S9e17: Kevjorik Jones – Moving Forward with Strength and Power

Welcome to our season 9 finale, this generous, vulnerable conversation with Hoffman grad, Kevjorik Jones, and host, Drew Horning. There are many reasons why people come to the Hoffman Process — as many reasons as people who have graduated from the Process. Kevjorik, a self-described consummate student of the human condition, came because he felt he was falling short. He was aware of the powers and opportunities he had. He was aware of the great relationships in his life. And yet, Kevjorik sensed he was falling short of living up to all he sensed he could become. In October 2024, Kevjorik completed his Process at the Guest House, the Hoffman Retreat Site in Chester, CT. Nature and the labyrinth on site provided a lot of healing. Rising early in the morning, Kevjorik would walk the labyrinth. One morning, he entered the labyrinth feeling shame. He emerged feeling connected to his child within. The beauty of this conversation lies in the generous stories Kevjorik shares with us. He offers stories of his childhood, the trauma he experienced, and the courage he found to do the deep work of the Process to heal the pain of his past. We hope you enjoy this moving, enlightening, uplifting conversation with Kevjorik and Drew. Thank you for listening to the Hoffman Podcast. We will be back for season 10 in early 2025. Happy New Year! More about Kevjorik Jones: Kevjorik is a real estate finance professional based in Washington, DC. From a young age, he developed a profound curiosity about the human spirit, the nature of existence, and the pursuit of enlightenment. Raised in a broken home, his adult life has been devoted to understanding the lasting impacts of social suppression—shaped by colonialism, racism, and polarization—on community, family, and personal achievement. During college, Kevjorik founded an organization to teach students entrepreneurial skills while pursuing careers in technology and real estate. Around this time, he discovered a spiritual connection to his African roots when he traveled to Ghana, West Africa. There, Kevjorik deepened his curiosity about the consequences of being uprooted and the maladaptations that emerge from being disconnected from one's origins through this experience. Today, Kevjorik is focused on village-building as a solution to the challenges posed by the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) parenting model, which isolates the individual from the collective whole. He believes that fostering interconnected communities can alleviate these strains. Kevjorik is blessed to have met his soulmate, now his wife of 15 years, just before his trip to Ghana. Together, they have built a loving family of four and a supportive network of like-minded individuals committed to growth, healing, and mutual care. Kevjorik's relationships have been deeply affected by the legacy of his childhood trauma. This eventually led him to the Hoffman Process. Before embarking on his Hoffman week, Kevjorik's primary goal was to break free from limiting thoughts and behaviors. Patterns of self-doubt and indecision had kept him from fully embracing life. Kevjorik has integrated tools from the Process into his daily life. He is committed to keeping his heart open, loving deeply, and living in alignment with his true purpose. Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevjorikjones/ As mentioned in this episode: Rancho La Puerta Watsu Healthy Deviant George Floyd and the Summer of 2020 Protests My Grandmother's Hands, by Dr. Resmaa Menakem •   Epigenetics •   Intergenerational trauma Somatic Therapy Functional Nutrition Tapping World Summit - •   Meridian Tapping The Great Migration Surrogate Parents in the Process: Working with people/groups who were like our parents. In Kevjorik's case, these were his Grandmother/Aunt and the church. Inner Child / Parenting Attachment Styles Labyrinth Wade in the Water

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You know, it feels victorious in a way
because, as I said, I don't have an
issue being vulnerable.
I've done it in public forums before,
but the ability to be able to do
it in a way where
I am
able to stay open to not close-up
has been very important to me. To be
able to tell my story without being so
ashamed of it has been very important to

(00:21):
me, and I think it's a critical element
of me being able to move forward in
strength and power.
Welcome everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute,
and it's stories and anecdotes
and people we interview

(00:41):
about their life post process
and how it lives in the world radiating
love.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Hoffman Podcast. Kevrick
Jones
is with me. Welcome, Kevrick.
Thanks, Drew. Nice to see you. It's great

(01:02):
to have you.
So in our
post process follow-up call,
which we do with all our grads to
support them as they head out into the
world,
you and I had such a great conversation,
and it just inspired me to follow-up with
you and ask later on, would you be
willing to sit down for a podcast recording?

(01:23):
So I'm so glad we're doing this.
Can you share a little bit about why
you took the process, what led you to
it,
all of that?
Sure. I will try to do that as
succinctly as possible because I've kinda had a
windy road as opposed to the process. I
feel like life's been preparing me for it
for quite some time.

(01:45):
Ultimately,
I
chose the process, it felt right for me
because,
in my discovery process
around stuckness,
feeling very stuck in life, very aware
of powers that I had,
very aware of great relationships
and great opportunity sets in life, but feeling

(02:06):
as though
I fell short of
living fully within that.
I'm a kind of a consummate
studier of
the human condition and how to improve, and
so I have a lot of knowledge,
a lot of even wisdom,
but it wasn't translating
into practices

(02:27):
the way that I felt like it should.
And particularly
since
the pandemic,
having a young family,
there are a lot of things that, I
guess, the cover got blown off of. You
know, between my wife and myself, we were
managing
kind of with, you know, our long held
traumas,

(02:48):
and that really
imploded, I would say, the pandemic forward, but
it's
related to things that have been
long brewing and always under the surface. But,
again, we were able to manage around it.
And so
since the
pandemic,
particularly over the last,
I would say,

(03:08):
3 years, there have been a lot of
different
experiences,
exposures that,
I guess, readied me for
the process.
My wife and I, I think it was
August of 21, we took a trip, just
she and I, to Hawaii,
which was
enlightening
on many fronts. And so on the one
hand, it was a beautiful trip for us,

(03:31):
first time away from the kids.
At the same time,
we had a lot of intermarital
strife during the trip, right, in paradise. And,
I remember my wife having a lot of
trepidation going
into that trip about, like, the trip not
being able to
solve or resolve some of the frictions that
she,

(03:52):
you know, had awareness of within our relationship.
The next summer after that, my wife turned
40,
and we
went to
a place,
called Rancho La Puerta,
which is
in Tecate,
right outside of Tijuana, Mexico. It's a wellness
based resort, and it's a very unique place

(04:13):
in that it is almost like a day
camp or a summer camp for a lot
of different wellness related things.
So we experimented a lot there.
My wife did, watsu, which is like a
water based kind of meditation,
which was very
emotional and spiritual for her. I observed

(04:34):
I remember there was a woman
there who was teaching a course based off
of a book that she authored called The
Healthy Deviant,
and I sat in on, I think 4
or 5 of her lectures, experimented with some
of the things that she suggested
while at the ranch.
And
the whole notion there was

(04:54):
if you want to live a healthy life
that you're deviating from the norm, you have
to be willing to bravely kind of experiment
to find yourself and to, you know, live
within that. And something about coming out of
that resort
really kinda reset the table for me in
terms of expectations for myself, what it meant
to be, and kinda holistic and well rounded.

(05:17):
And I've been really trying to attack things
from that point forward from a nutrition standpoint,
from a physical standpoint, from a mental, spiritual
standpoint.
Another parallel coming out of, the pandemic and
everything that happened in the summer of 2020
around George Floyd,
I had gotten involved in a number of
leadership things on the diversity side.

(05:39):
There was one diversity
leadership training program that I went through
where, you know, there was a lot of
sharing involved. And I realized in trying to
share my lived experience and my story that
I have very visceral,
almost emotional, like,
seizures. Like, my body would physically seize up,
like, whenever I would try to talk about

(06:01):
my upbringing,
my lived experience, etcetera.
And one of the works that came through,
one of those leadership trainings was a book
called My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menikin, and
it focuses
on
epigenetics
and
really the concept of race through the lens

(06:23):
of intergenerational
trauma.
And I remember picking that book up and
working through a number of the exercises,
you know, some, you know, now that I
have gone through the process, I realized are,
like, similar visualizations
as, you know, what we might experience in
the process.
And again, I would have these very
strong kind of emotional,

(06:43):
just, like,
physical, like, lock up reactions.
And those things persisted. I remember I did
another leadership
kind of fellowship program that was designed for,
you know, mid career people, you know, accelerating
their careers.
And I was a very open sharer in
that, similar to how I was in the
process. But I noted if I counted the

(07:06):
number of tiers per participant, like, I was
definitely, you know, head and shoulders above everyone
else in terms of, you know, how emotional
I was when trying to share
my story. And so, you know, these two
prongs, just like the general health and wellness,
I had physical
debilitations,
like, I was having a lot of my
physical inflammation

(07:27):
issues that was causing
fatigue, mental fog, like just physical tiredness breakdown.
And so I just wrapped all those things
up and over the last 2 years have
decided that I would push into all of
them. So,
from my grandmother's hands, I,
elected
to find a somatic based therapist or practitioner,

(07:49):
that I started working with at the end
of last year.
I found a functional based nutritionist,
the end of last year.
Started going to the chiropractor
last year,
doing a lot of body work. I went
to a physical therapist,
and then,
really started focusing based off of the comments
from the physical therapist around

(08:10):
my core.
And one of the things that my pneumatic
practitioner mentioned to me that resonated
was that,
you know, my body, my somatic positioning
had taken on just a very closed,
shrunken
disposition,
probably
consistent with how I've been feeling about myself,

(08:31):
how I had coped with my childhood conditions.
And so, you know, I've been through all
of these various practices trying to
open up and loosen up, which, you know,
I think all, you know, kinda prepared me
for the process.
The process itself came to me, I think,
very randomly. Somehow I got on a distribution

(08:52):
for
something called Tapping World Conference, and so it's,
you know, this concept of Meridian Tapping.
It's like a week long virtual conference that
I just put on my calendar. And when
the week came, I had kinda forgotten about
it, but, you know, ended up viewing a
couple of live presentations, and one
was by a woman who was dealing with

(09:12):
childhood trauma. And in listening to her tapping
presentation, she just mentioned the Hoffman process. And
I had never heard of it, But, you
know, in going to the website and researching,
it seemed like it was, you know, kind
of ready made for, what I was trying
to do. And it's very consistent with the
theme of, you know, coming into 2024
for me, which was

(09:33):
integration and trying to integrate a lot of
these healthy practices,
wellness practices
that I've been studying for a long time,
like, into my experience.
Hearing that full description and that wonderful timeline,
I can't help but notice
your deep commitment to healing.
Where'd you get that?

(09:54):
I have, I think since childhood,
been very
curious about
not just what makes people tick, but, you
know, I guess the way I would describe
it is
what makes good people suffer through bad circumstances?
What makes good people have bad outcomes?
And so for me, my parents got divorced

(10:15):
when I was, I think, 8 or 9
years old.
I could argue that maybe they shouldn't have
been married in the first place, but I
do think there was, you know, initial
love. You know, neither of my parents
had traditional
upbringings. And so my father,
his
mom
had him when she was, I think, 15,
and he essentially was raised by his grandparents.

(10:37):
I think with the notion of, you know,
we'll take care of him for a little
bit of time,
You are daughter, go get established. She moved
to DC to get a job, and she
ended up marrying someone who she had a
family with, but then they never came and
got my father and integrated them into that
family.
And so
I think that left a lot of open

(10:57):
wounds for him growing up. And then my
mother,
she moved around a great deal. Both her
parents died by the time she was in
high school, you know, mostly from drug or
alcohol affliction.
There's a lot of drug use that, you
know, kinda pervaded her family circumstances, and she
also lost a lot of her, caregivers,

(11:18):
you know, along the way, not only parents,
grandparents, aunts, etcetera, that, you know, supported her
during her childhood. And so these two people
get together and, you know, create a family.
The youngest of 3, you know, for a
time, it's good, but, you know, those pressures
of, you know, trying to hold everything together,
be able to immobile

(11:38):
while, you know, not having your wounds heal,
like, really just blew up. And so
in
my formative years, especially very early on, there
was a period of time where we had
family support similar to what my mother, I
guess, and my father had, like, with grandparents
involved. And so we used to live directly

(11:59):
beside
my
mom's
grandmother,
who we call grandma babe. I'm starting to
study our family tree in a way that
I guess
wasn't comfortable with pre process, and I've come
to realize that, like, she's technically not even
like a grandma, like she's an aunt,
right? But, you know, we called her grandma
babe and she served

(12:21):
that role. And so given that we live
directly beside her, I spent a lot of
time with her. So, Kevrick, just to clarify
this, that your mom
was born
to a teenage mother
at 15. That was my father's story. Oh,
that was your father's story. Where was your
mom then
that her grandmother had this parent so much,

(12:43):
or she just was next door and that
was part of it? It's probably even more
convoluted on my mother's side. And so she,
just depending on circumstances,
would be raised by different people. And so
similar to my dad's circumstance
around the elders saying, okay. You know, we're
seeing, you know, the great migration happen. We're

(13:04):
seeing opportunities in the big cities. And so
a lot of people, once they would get
done with high school, they would migrate to
the cities. And if they had kids, a
lot of times those kids would end up
back down south so that they could be
in the cities
and actually earn a living. And so then
that started the whole process of sending money
back home. Sometimes kids would come, sometimes they

(13:25):
would not. And so for my mom,
her mother moved to New York City, and
then for a fair amount of time, she
was raised by her mother's mom. But then
sometimes she would go to New York and
be with her mom or be with other
aunts, cousins, etcetera.
But her mom died when she was in

(13:46):
high school. She came back to be with
her mother's mother, her grandmother, and then I
think within a year, she died. And then
one of her aunts came to take over
that position, and then within a year, she
died. And so there was a lot of
loss there,
and she had, for a period of time,
been raised by her

(14:07):
father's
grandmother, grandma babe, and later in life after
her mother's
mother died,
she spent more time with her father's grandmother,
and that's grandma babe. And just to help
listeners,
that's who you chose, grandmother babe,
grandma babe, as your surrogate

(14:27):
in addition to your mom and dad. Is
that right?
Yeah. It was my mother, my father,
grandma babe, and the church. So those are
my 4. Okay. And it sounds like you've
been interested in
your family tree and the lineage and understanding
family history
even more post process.
Yeah. I was I had no interest for

(14:49):
it pre process. It all felt kind of
painful and what's the point. So I think
going through the process has given me, you
know, more curiosity
around it. So take us into your week.
Bring us along.
What happens, Kevrick?
I had I had a very
roller coaster
experience
in the process.

(15:10):
I know that in the beginning,
I had a lot of self shame.
The past 3 years, I'll say I've been
doing a lot of studying around,
you know, parenting,
relationships,
like, what these close in relationships are meant
to do for us as individuals.
Gotten fascinated by the whole
concept of one's inner child and that these

(15:32):
close relationships are really mirrors
for your inner child and the things that
are undealt with. So I had some awareness
around it, but, obviously, the process goes pretty
hard into that space.
And I remember each morning, I would get
up and, you know, on the campus,
there was a little nature area and they

(15:53):
had a
labyrinth in that area, and so I tend
to get up early
anyways. I couldn't quite sleep in. And so
on the second morning, I remember I went
to the labyrinth just to see what happened.
Right? Because, you know, I felt very lost,
and so I think that's it kinda represents
that feeling. And I remember, you know, that
morning, I was in the labyrinth

(16:13):
and I
just broke all the way down in the
labyrinth.
It was really around
this feeling of having
abandoned my childhood self, not really having been
there for my childhood self. Yeah. Again, I
have been growing in awareness around this over
the last 3 years with things I've been
reading, etcetera. But, you know, there was a

(16:34):
whole point of being here at process is
to
not continue that relationship.
And I remember going into it, feeling a
ton of shame.
I remember coming out of the labyrinth feeling
connected,
literally being able to walk out kind of
hand in hand with my inner child and
being able to play with that spirit. So

(16:54):
that was a great beginning, but as you
go through the process,
you move beyond just your inner child and
you start focusing on,
your parents' inner children. And that, I realized,
was really, really difficult territory for me. Like,
for my mother,
I think, you know, because I've had more
of a relationship with her over the years,

(17:14):
and she's been very,
instrumental in, you know, kinda my family rearing
and being with my kids, and she used
to live with us for some time. And
I'm very similar to her, like, I had
more empathy for her. But for my father,
I was just really
just angry. I mean, I was really livid,
and I not
appreciated that because
I think my attachment style, I just tend

(17:36):
to bury emotions and I really
feel emotions to the point where I can
kinda point to what the feeling is. But
I had a lot of rage
just pent up related to my dad and,
you know, how he treated the family and
how absent he was and how he, you
know, hasn't been able to, I guess, heal
himself to be a better participant
in the family.
But even that, I dealt with in the

(17:58):
labyrinth. And so, like, there was a day
where
we
had to, you know, do a visualization
exercise around our parents and the inner child
and I. I remember ending that, and we
were in the big room, and everybody left,
and it was like I was really just
sensitive.
And I was just kinda there,

(18:18):
stuck in that sensitivity,
and I had a emotional breakdown. And I
remember one of the coaches just coming up
behind me, had my eyes closed, and just
consoling me and, you know, ended up holding
me, like, on the floor like a toddler.
And, again, that helped me to really appreciate
how much
pent up emotion I had around this stuff.
But then the next morning, I had another

(18:40):
moment in the labyrinth
where I kinda found things in nature, leaves
that, for me, at that time, represented
my inner child, my mom, my father. I
walked through and
similar as, you know, with my inner child,
I was able to get to a place
of just
release, I suppose,
to not

(19:00):
have
the rest of the process be ruled by
that anger and that rage.
And from there,
there was still
more road to hoe, as they say, because,
you know, there's a lot more work we
have to do on the parent side. And
so I definitely had, you know, more
experiences, but I was able to push through
them.

(19:21):
Wow. That labyrinth for you is there's some
potent
energy, some deep work that happened between you
and the labyrinth every morning.
That seems to be the case. This is
special for me for sure.
What happened around
your grandmother, your great grandmother?
So, yeah, another, you know, important relationship for

(19:41):
me, again, was my relationship with my grandbaby.
I have realized over the years, having worked
through things that,
she was really a mother figure for me.
You know, in my early years when, you
know, my parents were struggling and busy,
there was some
way that she made me feel seen and
valued
that was really lost when she died, which

(20:04):
was, you know, just before my parents separated
and then got divorced.
So in working through,
you know, kinda patterns and feelings and so
on and so forth, I realized that
I felt very abandoned
by my grandma babe, that she, you know,
and my childhood self left, didn't say goodbye,
and left me with people who could not

(20:26):
understand
what I lost. So that was another, you
know, kinda feeling of
sadness, anger, you know, that was within me.
I don't think I dealt with that much
as a point of focus the way that
I deal with my inner child and, you
know, my parents or parents' inner children.
But we had a exercise towards the end

(20:46):
where, you know, we were
trying to
defeat our dark side, we'll say, in the
rage room, as I call it. And so,
you know, we're having this very
physical, I think you guys call it cathartic
experience.
We're kinda literally bashing this notion of our
dark side. It's a very taxing thing. And
so at some point,
it became,

(21:07):
you know, almost like a rhythmic kinda like
beating of a drum. And I remember,
for some reason,
being compelled to sing on top of that,
and so I started singing
things that,
I don't know, just just
felt right in the moment. And I remember
singing wade in the water.
That is a

(21:27):
song that I remember from, you know, being
Southern Baptist in church. Like, there was a
very specific way that we did wade in
the water that felt like you, you know,
were making waves.
I just felt like a presence kinda kinda
come over me.
And
it it's almost like, you know, everything muted
around me. Like, you know, when you put
the car in reverse and you got the

(21:48):
nice auto feature and it turns down the
volume,
it just I don't know. It just really
reminded me of me of grandma, babe.
And so
I sat in that
and remember
speaking to her like it was my grandma
babe and saying, you know, why did you
leave me?
And I remember
it going away. Right? And it's like I

(22:09):
was like, you know, okay, volume up. Like,
okay, people are bashing, yelling. Right? I guess
I'll get back to bashing.
And then
it came over me again, and I was
like kneeling down and I was hitting.
It almost put me in like a deep
prayer
stance,
and it was
sort of like my body was taking over
a bit. And I remember,

(22:30):
like, my
mouth loosely
saying I love you.
You know, I love you. I love you.
And there's just a warmth that came over
me.
It gave me a feeling of
perhaps she never actually left me. Right?
And perhaps
I just didn't know where she was, or
I I can see her, or

(22:51):
it wasn't the right time for her to
present herself, like that sort of thing.
And, you know, we have not only the
quadrinity, but we have the spiritual guide that
you all work us through, and so
I kinda enlisted her, I inherited her as
like an additional
spiritual guide, I'll say. And so in that
sense, she'd
stayed with me, like, since the process. And

(23:13):
when I do my quad check, I often,
you know, ask her for a message, you
know, just as I do my spiritual guide.
What do you feel? I feel appreciated, quite
frankly.
I feel
stronger because I always
associated strength with her,
and I associated
wisdom

(23:34):
with her. And so, you know, feeling like,
a, I have access to her now, like,
just helps. Right? Because we
post process, go through a lot of works
to try
to work from our spirit.
I also feel as though
it sort of changed my relationship
with things because
it makes me feel and or believe that

(23:56):
when she was with me, that she
put something inside of me to
help me
to navigate to get through all the things
that I would have to get to.
I noticed myself
getting a little emotional about the idea that
she put something inside you, that she never
really left you, that she's been there all
along.

(24:17):
What's that like to consider that she's been
there all along?
It's beautiful.
It is humbling.
It's a little sad
because
wish I
could have
seen that,
tapped into that, I suppose.
It also helps me to look at certain
things that have occurred in life differently

(24:37):
and to see where
that spirit
helped me to overcome some things or avoid
some things or look at something again or
look at something differently.
And there are so many, kind of, I
call it, like, spiritual interventions, right, that have
occurred along the way in order for me
to get to this place. And
many of them,
very unusual into Biologic, but, nevertheless,

(25:01):
they were there.
Then maybe she was there.
You come to the end of the week.
What happened as the week wound up, and
I imagine you kept taking walks in the
morning?
I did. So, you know, in post process,
there is
was it self forgiveness
walk? That's right. Self forgiveness and self compassion

(25:22):
walk. And, so I stayed we were in
Chester, Connecticut, and so I stayed over in
Chester, Connecticut. I got a small Airbnb.
I brought my bike up from DC just
in case. And Chester's like a cute little
town, and so I could, you know, bike
from where I was around, and I ended
up biking to the ferry. There's a ferry
that goes across the Connecticut River to, I

(25:43):
think it's Gillette
State Park. And so I went up and
saw William Gillette's castle, I don't know what
you call it, and then there's a whole
kinda natural area around there. And so I
took my book bag, I took my workbooks,
and and on this hike, I ended up
finding
this one very particular tree
that,
for some reason,

(26:03):
just really owned its own space in the
woods. Like, it was, like, the tallest tree,
the widest tree, like, I mean
and, like, all other trees just kinda just
like, you know what? You got it. You
know? This is this is your hood. Like,
we'll just be over here.
And I remember doing my
exercises,
like, in front of that tree and being

(26:24):
reminded of,
we did one exercise
where
we expanded our width, our depth, our height,
and it just, I don't know, really connected
me in that moment.
For me, it was a great kinda capstone.
Right? And it was a different kinda labyrinth
because I was just literally
out in the woods, like, meandering,

(26:44):
seeing different things, just going as far as
I could go before, you know, I needed
to get back to catch the ferry again.
So, yeah, I was I was saying that
was probably my my capstone labyrinth.
What do you notice
about
the process and you
together
months now? It's been almost 6 months. October.

(27:05):
So
we'll say 3 months.
What do you notice about you now 3
months
afterwards
in life?
How is it? The thing I notice
the most is
that
I
don't feel as steeped in,
I guess, what I what I now call
shame.

(27:26):
I feel as though
preprocess,
there's a lot of shame.
And it's almost as though, you know, everything
I was
reacting to
was because of the shame I felt around
what something meant to me or how it,
made me think of myself.

(27:46):
And, you know, in a lot of the
child trauma
works, they talk about and, you know, Hoffman,
no different,
how
central shame is to when
you live a trauma as a child because
you don't have enough context
to
rationalize it a different way. And so it's
like if

(28:07):
these circumstances are this way, I was here,
it must be because of me. And I
had a lot of, you know, unusual childhood
circumstances.
I think, you know, with that,
there was a sense of deep unworthiness
of
people
being fooled by me, and so

(28:27):
at some point,
they won't
be able to be fooled anymore, people will
leave, etcetera. And so you might as well
get ahead of that. Right? Like, unless not
feel, because if you wanna feel,
then whenever
somebody decides to leave, you know, that's gonna
be a big vacuum.
And so
there's a ton of that. I realized

(28:47):
that
I showed up in, you know, my lived
experience, how I interacted with my loved ones,
interacted with work, I mean, just literally everything.
And so post process,
without the shame,
I have a much
stronger
ability
to
listen.
Listen not only to, you know, what another

(29:09):
person is saying,
to listen to,
you know, we'll call it my quadrinity, but
particularly my body speaks really
well to me. We have a good relationship.
My emotional self, we're still getting to know
each other because I haven't really
interacted with, embraced, appreciated my emotions for a
long time. I've, for the most part, suppressed

(29:30):
them, so I don't have the type of
emotional language yet. But I am able to
sit
and observe that, oh, there's feelings going on
here. Right? Like, I can't call them by
name.
They seem like they're in
a gray direction or a red direction or
whatever you wanna call it. And even just

(29:51):
this morning, I reflected something to my wife
where I was like, I can't articulate fully
what I'm feeling, but I know that I'm
feeling negative feelings.
And I know that that relates to this,
and I'm working to express of. I think
that's another piece that you all talk about
greatly in the process is the beauty, the
benefit of expression.

(30:13):
I think I always felt, but I can
understand more when I'm having, like, a emotional
blockage or emotional buildup inside that needs to
come out in some way. Oftentimes, when I'm
able to express myself in one way or
another,
it helps to kinda brighten the space and
open up so that I don't go into
closure, which is my natural

(30:33):
pattern. My natural reaction is to close-up.
Kevrick, I wanna wind down here by asking
about
sort of taking us back to where we
started,
which is seeing
the journey you've taken
in self help and spiritual growth, and
you sort of laid out all these steps
that brought you to Hoffman.

(30:55):
And so now that you've completed the process,
you've had 3 months out into the world,
how has that shaped what you're gonna do
next, or
what
next holds for you in this journey?
I think that's something that, can't remember what
you said in small group or something like,
you know, hold the question, you know, allow

(31:15):
the question to remain out there and open.
And that is something that I'm definitely holding
the question around because,
you know, I work in a certain industry,
certain career, I got here for certain reasons,
there are reasons for me to stay, but
there's also this long standing
gravitation towards people development.
And I realized underneath that is not, you

(31:37):
know, in the surface level sense, it's at
a very deep, deep rooted,
spiritual
sense that I really value that for myself.
I see that in the loving relationships that
I've had over the years, that's something that
has come through
and something that people have really valued
of me, and it's something that I want

(31:57):
to lean into and grow.
What that looks like, TBD,
primarily because,
again, I'm still working on integration,
and I'm still working on openness,
and
I am
focused on
building the practices, integrating them better into my
life, pattern recognition,
the expression, the recycling,

(32:18):
and then
attaching,
you know, some of the models that I
have for stronger relationships
and using that to inform that pattern recycling
process. So, basically, skill up to a certain
level and then determine from there, like, what
the best next steps are. So that's over
the next 6 months what I'm really focused
on is just collecting the data and being

(32:39):
very open to the feedback from my loved
ones. I just delivered my letter to my
mother and father
over the last week. I had a conversation
with my mom. You know, I was much
more open to talking about family structure. It's
just like there's this blossoming
that's happening right now that I don't necessarily
know
where it goes or what it looks like

(33:02):
or if it ever end. But at some
point, I think
letting it season for a bit will be
wise before determining
best next steps. What's it been like to
take this time and
speak so vulnerably about your journey to talk
about your
Hoffman
time and life before and after.
What do you notice in the sharing of

(33:23):
all this? You know, it feels victorious in
a way because, as I said, I I
don't have an issue being vulnerable.
I've done it in public forums before,
but the ability to be able to do
it in a way where
I am
able to stay open to not close-up
has been, you know, very important to me.
To be able to tell my story without

(33:43):
being so ashamed of it has been very
important
to me, and I think it's a critical
element of me being able to move forward
in in strength and power.
Kevin, thanks for sharing. I'm grateful for this
time.
Same to you, Drew.

(34:03):
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Rasa Ingrassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other, and in the world.

(34:24):
To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.