The Biology Link Behind Mental Health and Spirituality with Dr. Lin Morel

Episode 47. Prepare yourself for a soul-stirring discussion with the internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and self-development guru, Dr. Lin Morel. In our riveting conversation, Lin unspools the story of her remarkable career, punctuated by a fascinating detour from being a petrochemical buyer in a male-dominated field to becoming a beacon of tranquility amidst life's tempestuous waves. We traverse the intricate labyrinth of spirituality intertwined with science, and Lin's profound insights paint a vivid narrative of the eternal dance between these two realms.

As we delve deeper, we unravel the profound impacts of trauma on our minds, bodies, and spirits. Lin guides us through the complex pathways of our brain, shedding light on the role of the amygdala and the significance of 'counting' rather than 'rehashing' traumatic experiences. We touch on martial arts and energy connections, and their power in healing trauma. In our exploration, we underscore the healing potential of intuition, creativity, and open-heartedness on the journey towards self-actualization.

Towards the end, our conversation ventures into the realms of effective communication and psychological safety. We explore the transformative power of self-love, resilience, and the recognition of our unique gifts. As Lin shares her extraordinary tale of overcoming trauma, finding joy, and being recognized for her outstanding contributions in trauma consulting, we hope you'll find inspiration and courage. So, tune in for an episode brimming with inspiring stories, practical advice, and thought-provoking insights. This isn't just an episode, it's an invitation to embark on a journey of self-discovery.

To work with Dr. Lin or learn more about her, visit: https://drlinmorel.com/

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I think this is going to be a really interesting podcast for some of you who ponder the role of science in spirituality and therapy and feeling and woo-woo stuff. My guest today is a trauma specialist and she's had a lot of success over the years and uses a very different technique than most therapists do and one of the cool things about it is that the techniques that she uses are now backed up by scientific clinical studies, which is my world and why I'm so excited about this. So on this podcast I have Dr Lynn Morrell where she sort of breaks down the kind of spiritual side of things and then I explain it from a scientific point of view. So it's a really cool program. Let me know what you think, enjoy.

Speaker 2: 0:54

And listening to Autobiology, the podcast where you can learn a little biology now so you can think for yourself later. Introducing your host who dreams of being on an episode of Star Trek as the quirky biologist who saves the day Jennifer Little Fleck.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode. Today I have the esteemed Dr Lynn Morrell with me. Her group is called Beyond Words Group and she has a really fun story that she's going to tell about how she had named her business. But she is an internationally renowned speaker, author, trainer in the field of self-development and peak performance using stress management techniques. But it's interesting that if you look her up on Amazon, it says that for more than 20 years she's helped thousands and thousands of people just like you master their lives and move on to the success that they've really dreamed about. But she just told me that it's been more like 39 years and I apologize for the cat which is amazing. She has an amazing breadth and depth of knowledge. I have to say that she has two master's degrees and a doctorate, but is also a spiritual certified instructor and a fifth degree back at Black Belt. You're amazing, lynn. I don't even know where to begin, but thank you for coming on the program today.

Speaker 3: 2:35

Oh, you're welcome, Jennifer. I am delighted to be on this program and my intention is to uplift people and help them find their path. Not the path someone else tells them in their life, but what they, organically and inwardly are called to do. And, by the way, I love cats. I had one called Newby, so I'm really glad he's participating with us.

Speaker 1: 3:01

He is very much participating today, no matter what I do, so I apologize.

Speaker 3: 3:06

Oh no, and it's like having kids you love them where they're at. He's feeling the energy. He is feeling the energy. So I'll start. I'll start. Wow, where do I start? I'll start as a chubby 15-year-old introvert living with a very traumatized family system and I was made the chaperone for my younger sister of 18 months and sent to judo classes, which I did not want to do. I was a bookworm, I mean, I read, I was gracious. By the time I was five years old, and so I went to this class and I fell in love. So I've been doing at this point.

Speaker 3: 3:49

I started martial arts in 1965. I still practice, although I must admit I don't kick so high anymore. I do, and then I do the hard stuff. But the way I came to my business I was a petrochemical buyer when I got out of college, in a time when women didn't do that. So there was a great disparity, number one within salary and number two with how you were treated. But because of my martial arts background they respected me. So that was very cool. And then I went to Giant Stadium where they equally respected me. When I put my foot underneath the throat of a six foot two security guard, my boss said what do you want? Be nice to me? I said I want to raise. The next day I got a raise, so having some kick in your life can help you move forward.

Speaker 3: 4:39

But I left my husband about 18 years and I took a trip to Santa Barbara where one of my karate students lived, and while I was there our friends said you need to talk to so and so. And on my last day I talked to so and so met her at a Chinese restaurant in Santa Barbara and we got talking and she said something that changed my life. And here's where, if the readers or the listeners pay attention to this, serendipity comes calling. All the time Is are we awake enough to be curious, to take a step forward? So what is it that you can do? Hold on, I'm just getting a ridiculous call here. What is it that we can make life better than you can imagine? What job do you have? And in that context she turned over a Chinese placemat and said what would you do? And I'm like a bird or a deer in a headlight. And I said I don't know. And at the end of that she actually pulled it out of me. I said I'd be a stress management consultant, using martial arts would help people do what they needed to do. And so she wrote it down, folded it up, took me to the airport on the way back to Newark I'm sitting in the middle seat.

Speaker 3: 6:12

That's when they were wider reading and it was about educators. And I read it and I burst out laughing and said, oh my God, they treat the people that help our children miserably. And when I started laughing, she goes what are you laughing at? I said, oh my God, my heart goes out to educators. And she goes I'm an educator. What do you do Now? Mind you, this was completely unbidden. Out of my mouth comes. I'm a stress management consultant. I help people find the stillness and the craziness of their life so that they can live from a place of peace and serenity. Oh my God, she goes are you available? I think it was like May 6th or something to do a workshop for the teachers in Rochester. I said think so, thinking. Can I get time off Giant Stadium?

Speaker 3: 6:59

I said I, and she goes do you have a business card with you? No, this is pre-cell phone. So she took my name and she booked me for that event. Now, I had never done public speaking. I was working at Giant Stadium as a spec writer, buyer and things like that and I freaked out.

Speaker 3: 7:21

My little body went into ah mode and so I did what any bookworm would do I went to the bookstore, I bought lots of books, I took all the stress management books out of the library, had lined pads and I made copious notes. But when I went to do the training, none of that came with me. I spoke from the heart and that was the thing that has made me successfully 39 or so years, because when I'm present with someone and I love, this has to do with martial arts training and sensitivity training. I studied in Beijing and I studied in Taiwan. Indians have adopted me and you know I've wanted to know about people and what makes them tick. So that moment came and from that moment on I've been word of mouth almost the entire time because it's like a referral.

Speaker 3: 8:16

I work with somebody. They say oh my God, you need to work with Lynn who says oh my goodness you need to work with Lynn, and that's been since 1984.

Speaker 3: 8:25

The thing I learned very, very deeply was number one I didn't know a darn thing. Number two I didn't really know that I was going to get a book, but I had always been a meditator in martial arts. You have to come to that zen point when you compete, and I competed a lot. I was the third ranked fighter in the United States at Madison Square Garden and you know, like I said against the government, that became the framework to which I lived, and mind you that I was incredibly, incredibly, what can we say? Introverted is the best word and because I was so quiet, I was deep but I never spoke, doing that first talk opened a door to me that might have remained closed had she not had that serendipitous thing. What do you want to do? So for everybody that's listening, we don't have to know, we just have to have an inkling that something is calling us. And in that calling of us, I found for myself that I didn't know a thing and that humbled me because I didn't know what the audience really needed. When I work with veterans groups, I don't know what they need and I work sometimes with the veterans collaborative speaking on zoom and the first thing is guys, I don't know what you need, I don't know what you've been through, so talk to me, and it's like inviting them to be present.

Speaker 3: 10:05

So what I would say to your listeners especially we're all traumatized in one way, shape or another, and that helps to build us in utero. If it's a stressful environment, the fetus is so smart, it develops effect on receptor cells for heart responders, danger or cool responders. Now, I've never met one at either end fully of the spectrum but our body creates us with tools that we can access. My sense is most of us have had that inner knowing as children stomped out of us. Our creativity, our inspiration, our intuitive knowing. Those are the things that we leave behind and our brain gets I would call it solidified, for lack of a better word With all the traumas that we have, our mental stories, every little piece of data. God help us and it wants to keep us safe. But safe is not life. That's what I've learned.

Speaker 3: 11:08

When we're willing to have a dream, no matter how minuscule it is, and we follow that trail, the happiness is at the other end because we've allowed ourself to be fully activated or actualized in our journey called life, and so, as a stress management consultant, I started out being my own guinea pig, because I came out of severe trauma, ran away at 17, worked my way through college, was such a nerd that I was in grad school my sophomore year and undergraduate I started doing graduate studies that I designed for myself, and it was always about knowing what made me tick. And I think that if you're listeners, just take that one little piece, jennifer that they know deep inside what their calling is, what their love is, and they learn how to, what's the word? Access those things that are stored in their body, in their brain, in their psyche, that keep them doing the same stuff over and over again, like a hamster on a wheel. The work I love that you're doing is you're showing them the neurobiology so that they can actually have some science that they can hang their hat on, so to speak. I've done so much of the science. I mean I'm a complete learning nerd and yet over the years I've learned more and more that the wisdom is in here. So the first thing I'll say when I work with a client is you know, I don't know and you don't know, so let's ask the boss. Or whatever their faith religion is, or if they don't have a faith. We'll talk about the breath, and my job, as I see it, is to help people feel safe inside their skins. That's the beginning of more than wellness, but wholeness.

Speaker 3: 13:10

We take those parts that we've buried and we put them in the basement, in a corner or someplace, and we try to forget about them. And as we get older, the body does keep the score. Vander Kolk has made that very clear. We store our traumas if we don't have the skills to look at them. Lots of relics oh my God, this happened to me and make that your CV.

Speaker 3: 13:36

But it's to discover what's there that needs to be released. You don't have to be a dead horse, you just access it, and then I use algorithms that have been discovered through trial and error over the last 40-something years working on myself and I have a colleague named Bruce and we used to get together once a week and we'd work on brain stuff. How can we get our brain to cooperate the right and the left side? How can we get our ego to become our amigo and not edge goodness out? So those are some of the things that I've taught myself and also learned. Degrees are great, jennifer, don't get me wrong. But what's the most important for any of us is to access our head and our heart, because the truth is always there.

Speaker 1: 14:30

Lynn, you just managed to sum up what I teach from a science perspective daily. I mean I could unpack every point you made and describe it from. I mean, basically, what's happened is everything that you're describing. We used to call woo-woo or hippie-sweep, Peetalk or whatever. However, in the last 20 years, we have scientifically shown that everything that you just said is true happens, and that is why the field of mental health is exploding. We now understand, as you said, that the body keeps score, the tissues remember, and if you don't deal with it, it leads to biological manifestations, it leads to disease. I mean, he really just wants to say hi to you then yeah.

Speaker 3: 15:36

So gracefully you reminds me of my little newbie, a Burmese stray that wandered into my life.

Speaker 1: 15:45

But, like what you said in utero, we already know that something's wrong In what Dr Thomas Boyce. He's a psychologist and pediatrician. He's discovered that this leads to basically two types of people, and you alluded to that those who can easily handle stress and change, and those who can by the upregulation of receptors, which translates into two distinct autonomic nervous system profiles. He calls them orcas, which are the sensitive ones, and dandelions, which are the ones that can handle anything and just shrug off whatever comes their way. So that is grounded now in science.

Speaker 1: 16:38

I talk about the amygdala all day long, every day, because you're exactly right, we have shown that the amygdala is 80% wired for negativity. It wants to keep you safe, it wants to keep you alive, and if it senses danger, whether it's psychological or physical, it tells you to turn tail or fight it out, both of which results in super cortisol, super amounts of cortisol, and that is what leads to a cycle of inflammation and then eventually, things like autoimmune disease. So I love that. Basically, 40 years ago, you started trying to figure all this stuff out on your own, and it's only recently has science caught up with you.

Speaker 3: 17:34

That's amazing, I know, and 40 years ago they all thought it was crazy. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure Parcel arts don't lie. When I was in China, if my energy was good, nobody could touch me. If I had a bad day, look out. So I've learned that energy is everything I mean, it's the currency of life, and Stephen Treninski said that he's a scientist friend of mine and I have had such a commitment to clearing the trauma in me so that I could be helpful to others. Part of my journey was that for almost 17 years I was both board chair and board member of a window between worlds, which uses the arts to help heal trauma Highly, highly effective.

Speaker 3: 18:27

I use a process of counting rather than make the person relive their trauma. That's why I'm not a traditional therapist. Frankly, my own opinion and it's only my opinion is it doesn't work well. If you rehash it, it makes it stronger inside of you. We want to diminish the potency of our neural systems that just go tilts at the least. Little even thought of something incorrect or wrong. And I'm guilty of freeze mostly. The martial arts helped me lift that responsibility. So I'm still here, trigger high sense perception.

Speaker 3: 19:10

I can tell with somebody's on the other side of the world if I'm working with them energetically. Is this a match or not? Or when is their trauma? And it looks like it's pulled out of a hat, but it's not. We're energy connected, the morphogenetic field. We're connected with all of creation, this wonderful web of connectivity. And that's where I was really considered far out, my first husband after 17 years. I left him and he insisted that I have medical testing because I was crazy. I actually came out certifiably sane and then I insisted he have one and he came out certifiably neurotic, with sexual proclivities.

Speaker 1: 19:59

Oh Jesus, or be careful what you ask for I guess right.

Speaker 3: 20:06

And he kidnapped my daughter when she was 12. And I didn't see her until she was 21, because he was so mentally unbalanced at that point that the only way I could save her and myself was to disappear. And the good news is she's back in my life. I prayed every day that she would be safe and she's thriving. She's doing wonderfully. She's like her mom and her dad. We're both really, really smart and she's found her way through that into this really grounded young woman and it's an incredible thing. She still has her firefight stuff, but she's done it in her own way. And I look at her and go, wow. And so we all have our traumas, we all store stuff. My biggest trauma is people I love die. For example, I really needed to unpack from my amygdala because the people that were most close to me did in fact die, leaving me feeling very much alone. But when you have your inner wisdom, you have your heart and your belly, you can connect the dots pretty easily.

Speaker 3: 21:23

There were times when I went to bed with one hand on my abdomen my donchian, they called me belly button, one hand on my heart and I would just breathe myself to sleep, and some simple as that. When I used to, I ran a retreat center for eight years and after my husband died in a plane crash, my second husband and I would walk through the woods with my dog and every step I would take I would say peace. That's one step, be still. Next step I am, and I use that walking meditation to take me off the high. You know the tilt valve where my pressure was so high I couldn't stand it. There's so many easy ways doing art, taking walk. You know I used to advocate punching a pillow, but that doesn't work so much because it just recycles the anger. So there's ways that we can clear our amygdala with training. We just got to keep replacing the negative with the wow, like what I just did.

Speaker 1: 22:32

So I'm going to pause for a second because I didn't really explain what the amygdala is for anybody who's listening, who is not familiar with it. So you actually have two amygdalae in your brain. You have one in each hemisphere and it's about the size and shape of an almond. And that's actually what amygdala means in Greek, I believe, is the language of origin, and it is basically what activates your fight-or-flight response. And we know now you know Prod Kiran Omani, who I work with it's actually fight-or-flight freeze and fawn, because a lot of times we just freeze when we know we're in danger, you know so think of like rabbits. And then we have the fawn response, which is you just sort of sit back in your meek and you just agree with everything that's being said until you can remove yourself from the situation. So your amygdala, as I mentioned earlier, is wired about 80% to pick up on negativity. Now, it does pick up on positivity too and remembers those things as well, but it is much more likely to be negatively reactive to a situation. So when we think about how we communicate with others, how we approach situation, what our initial reactions are to things, that's really what drives a lot of our unconscious behavior, our unconscious decision-making. So you know you brought up earlier about typical therapy and this makes so much sense to me.

Speaker 1: 24:24

Typical therapy unfortunately reiterates the problem instead of clearing it from the body, and you know what I thought about that a long time ago when I first started understanding the role of myelination in the brain. So for those of you listening, you've probably heard of myelination in terms of MS, multiple sclerosis. In people who have MS, the myelin is degrading and myelin is like the insulation around your neuron. So think like electrical tape, and the more myelinated something you know like one of your neuron connections is, you know, the more layers of electrical tape it has, the faster it can recall memories, the faster you know you can move, and when you don't have myelin you can't move. Your neurons actually get degraded because there's a lot of things that can attack the neurons that are floating around just in the interstitial fluid in your brain.

Speaker 1: 25:31

But we know the way to build myelin is to think about something. You myelinate what you think about. So here we are, rehashing, as you said, over and over and over these horrible things, and we're myelinating them and making them even more pronounced in our memories instead of less, and that's why the negative talk tracks get laid down. You know the oh, I can't do this, or I'll never be as good as so and so, or I'm not even going to bother trying because I know I'll just fail. Like those are negative talk tracks that you've thought so many times that they got super myelinated and so that's what comes up immediately, instead of you know what. I got this or I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to try and see what happens. And it's really, I think, just a matter of teaching people, as you said, you know just to adopt a different mantra and start start with something simple and say it to yourself over and over again, just like you're saying the other things inside your head over and over again.

Speaker 3: 26:39

And that's where you know it's easy to take the negative route, far, far easier. As you said, the shift doesn't have to be a big shift. You know, my teacher used to say if you want to lose weight, put your sneakers by the front door, and if you get them on and you never get to the gym, it's a start because you've got your sneakers on. It's by bit, and so it's all bit by bit, and the thing that I've done so much is the both writing. There's something I do call free form writing, where at the top of the page I say, for the highest good of all, concern, which is a direction, only to bring up what's appropriate. And then the challenge is to write for 20 minutes. You light a candle, if you can, or a light bulb represents the light, and you write what you're thinking without rereading it. The most important thing is never, ever rewrite what you've written in free form writing, because you're taking a little little itty bitty drillhole into your subconscious and unconscious and you're letting some of that glook out, but not enough to make you ill. So it's like mine at this point. I've been doing it 20 or 70 years or so. You know I really hate free form writing. I don't want to free from variety, but I know I need to do free from running. Oh god, did I turn up the tick? Even if you scribble, some of my trauma was pre, pre writing, pre kinesthetic. And then I would, I would scribble, and then at the end of the 20 minutes you get up, you go to the sink, if you, if you can, and you burn what you've written never before To look at, never to look at it again. That action of burning, it tells your unconscious we're done, we've taken this, that garbage out, we're gonna burn it. And what I do? Sense of Scotsman, I start at the top of the paper and I write down. So if this were the paper, I go this way and then I would turn around like this way, and then I so the one page was sufficient and you couldn't even read it by the time you were done. Burning that symbolically Says oh, this chapter is done. And there are times like my daughter kidnapped and I would write every night in the bathtub, which is a funny place to do freeform writing. But I get like a big Thing they had that went over the tub and I just write. And then I get up and I burn it. I don't have to do it so much anymore.

Speaker 3: 29:17

But for people that are dealing with what I call the barking dogs in their heads are not good enough. You're too fat, you're too skinny. Who do you think you are? Those are all lies. And yet I bought those lies for a very long time.

Speaker 3: 29:30

The thing that saved me was the, the courage I had to run away and Leave a dysfunctional, bipolar alcohol family behind me. I was not my family, but I certainly was a product of my family. But I became I lived from the neck up Very intellectual. You know I wanted to major in economics and pre-med kind of challenging when you're working your way through colleges and nurses aid and that my psych instructors said don't waste your time doing that, you'll be a great therapist. So you know I did my graduate stuff in psychology but I never fully entered in because the martial arts was always my friend. If I felt terrible, I do punches. Now I do punches, but I'll take a long walk to the lake, so they have a way to manage when the barking dogs come.

Speaker 3: 30:25

Most people aren't taught that and that's what makes people miserable, that's what drives people to suicide and depression. Those voices, they're automatic and they could be from our womb. If you're taught that you're no good from the time you're a little kid, you're gonna come out believing you're no good. That's just the way that the DNA and the RNA just gets passed forward. If you can clear the issue in your tissue, you get to have a whole new life. And and that's where algorithms come in. You know, I use something. I call it algorithms because it's counting and each level Of, and when you do this, do it with someone that you love or someone that will look after you if you're really traumatized.

Speaker 3: 31:12

So, for example, for the unconscious, if something has happened in your for you don't remember it, where you have anxiety, since you're four, you don't necessarily need to go figure out what happened, although if you ask, it'll show up, but you just write I don't know what's going on. I'm anxious, I'm always anxious. Gee, I had a panic attack last weekend. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Doesn't matter what you write. The idea is, kinesthetically You're getting it up and out and then, when you burn it, symbolically you're freeing up energy, because it can either be created into storage, so you're letting that energy Is holding you back and making space for new energy where you can put new things in. It's like emptying the trash on your computer. Then you have more space. So that would be, for example, in the unconscious.

Speaker 3: 32:02

It would be something as simple as I forgive myself for behaving as if I'm a loser, because a lot of people feel like they're losers they failed in their business or their exam. And then you say it three times once for your ego self, once for your unconscious self and once for your higher self, and so Over the years it's become really, really, really easy. Anybody can do it. It's helpful if you have someone that you love around, but I forgive myself for behaving as if I'm a loser. The first time I behaved is if I was a loser. The second time.

Speaker 3: 32:36

I behaved is if I was a loser. The third time I behaved is if I was a loser. And then you count four, five, six, seven. I did this on dr Ken's blog post, blog talk, whatever it was, and at the end of it she said well, can we take questions? And this woman said I've been a trauma survivor for 40 years. I've been psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist and I still have it. Can you help? I said, yeah, let's do it now. And dr Ken goes. Now we only have 15 minutes.

Speaker 3: 33:11

Oh, it's a piece of cake, because she had done so much work. She was just waiting for the company's waiting. Yeah, she's prepped. That's roughly in the teens, I'll say 12. Maybe it was 15. You know, the first time I behaved is if blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3: 33:27

She got to 12. She couldn't say the number 12 because, energetically, I look at the unconscious, is is numerous, numerous, like the numbers. You know, in this file is stored this trauma. So she got to 12 without having to read what it was, she just had to speak it, you know. And and when she got past 12 she was able to zipity, do dot to a hundred. I took less than 15 minutes and then I have them do a release statement. She did it on the air. It's ridiculous, it's funny and um, when we were done, I said what are you experiencing? She goes I can't find it anywhere in my body. It's completely gone. That's how, if you look at yourself and you get curious, excuse me, yes, you'll find that the psyche can be traumatized, but it also has the tools to untraumatize itself beyond the amygdala right, a process of loving yourself. Well, you know, and and it's a really wonderful thing I still have days when the barking dogs come roaring in and I'm a oi there. Here we go again.

Speaker 1: 34:47

We all have self-doubts, yeah, oh.

Speaker 3: 34:50

I think human and we all judge yourself. For me, having alleged failure, but failure partially A stone to greater wisdom that you could help others. It puts it in a different light. There are no failures, there's only experiments that don't work.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Oh, totally agree, I love experiments and I love failures. Uh, you know, I I want to unpack a couple of things that you said. First of all, uh, lynn, I have to say I've been kind of surprised about how many suicides I've heard about the last couple of years, I mean. And and I'm talking about people who are people who are accomplished Business, people who have been successful, who were currently successful, and I don't, I mean I really don't understand it. I mean it's almost an epidemic, um it is an epidemic.

Speaker 3: 35:50

I get, I get several calls a week when people are at their wit's end and they don't know what else to do. Um and I'll, I'll. I'll cop by saying I don't know. But what I've experienced is that when those barking dogs get entrenched and if you're a bright, shiny star and have a gift to offer to the world, I call it the loyal forces of the opposition We'll attempt to take you out. It's hard to explain it. It sounds so woo-woo, but how many people have called me as a matter of fact?

Speaker 3: 36:25

The woman that was on the phone just before I was trying to get in. I met her at a training and she wrote in my journal to my new old friend, lynn love so and so, with the phone number. I was burning all my old journals. I literally saw that beautiful purple cursive writing, took it out of the fire, thought she's probably moved through it in three times. On the third time I said look, I'll just call her, maybe she'll be there. Turns out she'd been in a car accident, her fiance had been murdered and she was clinically depressed. I worked with her the next night. She called me at quarter to 12. Thank God, back then my phone was on. I almost stepped in front of ongoing traffic. I wanted to end it all now. I worked with her, fast forward. Now she's doing phenomenally well, even though she has a brain injury and she has to walk with a cane. She is so joyful.

Speaker 3: 37:22

90% of the time I had her counting. I had her finding where her rage was, not to dwell on it but to release it. I have young children well, young 14-year-old, 12-year-old that are contemplating suicide. There's usually a trigger and in that moment of negativity, the negativity takes over. We can learn how to protect ourselves, not like putting on a suit of armor, but metaphorically, putting on a suit of armor Like Mleithwio whatever it's called from Lord of the Rings. He's got the fine woven protection. Our Mleithwio, or whatever you pronounce. It is when we look at the good, when we're feeling terrible. I was having a bad day yesterday. I tend to have a lot of pain from various, I would say, traumas that are still resolving.

Speaker 3: 38:27

But, when I saw my husband held up that plaque and said honey, look what you got in the mail. And it just lifted my spirits like incredibly.

Speaker 1: 38:37

But tell the audience how many plaques you've been awarded this year. Come on.

Speaker 3: 38:44

I have about five plaques In just this year and I thought they were scams and I wouldn't answer. Matter of fact, one of them has been calling me several times because I'm going to be I don't know some place, that I'm going to be another award, and what it was. It was Marquis who's who, top of trip or professionals like all of these wonderful things that they contact me and I said how did you find me? I'm not socially optimized. Oh, we have researchers who look for people doing good works and have longevity. So I have one of these. So this is. This is really awesome, this guy.

Speaker 1: 39:26

Wow, look at that. That is beautiful when. Congratulations.

Speaker 3: 39:31

And it says top transformation coaching CEO. This little guy, show and tell, came yesterday in recognition of outstanding efforts in the field of trauma consulting and it's like I was sort of feeling down a little bit. I just walked with my, my person who's making my gown with the doggies, and it's like traffic and tired and only five hours of sleep. And I walked in the door and he goes honey, you're more famous. And I said what are you talking about? And he takes this Most of them are eight and a half by 11 or more. And it's really interesting because I never wanted to be public, this part of my trauma, and I never wanted to speak.

Speaker 3: 40:19

But after that thing on the back of the Chinese napkin, who am I going to serve in this world? My fear, what am I going to take what I live through and offer it up as a path? Not the path, but a path to let go of the past, because our brain, you know it, holds onto the past and every little thing you did or didn't do is taken out at any point in time and waved in front of you. See you, that's the negative persuasion, the yin and the yang, good and bad, light and dark, doesn't matter what you call it, but we are a dichotomy of both. We have the ability to do incredibly altruistic things. We also have the ability to kill people, and that's the nature of humanity and human means. Hue is God in Sanskrit and manatee, so it's God, man, god woman. And the thing that you're doing is so awesome because you're giving people the tools that they can catch the negativity and know that something's off.

Speaker 3: 41:24

Gee, that's not like me. Even if it is like you, you start working with the language. That's not like me. I don't do that.

Speaker 3: 41:32

I've done some good stuff, even if it's to take out the kitty litter, it doesn't if you left a one less chocolate bar. Wow, I did better today. Those infant baby steps are the building blocks to our power and empowerment, and I don't care who you are. I work with people with MS, with people with polio, with strokes, paralysis. They can maximize their life with what they have. And when I look at some of the afflictions that I've had quote unquote I notice that every one of them I went from trauma to treasure, from wacky to wisdom, and I always look for what the gift is, and that's what's allowed me to survive these seven plus decades and to continue to learn and grow and find the joy in the human experience. That has been more than one person that has called me up suicidal, and I don't make them wrong, I just listen and if you can listen deeply without the judgments, they will feel seen and heard and that's the biggest part to healing.

Speaker 1: 42:54

I agree with you, Can I? I want to sort of unpack this from a scientific point of view. What you're talking about is maintaining psychological safety and that, you know, in my company communication model, that is the center of my communication model, which is psychological safety, and it doesn't mean, you know, pandering to anyone. What it means is being able to communicate in a way that you're not activating somebody else's amygdala. You're not saying you're being kind and listening and being non-judgmental, but always keeping in mind that the other person's brain really needs to know that they are being heard. Exactly, yes. The other thing that I wanted to talk about was your free form writing and combining that with just the act of listening to somebody talk.

Speaker 1: 44:01

In 2014, there was a study done for stress management techniques that looked at, using fMRI, what actually happened in the brain when people just verbalize their feelings in that moment, and this process is called affective labeling, and affect you know pretty much most of the time means you know your emotional component.

Speaker 1: 44:34

Literally, the act of just putting your feelings into words dissipates activity in the amygdala almost instantly and they can see it in real time on functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI, and their hypothesis in this paper was that it was not going to be as good as other you know neural stress management techniques that had been in existence, you know, for a couple of decades. They were really surprised by this, and that is why I mean it works for me. Just finding someone to vent to actually makes you feel better. You're just putting your feelings into words. You don't expect anybody to do anything with it. Or if you're journaling, why journaling really works for a lot of people is it's just getting out the feelings and then, once you get them out, the amygdala is like all right, let's move on Exactly.

Speaker 3: 45:34

And the act of writing kinesthetically activates the brain, as this is important. And back in the day I volunteered to work with single women on welfare to teach them life skills, and they would come in so traumatized and I'd always have tissues on the table because invariably they all ended up crying. I would hear them, I wouldn't comment, I wouldn't judge, I would just listen to them. And then, as they went around the room, they realized that they weren't alone In that building of a community. For six weeks they were able to see from other perspectives how they could climb out of their hole.

Speaker 3: 46:19

Many of them were raped and had children. The act of listening with fullness is probably the most precious gift you can give anybody Just what you said, but it transforms from the inside out. When I did work more statewide with women, they were on welfare and the person that was in charge of that particular nonprofit, she, said the one thing that they never get, that you give them is respect. When you respect the person rather than judge their behavior or where their station is in life, that elevates them to who they are, which is a human, a God man or God woman person. And this is long before there was lots of scientific studies, but it came from my own awareness of how I transform my life and that's what led me down this path. And, of course, the divine interruption was if you could do anything, what would it be? And here I am, all these years later, modeling. I'm a lot wiser now I can listen.

Speaker 3: 47:32

I had somebody cursing at me horribly last week after I was working with their other half and I finally said I needed to go. I took a shower. I really needed to get the negativity, because negativity does stick to you Energetic. So I took a shower and then the next morning the young man talked to me and profusely apologized, and it was a sincere. I deeply regret those words, but I was trying to protect my woman, thinking that I was going to cheat her somehow. So in my witnessing him going crazy, take care of myself.

Speaker 3: 48:13

I held the space. The whole time he was cursing at me. I kept going God bless you, I love you, peace be still under my breath. That's my honor, because I don't know another person's journey unless they give me permission. I just am learning how to take care of myself. And when I say God bless you, I love you, peace be still, it's never out loud because God bless you, it won't hurt them and it won't hurt you. They'll accept it or reject it and if you don't believe in God, put whatever you do believe and then I love you. It's a weapon that can't be hurt against you because it's a sword that doesn't cut in that way. And peace be still is a commandment where Peter was walking on the water and all of a sudden it dawned on him I can't walk on water and the statement was peace be still. And those things calm our mental down.

Speaker 1: 49:13

You know earlier you talked about when you first started out in your journey, that you didn't know anything and you didn't know what you were doing and you just started giving your perspective. And one of the other things that I do in my teaching is make sure I make sure that we have multiple perspectives. And it's almost like you just never know how somebody else saying the same words will just click with an individual or, instead of hearing it, just seeing it. You just never know. And when people feel like they have imposter syndrome, it's because they feel like their perspective isn't, they're not confident in their perspective. But what they don't realize is that every single human being needs multiple perspectives and no one has lived the life that you live. No one has gained that very specific experience that you have to share. That is completely different from somebody else's experience, and hearing yours versus somebody else's just never know who that's going to be valuable for, which is why nobody should ever have imposter syndrome, because there's there's no one who can share what you can share from your personal experience.

Speaker 3: 50:44

So look it out even larger, jennifer. We're all imposters, we're all pretending to be human beings, but the truth is we're created as something much better. And it's not better, but something greater. You know, I look at people in some ways as a huge diamond. Each person has a particular facet and when we, when we play off of each other's, we learn from every single facet of every single person. If we would open ourselves to hear, to really hear, to really take in what they're saying without swallowing it. But when you understand why somebody kills somebody and I've worked with people that have killed people in that moment that was the only choice they could see. When people take their own life, in that moment that's the only outcome they can see. And yet, when someone is available, no matter how I mean the janitor in my elementary school knew that I had a rough life- and every morning I'd walk in, he'd have his big old fashioned mop, you know, cleaning the school.

Speaker 3: 52:00

He goes hello, miss Lin, how are you today? And that I looked so forward to him. And then sometimes at recess or lunch, he'd buy me a 10-son ice cream. Now, now they say he was a pervert, but he was an old man who saw me. My judo teacher saw me when my mom was committed, you know. I'd visit her. She'd throw things at me. I'd come to my judo teacher's house six dogs, three dobeys and a hundred red poodles and I would sit in the sunroom with these dogs going, just loving me up, and I would listen. My judo teacher would listen to me, and then I'd have my good cry and then I'd go home and I was 17, barely able to drive. And so there are people that can see us and hear us, and oftentimes it's our very pain. That is the gift we can give them, in the sense that we've been through it, and I'll say I don't know what you're going through, but it's a little bit like this, and they'll say yes or no. I'll say, oh well, tell me more. And I've invited them to share the unspeakable, and we're all capable of great things. Every one of us.

Speaker 3: 53:16

You know there was a down syndrome young man about 17. I took one of my clients who was a frozen alcoholic for 20 years and she came to visit me and we went to the local hotel, which is the only pool and hot tub spa, and we sat in the jacuzzi and she goes I don't believe in God. I said, really, how come? Because I don't believe God loves me, why else would I be drinking all the time? I said, well, why don't you ask God to show you something? So we're sitting there in this hot tub and this young man about 17, at least close to six feet tall, with rubber duckies, jumps in the deep end of the pool and he's splashing, and he's splashing and he's splashing his way closer towards jacuzzi, which is only maybe 18 inches wide on that thing, and he goes with his elbows. And he goes God loves you. And points to no, no sir, story verbatim. And I said, well, let's just see if he does it again. He goes to deep end, splashes. Five minutes later, god loves you.

Speaker 3: 54:25

And she jumped out of the jacuzzi, ran into the dressing and passed out on the floor. She got herself dressed and I took her to the bathroom that night. I'm sitting in the back on the wall and the guy up front goes you on the wall. I stood up and I said I'm not an alcohol. Of course everybody laughed and I said but I brought my friend and that was the last time she drove she drank. They dragged her out to an AA restaurant, you know. They all went afterwards and she went home and she pretty much stopped drinking and it was well.

Speaker 3: 55:04

And she had a secret that she had never revealed to anybody, which she revealed to me, which is why she tried to drink away her pain. And so, god's grace, whatever you want to call it, goodness light, love it. It comes when you ask. And she didn't believe in God. How could God love me with what I did in my life? I knew what she did but you know she wouldn't forgive herself.

Speaker 3: 55:29

And it took 17 ish year old autistic Down syndrome kid to deliver a message with impeccable clarity. That's the nature, the energy. For those of us that get curious, miracles are all over. We just have to have the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the heart that's willing to know and the belly, what we call the Don Shen around your belly button.

Speaker 3: 55:58

There's an aspect of our consciousness that medicine doesn't know about. It's called the basic self. Indigenous people, hawaiians know about it. So it's an aspect that runs our parasympathetic nervous system and it knows stuff. We talk about the God brain. You know, if you show randomly generated pictures and there's an accident, personal spike, and if it's a nice nature scene, there'll just be level.

Speaker 3: 56:22

Basic self is here to protect us, to run our parasympathetic nervous system. It's about five years old and if you put your hand on your belly and you're feeling out of source, say, I'm so sorry, I didn't even know that you were there, thank you for running my body, and literally it will help you feel better, do better, think about yourself better, and this is something that science is just getting to understand. Near the second brain is in your gut. It tells you when you're not safe. We're trained not to listen to all the signs and signals. Oh, that couldn't be real. Or we tell our kids no, everybody knows, trees aren't purple color inside the line. So we're training them the automatons based on what the local belief system is.

Speaker 3: 57:14

And then all of that, jennifer, look how magnificent we can become when we get a little curious. Who am I anyway? What do I enjoy? Who do I judge? Wow, when I judge somebody, these three fingers are pointing back at me. Where in my life have I ever been like that? And it brings a compassion. I think what's needed more now is kindness and compassion, self love, the willingness to fall flat on your face and get up one more time than you fall. God knows, I should be an expert in the Guinness Book of Records on that one. And so now I jump up joyfully.

Speaker 3: 57:54

Well, that didn't work and I lost the cover to my iPhone. It must have fall out of my pocket. I was taking sunset pictures gone. I was in such equanimity so I think I had $100 inside pocket that, oh, somebody found $100. And I asked the rangers and nobody's seen it. So the solution I'll just go get a new one and maybe the first one will come back. And life happens and how we deal with it and how we tend to soil our life determines our success.

Speaker 1: 58:32

So, as we close out our talk today, when what's something that I mean everything that we've talked about today like what is one thing really that you just wish people knew, but they don't know.

Speaker 3: 58:49

I wish that they're lovable. Everybody's lovable. We we learn how to harden ourselves, especially if you have challenging childhoods. But if we were to know that we were created with a special purpose. Nothing happens accidentally on this planet. There are down pitch, other down syndrome young men that I know was 30. Now he is so happy. He walks in a room. Everybody buzzes because he's there. You know he was the spokesman for this, the special Olympics, when he was maybe 20.

Speaker 3: 59:30

And we all have gifts. Our challenge is to unpack them as the most precious things, even if it looks like something terrible. If you can unpack it, that's like Solomon gaining wisdom Everything that happens not to us, but for us. I look at things as for me, for us, for my clients, when we begin to transform and know they were doing the best we can, then our best is always good enough because it's the best we can. So for a while I said well, that didn't work. You know, yesterday I broke a. I love glasses and you can't find glass glasses anymore. So I bought a set and I'm down to already. I put a knife in my glass in the sink it's a stone sink and I knocked the glass over. Oh well, I'm down to number seven, and that's, that was the extent of my upset. Now, the old me would have been, you stupid idiot. What were you thinking of when you put a knife inside that glass? You know it's like oh well.

Speaker 3: 1:00:38

Next, I lost my my camera cover. Oh well, there's a new one. Whoever got it must need it and even with the discomfort I have wow, this pain must be for me. I think I'll do a little bit of meditation, go inside the pain and tell it I love it, which is a very viable way to help you heal pain. This is a solution to every question. We just have to be open enough. Like in China, they talk about all your energy sensors in arts. I, you know, I've been held up the gunpoint twice. First time I took the gun away from the person. The second time I blessed them when they ran away. And when the police caught them, I refused to say our 100% new. There were four, four perpetrators, two loaded guns. I only saw two. The detective said ma'am, did you really say God bless you after they put a gun to your head and stole your purse? I said I did. He goes. Ma'am, you're crazy. He said. They confessed they couldn't get God bless you out of their head. That is how powerful we are.

Speaker 1: 1:01:52

I've heard you tell that story a bunch of times, and every time I hear it it gives me goosebumps.

Speaker 3: 1:01:58

Yeah, because we're all that person. We have it inside of us to love ourselves. And then we look at the other person as us. In another iteration I saw a young girl, you know, maybe she was 19 at the most, the other was 17, one was 14 and the fourth got away. I only see children that haven't been loved. I shall, god, bless you. I love you, because they've never heard those words, probably in their whole life. We do what we do and then we forgive it. We move on to the next. I just want to thank you for allowing me to share on your show today.

Speaker 1: 1:02:39

Thank you, lynn. This interview has been a long time coming and I appreciate it so much. I know you've helped me work through a number of issues as well. I can attest to your algorithm and your method. It feels like a weight just lifts off of your chest. It's hard to describe. It's amazing, and God bless you. You are just an amazing person.

Speaker 3: 1:03:13

Thank you so much. Thank you, and thank you to all the listeners for listening.

Speaker 1: 1:03:17

Yes, before you go, you do have a couple of books and in a website as well. I just want to make sure the people are aware.

Speaker 3: 1:03:28

Can you?

Speaker 1: 1:03:29

describe your books for me real quick.

Speaker 3: 1:03:32

The first book I wrote was called Heaven's Helpful Hands. It's about to be republished. That was in 1990. I didn't find out it was the best seller till 1999 because they didn't have Amazon, from Bumps to Brilliance, sold this. From Bumps to Brilliance. That's a series of little one-page tips with a question or so at the bottom. That was actually the third book. Then there was Get Clear, get Connect, get a Job. That was in the 99 job slump. I volunteer with a local workforce to do speaking and I wrote that book because they wanted me to do a lecture. I just did that. Then there was my Favorite is Beyond the Lovelyville. It's a parable of rising above trauma and self-awareness. It's actually autobiographical To the eyes of frogs and turtles and mice and evil.

Speaker 1: 1:04:25

I have not read that one.

Speaker 3: 1:04:26

Oh, that's a fun one. Then I wrote the Grace of Love, which is about the love affair with my husband, james, during the eight years of our marriage before he passed away. He passed away. Td producer asked me if I would come on the air and write a book. Of course there's not where I was going to do that.

Speaker 3: 1:04:45

I did complete it. It's not here, but that's our unedited love letters for anybody who's looking for love. James and I were both traumatized. We put our energy into loving. It's an incredible book. The last thing he wrote to me we did poetry every day was Lynn, I cling to you and God, with all my strength. You're the center of my garden of love. My feedback was honey, I can't wait to see how God prunes us both for new things. I can't wait to grow. He was gone four days later.

Speaker 1: 1:05:22

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3: 1:05:24

It took me from 2007 to this year to have the courage to make it out there. I'm looking for people, maybe in church groups, because it's a primer for how to love and forgive and to grow in union as well as with your God self. Then the next one I can't even remember what. The next one, the next one? There's two others. I did a Tai Chi book and a lab and student book, but the one I haven't done yet is the Loser's Guide to Making it Big. I had a publishing company called Old Books beg me to do a series like the Dummy Series. James died and I just had lost all interest in doing it. So when the time comes, I have some chapters written and the publisher asked if I would do it in relationships and finances, in aging, whatever it was. You want me to do a whole series. So that's somewhere in the future. Right now I'm dealing with all the awards and stuff like that and getting used to it.

Speaker 1: 1:06:31

Okay, get used to it, girlfriend, because I see a lot more in your future, I know that's what my mystic friend Sally says.

Speaker 3: 1:06:38

She's 89 years young. I've known her for over 40 years and she's always been accurate. So she told me a year and a half ago you better get busy. You're going to be traveling worldwide, you and Paul, you're going to get lots of awards. Oh, sally, don't be silly. Well, yeah, every time I get one, I say, sally, you were right. So it's really all it is. All the award is. It's an acknowledgement that I care and we all care of ourselves, and award we get out of bed every day.

Speaker 3: 1:07:13

You know we could go. I had a good day today, even if you fell on your face. You're alive and you can learn something. Oh, I forgot to tie my shoelaces. Duh Simple.

Speaker 1: 1:07:26

Well, you are loved. Thank you so much for sharing all of your wonderful stories and your own traumas today, Lynn. God bless you.

Speaker 3: 1:07:35

God bless you too, and God bless all your listeners. Have a wonderful day, thank you, thank you.