December 20, 2023 • 50 mins
Growing up Buddhist and as a bodyworker and pilates instructor, J. Granelli learned the practice of bending so that he did not break. When he had a stroke, that lesson was put to the test. Jenn talks with J. about the importance of acceptance, being in the moment, and their gratitude for breaking intergenerational cycles of trauma.
Guest Bio: Read more about J. here
Guest Location: New York City, US
Resources from J. to Listeners:
- BodyCraft Pilates Studio- J.’s and his wife Lana's phenomenal pilates studio in Brooklyn, NY offers in-person classes and private sessions
- Email bcfitandwell@gmail.com to book a session at BodyCraft Pilates Studio and mention "The H.I. Note podcast" for a discount
- Thank you, J.!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hi everyone, it's Jen Nguyen here.
Welcome to this episode of theHigh Note Healing Inspirations
from Life, where today we talkto Jay Grinnelli about healing
stroke and quote bending like areed unquote.
Jay is such a multifaceted,multi-talented human being.
(00:37):
He is a body worker, my Pilatesinstructor In fact, that's how
I met him in Pilates class.
He's also a musician and acreative through and through.
You can read Jay's full bio inthe show notes.
I'll just say this conversationwith Jay is everything.
The conversation builds overtime.
(00:59):
You'll hear about breakingintergenerational cycles within
families, surviving stroke andthe power of staying present to
it all, pain included.
Jay is funny and playfulthroughout all of it.
This conversation is fun,dynamic and beautiful.
Let's get started.
(01:20):
Hi everyone, I'm so excited fortoday's guest.
I'll let you introduce yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Hi, my name is Jay Grinnelli.
I guess I would consider myselfsort of generally an artist in
the sense that I try to live mylife artfully.
Maybe that's a working way tothink about it.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yes, you create.
Yes, absolutely yeah, jay.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Well, I find myself seeking joy these days.
One of the places is in Pilatessessions with you.
Yes, sure you are an amazingPilates instructor.
Thank you.
No, I'm thanking you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Okay, you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
But I'm not curious about my sources of joy.
I'm actually curious about yoursources of joy.
What's a joyful memory for you?
It could be a recent one or onefrom the past, but it
absolutely brings you joy.
Whoa.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
That's so interesting Because I think my inclination
would be to somehow plumb thedepths of my memory.
Oh, I got one.
This is good.
This is total memory depthplumbing.
Plumbing worked, plumbingworked.
Yeah, when I was in fourth grade, we were living in Colorado and
(02:37):
my elementary school went on afield trip for like a week Never
going to happen today, that'samazing.
In five whole days, seven days,whoa yeah, in yellow school
buses and we drove from BoulderColorado we were living way to
Southern Colorado to go to MesaVerde and the Great Sand Dunes
(02:58):
and all this stuff Absolutelybonkers and very cool.
Yeah, it was great.
But on that first day you'rereally away from home.
I had never gone to summer campor anything, so it was our
parents that sent bag lunchesthat first day.
So we're at a rest stopsomewhere by the side of the
road and I feel a little bummedand I reach in my bag lunch and
(03:19):
there's a sandwich and at thevery bottom is a piece of bubble
gum that my mother had put inthe bag.
Oh score, unbelievable, it wasjust like the best feeling ever.
And it wasn't so much I meanbecause, like my mother would
(03:42):
never have given me bubble gum,so it was.
I think the thing that justmakes me so sort of warm hearted
about it even now was thethought that she was thinking
about me to that degree, likethat she would think enough to
(04:02):
think about what I would beexperiencing later that day and
that I needed some speciallittle something.
And this she was like anabsolute, like ninja master at
that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, and I really took that Like that's something
that I've tried to emulate in myown life, that I tell you
stories for days.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
It's got love in there.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, deep love, deep love, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
It's also got like a little playfulness.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Like a little, I don't know, delightful surprise.
Yeah, I would like to tackleyou with how silly and fun this
is.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, and kind of willing to break the rules.
Yeah, I mean she wasn'thardcore about like our diet or
anything, but like that kind ofcandy she would just never.
It would just never be at thehalf like we would just never
have it.
Yeah, I would get it when Iwent out with my friends or
something, but it wasn't part ofour house.
There weren't bowls of bubblegum or whatever.
(05:02):
And I think it was this kind of.
I didn't understand it tilllater in my life when I would
think about it, but it wasreally like not just that she
was my parent and she wasthinking deeply about me and
something that I would like, butthat it was like being very
seen as a kid.
I know that.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yes, she saw you and also future versions of you.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, that's how deeply she saw you, yeah, and
that it was that she and myfather too.
They, from my earliest daysthey were my earliest memory
treated us as people not to saythat they weren't our parents,
because they were very much ourparents, but they would talk to
you as a whole person, yeah,from a very young age, like they
(05:48):
would just get down on thefloor and just talk like, have
conversations with you aboutwhatever you was on your kid
brain, and it wasn't like oh,yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was just like, oh, okay,there's dinosaurs in this, on
this paper, and we're going totalk about.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
you know what I mean.
Like they, a fellow human, afellow journeyman, a journey
person in life.
Yeah, yeah, wow.
How did that make you feel as akid.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I think I just felt like a person.
I never felt disrespected and Inever felt not taken seriously
Mm-hmm, I never.
Yeah, I can hear that, yeah.
Yeah, I never felt likesomething I was doing was silly
or a phase or whatever.
You know, if I was like I'mreally into whatever they're
(06:31):
like, all right, let's do that,wow.
And you know it was just likeokay, this is what we're into,
so now we're into it and theywould go with me.
However, I wanted to go into it, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And that was worth exploring because it came up in
you and therefore it was worthy.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, and interesting and something that they would
learn.
You know they would want tolearn more about.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Oh, that's really cool that it wasn't just an act
of parenting or almost like asacrificial act for you it was.
All of us will benefit fromthis.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, I hear the equality, I hear the respect and
mutuality in that, yeah, and Ithink that in my own parenting
that's something that wasclearly made like a huge
impression on me, so that wassomething that I tried to bring
forward for my kids.
I wanted to have that qualitywith them where it was like,
(07:27):
yeah, okay, well, just, we'regoing to you get down on
geographically the same level asthem and just trying to be with
them.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So you would get down on the floor with your kids
when they were younger, all thetime, look at them eye to eye,
meet them person to person.
Yes, wow, yeah.
What a beautiful thing to carryforward from one generation to
the next.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
What a gift.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yes, I think both of my parents for that.
Just like you know, I think Ihad the opportunity before my
father died to thank him fornever hitting me.
He was hit by his father.
He was father's father, was hitby his father for, you know,
being involved in substanceabuse recovery that he was in.
His father was a drunk, hisfather's father was a drunk.
(08:15):
You know, there was a lot ofthings that my parents stopped.
What a powerful choice.
Yeah, they stopped like theywere like no, this ends here,
this ends here, this ends withme.
And I don't know that it was.
It wasn't necessarily presentedverbatim like this is what
(08:35):
we're doing, but it but.
But you know, as an adult Icould see like, oh, okay, that's
what, that's what was going on,like they stopped stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
They stopped cycles of abuse, yep, and what I'm
hearing is started cycles ofself worth and worthiness.
Yes, I hope.
I mean, as a survivor ofdomestic violence from my
childhood home, I hope to bethat cycle breaker in the
generations that have come.
You know before and after.
I do think it benefits bothdirections.
(09:06):
The lineage absolutely willappreciate it in either way.
Yeah, I am really struck byyour foresight to thank your
father for making that choicebefore he passed.
What did you say to him?
Do you remember the words?
I said thank you, Thank you forjust thank you, just thanks, you
(09:32):
got me right.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Thanks for the pasta and oh and this other stuff.
No, I, no, I, I I thanked him,I said thank you very much.
No, thank you very much.
It's so formal, but I just Isaid I just we had a moment it
was before he was really sickand I I was spending some time
(09:53):
with him and I just we weretalking about his father and who
I knew, you know, into my teens, before his, my grandfather,
his father died, and we weretalking about that and the, you
know, the family and all thatstuff.
And yeah, I just I said thankyou so much for not, you know,
bringing that forward, because alot of people do, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
A lot of people hurt people, hurt people yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Absolutely.
I mean that kind of pain.
There is like no length that ahuman being will not go to to
get out of pain, and thatincludes dehumanizing effect of
inflicting pain on somebody else.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Okay, Now I'm curious what was your numbing mechanism
?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
If I were to like, really, really distill down.
You know myself, the thing thatmotivates me, that animates me
probably as much as anythingelse, is this sort of desire to
learn, like I feel like I'mconstantly wanting to learn new
things.
Of course, the love of my wifeand my children and my family,
that's all in there.
But but you know, like theanimate, like the thing that ooh
(10:58):
, gets the little chipmunk in mybrain going, is learning things
.
And just like any tool, youknow you can build a house with
a hammer or hit somebody on thehead with a hammer, right, the
tool, any tool has, has multipleuses.
So that learning tool, theother side of that is
(11:20):
disengagement.
How so?
Because you can be so wound upin the learning that it gives
you a way to not have to sit inuncomfortable feelings.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Because you're moving forward to a new thing every
time you learn, yeah.
And you can, if you so choose,not look back.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It's a distant.
It can easily be a distantdistancing mechanism.
I had a chart reader personwhom my mom loved to use as she
passed away.
I can't remember her name but abirth chart.
Yeah, birth chart, astrologerperson, among other things had
said to me once that and I'mgoing to preface this by saying
I was raised as a Buddhist, sothe reincarnation thing is how I
(12:04):
think it works but she said tome that previous times around I
had spent a lot of time in atower, kind of studying books
and being removed from people,and that my job this time was to
be with people.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
To bring the learning into communion with others.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, and to just be messy with people.
So I think that's the thingright.
Like you can use the quest forknowledge if that's a particular
vice, you can use that as a wayto stay away from people.
Like you can learn a ton andnot be really good at
interacting with people.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yes, like if an academic chooses to be locked up
in his or her ivory tower.
Totally yeah, got it.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, that's like that.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Or you could use it to learn with people.
You learn from them, they learnfrom you.
Oh wow, I have experienced thatwith you, jay.
I'm embarrassed to say that,despite having pages of notes
from things I've learned fromyou, we've only had six Pilates
together.
But I will say one of the firsttimes somewhere in that massive
(13:16):
amount of Pilates sessions I'velearned in eight years, one of
the first times I realized I waslearning something so crucial
that I needed to write it downin the middle of the session.
Yeah, you said to me, jen,rigidity in the body is a stress
response.
Yes, the goal is not rigidity,the goal is suppleness.
When did you first learn that?
(13:38):
Because for me that was likemind blown.
Can you repeat that so I knowwhat it meant for me and when I
learned it with?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
you yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, but when did you learn it for yourself?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I think probably it's one of those things that I
don't know when I learned it.
I do know when, going through aparticular hard time, I
understood for the first timethat being able to bear
something was a function ofbeing able to bend.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Can you say that again, being?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
able to bear something was a function of
being able to bend.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Wow, why is that?
Say more, why is that good?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
If we talk a little bit more, if we relate it back
to the rigidity thing.
If something is very difficultemotionally or physically or
whatever, my ability to bendwith it, my ability to be bent
by it.
To let myself be bent meansthat I can withstand it, sort of
(14:47):
like a wind blowing.
My wife and I used to say bendlike a reed.
The wind blows through a fieldof grass and everything bends
over and then it comes back sothat you can let things come
over you and I think, part ofWithout snapping or breaking
Without snapping withoutbreaking.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
You can bend and then rebound.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yes, Change is the goal, Wow.
So if I break sort of followingthe metaphor, rebounding is
very difficult.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
It's not possible or not possible.
Right, I'm in shambles on thefloor, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Right.
So the goal is to be dynamic.
The goal is to be bendable,because whatever the thing is,
however horrible it is, willchange.
It might not change for thebetter even, but the
circumstance will change.
(15:45):
We change moment to moment, soit's sort of letting being able
to bend with the situation untilthe thing can sort of change in
some way.
I think the other part of it isthat if I'm bendable, it means
I'm willing to let go of mypreconceived ideas about things.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And integrate the learning into the next version
of myself.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Whatever it's going to be, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Wow.
So what's the memory that comesto mind when you realize the
importance of bending orsuppleness?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I think there are a lot of places in my life that
that occurred for me.
I think you know like a rootone certainly would be when my
parents broke up.
It was a big, huge, horriblefight.
It was a scene that I was likeliterally in the middle of.
One of them had me the otherone was trying to pull me out of
that person's arms.
I was probably like five, wow,and at that age it just seems
(16:46):
like your world is completelytorn asunder.
I mean, it's destroyed, youknow.
But both of them, after theinitial fireworks and it was
clear that the relationship wasover, both of them endeavored so
deeply to make us understand, athat it wasn't our fault.
B that they were going to bethere for us.
(17:08):
And I think, on a fundamentallevel, that at that moment, sort
of, or when that happened, itdawned on my little brain that
like, oh, actually this horriblething just happened, but my
world didn't end and in themoment it felt like it was
ending, it felt like it was over, and so that was.
(17:29):
I think that would have been tome, if I think back on, the
root of that idea, that would be.
I hadn't really ever thoughtabout it like that up until now.
But I think that is sort of theroot of it, of this like, oh,
here's some horrible, horriblething and I survived.
And the people that I love, thatI were so dependent on,
(17:53):
recreated our life.
You know, to the degree thatthey remained very close friends
.
There was never any like I mean, I'm so fortunate in this, but
they were.
You know, there was never anacrimony about who's got who and
who's going to live where, andyou know they each served like a
very different purpose in mylife because I had different
relationships with them.
And even later on, I rememberwe were all in San Francisco or
(18:15):
something and we went to a movie, my brother and I and my mother
and my father.
I'm just like this is weird.
It's like you guys don't know.
This is strange, like I don'tknow what to do with myself.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I know your grownups.
This is too mature.
Come on really.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
So I think that was the if I think back on it.
Thank you for giving me thatopportunity to think back on it.
I feel like that was probablymaybe the root of it, but I
think it has grown.
I mean, I think it's somefundamental belief.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Can you give me an example of it showing up
recently?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
You know, I think a bunch of years ago probably
eight or nine years ago now, Iguess I had a stroke and it was
a kind that was I was fortunatein and where it happened.
It happened right in front ofthe hospital and literally in
front of the hospital and itwasn't a thing.
Yeah, and it wasn't.
And it happened to be ahospital that had just invested
in a neurosurgery unit andgotten this amazing doctor who
(19:16):
happened to be like a specialistin the thing that happened to
me.
No, I know it's ridiculous.
It's not even like if you pitchthat as a movie they would be
just like oh, come on.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
That doesn't happen.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
That's just dumb, but that's what happened, what it
did.
But it did happen, yeah, andyou know that was a big, huge
thing and you know I was in thehospital for a while and had
multiple crazy procedures torectify it and you know it was
probably like a three year ishor deal of recovering and then
(19:53):
trying to fix the sort ofmechanical problems that were,
that were in there.
But but it was.
You know, this kind of thoughtprocess really was super useful
in that, in that process.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Can you remember a moment when you chose bending
over breaking in that process?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, I mean geez, it was just full of them, you know
, because it was very painful,you know there were.
I had headaches daily, probablyfor almost three years, of
varying, varying degrees.
I mean to the extent that likeI knew them, you know they were
my, they were my friend, alittle bit like I could play
with them.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
You had different personalities for each of these
headaches.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I knew what I would do and I knew I knew if I did
certain things I would get aheadache and I could.
I sort of knew what theheadaches were going to feel
like.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah Cause a stroke is a big deal, Jay.
Yeah, this is huge.
So take us into that world.
What?
What were you dealing?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
with Post-stroke.
I was very fortunate becausethe the way it was like a
hemorrhagic thing.
I I was like a subduralhematoma.
So the blood that was bleedingonto my brain wasn't for my
brain, it was from a bunch ofarteries in my scalp that had
gone through, so it was like acongenital thing probably had
gone through my skull and we'retrying to dump blood into a vein
(21:12):
directly in my head, and soeventually that vein burst and I
had all this bleeding on mybrain, which is not what your
brain likes or wants or enjoys,and so it hurts like crazy and
your brain swells and my eyesgot weird and my hearing got
weird and and I collapsedessentially, and so the so I was
extremely fortunate in that,like I didn't I didn't, you know
(21:35):
all my parts work, I didn't youknow parts of my brain were
damaged from lack of oxygen orred blood, and so I came out of
it like pretty intact.
I mean, I was in ICU for likeseven days and I walked out of
the hospital.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Oh my.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And I, yeah, and I felt very altered in my body,
like I couldn't.
I felt taller and stranger andI couldn't figure out, like
where everything was inperipheral, in my peripheral
vision, because my eyes werestill kind of messed up and I
felt like I had been on a planethat had crashed into the ground
and I had walked out of it.
I don't understand why it was,but it was that kind of like I
(22:14):
said, survived a piano droppingon me from a building.
It's like it just made zerosense to me.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
I mean a real near death experience.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
As far as I was concerned, and and certainly in
that experience, I was the firsttime I had experienced actual
fear on the degree that I hadfelt.
I had never felt.
I mean, I had been, of course,afraid in my life many times,
but I had never felt fear on thelevel of I have lost control
(22:46):
completely.
When the cotton and I stretchthat construct as far as I could
like, I'm having headache andit's going to be okay.
And I was on my way torehearsal and it's going to be
okay, and I'm just going torehearsal and then I'm a little
dehydrated.
You know, I had stretched thisthing beyond the.
You know, even after everythingwas going nuts.
But that was the con, thecontext that I had created for
myself, and when that broke,that was the first I had never
(23:09):
felt that we're like, oh, youknow, I'm going to die, and it
hurts so much, and the pain andthe disorientation of it and I
mean it was just all.
Everything was on 11, all theway.
And then I was in.
They took me to the emergencyroom.
My wife, lana, you know, wasthere with me in the car and she
(23:29):
ran across the street to thehospital and said like hey, this
is happening to my husband andshe got somebody to come over
and look at me Wow, yeah.
And they stopped traffic andshe got in the car and drove me
to the ambulance center.
I mean, if it hadn't been herwith me, I don't know what.
What happened?
Lana saved your life.
Yeah, totally Wow and so.
But there was a moment in thehospital where the they're
(23:51):
bringing me out of a CAT scan,and this woman got close enough
to me that I could see her,because I couldn't really see,
and she said you're going to beokay.
Wow.
And then the world went snap.
Okay, I'm back.
I still in pain, still all thiscrazy stuff, still worried.
I don't know what's going onwith my body, but the context
(24:14):
had come back.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Wow, like the five-year-old self who thought
the world was ended and yetsomehow it got recreated and you
were able to move forward andmove through the world again.
Yeah, this was happening againafter the stroke.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
After the stroke yeah , like it just.
It was like okay, now there'sokay.
So then there's all thephysical problems with it and
whatever, and it was a long road.
But in that moment, when shesaid that there was a context
again, I could, my brain, could,my mind, could go, could create
a reality again which had beentaken out of it.
(24:51):
And in the process of all of thethings that I went through to
recover, there were many timeswhere things were very
uncomfortable, I mean physicallyvery uncomfortable.
There was a whole I had to havethis whole radiation treatment,
yada, yada, yada.
But the setting that uprequired, you know, all these
fixtures on my head and CATscans and MRIs and all this
(25:12):
stuff.
It was extremely uncomfortable,not to mention the fact that
there are these doctors hoveringaround you and you're just a
piece of meat, right, they'rejust poking you in da, da da,
and I would walk out of thosesessions and you know Lana would
be there and I would just, youknow, crumple, because I had
been expending so much energy tojust like keep myself together
(25:33):
in the face of this thing.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
The courage took a lot out of you.
It was exhausting.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
It was and I just was trying to survive it, you know
and so.
But that to me is like one ofthose places where it's just
like okay, this is going tohappen to me.
I understand this is going tohappen to me.
And I understand that it'shappening to me and that I'm
doing my best to breathe, tofeel centered, to let it happen
to me, and when I get out of it,maybe it means I fall on the
(26:02):
ground for a minute, but that,to me, is bendy, like that's
dynamic.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Wow, I am so moved by your courage and I'm also moved
by your presence that you choseto stay present to all of this
pain.
And I'll say I'm also moved byLana's presence, oh my God,
because her presence when thestroke happened saved your life.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
And I also think I'm hearing is that her presence
when she received you each timeyou felt you were going to
crumble after a major treatmentalso saved your life.
It's what enabled you to, afterthe bending, rebound.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, I think, and I think, yes, I mean, and I think
in a lot of levels, like it washarder on her to be a witness.
Yeah, because, I was just, yeah, I'm just going through this
process.
It's happening to me.
I have choice.
I don't have any choice.
It like some part of me inphysically was broken and I
(27:03):
needed to be fixed, so I had togo through this thing, survival
required it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, like Maslow's Hari Arachium needs.
We got some base needs to takecare of.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It was what I needed to do to survive and she my
partner, you know had to holdthat space for me and, on top of
all of what she was goingthrough, the worry and you know
I mean it's terrifying to seesomeone you love have to go
through something like that andto not know what's next.
We didn't know.
And so she actually, and shehad, you know, I was out of it
(27:36):
Like so she had to manage thekids and the family who had all
come to help Air quotes.
You know, there was, I think,she, you know, I think it was
much harder on her.
I just had to subject myself towhatever they're going to do to
me.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
But we're not going to take that lightly.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
No, no, no, no.
But but it was very is verysimple.
You know, I had to put myselfin that position and I think,
and then she was able to holdthat space and create a pathway
for me to have this amazing, youknow, bottomless beanbag of
love that I could just it wasalways there.
(28:18):
It was just always there.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And I hear not just love, but also presence and
courage and suppleness.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I imagine she was bending like a reed over and
over again to be there for you.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Wow, is there in I mean a three year recovery
process?
Is there anything else that wasa key moment in your healing
journey?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
There was a moment where they had tried a bunch of
stuff and it wasn't.
It had, you know, like theradiation treatment had to wait
18 months to see if it hadscarred everything over and
closed everything down, and itdidn't.
And we pushed it another sixmonths just to see and at some
point it became clear that theywere going to mechanically fix
it, which meant, you know,cutting my head open, surgery
(29:04):
yeah, very serious surgery.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Is this?
May I ask is this the big scar?
Speaker 2 (29:08):
That's the zipper you call it the zipper, that's the
zipper.
My friend, close friend of mine, had heart surgery and he
called it the zipper his scar,and I was like, yeah, it's
zipper.
So yeah, that's what that'sfrom.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
So and may I ask where does it run on your?
Speaker 2 (29:23):
from.
You know, maybe just behind onthe right side, just behind the
crown of my head, all the waydown to, you know, my neck,
essentially.
And so you know, they took someskull out and they got under.
They had to lift my brain up toclip this thing off, which they
did, and they put it all backtogether.
And but in the process ofgetting ready for that because
we knew that it was going to,you know, it wasn't like get in
(29:47):
the operating room right now,Like we had five or six weeks,
Got it.
And in the process of that I wasthinking to myself well, I had
been through like three verylong sort of surgical procedures
at that point, plus tons andtons of these weird sort of
x-ray processes where you'rekind of awake and kind of asleep
(30:07):
and they run this big x-raymachine around your head.
It was like a cerebralangiogram so they could monitor
what was going on.
So I had been in and out of thehospital a bunch, I had been
under anesthesia a bunch, andthere was so much of it that I
knew I knew the freaking tastein the back of my throat when
they pushed saline into my IV.
Wow, you know what I mean.
(30:29):
Like there's a, there's a smell, the chemical is there.
I knew it.
I knew it.
I knew what it felt like towake up from anesthesia, like
being out for seven hours oreight hours.
I knew what that felt like.
I knew what my body dealt with.
I knew all those freakingneedles that they stuck into you
.
I knew what it felt like tohave a pick line inserted into
(30:50):
my arm, into my heart.
I knew all of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
And you're bracing yourself.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
You're bracing yourself and that's what I was
doing.
I realized that what I wasdoing was I was armoring myself
up and I was doing it veryconsciously, like, okay, I'm
those guys, they're not going toscrew them, they're not going
to get me this time, they're notgoing to hurt me.
How does it hurt?
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
It sounds painful.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
And every aspect of it hurt.
So I was thinking about that alot and then the little light
bulb went off and I realizedthat that was like diametrically
the wrong approach.
That's the rigidity, yes, thestress response.
That's rigidity.
Right, that is, I'm going tomake myself hard and it's going
(31:36):
to bounce off me, right, becauseI'm literally armoring, like
metaphorically, literallyarmoring myself.
I'm going to be breaking myselfagainst it, and I'm mistaking
that.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
For strength, yes, but really.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
It's extremely weak, not in a pejorative sense, but
just structurally.
It's weak Because, because, ayou know, it's like building
yourself a house of twigs towithstand a tsunami.
That's not going to work.
This will probably work Likehiding behind, like a little
teeny bridge, like definitelynot going to my armor is not
(32:12):
serving me.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
What yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Because the the hugeness of what was rolling
downhill at me and it was datecertain, like on a Wednesday or
whatever it was I was going toshow up at seven in the morning
and this thing was going tohappen and the hugeness of that
thing.
There was no way that I couldarmor myself up enough, other
than even if I clenched everymuscle in my body and tried to,
(32:38):
you know, grip my teeth throughthe whole thing.
I would still be crushed.
We're not in control.
No, especially there.
And so so what I did was Iwhatever?
I realized that I was doing thewrong thing, and so I changed
it, I turned it aroundcompletely, and and it all
(33:00):
became about working really,really hard to learn to accept
what was going to happen.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
How.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, that sounds hard.
Yeah, I just I decided thatwhat I wanted to do and that the
way forward through this thingwas to start to give myself
tools to accept what was goingto happen.
And that meant thinking veryconsciously about they're going
(33:34):
to do all the stuff to me.
And I even had a little thingthat I said.
I don't even remember what itwas exactly, but it was
something to the effect of like,when I would think about it and
I could feel anxiety rising, Iwould say something to the
effect of I'm in, I'mparticipating in this treatment
and I accept whatever comes withit, because it is a tool that
(33:56):
I'm using to help myself heal,to help myself be better, and I
so.
I accept the pain, I accept thediscomfort, I accept the
assault of it, because surgeryis an assault, it's violent and
even though we're not consciousfor it or not asleep, there's a
(34:17):
difference.
Even though we're not consciousfor it, our bodies remember the
trauma of the attack.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
It's so invasive, it's so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
You're not designed to be cut open.
There's no part of your bodythat is okay with being cut open
because you think you're goingto die, like on a very
fundamental level.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And the body keeps the score Absolutely, so the
trauma resides there.
Yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
And that's what it was about saying like, okay,
this is going to happen.
And my little mantra I don'tremember again exactly what it
was, but it was something like Iaccept this treatment because I
know that it's going to help meand that I need to recover and
that this is a path to recovery,even though it was going to be
difficult, something like that.
That's sort of wordy for whatit was.
Wow.
But so there was that aspect ofit.
(35:02):
There was being able to reallytry to find a way to be
accepting and compassionatetowards myself, so understanding
that I would have that if I hada hard time with whatever it
was, just I was having a hardtime and that that was okay to
have a hard time and to be hurtthat day and to be sad that day
(35:23):
and to be whatever I was feelingthat day, but that I could have
like that fundamentally, that Icould be that empathic to
myself.
And accept it.
Yeah, and accept it Accept it.
It was an exercise in radicalacceptance, of really just being
like okay, I'm going to beuncomfortable, this is going to
hurt and I'm going to just bepresent with being hurt and sit
(35:50):
in.
If it meant sitting in the hurt, then I was going to sit in the
hurt, wow.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
The presence, the acceptance, the self-compassion,
the literal tools, with themantra, the reframe.
I'm going to reframe this awayfrom something that is breaking
me down to something that is atool for my healing.
Where did that lead?
This story has a good ending.
(36:17):
I'm sitting here.
What you're doing these days.
What happens next?
How do I get to still talk toyou, jay?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I think what it how it manifested for me, I felt
like was that I was able to justbe present through my recovery,
and so it became less abouttrying to achieve normalcy again
and became to accept the factthat I wasn't ever going to be
the same, that that part of me,that myself previous to that day
(36:49):
August 2nd, whatever it was,august 1st was gone.
But I could let go, try to letgo of that and try to accept
what the new version of me wasgoing to be.
That it isn't about trying toachieve.
I just I hear it with peoplewho are injured all the time
Like I just want to get back tohow I was.
(37:10):
I want to get back to normal.
There's no normal.
Normal is whatever you are inthe moment, and so that was a
big part of it.
Like being able to let go ofthat, being able to just move
forward and being able to justbe present in things that were
difficult when they weredifficult.
(37:30):
You know, to just understand.
If I understand fundamentallythat change is unstoppable, then
I understand that at some point, on a moment to moment basis,
maybe my suffering will change alittle bit.
I'm not talking about like fromtoday to tomorrow.
I'm talking about like from nowto now.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
It might feel slightly different this second
than the next second, and that'sa good thing.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And that's okay, and that includes it might hurt.
It can be a good thing, yeah,and that includes that it might
hurt more in the next second.
But if it can change in thatdirection, it can change in the
other direction.
You know, I feel like not onlycan two things be true at the
same time, but a multitude ofthings can be true at the same
time.
And so if I can be in pain, butI can be grateful, right, I can
(38:26):
.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Oh, that's some hard stuff to say.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I understand.
You know what I mean.
I can be suffering throughsomething, but I can be loved, I
can love, I can see a pathforward.
Maybe that that's way off inthe distance.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
I hear yes and both, and yes.
One way to think of that is wow, holding all that complexity
sounds really heavy and hard.
No thanks, yeah, sure, don'treally want to do that.
I'll pick another route.
Fodka, I would say Moscow, butyeah, sure, good enough.
(39:04):
Or, holding all of thatcomplexity keeps me present.
Yes, enough to make a new wayforward.
What is holding all thatcomplexity enable?
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I'm not saying this to sound cheeky.
It enables you to hold all thatcomplexity more it does.
It sounds like it would requirea huge amount of energy, but I
think very much in the way thata body that is aligned moves
easier through the world.
(39:42):
There's a certain level ofenergy that requires me to keep
myself physically lined up, butI'm getting so much more back
because of so much more ease.
It's so much more efficientthat it really is.
I'm actually on a net plus, Ithink.
(40:02):
In terms of holding all thatcomplexity.
It's very much the same thing.
It seems like it requires a lotof energy to be present like
that, or to try to be presentlike that, but on the other side
of it, being present like thatmakes it possible to keep being
present like that.
Once you're in that zone, thenit becomes self-perpetuating.
(40:23):
It's not an additional effortno.
It's not harder.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
It's just trying to put yourself into that spot over
and over again.
I think the compassioncomponent of that
self-compassion component ofthat is going like well today.
I ain't going to do thatbecause I can't.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
That's okay, because it will change.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yes, I'm not like some yogi dude or something, but
life is what life is and it'smoment by moment.
There are some moments when Ican be like that and there are
some moments when I can't.
Probably, if you added it allup, the moments I can't be like
that are way more than themoments I could by a lot.
(41:11):
But it's okay.
It's okay to be sad and hurtand mad and upset, because it's
also okay to be jubilant and inlove and joyful.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
And both types of emotions require presence.
So I've got to practicepresence.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Okay, now I'm curious .
You've built up all thiscapacity and awareness within
yourself and presence.
What's next?
What do you hope for your ownhealing journey Next?
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I don't have a.
Next, I don't.
You're too present for that.
It sounds so pretentious.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
No, I'm not, I'm not, I think I'm just finally
catching on, but his presencething is always present, it's
always present.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, I think I feel like there are things that I
endeavor to do, such as Iendeavor to not compartmentalize
my life.
I endeavor to not say there'sthis part of me that's siloed
off from this part of me.
I endeavor to be kind to people.
(42:28):
I endeavor to be in a way thatpeople can be kind to me.
It sounds incredibly basic, butyou know it's lacking in
today's world.
It's very lacking.
Yeah, I mean everything thatthe world teaches us now is to
be separate.
And again, the compassion partis to be okay with when I fail
(42:53):
at all of these things, whichagain is a lot.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
I haven't seen that too.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
But yeah, it's just To me, it's just being very
simple, it's very simple, it'sjust.
Can I be present in the world,can I inhabit my body to the
it's fullest when I presentmyself to people as vulnerable,
(43:22):
but not but strong?
Strong in a sense of not likefrom physical strength
necessarily, but just that I'm,my vulnerability.
I think what I understoodfinally when we were talking
about what I was doing to try tofigure out how to deal with the
surgical thing, was that Iunderstood finally and I'd heard
(43:42):
it in self-help books andwhatever but I finally
understood that vulnerabilitywas the strongest place to be,
because if I put myself in thatposition, if I could consciously
say I'm going to be here andjust try to be present and not
armor myself up, that that wasan incredibly powerful position.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
So you are helping me on my healing journey.
You are doing so much for theother clients you come across.
You're clearly doing so muchfor yourself and your family and
future generations and yourlineage.
What do you hope for others intheir healing journey?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
I think for me, and what I endeavor to try to do in
our work, is to help people findthat sort of footing where they
can experience whatever iscoming from this sort of stable
dynamic, there's one person Ican control in the entire world
(44:51):
and that's me, and I'm not verygood at that.
So I think if, on a verymetaphysical level, I feel like
we are boundless, healingcapacity is boundless.
We are made of the stuff ofstars.
(45:12):
The universe exists in us and Ibelieve that I believe there's
zero end to potential energy,kindness, love, compassion.
So all I try to do as much as Ican, in any way I can, is to
maybe make it so that that is alittle easier somehow, and it's
(45:36):
just little, little bits.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
As I've seen in my six sessions with you, small
ships can have big impact.
Thank you, jay, you're welcome.
Oh, I didn't drop my register.
Oh, sorry, thank you, jay.
You're welcome, jay.
This was awesome.
I think it's a wrap.
Woo, what a specialconversation.
Thank you for sticking aroundfor my love and learning
(46:08):
reflection.
So here's what I'm learning andloving from my conversation with
Jay Cyclebreaking, bending likea reed and radical acceptance.
So I'll say a little more aboutwhat I'm taking away for each
of those three things.
Cyclebreaking I love how Jaydescribed feeling respected as a
kid and being very seen.
(46:30):
I really want to create thatexperience for my own kids.
So I'm inspired by the cyclebreaking that Jay's parents
actively chose to do to stopcertain patterns in their
families and start new,healthier ones.
And it feels like an extraspecial way to honor Jay's
(46:51):
father, for whom it was theanniversary of his passing the
day that we recorded ourconversation, so it feels really
special.
Thank you, jay, and thank youJay's father, and I especially
want to thank Jay for sharingthe phrase that he and his wife
Lana would say to each otherduring their most challenging
times in life and like a reed.
(47:14):
I'll never forget that rigidityin the body is a stress response
and I can feel it in myselfwhenever I'm present enough and
scanning my body in a difficultmoment or conversation.
And that defense mechanism,that rigidity, is the opposite
of what I ultimately need.
So I want to remember in themoment of my triggered self that
(47:38):
the goal is to be dynamic andbe able to bend with the
situation until the situationchanges.
I think of it as riding thewave, not getting stuck in one
place, and the fact of thematter is change is inevitable,
so it will inevitably change.
And, as Jay put it, beingbendable includes being willing
(47:58):
to let go of my preconceivednotions about things.
So I am committing to endeavorto face life from that dynamic,
stable stance that Jay described.
And, last but not least, I was,and still am, blown away by
Jay's radical acceptance, as heput it, including of the immense
(48:23):
pain he experienced throughoutthe three year ordeal
surrounding his stroke and themassive brain surgery he had.
It sounds incredibly hard andincredibly worth it.
Worth it because thatacceptance seems key to not
adding suffering to my lifethrough resistance.
(48:43):
From what I am learning fromBuddhist teachings and other
places, the resistance addssuffering.
It's worth it because thatradical acceptance will enable
me to hold more complexity,which is so needed in today's
world, and to have more presence, and I want to be more present
to the things and people that Ilove most in my life.
(49:06):
So my question for you is whatare you loving and what are you
learning from this conversation?
I hope you were inspired ormoved by at least one thing that
you heard today and, if youwere, please share this episode
with someone you love or someonewhom you think might appreciate
it.
It would mean so much to me.
And not everything will be foreveryone, and that's A-OK.
(49:30):
Take what you need, leave whatyou don't.
And, based on what you'reloving and learning from this
conversation, I have one morequestion for you.
What's one thing you commit todoing next for greater
fulfillment and wholeness inyour own life?
Oh, and one more thing For anylisteners interested in checking
(49:50):
out BodyCraft Pilates, theBrooklyn-based Pilates studio
that Jay and his wife Lana own.
It is amazing.
They're offering a discount toany new clients who mentioned
this podcast the High Note whenyou email them.
See the show notes for moreinformation.
Thank you so much for listening.
(50:11):
Much love everyone.
Hi everyone, it's Jen Nguyen here.
Welcome to this episode of theHigh Note Healing Inspirations
from Life, where today we talkto Jay Grinnelli about healing
stroke and quote bending like areed unquote.
Jay is such a multifaceted,multi-talented human being.
(00:37):
He is a body worker, my Pilatesinstructor In fact, that's how
I met him in Pilates class.
He's also a musician and acreative through and through.
You can read Jay's full bio inthe show notes.
I'll just say this conversationwith Jay is everything.
The conversation builds overtime.
(00:59):
You'll hear about breakingintergenerational cycles within
families, surviving stroke andthe power of staying present to
it all, pain included.
Jay is funny and playfulthroughout all of it.
This conversation is fun,dynamic and beautiful.
Let's get started.
(01:20):
Hi everyone, I'm so excited fortoday's guest.
I'll let you introduce yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Hi, my name is Jay Grinnelli.
I guess I would consider myselfsort of generally an artist in
the sense that I try to live mylife artfully.
Maybe that's a working way tothink about it.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yes, you create.
Yes, absolutely yeah, jay.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Well, I find myself seeking joy these days.
One of the places is in Pilatessessions with you.
Yes, sure you are an amazingPilates instructor.
Thank you.
No, I'm thanking you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Okay, you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
But I'm not curious about my sources of joy.
I'm actually curious about yoursources of joy.
What's a joyful memory for you?
It could be a recent one or onefrom the past, but it
absolutely brings you joy.
Whoa.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
That's so interesting Because I think my inclination
would be to somehow plumb thedepths of my memory.
Oh, I got one.
This is good.
This is total memory depthplumbing.
Plumbing worked, plumbingworked.
Yeah, when I was in fourth grade, we were living in Colorado and
(02:37):
my elementary school went on afield trip for like a week Never
going to happen today, that'samazing.
In five whole days, seven days,whoa yeah, in yellow school
buses and we drove from BoulderColorado we were living way to
Southern Colorado to go to MesaVerde and the Great Sand Dunes
(02:58):
and all this stuff Absolutelybonkers and very cool.
Yeah, it was great.
But on that first day you'rereally away from home.
I had never gone to summer campor anything, so it was our
parents that sent bag lunchesthat first day.
So we're at a rest stopsomewhere by the side of the
road and I feel a little bummedand I reach in my bag lunch and
(03:19):
there's a sandwich and at thevery bottom is a piece of bubble
gum that my mother had put inthe bag.
Oh score, unbelievable, it wasjust like the best feeling ever.
And it wasn't so much I meanbecause, like my mother would
(03:42):
never have given me bubble gum,so it was.
I think the thing that justmakes me so sort of warm hearted
about it even now was thethought that she was thinking
about me to that degree, likethat she would think enough to
(04:02):
think about what I would beexperiencing later that day and
that I needed some speciallittle something.
And this she was like anabsolute, like ninja master at
that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, and I really took that Like that's something
that I've tried to emulate in myown life, that I tell you
stories for days.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
It's got love in there.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, deep love, deep love, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
It's also got like a little playfulness.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Like a little, I don't know, delightful surprise.
Yeah, I would like to tackleyou with how silly and fun this
is.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, and kind of willing to break the rules.
Yeah, I mean she wasn'thardcore about like our diet or
anything, but like that kind ofcandy she would just never.
It would just never be at thehalf like we would just never
have it.
Yeah, I would get it when Iwent out with my friends or
something, but it wasn't part ofour house.
There weren't bowls of bubblegum or whatever.
(05:02):
And I think it was this kind of.
I didn't understand it tilllater in my life when I would
think about it, but it wasreally like not just that she
was my parent and she wasthinking deeply about me and
something that I would like, butthat it was like being very
seen as a kid.
I know that.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yes, she saw you and also future versions of you.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, that's how deeply she saw you, yeah, and
that it was that she and myfather too.
They, from my earliest daysthey were my earliest memory
treated us as people not to saythat they weren't our parents,
because they were very much ourparents, but they would talk to
you as a whole person, yeah,from a very young age, like they
(05:48):
would just get down on thefloor and just talk like, have
conversations with you aboutwhatever you was on your kid
brain, and it wasn't like oh,yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was just like, oh, okay,there's dinosaurs in this, on
this paper, and we're going totalk about.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
you know what I mean.
Like they, a fellow human, afellow journeyman, a journey
person in life.
Yeah, yeah, wow.
How did that make you feel as akid.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I think I just felt like a person.
I never felt disrespected and Inever felt not taken seriously
Mm-hmm, I never.
Yeah, I can hear that, yeah.
Yeah, I never felt likesomething I was doing was silly
or a phase or whatever.
You know, if I was like I'mreally into whatever they're
(06:31):
like, all right, let's do that,wow.
And you know it was just likeokay, this is what we're into,
so now we're into it and theywould go with me.
However, I wanted to go into it, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And that was worth exploring because it came up in
you and therefore it was worthy.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, and interesting and something that they would
learn.
You know they would want tolearn more about.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Oh, that's really cool that it wasn't just an act
of parenting or almost like asacrificial act for you it was.
All of us will benefit fromthis.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, I hear the equality, I hear the respect and
mutuality in that, yeah, and Ithink that in my own parenting
that's something that wasclearly made like a huge
impression on me, so that wassomething that I tried to bring
forward for my kids.
I wanted to have that qualitywith them where it was like,
(07:27):
yeah, okay, well, just, we'regoing to you get down on
geographically the same level asthem and just trying to be with
them.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So you would get down on the floor with your kids
when they were younger, all thetime, look at them eye to eye,
meet them person to person.
Yes, wow, yeah.
What a beautiful thing to carryforward from one generation to
the next.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
What a gift.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yes, I think both of my parents for that.
Just like you know, I think Ihad the opportunity before my
father died to thank him fornever hitting me.
He was hit by his father.
He was father's father, was hitby his father for, you know,
being involved in substanceabuse recovery that he was in.
His father was a drunk, hisfather's father was a drunk.
(08:15):
You know, there was a lot ofthings that my parents stopped.
What a powerful choice.
Yeah, they stopped like theywere like no, this ends here,
this ends here, this ends withme.
And I don't know that it was.
It wasn't necessarily presentedverbatim like this is what
(08:35):
we're doing, but it but.
But you know, as an adult Icould see like, oh, okay, that's
what, that's what was going on,like they stopped stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
They stopped cycles of abuse, yep, and what I'm
hearing is started cycles ofself worth and worthiness.
Yes, I hope.
I mean, as a survivor ofdomestic violence from my
childhood home, I hope to bethat cycle breaker in the
generations that have come.
You know before and after.
I do think it benefits bothdirections.
(09:06):
The lineage absolutely willappreciate it in either way.
Yeah, I am really struck byyour foresight to thank your
father for making that choicebefore he passed.
What did you say to him?
Do you remember the words?
I said thank you, Thank you forjust thank you, just thanks, you
(09:32):
got me right.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Thanks for the pasta and oh and this other stuff.
No, I, no, I, I I thanked him,I said thank you very much.
No, thank you very much.
It's so formal, but I just Isaid I just we had a moment it
was before he was really sickand I I was spending some time
(09:53):
with him and I just we weretalking about his father and who
I knew, you know, into my teens, before his, my grandfather,
his father died, and we weretalking about that and the, you
know, the family and all thatstuff.
And yeah, I just I said thankyou so much for not, you know,
bringing that forward, because alot of people do, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
A lot of people hurt people, hurt people yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Absolutely.
I mean that kind of pain.
There is like no length that ahuman being will not go to to
get out of pain, and thatincludes dehumanizing effect of
inflicting pain on somebody else.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Okay, Now I'm curious what was your numbing mechanism
?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
If I were to like, really, really distill down.
You know myself, the thing thatmotivates me, that animates me
probably as much as anythingelse, is this sort of desire to
learn, like I feel like I'mconstantly wanting to learn new
things.
Of course, the love of my wifeand my children and my family,
that's all in there.
But but you know, like theanimate, like the thing that ooh
(10:58):
, gets the little chipmunk in mybrain going, is learning things
.
And just like any tool, youknow you can build a house with
a hammer or hit somebody on thehead with a hammer, right, the
tool, any tool has, has multipleuses.
So that learning tool, theother side of that is
(11:20):
disengagement.
How so?
Because you can be so wound upin the learning that it gives
you a way to not have to sit inuncomfortable feelings.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Because you're moving forward to a new thing every
time you learn, yeah.
And you can, if you so choose,not look back.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It's a distant.
It can easily be a distantdistancing mechanism.
I had a chart reader personwhom my mom loved to use as she
passed away.
I can't remember her name but abirth chart.
Yeah, birth chart, astrologerperson, among other things had
said to me once that and I'mgoing to preface this by saying
I was raised as a Buddhist, sothe reincarnation thing is how I
(12:04):
think it works but she said tome that previous times around I
had spent a lot of time in atower, kind of studying books
and being removed from people,and that my job this time was to
be with people.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
To bring the learning into communion with others.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, and to just be messy with people.
So I think that's the thingright.
Like you can use the quest forknowledge if that's a particular
vice, you can use that as a wayto stay away from people.
Like you can learn a ton andnot be really good at
interacting with people.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yes, like if an academic chooses to be locked up
in his or her ivory tower.
Totally yeah, got it.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, that's like that.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Or you could use it to learn with people.
You learn from them, they learnfrom you.
Oh wow, I have experienced thatwith you, jay.
I'm embarrassed to say that,despite having pages of notes
from things I've learned fromyou, we've only had six Pilates
together.
But I will say one of the firsttimes somewhere in that massive
(13:16):
amount of Pilates sessions I'velearned in eight years, one of
the first times I realized I waslearning something so crucial
that I needed to write it downin the middle of the session.
Yeah, you said to me, jen,rigidity in the body is a stress
response.
Yes, the goal is not rigidity,the goal is suppleness.
When did you first learn that?
(13:38):
Because for me that was likemind blown.
Can you repeat that so I knowwhat it meant for me and when I
learned it with?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
you yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, but when did you learn it for yourself?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I think probably it's one of those things that I
don't know when I learned it.
I do know when, going through aparticular hard time, I
understood for the first timethat being able to bear
something was a function ofbeing able to bend.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Can you say that again, being?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
able to bear something was a function of
being able to bend.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Wow, why is that?
Say more, why is that good?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
If we talk a little bit more, if we relate it back
to the rigidity thing.
If something is very difficultemotionally or physically or
whatever, my ability to bendwith it, my ability to be bent
by it.
To let myself be bent meansthat I can withstand it, sort of
(14:47):
like a wind blowing.
My wife and I used to say bendlike a reed.
The wind blows through a fieldof grass and everything bends
over and then it comes back sothat you can let things come
over you and I think, part ofWithout snapping or breaking
Without snapping withoutbreaking.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
You can bend and then rebound.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yes, Change is the goal, Wow.
So if I break sort of followingthe metaphor, rebounding is
very difficult.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
It's not possible or not possible.
Right, I'm in shambles on thefloor, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Right.
So the goal is to be dynamic.
The goal is to be bendable,because whatever the thing is,
however horrible it is, willchange.
It might not change for thebetter even, but the
circumstance will change.
(15:45):
We change moment to moment, soit's sort of letting being able
to bend with the situation untilthe thing can sort of change in
some way.
I think the other part of it isthat if I'm bendable, it means
I'm willing to let go of mypreconceived ideas about things.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And integrate the learning into the next version
of myself.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Whatever it's going to be, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Wow.
So what's the memory that comesto mind when you realize the
importance of bending orsuppleness?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I think there are a lot of places in my life that
that occurred for me.
I think you know like a rootone certainly would be when my
parents broke up.
It was a big, huge, horriblefight.
It was a scene that I was likeliterally in the middle of.
One of them had me the otherone was trying to pull me out of
that person's arms.
I was probably like five, wow,and at that age it just seems
(16:46):
like your world is completelytorn asunder.
I mean, it's destroyed, youknow.
But both of them, after theinitial fireworks and it was
clear that the relationship wasover, both of them endeavored so
deeply to make us understand, athat it wasn't our fault.
B that they were going to bethere for us.
(17:08):
And I think, on a fundamentallevel, that at that moment, sort
of, or when that happened, itdawned on my little brain that
like, oh, actually this horriblething just happened, but my
world didn't end and in themoment it felt like it was
ending, it felt like it was over, and so that was.
(17:29):
I think that would have been tome, if I think back on, the
root of that idea, that would be.
I hadn't really ever thoughtabout it like that up until now.
But I think that is sort of theroot of it, of this like, oh,
here's some horrible, horriblething and I survived.
And the people that I love, thatI were so dependent on,
(17:53):
recreated our life.
You know, to the degree thatthey remained very close friends
.
There was never any like I mean, I'm so fortunate in this, but
they were.
You know, there was never anacrimony about who's got who and
who's going to live where, andyou know they each served like a
very different purpose in mylife because I had different
relationships with them.
And even later on, I rememberwe were all in San Francisco or
(18:15):
something and we went to a movie, my brother and I and my mother
and my father.
I'm just like this is weird.
It's like you guys don't know.
This is strange, like I don'tknow what to do with myself.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I know your grownups.
This is too mature.
Come on really.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
So I think that was the if I think back on it.
Thank you for giving me thatopportunity to think back on it.
I feel like that was probablymaybe the root of it, but I
think it has grown.
I mean, I think it's somefundamental belief.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Can you give me an example of it showing up
recently?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
You know, I think a bunch of years ago probably
eight or nine years ago now, Iguess I had a stroke and it was
a kind that was I was fortunatein and where it happened.
It happened right in front ofthe hospital and literally in
front of the hospital and itwasn't a thing.
Yeah, and it wasn't.
And it happened to be ahospital that had just invested
in a neurosurgery unit andgotten this amazing doctor who
(19:16):
happened to be like a specialistin the thing that happened to
me.
No, I know it's ridiculous.
It's not even like if you pitchthat as a movie they would be
just like oh, come on.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
That doesn't happen.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
That's just dumb, but that's what happened, what it
did.
But it did happen, yeah, andyou know that was a big, huge
thing and you know I was in thehospital for a while and had
multiple crazy procedures torectify it and you know it was
probably like a three year ishor deal of recovering and then
(19:53):
trying to fix the sort ofmechanical problems that were,
that were in there.
But but it was.
You know, this kind of thoughtprocess really was super useful
in that, in that process.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Can you remember a moment when you chose bending
over breaking in that process?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, I mean geez, it was just full of them, you know
, because it was very painful,you know there were.
I had headaches daily, probablyfor almost three years, of
varying, varying degrees.
I mean to the extent that likeI knew them, you know they were
my, they were my friend, alittle bit like I could play
with them.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
You had different personalities for each of these
headaches.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I knew what I would do and I knew I knew if I did
certain things I would get aheadache and I could.
I sort of knew what theheadaches were going to feel
like.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah Cause a stroke is a big deal, Jay.
Yeah, this is huge.
So take us into that world.
What?
What were you dealing?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
with Post-stroke.
I was very fortunate becausethe the way it was like a
hemorrhagic thing.
I I was like a subduralhematoma.
So the blood that was bleedingonto my brain wasn't for my
brain, it was from a bunch ofarteries in my scalp that had
gone through, so it was like acongenital thing probably had
gone through my skull and we'retrying to dump blood into a vein
(21:12):
directly in my head, and soeventually that vein burst and I
had all this bleeding on mybrain, which is not what your
brain likes or wants or enjoys,and so it hurts like crazy and
your brain swells and my eyesgot weird and my hearing got
weird and and I collapsedessentially, and so the so I was
extremely fortunate in that,like I didn't I didn't, you know
(21:35):
all my parts work, I didn't youknow parts of my brain were
damaged from lack of oxygen orred blood, and so I came out of
it like pretty intact.
I mean, I was in ICU for likeseven days and I walked out of
the hospital.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Oh my.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And I, yeah, and I felt very altered in my body,
like I couldn't.
I felt taller and stranger andI couldn't figure out, like
where everything was inperipheral, in my peripheral
vision, because my eyes werestill kind of messed up and I
felt like I had been on a planethat had crashed into the ground
and I had walked out of it.
I don't understand why it was,but it was that kind of like I
(22:14):
said, survived a piano droppingon me from a building.
It's like it just made zerosense to me.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
I mean a real near death experience.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
As far as I was concerned, and and certainly in
that experience, I was the firsttime I had experienced actual
fear on the degree that I hadfelt.
I had never felt.
I mean, I had been, of course,afraid in my life many times,
but I had never felt fear on thelevel of I have lost control
(22:46):
completely.
When the cotton and I stretchthat construct as far as I could
like, I'm having headache andit's going to be okay.
And I was on my way torehearsal and it's going to be
okay, and I'm just going torehearsal and then I'm a little
dehydrated.
You know, I had stretched thisthing beyond the.
You know, even after everythingwas going nuts.
But that was the con, thecontext that I had created for
myself, and when that broke,that was the first I had never
(23:09):
felt that we're like, oh, youknow, I'm going to die, and it
hurts so much, and the pain andthe disorientation of it and I
mean it was just all.
Everything was on 11, all theway.
And then I was in.
They took me to the emergencyroom.
My wife, lana, you know, wasthere with me in the car and she
(23:29):
ran across the street to thehospital and said like hey, this
is happening to my husband andshe got somebody to come over
and look at me Wow, yeah.
And they stopped traffic andshe got in the car and drove me
to the ambulance center.
I mean, if it hadn't been herwith me, I don't know what.
What happened?
Lana saved your life.
Yeah, totally Wow and so.
But there was a moment in thehospital where the they're
(23:51):
bringing me out of a CAT scan,and this woman got close enough
to me that I could see her,because I couldn't really see,
and she said you're going to beokay.
Wow.
And then the world went snap.
Okay, I'm back.
I still in pain, still all thiscrazy stuff, still worried.
I don't know what's going onwith my body, but the context
(24:14):
had come back.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Wow, like the five-year-old self who thought
the world was ended and yetsomehow it got recreated and you
were able to move forward andmove through the world again.
Yeah, this was happening againafter the stroke.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
After the stroke yeah , like it just.
It was like okay, now there'sokay.
So then there's all thephysical problems with it and
whatever, and it was a long road.
But in that moment, when shesaid that there was a context
again, I could, my brain, could,my mind, could go, could create
a reality again which had beentaken out of it.
(24:51):
And in the process of all of thethings that I went through to
recover, there were many timeswhere things were very
uncomfortable, I mean physicallyvery uncomfortable.
There was a whole I had to havethis whole radiation treatment,
yada, yada, yada.
But the setting that uprequired, you know, all these
fixtures on my head and CATscans and MRIs and all this
(25:12):
stuff.
It was extremely uncomfortable,not to mention the fact that
there are these doctors hoveringaround you and you're just a
piece of meat, right, they'rejust poking you in da, da da,
and I would walk out of thosesessions and you know Lana would
be there and I would just, youknow, crumple, because I had
been expending so much energy tojust like keep myself together
(25:33):
in the face of this thing.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
The courage took a lot out of you.
It was exhausting.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
It was and I just was trying to survive it, you know
and so.
But that to me is like one ofthose places where it's just
like okay, this is going tohappen to me.
I understand this is going tohappen to me.
And I understand that it'shappening to me and that I'm
doing my best to breathe, tofeel centered, to let it happen
to me, and when I get out of it,maybe it means I fall on the
(26:02):
ground for a minute, but that,to me, is bendy, like that's
dynamic.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Wow, I am so moved by your courage and I'm also moved
by your presence that you choseto stay present to all of this
pain.
And I'll say I'm also moved byLana's presence, oh my God,
because her presence when thestroke happened saved your life.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
And I also think I'm hearing is that her presence
when she received you each timeyou felt you were going to
crumble after a major treatmentalso saved your life.
It's what enabled you to, afterthe bending, rebound.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, I think, and I think, yes, I mean, and I think
in a lot of levels, like it washarder on her to be a witness.
Yeah, because, I was just, yeah, I'm just going through this
process.
It's happening to me.
I have choice.
I don't have any choice.
It like some part of me inphysically was broken and I
(27:03):
needed to be fixed, so I had togo through this thing, survival
required it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, like Maslow's Hari Arachium needs.
We got some base needs to takecare of.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It was what I needed to do to survive and she my
partner, you know had to holdthat space for me and, on top of
all of what she was goingthrough, the worry and you know
I mean it's terrifying to seesomeone you love have to go
through something like that andto not know what's next.
We didn't know.
And so she actually, and shehad, you know, I was out of it
(27:36):
Like so she had to manage thekids and the family who had all
come to help Air quotes.
You know, there was, I think,she, you know, I think it was
much harder on her.
I just had to subject myself towhatever they're going to do to
me.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
But we're not going to take that lightly.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
No, no, no, no.
But but it was very is verysimple.
You know, I had to put myselfin that position and I think,
and then she was able to holdthat space and create a pathway
for me to have this amazing, youknow, bottomless beanbag of
love that I could just it wasalways there.
(28:18):
It was just always there.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And I hear not just love, but also presence and
courage and suppleness.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I imagine she was bending like a reed over and
over again to be there for you.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Wow, is there in I mean a three year recovery
process?
Is there anything else that wasa key moment in your healing
journey?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
There was a moment where they had tried a bunch of
stuff and it wasn't.
It had, you know, like theradiation treatment had to wait
18 months to see if it hadscarred everything over and
closed everything down, and itdidn't.
And we pushed it another sixmonths just to see and at some
point it became clear that theywere going to mechanically fix
it, which meant, you know,cutting my head open, surgery
(29:04):
yeah, very serious surgery.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Is this?
May I ask is this the big scar?
Speaker 2 (29:08):
That's the zipper you call it the zipper, that's the
zipper.
My friend, close friend of mine, had heart surgery and he
called it the zipper his scar,and I was like, yeah, it's
zipper.
So yeah, that's what that'sfrom.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
So and may I ask where does it run on your?
Speaker 2 (29:23):
from.
You know, maybe just behind onthe right side, just behind the
crown of my head, all the waydown to, you know, my neck,
essentially.
And so you know, they took someskull out and they got under.
They had to lift my brain up toclip this thing off, which they
did, and they put it all backtogether.
And but in the process ofgetting ready for that because
we knew that it was going to,you know, it wasn't like get in
(29:47):
the operating room right now,Like we had five or six weeks,
Got it.
And in the process of that I wasthinking to myself well, I had
been through like three verylong sort of surgical procedures
at that point, plus tons andtons of these weird sort of
x-ray processes where you'rekind of awake and kind of asleep
(30:07):
and they run this big x-raymachine around your head.
It was like a cerebralangiogram so they could monitor
what was going on.
So I had been in and out of thehospital a bunch, I had been
under anesthesia a bunch, andthere was so much of it that I
knew I knew the freaking tastein the back of my throat when
they pushed saline into my IV.
Wow, you know what I mean.
(30:29):
Like there's a, there's a smell, the chemical is there.
I knew it.
I knew it.
I knew what it felt like towake up from anesthesia, like
being out for seven hours oreight hours.
I knew what that felt like.
I knew what my body dealt with.
I knew all those freakingneedles that they stuck into you
.
I knew what it felt like tohave a pick line inserted into
(30:50):
my arm, into my heart.
I knew all of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
And you're bracing yourself.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
You're bracing yourself and that's what I was
doing.
I realized that what I wasdoing was I was armoring myself
up and I was doing it veryconsciously, like, okay, I'm
those guys, they're not going toscrew them, they're not going
to get me this time, they're notgoing to hurt me.
How does it hurt?
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
It sounds painful.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
And every aspect of it hurt.
So I was thinking about that alot and then the little light
bulb went off and I realizedthat that was like diametrically
the wrong approach.
That's the rigidity, yes, thestress response.
That's rigidity.
Right, that is, I'm going tomake myself hard and it's going
(31:36):
to bounce off me, right, becauseI'm literally armoring, like
metaphorically, literallyarmoring myself.
I'm going to be breaking myselfagainst it, and I'm mistaking
that.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
For strength, yes, but really.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
It's extremely weak, not in a pejorative sense, but
just structurally.
It's weak Because, because, ayou know, it's like building
yourself a house of twigs towithstand a tsunami.
That's not going to work.
This will probably work Likehiding behind, like a little
teeny bridge, like definitelynot going to my armor is not
(32:12):
serving me.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
What yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Because the the hugeness of what was rolling
downhill at me and it was datecertain, like on a Wednesday or
whatever it was I was going toshow up at seven in the morning
and this thing was going tohappen and the hugeness of that
thing.
There was no way that I couldarmor myself up enough, other
than even if I clenched everymuscle in my body and tried to,
(32:38):
you know, grip my teeth throughthe whole thing.
I would still be crushed.
We're not in control.
No, especially there.
And so so what I did was Iwhatever?
I realized that I was doing thewrong thing, and so I changed
it, I turned it aroundcompletely, and and it all
(33:00):
became about working really,really hard to learn to accept
what was going to happen.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
How.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, that sounds hard.
Yeah, I just I decided thatwhat I wanted to do and that the
way forward through this thingwas to start to give myself
tools to accept what was goingto happen.
And that meant thinking veryconsciously about they're going
(33:34):
to do all the stuff to me.
And I even had a little thingthat I said.
I don't even remember what itwas exactly, but it was
something to the effect of like,when I would think about it and
I could feel anxiety rising, Iwould say something to the
effect of I'm in, I'mparticipating in this treatment
and I accept whatever comes withit, because it is a tool that
(33:56):
I'm using to help myself heal,to help myself be better, and I
so.
I accept the pain, I accept thediscomfort, I accept the
assault of it, because surgeryis an assault, it's violent and
even though we're not consciousfor it or not asleep, there's a
(34:17):
difference.
Even though we're not consciousfor it, our bodies remember the
trauma of the attack.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
It's so invasive, it's so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
You're not designed to be cut open.
There's no part of your bodythat is okay with being cut open
because you think you're goingto die, like on a very
fundamental level.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And the body keeps the score Absolutely, so the
trauma resides there.
Yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
And that's what it was about saying like, okay,
this is going to happen.
And my little mantra I don'tremember again exactly what it
was, but it was something like Iaccept this treatment because I
know that it's going to help meand that I need to recover and
that this is a path to recovery,even though it was going to be
difficult, something like that.
That's sort of wordy for whatit was.
Wow.
But so there was that aspect ofit.
(35:02):
There was being able to reallytry to find a way to be
accepting and compassionatetowards myself, so understanding
that I would have that if I hada hard time with whatever it
was, just I was having a hardtime and that that was okay to
have a hard time and to be hurtthat day and to be sad that day
(35:23):
and to be whatever I was feelingthat day, but that I could have
like that fundamentally, that Icould be that empathic to
myself.
And accept it.
Yeah, and accept it Accept it.
It was an exercise in radicalacceptance, of really just being
like okay, I'm going to beuncomfortable, this is going to
hurt and I'm going to just bepresent with being hurt and sit
(35:50):
in.
If it meant sitting in the hurt, then I was going to sit in the
hurt, wow.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
The presence, the acceptance, the self-compassion,
the literal tools, with themantra, the reframe.
I'm going to reframe this awayfrom something that is breaking
me down to something that is atool for my healing.
Where did that lead?
This story has a good ending.
(36:17):
I'm sitting here.
What you're doing these days.
What happens next?
How do I get to still talk toyou, jay?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I think what it how it manifested for me, I felt
like was that I was able to justbe present through my recovery,
and so it became less abouttrying to achieve normalcy again
and became to accept the factthat I wasn't ever going to be
the same, that that part of me,that myself previous to that day
(36:49):
August 2nd, whatever it was,august 1st was gone.
But I could let go, try to letgo of that and try to accept
what the new version of me wasgoing to be.
That it isn't about trying toachieve.
I just I hear it with peoplewho are injured all the time
Like I just want to get back tohow I was.
(37:10):
I want to get back to normal.
There's no normal.
Normal is whatever you are inthe moment, and so that was a
big part of it.
Like being able to let go ofthat, being able to just move
forward and being able to justbe present in things that were
difficult when they weredifficult.
(37:30):
You know, to just understand.
If I understand fundamentallythat change is unstoppable, then
I understand that at some point, on a moment to moment basis,
maybe my suffering will change alittle bit.
I'm not talking about like fromtoday to tomorrow.
I'm talking about like from nowto now.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
It might feel slightly different this second
than the next second, and that'sa good thing.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And that's okay, and that includes it might hurt.
It can be a good thing, yeah,and that includes that it might
hurt more in the next second.
But if it can change in thatdirection, it can change in the
other direction.
You know, I feel like not onlycan two things be true at the
same time, but a multitude ofthings can be true at the same
time.
And so if I can be in pain, butI can be grateful, right, I can
(38:26):
.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Oh, that's some hard stuff to say.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I understand.
You know what I mean.
I can be suffering throughsomething, but I can be loved, I
can love, I can see a pathforward.
Maybe that that's way off inthe distance.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
I hear yes and both, and yes.
One way to think of that is wow, holding all that complexity
sounds really heavy and hard.
No thanks, yeah, sure, don'treally want to do that.
I'll pick another route.
Fodka, I would say Moscow, butyeah, sure, good enough.
(39:04):
Or, holding all of thatcomplexity keeps me present.
Yes, enough to make a new wayforward.
What is holding all thatcomplexity enable?
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I'm not saying this to sound cheeky.
It enables you to hold all thatcomplexity more it does.
It sounds like it would requirea huge amount of energy, but I
think very much in the way thata body that is aligned moves
easier through the world.
(39:42):
There's a certain level ofenergy that requires me to keep
myself physically lined up, butI'm getting so much more back
because of so much more ease.
It's so much more efficientthat it really is.
I'm actually on a net plus, Ithink.
(40:02):
In terms of holding all thatcomplexity.
It's very much the same thing.
It seems like it requires a lotof energy to be present like
that, or to try to be presentlike that, but on the other side
of it, being present like thatmakes it possible to keep being
present like that.
Once you're in that zone, thenit becomes self-perpetuating.
(40:23):
It's not an additional effortno.
It's not harder.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
It's just trying to put yourself into that spot over
and over again.
I think the compassioncomponent of that
self-compassion component ofthat is going like well today.
I ain't going to do thatbecause I can't.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
That's okay, because it will change.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yes, I'm not like some yogi dude or something, but
life is what life is and it'smoment by moment.
There are some moments when Ican be like that and there are
some moments when I can't.
Probably, if you added it allup, the moments I can't be like
that are way more than themoments I could by a lot.
(41:11):
But it's okay.
It's okay to be sad and hurtand mad and upset, because it's
also okay to be jubilant and inlove and joyful.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
And both types of emotions require presence.
So I've got to practicepresence.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Okay, now I'm curious .
You've built up all thiscapacity and awareness within
yourself and presence.
What's next?
What do you hope for your ownhealing journey Next?
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I don't have a.
Next, I don't.
You're too present for that.
It sounds so pretentious.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
No, I'm not, I'm not, I think I'm just finally
catching on, but his presencething is always present, it's
always present.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, I think I feel like there are things that I
endeavor to do, such as Iendeavor to not compartmentalize
my life.
I endeavor to not say there'sthis part of me that's siloed
off from this part of me.
I endeavor to be kind to people.
(42:28):
I endeavor to be in a way thatpeople can be kind to me.
It sounds incredibly basic, butyou know it's lacking in
today's world.
It's very lacking.
Yeah, I mean everything thatthe world teaches us now is to
be separate.
And again, the compassion partis to be okay with when I fail
(42:53):
at all of these things, whichagain is a lot.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
I haven't seen that too.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
But yeah, it's just To me, it's just being very
simple, it's very simple, it'sjust.
Can I be present in the world,can I inhabit my body to the
it's fullest when I presentmyself to people as vulnerable,
(43:22):
but not but strong?
Strong in a sense of not likefrom physical strength
necessarily, but just that I'm,my vulnerability.
I think what I understoodfinally when we were talking
about what I was doing to try tofigure out how to deal with the
surgical thing, was that Iunderstood finally and I'd heard
(43:42):
it in self-help books andwhatever but I finally
understood that vulnerabilitywas the strongest place to be,
because if I put myself in thatposition, if I could consciously
say I'm going to be here andjust try to be present and not
armor myself up, that that wasan incredibly powerful position.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
So you are helping me on my healing journey.
You are doing so much for theother clients you come across.
You're clearly doing so muchfor yourself and your family and
future generations and yourlineage.
What do you hope for others intheir healing journey?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
I think for me, and what I endeavor to try to do in
our work, is to help people findthat sort of footing where they
can experience whatever iscoming from this sort of stable
dynamic, there's one person Ican control in the entire world
(44:51):
and that's me, and I'm not verygood at that.
So I think if, on a verymetaphysical level, I feel like
we are boundless, healingcapacity is boundless.
We are made of the stuff ofstars.
(45:12):
The universe exists in us and Ibelieve that I believe there's
zero end to potential energy,kindness, love, compassion.
So all I try to do as much as Ican, in any way I can, is to
maybe make it so that that is alittle easier somehow, and it's
(45:36):
just little, little bits.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
As I've seen in my six sessions with you, small
ships can have big impact.
Thank you, jay, you're welcome.
Oh, I didn't drop my register.
Oh, sorry, thank you, jay.
You're welcome, jay.
This was awesome.
I think it's a wrap.
Woo, what a specialconversation.
Thank you for sticking aroundfor my love and learning
(46:08):
reflection.
So here's what I'm learning andloving from my conversation with
Jay Cyclebreaking, bending likea reed and radical acceptance.
So I'll say a little more aboutwhat I'm taking away for each
of those three things.
Cyclebreaking I love how Jaydescribed feeling respected as a
kid and being very seen.
(46:30):
I really want to create thatexperience for my own kids.
So I'm inspired by the cyclebreaking that Jay's parents
actively chose to do to stopcertain patterns in their
families and start new,healthier ones.
And it feels like an extraspecial way to honor Jay's
(46:51):
father, for whom it was theanniversary of his passing the
day that we recorded ourconversation, so it feels really
special.
Thank you, jay, and thank youJay's father, and I especially
want to thank Jay for sharingthe phrase that he and his wife
Lana would say to each otherduring their most challenging
times in life and like a reed.
(47:14):
I'll never forget that rigidityin the body is a stress response
and I can feel it in myselfwhenever I'm present enough and
scanning my body in a difficultmoment or conversation.
And that defense mechanism,that rigidity, is the opposite
of what I ultimately need.
So I want to remember in themoment of my triggered self that
(47:38):
the goal is to be dynamic andbe able to bend with the
situation until the situationchanges.
I think of it as riding thewave, not getting stuck in one
place, and the fact of thematter is change is inevitable,
so it will inevitably change.
And, as Jay put it, beingbendable includes being willing
(47:58):
to let go of my preconceivednotions about things.
So I am committing to endeavorto face life from that dynamic,
stable stance that Jay described.
And, last but not least, I was,and still am, blown away by
Jay's radical acceptance, as heput it, including of the immense
(48:23):
pain he experienced throughoutthe three year ordeal
surrounding his stroke and themassive brain surgery he had.
It sounds incredibly hard andincredibly worth it.
Worth it because thatacceptance seems key to not
adding suffering to my lifethrough resistance.
(48:43):
From what I am learning fromBuddhist teachings and other
places, the resistance addssuffering.
It's worth it because thatradical acceptance will enable
me to hold more complexity,which is so needed in today's
world, and to have more presence, and I want to be more present
to the things and people that Ilove most in my life.
(49:06):
So my question for you is whatare you loving and what are you
learning from this conversation?
I hope you were inspired ormoved by at least one thing that
you heard today and, if youwere, please share this episode
with someone you love or someonewhom you think might appreciate
it.
It would mean so much to me.
And not everything will be foreveryone, and that's A-OK.
(49:30):
Take what you need, leave whatyou don't.
And, based on what you'reloving and learning from this
conversation, I have one morequestion for you.
What's one thing you commit todoing next for greater
fulfillment and wholeness inyour own life?
Oh, and one more thing For anylisteners interested in checking
(49:50):
out BodyCraft Pilates, theBrooklyn-based Pilates studio
that Jay and his wife Lana own.
It is amazing.
They're offering a discount toany new clients who mentioned
this podcast the High Note whenyou email them.
See the show notes for moreinformation.
Thank you so much for listening.
(50:11):
Much love everyone.
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