August 8, 2022 • 42 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
[Music]
[Music]
well i appreciate you sitting down with
me today i want to be respectful of your
time um so just to get you introduced to
have um tamar stone am i saying that
(00:21):
correct tomorrow
tomorrow okay yeah thanks i've only seen
it read and said uh the
you um i want to get to your work and
some of the stuff that you've done but
also a lot of the podcast is kind of
trying to give people an idea of the
like history of the profession
there's not a great understanding of
(00:41):
that even among clinicians so going back
to kind of start with um your dad you
have you know your dad is a union
analyst who actually goes through one of
the carl jung institutes which is not a
quick or cheap process you know you have
to have been an analysis for seven years
then you've got to do what four years of
study that you pay for i mean it's like
a master's degree um
(01:03):
and then after after that they had you
know the blessing of the institute and
um
then he gave that up to start his own
model and jump in and correct me
anywhere here because i'm going based on
what i understand
yeah that's absolutely correct
and so the model is called voice
dialogue and the embracing ourselves
(01:24):
book is kind of the manual for that but
then there's a whole lot of other
resources
um and i i wanted to talk to you because
when i first got into therapy they were
just teaching us all the cbt in school
and it was the cognitive behavioral
stuff and i was just like i don't
understand this like how would this ever
make anyone change this is just common
sense stuff the ego would try
before going to therapy like i don't
(01:45):
want to tell somebody this in therapy
like and i i just didn't get it and the
first kind of you know jung i got into
later but he's kind of overwhelming and
in school all you get is this guy came
up with a collective unconscious moving
on you know if you get anything that's
what you get you know in the education
now
and when i picked up embracing ourselves
and was going through it i was like i
(02:06):
like this a lot and i like this a lot
more than internal family systems i
think internal family systems is great
but it's very popular um and the voice
dialogue stuff was so intuitive um that
the concepts made sense with every
single person that i talked to people
really liked it and then it kind of set
me down a road to depth psychology and
somatic psychology so um yeah i was
really excited to to get a little
(02:27):
glimpse into maybe the formation of that
do you do you have any
insight into their process or
secrets you know about the
wow big question well i could tell you
that when i was like in my teens my
father used to sit me down in the living
room and
you know and talk to my parts and
you know
(02:49):
it probably you know it was one of the
few if only households you know where
this was happening and my brother would
walk in the room and want to watch and
it was like no don't sit there my you
know whatever self was sitting there and
um
so he you know he
um he was a very
um
(03:10):
deep and rich thinker and this body of
work i think really did come out of
um you know his union
roots and uh ancestry if you will you
know he was in that lineage of the the
you know the
the conscious mind the collective
conscious you know and
(03:30):
and and the voice dialogue work has
evolved over the years it's not like he
started something and then it got it
didn't ever reify and it doesn't it
still doesn't feel reified because when
he brought it to the world
i mean he he
he conceived it and then
in his relationship with my stepmother
(03:51):
sidra
he
they they really work the work together
they walk the walk they talk the talk
they facilitated each other
and and really took the work out to the
world and
and so
one thing that i think is important to
distinguish is like so the voice
dialogue is really the technique of
(04:13):
giving voice to your inner selves
but but the philosophy is called
the psychology of selves and the aware
ego process
and the premise being
for your listening audience that we all
have selves they're universal
everybody has selves you know the pusher
(04:34):
the critic the perfectionist the pleaser
the accommodator but the difference at
the personality level is that we
over identify with certain selves
and repress and disown others
and not only that but for every self
that's dominant in our personality or
that's primary we say in our personality
(04:57):
we are repressing or disowning it's it's
opposite in a very mathematical way it's
ma it's a mathematical precision the
degree to which we identify with oneself
is the degree to which we repress or
disown its opposite
so then it becomes kind of
more juicy and interesting and kind of
(05:19):
exciting to explore like this isn't just
random this is actually
um
mathematical
and um
i use the term
repress and disown separately that that
repressing
um well let me start first disowning
(05:40):
itself is actually where it's off the
radar screen of our consciousness we
don't even know that it's there it's
sort of like a fish in water
repressing a self is sort of like we
kind of know it's there but we're just
not
giving it energy
it's you know it's yeah more or less uh
we're just owned as a it's literally off
(06:02):
the radar screen of our consciousness
so so furthermore you know that that
there we have all these selves
and
and the personality in a traditional
sense is sort of like what we call
like um or what's referred to as the ego
or the operating ego and you know is
(06:24):
in voice dialogue terms whatever selves
are running the show at any given time
you know it might be one it might be
more than one it's it's the lens that
we're seeing out of it's it's it's how
we see the world and how we're seen by
the world
so um
in in the voice dialogue psychology of
(06:46):
selves perspective
there's the concept of an aware ego
which is
which is um
a healthy i mean
in in the psychology of cells we don't
negate the ego it's not a bad thing it's
a survival thing these selves have been
(07:07):
born usually in our family of origin to
help us survive and survive not
necessarily physically but emotionally
psychologically spiritually you know we
have to survive you know any kind of
issues in our in in the home if there
are issues
um birth order you know um you know
(07:29):
poverty um um
community school religions you know that
these cells are born in us to help us
survive
and um
that's really important and they deserve
to be
acknowledged and valued for the role
that they've played in our lives
(07:52):
yeah
and and
yeah go ahead please no no go ahead you
get please finish well one more thought
with that and so what happens with these
selves is that they're born usually
early in our lives
and
and they have helped us in many
different kinds of ways by you know like
you know lending their support you know
(08:14):
uh
but what happens when we grow up is some
of ourselves are still like frozen in
time and they're they're continuing to
function as if we're still children in
our family of origin
and and so what from the voice dialogue
perspective we just want to like update
those selves acknowledge them
(08:35):
for the role they've played and update
them even like update their job
description you know just like to like
they don't they don't need to function
as if we're still children that's not
necessary you know and
that's the update
and it's it's often the least uh used
you know parts of self that we're the
(08:56):
least comfortable with so when they come
out they're very rigid and they have a
very you know strong hold over us you
know because we avoid them until they're
unavoidable but in my experience
can you give an example of what you mean
well i think like um have you ever seen
john beebe's like shadow model of the
mbti he's one of those pacifica kind of
(09:18):
jungian i guess he's getting older now
too but um he talks about you know the
on the mbti which i think there's a lot
of overlap with the link with the
language of the voice dialogue system
and then
ways that the mbemb ti works but you
know for anyone not familiar with it
it's generally saying that our brain can
(09:38):
can think or solve problems in eight
different ways but each one of those
ways is directly opposite of another
type so i can't be saying what's going
on inside me and what do i think about
this and what am i feeling at the same
time that i'm going what's going on out
here what are they thinking what are
they feeling those are those are
introverting or extroverting you know
you can switch pretty quick but you're
(09:59):
doing one of the other and so you know
there's eight of those and and bb says
you know as you stay in any of the the
therapy models that work
the numbers get closer together you get
less comfortable being like i have to
you know me
i was just intuitive all the time i mean
i could not do detail-oriented work i
was like i couldn't learn math in school
because i was like a computer could do
(10:19):
this like why i don't want to do this
what's important is figuring out and
making connections and creating and and
you know that's that's pretty rigid you
know you know and i needed to be more
comfortable with detail detail-oriented
thinking
i needed to be more comfortable with you
know a rote
process that was probably meditative and
trying to pull me back into my body more
(10:39):
than i wanted to admit you know it's
easy for the ego to just say no i'm
creative i'm intuitive you know like i
don't like that you know really there's
probably some fear there and so i think
like a lot of times when
going back to to your question like when
you have
a part of self that's very young that
was very rigid in the house you know a
controlling part or a protective part
(11:00):
that kind of pops up to keep you safe
you usually don't use it very much you
know it's not something that you're
seeing all the time or you're very
conscious of so when it comes up it's
very strong and reactive
yeah yeah or that it's used all the time
and you cease to see it as so you know
someone's enmeshed with the part when
the a type is always you know
(11:21):
controlling us that's an option too
and you said a beautiful thing you know
about your own processes like how that
it was important for you to integrate
the the rationale
and that's what's true you know about
this philosophy and how you know how it
was held by my father and and it
continues to be held by uh sidra and
(11:43):
myself you know
it it it's um
it's almost like
we we attract what we disown in our
lives you know if we're really
identified with a certain self or set of
cells what are we going to attract in in
our lives are people who carry the
opposite energy and it and that's not
(12:04):
like a punishment that's we marry our
shadow you know exactly exactly and and
it's an opportunity it's like an
integration or another way of saying it
is we want to be able to take the
homeopathic
dose
of you know our opposite you know our
you know our partner our friend our
(12:24):
neighbor because they're they're caring
that's how we become really whole
i mean whole in a real way
is integrating the things that that are
foreign to us or that we disown or
repress or
yeah so it's beautiful it's a beautiful
kind of model it's a consciousness model
really
(12:45):
and
i i think that
that
one another concept that you have used
before is that the the shadow's always a
paradox that for every part there's a
direct opposite
part
yes and i think that's an interesting
idea um we use that a lot could you say
a little bit about how you apply that
yeah well like one thing the way i hold
(13:08):
shadow is that that
um
you know i know shadow gets kind of a
negative kind of wrap you know in some
methodologies you know oh the shadow and
it's like as if it's bad but it's not
it's just
what what's you know what we're not
seeing that's what's in the shadow you
know it's
(13:28):
like when you know when we're walking in
the sun we have a shadow and you know we
turn around to see it and the shadow's
now back there so
[Music]
so our shadow can be what's repressed or
disowned but our shadow can equally be
what's so dominant in our personality
that we've just ceased to see it as so
so i have a a wide range of you know how
(13:51):
i hold the shadow
and in voice dialogue work in the
technique of giving voice to these cells
we always start with what's primary
what's dominant what's protective
because that's the safest way of gaining
access to what's on the other side
what's repressed or disowned is you go
(14:12):
through
the primary and find its opposite
because in doing it that way it it's
fundamentally safe it's almost like
getting permission to go to the other
side after you've honored the the the
the um the part that has created a lot
of protection and run a lot of
interference and
(14:34):
yeah so that's the way to get to the the
shadow is it's really you know through
the primary and it's really really safe
and it's really really honorable
yeah i think the tension of those
opposites when i work with a lot of um
dissociative disorders uh
and
but really with everybody there's
there's like um when
(14:56):
you get somewhere so quickly when you
offer somebody that doorway because
somebody may sit and talk forever about
like i'm so afraid of being judged i
hate other people judging me why can't
everyone just be nice you know i hate
judgment and and then you know you say
okay let's look for the opposite of that
and you though there's going to be this
is very strong so there's going to be an
opposite piece you know and then slowly
(15:17):
they're able to be like wait a minute i
judge all these people to protect myself
from judgment you know like this is
actually this fair dog swear if i just
sat there you know that both of those
things are in you that seems to get
people there quickly if i just sat there
and was like do you think you're a
judgmental person i mean there would be
a you know analytic debate for hours
about no i'm nice it's the world that is
(15:38):
bad you know
but
yeah the idea of opposites somehow is
less threatening to the ego i think to
to see some of that stuff yeah
and that also in in the opposites it's
not that we need to become
the person we're judging it's not you
know it's just to see that they hold an
energetic
(15:59):
um opposite energy it's not that you
know we need to become
you know our enemy or our people you
know we want it we want
to claim or reclaim um the essence of
what that part so if i'm judging someone
for being a slob it doesn't mean i need
to become a slob
(16:20):
i need to recognize what the essence of
slob is and and i had that in my own
life with someone and you know what i
found was the essence of slob was
someone who
so so the difference between you know it
it's like you know i don't need to be i
mean i'm more identified with perfection
or organization and order but it doesn't
(16:43):
mean that i need to become a slob i need
to be
have access to what's love represents
for me
so it's not like when we see what it is
we're you know because we can learn
about our our primary uh your endosome
cells yeah well we can learn about
disowned cells by who we judge who who
(17:04):
triggers us who creates a diversion
response but again it doesn't mean
becoming that it doesn't mean we have to
be like them we just have to find what
the essence uh energy is in what it is
we're judging
well
um
the so one of the things that it's kind
(17:26):
of interesting to me is that you've got
analysts who do kind of what um sidran
hal did they leave the institute
in the from the late 60s to the early
80s and then start models of jungian
um
based you know therapy that are more
somatic and more experiential like voice
(17:47):
dialogue is you know this direct
encounter it's not an analysis
as much
um do you have any re he did
i mean one did uh
do you know if those guys talked i mean
did art mandel ever talk to the voice
dialogue people or the bioenergetic did
they
i mean they're kind of doing a similar
thing and then two
(18:08):
can you speak to maybe the frustration
with the institute or the limitations to
peer analysis that was leading people to
you know leave something that it was
hard to to to do took a lot of time
yeah you know it's a great question um
i i
i don't know if there was much
communication in in all these different
(18:29):
people and modalities i i don't know
that there was actually um there could
have been but i i don't know
and also i think i
i wouldn't even for me i mean i see it
as evolution you know like like
everything is sort of evolutionary
and um
(18:50):
so it's not i mean
it's not
to me a negation of jung or even
analysis because there's still a place
for it
for some people and
you know and young still has this like
father of psychology kind of place and
he always will i think because
he was a forerunner you know not that
(19:11):
freud was and also but
um
so part of it to me was just
evolutionary you know that sure
you had these other people who were like
carrying the mantle like there was you
know they
was young in their in their
bloodstream but they were you know
evolutionary and the thing
(19:31):
i would say about voice dialogue um in
particular
is one of the things that hal and sidra
did or didn't do you know that a lot of
other modalities did is they didn't
certify
they didn't reify
the
organization you know they have an
organization i mean
but they you know and and i when i train
(19:53):
people i give certificates of completion
but there's no certification
so what they did that's different and
i'm not even saying good bad right wrong
but what's different
is they didn't they didn't reify and and
voice dialogue has therefore become like
open source software
um people who who learned it and ideally
(20:16):
learned it you know in a really kind of
lineage way like they asked you know in
a pure way
and even if they didn't you know they
they have been able to run with it in
lots of different creative ways and it
has it's not
institutionalized and
um and i i i have a lot of respect and
(20:37):
admiration like that that
was kind of cutting edge of hal and
cidra you know to do it that way that
wasn't done and i think it's what keeps
this body of work kind of
um a little bit like in it not of it
it's not
confined
reified or tied down in in a certain way
(20:59):
it's really like or open source software
yeah and i i think that that was one of
the reasons it's so interesting is the
people taking ian's um
view of the psyche which i think is
other psychologies it's not that they
don't work you know it's like adler had
something he was noticing you know the
(21:20):
compensation you know instead of you you
can use that language to set attention
to the opposites or you know cognitive
behavioral therapy is ego management
strategies but jung
did something that takes a long time to
learn but it is the most complete
psychology out there it kind of
describes every instance of
mental illness also a journey across the
life course i mean just it's incredibly
(21:42):
big
and and and whole um but
you you see
a lot of you like um
well here here's my suspicion i don't i
don't know um
one of the things that happens in the
70s to academia is that it becomes kind
of like especially the soft sciences
(22:02):
kind of become insecure
so you see things like the direct
practice doctorates in mental health
that are just now coming back because
we're kind of fixing a lot of damage
that was done the profession in the 80s
like they just go away you know you're
not allowed to study the thing as a
practitioner you have to do it as the
the psychology of the thing so that you
can teach in academia and publish papers
(22:23):
and raise your t-score and all of this
stuff and i think that hurt the
profession it kind of overly
intellectualized it and i wonder if that
didn't creep into the institutes because
when you read the the
things that are getting published
they're incredibly analytical and
they're they're very um
they're not based in experiential stuff
(22:45):
and
it's it's strange to me that that is the
case because jung wasn't like that a lot
of the earlier unions like hillman
weren't like that you know hillman would
make people find the physical route
of the archetype and jung is so
phenomenological you know he
only writes case studies and then
eventually does the red book to map his
own self
(23:07):
but you don't see the spirit of that
left you see people that are kind of
insecure kind of like very academic very
theoretical and i wonder if there wasn't
just not a place for people
doing experiential type modalities and
that's why you see that in the 70s and
80s but i don't know
yeah i'm not sure either you know i'm
(23:27):
not sure either it is it's a great
question
a living question
well i think that they were so ahead of
their time i mean a lot of the the
neuroscience now is starting to say well
you have to use the body and you have to
use the subcortical brain and you know
direct experience is better and it's
just like somebody already said that
they said it four years ago like you
know you guys
(23:47):
you guys wrote it off as not
evidence-based because it wasn't a
number that you could put into a study
um and again there's the evolution that
like you know maybe we could get further
to the experiential because and there is
a young and a freud and an ad you know
that that there's this rich terrain
which
you know all these
(24:09):
modalities have grown out of
we did an interview with uh peak
neuroscience and they have this uh
proprietary technology basically that is
kind of interesting and it
will map the brain
when you wear a eeg an active eeg and it
tells you you know what's going on and
then they can stimulate different areas
(24:30):
so like with autism you can take the
part of the thought thalamus is trying
to signal hey this is how you handle
sensory input
but the longer term memory portion of
the brain there's a signal gap it's not
learning how to handle the sensory stuff
so they can kind of zap the information
from over here over there and it's it's
neat stuff but they were saying that the
brain essentially it has these
wavelengths and you can see how it's
(24:51):
thinking based on the wavelengths and
what they mean
hey i'm sorry we keep keep disconnecting
yeah it's a mystery i don't know if it's
my computer or yours and
yeah that's really odd
so what's the last thing you heard there
about um the neuroscience and and you
know the work they that they've done
like with autism and yeah so well so
(25:15):
they basically were saying like the
brain
it want the problem is that it wants to
think only in one of these wavelengths
but that you need all of them to be more
whole and so
they was saying like okay so the theta
wave that's how when you're trying to
study for a test and you're trying to
concentrate but you're concentrating so
much that you start to overthink and you
feel bad about yourself and you become
obsessive we would lower the theta and
(25:35):
then you need more of a and it was like
they sounded so much like voice dialogue
you know
uh you know conception or mbti kind of
you know balanced functioning
yeah yeah and balance is such a great
word and you know like in voice dialogue
we want kind of to integrate all
ourselves we you know ourselves are this
(25:56):
inner
family and we want to have access to all
of them
and and balance doesn't mean like a
fixed balance where you don't move you
know like okay got it don't move it's
more like like a um
it's it's a living you know it's fluid
and you know and this aware ego process
versus an operating ego is that we have
(26:20):
an objective awareness of ourselves
without judgment you know it's like we
can hear what all of ourselves are
saying at any given time at a content
level without
identifying with it without you know
like without even a value structure it's
just objective witnessing and we can
(26:41):
also feel what ourselves are feeling but
again without judgment without like
saying this is good and this is not good
just feel what ourselves are feeling
hear what ourselves know what ourselves
are saying or wanting you know at the
content level
and that's how we're
involved you know with ourselves it's
(27:03):
this aware ego that's not judgmental
that's not um values based you know like
and and it gives us a sense of choice
i mean real choice in every given moment
we're making choices but if these with
with access to ourselves where we're not
(27:24):
being pulled like
like a you know pulled down on you know
to the under the waters of life where
we're conscious and intentional um
it's there's a kind of freedom and
liberation in that
it's very powerful
so i mean now could you talk a little
bit about your work and the body uh
(27:45):
dialogue process and themselves in a box
you know all the ways that you do your
your process
yeah
uh so um
my main work is one one on one with
individuals and couples
and then in addition i do trainings in
voice dialogue level one level two level
three
and then um
(28:07):
i created an offshoot of voice dialogue
called body dialogue um that's about
giving voice to the overall voice of the
body and and and all its parts that the
body has a voice
and all the parts of the body have a
voice and that there's a very safe and
honoring way of giving voice to the body
because the body is often you know for
(28:30):
many people very disowned and
so it's really profound to kind of get
into a relationship with your own body
so that's a whole that's a body of work
that that i created as an offshoot of
voice dialogue and then i also created
um selves in a box which is a card deck
kind of like a
(28:51):
a psycho spiritual tarot deck but it's
it's a you know of using cells i chose
52 and i think there's an infinite
number of cells out there but i chose 52
to represent in the card deck
and and and the guidebook that goes with
the
card deck is like a
(29:11):
graduate study of consciousness where i
teach
work and then i show all these different
ways that you can
use the cards and explore your own
psyche and consciousness using
the cards so yeah that's kind of
my thing is i kind of live and breathe
this this work and i'm i'm very
(29:34):
grateful um grateful to my father and my
stepmother and
you know that i'm in as you are you know
in a in a um
in a life work that i i love and live
well and so there's two parts of the
voice dialogue uh like system that i
don't do um i mean one of them is chair
(29:54):
work i mean they they originally there
was like a salt and that you would sit
here and talk to the inner critics sit
there and talk as the pusher sit over
here and talk to the authentic self and
when you were you were moving around to
there was some psycho drama and then the
other part of it was it was a group
practice you know they would do groups a
lot of the time um
(30:15):
from
what i was reading i mean do you do
either of those or
are those necessary
yeah um well i in in my work i do voice
dialogue with people i mean not all my
clients
necessarily want to do you know that the
technique of giving voice to the inner
selves you know sometimes it's just more
(30:36):
a philosophical conversation in regards
to their life where they get the
consciousness model but they don't want
to necessarily do the technique but i do
even on zoom i do
you know 75 of my work is voice dialogue
where we
and and it's not kind of random i really
get you know i follow the thread of the
(30:57):
person i'm working with like what's
primary and we always start with what's
primary and then go to its opposite so
it's done in kind of an honoring and
balance and you know
there's a methodology and and and the
safety you know to
to to doing that and then i do group
work too and i do i have a dream group
(31:20):
and i do a sales and a box webinar where
i do readings for people using the cards
i have an online version and
yeah so there's lots of different even
in the group work way back you know hal
would actually do voice dialogue with
people or he'd have he'd
teach on dreams and consciousness and
then he'd have people break up and do
(31:42):
the voice dialogue with each other so
voice dialogue is always sort of being
done
for people who want to do it for the
people who do it it's usually a positive
addiction they love
learning about their cells it's really
quite exciting
but you add the somatic part to it you
bring the body into that process i do
(32:02):
for people who want that you know i
don't you know
require it for anyone but if if i am
working with someone
um you know where i feel that the body
is sort of being negated or repressed or
disowned or
you know calling
for help you know i'll bring up you know
i think it might behoove us to do a body
(32:22):
dialogue session or some people just
hear about me you know it's like there's
so many doorways into consciousness you
know people are struggling with the end
of a relationship so they enter a
therapeutic relationship with someone or
people have an illness or an injury and
they enter into a therapeutic
relationship with someone to you know to
to kind of how to hold hold it all and
(32:45):
there's a lot of doorways in to
consciousness and
yeah so for some people it's the body
you know and for some people it's it's
something else
so yeah i do it all you know i just look
whatever someone is wanting or needing i
i
you know even couples work i do a lot of
work with couples because i
(33:07):
i love doing couples work from
from the psychology of sales perspective
which is equal responsibility equal
accountability that there's no like well
you're right and you're wrong no there
are a lot of
moving parts there are a lot of cells
involved in it and that you know it's
it's an equal
(33:27):
journey
yeah no and do you want to say anything
more about your process or the selves in
a box system you know i saw that was for
sale through the website that looks like
an interesting addition to our clinic so
yeah um it it's um currently i mean it's
for sale through amazon i'm actually
just in the midst of
(33:49):
like my third
reprinting and i am kind of updating
refreshing the box
so that's probably about maybe six to
eight weeks out
um and then the new version will be
available i think i only have about like
25 boxes left at home and then amazon
has about maybe 30 so
(34:10):
but yeah i mean there that's available
through amazon and um
i think it's a great tool a tool you
know for a tool for consciousness and a
tool in working with other people's
process and
um so is it like an introspective tarot
deck almost like
using that to look understand the self
exactly
(34:32):
learning to understand you know and your
relationship to your own selves and also
to understand your relationship to other
people's selves it works in both ways
well and i saw you had done a talk on
young platform um did you have a good
experience with them i haven't heard it
yet um
yeah yeah i am and i'm gonna be doing uh
(34:54):
another one and i think october on just
the inner critic
yeah i mean they they um
you know approached me and you know i
because of the origins you know
in my father's you know lineage i just
felt very honoring of of you know the
request to do voice dialogue yeah coming
(35:16):
from them that's really beautiful so
yeah i try to
you know again open source software like
go where the energy is like you reached
out
like oh an opportunity to connect with
someone else in the world
you know on the consciousness path and
how beautiful is that
yeah it's uh it's interesting they had
(35:37):
reached out to me i think like a year
and a half ago and then i got underwater
with everything and had never really put
anything together but it's still on a
short list to do there's some really
interesting stuff on
on their site
um well
i i think that's what i have i mean i
was just kind of curious if you had any
insights into that and i think giving um
even clinicians a sense of the history
(35:59):
and
and dynamics of the profession is
important and something we leave out in
education a lot of the time um you have
anything else you want to add or or
or pitch that you're working on and
we can link to anything that you'd like
to link to
yeah yeah thank you i am working on a
book on the body and um you know
(36:22):
my
history with it and you know body
dialogue and and all like and what you
know that the body has
you know to your point an important role
in all this like with it's sort of like
without planet earth we won't be here
without our bodies we won't be here so
you know i i i do really uh value that
and you know i i yeah so that's
(36:45):
something i'm working on um
yeah i think i you know it feels
complete it was a real honor to meet you
joel and i really appreciate
you know you and the work you're doing
and you know what you're bringing to the
world
well thank you so much i really
appreciate you sitting down it's always
neat to to
you know hear people that have direct
(37:05):
experience with you know parts of the
profession um because not all of it i
don't think it's the exposure that it
does i mean there's kind of that it
should there's kind of a bias that i
think is changing where
if something isn't objectively
measurable we don't
research its effectiveness because it's
harder to research it and so you get
(37:27):
people saying well the gold standard is
the simplest modality because the most
research has been done on it where
you know i don't see the a to b there
you know exactly
yeah
well and
do you ever do any eye movement therapy
mdr or brain spotting or yeah i've done
it myself personally and very much
respect it and and i think you know gosh
(37:49):
i believe in all modalities it's like
you know
reach out to sort of the one you need at
any given time you know so yeah i i have
personally experienced i'm not trained
in it myself but i have the utmost
respect for it absolutely right
brains mdr has a
kind of rigidity to a lot of the
(38:10):
protocols but with brain spotting i find
it fuses really well with parts based
stuff and we use
oh we'll find the inner critic
physically how does this want to move
your spine you know do you want to fight
stand up and fight do you want to hide
you know what what is that and then that
opens a gateway to go really far in but
it's the parts based language to help
people find the what's in their body
(38:32):
so
we use those together quite a bit
yeah lovely
and then um
because i you know internal family
systems is real big now you see it like
in a lot of treatment facilities and
stuff um i mean it's almost the same
system as voice dialogue with maybe a
little bit different methodology and
(38:54):
different vocabulary but a lot there's a
lot of overlap and that they're both
parts-based modalities
um i mean do you what do you think the
biggest differences are and or or or are
the voice dialogue community even aware
of the biofest that much
not really i'm and honestly i'm just
being i'm not that aware but
(39:16):
i i think maybe the biggest piece is
that in voice dialogue there's really
the strengthening of
an aware ego process
and not the aware ego as a self it's not
a self it's a muscle it's a process it's
our capacity to stand between opposites
and i think that may be one difference
(39:36):
and the other difference is
is really separating from self like when
i work with a moon with voice dialogue i
have them move over they don't have to
move far
but i have them move over and make a
physical separation so they can
experience the self as as as a self
(39:57):
and separate from this i it's like a
disidentification
from that we see you know this this
critic you know it's strong in me but it
isn't me and that separation
is really to me important and then
coming back and having a sense of
you know an aware ego process where you
(40:18):
know i'm in it but not of it
yeah i think voice dialogues language is
a lot more intuitive i think you're the
i mean i'm kind of pushy i want to move
quickly and the more time i'm spending
teaching somebody vocabulary or parts of
the brain or the the language of a model
is time that we're not spending doing
work and with voice dialogue there's
(40:39):
very little that you have to explain
because
all this stuff is readily apparent and
familiar and you know differentiating
between a firefighter and a protector
and a you know
and ifs is you know i think the model is
good but i also i'm not wild about the
language and the thing that i'm the
least fond of is the name because
this whole idea was like well internal
(41:00):
family systems there's a whole family of
different things in your head and they
you can use family therapy to make them
talk or whatever but it's like when you
say internal family systems to somebody
they think you are doing therapy with
their family it's not clear that it is
an individual therapy modality
that's so funny yeah yeah so i always
just say ifs if i'm yeah gonna say it um
(41:24):
but uh yeah thank you so much for
sitting down and um do you we'll link to
the website uh do you want us to link to
the in platform talk or anything else
that would be uh
yeah um
not necessarily i am up doing um or
redoing my website hopefully you know by
september i'm gonna have a new fresh
(41:44):
um and more user-friendly website so i
you know people can learn more um
but yeah no i think that's kind of it
and then you do you see people um across
the nation or can you practice in any
state via online
yeah i i have an international client
base i i work with people all over the
(42:06):
world and i'm an early riser so i can
adjust for my international clients by
getting up early
yeah that's that's great um yeah so and
that is another thing you know anybody
listening to this can can call you up if
they're interested in that work and we
usually put the video on youtube and
then release the audio as a podcast so
the um
(42:27):
you know is a lot
well thank you so much and um
thank you
appreciate you sitting down and um we
will uh and waking up early
and my pleasure
all right well uh we'll talk to you soon
thank you okay bye
(42:48):
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
well i appreciate you sitting down with
me today i want to be respectful of your
time um so just to get you introduced to
have um tamar stone am i saying that
(00:21):
correct tomorrow
tomorrow okay yeah thanks i've only seen
it read and said uh the
you um i want to get to your work and
some of the stuff that you've done but
also a lot of the podcast is kind of
trying to give people an idea of the
like history of the profession
there's not a great understanding of
(00:41):
that even among clinicians so going back
to kind of start with um your dad you
have you know your dad is a union
analyst who actually goes through one of
the carl jung institutes which is not a
quick or cheap process you know you have
to have been an analysis for seven years
then you've got to do what four years of
study that you pay for i mean it's like
a master's degree um
(01:03):
and then after after that they had you
know the blessing of the institute and
um
then he gave that up to start his own
model and jump in and correct me
anywhere here because i'm going based on
what i understand
yeah that's absolutely correct
and so the model is called voice
dialogue and the embracing ourselves
(01:24):
book is kind of the manual for that but
then there's a whole lot of other
resources
um and i i wanted to talk to you because
when i first got into therapy they were
just teaching us all the cbt in school
and it was the cognitive behavioral
stuff and i was just like i don't
understand this like how would this ever
make anyone change this is just common
sense stuff the ego would try
before going to therapy like i don't
(01:45):
want to tell somebody this in therapy
like and i i just didn't get it and the
first kind of you know jung i got into
later but he's kind of overwhelming and
in school all you get is this guy came
up with a collective unconscious moving
on you know if you get anything that's
what you get you know in the education
now
and when i picked up embracing ourselves
and was going through it i was like i
(02:06):
like this a lot and i like this a lot
more than internal family systems i
think internal family systems is great
but it's very popular um and the voice
dialogue stuff was so intuitive um that
the concepts made sense with every
single person that i talked to people
really liked it and then it kind of set
me down a road to depth psychology and
somatic psychology so um yeah i was
really excited to to get a little
(02:27):
glimpse into maybe the formation of that
do you do you have any
insight into their process or
secrets you know about the
wow big question well i could tell you
that when i was like in my teens my
father used to sit me down in the living
room and
you know and talk to my parts and
you know
(02:49):
it probably you know it was one of the
few if only households you know where
this was happening and my brother would
walk in the room and want to watch and
it was like no don't sit there my you
know whatever self was sitting there and
um
so he you know he
um he was a very
um
(03:10):
deep and rich thinker and this body of
work i think really did come out of
um you know his union
roots and uh ancestry if you will you
know he was in that lineage of the the
you know the
the conscious mind the collective
conscious you know and
(03:30):
and and the voice dialogue work has
evolved over the years it's not like he
started something and then it got it
didn't ever reify and it doesn't it
still doesn't feel reified because when
he brought it to the world
i mean he he
he conceived it and then
in his relationship with my stepmother
(03:51):
sidra
he
they they really work the work together
they walk the walk they talk the talk
they facilitated each other
and and really took the work out to the
world and
and so
one thing that i think is important to
distinguish is like so the voice
dialogue is really the technique of
(04:13):
giving voice to your inner selves
but but the philosophy is called
the psychology of selves and the aware
ego process
and the premise being
for your listening audience that we all
have selves they're universal
everybody has selves you know the pusher
(04:34):
the critic the perfectionist the pleaser
the accommodator but the difference at
the personality level is that we
over identify with certain selves
and repress and disown others
and not only that but for every self
that's dominant in our personality or
that's primary we say in our personality
(04:57):
we are repressing or disowning it's it's
opposite in a very mathematical way it's
ma it's a mathematical precision the
degree to which we identify with oneself
is the degree to which we repress or
disown its opposite
so then it becomes kind of
more juicy and interesting and kind of
(05:19):
exciting to explore like this isn't just
random this is actually
um
mathematical
and um
i use the term
repress and disown separately that that
repressing
um well let me start first disowning
(05:40):
itself is actually where it's off the
radar screen of our consciousness we
don't even know that it's there it's
sort of like a fish in water
repressing a self is sort of like we
kind of know it's there but we're just
not
giving it energy
it's you know it's yeah more or less uh
we're just owned as a it's literally off
(06:02):
the radar screen of our consciousness
so so furthermore you know that that
there we have all these selves
and
and the personality in a traditional
sense is sort of like what we call
like um or what's referred to as the ego
or the operating ego and you know is
(06:24):
in voice dialogue terms whatever selves
are running the show at any given time
you know it might be one it might be
more than one it's it's the lens that
we're seeing out of it's it's it's how
we see the world and how we're seen by
the world
so um
in in the voice dialogue psychology of
(06:46):
selves perspective
there's the concept of an aware ego
which is
which is um
a healthy i mean
in in the psychology of cells we don't
negate the ego it's not a bad thing it's
a survival thing these selves have been
(07:07):
born usually in our family of origin to
help us survive and survive not
necessarily physically but emotionally
psychologically spiritually you know we
have to survive you know any kind of
issues in our in in the home if there
are issues
um birth order you know um you know
(07:29):
poverty um um
community school religions you know that
these cells are born in us to help us
survive
and um
that's really important and they deserve
to be
acknowledged and valued for the role
that they've played in our lives
(07:52):
yeah
and and
yeah go ahead please no no go ahead you
get please finish well one more thought
with that and so what happens with these
selves is that they're born usually
early in our lives
and
and they have helped us in many
different kinds of ways by you know like
you know lending their support you know
(08:14):
uh
but what happens when we grow up is some
of ourselves are still like frozen in
time and they're they're continuing to
function as if we're still children in
our family of origin
and and so what from the voice dialogue
perspective we just want to like update
those selves acknowledge them
(08:35):
for the role they've played and update
them even like update their job
description you know just like to like
they don't they don't need to function
as if we're still children that's not
necessary you know and
that's the update
and it's it's often the least uh used
you know parts of self that we're the
(08:56):
least comfortable with so when they come
out they're very rigid and they have a
very you know strong hold over us you
know because we avoid them until they're
unavoidable but in my experience
can you give an example of what you mean
well i think like um have you ever seen
john beebe's like shadow model of the
mbti he's one of those pacifica kind of
(09:18):
jungian i guess he's getting older now
too but um he talks about you know the
on the mbti which i think there's a lot
of overlap with the link with the
language of the voice dialogue system
and then
ways that the mbemb ti works but you
know for anyone not familiar with it
it's generally saying that our brain can
(09:38):
can think or solve problems in eight
different ways but each one of those
ways is directly opposite of another
type so i can't be saying what's going
on inside me and what do i think about
this and what am i feeling at the same
time that i'm going what's going on out
here what are they thinking what are
they feeling those are those are
introverting or extroverting you know
you can switch pretty quick but you're
(09:59):
doing one of the other and so you know
there's eight of those and and bb says
you know as you stay in any of the the
therapy models that work
the numbers get closer together you get
less comfortable being like i have to
you know me
i was just intuitive all the time i mean
i could not do detail-oriented work i
was like i couldn't learn math in school
because i was like a computer could do
(10:19):
this like why i don't want to do this
what's important is figuring out and
making connections and creating and and
you know that's that's pretty rigid you
know you know and i needed to be more
comfortable with detail detail-oriented
thinking
i needed to be more comfortable with you
know a rote
process that was probably meditative and
trying to pull me back into my body more
(10:39):
than i wanted to admit you know it's
easy for the ego to just say no i'm
creative i'm intuitive you know like i
don't like that you know really there's
probably some fear there and so i think
like a lot of times when
going back to to your question like when
you have
a part of self that's very young that
was very rigid in the house you know a
controlling part or a protective part
(11:00):
that kind of pops up to keep you safe
you usually don't use it very much you
know it's not something that you're
seeing all the time or you're very
conscious of so when it comes up it's
very strong and reactive
yeah yeah or that it's used all the time
and you cease to see it as so you know
someone's enmeshed with the part when
the a type is always you know
(11:21):
controlling us that's an option too
and you said a beautiful thing you know
about your own processes like how that
it was important for you to integrate
the the rationale
and that's what's true you know about
this philosophy and how you know how it
was held by my father and and it
continues to be held by uh sidra and
(11:43):
myself you know
it it it's um
it's almost like
we we attract what we disown in our
lives you know if we're really
identified with a certain self or set of
cells what are we going to attract in in
our lives are people who carry the
opposite energy and it and that's not
(12:04):
like a punishment that's we marry our
shadow you know exactly exactly and and
it's an opportunity it's like an
integration or another way of saying it
is we want to be able to take the
homeopathic
dose
of you know our opposite you know our
you know our partner our friend our
(12:24):
neighbor because they're they're caring
that's how we become really whole
i mean whole in a real way
is integrating the things that that are
foreign to us or that we disown or
repress or
yeah so it's beautiful it's a beautiful
kind of model it's a consciousness model
really
(12:45):
and
i i think that
that
one another concept that you have used
before is that the the shadow's always a
paradox that for every part there's a
direct opposite
part
yes and i think that's an interesting
idea um we use that a lot could you say
a little bit about how you apply that
yeah well like one thing the way i hold
(13:08):
shadow is that that
um
you know i know shadow gets kind of a
negative kind of wrap you know in some
methodologies you know oh the shadow and
it's like as if it's bad but it's not
it's just
what what's you know what we're not
seeing that's what's in the shadow you
know it's
(13:28):
like when you know when we're walking in
the sun we have a shadow and you know we
turn around to see it and the shadow's
now back there so
[Music]
so our shadow can be what's repressed or
disowned but our shadow can equally be
what's so dominant in our personality
that we've just ceased to see it as so
so i have a a wide range of you know how
(13:51):
i hold the shadow
and in voice dialogue work in the
technique of giving voice to these cells
we always start with what's primary
what's dominant what's protective
because that's the safest way of gaining
access to what's on the other side
what's repressed or disowned is you go
(14:12):
through
the primary and find its opposite
because in doing it that way it it's
fundamentally safe it's almost like
getting permission to go to the other
side after you've honored the the the
the um the part that has created a lot
of protection and run a lot of
interference and
(14:34):
yeah so that's the way to get to the the
shadow is it's really you know through
the primary and it's really really safe
and it's really really honorable
yeah i think the tension of those
opposites when i work with a lot of um
dissociative disorders uh
and
but really with everybody there's
there's like um when
(14:56):
you get somewhere so quickly when you
offer somebody that doorway because
somebody may sit and talk forever about
like i'm so afraid of being judged i
hate other people judging me why can't
everyone just be nice you know i hate
judgment and and then you know you say
okay let's look for the opposite of that
and you though there's going to be this
is very strong so there's going to be an
opposite piece you know and then slowly
(15:17):
they're able to be like wait a minute i
judge all these people to protect myself
from judgment you know like this is
actually this fair dog swear if i just
sat there you know that both of those
things are in you that seems to get
people there quickly if i just sat there
and was like do you think you're a
judgmental person i mean there would be
a you know analytic debate for hours
about no i'm nice it's the world that is
(15:38):
bad you know
but
yeah the idea of opposites somehow is
less threatening to the ego i think to
to see some of that stuff yeah
and that also in in the opposites it's
not that we need to become
the person we're judging it's not you
know it's just to see that they hold an
energetic
(15:59):
um opposite energy it's not that you
know we need to become
you know our enemy or our people you
know we want it we want
to claim or reclaim um the essence of
what that part so if i'm judging someone
for being a slob it doesn't mean i need
to become a slob
(16:20):
i need to recognize what the essence of
slob is and and i had that in my own
life with someone and you know what i
found was the essence of slob was
someone who
so so the difference between you know it
it's like you know i don't need to be i
mean i'm more identified with perfection
or organization and order but it doesn't
(16:43):
mean that i need to become a slob i need
to be
have access to what's love represents
for me
so it's not like when we see what it is
we're you know because we can learn
about our our primary uh your endosome
cells yeah well we can learn about
disowned cells by who we judge who who
(17:04):
triggers us who creates a diversion
response but again it doesn't mean
becoming that it doesn't mean we have to
be like them we just have to find what
the essence uh energy is in what it is
we're judging
well
um
the so one of the things that it's kind
(17:26):
of interesting to me is that you've got
analysts who do kind of what um sidran
hal did they leave the institute
in the from the late 60s to the early
80s and then start models of jungian
um
based you know therapy that are more
somatic and more experiential like voice
(17:47):
dialogue is you know this direct
encounter it's not an analysis
as much
um do you have any re he did
i mean one did uh
do you know if those guys talked i mean
did art mandel ever talk to the voice
dialogue people or the bioenergetic did
they
i mean they're kind of doing a similar
thing and then two
(18:08):
can you speak to maybe the frustration
with the institute or the limitations to
peer analysis that was leading people to
you know leave something that it was
hard to to to do took a lot of time
yeah you know it's a great question um
i i
i don't know if there was much
communication in in all these different
(18:29):
people and modalities i i don't know
that there was actually um there could
have been but i i don't know
and also i think i
i wouldn't even for me i mean i see it
as evolution you know like like
everything is sort of evolutionary
and um
(18:50):
so it's not i mean
it's not
to me a negation of jung or even
analysis because there's still a place
for it
for some people and
you know and young still has this like
father of psychology kind of place and
he always will i think because
he was a forerunner you know not that
(19:11):
freud was and also but
um
so part of it to me was just
evolutionary you know that sure
you had these other people who were like
carrying the mantle like there was you
know they
was young in their in their
bloodstream but they were you know
evolutionary and the thing
(19:31):
i would say about voice dialogue um in
particular
is one of the things that hal and sidra
did or didn't do you know that a lot of
other modalities did is they didn't
certify
they didn't reify
the
organization you know they have an
organization i mean
but they you know and and i when i train
(19:53):
people i give certificates of completion
but there's no certification
so what they did that's different and
i'm not even saying good bad right wrong
but what's different
is they didn't they didn't reify and and
voice dialogue has therefore become like
open source software
um people who who learned it and ideally
(20:16):
learned it you know in a really kind of
lineage way like they asked you know in
a pure way
and even if they didn't you know they
they have been able to run with it in
lots of different creative ways and it
has it's not
institutionalized and
um and i i i have a lot of respect and
(20:37):
admiration like that that
was kind of cutting edge of hal and
cidra you know to do it that way that
wasn't done and i think it's what keeps
this body of work kind of
um a little bit like in it not of it
it's not
confined
reified or tied down in in a certain way
(20:59):
it's really like or open source software
yeah and i i think that that was one of
the reasons it's so interesting is the
people taking ian's um
view of the psyche which i think is
other psychologies it's not that they
don't work you know it's like adler had
something he was noticing you know the
(21:20):
compensation you know instead of you you
can use that language to set attention
to the opposites or you know cognitive
behavioral therapy is ego management
strategies but jung
did something that takes a long time to
learn but it is the most complete
psychology out there it kind of
describes every instance of
mental illness also a journey across the
life course i mean just it's incredibly
(21:42):
big
and and and whole um but
you you see
a lot of you like um
well here here's my suspicion i don't i
don't know um
one of the things that happens in the
70s to academia is that it becomes kind
of like especially the soft sciences
(22:02):
kind of become insecure
so you see things like the direct
practice doctorates in mental health
that are just now coming back because
we're kind of fixing a lot of damage
that was done the profession in the 80s
like they just go away you know you're
not allowed to study the thing as a
practitioner you have to do it as the
the psychology of the thing so that you
can teach in academia and publish papers
(22:23):
and raise your t-score and all of this
stuff and i think that hurt the
profession it kind of overly
intellectualized it and i wonder if that
didn't creep into the institutes because
when you read the the
things that are getting published
they're incredibly analytical and
they're they're very um
they're not based in experiential stuff
(22:45):
and
it's it's strange to me that that is the
case because jung wasn't like that a lot
of the earlier unions like hillman
weren't like that you know hillman would
make people find the physical route
of the archetype and jung is so
phenomenological you know he
only writes case studies and then
eventually does the red book to map his
own self
(23:07):
but you don't see the spirit of that
left you see people that are kind of
insecure kind of like very academic very
theoretical and i wonder if there wasn't
just not a place for people
doing experiential type modalities and
that's why you see that in the 70s and
80s but i don't know
yeah i'm not sure either you know i'm
(23:27):
not sure either it is it's a great
question
a living question
well i think that they were so ahead of
their time i mean a lot of the the
neuroscience now is starting to say well
you have to use the body and you have to
use the subcortical brain and you know
direct experience is better and it's
just like somebody already said that
they said it four years ago like you
know you guys
(23:47):
you guys wrote it off as not
evidence-based because it wasn't a
number that you could put into a study
um and again there's the evolution that
like you know maybe we could get further
to the experiential because and there is
a young and a freud and an ad you know
that that there's this rich terrain
which
you know all these
(24:09):
modalities have grown out of
we did an interview with uh peak
neuroscience and they have this uh
proprietary technology basically that is
kind of interesting and it
will map the brain
when you wear a eeg an active eeg and it
tells you you know what's going on and
then they can stimulate different areas
(24:30):
so like with autism you can take the
part of the thought thalamus is trying
to signal hey this is how you handle
sensory input
but the longer term memory portion of
the brain there's a signal gap it's not
learning how to handle the sensory stuff
so they can kind of zap the information
from over here over there and it's it's
neat stuff but they were saying that the
brain essentially it has these
wavelengths and you can see how it's
(24:51):
thinking based on the wavelengths and
what they mean
hey i'm sorry we keep keep disconnecting
yeah it's a mystery i don't know if it's
my computer or yours and
yeah that's really odd
so what's the last thing you heard there
about um the neuroscience and and you
know the work they that they've done
like with autism and yeah so well so
(25:15):
they basically were saying like the
brain
it want the problem is that it wants to
think only in one of these wavelengths
but that you need all of them to be more
whole and so
they was saying like okay so the theta
wave that's how when you're trying to
study for a test and you're trying to
concentrate but you're concentrating so
much that you start to overthink and you
feel bad about yourself and you become
obsessive we would lower the theta and
(25:35):
then you need more of a and it was like
they sounded so much like voice dialogue
you know
uh you know conception or mbti kind of
you know balanced functioning
yeah yeah and balance is such a great
word and you know like in voice dialogue
we want kind of to integrate all
ourselves we you know ourselves are this
(25:56):
inner
family and we want to have access to all
of them
and and balance doesn't mean like a
fixed balance where you don't move you
know like okay got it don't move it's
more like like a um
it's it's a living you know it's fluid
and you know and this aware ego process
versus an operating ego is that we have
(26:20):
an objective awareness of ourselves
without judgment you know it's like we
can hear what all of ourselves are
saying at any given time at a content
level without
identifying with it without you know
like without even a value structure it's
just objective witnessing and we can
(26:41):
also feel what ourselves are feeling but
again without judgment without like
saying this is good and this is not good
just feel what ourselves are feeling
hear what ourselves know what ourselves
are saying or wanting you know at the
content level
and that's how we're
involved you know with ourselves it's
(27:03):
this aware ego that's not judgmental
that's not um values based you know like
and and it gives us a sense of choice
i mean real choice in every given moment
we're making choices but if these with
with access to ourselves where we're not
(27:24):
being pulled like
like a you know pulled down on you know
to the under the waters of life where
we're conscious and intentional um
it's there's a kind of freedom and
liberation in that
it's very powerful
so i mean now could you talk a little
bit about your work and the body uh
(27:45):
dialogue process and themselves in a box
you know all the ways that you do your
your process
yeah
uh so um
my main work is one one on one with
individuals and couples
and then in addition i do trainings in
voice dialogue level one level two level
three
and then um
(28:07):
i created an offshoot of voice dialogue
called body dialogue um that's about
giving voice to the overall voice of the
body and and and all its parts that the
body has a voice
and all the parts of the body have a
voice and that there's a very safe and
honoring way of giving voice to the body
because the body is often you know for
(28:30):
many people very disowned and
so it's really profound to kind of get
into a relationship with your own body
so that's a whole that's a body of work
that that i created as an offshoot of
voice dialogue and then i also created
um selves in a box which is a card deck
kind of like a
(28:51):
a psycho spiritual tarot deck but it's
it's a you know of using cells i chose
52 and i think there's an infinite
number of cells out there but i chose 52
to represent in the card deck
and and and the guidebook that goes with
the
card deck is like a
(29:11):
graduate study of consciousness where i
teach
work and then i show all these different
ways that you can
use the cards and explore your own
psyche and consciousness using
the cards so yeah that's kind of
my thing is i kind of live and breathe
this this work and i'm i'm very
(29:34):
grateful um grateful to my father and my
stepmother and
you know that i'm in as you are you know
in a in a um
in a life work that i i love and live
well and so there's two parts of the
voice dialogue uh like system that i
don't do um i mean one of them is chair
(29:54):
work i mean they they originally there
was like a salt and that you would sit
here and talk to the inner critics sit
there and talk as the pusher sit over
here and talk to the authentic self and
when you were you were moving around to
there was some psycho drama and then the
other part of it was it was a group
practice you know they would do groups a
lot of the time um
(30:15):
from
what i was reading i mean do you do
either of those or
are those necessary
yeah um well i in in my work i do voice
dialogue with people i mean not all my
clients
necessarily want to do you know that the
technique of giving voice to the inner
selves you know sometimes it's just more
(30:36):
a philosophical conversation in regards
to their life where they get the
consciousness model but they don't want
to necessarily do the technique but i do
even on zoom i do
you know 75 of my work is voice dialogue
where we
and and it's not kind of random i really
get you know i follow the thread of the
(30:57):
person i'm working with like what's
primary and we always start with what's
primary and then go to its opposite so
it's done in kind of an honoring and
balance and you know
there's a methodology and and and the
safety you know to
to to doing that and then i do group
work too and i do i have a dream group
(31:20):
and i do a sales and a box webinar where
i do readings for people using the cards
i have an online version and
yeah so there's lots of different even
in the group work way back you know hal
would actually do voice dialogue with
people or he'd have he'd
teach on dreams and consciousness and
then he'd have people break up and do
(31:42):
the voice dialogue with each other so
voice dialogue is always sort of being
done
for people who want to do it for the
people who do it it's usually a positive
addiction they love
learning about their cells it's really
quite exciting
but you add the somatic part to it you
bring the body into that process i do
(32:02):
for people who want that you know i
don't you know
require it for anyone but if if i am
working with someone
um you know where i feel that the body
is sort of being negated or repressed or
disowned or
you know calling
for help you know i'll bring up you know
i think it might behoove us to do a body
(32:22):
dialogue session or some people just
hear about me you know it's like there's
so many doorways into consciousness you
know people are struggling with the end
of a relationship so they enter a
therapeutic relationship with someone or
people have an illness or an injury and
they enter into a therapeutic
relationship with someone to you know to
to kind of how to hold hold it all and
(32:45):
there's a lot of doorways in to
consciousness and
yeah so for some people it's the body
you know and for some people it's it's
something else
so yeah i do it all you know i just look
whatever someone is wanting or needing i
i
you know even couples work i do a lot of
work with couples because i
(33:07):
i love doing couples work from
from the psychology of sales perspective
which is equal responsibility equal
accountability that there's no like well
you're right and you're wrong no there
are a lot of
moving parts there are a lot of cells
involved in it and that you know it's
it's an equal
(33:27):
journey
yeah no and do you want to say anything
more about your process or the selves in
a box system you know i saw that was for
sale through the website that looks like
an interesting addition to our clinic so
yeah um it it's um currently i mean it's
for sale through amazon i'm actually
just in the midst of
(33:49):
like my third
reprinting and i am kind of updating
refreshing the box
so that's probably about maybe six to
eight weeks out
um and then the new version will be
available i think i only have about like
25 boxes left at home and then amazon
has about maybe 30 so
(34:10):
but yeah i mean there that's available
through amazon and um
i think it's a great tool a tool you
know for a tool for consciousness and a
tool in working with other people's
process and
um so is it like an introspective tarot
deck almost like
using that to look understand the self
exactly
(34:32):
learning to understand you know and your
relationship to your own selves and also
to understand your relationship to other
people's selves it works in both ways
well and i saw you had done a talk on
young platform um did you have a good
experience with them i haven't heard it
yet um
yeah yeah i am and i'm gonna be doing uh
(34:54):
another one and i think october on just
the inner critic
yeah i mean they they um
you know approached me and you know i
because of the origins you know
in my father's you know lineage i just
felt very honoring of of you know the
request to do voice dialogue yeah coming
(35:16):
from them that's really beautiful so
yeah i try to
you know again open source software like
go where the energy is like you reached
out
like oh an opportunity to connect with
someone else in the world
you know on the consciousness path and
how beautiful is that
yeah it's uh it's interesting they had
(35:37):
reached out to me i think like a year
and a half ago and then i got underwater
with everything and had never really put
anything together but it's still on a
short list to do there's some really
interesting stuff on
on their site
um well
i i think that's what i have i mean i
was just kind of curious if you had any
insights into that and i think giving um
even clinicians a sense of the history
(35:59):
and
and dynamics of the profession is
important and something we leave out in
education a lot of the time um you have
anything else you want to add or or
or pitch that you're working on and
we can link to anything that you'd like
to link to
yeah yeah thank you i am working on a
book on the body and um you know
(36:22):
my
history with it and you know body
dialogue and and all like and what you
know that the body has
you know to your point an important role
in all this like with it's sort of like
without planet earth we won't be here
without our bodies we won't be here so
you know i i i do really uh value that
and you know i i yeah so that's
(36:45):
something i'm working on um
yeah i think i you know it feels
complete it was a real honor to meet you
joel and i really appreciate
you know you and the work you're doing
and you know what you're bringing to the
world
well thank you so much i really
appreciate you sitting down it's always
neat to to
you know hear people that have direct
(37:05):
experience with you know parts of the
profession um because not all of it i
don't think it's the exposure that it
does i mean there's kind of that it
should there's kind of a bias that i
think is changing where
if something isn't objectively
measurable we don't
research its effectiveness because it's
harder to research it and so you get
(37:27):
people saying well the gold standard is
the simplest modality because the most
research has been done on it where
you know i don't see the a to b there
you know exactly
yeah
well and
do you ever do any eye movement therapy
mdr or brain spotting or yeah i've done
it myself personally and very much
respect it and and i think you know gosh
(37:49):
i believe in all modalities it's like
you know
reach out to sort of the one you need at
any given time you know so yeah i i have
personally experienced i'm not trained
in it myself but i have the utmost
respect for it absolutely right
brains mdr has a
kind of rigidity to a lot of the
(38:10):
protocols but with brain spotting i find
it fuses really well with parts based
stuff and we use
oh we'll find the inner critic
physically how does this want to move
your spine you know do you want to fight
stand up and fight do you want to hide
you know what what is that and then that
opens a gateway to go really far in but
it's the parts based language to help
people find the what's in their body
(38:32):
so
we use those together quite a bit
yeah lovely
and then um
because i you know internal family
systems is real big now you see it like
in a lot of treatment facilities and
stuff um i mean it's almost the same
system as voice dialogue with maybe a
little bit different methodology and
(38:54):
different vocabulary but a lot there's a
lot of overlap and that they're both
parts-based modalities
um i mean do you what do you think the
biggest differences are and or or or are
the voice dialogue community even aware
of the biofest that much
not really i'm and honestly i'm just
being i'm not that aware but
(39:16):
i i think maybe the biggest piece is
that in voice dialogue there's really
the strengthening of
an aware ego process
and not the aware ego as a self it's not
a self it's a muscle it's a process it's
our capacity to stand between opposites
and i think that may be one difference
(39:36):
and the other difference is
is really separating from self like when
i work with a moon with voice dialogue i
have them move over they don't have to
move far
but i have them move over and make a
physical separation so they can
experience the self as as as a self
(39:57):
and separate from this i it's like a
disidentification
from that we see you know this this
critic you know it's strong in me but it
isn't me and that separation
is really to me important and then
coming back and having a sense of
you know an aware ego process where you
(40:18):
know i'm in it but not of it
yeah i think voice dialogues language is
a lot more intuitive i think you're the
i mean i'm kind of pushy i want to move
quickly and the more time i'm spending
teaching somebody vocabulary or parts of
the brain or the the language of a model
is time that we're not spending doing
work and with voice dialogue there's
(40:39):
very little that you have to explain
because
all this stuff is readily apparent and
familiar and you know differentiating
between a firefighter and a protector
and a you know
and ifs is you know i think the model is
good but i also i'm not wild about the
language and the thing that i'm the
least fond of is the name because
this whole idea was like well internal
(41:00):
family systems there's a whole family of
different things in your head and they
you can use family therapy to make them
talk or whatever but it's like when you
say internal family systems to somebody
they think you are doing therapy with
their family it's not clear that it is
an individual therapy modality
that's so funny yeah yeah so i always
just say ifs if i'm yeah gonna say it um
(41:24):
but uh yeah thank you so much for
sitting down and um do you we'll link to
the website uh do you want us to link to
the in platform talk or anything else
that would be uh
yeah um
not necessarily i am up doing um or
redoing my website hopefully you know by
september i'm gonna have a new fresh
(41:44):
um and more user-friendly website so i
you know people can learn more um
but yeah no i think that's kind of it
and then you do you see people um across
the nation or can you practice in any
state via online
yeah i i have an international client
base i i work with people all over the
(42:06):
world and i'm an early riser so i can
adjust for my international clients by
getting up early
yeah that's that's great um yeah so and
that is another thing you know anybody
listening to this can can call you up if
they're interested in that work and we
usually put the video on youtube and
then release the audio as a podcast so
the um
(42:27):
you know is a lot
well thank you so much and um
thank you
appreciate you sitting down and um we
will uh and waking up early
and my pleasure
all right well uh we'll talk to you soon
thank you okay bye
(42:48):
[Music]
[Music]
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