just they're, they're
broken or they're just missingsomething?
They don't, they don'tunderstand, you know.
And it's also this thing aboutchanneling, which is such a big
(20:58):
part of the work you do, andit's part of the reason why I
ended up not going intoconservatory, even though I had
accepted and was withscholarship, was that I worked
intuitively and I wrote musicintuitively and I was worried
that I was going to lose that.
Now, someone like you, you gotall the tools and then through
(21:23):
that, you work, you channel, youknow which is the way to go,
but I just think we're.
We're at this time now where,like, those systems are kind of
falling apart and people arehungry for this, you know, for
these bigger needs, these, youknow.
(21:45):
It's like what can I bring intothis that supports me
emotionally, that isn't going tojust feed my ego.
Nathan (21:51):
Yeah, absolutely it's.
You can create, you can dance,you can sing to develop your ego
.
You know to, to make it bigger,to possess something.
These moves become my moves.
You know.
This song becomes my song andit's about me.
None of the dancing that I'mdoing or the dances that I'm
(22:13):
creating are about me.
They're actually a loss ofidentity.
They're about creating aspaciousness where I can.
When we lose the possessivenessand the grip of our identity,
that's when freedom happens.
That's when we can move, we canchange, we can be everything at
(22:33):
once, and that's, to me,infinitely more fulfilling than
trying to like narrow myselfinto this one dot and owning it.
You know that's holding on,it's dancing to hold on.
But the dance work that I do isdancing to learn how to let go,
and that is about trusting yourbody.
When you learn how to trust andfollow your body, when you
(22:57):
learn that you can use movementas a way to interrupt your
thinking and that life is not aconcept, life is not in our mind
, life is an experience, that'swhen that's, to me, infinitely
more fulfilling.
Jenee (23:15):
Yeah, I mean I was thinking about your video under
the tree and how you werefeeling, you know, down, and
this is a perfect example.
And you have the earphones on,you go to the tree and you're,
you know you can actually tellthe story.
That it's you know.
Things aren't really moving.
Nathan (23:33):
Yeah.
Jenee (23:34):
And you're trying to get there and we get stuff forcing.
You're kind of forcing it andthen you take the earphones off
and I don't know if you want totalk about this, because it's a
beautiful video.
Nathan (23:53):
Yeah, we get stuck.
I say life is movement, life ischange, and death it's not
actually death as we know it.
Death is stagnation, death isfixation.
That's when we're no longeralive, we're trapped in an
affixed sense of self.
And when we're trapped in afixed sense of self.
And when we're trapped in afixed sense of self.
That sense of self it also hasall these stories and all these
traumas and it creates thisparalysis.
(24:13):
We all feel that sometimes, whena trauma is reignited by
something, we get absolutelyparalyzed and we can't move.
It's like I cannot get out ofbed.
I feel completely stuck in thissensation and a lot of times
then we go to distract, we go tonumb.
Well, how can I sort of take mymind out of this?
(24:36):
How can I sort of distractmyself?
Because I don't want to meetthis feeling.
This feeling is too big for meto meet.
But when we go to the somaticdance floor, the spiritual dance
floor, we're using dance as away to invite change, to let go
of that fixation.
(24:56):
We're releasing thepossessiveness and the story and
the identity that attachesitself to all of this pain, all
of this trauma.
We're releasing it.
We're letting those feelings go.
So we feel the feelings, but wefeel them as an act of
generosity.
I give these feelings up.
I no longer possess thesefeelings.
I set these feelings free.
I set my stagnation, myfixation free.
(25:21):
You know, I release it throughmovement.
And when we start to move, evenif we're going to be less
philosophical or spiritual aboutit, when we start to move,
things change, things move.
It's that simple, right.
You don't have to think thatmuch about it.
You can just get up and you canjust start to move.
Move your shoulders, move yourneck, move your spine, move your
(25:41):
hips, move where it feels stuck.
Move your spine, move your hips, move where it feels stuck
Right.
And as you start to move, thenit's like oh, that thing that I
was just so fixated on, thatfelt so paralyzing, sort of just
disappears.
Jenee (25:55):
Yeah.
Nathan (25:55):
And I'm okay, you know because, we're supposed to move,
Babies move, they move, theycry.
They feel that everything's inthe present moment, and so I'm
yeah, I'm passionate about justgetting things moving.
Jenee (26:10):
Yeah, and I think people get hung up on like the fear of
the feeling and they don't wantto feel the feeling because it
feels so daunting andoverwhelming.
And the fact of the matter andthe truth of it is, if you go
into the feeling entirely, it'sactually much less painful.
(26:31):
You can move through in onesetting.
You can move through a feelingthat you've been holding on to
your whole life, you know, andespecially with movement.
Nathan (26:44):
Yeah.
Yeah absolutely Suffering is notcaused by what is.
It's caused by our resistanceand reaction to what it is.
That's, you know, buddhistphilosophy 101, right, and you
start to just ingrain that intoit.
Oh wait, I can be with what isand I can actually see through.
I had this moment yesterdaywhere I get overwhelmed really
(27:05):
easily, especially after, like,dealing with neurological pain
and chronic health issues.
Overwhelm is like the thingthat takes me out, like it's
just like when I start to getoverwhelmed, I'm just like I
lose all my regulation.
I'm like totally like blackedout and I realized, like
overwhelm what it does itactually changes our senses.
(27:27):
You know, trauma and theseemotions, they change our senses
, so we're not seeing properly,we're not smelling properly,
we're not tasting properly,we're totally sort of um warped
into, uh, an experience.
That is a non-reality and infact it's not actually here.
But what I've been noticingafter really working, doing this
work, is that I can just sortof like feel that and then I can
(27:51):
just like look around my roomand be like wait, everything's
fine, exist here in this timeand space, that.
And then I can like look atdetails and they root me into
the present moment.
(28:11):
I'm like I'm okay, everything'sokay, and I can release this
story, because this story is notit's a protective mechanism,
but it's actually keeping mefrom changing, from moving, from
evolving.
Jenee (28:25):
Yeah, yeah, the orient.
The orienting is huge, you know, bringing yourself back into
the present moment, lookingaround the room and just being
aware of just even having enoughspace to be aware.
With that, with orienting, youknow, it's like to be able to
get that wedge where you're like, oh okay, this story is, you
(28:50):
know, it's actually not thetruth and it's not even the
present moment.
Nathan (28:54):
Yeah.
Jenee (28:55):
You know, but that's that can be huge for people.
You know it can be the nervoussystem.
Dysregulation can be sodaunting.
Yeah, you know.
Nathan (29:04):
Yeah, and dysregulation can be so daunting.
Yeah, you know, yeah, when you,when the dance is a place where
we feel our feelings, and wefeel the feelings that, the
baggage of feelings, you knowall of the past feelings,
experiences and sensations, theylive in our bodies.
If we, if they have not beenfelt, they have been repressed
into our bodies and so as wemove, sometimes a certain
(29:25):
movement, you'll just feel,something will click and a whole
feeling will start to comethrough you, and then we just
remind ourselves that thisfeeling is not ours to possess
anymore.
Right, that's the intentionwhen we go to the dance floor is
.
let me set this feeling free,and as I set this feeling free,
(29:48):
I set myself free.
Jenee (29:50):
That is profound.
We have to stop possessingfeelings.
Nathan (29:56):
Feelings have nothing to do with an I, they have nothing
to do with an identity orpersonality.
When we attach an I or a Y to afeeling, then we possess it and
we hold on to it.
But the joy is not in holdingon, the joy is in letting go.
That's what we realize throughthe dance.
(30:17):
The dance becomes joyful whenwe let go.
That's when it becomes worship.
That's when it becomes worshipthat when it, that's when it
becomes devotional, then thedance, where it's a, it's a
celebration of life.
And what is life?
Impermanence?
Life is we can't hold on toanything.
Yeah, so we talk aboutsurrender in the dance.
(30:39):
Surrender is not an act, it'san, it's an unaction, it's an
act of undoing.
Everything is impermanent.
That is the truth.
So we just recognize that andthen we start to let this moment
dance us and the next momentdance us and the next moment
dance us, and then we're in thatflow of change, of impermanence
(31:02):
, and that gives us this abilityto befriend change and to learn
how to trust life and to learnhow to see that when we can let
things go, good things come.
Jenee (31:12):
Absolutely.
I want to walk back a littlebit to you finding Buddhism and
how that happened, and it reallyso much informs what you're
doing now.
Nathan (31:24):
Yeah, buddhism was sort of something that Guruji was
teaching us all, but it sort ofwas like you know secretly.
Jenee (31:34):
It was a little crouched behind yeah.
Nathan (31:37):
Yeah, my friend Sita, who I think you probably know as
well.
Jenee (31:44):
Yep, Sita who.
Nathan (31:45):
I think you probably know as well, yep, she was a
supporter and an advocate of methrough the chronic illness
journey and she kept telling me,like, learn Buddhism, learn
Buddhism, because that's reallybeen her path and I sort of was
resistant to it.
And then I gave in and I readthis book called Dharma Art by
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and Iwas just like, oh yep, this is
(32:08):
it.
And it was really actually veryprofound book for me because it
was about sort of decolonizingthe idea of you as an artist
being an identity as like aseparate identity and and
realizing that like art is inevery moment.
(32:30):
Art is in the way that we dosomething, it's in our style,
it's in the way we make our bed,it's in every moment there's
beauty, it's walking the beautypath.
And so it helped me sort oflike separate, oh, art is what
happens when I'm in a dancestudio versus when I'm here in
this present moment.
And that was very freeingbecause I was like, okay, well,
(32:52):
I can't really dance right now,I can't really make my art in
the way that I have, but I canlive an artistic life, and that
was really beautiful.
But yeah, the Buddhistphilosophy to me it's just, I'm
on a deep quest for truth andfor illumination and for
enlightenment and I have beenfor a long time.
(33:16):
We see these little trickles ofit even in our childhood the
questions and the curiosity, andstudying Buddhism became a very
sort of concrete way to explorethat more.
Jenee (33:31):
Yeah, that deep, that deep hunger and the deep
spiritual seeking.
You know, I think I I had thatsince I popped out of the womb,
you know, and was always likewhy and what?
Nathan (33:42):
And you know, yeah, I mean for me realizing, like,
what is the root of suffering?
Right, and does there have tobe suffering?
Because I was suffering so muchand for me I was just like the.
What brought me, I think,really to Buddhism was how do I
suffer less?
Yeah, and the the.
(34:02):
The heart of the teachings isis that, you know, our suffering
is caused by attachment,aversion and ignorance, which is
basically trying to find a wayto escape reality as it is.
And all of the Buddhistteachings just are saying what
all of the somatics people aresaying, are saying what everyone
is saying, which is the presentmoment is all we have, and it's
(34:26):
actually so beautiful.
If we can come into this momentand we can meet this moment as
it is.
We can see that there's like aninherent beauty and enlightened
quality to it, and finding a wayto take, you know, these
binaries out of our mind, thislike pain, pleasure, good, bad
(34:51):
and just see something withequanimity, became like a way
for me to be in the experienceof pain and acknowledge the
suffering that I was having, butsort of not double down on top
of it, not create more sufferingfrom that, and then from that
place to like see that there canactually be beauty in this
(35:13):
right.
And oftentimes we see that oncewe get through the experience
we're like oh yeah, there wasthis reason for it and there was
this divine orchestration.
But even being inside of it,you can see sort of the ways
that, oh, because I'm in painand because I'm suffering, I'm
getting to practice greaterequanimity, I'm getting to learn
about reality as it is, I'mgetting to meet my traumas, I'm
(35:36):
getting to heal in all of theseways and reminding yourself so
that, especially when your mindis really in the gutter of this
sucks, everything sucks.
I'm complaining all the time.
Jenee (35:46):
Yeah, all the time, yeah, yeah yeah, um just can help you
.
Nathan (35:48):
Like it's mind training.
You know lojong, you take a,you change your perspective on
the situation yeah, hmm, I'mjust sitting with all of this.
Jenee (36:02):
It's really beautiful, it's profound.
I want to talk about the recentkind of lessons you had posted
you know, 12 lessons that Ilearned through somatic movement
this week and talk a little bitabout somatics more semantics
(36:27):
more.
Nathan (36:28):
And yeah, the body of work of semantics was totally
introduced to me by saw and saw.
Learned semantics not through,you know, peter levine and um
and gabor mate, but he learnedthat through buddhism.
Yes, and one of his famousquotes and posts is you know,
semantics wasn't created in the70s by this guy named Peter
Levine, and it was created bythe Buddha 2500 years ago by
(36:48):
brown people.
You know, the word somaticsitself is a colonized word and
that's like oh gosh.
You know, like we, we thinkeverything is new.
But but it's not, but the workthat he's done has been just
profoundly influential andinspiring to me in terms of
(37:13):
learning how to feel yourfeelings without a story, and to
me then I was like, oh, that'slearning how to feel your
feelings without an identity.
So we've talked a little bitabout that and just I think he's
just platformed me, he'schampioned me and he's given me
the stage to be able to do whatI have been doing for a long
(37:37):
time, just sort of on my own,and through these conversations
he's giving me language also forthings of oh, that's a trance
state.
You know, trance state issomething that we practice.
What is trance state right?
It's when you start to move andyour thinking sort of goes away
(38:02):
and you're just in the movement.
Jenee (38:04):
Yes.
Nathan (38:04):
And then, because you're in the no self, you sort of
have all of this oracularinformation, you get these
psychic visions, you get thiswisdom that comes into you, and
then you come back into yourbody and you're like wait, how
do I know these?
Jenee (38:20):
things, yeah, yes, Like what?
Nathan (38:21):
How do I know these things?
But because you're opening upto that interdependent field,
that information can start tocome to you.
It's yours, it's available tous and the information in our
body in our blood in our bones.
The dances that we haveforgotten but that live sort of
(38:41):
in our history can start to comeout Even.
You know, people can be like 1%African and they can like find
themselves doing this Africandance and they're like I never
studied African dance.
That's such a great example ofthe body having all of this
intelligence and information andways that we can sort of
(39:02):
understand that we're so muchbigger than this myopic self
we've believed ourselves to be,and that's very inspiring, like
pragmatically.
What that can do for you is itcan change your story.
You get that embodiedexperience that I'm more than
what I believed to be Like.
Life is not my assumption ofwhat life is.
(39:23):
Life is something likemysterious and ineffable and
that sort of creates thiscuriosity and this like
excitement to wake up every dayand see what can I discover.
One of the massive things thatI ask people after every session
is what did you discover?
Because we're trying to go intothe unknown.
One of the things of my somaticpost was get uncomfortable,
(39:50):
like when you are uncomfortable,it's a great sign because
you're learning something new,and that's something that I try
to, you know really get peopleto learn.
Jenee (40:03):
When I see you dancing, I feel like you are there, You're
in that space that createsgreat art, that full let go that
I think every true artist wantsthat.
When I see you, I'm like I wantthat for me, but on stage
(40:26):
behind a microphone.
Nathan (40:27):
Yeah.
Jenee (40:27):
You can recognize it and you know the irony of it is like
.
Nathan (40:32):
getting there requires that that full release, that
that the mind you know it's alsolike about a deep intimacy and
honesty with yourself, I thinkjust to be like all of the like
things that I'm holding up, allof the masks and the things I'm
pretending to, you know thespell of being pretty or perfect
(40:54):
, or having my shit together allthe time, that it's like I'm
willing to sort of expose allthat and then, when I expose all
that, there's like this deeperintimacy and well of creativity
that can start to come through.
Jenee (41:07):
I've been thinking a lot about the mask.
I wrote about it yesterdaybecause I'm you know, starting
to teach women voice in a waythat I mean, I've been teaching
women voice this in a similarway as the movement, but I'm
taking it to another level nowand I've been thinking so much
about the mask.
You know and how difficult thatis oftentimes to put that down
(41:34):
you but there is.
If you really are hungry forbeing seen, it does really
require.
Nathan (41:51):
You know that that step that can be so terrifying yeah
you know of dropping that maskpartnership has taught me this a
lot, because you can't hidefrom the person that you love
and sort of there's nowhere togo.
Like when you're alone andyou're on your own.
It's like you can sort ofescape and be, hidden and like
(42:13):
when we go to all of these weirdplaces on our own.
Jenee (42:17):
It's like all of our weird little habits and things.
Nathan (42:20):
Like nobody knows about all our little secrets.
On the spiritual path path,there's not really room for
secrets like those are all theways we're still sort of
possessing and holding on ourterritory.
You know, yeah, um, and deeptantric partnership teaches us
that like we have to expose allof that.
So, like all of my addictions,like the porn addiction that
(42:41):
I've had till I'm like since Iwas like 12, I'm like totally
exposed and like facing, likehaving to move through, so me
being met with like those honesteyes and those eyes that are,
like you know, you can't hide.
I think that's also like howcan we approach our creative
practice, our dance, our, our,our singing, with like that kind
(43:05):
of brutal honesty?
Um, yeah, because oftentimespeople are like well, I don't
have anything to say, well, it'slike you, you do and you just
have to like be very you have tomeet yourself in that
uncomfortable place yes um, andthen it's like then there's like
a lot of inspiration there.
Jenee (43:27):
Yeah, it's so interesting because I I went through
menopause early because of mythyroid and um when I was 40,
and you know I'm starting toexperience some of the
difficulties of of what canhappen when you go through those
kind of hormone shifts, and oneis that I've lost like a huge
(43:48):
range in my voice.
I've lost high range anddramatically, like quickly.
You know, it was like literallyovernight.
And at the same time I was myhusband and I serve a medicine
and we I guide people throughtheir journey with my voice and
(44:12):
I, through that, had found, I'mfinding this other way you know
because I was.
there was so much judgmentaround the loss of tone and
quality and all of a sudden Ican't like stay on a note where
I mean my whole life has been myvoice, you know, and I think
(44:35):
you can identify with that, andand so what?
what I've come to realize inthis is it's taking me deeper
and deeper and deeper into theshamanic Um, I guess I would say
shamanic cause that's what itis for me Um elements and
(44:56):
practice of like what is behindwhat I'm doing, what is, what is
the sound current and what ismy intentionality behind what
I'm moving, you know, and thenand then, like none of that
stuff matters yeah it doesn'tmatter if I'm cracking, it
(45:17):
doesn't matter if I can't hold.
Oh my god, it's gorgeousbecause it's human.
Nathan (45:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, break the spell ofpretty perfect, have all your
shit together.
We make people dancechaotically and ugly, and we're
like, you know, make, make facesand stick your belly out, stick
your your butt out, and youknow, do and slap yourself.
(45:44):
And then yeah and uh, becausethat that that narrow idea of
like what beautiful sound is orwhat beautiful movement is is,
um, is really limiting andreally like, actually very harsh
on ourselves and so, like youwere saying, it's like actually
(46:06):
seeing so much beauty in thecrack and in the like, the rasp,
and in the moment where, like,you didn't sleep and you show up
to your work or whatever andyou're on social media and
you're trying to say somethingwise, it's like all the ways
that we sort of want to hide andbecome this like perfect
version of ourselves that otherpeople will approve of, but
(46:30):
instead just like showing up inthe vulnerability of like.
this is where I am.
This is the human experience.
And wisdom is not found in likethe pretty, perfect, beautiful.
It's actually found in like theraw, real ugly.
And I would say same withhealing.
You, you know, healing is like afrequency of acceptance yeah um
, not a frequency of having yourshit together all the time, not
(46:53):
a frequency of eating the rightmeal at every moment.
Um, healing is is.
To me, it's been a journeyabout surrendering control and
learning how, like when myboyfriend messes up my plans or
when you know things didn't gothe way that I wanted it to go
Like how do I, how do I meetthat?
(47:13):
With compassion and kindness.
So I love that and I think someof the beautiful, most
beautiful voices we've heard arethe voices that, like they move
truth, not with beauty exactly,yes, yeah, I agree 100 yeah,
that's powerful is thereanything on your sticky note
(47:38):
there that we didn't cover?
I think one thing I do want tosay is that your body is, like,
vastly intelligent, and it knowsexactly what movement it needs.
It knows exactly what sound itneeds, and so when we go into
our body and move from a placeof when we really move for
(47:59):
ourself, when we move as our ownmedicine, we know exactly what
to give ourselves, and that'sempowering.
Nobody has to teach you this.
Actually, your body alreadyknows it, and so I try to remind
myself and everybody of thatbefore every practice, that we
can actually sit here and we canconjure the body, give us an
(48:23):
image of how you want to movetoday, of how you want to feel
today.
You know of what feelings needto be released today, and we can
sort of like we can even feelit before we even do anything.
Um, and so your body is yourauthority, um, and I think it's
really important that,especially for those of us that
(48:45):
have been trained ininstitutions, or all of us that
are socially conditioned to sortof follow the external
authority, that we really remindourselves that our bodies, our
voices are our authorities, andwhen we listen to them, they
give us exactly what we needexactly what we need.
Jenee (49:10):
That's so beautiful.
It's food for the soul and thebody.
Nathan (49:12):
You know this is, this is the temple, and once you
start to like let your body lead, it will take you places you
could have never imagined.
I mean, I will do movementsthat I'm like, how did I just do
that?
And it was just following mybody.
And when I was fully in like adevotional space of like letting
(49:33):
go to my body, let my body lead.
My body knows what it needs.
I'll like stretch in a way thatI'm like whoa.
That I'm like whoa, you know,because I'm no longer in sort of
the mental contraction of whatis possible, what is good, what
is bad.
I'm going into that unknown,into that mystery.
(49:54):
I know you do this too in yourchanneling?
Jenee (49:58):
Yes, for sure.
Yeah, this is really excitingstuff it is.
Nathan (50:01):
It's like I said, this is really exciting stuff.
Jenee (50:03):
It is.
It's like I said this is it,this is where we're going.
I think, as a planet, this iswhat we need.
This is part of likedecolonizing, you know, this is
part of healing and de-thawingand de-numbing.
Nathan (50:23):
Yeah and de-thawing and de-numbing.
And you know, yeah, it's like weget validation through
possessing things Like that'swhat our culture is about, like
the more that I can possess, themore territory, the more land,
the more success, the morepeople, the more customers I can
possess.
Then that builds this enormousego that then gets fed off of
(50:45):
this insatiable greed and wethink that, you know, that is
what is going to save us, thatis what is going to give us the
juice, but it's not, and I thinkpeople are waking up to that
that this is not why am I doingthis?
This is not giving me what Iactually want.
And so then, when we start tomove into the body, into nature,
(51:10):
and we start to into thegoddess, you know, which has
been a profound part of my pathof as a devotee of Isis we start
to uncover, like, a muchgreater joy and pleasure through
surrender not through gainingterritory, but through
(51:30):
surrendering all territory.
When you become no one, youbecome everything and everyone,
and all of that becomes yoursand not yours at all.
And it just gets to move throughyou and you become that free
vessel for all of that.
That's the greatest gift, it'sthe greatest pleasure, that's
what we pray to as a priest, asa priestess, as a devotee every
(51:51):
day.
You know it's like.
May I be the servant of themagnitude of the universe.
And when I sing this song orwhen I dance this dance, may I
allow the powers of the universeand those that are maybe not
spoken for.
This is where we can alsobecome an advocate on behalf of
(52:13):
nature, an advocate on behalf ofthe voices that have been
oppressed.
We can let those channelthrough us and then our dances
and our songs become forces ofchange.
Jenee (52:24):
Reach yeah, reach yeah.
Nathan (52:27):
Yeah, thank you so much.
Jenee (52:29):
Thank you so much.
This was a beautifulconversation.
I feel so like lit up and justfilled up.
I'm curious where people findyou, how they can come and dance
with you.
Nathan (52:42):
Yeah, people find you how they can come and dance with
you.
Yeah, so my method that is aburgeoning method, but it's been
deep in me for so long iscalled temple dance, and it's
about bringing back the dance asworshiping the powers of the
cosmos, and through our danceswe celebrate the loss of self,
(53:07):
the death, the awe, the beauty,the chaos.
Dance as a way to become apriest or priestess of change.
So I'm teaching this alongsidemy partner who teaches saw
method somatic activated healingin LA on April 28th.
(53:30):
I don't know when this will belaunched, but we're teaching it
all the time.
We're going to be teaching itevery month.
So come do a temple dance class.
There's also a free class in myInstagram bio.
My Instagram is NathanHirschhout.
Nathan N-A-T-H-A-N.
Hirschhout H-I-R-S-C-H-A-U-T.
Jenee (53:48):
Oh, I said your name wrong.
I have to fix that at thebeginning.
Nathan (53:51):
Oh, don't worry about it .
I said Hershout so, oh, okay,it sounded similar enough.
Okay, yeah, it's okay.
So yeah, come DM me and um andlet's meet and dance together.
Jenee (54:06):
Love it.
Um, I will post your sub stackand all the places they can find
you, and I'm just so gratefulfor this conversation.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, yeah.
Yeah, the Heartlight Sessionspodcast is executive produced
and hosted by me, janae Halstead.
(54:28):
It's edited, mixed and masteredby me too, and that theme song
you hear, it's called Heartlightand, yep, you guessed it, it's
from my record.
Disposable Love.
Got questions about a certainhealing modality or about
heart-centered healing, or maybeyou just need some advice on
life, love or creativity.
Send it my way, email me atletters at heartlightpodcastcom.
(54:49):
Until next time, I'm JanaeHalstead, and thanks for
listening to Heartlight Sessions.
Thousand volts of sunshine.
Welcome to the Heartlight Sessions, a podcast about
lightworking your way throughdark times.
I'm Jenee Halstead.
I'm a singer-songwriter,holistic vocal coach, intuitive
guide and plant medicinefacilitator.
I'm also a survivor ofchildhood abuse, autoimmune
issues and my 30s.
I'm on a lifelong healingjourney and autoimmune issues
and my 30s.
I'm on a lifelong healingjourney and, along the way, I
(00:28):
want to share the ideas andteachings that rock my world.
Every week on HeartlightSessions, I call in artists,
healers and thinkers to explorewhat's helped them live and
thrive from a heart-centeredplace, because the heart, it's
where the best things happen.
If you've ever wondered how tounlock your biggest
(00:51):
breakthroughs or how to comeback from that stuff that tried
to kill you, you know the stuffI'm talking about, the stuff
that's supposed to make youstronger.
Or if you've ever wondered howto just do you straight from the
heart, you're in the rightplace.
So join me, won't you?
Let's turn on that heart light.
Hello, hello, hello, hi, hi,hey.
(01:23):
I'm so happy, I'm so excitedabout this conversation.
I have Nathan Herschel with meand he is one of the most
beautiful dancers and I lovewatching you express channel
through movement.
He's teaching dance as aspiritual practice and he's
(01:46):
Juilliard, trained, trained Ilike the tagline.
It's trained in Juilliard,transformed in temples Exactly
20 years of movement experience.
So let's just dive right inwith what you're doing right now
and maybe we can kind of flowthe conversation from there.
Nathan (02:06):
I mean, my whole story and life has been the dance.
I found the dance when I wasseven.
I was watching my sister'sdance recital and a guy came on
and he wore these white longgloves and he was sort of doing
this Broadway routine and I wasjust completely enamored by it.
(02:29):
I came home and I could notstop dancing and so my mom was
like okay, we're going to puthim into the classes and it was
like one class a week.
The next week I was like inanother class.
The next month I was in fourclasses.
The next month I was in fourclasses.
The next month I was in eightclasses.
(02:51):
By the time I was 10 years old,I was competing.
By the time I was 12, I wascompeting internationally by the
time I was 15, I gotemancipated to move to Arizona
to live on my own and trainthere for two years in like the
best competitive dance school inthe country, and then I went to
Juilliard.
So my life was horse blindersdance.
(03:15):
I was a major perfectionist, amassive control freak and very
hard on myself, extremelycritical.
And so take that equation andthen put it into the highest
expectation dance school in theworld and you get a break.
(03:36):
You know, you get a completefracture of when I am not
achieving the perfection that Iexpect of myself.
I am not worthy, I'm not valuedand I don't value myself.
You know, and so I had a massivemoment of being like is this
(03:58):
why I do this?
yeah do I do this to be the best, because the original spark was
not that.
The original spark was there isa love and there is a joy, and
there is an experience beyondthe day-to-day life, an
experience we could say anecstatic experience that that
(04:22):
person was having, that I wasyearning for An expressive
experience, that I was yearningfor an expressive experience
that I was yearning for and um,and so I had a real moment and
that was the spiritual awakening, that was the turning point,
when I started to realize that Iwas not my identity, that had
been built up, that was thisperfect thing and had to be.
(04:44):
You know, make no mistakes,yeah.
Jenee (04:48):
Yeah.
So you've been writing a lotabout that lately and I'm
wondering when, because I feellike you've had several like
kind of initiations in the pastfew years.
But when was that that firstone, and did that coincide with
illness?
No or was there something earlyon earlier?
Nathan (05:07):
Yeah, so I was 18 when that first one happened and I
read Be here Now by Ram Dass andI started doing just basic
asanas and meditation.
And I had an amazing friend atschool who was a massive
inspiration for me spirituallyand you know we always have that
person who sort of is like theinitial hand into the path.
(05:31):
Bless them, bless them, blessthem, bless them, bless them.
And I started just learningthat you know, I was not my
thoughts and gaining thatspaciousness to be able to then
change.
(05:53):
And then I found Guru, jagat andKundalini Yoga and was studying
with her for six years.
You know very intimately a verycontroversial personality, but
she helped me tremendously.
Jenee (06:02):
I would not be the person that I was without her Me
either.
Nathan (06:07):
So I started I was at Juilliard and then I would
finish classes and go to Ramaand then go home.
So I was almost like doingsimultaneous schooling and
education, where I was gettingthis like very sophisticated
dance training and then I wasgetting this very sophisticated
spiritual training.
Jenee (06:25):
Yes.
Nathan (06:26):
That was kind of then like created the backbone to
what I do now.
But, so in 2019, I was gosh, Iwas 20 years old and my dad died
suddenly in like a freakaccident, and that was sort of
like the next catalyst, the nextinitiator.
(06:49):
I went to Egypt with my momjust as sort of a way to find
solace, and I went into theTemple of Philae, Isis's temple,
and I had a massive awakeningthere where I heard her say you
know, I am your mother and youare my son, and it brought tears
(07:14):
to my eyes.
I was sitting in betweenHarijivan and Guru Jagat the
sort of two teachers and theywere just like holding me in
this embrace as I was just likecompletely breaking down, and I
would say that was the pointwhere the healing journey really
started, where the deeper sortof you need to go into the
(07:37):
underworld now all of thesefractured pieces of yourself,
and it's no longer about justthe spiritual high right.
Jenee (07:46):
Which it is in the beginning, where, like I love
the spiritual path, I feel sogood and you're like searching
for that high all the time.
Nathan (07:55):
Yeah, then it became really a journey into the
underworld.
And then Guru Jagat died a yearor two after my dad died, and
then I got chronically ill withsort of a long COVID, you know
multivirus strep infection thatjust would not go away.
(08:19):
It was like I got sick in themonth in 2022, in like March,
april, just cold after coldafter cold, after flu, after
food poisoning, untilessentially I broke.
I had this massive migraine, Ihad shingles all over my body
and I mean I was overworking forsure.
Jenee (08:39):
I was not.
Nathan (08:41):
I was not living the life.
I am now where I was listeningto my body and following its
cues I was totally still incontrol freak.
I did not want to let go of myambition.
I was like, no, you know, I wasthis very ambitious kid.
I will be successful.
I will achieve all of my goals.
I will control my life.
I thought I was going to be achoreographer.
I thought I was going to godown this path in this very
(09:02):
specific way.
I still had so much resistanceto fully giving in to the Dharma
, to fully giving in to thedeeper purpose.
I really thought this otherlife was going to give me
everything I wanted, and likethe fame and the attention and
the recognition from theinstitutions and the art world,
(09:24):
it was so seductive to me.
I was like, oh, this is goingto make me whole.
This is going to like, bring methe salvation that I've been
looking for.
Little did I know, and we bothknow now that you know it's not
and the body knows actually somuch more about what we really
(09:44):
need.
Jenee (09:45):
Right.
Nathan (09:47):
And it was a two year journey with illness really of
massive fatigue, sometimes inmonths spent in bed.
I was pretty much in solitaryisolation, realized that I
didn't have true friends.
Jenee (10:02):
You know, everything was.
That's so hard.
Nathan (10:06):
Everything was about what I could get from my friends
, how they supported me in mycareer yeah, and that was then
when the deeper teachings reallystarted to settle in and I
ultimately had no choice.
It was like if you want to getout of this, you have to um,
meet these false gods and seethrough it.
Jenee (10:30):
Did you have a moment during that where you were just
on your knees, like where youfinally had that, that surrender
moment where you were like,okay, all right, I'm here, I'm
here for it, like that oh yeah,I for sure had the rock bottom.
Nathan (10:45):
I was.
My mom had kicked me out of myhouse, um, because I wasn't
following her medical advice,and so she said you can't live
here anymore and I'm not goingto financially support you.
And so I used my savingsaccount to get an Airbnb five
minutes from my mother's house,because I had no energy to go
(11:08):
anywhere.
I couldn't move, you know oh mygosh Went to this place was
completely alone, you know like,did not know, Like it was where
I grew up, but I left home whenI was 15.
So I didn't really have friendsin that area.
So I didn't really have friendsin that area and living there
(11:32):
alone for a month and justdealing with the obscene pain.
I deal with a facial paincondition and it was so extreme
and I one night just lost it andI was dealing with ideation at
that point.
Jenee (11:48):
I just lost it and I was dealing with ideation at that
point and I just didn't want tobe alive in that body anymore.
Nathan (11:51):
I was like the body was such a torturous experience
living in that body and I triedto make peace with it.
But the pain was so intense andI was really also in a place of
like that hyper independence,of just like I have to go
through this on my own.
I wasn't willing to get support, I wasn't getting like the
(12:11):
medication that I needed, andthen it just sort of crumbled
and I reached out to my friendand I was like look, if you want
me here, you have to tell menow.
And she did.
And then everything startedshifting when I started letting
people in and getting supportand getting help.
(12:33):
And we started doing three JoeDispenza meditations every day.
Jenee (12:37):
We would like get on Zoom .
Nathan (12:39):
She would get on every day with me like talk about a
friend.
It's totally saved my life,turned my life around.
40 days later was in acompletely different place.
Jenee (12:50):
Which meditations did you do?
Nathan (12:52):
I did body parts space in the morning, Then I did
generous present moment, Then Idid um.
What was the one I did at night?
Oh, the blessing of theblessings of the energy centers.
Jenee (13:02):
What was the one I did at night?
Oh, the blessing of the energycenters, blessings of the energy
centers, yeah, that changed me,my life.
I mean, my thyroid does go upand down, but the blessing of
the energy centers took mythyroid numbers way down and I
didn't stick with it, because ittakes a while.
But if you're chronically illlike that is an incredible
(13:26):
meditation.
Nathan (13:27):
You have to learn how to regulate your system and those
meditations gave me sort of theinitial, just to get out of that
crisis.
Jenee (13:37):
Yes.
Nathan (13:38):
Those meditations became the perfect stepping stone.
Jenee (13:41):
Yeah, when you start to reduce inflammation in the body,
you know, when you start toreduce inflammation in the body,
you know when you start toregulate, it's like then you can
actually start to like peerthrough the blinds and see.
You know, okay, there's somehope yeah, exactly and so from
there, after 40 days, what wasyour next step?
Nathan (14:04):
gosh.
Then it was um.
I started learning buddhistdharma and I went to land of the
medicine buddha and I workedand lived at a retreat center
for three months and wascontinuing to study buddhist
philosophy and budd psychologyand from that point then I
(14:28):
started working with abiochemist in Nashville.
I was finally humbled enough toaccept the help that had been
offered.
And also, when you're acceptinghelp, you are accepting
something beyond your control.
You're having to trustsomething outside of you, and my
(14:48):
trust was so broken that Ireally had to like restore that
trust, because I had tried a lotof different medical medium and
different sort of healingmodalities and they didn't work.
So I was very brokenhearted andkind of was like well,
nothing's worth it, likenothing's going to work.
(15:09):
Nothing's going to fix me.
I'm not going to heal, you know, it's very in that place of I
can't do it.
And then I went and I startedworking with this biochemist and
within four months my entirelife changed and my body was 70%
healed.
I had enough energy to move toLA.
(15:30):
And then, my first week in LA, Imet Saul, which is literally
going from living alone, sick inthe woods with like no friends
around, to like meeting this manwho was going to completely
change my entire reality.
(15:51):
So meeting him was like theboon at the end of the tunnel,
to be like there is someone whois so loving, who wants to work
with me and do this work, andsaw what saw did for me, because
he became the permission slipfor me to fully embrace myself
(16:15):
as a healer and as a spiritualteacher I have goosebumps yeah,
as at that point I was stillholding on to my identity as a
dancer from this sort of likeyou know concert dance world,
but it wasn't serving me at all.
It really was actually not thelife I wanted to live and I had
(16:37):
to fully give that up.
And that was so hard.
There was so much grief in thatthere was like so much loss.
There was so much of like did Ifail?
Am I?
Jenee (16:47):
a failure.
Nathan (16:48):
And it's like no, wait a second.
And so I saw the life that Saulwas living and I saw that he
was like I want to do this withyou, I don't want to do this
alone anymore and you're totallythe perfect person for it.
And I was like so resistant inthe beginning.
I was like no, I want to do myown thing, I don't want to work
together.
Jenee (17:10):
You know I want to.
Nathan (17:11):
I'm still in that control space and just
eventually I softened and I gavein and I was like wait, we had
the LA fires actually and weleft.
And that was the moment where Iwas like this life with Saw and
teaching the dance as aspiritual practice and as a
healing modality, this is such abetter life than anything that
(17:32):
the concert dance world couldgive me.
Jenee (17:34):
Like.
Nathan (17:35):
I'm so much happier, I'm so much healthier.
I just feel way better, I feelaligned, and so it's like
releasing.
That was like the mostliberating piece of my story
that is so beautiful.
Jenee (17:48):
I know we cling, it's so hard.
I was talking to my husband theother day about it too and I'm
like there's just remnants of methat are still kind of clinging
onto the side.
You know, of the wall but it'slike, but I actually let go a
long time ago.
You know, it's just, it's likeit does take a little bit of
time to sort of get it out ofyour system.
(18:10):
You know I'm being like I'mstill just wanting that
reflection from the, from themusic world, the song, you know,
but it's like, but I'm nothappy there.
Nathan (18:20):
Yeah.
Jenee (18:21):
I was never happy there.
You know, I had my moments, butyeah, it's just, I don't know,
(18:44):
like you're saying, there's this, this bigger universe and the
beautiful someone can like hopon and see you in like high art.
You know, I mean I I pouredthrough your videos today.
I was just like, oh, can't evenimagine having the opportunity
to learn from you, you know samefor you.
Nathan (19:03):
I mean, it's like that vocal training that you have it,
it, it, pieces of it come in.
You know, I haven't thrown thebaby up with the bath water.
I really loved learning Gaga um, which was the movement
language by Ohana Harin, and Igot to study with him personally
and uh, it it's still all ofthat wisdom that lives, lives in
(19:26):
me.
I think it's just like we haveto.
We have to go where we're meantto go and where we're planted
and where the doors are open,some people.
They're really able to do thehealing work in the industry, um
in the dance industry, in themusic industry, because for some
reason their aura is able tolike um to work in that space
(19:47):
yeah, but for me it was veryclear that I was like this, this
just there's so much frictionhere and I just need to go and
sort of do my own thing, but Iwould love to teach temple dance
at juilliard um so, juilliard,if you're watching knock, knock,
I think yeah, exactly, I thinkthat um artists having a
(20:07):
connection to their spirit isessential for an artist's
creative development, religionor belief system, and the fact
that that could happen throughdance or through music, or
through the medium that theseyoung dancers are trained in, I
(20:31):
think that it's essential fortheir creativity and I think
that it could benefit themtremendously.
So it's.
Jenee (20:37):
I think it's, it's a missing piece, and I think this
is actually the wave of thefuture, you know, because how
many dancers leave school andthey're just they're, they're
broken or they're just missingsomething?
They don't, they don'tunderstand, you know.
And it's also this thing aboutchanneling, which is such a big
(20:58):
part of the work you do, andit's part of the reason why I
ended up not going intoconservatory, even though I had
accepted and was withscholarship, was that I worked
intuitively and I wrote musicintuitively and I was worried
that I was going to lose that.
Now, someone like you, you gotall the tools and then through
(21:23):
that, you work, you channel, youknow which is the way to go,
but I just think we're.
We're at this time now where,like, those systems are kind of
falling apart and people arehungry for this, you know, for
these bigger needs, these, youknow.
(21:45):
It's like what can I bring intothis that supports me
emotionally, that isn't going tojust feed my ego.
Nathan (21:51):
Yeah, absolutely it's.
You can create, you can dance,you can sing to develop your ego
.
You know to, to make it bigger,to possess something.
These moves become my moves.
You know.
This song becomes my song andit's about me.
None of the dancing that I'mdoing or the dances that I'm
(22:13):
creating are about me.
They're actually a loss ofidentity.
They're about creating aspaciousness where I can.
When we lose the possessivenessand the grip of our identity,
that's when freedom happens.
That's when we can move, we canchange, we can be everything at
(22:33):
once, and that's, to me,infinitely more fulfilling than
trying to like narrow myselfinto this one dot and owning it.
You know that's holding on,it's dancing to hold on.
But the dance work that I do isdancing to learn how to let go,
and that is about trusting yourbody.
When you learn how to trust andfollow your body, when you
(22:57):
learn that you can use movementas a way to interrupt your
thinking and that life is not aconcept, life is not in our mind
, life is an experience, that'swhen that's, to me, infinitely
more fulfilling.
Jenee (23:15):
Yeah, I mean I was thinking about your video under
the tree and how you werefeeling, you know, down, and
this is a perfect example.
And you have the earphones on,you go to the tree and you're,
you know you can actually tellthe story.
That it's you know.
Things aren't really moving.
Nathan (23:33):
Yeah.
Jenee (23:34):
And you're trying to get there and we get stuff forcing.
You're kind of forcing it andthen you take the earphones off
and I don't know if you want totalk about this, because it's a
beautiful video.
Nathan (23:53):
Yeah, we get stuck.
I say life is movement, life ischange, and death it's not
actually death as we know it.
Death is stagnation, death isfixation.
That's when we're no longeralive, we're trapped in an
affixed sense of self.
And when we're trapped in afixed sense of self.
And when we're trapped in afixed sense of self.
That sense of self it also hasall these stories and all these
traumas and it creates thisparalysis.
(24:13):
We all feel that sometimes, whena trauma is reignited by
something, we get absolutelyparalyzed and we can't move.
It's like I cannot get out ofbed.
I feel completely stuck in thissensation and a lot of times
then we go to distract, we go tonumb.
Well, how can I sort of take mymind out of this?
(24:36):
How can I sort of distractmyself?
Because I don't want to meetthis feeling.
This feeling is too big for meto meet.
But when we go to the somaticdance floor, the spiritual dance
floor, we're using dance as away to invite change, to let go
of that fixation.
(24:56):
We're releasing thepossessiveness and the story and
the identity that attachesitself to all of this pain, all
of this trauma.
We're releasing it.
We're letting those feelings go.
So we feel the feelings, but wefeel them as an act of
generosity.
I give these feelings up.
I no longer possess thesefeelings.
I set these feelings free.
I set my stagnation, myfixation free.
(25:21):
You know, I release it throughmovement.
And when we start to move, evenif we're going to be less
philosophical or spiritual aboutit, when we start to move,
things change, things move.
It's that simple, right.
You don't have to think thatmuch about it.
You can just get up and you canjust start to move.
Move your shoulders, move yourneck, move your spine, move your
(25:41):
hips, move where it feels stuck.
Move your spine, move your hips, move where it feels stuck
Right.
And as you start to move, thenit's like oh, that thing that I
was just so fixated on, thatfelt so paralyzing, sort of just
disappears.
Jenee (25:55):
Yeah.
Nathan (25:55):
And I'm okay, you know because, we're supposed to move,
Babies move, they move, theycry.
They feel that everything's inthe present moment, and so I'm
yeah, I'm passionate about justgetting things moving.
Jenee (26:10):
Yeah, and I think people get hung up on like the fear of
the feeling and they don't wantto feel the feeling because it
feels so daunting andoverwhelming.
And the fact of the matter andthe truth of it is, if you go
into the feeling entirely, it'sactually much less painful.
(26:31):
You can move through in onesetting.
You can move through a feelingthat you've been holding on to
your whole life, you know, andespecially with movement.
Nathan (26:44):
Yeah.
Yeah absolutely Suffering is notcaused by what is.
It's caused by our resistanceand reaction to what it is.
That's, you know, buddhistphilosophy 101, right, and you
start to just ingrain that intoit.
Oh wait, I can be with what isand I can actually see through.
I had this moment yesterdaywhere I get overwhelmed really
(27:05):
easily, especially after, like,dealing with neurological pain
and chronic health issues.
Overwhelm is like the thingthat takes me out, like it's
just like when I start to getoverwhelmed, I'm just like I
lose all my regulation.
I'm like totally like blackedout and I realized, like
overwhelm what it does itactually changes our senses.
(27:27):
You know, trauma and theseemotions, they change our senses
, so we're not seeing properly,we're not smelling properly,
we're not tasting properly,we're totally sort of um warped
into, uh, an experience.
That is a non-reality and infact it's not actually here.
But what I've been noticingafter really working, doing this
work, is that I can just sortof like feel that and then I can
(27:51):
just like look around my roomand be like wait, everything's
fine, exist here in this timeand space, that.
And then I can like look atdetails and they root me into
the present moment.
(28:11):
I'm like I'm okay, everything'sokay, and I can release this
story, because this story is notit's a protective mechanism,
but it's actually keeping mefrom changing, from moving, from
evolving.
Jenee (28:25):
Yeah, yeah, the orient.
The orienting is huge, you know, bringing yourself back into
the present moment, lookingaround the room and just being
aware of just even having enoughspace to be aware.
With that, with orienting, youknow, it's like to be able to
get that wedge where you're like, oh okay, this story is, you
(28:50):
know, it's actually not thetruth and it's not even the
present moment.
Nathan (28:54):
Yeah.
Jenee (28:55):
You know, but that's that can be huge for people.
You know it can be the nervoussystem.
Dysregulation can be sodaunting.
Yeah, you know.
Nathan (29:04):
Yeah, and dysregulation can be so daunting.
Yeah, you know, yeah, when you,when the dance is a place where
we feel our feelings, and wefeel the feelings that, the
baggage of feelings, you knowall of the past feelings,
experiences and sensations, theylive in our bodies.
If we, if they have not beenfelt, they have been repressed
into our bodies and so as wemove, sometimes a certain
(29:25):
movement, you'll just feel,something will click and a whole
feeling will start to comethrough you, and then we just
remind ourselves that thisfeeling is not ours to possess
anymore.
Right, that's the intentionwhen we go to the dance floor is
.
let me set this feeling free,and as I set this feeling free,
(29:48):
I set myself free.
Jenee (29:50):
That is profound.
We have to stop possessingfeelings.
Nathan (29:56):
Feelings have nothing to do with an I, they have nothing
to do with an identity orpersonality.
When we attach an I or a Y to afeeling, then we possess it and
we hold on to it.
But the joy is not in holdingon, the joy is in letting go.
That's what we realize throughthe dance.
(30:17):
The dance becomes joyful whenwe let go.
That's when it becomes worship.
That's when it becomes worshipthat when it, that's when it
becomes devotional, then thedance, where it's a, it's a
celebration of life.
And what is life?
Impermanence?
Life is we can't hold on toanything.
Yeah, so we talk aboutsurrender in the dance.
(30:39):
Surrender is not an act, it'san, it's an unaction, it's an
act of undoing.
Everything is impermanent.
That is the truth.
So we just recognize that andthen we start to let this moment
dance us and the next momentdance us and the next moment
dance us, and then we're in thatflow of change, of impermanence
(31:02):
, and that gives us this abilityto befriend change and to learn
how to trust life and to learnhow to see that when we can let
things go, good things come.
Jenee (31:12):
Absolutely.
I want to walk back a littlebit to you finding Buddhism and
how that happened, and it reallyso much informs what you're
doing now.
Nathan (31:24):
Yeah, buddhism was sort of something that Guruji was
teaching us all, but it sort ofwas like you know secretly.
Jenee (31:34):
It was a little crouched behind yeah.
Nathan (31:37):
Yeah, my friend Sita, who I think you probably know as
well.
Jenee (31:44):
Yep, Sita who.
Nathan (31:45):
I think you probably know as well, yep, she was a
supporter and an advocate of methrough the chronic illness
journey and she kept telling me,like, learn Buddhism, learn
Buddhism, because that's reallybeen her path and I sort of was
resistant to it.
And then I gave in and I readthis book called Dharma Art by
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and Iwas just like, oh yep, this is
(32:08):
it.
And it was really actually veryprofound book for me because it
was about sort of decolonizingthe idea of you as an artist
being an identity as like aseparate identity and and
realizing that like art is inevery moment.
(32:30):
Art is in the way that we dosomething, it's in our style,
it's in the way we make our bed,it's in every moment there's
beauty, it's walking the beautypath.
And so it helped me sort oflike separate, oh, art is what
happens when I'm in a dancestudio versus when I'm here in
this present moment.
And that was very freeingbecause I was like, okay, well,
(32:52):
I can't really dance right now,I can't really make my art in
the way that I have, but I canlive an artistic life, and that
was really beautiful.
But yeah, the Buddhistphilosophy to me it's just, I'm
on a deep quest for truth andfor illumination and for
enlightenment and I have beenfor a long time.
(33:16):
We see these little trickles ofit even in our childhood the
questions and the curiosity, andstudying Buddhism became a very
sort of concrete way to explorethat more.
Jenee (33:31):
Yeah, that deep, that deep hunger and the deep
spiritual seeking.
You know, I think I I had thatsince I popped out of the womb,
you know, and was always likewhy and what?
Nathan (33:42):
And you know, yeah, I mean for me realizing, like,
what is the root of suffering?
Right, and does there have tobe suffering?
Because I was suffering so muchand for me I was just like the.
What brought me, I think,really to Buddhism was how do I
suffer less?
Yeah, and the the.
(34:02):
The heart of the teachings isis that, you know, our suffering
is caused by attachment,aversion and ignorance, which is
basically trying to find a wayto escape reality as it is.
And all of the Buddhistteachings just are saying what
all of the somatics people aresaying, are saying what everyone
is saying, which is the presentmoment is all we have, and it's
(34:26):
actually so beautiful.
If we can come into this momentand we can meet this moment as
it is.
We can see that there's like aninherent beauty and enlightened
quality to it, and finding a wayto take, you know, these
binaries out of our mind, thislike pain, pleasure, good, bad
(34:51):
and just see something withequanimity, became like a way
for me to be in the experienceof pain and acknowledge the
suffering that I was having, butsort of not double down on top
of it, not create more sufferingfrom that, and then from that
place to like see that there canactually be beauty in this
(35:13):
right.
And oftentimes we see that oncewe get through the experience
we're like oh yeah, there wasthis reason for it and there was
this divine orchestration.
But even being inside of it,you can see sort of the ways
that, oh, because I'm in painand because I'm suffering, I'm
getting to practice greaterequanimity, I'm getting to learn
about reality as it is, I'mgetting to meet my traumas, I'm
(35:36):
getting to heal in all of theseways and reminding yourself so
that, especially when your mindis really in the gutter of this
sucks, everything sucks.
I'm complaining all the time.
Jenee (35:46):
Yeah, all the time, yeah, yeah yeah, um just can help you
.
Nathan (35:48):
Like it's mind training.
You know lojong, you take a,you change your perspective on
the situation yeah, hmm, I'mjust sitting with all of this.
Jenee (36:02):
It's really beautiful, it's profound.
I want to talk about the recentkind of lessons you had posted
you know, 12 lessons that Ilearned through somatic movement
this week and talk a little bitabout somatics more semantics
(36:27):
more.
Nathan (36:28):
And yeah, the body of work of semantics was totally
introduced to me by saw and saw.
Learned semantics not through,you know, peter levine and um
and gabor mate, but he learnedthat through buddhism.
Yes, and one of his famousquotes and posts is you know,
semantics wasn't created in the70s by this guy named Peter
Levine, and it was created bythe Buddha 2500 years ago by
(36:48):
brown people.
You know, the word somaticsitself is a colonized word and
that's like oh gosh.
You know, like we, we thinkeverything is new.
But but it's not, but the workthat he's done has been just
profoundly influential andinspiring to me in terms of
(37:13):
learning how to feel yourfeelings without a story, and to
me then I was like, oh, that'slearning how to feel your
feelings without an identity.
So we've talked a little bitabout that and just I think he's
just platformed me, he'schampioned me and he's given me
the stage to be able to do whatI have been doing for a long
(37:37):
time, just sort of on my own,and through these conversations
he's giving me language also forthings of oh, that's a trance
state.
You know, trance state issomething that we practice.
What is trance state right?
It's when you start to move andyour thinking sort of goes away
(38:02):
and you're just in the movement.
Jenee (38:04):
Yes.
Nathan (38:04):
And then, because you're in the no self, you sort of
have all of this oracularinformation, you get these
psychic visions, you get thiswisdom that comes into you, and
then you come back into yourbody and you're like wait, how
do I know these?
Jenee (38:20):
things, yeah, yes, Like what?
Nathan (38:21):
How do I know these things?
But because you're opening upto that interdependent field,
that information can start tocome to you.
It's yours, it's available tous and the information in our
body in our blood in our bones.
The dances that we haveforgotten but that live sort of
(38:41):
in our history can start to comeout Even.
You know, people can be like 1%African and they can like find
themselves doing this Africandance and they're like I never
studied African dance.
That's such a great example ofthe body having all of this
intelligence and information andways that we can sort of
(39:02):
understand that we're so muchbigger than this myopic self
we've believed ourselves to be,and that's very inspiring, like
pragmatically.
What that can do for you is itcan change your story.
You get that embodiedexperience that I'm more than
what I believed to be Like.
Life is not my assumption ofwhat life is.
(39:23):
Life is something likemysterious and ineffable and
that sort of creates thiscuriosity and this like
excitement to wake up every dayand see what can I discover.
One of the massive things thatI ask people after every session
is what did you discover?
Because we're trying to go intothe unknown.
One of the things of my somaticpost was get uncomfortable,
(39:50):
like when you are uncomfortable,it's a great sign because
you're learning something new,and that's something that I try
to, you know really get peopleto learn.
Jenee (40:03):
When I see you dancing, I feel like you are there, You're
in that space that createsgreat art, that full let go that
I think every true artist wantsthat.
When I see you, I'm like I wantthat for me, but on stage
(40:26):
behind a microphone.
Nathan (40:27):
Yeah.
Jenee (40:27):
You can recognize it and you know the irony of it is like
.
Nathan (40:32):
getting there requires that that full release, that
that the mind you know it's alsolike about a deep intimacy and
honesty with yourself, I thinkjust to be like all of the like
things that I'm holding up, allof the masks and the things I'm
pretending to, you know thespell of being pretty or perfect
(40:54):
, or having my shit together allthe time, that it's like I'm
willing to sort of expose allthat and then, when I expose all
that, there's like this deeperintimacy and well of creativity
that can start to come through.
Jenee (41:07):
I've been thinking a lot about the mask.
I wrote about it yesterdaybecause I'm you know, starting
to teach women voice in a waythat I mean, I've been teaching
women voice this in a similarway as the movement, but I'm
taking it to another level nowand I've been thinking so much
about the mask.
You know and how difficult thatis oftentimes to put that down
(41:34):
you but there is.
If you really are hungry forbeing seen, it does really
require.
Nathan (41:51):
You know that that step that can be so terrifying yeah
you know of dropping that maskpartnership has taught me this a
lot, because you can't hidefrom the person that you love
and sort of there's nowhere togo.
Like when you're alone andyou're on your own.
It's like you can sort ofescape and be, hidden and like
(42:13):
when we go to all of these weirdplaces on our own.
Jenee (42:17):
It's like all of our weird little habits and things.
Nathan (42:20):
Like nobody knows about all our little secrets.
On the spiritual path path,there's not really room for
secrets like those are all theways we're still sort of
possessing and holding on ourterritory.
You know, yeah, um, and deeptantric partnership teaches us
that like we have to expose allof that.
So, like all of my addictions,like the porn addiction that
(42:41):
I've had till I'm like since Iwas like 12, I'm like totally
exposed and like facing, likehaving to move through, so me
being met with like those honesteyes and those eyes that are,
like you know, you can't hide.
I think that's also like howcan we approach our creative
practice, our dance, our, our,our singing, with like that kind
(43:05):
of brutal honesty?
Um, yeah, because oftentimespeople are like well, I don't
have anything to say, well, it'slike you, you do and you just
have to like be very you have tomeet yourself in that
uncomfortable place yes um, andthen it's like then there's like
a lot of inspiration there.
Jenee (43:27):
Yeah, it's so interesting because I I went through
menopause early because of mythyroid and um when I was 40,
and you know I'm starting toexperience some of the
difficulties of of what canhappen when you go through those
kind of hormone shifts, and oneis that I've lost like a huge
(43:48):
range in my voice.
I've lost high range anddramatically, like quickly.
You know, it was like literallyovernight.
And at the same time I was myhusband and I serve a medicine
and we I guide people throughtheir journey with my voice and
(44:12):
I, through that, had found, I'mfinding this other way you know
because I was.
there was so much judgmentaround the loss of tone and
quality and all of a sudden Ican't like stay on a note where
I mean my whole life has been myvoice, you know, and I think
(44:35):
you can identify with that, andand so what?
what I've come to realize inthis is it's taking me deeper
and deeper and deeper into theshamanic Um, I guess I would say
shamanic cause that's what itis for me Um elements and
(44:56):
practice of like what is behindwhat I'm doing, what is, what is
the sound current and what ismy intentionality behind what
I'm moving, you know, and thenand then, like none of that
stuff matters yeah it doesn'tmatter if I'm cracking, it
(45:17):
doesn't matter if I can't hold.
Oh my god, it's gorgeousbecause it's human.
Nathan (45:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, break the spell ofpretty perfect, have all your
shit together.
We make people dancechaotically and ugly, and we're
like, you know, make, make facesand stick your belly out, stick
your your butt out, and youknow, do and slap yourself.
(45:44):
And then yeah and uh, becausethat that that narrow idea of
like what beautiful sound is orwhat beautiful movement is is,
um, is really limiting andreally like, actually very harsh
on ourselves and so, like youwere saying, it's like actually
(46:06):
seeing so much beauty in thecrack and in the like, the rasp,
and in the moment where, like,you didn't sleep and you show up
to your work or whatever andyou're on social media and
you're trying to say somethingwise, it's like all the ways
that we sort of want to hide andbecome this like perfect
version of ourselves that otherpeople will approve of, but
(46:30):
instead just like showing up inthe vulnerability of like.
this is where I am.
This is the human experience.
And wisdom is not found in likethe pretty, perfect, beautiful.
It's actually found in like theraw, real ugly.
And I would say same withhealing.
You, you know, healing is like afrequency of acceptance yeah um
, not a frequency of having yourshit together all the time, not
(46:53):
a frequency of eating the rightmeal at every moment.
Um, healing is is.
To me, it's been a journeyabout surrendering control and
learning how, like when myboyfriend messes up my plans or
when you know things didn't gothe way that I wanted it to go
Like how do I, how do I meetthat?
(47:13):
With compassion and kindness.
So I love that and I think someof the beautiful, most
beautiful voices we've heard arethe voices that, like they move
truth, not with beauty exactly,yes, yeah, I agree 100 yeah,
that's powerful is thereanything on your sticky note
(47:38):
there that we didn't cover?
I think one thing I do want tosay is that your body is, like,
vastly intelligent, and it knowsexactly what movement it needs.
It knows exactly what sound itneeds, and so when we go into
our body and move from a placeof when we really move for
(47:59):
ourself, when we move as our ownmedicine, we know exactly what
to give ourselves, and that'sempowering.
Nobody has to teach you this.
Actually, your body alreadyknows it, and so I try to remind
myself and everybody of thatbefore every practice, that we
can actually sit here and we canconjure the body, give us an
(48:23):
image of how you want to movetoday, of how you want to feel
today.
You know of what feelings needto be released today, and we can
sort of like we can even feelit before we even do anything.
Um, and so your body is yourauthority, um, and I think it's
really important that,especially for those of us that
(48:45):
have been trained ininstitutions, or all of us that
are socially conditioned to sortof follow the external
authority, that we really remindourselves that our bodies, our
voices are our authorities, andwhen we listen to them, they
give us exactly what we needexactly what we need.
Jenee (49:10):
That's so beautiful.
It's food for the soul and thebody.
Nathan (49:12):
You know this is, this is the temple, and once you
start to like let your body lead, it will take you places you
could have never imagined.
I mean, I will do movementsthat I'm like, how did I just do
that?
And it was just following mybody.
And when I was fully in like adevotional space of like letting
(49:33):
go to my body, let my body lead.
My body knows what it needs.
I'll like stretch in a way thatI'm like whoa.
That I'm like whoa, you know,because I'm no longer in sort of
the mental contraction of whatis possible, what is good, what
is bad.
I'm going into that unknown,into that mystery.
(49:54):
I know you do this too in yourchanneling?
Jenee (49:58):
Yes, for sure.
Yeah, this is really excitingstuff it is.
Nathan (50:01):
It's like I said, this is really exciting stuff.
Jenee (50:03):
It is.
It's like I said this is it,this is where we're going.
I think, as a planet, this iswhat we need.
This is part of likedecolonizing, you know, this is
part of healing and de-thawingand de-numbing.
Nathan (50:23):
Yeah and de-thawing and de-numbing.
And you know, yeah, it's like weget validation through
possessing things Like that'swhat our culture is about, like
the more that I can possess, themore territory, the more land,
the more success, the morepeople, the more customers I can
possess.
Then that builds this enormousego that then gets fed off of
(50:45):
this insatiable greed and wethink that, you know, that is
what is going to save us, thatis what is going to give us the
juice, but it's not, and I thinkpeople are waking up to that
that this is not why am I doingthis?
This is not giving me what Iactually want.
And so then, when we start tomove into the body, into nature,
(51:10):
and we start to into thegoddess, you know, which has
been a profound part of my pathof as a devotee of Isis we start
to uncover, like, a muchgreater joy and pleasure through
surrender not through gainingterritory, but through
(51:30):
surrendering all territory.
When you become no one, youbecome everything and everyone,
and all of that becomes yoursand not yours at all.
And it just gets to move throughyou and you become that free
vessel for all of that.
That's the greatest gift, it'sthe greatest pleasure, that's
what we pray to as a priest, asa priestess, as a devotee every
(51:51):
day.
You know it's like.
May I be the servant of themagnitude of the universe.
And when I sing this song orwhen I dance this dance, may I
allow the powers of the universeand those that are maybe not
spoken for.
This is where we can alsobecome an advocate on behalf of
(52:13):
nature, an advocate on behalf ofthe voices that have been
oppressed.
We can let those channelthrough us and then our dances
and our songs become forces ofchange.
Jenee (52:24):
Reach yeah, reach yeah.
Nathan (52:27):
Yeah, thank you so much.
Jenee (52:29):
Thank you so much.
This was a beautifulconversation.
I feel so like lit up and justfilled up.
I'm curious where people findyou, how they can come and dance
with you.
Nathan (52:42):
Yeah, people find you how they can come and dance with
you.
Yeah, so my method that is aburgeoning method, but it's been
deep in me for so long iscalled temple dance, and it's
about bringing back the dance asworshiping the powers of the
cosmos, and through our danceswe celebrate the loss of self,
(53:07):
the death, the awe, the beauty,the chaos.
Dance as a way to become apriest or priestess of change.
So I'm teaching this alongsidemy partner who teaches saw
method somatic activated healingin LA on April 28th.
(53:30):
I don't know when this will belaunched, but we're teaching it
all the time.
We're going to be teaching itevery month.
So come do a temple dance class.
There's also a free class in myInstagram bio.
My Instagram is NathanHirschhout.
Nathan N-A-T-H-A-N.
Hirschhout H-I-R-S-C-H-A-U-T.
Jenee (53:48):
Oh, I said your name wrong.
I have to fix that at thebeginning.
Nathan (53:51):
Oh, don't worry about it .
I said Hershout so, oh, okay,it sounded similar enough.
Okay, yeah, it's okay.
So yeah, come DM me and um andlet's meet and dance together.
Jenee (54:06):
Love it.
Um, I will post your sub stackand all the places they can find
you, and I'm just so gratefulfor this conversation.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, yeah.
Yeah, the Heartlight Sessionspodcast is executive produced
and hosted by me, janae Halstead.
(54:28):
It's edited, mixed and masteredby me too, and that theme song
you hear, it's called Heartlightand, yep, you guessed it, it's
from my record.
Disposable Love.
Got questions about a certainhealing modality or about
heart-centered healing, or maybeyou just need some advice on
life, love or creativity.
Send it my way, email me atletters at heartlightpodcastcom.
(54:49):
Until next time, I'm JanaeHalstead, and thanks for
listening to Heartlight Sessions.
Thousand volts of sunshine.
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