SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to Soul Portals, exploring psycho-spiritual horizons with your hosts, Cedric Speyer and Deanna Nagel. Cedric is an author and therapist who developed the interview guidance model and is a pathfinder in the psycho-spiritual realm. Deanna created the Essential Soul Care Model, a model suitable for therapists, coaches, and healers. The monthly episodes of Soul Portals feature guests sharing insights from their personal paths and professional practices. Thank you for tuning in for the Soul Talk with all kinds of trailblazing teachers and guides as Cedric, Deanna, and guests explore new evolutionary landscapes.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

May the spirit flow freely through our conversation and this gathering, allowing it to be both energizing and edifying. And we're coming to you from Stockholm, Sweden, and Florida, USA, and Toronto, Canada. And all the places that the you are in. So I'd like to kick off with an opening quote, and this one comes from the fellow who writes all the soul books. So it's one of his recent ones, Soul Therapy, which ties into our the mission and mandate of soul portals. And this uh brief passage is about social unconsciousness, because a big part of our theme is bringing more conscious having more social consciousness. So it's Thomas Moore. He says the root problem in society is an astounding degree of unconsciousness in dealings among people. Many act and speak from their deep needs, long-standing neurotic patterns and fears, with little or no awareness. A community thrives on a spirit of cooperation and empathy, but often what you see is pure narcissism, self-interest, and gross immaturity. We need a revolution in how society thinks of itself. A means of becoming more mature and thoughtful about social interaction. We need communal therapy and we need it urgently. And that's what Georgia is bringing to consciousness into the community. So welcome, Georgia. If you can say a little bit about in the world, who you are, what you are, where you are, in your on your path, and then we'll delve more deeply into the journey.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yes. Thank you, Cedric, for the introduction. And uh hello everyone. I I think the biggest label I can use for myself is a human development professional. I started out as an um anthropologist and an economist, and I have spent my experience uh straddles different sectors, uh corporate banking. Uh but the last year, the last decade I spent in the sphere of international development and public policy, so social economy and investment. And I have now transitioned uh to be a social entrepreneur and a leader of a social organization and uh healing initiative in Europe. And the more unofficial label I would put to myself or um uh yeah, uh it would be a of a possibilitator, someone who sees the opportunities before they become visible, the higher potentialities, and uh yeah, opens conditions uh for possibility uh for individuals and uh and communities. And I focus on intentional deep healing in community, so not so much psychotherapy but healing.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Like psychotherapy at large and yeah, going beyond the individual, including the individual, but going beyond. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:02

And I know that the title of this podcast includes the big C word, cancer. Can you talk a little bit about that and and sort of the the soul behind the work you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 5:17

So well, um we spoke about community and the social or the systemic uh dimension of cancer. I I do believe that cancer uh is not just a disease in in the body, although we approach it mainly like that, and we treat it, and then on the system level, we measure it as the cancer burden, let's say, on public policy and spending. Uh, but it has important cultural, uh, social, and ecological dimensions for me. I think it's a mirror for society, it has important teachings for all of us individually and collectively. And so some of my work is in creating the conditions for unlearning so as to be able to decode some of the meanings and to receive the teachings in uh yeah, in a moment of adversity or great distress. In a moment of a storm, there is a way to walk with the storm and learn from it. And while each of us walks their own authentic path, um, it's easier to walk. Maybe not easier, but lighter. It's never easy, but it can be lighter that walk when we walk in community. So something I learned early on from my experience is that only we can help ourselves, really, or heal ourselves, but we cannot do it alone. It was true for me and it's for many others that I uh I have met in the time since I entered this new field, and so yeah, that's the spirit with which I work in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Yeah, you're you're taking psycho oncology to a new level. And as far as your personal journey goes, was there a moment of awakening when you shifted from being a you know a victim of the disease to to just a much wider, broader, deeper view of it that you're practicing now and teaching other people?

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Oh, an interesting question. I don't know if I saw myself as a victim of the even at the beginning, although it's a it's an important skill, let's say, or uh uh a state of total innocence as what is happening to me. And I think we'll speak about it as we transition to speaking about those consciousness skills uh that accompany each person going through a cancer, or I would say other illnesses as well.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Um but um Yeah, sorry that it I any assumption that you were a victim first and then transitioned.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

As I say, it's an important skill, and I was there as well, as with everyone who is uh presented with some grave news and a very um urgent diagnosis and not in a grim prognosis, uh let's say. Um and well, that happened for me six years ago. I embarked on this path of deep intentional healing. I really interpreted it as an initiation. For me, life was initiating me into something that I hadn't asked for, but that's how initiations come. They're not on demand, they're not about self-development. Um, and it turned everything around for me at a time when I was really living my dream life in a very high achievement in the European public institutions, in the official structures. I was having everything I had been working for very hard, and this was a very big pivot I needed to make. Um, you asked what was the big shift, uh and you asked about psycho oncology. So I was in healing for uh several years, and when I understood that I was not dying, as the doctors had predicted, I was given eight months. Um so after a few years I had regained the strength of my body, the the balance was brought back into my system through uh exploring a variety of different modalities. I followed a very holistic approach. And um with time, I'm a very cognitive person. I I do have a PhD in anthropology, so I I I wanted to systematize or understand deeper. And I said the one thing I haven't studied psychotherapy, um, although I studied, I worked and I applied for my own healing. I did go into school, back to school, and I did a master's program in psychooncology, and that was another big turn for me because it was another initiation of sorts. Um, it seemed that the program was very holistic in orientation, or at least that was the presentation, but as a clinical-based program, um, it's the curriculum, the discussions held very little space for what I had experienced personally. And um that was very difficult for me because quite flattening. So it is when I was launched into yet another period in research and investigation into literature that is not yet part of the curriculum, but it's evidence-based. It's um so the evidence is mounting on the potentialities of the human body and the human consciousness. Uh, that evidence is mounting. So I have been researching that and working with with people like myself. Um, so it's very yeah, it's my work is based in literature, but also very based on deep experience of myself and and of the people that I'm very grateful and humble to accompany on their journey.

SPEAKER_04 12:01

When you were going through your own journey, did you find the medical model to be supportive or um not supportive of your choice to be holistic and integrate integrative?

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Uh both end. Um okay. I will speak frankly here, um from my heart, and as it happened, um I found initially the model limiting because it was based on finding out what was happening in different parts of my body. I had cancer diagnosed in two different parts. There was no connection between these parts in the in the investigations of doctors and on the treatment suggested. Uh it disregarded the fact that it's happening in a single organism, single person, single soul in a life path. So no questions were asked. And that was my first kind of light. Uh another one was uh it doesn't matter what you eat or how you support your body, you have to do your chemotherapy as the only um chance to maybe preserve your life. No guarantees, of course, it's cancer. Uh so that was the second um kind of lighting, light, alarm light for me. And the third was um a lot of the medical professionals, although well intended, did not look healthy themselves. So that was again prompted me to go to different hospitals and different oncologists uh until I find someone I can put my trust into, um, who looked healthy and radiated health and uh had all the credentials. So eventually I found good support. But by the time I had found that one oncologist who happened to be in Luxembourg, uh, which is where I lived at the moment, um, I started the journey in Bulgaria but uh went back to my place of work. So by the time I found a good oncologist, I had also found some other options, healing options for myself, and decided to give them a try. So eventually I did not um rely as much on the biomedical model for healing as I um really diversified my healing choices and followed quite a holistic path. But it's important for me to highlight that it was not through rejecting medicine or science, and that very good uh oncologists accompanied me in a way of screening, as she had predicted I was dying, or I would surely die by doing what I chose to do. She was uh scanning me, doing the tumor markers, uh, blood tests, and and everything required on the way. So I feel like I had one leg in both planets, let's say. It's a grief of mine that these planets are, you know, disconnected today. And many people who find themselves in the hospital space, now depending on where, of course, some health systems I live in Europe, so some health systems are really much more integrated and the biopsychosocial model seemingly working better. Uh, but most people who find themselves um into a health facility um do not have access to these psychosocial support tools and not from the from a level of consciousness that um can can support the unlocking of deeper healing. Uh so the orientation is very much towards curing and coping or accompaniment. So yeah, so that became a mission for me to create those bridges and to to join the dots and to create those spaces that are more integral in nature that do not exclude any modality, any solution, but bring them in one place and where people can access first are supported to expand the awareness of what this can mean, access deeper meaning for themselves, and then make a choice uh from a freer place, a place of love rather than fear, a lot of fear associated with cancer, as we know. So it's culturally conditioned as we spoke.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

There's a comment from Michaela in the chat about who's open about having had cancer herself and being really positive helped her through the process and now counsels people and definitely not a victim of cancer. Um how is your approach like the same as the like the well-known positive visualization and focusing on health, not on disease? How is your approach like the same or different than that? Yeah, you know, because there is there is like a pop psychology focus on you know self-talk about whatever it is, and how to encourage yourself, not discourage yourself. But you have a much you have a wider scope than that when it comes to consciousness and raising consciousness. This happens to be one arena and one way of doing it, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:01

So yes, I'm trying not to like latch on to language now because language is very binary and limiting. I have to and I speak from a place of how my healing. I can I'm I really can't be an authority on my healing, and I'm very careful to not suggest or suggest models or write them wrong ways, uh, because the territory of deep intentional healing is a territory beyond right and wrong, good and bad. And I have indeed found that each level of healing or each level of consciousness has its own healing, and you know, for each person, this is cancer is uh a teacher of mine uh that was uh who accompanied me on my path early on through my healing said it's like uh the healing is like a designer quad. You know, it's really it has to be tailored to the person, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Very inclusive, like you're not yeah, you're not contradicting anything, but you may be adding something, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

So I it's important for me to say that. Um so that said, um, I think it's of course uh important to be positive, and as the expansion of consciousness progresses, there is uh increasing access to more skills, to more ways of being that are more empowering and more positive and uh allow us to step more into the territory of trust. Um, that said, that is a space where all emotions are present and need their own space and acknowledgement. So for me, cancer was a permission to grief. It was a door that opened to a lot of sorrow, a lot of sadness, a lot of mourning. I hadn't been able to do previously in my life. So for me, healing was about digesting and metabolizing that grief. And I also find that a lot of that is best health communally. Like I couldn't have held it on my own. I think we're not meant to hold it on our own, it can overwhelm us. So, yes, it was very important to be positive. And I, you know, I wouldn't say ever because it's normal to be thrown into a more I don't want to label it victim state, but where it's like, what is happening to me? Like I don't understand how this is happening to me. It's a state of shock. So that's a normal part of the process, and it's um, and it's an important skill, as I will uh I hope to discuss later. Um so it's it's great to be positive, but for me, most important for the deep healing eventually is to welcome all of the emotions that maybe have been hanging out around, uh, but we haven't had the time, space, or capacity for.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

So this is that leads us to the healing circles because of the support in the community that's the container. So, can you say a bit about that project that it's that uh because it's a big part of your vocation?

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Yes, it is now. Um I it is not something I knew when um perhaps it was that I most urgently or deeply needed it. So I had to cobble my own solutions and uh access to communities. But it is after I uh studied um psycho oncology and I embarked to see on on uh the question. To find people who are working from that from that state of vision and who were creating spaces where everything was welcome and where deep healing and community was possible. That I found Healing Circle one year ago, and they have quickly become a primary way that I one of the primary spaces with which we work. And they are very healing circles are a very gentle transformation, space of transformation that is not transformation that is not demanded. Let's say it's where people come together in a ritualized space, safely held, not by facilitator or therapist, they're host and guardians. We co-hold the space, there is a healer on every chair, and there is something magical that happens that is the heart sharing, that dropping from here to here to the heart, and speaking from the heart, speaking in draft, speaking with new words about myself. So each one speaks in equal measure. So it's very democratic, participatory process. Um and hears themselves say a new story about oneself that's deeply healing, and it's deeply healing to be listened to without being interrupted and without the necessity to respond. And one of the we have a set of agreements that provide this safe container. Um and some of them are very magical, all of them are magical together, but some of them that are unconventional to other spaces, such as mutual support groups, are that we um we honor each other's unique ways of healing and don't presume to save, to advise, um fix or save one another. So um there is little crosstalking in the circle, and there is it's quite unusual because our culture doesn't work that way, as we all know.

SPEAKER_04 24:20

So well, and the medical model specifically, but even some of the healing professions, um, many people come to these fields because they want to fix. So it sounds like that's what this the circle does. It allows that inner voice, that inner story to emerge.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yes. I like Rachel Naomi Reman's quote, uh, or thoughts, I'm sure you know it, that says um to help is to see life as weak, to fix is to see life as broken, and to serve is to see life as whole. And healing circles are a space of service. Uh, that's why they're uh you know free of charge, they are very accessible, very democratic, and they're in service also because when we grieve, when we show up with our authentic emotions, we are of service to the community, we heal each other. So it's a space that we say we heal ourselves, each other, and the world. Through each healing circle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:49

So your healing circle brings out the inner light, and then the greater the circle itself brings its collective light to the community.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Yes, yes, very well said. And when you said that you know it's um honors the inner knowledge, um, this is another one of our agreements that we trust that each of us has within them the guidance they need for healing, and we rely on the power of silence to access that guidance. So um that's very very special. Uh, it was true also in my own healing journey. I recognize it as this profound practice, and and path of equilibrating the inner authority with the outer authority, which is not an important, it's very important what uh trusted uh medics, physicians have to say. Of course, they've studied there is a body of knowledge, uh, but that always has to be brought in balance with the inner guidance and our inner healing, our inner healer, our inner authority. So it's somewhere in the balance where true healing happens.

SPEAKER_04 27:06

Um, and the the use of silence as a healing tool is very contemplative, and we are so compelled to listen to respond instead of listening to hear.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah. So it healing circles entrain us into this um way of deep listening, and also we often have fear of silence, you know, of the empty, and we try to drone out this fear with with words to fill the space, and yet this is where great wisdom is held. Uh so as people learn to sit in silence and not to be disturbed by it, not to rush, uh there's a space for new things to be born. It's um yeah, so it's very generative as a process.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

You you mentioned skills before, would you have an example of the kind of skills that have emerged for you that you know not uh not techniques to fix anything, but the the skills that promote the consciousness you're talking about?

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Yes. So it's it's a way that I'm currently holding all of these learnings. I and I'm an anthropologist, please remember that. Um yes, and so decoding and systematizing what I'm seeing growing in myself and what I see from others' uh paths. I speak of them as skills or capacities. Um and um let's see how to bring this in the best way. So you have spoken, you all know about the levels of consciousness, and you have had your previous episodes, and I also work as a developmental uh uh development uh person. I I know about levels of of development, and this was profoundly missing from the psycho-oncology uh kind of paradigm in which I was in. It was very it was very flat. So I said, okay, how are those different levels of consciousness um present and not as you know, stages through which we move, but skills that we can access that are accessible to all of us and are you know they all live um so we are multiple uh we have this multiplicity inside us, and different parts of us can have different um different skills, but it's like a range that we are um we are able to access. So I have um theorized, let's say, or I am um considering about five or six six different skills, and when we spoke previously, you know that the easiest way through which to uh present them is this relationship, our base orientation towards life. So at the first level, uh life happens to me is what you previously referred to as uh this kind of state of shock and denial, this more survival state of where something happens to me, and I feel with very little recourse to address it.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

Um that's actually I'm sorry, that's actually what I meant by victim, not you know, so you know, the to me phase that you're power, you know, powerless because it's happening to you.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Right. So for me, it's very important to highlight that uh there is strength in each of these positions or skills. The strength is you know the coping, the distancing that cannot be happening, that cannot be true of me. This is also a skill, and it there is a certain innocence in it. I'll come back to it, but it's important. Is this it cannot be true of me, right? So uh, but often there, um, where that skill comes short, um, as you were rightly pointing out, is that it can be a lot of feeling of guilt or um feeling of punishment. You know, why me? How did I deserve this? Uh it goes in this survival uh state. And then a next skill that we can access: uh life happens by me. It's more of a um confusion state, let's say. Um, it is where I access agency. Uh, there's something I can do in this. Uh, and it's when I frequently say, Okay, I've got this. There are ways, there are treatments, I'm gonna fight that. I'm going to uh suit myself up, I'm going to be strong. And um, this is something that is very present in the in the current model uh and society, right? Get it together, you can power through this. Um, there's great strength in that because there is mobilization. Uh, there's also anger, which is possible there, which in the survival stage, you know, it's more um uh yeah, it's it's less it's less the case. So just to to say also that um I was able to put this together for myself using Leticia Nieto's um uh model, but it's a developmental model for consciousness skills liberation, and Robert Keegan's work, which probably most of you are familiar with, um, on the orders of consciousness. So uh for Keegan, the first state of shock denial is the impulsive mind, like life happens to me, and the life happens by me. It's when we when you when we access the instrumental mind, okay. And then um the next skill set uh I call empowerment, life happens for me, and this is where we can see skills of benefit finding and negotiation. It can be something like um, all right, cancer was horrible, is horrible. It's not something I wish for, but you know, it allowed me to spend time with my children or to take that trip or to write a book or just whatever it is, right? We we start to see um a benefit also or silver lining in the condition, and there's also negotiation, you know. And if I do get well, I'm going to start doing this, or this is a kind of change I will make. So it's more purposeful uh living and active participation, and then the next uh stage, which is the self-altering mind uh in Gegen, life happens in me, it's a sphere and a skill of strategy. So life happens in me, or through me, it's I am the territory in which an illness comes. Uh, I am the host environment for cancer. You know, there's ways that I can influence it, and not only when it's here, but it's reappearance. And so um there you start to look for the more emotional, spiritual roots of cancer. I'm able to um see myself as a system, uh, interacting with different systems. Um, tell me if I'm saying it in too detailed way, or you can ask me questions.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Please keep going.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Okay. Um, and then I can come back and fill more details for each of this. And then um, life happens as me, kind of the wider skill set. Um, it's a self-transforming mind. Uh, and it's um it's where, how would I put it? In my own words, I will put it, it's where while cancer continues to be a defined defining moment in my life, it is I'm no longer defined by the illness or even by the healing experience. I start to heal my healing, I am accessing some of that myself. Um, it's also the the skill that allows you to say, I am nothing, and that's wisdom, and I am everything. I see myself as everything, and that is love. And my life happens as the dance between the wisdom and the love.

SPEAKER_04 36:54

So you're you're developing this theory. Did you live this theory? Was this lived experience that in in retrospect you're saying, oh wow, this is the process I went through, or were you conscious of the process while you were going through it?

SPEAKER_01 37:20

I was having increased co increasing consciousness, so it's uh a question of degrees while I was going through it, and I was very stimulated once you know I had all this understanding, and I was trying to really consciously see what it is that worked for me because I believe it deserves studying. How come I didn't die and no one cares? And it doesn't fit in the literature that you know I spent money and time and I was tested on, and it it just defied, or it or it was not visible in what we were uh studying, and there are so many cases like that. So I really was propelled to to understand okay, what it is that I went through, and um yes, it um it continues to evolve um in relation to other people that I work with and other spaces that I am in. So it's it, yeah, it's something that uh it's emerging and it's very much um is part of my research work for the dissertation, which uh I will be defending next uh next spring.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

I really like what you said about each each stage having its its strength and its benefits.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

So it's not just a progression from you know getting getting better. There's there's a better in each of them.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

This is it's very important for me. Uh it's really not black and white, like it's good that I'm here or I'm here, and actually the final stage, if it's integral state, it holds all of the previous stages without judgment. They say integral um skill, which is you know the consciousness skills uh skill corresponding to life happens as me or I am life. Um it draws its strength from being able to honor all of the other and bring and be at choice in the using or not of any other skill. So for example, um life happens by me, it's very good. It can be excessive if you think that you have to do everything through effort, right? Um, life happens in me as well, can grow, and I have seen it in myself and others, in over vigilance. Okay, if I'm in control of so much, if I'm able to influence with my consciousness so much and what happens as the physical process in my body, then like how do I know when it's enough? How much therapy, how much shadow work, how much supplements, how much so I meet with many people who are you know more empowered, more on the healing path, many of them um fully on the alternative planets, let's call it, uh, and doing experimentation, understanding life is experimenting through them uh via cancer. But then it's impossible to rest, you know, like to know how much is enough that I do, when do I know I'm healed? When I do I know I'm not gonna die or it's not going to come to me, because the hospital won't tell you that. The hospital will say, You have done now the treatment, now go home. You have completed, but how do I live after this? I cannot live as if it's never happened, or as like I'm back to normal. It's not, it's I'm not normal. So, how do I? And so I just want to say it's this balance between agency, like I can take 100% responsibility for me, like I I really feel my power, and innocence, and that innocence is in the for me, it's in the life happens to me, you know, like I'm innocent, and I can be innocent and responsible. If I cannot accommodate these two in me, um, you know, I'm at one extreme, so we often get people who say, I cannot, it's so great to hear you speak, it's so good. All these people that are in the circle, but I cannot bear because I cannot bear that if I have agency and response, I I did that to me. I did that to myself, you know, like so how much agency, how to cope with the agency in the innocent, and you need to be able to integrate both in the healing circle is this place where you can practice that.

SPEAKER_04 42:13

Um yeah, uh so it reminds me, though they are very different theories, there's the stages of change, trans-theoretical stages of change. And as a coach or a therapist, what's very powerful is to the the therapist or the coach can see in the client or the person what stage they are in. But what is very empowering is when the client or the person recognizes them for themselves what stage they're in. So it seems like your your theory would bode well to that, that these are all experiences people with cancer have on a continuum, but when they can when they can get to the point that they're embodying the stage they're in, that's when the soul work can begin.

SPEAKER_01 43:13

I like the way you say it. Yes, yes, it is like that, and being in a community of very deep sharing can help us own and embody some of the things that are in us, but we cannot recognize until someone else says it. And then first you're thinking, Oh, Jesus, they're saying that. And then you think, how is this true in me? How is the same thing dancing in me? And then a deep sigh, and then a true fear, and then we know, and then it's just yes. It's that um very deep, but it's visceral experience, it's neurobiological, it's not in the mind even. I mean it's there is an inside, but it's more like an epiphany. It's not cognitive. It's just like I know it. And I know it in my bones now. That the same thing that's happening to you, it's me, and I I didn't know it before you said it. And I can hold it only because we're together.

SPEAKER_04 44:20

It's um well, because diagnosis of any kind can be very isolating. Not I mean the the shock of it, yes, but it's also very isolating, and we can without community feel alone with that. Like nobody understands, nobody nobody's been in my shoes. Um and even if they are wearing my shoes, there it doesn't feel the way I feel. And so I can see how the circle helps humanize what the medical model can't do. Yeah, it's and it's not necessarily they don't want to do it, it's just that's not that's not what their focus is.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Yes, and there's a lot of shame uh around this in society, there's still a lot of stigma, and so it um so coming to a circle or to any kind of support or care deep care space uh takes a degree of courage as well. Um and I because we are conditioned to think that it's weak, you know, we're suited up, we're armored up, we're strong, and so to be vulnerable, um, and that there is a big strength and and healing in vulnerability, it's not the it's not our conditioned uh impulse. It's what we discover in circle, but it uh it takes a certain at least openness to the armoring to to come into the circle. So it's not automatic. So I'm not saying that um we like to offer the spirit is to offer circles to anyone anywhere who is ready or who asks for it, but the reality is the people that most need it are sometimes least able to ask, allow it for themselves, and yet it is the spiritual protocol of deep healing I've got for it.

SPEAKER_02 46:37

Yeah, and of course, and of course the model applies to any issue, any challenge.

SPEAKER_04 46:45

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

I mean, you experienced it with cancer, but it's right, there may there's emotional cancers that don't even appear physically.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Yes, yes. So, my kind of passion, given my experience, is around cancer and all the teachings of terminal illness, for the very terminal times we are as a society, you know, with all the host of of crises that um and unraveling that we are um having to confront and what terminal illness can teach us on the collective level. So I'm passionate with cancer and the healing circle practice uh and methodology as it emerged, emerged from brave pioneers in the United States, as it happens, that uh were profoundly touched by cancer. That's Michael Lerner and Deanna Lindsay. That said, the healing circle is um it's very versatile, it's very amenable to different uh issues, you know, where people would like to come together around a certain topic or a common experience. So there are many different types of healing circles. Um to yeah, for uh race, culture diversity or loneliness, or kind of connection, belonging. Um they are healing circles for caregivers as well, and in the US, they are now uh making quite a there is an impulse and an open pathway to bring healing circles into medical spaces, to academic institutions, even phase-based faith-based institutions. So it's uh I see a degree of professionalization in the US, like by bringing it to uh hospitals. And this is something that we might be able to do as well in Europe as a next step.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

Yeah, it's like it's like AAA that started with alcoholism and then kept expanding and having spin-off groups, themes. And it raises the question like, how is it sounds like AA? The format sounds like AA, you know, the the the sharing without the crosstalk or the responding and the holding the space. So what would be different about the experience in the healing circle as a you know compared to an AA meeting?

SPEAKER_01 49:23

There is a common basis, if you wish. Um the methodology is a little bit different with the ritual uh elements that we use. So the lighting of the candle, uh, we use a soundball uh to to mark silence or to hold silence or to honor some of the deeper sharings uh or to center us. Um the agreements are a little bit different. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:54

And I don't hear in the circle that you're that the agreements or the underpinning is that you are powerless to the disease.

SPEAKER_02 50:06

Yeah, just the opposite.

SPEAKER_04 50:09

Right. And with with 12 steps, yeah that's the first out of the gate is that I'm you know I'm powerless to this addiction I have. So I would think that the healing circles would be different in that way.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

Right. I I'm hesitant to compare directly because I don't know as much about the um AA, and I haven't been to a meeting, but based on what you're saying, yes, what is very true about uh healing circles is that healing is available and it's possible for everyone at any time. So even if the phase of dying, actually until our last breath, we are healing. Um and sometimes the greatest learnings are actually at the at the at the last moments of life, and um yeah, a very simple definition of um healing circles by one of its founders is um if it touches your heart and guides you on your path, it is a healing circle. And Cedric, I want to say here confession, not a confession, not a disclosure, but just a sharing. Um I began my practice in healing circles just as I had found the interview guidance model. Again, very propelled to see what clinical model or base I can have to uh to step on uh in building my dissertation and research. And looking at your axis, you know, I that's how I saw the healing circle. If it touches your heart vertical and guides you on the on your path, whatever you have to traverse you now traverse as life circumstance now, it's a healing circle, and it just made complete sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 52:10

Yeah, yeah, I had a similar journey in that the experience and the journey became the model, and the model became you know confirmed and supported the journey. So and for the audience that George is referring to the what the crossroads and the components of personhood that's in the interview textbook. Um yeah, and the the process, tell me if this um resonates with your process, the um the model of the witness presence, essence, guidance as like the interior motion.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Yes, very much. I would say that the circle is that's how I saw it, is um space and a practice for the interview guidance model of sorts, because it allows for this deep witnessing of myself, uh witnessing the other and letting life witness itself through me almost in a deep sense. And then to to be able to access my feelings and the range of feelings that are within me and hold them together in their complexity and start to integrate the needs underneath the the feelings, my basic values, and then to touch guidance and what is the next step that I take based on that? What am I guided to more practically? And so often people, I mean, that's one of the most magical things. People would you know enter a circle with a question, and by the end of the hour and a half, they're typically hour and a half, they will have an answer or part of an answer for themselves, although no one taught them anything, they received it, or they will come with a very confused, uh difficult state, and they would emerge with a beautiful question, and that's the offering, and it's right because it's uh unfoldment, unfoldment, yes.

SPEAKER_02 54:22

So the fourfold path is not like step one, two, three, four. No, it's it's how they unfolding, yes, like connecting one naturally unfolds or emerges into the into the next, yeah, yeah. That was from the learning the NVC model, nonviolent communication, adapting it uh you know, to the interview model, and then seeing how you know it would um function on a deeper level. What's what's like the meta version of all this? And that's how the discovery of witness presence essence guidance.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

Yeah, I'm an MVC practitioner as well, and non-communication was a part of my healing path as it happened, along with many other modalities, but that capacity for non-violence is so fundamental to healing, and again, the per the anthropologist inside me was that the way we actually put on all these responsibilities are because of this um culture of scarcity and this constantly pushing ourselves and exceeding bodily limits, you know, not being with the rhythm with the bodily intelligence, because pushing through boundaries and exceeding it's the way we are doing it societally, um, the burnout culture and the way we transgress planetary boundaries. So, you know, the healing that has to happen on the individual, the collective, and planetary level is the same, is that base capacity for exactly the big picture.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

In the garden variety counseling, it's feelings, needs, values, purposes. And I mean, something I could see people learning from healing circles is not to do any process skipping, but to really go through, like, you know, starting with the feeling to the need to the value purposes. So that's how these fourfold models work, you know, in practice. But it's fascinating the way you take it to a larger scale and a bigger picture and the healing of community, not just the individual.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

I don't think healing is possible, like for myself. Uh complete healing until the whole is healed. Simply because of that, I'm inextricably connected, I'm embedded in all. I'm an extension of the land. That's the life happening. I am life skill. So knowing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:19

Okay, some of the authors and leaders you mentioned can be put in the resources. If people want to follow up with those. And we're at twelve fifty-nine. So time for the closing lesson. Which is may we live in openness to what will emerge next in the evolutionary pageant. Thank you for sharing on those number of levels.