not stay everyone grander here welcomes a positive energy enlightening television for the evolving soul on this show i've got two psycho therapist for the price of one first up roberta pugh is a transformational psychotherapist and author then i'm joined by anne marie augusta suzy dervish and psycho therapist once again will spore spiritual and mystical realms so stay where you are as positive energy starts two books and your latest book is body is sanctuary for soul and embodied in light and practice so i'm very interested to hear more tell us a little bit more about embodied in light mint well embodied in lightman draws from the fields of psychology and theology and essentially i'm interested in helping people come home to the container of their body once we come home in our body we realize that there's that intelligence there and that intelligence wants to help us move beyond what we call the wounded imprint so many people have used different terms for this movie calls it the mistaken identity eckert only talks about the pain and the pain body and i call it the wounded imprint so we're raised to believe we are this narrative of our wounded imprint and what we learn is that there's something greater beyond that that we are and it's our souls intelligence that actually defines that by so it's about bringing because people have a lot of definitions about the soul and what that is but you're saying again there's a oneness to soul and body yes and mind and emotions so how do you describe that well it is true that there's a lot of controversy about what exactly is the soul and i think that you know when you're in the realm of your soul that you're in that place so i like to think of it as something that is primordial and something that is indurain something that is beyond how you typically experience yourself in your mind and your cognition it's beyond the body the body emotion my sensation and so the soul essentially as i write about it is that part of you that is connected with something expansive something universal so i like to think of the individual soul which each of us has a unique soul and that connects with the universal soul so whether you call that god or you call that spirit or the divine or the universe it's something here that our individual soul is looking to with in that's the homeless yeah speak beautiful and poetically put and we can kind of really feel that and it's universal the way you're talking about it it's not tied to any dog or any particular philosophy it's just this universe ality of there's more to us yes there's more to us we are an essence that is less harder to describe and bigger than all that we ever think about yes although if you come from a faith tradition there can be a dog ma or a philosophy that my come into play and interact but in this process it's actually a direct communication so that your soul about the concept that we are both earth and sky earth and ether we are finite and infinite and so it's really that connection of the body and beyond the body the finite and the infinite that come into process so once you learn how to access the subtle body there's a communication there and whether you call it listening to that still small voice learning to go within there's a process there of circular receiving the communication and then actually communicating back and that's being received in that forms a circle that is diala chair while we're a dialogue so that's a third of the day i weather we're conscious about it or not whether or self aware it's always happening so that the universe is communicating people are communicating with us and so it's learning to receive those communications through the subtle body so it's the soul that is connected to the subtle body and so do you say that that's kind of the journey of the soul if there was a purpose so to speak of the soul too to remember that to experience that to reclaim that yes so the journey is for the soul to return home in the body so call young talked about the concept that the soul who actually wrote a book about qunu yoga which is where i draw from along with shamanism but the concept that the soul is looking to inhabit the body and that the body is looking to merge into something greater than just the body the soul so this is an interactive longing that these concepts these aspects are actually looking for something that each other offers so we begin to understand that there's this longing that becomes this interactive dependence that actually is the  kundalini yoga that you draw from those disciplines so talk a little bit more about the role the integration of those play within this sure so i began my therapy practice in eighty six and i really integrated systems theory which is understanding ourselves in the larger systems of our relatedness and dalt theory which is a body centered psychotherapy and it was in doing that for about fifteen years that i realised  working with clients that there was a piece missing so i had a background i have a master's in theology so of course i've always been curious about spirituality and the saw in college my studies were psychology sociology and self so we all know that in growing up we lose aspects of ourself where they go is greatly debated whether they go and hide out in little parts of ourselves or in crevices or whether they actually go out into the cosmos somewhere is a debated concept all i know is that they can be retrieved and they can be called home so the more we call these last parts of self home and these last parts of soul home we begin to actually fill out our skin we move into which is called the luminous energy field which is really coming home to our pure potentiality which is the the best greatness of the high and we are so how does that look sort of on a practical level when people how you integrate that i guess into your psychotherapy just a bit because i know you work with you know drumming and and and sound because i've had to do that you know i've experienced your work in groups but to the first time or how would you explain how that kind of shows up in a in a one on one or group setting well the way that would work is that you would you would start to get quieted by breathing and actually beginning to go in to your body's  interiority is how the young ian speak of it you begin to take your breath all the way down to the soles of your feet all the way up to the crown of your head and then you start travelling through your body i like to think of it as those night lights when you're hiking you have a late and you go in word in you start to explore any tension any tightness so the portal into the pathway in according to the shell theory is sensation so any sensation that you notice in your body is where you begin to focus your awareness and your tension and then you bring your breath there and then you start to give voice to that aspect of you and then some things starts to fill out and then you begin that dialogue of process and then calling in the drum is essentially awakening the heartbeat so all you're doing is you're trying to access that non self which is that soul consciousness that expanded aspect of you and so it's all about learning to dialogue with that inner process what we call in phenomenology the subjective experience so it's not about coming outside so in my work i'm not reporting you're not reporting and i'm not in a lies in i'm actually insulating you going inward when you learn to go inward you realise there's a deep conversation going oh yeah so many people are focused here right externally outwardly they think they have to look out there or up there even for those answers for that deep experience of themselves and who they are as a sole identity yeah it's really within as the shaman say and as many disciplines say that helps us to connect and expand yes so that that must be very it can be very profound obvious very profound work it profound yeah and and your question earlier you know that you're in that space because you experience yourself as pulsing in an magnanimous way you just know that you're in the potential experience and you feel it yes from your toes to the top of your head yeah it changes you for life and it does it does definitely awaken something in you that once awakened never goes completely dormant again absolutely so i encourage people to try these kinds of practices myself because they're so directly experienced on the drumming itself is such a catalyst yes so reaching those making it possible actually airing out so much of the static of the mind for the research shows it rick actually takes you into a theta brain w activities of four beats per second actually moves you out of the monkey mind to that busy busy brain and starts to access something something higher a higher consciousness we say that's a great place to start yeah yeah so anything you'd like to say just about maybe personally you as a person what makes you so special what do you love from your personal life who is in your personal life that you love and maybe just conclude with anything about your private practice which is here in this princeton area yes it is of course i love my son so i have two boys here to be a boy in five i'm a mom of two boys twenty five and twenty one my oldest is studying film and my youngest is physics so we have a lot to talk about all the time and then love i just love princeton i'm going to grow old here and my practice certainly feeds me tremendously but i am on the cusp of something i'm taking this work i think to a new next level and that's really about soulful communities so how do we begin to embody the characteristics of the souls of plato wrote a lot about the soul and the concept of right action and that there are certain characteristics of the soul sincerity  generosity peace the list goes on these twelve but the essence is that we can begin to live in seoul for ways as community and i'm hoping to take this work out into the global world certainly in these days i think we could use it we need to expect we want to expand it out yes why keep it so there is definite urgency right now not to keep it small just within our little circles but to really move it out into the world you know you know i certainly acknowledge you for that bigger vision and for the work that you're doing privately with people and with small groups around this area and others and i encourage people to certainly reach out to you so thank you thank you very much roberta for being on positive energy and it's an adventure really a pleasure so thank you thank you so much to use well i'm here with ann marie augusta welcome to positive energy thank you michel thank you so much for having me here it's really a pleasure it's a pleasure for me as well so you're a psychotherapist and you practice sophis mystical dimension of islam and students on this path are known as suzy dervishes and when you are yourself so tell us a little bit about what is a soofi and why sophism spoke to you on a spiritual knows rather than one who believes and and what i mean by that is is in order to believe you have to take somebody else's word for something right so whether it's you know a church or a teacher or a religious institution soofi as as a mystic of a slum is one who searches for her truth within so a sushi turns n word towards the heart towards that in the stillness to find the truth and once she finds that truth that is what informs his life is that truth so is that the part of it that really spoke to you initially that part that it's an inner and inner journey  connection yeah actually initially no initially you know i had i was raised catholic and and i was always drawn to the sacred heart as a child i would i had a very intense passionate connection to god and to the catholic church growing up i wanted to be known and it was all you know very passionate and then as i got older i kind of came away from that particular tradition and started exploring different traditions buddhism and  while there were studying as you know the different religious traditions but not in an academic sense and experience all sense so the way that one spirit does it is that with each tradition you actually plunge into the practices the mystical practices of each tradition so when we started studying islam i had come into this class i knew very little about islam and what i didn't know i didn't like it was kind of like you know all this talk about jihad and you know women having to cover themselves up and all of this stuff and you know i'm a feminist i'm a you know pacifist and i so i kind of came into this really what the lot of preconceived i was ready for an argument i was like ok well you know start to talk about this jihad and women and i'm ready to go to fight you know when and when she came in she got up there and the only thing that she talked about practices of sophism zuker means remembrance of god and the zucker wanted to practice in a communal sense involves chanting and dancing and whirling and when she brought this ceremony to the one spirit classroom i left that room i was in an altered state it was lots i loaded yeah and that evening during my prayer something amazing happened my heart just opened up the way they did when i was a child you know often people don't know much about it so that's why we're doing as but one of the images they have in their mind is the whirling dervishes and so you mentioned it's one of the traditional kind key practices and so say what the purpose is and what the experiences of whirling it is something that you do daily it's a form of meditation a form of prayer as you said right away so that the world is something that was said that the pro yeah his works the must not be and fema feely are actually known as the highest interpretation of koran so if you read rumi and you love rumi then you love koran because the form is you put your right hand up towards the heavens and your left hand down you just turn and you turn toward your left and that the left is the side of the body where the heart is so everything and sophism is oriented toward the heart and the idea is that as you were you receive the blessings from god from the law and that comes through your body through your heart and then you spread it out to the world and then the motion that  the dervishes engage in in our chanting involves putting the chin up to heaven and then down towards the heart and up again so if we're chanting allah it's separation i love that i love it it brings everything in it uses voice and body and emotion and ritual and intention and prayer and meditation sort of all coming together in what looks like this this dance although it's much much more than a dance yeah so that's a that's a really beautiful practice in terms of a traditional practice and i'm glad that you mention rumi too because it seems like rumi is even more well known than ever there is so much spiritual renaissance happening people talking about spirituality all its forms more than ever and roomies name always comes up because of his beautiful so much speaks in his and his beautiful poetry and it kind of bypasses people's i think misconceptions or their their conditioning because everybody can appreciate a beautiful poem beautiful words that express love light right love compassion and oneness yeah so i'm sure that your life has changed and to some degree since you sort of embrace this i know that you also have a  psychotherapy practice and you've managed to to marry those together to sort of bridge or it's always been or so tell me about your wrote your sophisms relationship to your psychotherapy practice or you know do you and how do you maybe integrate some of some of those beliefs so it's very interesting you know i never intended for that to happen you know but spirituality i see therapy as part of the continuum of of spiritual development you know so we were talking earlier about the heart you know so the heart is where you go to find truth you know but before you can find the truth in your heart you have to kind of clear away the layers that surround the heart the the corridors our teacher calls them the outer kora doors that are filled with these you know traumas and pains and sorrows and you know  misconceptions and you know anxieties you know and want and that's the task of of the human being that's we come into the world of the neurons so we kind of work on the heart and everything in life is grist for that mill so everything that happens in your life it's said you know no matter where you look you see the face of god so the task of the human being in this life is to look at the events of your life and interpret them according to the very highest thirty highest intention the highest thing that you can do in order to see the hand of god in everything so when i'm working with my clients as with myself we look at the events of their life in that kind of a light you know and understand that the reason for coming here is transformation you know many people come into treatment thinking oh i'm so i'm so broken my life is so terrible and why do all these things happen to me what did i do why is god punishing me why you know and this is kind of the conception the perception that people have coming in and once you're able to understand that these are the tools that the souls perfected by that the human being is refined by and then you look at your life in a completely different way so then it becomes easier to bear those horrid a you know you're able to see that when your heart is broken that as that teacher said that's where the li comes but it's difficult to do that on your own you need the support of somebody who understands what it's like to go through that first of all who also understands the different psychological processes that can get in the way in the kind of can kind of trip you up and also that has a completely nonjudgemental and compassionate understanding of you because without that people become frozen by shame so in order to bypass that you need to be doing this work with somebody that really and truly get to and that loves you and can see you the you that you're not necessarily seeing to be a witness to that to you as whole despite what you may be where you may be and to hold the space really kind of hold the intention for that so i really honor that you're bringing that into into your into the traditional psychological world and i think it does add more depth and dimension and more possibility and profound as to how people can really heal and so i really honor that salute while i honor it to come from  our work in the world as a we call it and so i know you i want to have you share a bit about your personal life kind of because there's also something very positive and hopeful that really goes well with what we're talking about in terms of just my my wife and i now have been together for nearly seventeen years and you know we raised our family together along with their father you know we have one of those modern families and it's been really one of the greatest blessings of my life to meet this woman we share the same kind of passion for helping people and over the past sixteen years we've done a lot of work with the marriage equality movement and you know social justice activism and this type of thing so when they finally passed the law that gay couples could get married we were just thrilled and so we were kind of waiting for the right time you know but you know despite our best intentions we can never quite get it together it was kind of like you know really i'm playing this timing was perfect just any way it was it was  as long as it's a last timing it's perfect timing if it's my timing it's not per that is why it didn't work out it had to be a last time and so what happened is that we were putting off we're planning this and planning this and all the plans with and then finally this past year we wanted  to get married under this current administration so we decided ok well why don't we plant something and then we couldn't get the license and time and this and that and finally at the very last minute everything just kind of came together we ended up getting our marriage license in less than twenty four hours and we were married on the orse of rumi on roomies wedding day and i on his feast day and it was a beautiful intimate ceremony that always to be celebrated and it's nice to know that we're being looked out for all right we're being guided and we're part of some larger plan and purpose and design so thank you for what you shared today and marie and i hope that people will reach out to you  and please continue to do the work that you're doing in the world so we're going to end with a little chair dancers want to thank you wonderful wonderful and honor you so much thank you so much for having me here well we're wrapping up another enlightening show i hope you enjoy the show and that you've got something new and valuable remember to keep your mind positive your heart open your vibes positive and be kind to one another thank you for watching join me next time on positive energy