Is the freedom that we believe we have an illusion? What does it truly mean to LIVE FREELY in our modern world? When we observe the way the systems of government and industry condition and control us from the time we are born until the time we pass, it can feel supremely frustrating to say the least. Christopher John Hills V has been refusing to be part of this system of control since early in his life.
He has continuously observed the way in which his conditioning as created disconnection within him and has been on a journey of building connection, grace and integrity in his living experience. When I found Christopher's website, I was so intrigued by this young man and the way he expresses himself and shares his valuable perspective.
In this tender and intricate interview we delve into:
-What is modern slavery? How does it effect us in our daily lives?
-His early life experiences and his path into offering spiritual counseling
-How does freedom and our food system intersect?
-What do our bodies really need and what are they not getting?
-A powerful poem that calls for awakening and change
-Nature as our greatest teacher and ally in liberation : permaculture and food as medicine.
Christopher John Hills V. A poet, artist, counselor and philosopher of the heart.
His core values are healing, truth, love, and freedom.
and on Social Media
IG @christopherjohnhillsv
Read While You Tune In
A: Every day there is a forgetting and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world and experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy. Today here here where you free your Soma. Hello everyone, welcome to Free Your Soma, Stories of Sematic Awakening and How to Live from the Inside Out. Today I have Christopher John Hills the Fifth here with me. He is a poet, artist and philosopher of the heart and the co-owner and executive president of Radiant Motion Pictures. He is a holistic counselor and has a family nonprofit called the Christopher Hills Foundation. The focus of this nonprofit is going to be the education for youth about a new way of being on earth, answering the question, how do we create a better life? I love that question and I am so excited to talk to you today Christopher. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Yeah, yeah. So it's fun because I think of this podcast sometimes as a vehicle to reach out to people that I find on the internet, whether it's through social media or through a website or through a blog post or something. And I go, this is an interesting person. I would like to talk to them. And then this platform gives me the opportunity to do that and not just seem like kind of a random goofy person, which I wouldn't mind looking like a random goofy person, but it's also nice to get to share the interaction with a wider audience to share and amplify someone who's doing really interesting, important work in the world. So when I came across your profile and I ended up going to your website, I, I, and this happens fairly often. I read about what you're up to. I read about what you offer and what you do. And I just kept thinking this guy's not using the word somatic, but this is a somatic person. This is someone who's very connected to his inner world through his body and who is helping other people be here, be here in their bodies on the earth, living it, doing it. And, and I wanted to talk to you and I wanted to have you on the show. So that's a little bit about why I invited you here. And you know some of that, but just to orient our readers, our listeners, would you tell us a little bit about what, what you've been up to? You know, you've got these projects kind of give us like a little bit of a summary about like what it is that you do.
C: Yeah, I would say my primary interest and purpose revolves around healing. I always say that first comes with myself, working to heal myself so that I can be the best version of myself to show up to assist others. And so I channel that through holistic counseling practice where I offer services for people to come and find out the root causes of what's really causing them pain and to begin to use philosophic insights and different perspectives to begin to shift that and lead a more joyful, loving life. And I'm also very passionate about the arts. A poet, artist and philosopher of the heart is kind of my title. And, you know, for me, the arts is a beautiful way to share our creative expressions with the world, our natural talents, skills and abilities, our gifts. And one of those platforms of art is the expression of motion media film. And so I started a film production company with a dear friend of mine, a movie director named Kevin Williams. And we are in the process of creating an amazing spiritual adventure story that kind of reveals the human potential and what we're capable of and gives everyone the opportunity to see that you're not just trapped in this little tiny box that society has designed for you. There is much more to life than what you've been taught.
A: Wow, that's amazing. So you're currently working on a film.
C: Yes, it was a book that I read, which I will not state the title of it just yet, but it's something that I read probably about seven, eight years ago. And it was a beautiful experience, a very visual experience while reading it and a amazing story and a true story at that. And fast forward about seven or eight years later, I was able to acquire the rights, the film production rights of that book to turn it into a film series. So that is our current project that we're focusing on. And we have some other scripts as well that we're working on as well.
A: Yeah, that's exciting. That's wonderful, because that sounds like something that's really substantial. You know, there's so much media out there now and not all of it is really worth our time and energy to sit there and take it in. You You you might be part way through watching something and you're like, is this really nutritious? You know, it's kind of like our food or something. Is this like just junk media? You You is this just the same formulaic things over and over, you know, just designed to like get a certain reaction from me? Or is this really nourishing like media? You know, that's a good question. I think a lot more people are starting to ask themselves about the things they take in in terms of content, not just, you know, what they're eating, right?
C: Yeah, when we become aware that our thoughts form and shape our realities, then we have to look at what are we allowing into our minds? And several years ago, I started looking at, OK, what is my music library? And what are all the lyrics? You know, what am I being taught to create as my reality? And I had to look at all these songs that might have been in there since I was a kid and filter out a ton of content that was very destructive, but very subtle. You know, lyrics anywhere from relationship dynamics to everyday living, you know, it was just very toxic information that was being fed into our minds. And especially as children, that we didn't even realize the messages that we were receiving. And also look at that in the film world. And, you know, one of my interests in being a part of the film world is to offer something different, because most of what is presented in Hollywood media is the same type of script over and over again that is completely toxic and full of imagery of war and enemies and fighting and violence and gore. And it's a miscommunication of our natural way of being as a soul.
A: Yeah, it's interesting because I think that that form of like kind of more brutalized entertainment or something has been around for ages, but it still doesn't really express like what a human being truly is, which is what you're pointing to. You You and what I believe, you know, the realm of semantics is all about is about creating that capacity to experience wholeness, you know, that is not just our primal sense, but, you know, includes our primal sense, but is so, so much more than that, you know, that is sophisticated enough to solve a problem through conversation, through empathy, through understanding versus simply brute force, you know, or simply, you know, who's stronger here, who's louder, right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, that sounds like a really exciting project, and I'm definitely going to keep my my eyes and ears open for when that's coming along and check it out. That sounds great. Kind of coming back to the counseling work that you do, can you tell us a little bit about how you got into that? I I you're, you know, you're a young man and you are, you know, upfront kind of said like that you have come into healing work through the work that you've done with yourself. You know, did you have mentors or people who guided you into this specific arena of work?
C: So I would consider the fact that I've been a philosopher my whole life, even since I was a child, I would question everything. I was a critical thinker and I saw the world that I lived in and didn't agree with a lot of the things that was presented to me. And so I rebelled against it. And to be a rebel in this world is not the easiest path. You were oftentimes attacked, criticized, ridiculed or just told you're crazy. But when you know in your heart that you're not crazy and that the world that you live in is actually crazy, then it's easier to just persevere forward and find the truth. And for me, philosophy, the word philosophy means the love of wisdom. And I desire to live a life of wisdom because I know that if I am making wise choices, I am avoiding painful things to happen in my life. And so I grew up with quite a difficult and challenging childhood. And I've had to go through a process of working on healing myself from that traumatic experience that I had. And And and the love of wisdom was very helpful for me on that journey. And there was a wise teacher that I began learning from. And this teacher's name is Jonah. They are a non-physical being that speaks through a man named Hosca Harrison. And they had some of the most amazing insights and wisdom that I have ever experienced learning from a teacher, something that resonated and spoke directly to my heart. And one of their primary teachings was you can learn through pain or you can learn through joy. Both are going to teach you, but it's your choice. It's up to you. And I really had to sit with that comment and evaluate the life that I had lived and see that it was riddled with pain and to take full responsibility for the life that I was living and was creating and to realize that I was choosing those painful experiences when I could have chosen joy instead. And during that timeframe of my life when I was exploring all of this, I began to get a taste of what joy felt like and I wanted more and more of it. And I had had enough of pain. You know, I had hit rock bottom per se. And so I was now motivated to be more conscious about my decisions, be more conscious about myself and what was occurring in my life. And whenever a painful experience would arise, I would have to look at it and say, what did I do to create this? How can I take full responsibility for the situation that I'm in? I am not a victim to anything. I create my reality. And that allowed me to look at and choose a more joyful path, make a different decision. And along my process of life, I have a very loving heart and concern and care for others. I want everyone to be happy. I want everyone to thrive. I don't understand what I do now because I've learned a lot about the corruptions of our world. But then I did not understand why we didn't live a holistic life, all of us. Why was so many people depressed and miserable with their lives? Or hurting or in pain? And so I would counsel people throughout my life without even realizing what I was doing. And the reflections I got back that helped me understand what I was doing was getting a phone call five or 10 years later from somebody that I befriended and spoke to and having them tell me that my presence in their life or the advice that I gave them had shifted and changed their life. And it wasn't until I had a group of friends that were counselors that would see me interacting with other people or their friends and how I naturally would just begin this process of going deep with people. I'm not a surface level person. I like to go straight to the depth of what's actually true for them, what's actually interesting for them, what's exciting for them. And they recognized that I had an ability to assist people through the art of counseling. Now, they encouraged me to get into this for a while and I resisted and it wasn't until this spiritual teacher that I had begun learning to had suggested that I do it as well that I said, okay, let's pursue this. And as I began to step into it and work with clients more on a professional basis, it seemed seamless for me. It didn't seem like a job. It didn't seem like work. It just seemed very natural. And it's also very fulfilling to see somebody go from where they're at to a much more fulfilled potential.
A: Yeah, I think that that word natural, that I get a feeling that you're natural. I get a feeling that this way of being that you are, that you embody is just, your natural state. You're very much someone who's connected to their natural state. And that's, as you said before at the beginning of your, you know, your little bit of your story here, that's not the world that most of us are growing up in. We're not growing up in a natural world where people are behaving naturally. We're growing up in a lot of corruption. And so there's a certain purity that it seems you've been able to not only hold in yourself, but then deepen and cultivate. And that is that, you know, in my view, and you can tell me what you think of this, I think it's that purity of your heart that is what is healing to others. It's that energy that you carry, that natural way that you are. That is what, you know, we, you know, even though it comes out in the words you say, that, you know, the presence that you bring, the tone of your voice when you're speaking as your person, it's all coming from that pure energy that you're, that you're holding, that you're creating that's inside of you. And so, you know, that came across when I read things on your website, you know, which is interesting to say, because not everybody can bring that across in the way that they express themselves, you know, through just reading their words, but that you definitely have that. And it was quite impressive. So thank you for sharing, you know, about your, your story about your childhood. Sounds like you went through some really trying times and I can absolutely relate. You know, for me, the pain that I went through for so long was very physical pain, you know, and being in a lot of chronic physical pain that was related to my traumatic life experiences that were unprocessed to me, you know, that were unintegrated. And, you know, the, the somatic work that I offer is about integrating those things. And so when, you know, you can kind of come at things from different angles with someone, there, they can start to piece things together, right. And that went on for me a lot. And I see you nodding your head like, you know, this too, when you kind of pick something up here and then a piece comes in and now suddenly the picture comes together, right. That's, that's really been true for me in just discovering the way that my body, my physical body has held on to the experiences that I've had in my life, you know, and we can work top down from like, you know, clearing things energetically and spiritually or, you know, mentally and philosophically, we can also work bottom up, you know, it works through your direction, you start, you know, but the end result is that, you know, we're working towards that naturalness that, that I talked about that you're carrying this, this way of being human that is integrated, it's not just living in our heads or living in our emotions or living in our karma, it's living in our full body on earth. So I would love for you to share a little bit more about your connection to the earth and about some of the things that you are finding are connecting the work you do with people heart to heart with, with the earth, with the earth and the beliefs you have about that. I know we talked about the little bit of that in our, our pre-interview. Would you like, like to share a little bit about that?
C: Yeah, I wrote an article called, uh, dismantling modern day slavery, the fall of empires in the beginning of a new world. And I'll try my best to sum up some of what's in that article, because it is something that I'm very passionate about is I remember being a child and I and you as well are part of the generation that grew up climbing trees and being out in nature. Uh, unfortunately I witnessed the newer generations are glued to screens and it is very destructive in many different ways to their psyche and to their physical bodies to their being. And being connected to the natural world is being connected to truth. We are part of the natural world. We are an extension of that natural world. We are made up of it. There is so much intelligence in nature that can solve all of our problems. It can teach us everything about life. If you want to understand how energy works, if you want to understand how life works, just go and observe how nature works. It's all written in the fabric of nature. And throughout my process of growth and learning, I came across permaculture. Permaculture is a design art of working with nature and collaboration with nature to make a closed loop of caring for the earth and the earth cares for you. You care for the people, the people care for you. It is giving back to what gives to you. And in the process of working and cultivating permaculture, you create a sustainable ecosystem that continues to compound and grow and get bigger and better. And And an amazing way of life. My permaculture teacher that I learned from Jeff Lawton says, you can solve all of the world's problems in a garden. And I feel there's a lot of truth to that. We've disconnected so much from that natural world, from the garden. We, I love to use the terminology of the Garden of Eden. We have that imagery of this beautiful utopic kind of landscape that people apparently once lived in. Well, why aren't we living in that now if it's such a beautiful, amazing thing that we all idolize? When we could easily create it, we don't need much to do so either. Our physical bodies can build that. And permaculture is kind of the framework for building that. And so I aspire to be physically in my body with the Earth because I chose to be here. But through the many traumas that we experience in this broken society that we live in that does not match the frequency of our soul, oftentimes, individuals will try to disconnect from their body because it's painful what they're experiencing. They want to fly out in their mind and create an imaginary world to live in. That's understandable based off of what we live in. But what we need to do is to create that imagination physically here on Earth.
A: Yeah, and that pain that we can experience when we, as you said, we meet the world with a frequency that we're carrying that is not matched. And many times as you mentioned before, when you point out that there's a schism, people act like you're the problem. People act like it's you, not the world at large. And that pain, that pain can be an energy that is used to further avoid reality, or to escape or to retreat and hide. And that energy can also be used more righteously to take action and to do something and to say what it is so that other people who feel the same way know that they're not alone, so that they can hear you, so that they can all join together and then things like a permaculture movement can take place. And there are places in the world where that's going on. There are. And that's something that is so inspiring when maybe you've been living in the bubble of mainstream culture for whatever reason. Maybe that was just how you grew up. Maybe that's how your family lives. And to break out of that and see that there are totally different, innovative, powerful healing things that are going on in the world is tremendous. I got to experience quite a lot of that when I traveled globally during my 20s and I went all over the world to different places. And And I saw some really challenging places on earth that I would not choose to go back to. And I also saw some places where people were really working to better themselves and better the planet. And And we stay in our smaller world, that comfort zone of whatever it is that we're accustomed to, we are limiting our potential for growth because we don't really know the bigger picture of what's possible. Can you say a little bit about that? I I you did some traveling too. How was it to travel for you?
C: Yeah, I've been traveling since I was a child practically. And you just get introduced to different environments, different people, different ways of life. To touch back on what I was talking about before, it is important to realize that the world does not want to change. If it did want to change, it would have already changed a long time ago. And so we can't do anything to change the world, but we can do everything to change our own world. And we have to look at the world that we're currently living in and the societies that we're living in, and to realize that they're collapsing, they're falling apart. Because they were not sustainable to begin with. And when something takes, takes, takes, takes, takes and never gives back, eventually there's nothing left to give. And we are closing in on a point where our society has nothing left to give its people. And we can use our free will choice to either be a part of participating in that fall, which will be very, very painful. You can look back in history and see the fall of Rome. You can look even further back in history and see the fall of Atlantis. And those were very destructive events that caused a lot of pain. But I'm sure during those time frames and during those events, there were several individuals that had the intuition to say the body intelligence, to say something isn't right in this dynamic that I'm living in. Something is calling me to look elsewhere, to create elsewhere in my life. And so they branch off from society and begin taking full responsibility and full authority over their own livelihood. They become the creation of their own life rather than following somebody else's agenda. Our society, we follow somebody else's agenda, a design, a blueprint that says this is what life is. But is that true? Or is that just the opinion of what somebody believes life is? And what if life is completely different to us as an individual? Yeah.
A: And then also the generational programming of every person that came before us, that had whatever experience they had. And And now we're operating as if it's still that time and that thing is occurring in these ways in which we just keep repeating these cycles of behavior that have very little to do with now. They have very little to do with this moment and everything that's possible at this moment. Right.
C: I mean, we're constantly up against the genetics, the genetic energies of our ancestors and the cycles and the patterns and the choices that they've made. Were they harmonious or were they destructive? And becoming aware of it because if you don't become aware of it, it's on autopilot. It's going to play out through your life, but you can change it. You can be the pattern breaker and stop the line and the lineage of pain where it no longer gets passed down to your child and their children. You can heal your lineage. And that helps heal your ancestors, whether they're physically alive still or nonphysically present. Yeah.
A: Is this a thing that you have personally looked into and done some of? I'm curious just because you're the fifth. So you are connected and there's this family name with the nonprofit. So there's this strong connection that you're carrying with your lineage. And And that been something that you have delved into personally? I'm just curious. Yeah.
C: I mean, my strongest tie that I'm currently aware of is my grandfather. He started the foundation. He started a lot of work in motion that I'm continuing currently now. He was considered the father of Sparolina for his work in bringing this amazing mother of all superfoods to the world. And he was very passionate about implementing changes to human suffering. He had a mission to end world hunger and Sparolina was part of that mission. It was the most nutrient dense food that he could find on this planet that grew to full maturity in only three days. And so he saw it as a vehicle to create a solution. But he also wrote over 30 books on consciousness, on energy and how it works, on the whole chakra system, the energy centers, on conflict resolution. You know, there were so many things that he was interested in. And he was a scientist and a philosopher himself and amazing writer. So I've had to look into that part of my lineage on my father's side of the family and see what have I absorbed and taken on from my father and from my grandfather and so forth, that doesn't work and isn't an alignment with who I am as a soul and what my heart desires to live. And then I also look at it and say, what does work? What amazing gifts, what amazing abilities have I chosen to incarnate into this family lineage to utilize and use as my purpose, to support my purpose in life? And we can do this on both sides of our family lines and begin to understand who we are. What is the fabric of our genetics and why did we choose this family as a soul? Because we all choose our families for learning and growth and healing. And we keep coming back into these bodies until we have healed. Because we cannot resolve the issue unless we are in the location and the dimension in which we created the issue. So it's very important to learn how to feel. Very uncomfortable to learn how to feel in the world that we live in. But critical, if you want to heal, if you want to grow, if you want to reunite with your soul and your path, you got to learn how to feel and to become aware of everything that is influencing you consciously and unconsciously, to bring the unconscious into your conscious mind. Because once you're aware of something, you can do something about it.
A: You have some power, you have some influence. It's amazing because as you're speaking, I am hearing this in one way as philosophy, but in another way I'm hearing it as very literal truth. Because what you said before a moment ago about the only way to, and you were talking about incarnating on the earth, the only way to heal, something is to actually be in the place where it happened. So to speak like the scene of the crime. This is actually totally true neurophysiologically when it comes to muscle tension and pain. If we're talking about a contracted muscle in your neck or your shoulder or your back that is continuously firing and maybe it's pulling on nerves or you know pressing on them or it's pulling on attachments to muscle, right? And it's causing someone pain. The only way to actually get that muscle to turn off its contraction is actually by going into the contraction gently and then really, really slowly letting it go just to the point that the muscle's nervous nervous system with that person is ready to let go. It might only be 3% the first time you do it. And then you repeat that you keep going in with gentleness and you engage that pattern and you slowly let it go and you do this over and over until the muscle has a new length. You know and to me this is a microcosm of healing. We have to go into those places where there is pain. We have to go into those you know memories whether there are memories or ancestors memories, right? And there's so many different ways that one can do this and we have to we have to connect those spaces, right? And if they if they are not not really functional, we get to make them more functional by releasing, by letting go and by surrendering and continuously doing that. Like it happens a little bit at a time until all of a sudden it's like the muscle's longer, the person's out of pain, you know, or the life of this moment that your life just shifts and you have an epiphany and you realize that you don't have to keep doing this thing that you've been doing, right? So it's it's I love when I have these conversations because we get to really see how these layers of our consciousness which is also our body, they're not they're they're not that different from each other. It this this is the way that this healing works is on a physical level but also metaphysical and it's simultaneous. They're simultaneous to one another.
C: Yeah. Another thing, another element of healing or understanding how energy works would be the physical is the last line of manifestation. We have many different bodies. I'll use three of them as an example because they're understandable. We have a physical body. I can see my physical body. I can feel my physical body. I'm no I know it's there. We have an emotional body. And we have a mental body. Now, the physical is the last line. It's the end of the road. If you have some sort of pain or issue, it's going to first filter through your mental body and your emotional body before it gets to the physical. And if you're able to deal with it in the mental emotional state, say through counseling, where you work through it mentally and emotionally first, and you heal it mentally and emotionally, it's not going to manifest into the physical as something that's painful or as a disease or an issue. And vice versa, reverse. If you have a mental or emotional issue, and it's already manifested into the physical, if you work on healing that physical element, it will alleviate the mental and emotional issue as well so that you can begin working on healing the mental and emotional issue. Right.
A: Well, and so much of this is unconscious, as you mentioned before, we are unconscious to this. We are unconscious to what is sometimes what is hurting our heart or our soul just by living in the world, what is causing us pain mentally and emotionally, spiritually. We don't notice it until it is a lower back pain. Then we notice that we have lower back pain, but we don't realize, oh, that is about this feeling that's been going on in me for a long time. It's about these specific experiences perhaps that I held onto that I didn't realize I was holding onto. And now it's finally manifested as this pain in my back or as you mentioned some kind of disease. But so much of this is unconscious in us and it really takes going through, at least for me, it it going through actual physical challenges and connecting them and having mentors and people there who could help me connect and go, oh, this pain that you're having isn't just physical, it is mental, emotional, spiritual. As you said, it started there. It It with thought or feeling. And And been exploring this with a somatic mentor of mine and I'll tell you what you think of this. Maybe you can tell me what you think of this process, but he had these chain of words that he would say and he would say them to me like five words in a row in varying orders. And they were words like resist, rest. So it would be like rest and resist and he would pair them resisting, rest, rest, rest, resisting, rest. And I was supposed to hear this chain of words and as I heard them, just notice what I felt for experience and then let it go. And when I had succeeded in just letting it go, I was supposed to like nod or let him know. And then he would give me the next chain of words. And we did this for quite a while, like maybe 15, 20 minutes. And by the time we were at like, maybe the 10 minute mark of me just receiving these chains of words, I felt how they were these tiny little micro responses just to the vibration of those words, like rest had its own feeling and then resist had this feeling. It was somatic. It was a body feeling. Even though when I started, it it like my mind was going and saying a bunch of stuff and talking, there was a point where my mind stopped talking and I started feeling the impact. And it was a perfect example to me of what we're talking about, which is that our thoughts, our feelings, the programming, the music that you're listening to, your environment, our environment that's external and our environment that's internal, all has this immediate impact on our body and on our every layer of our body, right? I guess you could say. So I don't know if you've ever had an experience like that with kind of like repetition of words or repetition or feeling that, like kind of like if you say a word over and over and it stops meaning anything, it was kind of like that, except it's had more meaning. It It like a meaning that was a full body meaning.
C: Yeah. Everything in our universe is communicating frequencies. Frequencies of energy, frequencies of intent. And when we can tune in to what that intention is, we realize that we are a part of that universe reacting and communicating back. And so language, we have a understanding of what words mean based off of a learning in our brain. Our brain has learned that this word means this. And we have imagery and we have sensational feelings to reflect on what those means. You know, pain, soreness, we can relate to what that feels like because we've experienced it. And we've identified that this word means this, it feels like this. So that is a very important thing to become aware of is that we are sublimally being influenced all the time by images, by words, by sounds, by frequencies to manipulate the direction of our thoughts and the sculpture of our life. And going back to learning how to feel, we can begin to learn how to feel when that is occurring. And to say this negative influence that is present, I'm not going to allow to penetrate into my being. I'm going to create an energetic field that protects me from that influence so that I can create a life that is a reflection of what I desire rather than what somebody else desires for me.
A: Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking once again about that article that you wrote and, you know, the idea of slavery. And it's so interesting because this is, you know, very similar to the guy who created my modality. I don't know if you ever heard of him, his name was Thomas Hannah, he was extremely concerned with the concept of freedom, you know, and liberation, and the end of tyranny. He wrote a book called The End of Tyranny. It's basically about very much what you're pointing to, which is this sense of being alive in your body as a, like, act of rebellion against forces that would otherwise try to control and manipulate your body for their own needs, you know, whether we want to call that the means of capitalism, to sell you things so that people can make money off of your desires and reactions, you know, whether that's to keep you small and not, you know, taking action in the world in different ways, right? There's so many different ways that there are people, you know, lots of different people who we don't realize benefit off of our enslavement in this mental and spiritual way that you're describing.
C: Yeah, let's talk briefly about food.
A: Yeah, there you go. That's a good one to talk in. Yeah.
C: Look at how the food supply has shifted and changed in the last 50 years. Look at the epidemic of health issues that has occurred in the past 50 years. When you and I were children in our generation to hear somebody having cancer was like an anomaly. It was a very rare occurrence. Nowadays, it's almost one in every other person is getting cancer. Now, the number one cause of cancer is actually guilt. But it has also contributed to largely the toxic environment that we live in, whether that's our household products that we use, what do we put on our skin? What do we put into our mouths? What are we eating? And genetically modified foods are designed to resist pesticides and insecticides. What do pesticides and insecticides do? They eliminate and kill and destroy insects and pesticides. So when you are consuming genetically modified foods, it has that frequency and that energy in it. You are basically annihilating yourself. It's a very toxic reversal of our natural energy system. But it's got a huge agenda behind it. It is designed that way. It is not a natural substance. It's unnatural. And when we consume these things unconsciously, we become much more passive. And when we're passive, we're less likely to think critically and to make choices that are beneficial for our lives. Now, how many people become sick and then are force-fed pharmaceutical drugs? Here's something to fix your problem. Oh, you have another problem. Here's another thing to fix that problem. Oh, here's another problem. Here's another pill to fix that problem. Now, the food companies that are causing a lot of illness through what we're eating are also owned by those pharmaceutical companies that are also profiting off of our illness. So it is of their best interest to make us sick through the food supply because they make far more money by working to temporarily cure that sickness or to pretend like they are curing that sickness, which they are only prolonging it with most of their pharmaceutical drugs that are presented.
A: Yeah. I mean, the other angle here that is somewhat terrifying to learn about is just the way that foods are manufactured to stimulate the reward centers of our brain. They're literally bio-packed. We hear more and more about this hyper-palatable food. The processed food industry is designed to make you want to eat a lot of this thing. And it also numbs you to the tastes of natural foods. And that was a big eye-opening piece for me when I really started reducing the amount of, say, for example, salt and oil that I was consuming. I found that when my taste buds started to shift back to their more natural state, they often say recommend with babies, don't feed them salt and food. It's too strong for them. Why would it be too strong for a baby? Because their natural taste buds are sensitive and they can taste different things. And then their taste buds are developing over time. Well, our adult taste buds can also become more sensitive once again, but they're numbed by the foods that are created to numb us and have us desiring more and more sensation because we can't feel anything. Kind of coming back to this idea of regaining feeling, learning how to feel again. And that's one way that our systems have been hijacked by companies who want to sell a lot of their product. I read this book called Sugar Fat Salt by a journalist and it has a whole piece on the Coca-Cola Pepsi industry. And it was kind of shocking because they don't call their customers customers, they call them users. And it is and it absolutely is.
C: Yeah. I wrote an article once called Never Believe a Lie. And if you look at the word believe right in between it right in the middle, there's the word lie. And a lot of beliefs are lies. So to question what lies have you accepted, what lies have you been told since you were born? You've been lied to since you were born. And what lies have turned into beliefs that have turned into the reality that you live in that is absolutely not true. But it is your life. It has become your life. And so you are living an untrue life. When one begins to use critical thinking to unravel all the lies that they have accepted, it can be quite disorienting. It can be quite shattering of what they thought life was. But it can also be extremely liberating when they come back to knowing that, oh, okay, this is why I don't feel connected to my life or to this society or to this world or to myself because I am living a lie. How many people are living a lie through slow suicide by eating these foods that are literally obliterating them from the inside out that is shutting down their consciousness? But they continue doing it because everyone else is doing it.
A: They may not know another way unless you've experienced the other sides. You don't even know it's there.
C: Yeah, there's different sides of the coin there. There are some that have just haven't gotten its ignorance not in a negative way. It's just they haven't been taught. They haven't been told. But another half of that is denial. You know and you have been told, but it's an addiction like you said, the users. You're addicted to it. And that's an escapism from being present in your body, being fully grounded on the earth is you want to escape your pain. And a lot of these substances, whether it's food or pharmaceuticals, pain killers, whatever it is, alcohol could be an escapism.
A: Yeah, and I relate to that because when I was in physical pain, it was very easy to reach for those things. It was. It was very easy to want to reach for those things. And yet there was always a voice inside of me that refused to be an addict, refused to be disempowered in that way. Even as I struggled with it, there was a part of me calling out saying, no, no, no. And it took time and honestly it took support. It took support from mentors, the somatic educators, even for different times in my life. It was friends. It was maybe, someone like you or a friend that comes into my life and reminds me of what's true because there's always going to be the friends that are enabling or are just on that same level as you. And then occasionally you're going to meet someone who's just inviting you into that next layer of who you really are, that you're just not quite able to get there without that little nudge or that little push or that little invitation. But it is. I see a big, and I mean, there's lots of people talking about this, like Gabramate and people like that are talking about the intersection of our addiction and our trauma and the pain that we're carrying that has us reaching for anything. And that is exactly why the alternative methods that are out there, alternative methods to pharmaceuticals, alternative methods to how to cook your food, that people simply don't know about, there needs to be more and more access to these things, more and more knowledge about their existence so that people can know they have a choice and maybe they can feel like me and have that little nagging voice that says, no, I'm not going to continue to reach for something that makes me feel better in the moment that I know is harming me long term. I know is killing my spirit.
C: I think it really comes down to do you have self-respect? Do you honor yourself in your life?
A: And that can be a hard one. Yeah, because some people, and it's no judgment, some people don't. I mean, when you have been someone who has struggled with self-hate or even people who have struggled with suicidal ideation at different times in their life from pain that they're carrying, there may not be that foundation of self-respect that you bring up. It's a really good point. And I'm not saying this with judgment at all. I'm saying it with deep compassion because that's a difficult place to start from. And establishing that self-respect is a huge part of being able to make different choices.
C: So many people have never been taught how to take care of themselves because their parents didn't know how to take care of themselves. That's part of that ancestral line where maybe some of your ancestors got it right and you can tap into that information. But the majority of people, especially our generation and beyond, do not know how to take care of themselves very well. I know myself, I had to teach myself, okay, this is how you properly feed yourself. This is how you properly, you know, take care of all these basic fundamental necessities of life that are the foundation of life. If you build a house, are you going to build it on sand or are you going to build it on stone? You know, you want to build your life on a very solid foundation and that starts with knowing and learning how to really take good care of yourself. I often say if people aren't tending to their basic fundamental needs, first and foremost, as the simplistic foundation of their life, they can try to create whatever they want in their life, but they're going to be like a car with the e-brake on. They're going to be spinning their wheels, you know, try to create your goals and your dreams without getting enough sleep. You're going to be walking around as if you're just drank a bunch of alcohol, you know, your brain is not awake. It's not functioning properly. And so assistance is always being offered to people. Humanity is consistently being offered tons of assistance, whether that be physical mentors, healers, or non-physical beings that are present and with you continuously. You're always being offered support. The problem and there are students who are willing to learn. And so to ask yourself, do you want to live a more holistic, healthier, empowered, beautiful, joyful, loving existence? If you do, open yourself up to receiving assistance. Assistance from somebody who has integrity, assistance from a source that is compassionate and loving and supportive, who does not have an agenda or an influence over you to convince you to do something that's destructive. You offer assistance semantically with your clients to help assist them to heal. And it must be very rewarding when your clients receive that assistance and have an epiphany or have something unlock for them where they are no longer experiencing the pain that they've carried around for so long. And then they can become grateful towards themselves and you for that assistance.
A: Absolutely. I mean, it always feels like I am time traveling and I get to re-experience myself in that process, in that process of coming out of the pain. And there's something that I find so beautiful about that. It just reminds me of what's possible. And so in so many ways, like any end practice, it's an extension of your own healings, an extension of your own work that you're done or are doing. And the changes that people end up making in their lives when they feel, coming back to this idea of learning how to feel again, learning how to actually be here in your body on the earth, like a very common thing. After I've guided someone through somatic movement, I have them stand up and they started in standing and they end in standing and they feel right away that their feet are literally more connected to the ground. The bottoms of their feet have opened up and have widened and have become balanced. Whereas before, maybe they had foot pain, maybe there was tension, maybe all of their weight was to one side or it was back on their heels towards their toes. Some misalignment was going on. And right after they come back in to their body in this really deep way, they can feel immediately that their feet are more grounded, that they're actually more here. Less of them is resisting this reality. They are more present. It's interesting though because it comes back to what you say, not everybody is a willing student. And almost everybody that I do a consultation with or a session with has this experience and yet it's only a certain number of people that go, oh my goodness, this is significant. This is meaningful. This is something I need to be in all the time. I need to be here with my feet on the ground all the time and I want to learn this from you. So it is, it's a special kind of individual and maybe for some of them, it's just the timing isn't quite right. That's maybe a step. They're not quite at that step in the larger process. And yeah, just when that person comes in who's ready, it's a magical thing.
C: There's a new age movement going on that is repeating old age dogma with just a different disguise. You know, we've been taught with religious belief systems that a savior is going to come and do it for us. It's going to save us. It's going to end our pain. How many people have waited throughout centuries for a savior to come and a savior never comes. And when somebody is open to being saved, they're giving all of their power away. And most of the time some something will come along and say, I will take care of you. But what they're really saying is, I will control you. I will become your master and you will become my slave. And any master who has a slave is a slave onto themselves. And so if we look at these, I see it a lot in the new age movements of escapism. And I wrote an article called DMT in the Polarities of the Third Dimension. And I found this article to be quite controversial. But my highest value is love, truth, freedom. So I speak the truth, regardless of if I will become ridiculed for it. And I have found that the use of psychedelics in particular are damaging to the biology of the body and create a lot of issues that could be avoided. Specifically, the substance called DMT that comes from plants like ayahuasca, for example. What it does is it begins to deplete your natural balance of serotonin and melatonin in your brain. And it gives you this euphoric flood of serotonin. But the DMT is coming from an outside source. It's not coming from within you. Whereas the human body produces DMT naturally. But that DMT is different than an external DMT. That DMT is connected to you, to your spirit. So the insights that you receive from that experience, when you activate it naturally through, say, meditation, then you're going to get more of the truth. But if you have it coming from an external source, you're going to get more of the illusion. And when you tax your body of these substances like serotonin and melatonin, the body needs to replenish all those things. And if it doesn't, it begins to create a cascading effect where your other organs and glands become out of balance. Now you might have learned that our organs are storehouses for our emotions. The liver is the seat of anger. The kidneys are the seat of fear. The lungs are the seat of grief. If you begin having these organs get out of balance because you've taken some sort of a substance because you're seeking maybe spiritual enlightenment, but really you're doing it under the disguise of you're too painful in your existence that you want to escape. Then oftentimes what happens is three months, maybe six months down the road, you have a mental and emotional meltdown. Or what I've witnessed in some is they start to develop symptoms of schizophrenia. Or if somebody has a prolonged use of these substances, they begin to develop brain tumors. Now this is not understood or widely studied and greatly rejected by most because these substances are a form of escape, a form of addiction that is just replacing one addiction for another less obvious one. And so there are these movements where many people want to remove themselves from their bodies, but you're going to get much more insights about your spiritual experience, putting your hands in the dirt and working in a garden, watching the butterflies fly by, visiting with a hummingbird, being connected to the ground. Then you are trying to escape through some sort of substance that alters your physicality, your biology.
A: Yeah, I mean I personally have never done ayahuasca or any of that so I can't speak to that experience. It was never personally attractive to me because I had kind of an experience when I was younger that was very psychedelic and I didn't know how to deal with it, whatever they call the nervous breakdown or something. But as I heard about people talking about this kind of stuff, I was wary because I knew that I had sensitive brain chemistry or whatever you want to call it and I didn't want to mess with that, especially when I was younger. I was very cautious about that kind of stuff. So I can't really speak to the actual experience of what you're talking about, but I had a woman on my podcast at the beginning of this season who talked about just the way that plant medicine is getting defined as psychedelics and ayahuasca and DMT and these plants that have these really intense effects on human beings. But her definition of plant medicine is a little bit more like what you were talking about. It's about putting your fingers in the soil. It's about working with herbs and vegetables and eating them, eating plants. That's medicine that truly is plant medicine and it was a fascinating conversation from her end to just kind of look at what you're talking about also which is this idea that these substances have this really intense, in many ways, narcotic effect on our systems and that in and of itself is going to be attractive to someone who wants to escape this reality, who wants to escape being in their body because they're going to have this really intense euphoric, even if it's an unpleasant experience, it's still something other than what they're experiencing. It's a novel, and what you're talking about in this slow, gradual process because someone who's coming off of some intense trip is not going to have that sensitivity to feel the energy of a butterfly flying past. It's going to be invisible to them sometimes, not every person, but many people. They're craving that extreme forceful energy because that's what their nervous system has become accustomed to. That's how they know something's happening in their life and in the world. What you're describing is it's a slow and tender process of re-inviting sensitivity back into our consciousness and back into our body where something, when I hear about combo and I hear about these things and people are vomiting and they're having these crazy near-death experiences, I hear that and my nervous system and my body is like, no thank you, not interested because I have a certain level of calm that I've cultivated that I don't really want to disturb it. I don't really want to throw the ecosystem of my body off in such an extreme way because I've developed something precious, but for people who are out there who are listening, it's like you can't really know this preciousness until you've created it for a while because it doesn't happen instantly. It doesn't happen from swallowing some tea or eating a chocolate. It happens day in, day out, slowly over time that you regain this feeling and sensitivity.
C: Yeah, many people are looking for a quick fix.
A: Yeah, feel better right now or not necessarily even better and that's the crazy thing. That's the I had a lot of conflict within myself about when I was younger because I didn't do any of these DMT but I did drink alcohol for periods of time and that was a weird thing because you feel better for a little bit and then you feel way, way worse. You feel like 10 times worse than you did before you were drinking, you know what I mean? Sometimes because it's so toxic and it's just this interesting thing of like we want to feel better for the moment but the thing that we're doing to feel better is so detrimental over time and immediately. It's very insane, like the definition of insane to kind of do this thing over and over again that's so harmful. But like I said, there's this whole intersection of addiction and trauma and the reasons why we're going back to that stuff. The reasons why we have these disconnections. Some people have even had them from birth. They've had birth traumas, they've had pain from birth and that's been their whole reality. But what's amazing is that even that you can come back from, even that you can build those neural pathways that we're missing. You can still develop your sensitivity and regain boundaries within your body with the right kind of input, you know, with the right kind of environment.
C: And not all issues are just locally here now in this life. We have lived many different lives in which we've created issues that if are not resolved, they're carried with us into this time frame. And as you work with your body, you can realize that that's stored in your body. And when you, the earth stores imprints of your soul, information, if you in another lifetime were in some location of the earth, and then you pass away and you're now in this lifetime and you return to that exact location, the earth feeds back that energy to you from where you've been before.
A: That's amazing. I have not really thought about that concept before. That's I, it's very, very fascinating. Because I definitely felt drawn to certain places on earth at different times and repelled from certain places on earth too. And I don't know, you know, I can't necessarily know whether the places I was drawn to, whether I was drawn there because there was something, you know, positive or something, you know, good for me there, or whether it was because there was something there that I needed to clean up. Yeah, which might be the same thing, depending on how you look at it.
C: And in the process of learning how to feel, you increase your intuition. If you are somewhere, and there is an unactive volcano, and you have this feeling, I need to travel somewhere right now, I need to go on a vacation. And you actually follow through with that feeling that was real for you. And while you're on vacation, you discover that that volcano in the location that you currently were at, erupted and destroyed the house that you were just in. Your body has an intelligence that will let you know things that are going to happen ahead of time. You can look at it. Whenever there's a tsunami that's about to happen, the animals are gone long before the tsunami arrives. And that's true with many different natural disasters. You can look at the response of the animals, they are using their innate intelligence to pick up on what's about to happen. And they run for cover. They take care of themselves. And we have that ability to access that in all areas of our life. You can become aware that you're about to create something that's painful, whether it be in your relationship, whether it be in your work that you're doing, whatever it is, you can have that body awareness to alert you and say, pay attention.
A: And probably ask you to pivot or at least steer a slightly different direction. So if you think about it, we don't have to do a whole 180 on ourselves every time. You can just step two feet or a quarter of an inch to the right and that bullet flies past you.
C: Yeah, if you're sailing a ship and you have it just the steering wheel slightly tilted to the left, your destination is Hawaii. You might end up in Australia. Right. Because over the longer period of time, that tiny little adjustment will take you on a completely different course.
A: Love it, because that's exactly what I do is micro movements. We do tiny little adjustments and it makes huge changes in our physiology. So once again, tying in how these concepts are literal, their ideas, but they're also something that we physically experience in our world constantly. It's the end of the day. In this example, it's math. It's all math. Wow. Well, this has been just an absolute amazing conversation. I have loved the flow of it. I would love to hone things in a little bit here with, do you have, you said maybe you had a piece of writing that you could share with us, some of your poetry?
C: Let's see if I can think of one real quick. I think, let me grab one for you. This is one that I wrote recently. When I was young, I defied rules, rebelled against the slightest confinement, arose in fierce protest of their molds, greedy hands that grasp for precious souls. Eager to corrupt that which has remained pure, swallowing the free spirited wind into the vacuum of a tiny container. Dragging the child's wonder through a desert of thorns, evaporating every tear until one has forgotten that they are made up of water. A world concentrated upon its own sorrow, a world of thieves stealing from their own pockets, enamored like glue to a fake jewel. They swim gleefully unaware of their own deception, defending to the death their own pathway to destruction. What illness has consumed thy restless abandonment? The swamp of a fermenting consciousness is one far from being passionate, bogged down by the mirror of its own hatred, belligerently angry to the bone. When truth is spoken, there are few who hear it. Sick in mind, body, and spirit. Unforgotten, unremembered, and unknown. Too fearful to think, a full-grown clone. A flame that burns wings, once considered delicate. Giving of one's life into the hands of another who is negligent. Hands that do not know love, nor honor. Where is the courage to be different? In a land where everyone is the same. Obeying the throne that stole from you. The peacefulness and freedom of your own innocence.
A: Powerful. I enjoyed the rhythm too. I enjoyed the style, the way that you brought things really together. And yeah, it was a beautiful rhythm to that. I could feel, it was very evocative, to feel the passion and the pain of these realities, these truths that you've been observing for so long. Obviously, it's the case that this has been going on in you for a very long time that you've been observing and speaking out and refusing to be a part of this system. I could hear that in your words, I can see that in your body language. Everyone here today got to feel into some of that. And you are truly a truth seeker. You're a truth seeker and you're a truth speaker. And I appreciate you. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for sharing boldly your feelings, your intuitions, your wisdom, the things that you've gathered. It's been very beneficial. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Yeah. If anyone is listening and wants to reach out to you, either to get some counseling or just to ask a question, where they find you?
C: My website, lovelightrising.com. And you can see the counseling services on there and also several articles that I've written are posted there as well and some resources to assist with healing.
A: Amazing. Yeah. Thank you. I'd love to catch up with you maybe closer to around the time that your production is further along or maybe right after the show has been released. I don't know whether that's going to be, but I'd love to have you back on the show to talk more about that journey and talk more about the film. Thank you. Yeah, wonderful. Thank you so much. You've been listening to the Free Your Soma podcast. Subscribe now to hear more stories of somatic awakening and gain knowledge and tools for somatic living. If you'd like to learn more, about me, Amy Takaya, Hanosomatic Education or the Radiance Program, please visit www.freeyoursoma .com.
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