086 – Therese Jornlin: Taking Care of Your Birth

Sarah Tacy [00:00:05]:
Hello. Welcome. I’m Sara Tacy, and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown, and the pull feels real. Together, we share our grief, laughter, love, and life saving tools. Join us. Hello, and welcome to Threshold Moments. Today, we have with us Therese Dornland.

Sarah Tacy [00:00:43]:
It is such an honor and a long time of waiting patiently on both sides where we have both been living our own lives, but our circles very much overlapping. Therese in our community here in Maine, and I know that her reach goes far beyond Maine, But here in Maine, she is often looked to as a mentor. She is entering the phase soon of becoming a grandmother. She is a mother to 3. She has been on the spiritual path since the age of 14 when a traumatic event entered her life and opened her up to what is beyond ordinary living. And whenever anybody opens their life to beyond ordinary, to the extra ordinary and weaves it into the daily, they will, for sure, have a life with so many thresholds. My list of things I wanted to talk to Therese about, including her time with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and studying with Guru in India and her phase becoming a mother and her TEDx talk on what it means to reclaim the wisdom of the female body. And could just say on and on and on the diagnosis she got, the separation from her husband, and then what were the past with her children? There were so many points that I’m like, oh, we probably can’t talk about it all in an hour.

Sarah Tacy [00:02:37]:
And instead, we talked about the big awakening at the beginning. And what is death? How does it create the compost for the life that we are meant to live, that we are here to live? And for me in this conversation, I took it quite selfishly to explore the questions of why are we here? What’s it all for? And I heard perspectives that I actually haven’t heard quite this way before. Why am I here? And as I’ve been exploring deeper and deeper, what music is and movements and the way it helps move energy and our body and having and feeling expressions through the soul, she again, gave me another layer to consider. This episode was exactly what I needed at just this time. And I’m pretty sure I might listen back to it a few times because I feel like there is wisdom for me to absorb over and over and over again. What I’ll say, there’s this part okay. So she has a program called Women A Week that runs every year, and it’s online. So if you’re curious about how your biology can be a superpower, check it out at therese dornland.com.

Sarah Tacy [00:04:14]:
The other thing is that if you’re listening when this comes out, which is the beginning of October, you might have 2 weeks to get on a plane and join Therese in Peru. She has 2 spots left, and a few of my closest friends will be there. It is the sacred human in Sacred Valley of Peru, in which Charice will be joining up with a few other local medicine and wisdom keepers that she has become friends with over the years and will be sharing in explorations of nature and self and beyond with those who choose to go. It didn’t work out for me this year. I would love to be there. And so if you’re getting that little, , that little feel that it might be for you and you get into that last minute spot, man, I’m so excited for you. Otherwise, you don’t have to end up in Peru. Please enjoy the conversation and what it offers you in this time and space.

Sarah Tacy [00:05:30]:
Welcome to Threshold Moments. Today, we have with us Therese Jornlin. I often start with a bio, but I really feel like in this case, we are going to get to know Therese and her story throughout. What I will say is that I often perceive Therese as I don’t know if the elder in our community is the right phrase, but somebody who has lived a really full life of both awakening and I feel like, Therese, you have another term that maybe you can correct me in a second or update me, of like descending throughout life into the body, into earth, and with many stories to share, but also a heart that sees really clearly and has been so helpful for so many of us in this community up in Maine. And I know you also have an online community in finding our heart, our voices, our truth, our power, working with life and death. And so when my editor said, Hey, if your podcast were to end tomorrow, who would you wanna have on that you haven’t spoken to? I was like, oh, I would love to have Therese come on then. I haven’t invited Therese on yet. Also, it will be October when this airs.

Sarah Tacy [00:07:01]:
And so, although Threshold Moments has this innately woven into it, just this theme of what needs to die away. And so here we are with that. Welcome.

Therese Jornlin [00:07:14]:
Yes. Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be asked and have been actually really excited from a distance watching you create this space for yourself and for other people and for these powerful stories. So, yeah. Thank you.

Sarah Tacy [00:07:31]:
Thank you. When I asked you and I told you that this podcast was about people telling her story or history or their story for the purpose of accompaniment and that we would touch upon this idea of death as well, things that need to die away. You said, oh, the part of the cycle that we tend to resist and yet makes everything grow. And I’m wondering if you could say a little bit more about that.

Therese Jornlin [00:08:04]:
Oh, we’re going right for it.

Sarah Tacy [00:08:06]:
We’re just going right for it.

Therese Jornlin [00:08:08]:
Yeah. I have a, I have a campaign I want to start and it’s so not going to be popular, but it’s like, , bring death back, bring death back because death is the center of the creative cycle. And so without death or disintegrating or the autumn that we’re in right now, , these leaves are gonna be the fertilizing element. Whatever’s happening in the potency of winter is going to be the fertilizing element for whatever life is going to come. So it’s such a seminal healing to heal that belief that death is an ending. It’s not an ending. And without death, , the the change from decade to decade, to decade, every decade we’re, we’re asked to leave something. So that new skin, , the snake skin, the new skin can emerge in the twenties, in the thirties or whatever.

Therese Jornlin [00:09:12]:
And without death, we calcify, , I call it walking rigor mortis. So there’s so much of the world, our institutions, our systems that are just having so much time coming alive because of keeping things the same. And when we keep things the same, whether it’s marriage or friendship or work or whatever, we’re actually, it’s a fate worse than death. You know, it’s rigor mortis, it’s calcification. So, yeah, so that’s sort of seminal to my practice. I understand that every practice I do traditionally yoga is a death practice. You know, I’ve studied yoga and in different mindful movement forms. And I studied in India and my teacher after, , many, many months of studying, he says yoga is all about death.

Therese Jornlin [00:10:08]:
Yoga meditation is practicing your death, but do not put that in your flyer because no one will come. Yeah. So every, every time I sit or every time I practice, , the in breath, the out breath it’s right there. Always it’s in our biology, , so it’s, it’s returning to what our bodies know is the same as what the earth knows and bringing our mind, , bringing our consciousness back into our cellular memory of that truth.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:43]:
When you talk about the walking rigor mortis, I think I’m like going back to reading Thomas Hannah’s work, who I think is from like the 19 fifties or 1970s, His book was called Somatics. And he talks about sensory motor amnesia, where once we have something that holds in our body, once the pattern’s in there, and it holds out a certain amount of tonus And it’s a memory that’s holding and that we have this illusion that as we get older, we get stiffer. And he tells a story about a man going into surgery. And the doctor says, don’t forget not to eat before 9 o’clock. I’m making that part up. But Yeah. He says something, and the man turns around. And he’s so stiff that he has, , he has to turn his whole body.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:33]:
They turn his feet, turn his feet, turn his feet so he can see the doctor and go back. And then what was awe inspiring or causing curiosity is that as this man was coming out of anesthesia and there may be something in the anesthesia too that would do this. He was so fluid. He was like a baby. And so Thomas Hannah was curious about how much of our rigidity as we get older is truly the process of getting older and how much of it are the things that we hold and the personality that we become. And as I’ve watched my grandparents, my grandfather just passed away and my grandmother is 96. I’ve in this last year, she lost her husband of 72 years. She lost her older sister who was 97.

Sarah Tacy [00:12:25]:
And she just like is having sleepovers with her great grandchildren. And, and I’m not saying that she hasn’t taken time to mourn, but as I watch her and I have experienced my own griefs, I’m curious about being with death and allowing it to open your heart instead of solidify your heart.

Therese Jornlin [00:12:44]:
Right. Right. Right. Right. Very difficult in a culture that doesn’t understand and embrace death as the center part of the creative wheel. You know, very, very, very difficult. Yeah. So, so my, my journey with that began when I was a kid.

Therese Jornlin [00:13:04]:
So actually death is really my primary teacher. So when I was 14, almost 15, my father died very suddenly. 6 kids, very.

Sarah Tacy [00:13:19]:
Total,

Therese Jornlin [00:13:20]:
total up ending cosmic air, , in myself, my heart, the family, , it was a, it was a, a really, really big deal. And, and yet in, in at the same time, and this is the thing about thresholds, thresholds. It’s such a powerful place because, birth and death, the two ends of the cycle are in union. You know, they’re, they’re both there. So, so when they say threshold moments, we tend to go to like all the dramas, traumas, , but there are threshold moments where that are ecstatic. Also in that instance, I had, , major, , trauma drama that was happening. And at the same time, and this is a longer story, it was my first truly awakening experience. It truly was like the veil just got ripped open, not gently lifted.

Therese Jornlin [00:14:23]:
So it was this seeing things as they are experiencing love and light, but that I could never describe. And it also set me on a path because like, woah, what is this? And I knew it had to do with a radical death, like a physical death of myself, of dad, of the family. But what was more difficult was in years of somatic work and therapy and so forth, what was much more difficult about dad’s death? It was the, the lack of moving the energy, the lack of not just communal family, communal, but larger collective, communal. I’m going to call it grieving, but it’s just moving the power of so much love. So that, that, that didn’t get to happen was actually really the issue, the much bigger issue, because when he died, I saw the light, what I mean? It was like this. And if there was a container there, it would have been a different journey. I wouldn’t have also learned all I got to learn so that I can help people when they think they’re lost or think that they’re their story, ? So when you ask the question, how do you deal that? It’s like all of us who chose birth at this time, I feel are here to heal this seminal severance of death is life. We shouldn’t be comparing, oh, there’s life and death.

Therese Jornlin [00:15:57]:
There’s life and death. It’s like every time I hear that I get like a, I feel a twist in my body. It’s death is juxtaposed birth. If you want to have it juxtaposed to anything, but all there is is life. Death is an expression of life. Birth is an expression of life. And as we allow ourselves to traverse, surf, trip through the cycle of the human life cycle, but through my breath cycle, women have powerful access to this in their menstruation cycle. As I learned to traverse the whole cycle and allow for that I have it in my biology.

Therese Jornlin [00:16:38]:
The earth has it in hers. But as I do that, I get to also tap into what’s very hard to talk about, but I get to tap into what is unchanging. What is actually, , as the Buddhist would say, is never born and never die. You know? But you have to go through this belief that I’m born and I die over and over and over. That’s the gym I realized we’re supposed to be in. And I go to a gym. I love a gym, but it exercises this. I have control.

Therese Jornlin [00:17:12]:
I have power. I have muscle. It’s like a superpower is surrender. A superpower is being willing to be in the unknown, learning how to see in the dark. Because if you just think about it, whatever known you’re in right now was once unknown, , so whatever unknown I’m in, I’m journeying the cycle. I’m in an unknown now, , I have a biological biographical library to turn to, to help me keep learning, to see in the dark until the sun rises until form takes shape. Oh, there now I’m in the known. So that’s what I say to people is may you have as many identity crises as possible.

Therese Jornlin [00:18:05]:
I’m chasing the journey that cycle as often as possible. You know?

Sarah Tacy [00:18:09]:
When I was 24, I wrote a letter to myself. And sometimes I, like, curse this letter that I wrote. And it went something along the lines of, may I have, like, a midlife crisis, an identity crisis every day of my life?

Therese Jornlin [00:18:25]:
Yes. Sometimes when I’m in

Sarah Tacy [00:18:27]:
the middle of what it like, one of these, like, death cycles and not knowing the way out and not knowing the next step and not feeling good and in the pain, I’m like, did I write that? Like, it was probably inevitable anyway, but, like, come on, 24 year old self. Yeah. I think actually, I think one of the things that I was hoping when I wrote that was that if I had a bunch of micro deaths, I wouldn’t wake up in the middle of my life and say, who am I? Boom. But I was not correct. I wanna say some of the bigger ones I’ve, like I still sometimes have done, like have had moments where I look in the mirror and like, woah. Who’s looking back at me Yeah. To do some rearranging? Yeah. So I rock in that, like right? So I didn’t get to escape in, like, a like, big moments of unknown by doing a lot of micro moments.

Sarah Tacy [00:19:29]:
But I do think that was part of my hope. It’s like, if I just keep, , daily, like, sloughing away the skin, then I won’t have to shed the whole skin all at once. Yeah.

Therese Jornlin [00:19:40]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But those micro moments are again, it’s the gym. Those micro moments are the way that you build capacity and muscle and imagine a world where that consciousness was awake. You know, imagine your, your wisdom, your inner, your inner ancient crone at 24 or 26 was showing you something of the nature of this reality, ? So imagine if that just collectively was in the air, there would be no desire to escape. There would be excitement to see who I will be, , at that true coming of age, , like around fifties or something like that, , and you’re beginning that that journey.

Therese Jornlin [00:20:32]:
That’s the world I live in and, well, art.

Sarah Tacy [00:20:36]:
If I were to rewind our conversation a little bit, there were parts of your story that you were telling, and sometimes without a little bit more context, people could only guess. And I’m wondering when you talk about having both the threshold of death of the whole constellation of what family looked like one moment before too. So what I think you’d shared with me was, like, the next day having, I don’t wanna call it a spiritual awakening unless that’s what you call it, but I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t even know. Maybe perhaps it was. Whatever it was that you could even walk us through, like, what happened? How did that look like? How does that happen in day to day life? What what was the experience? Could you say another thing or 2 about

Therese Jornlin [00:21:26]:
Yeah. I can try, , because it was so not of my day to day, , the ordinary mind, I think is gratefully, , needs a structure and needs, needs ordinariness, ? So this, this experience took me to the extraordinary consciousness, I guess I would say. But just the, if I just 0 in on that seed as best I can, I’m young, I’m a kid, , pretty, pretty innocent. And we have a big family, strong family. They’re very dynamic parents, very active, active family. It was, , could be exhausting. Dad even would say, , I’m going to outlive you all. You know? So just seeding in these insane messages.

Therese Jornlin [00:22:17]:
I never saw my father sleep, ? So there was a whole lot of experience or elements, conditioning, whatever that I mean, any, any child would be shocked, but there was, there was something extraordinary about his bigness, ? And so to have the opposite happen where there are middle of the night, there are horrific sounds coming out of mom and dad’s room and I’m awake in my room’s next to theirs. And my mom, I’m standing at the door, shaking her hands, like something’s wrong with daddy, something’s wrong with daddy. You know, everybody, , tears down all 5 of the 6 of us were home, , tears into the bedroom and there’s my father having massive heart attack. So, so the sounds and the movement and the visual and my 2 little brothers and, , my sister, , on top of him trying to give him, , resuscitate him. And then he was on a bed and then these little boys trying to get him on the floor, ? So the, the scene was like, , made for the movies, , kind of thing. So it was searing and we call a neighbor who’s a doctor and he comes and he’s, , on him, hitting him quite hard. And, and then he just looked at my mom and, and, and shook his head. And it was like, what? It was, It was extraordinary, actually, because I, as a young kid, now I know more about who I am.

Therese Jornlin [00:23:51]:
Even in that moment, I had a weird kind of calm and seeing. I was able to see, and I know I have that gift now as an older person, but but it was visually, , very gruesome, very hard, , to to deal with. So that emotion, that much energy, if we just look at it as energy, I think had everything to do with blasting the ordinary, just blasting it open. And then we began the dance, which I knew nothing about of how we do grief. You know, all these people, he was also, very well known in the state. So it was really public and it was on the front page of the paper and the flags were half masked. And so it was all this stuff going on. And I’m just a solo kid, like where’s my dad, ? So it was this, but no one was explaining it or, or, or holding us.

Therese Jornlin [00:24:50]:
And all of us got kind of jettisoned to our own islands, , and, and mom, , God bless her. I, , 6 kids and, and she, , hold your head high, , kind of thing. And I’m just like, why aren’t we crying? And, and all these people coming to the house with food and telling stories. I was so confused by these dear friends who love my dad. I just didn’t know the ritual. You know how you have tons of macaroni and cheese come to your house and all of that, , And I’m like, We’re all hanging out. And Ellen, like, Why aren’t we all keening? You know what I mean? So I was just bumbling along in this scene and grabbed the newspaper because there was my dad, , in the front of the newspaper and I curled it up and it was dark. And I just went to go take a walk around the block, which is not something I did, , by myself.

Therese Jornlin [00:25:46]:
And this is where it’s just really hard to explain. I got barely around the block and it was, it was dark and it was like a curtain lifted and an intense light, but it wasn’t light, like a spotlight. It was like a pulsing is a pulsing, so gentle, which is even too strong a word for it, daylight, but it was like nighttime. And this incredible, is what I imagine I’ll merge with when I die. It’s what I feel when I’m in a really good meditation day, ? So it’s hard to describe, but it was a cellular experience that also set my heart on its path. And I remember returning home, but I was also groveling in the change, the both and, , but quietly I was like, woah, this isn’t going away. This is a compass now for my life. So then I began, , journey of going about life as usual, somehow, , no, no real grieving as a family or anything.

Therese Jornlin [00:27:11]:
And you go back to school and there weren’t therapists or anything like that. And everybody knew our family and nobody’s talking. And then I felt bad for people because they felt bad, ? So then the whole taking care of people thing and not talking thing, but I kind of lived in the middle world here, , and, , academics and athletics and all of that, but I had a whole other world that, that had, connected with me. And I would even use the word later in my life. Well, not later in my life, like about 4 years later, I had another experience where it was, it was like being subsumed, like being seduced, happily seduced, ? So the energy, the energy and the awareness, and you use the word descend, , I hear the, I hear the word Ascension, which I kind of, I get, but I actually think we, we need to descend. We I don’t know if we’ve ever really been here, , like how do we, as humans bring in this energy from within our cells, from within our, I’m gonna call it our DNA. You know?

Sarah Tacy [00:28:27]:
As you’re doing that and I’m watching you move your hands down, it’s reminding me of a time when you were talking about how do we descend and I don’t I’m gonna add an element because I would love for you to clarify if this feels true or not. Do you feel like part of the descending into the human body? I heard you say the light within. Do you also feel like our bodies are trying to grow their capacity to be able to take in that light that you experienced, whether it’s in, , meditation or laying on the couch, like that ability to take in another light that’s even beyond us and be able to digest it into ourselves and into our body.

Therese Jornlin [00:29:15]:
Yeah. So what, what I would say is it’s so much about receiving. This was so powerful because this situation was so extraordinary that it wasn’t even a question of receiving. It just was, ? But in terms of the practice, what I’ve come to is how much can I receive? And I’m not sure to be honest, if any of it is outside myself, , so it feels like it’s beyond me, but I think what I’ve come to that it is me. It is us and we are expanding our bandwidth into what’s already within me. Does that make sense?

Sarah Tacy [00:30:05]:
It does ish. Yeah. Ish.

Therese Jornlin [00:30:07]:
Yeah. It’s it, it’s hard. It’s like not, it’s just not outside me. I think everything outside me gives me a metaphor, so to speak for this, that we cannot name. So the sun, I mean, the sun is a, there’s a source in the central sun, and then it expresses itself in these different rays.

Sarah Tacy [00:30:31]:
Yeah.

Therese Jornlin [00:30:32]:
That appears to be Sarah appears to be trees. And we live, live that light out as a forgetting and a remembering, oh, an individual on the one unique Ray that will never be again. And my sole responsibility as my one teacher says is to my birth is to that expression and it’s connected to one source. So it’s like, I am one of a kind and I’m the one or the one of many or Yeah. Oh, these words.

Sarah Tacy [00:31:07]:
Yeah. He said my sole responsibility is towards my birth and Take care of your birth. Take care of your birth. And I’m wondering in an in another conversation we we had and I I understand again, this is like a word thing, but I’m like, ah, there’s, like, some nuance here that I wanna Yeah.

Therese Jornlin [00:31:24]:
Go and

Sarah Tacy [00:31:24]:
deal into, which is, like, we are not here just to heal. And I think that when you say we are here to tend to my birth, there’s a difference there. And I’m wondering if you can speak a little bit to the difference between, like, being here just to heal and being here to tend to your birth.

Therese Jornlin [00:31:45]:
Yeah. What? Okay. I was sharing, sharing with you this story when I was in ceremony with some people and I’ve worked with a lot of people and 1 on 1 with people and, , the, the, the need. I go to someone or someone comes to me or signs up for a workshop or something and is there to deepen their understanding of themselves or to continue to heal. And I don’t know, I snapped, , something snapped in my brain when I was experiencing these beautiful, beautiful beings as I see them. Yes. With challenging stories that have created maybe challenging personalities, but that’s not what I see, ? And I know we need to bring those parts back to, to the heart, back to love. But it’s painful, , when I see it like looping, , kind of thing.

Therese Jornlin [00:32:42]:
And what’s happening is then there’s a seeding in of this identity or this, this story. And they’re both true, , it’s like, I need the story to realize there’s no story, ? So I just sort of, I snapped in hopefully a gracious way, but I just blurted out at the integration the next day. Like we did not come to the planet to heal. And I heard myself go. I was like, oh my God. And they looked at me and, and I said, it’s these stories are here to be brought back into the source of the sun, , and to be activated as the sun into your unique expression of life force. So if I clarify it, this planet is, is the planet of forgetting and forgetting is just a part of the gig and in our forgetting, we are compelled to remember. I don’t know.

Therese Jornlin [00:33:46]:
That’s just what happens here in the 3rd dimension, ? So healing is essential, but it is just the beginning. Like there’s a point where you get a sense of your larger self and you start to realize, oh, these are deep things in me, in my ancestry, in the collective that in and through this body, I am, I am going to bring it back to the source, to the degree that I can. What I don’t, my children will pick up and they’ll do the same for a way bigger story. You know? So there’s a point in life and I do think it, it kind of can begin to happen, especially if a person is, is on a path around mid forties or so where the stories that we’ve lived can start to be so integrated that they can start to be used as sharings or teachings, if you will, because what I’ve been through and you’ve been through they’re seminal. It’s like any good myth, , there’s seminal themes. There’s nothing really new under the sun or, , my trauma isn’t better than your trauma or harden or whatever, ? So we came here to remember let’s call that healing that I’m already whole. And in even a taste of that, I then can enter a phase of what I’ll call activation. Again, the word is kind of feeble, but I get to feel an activation of my place of my inescapable place of belonging.

Therese Jornlin [00:35:22]:
No matter what thoughts I’m thinking about myself, then it’s my inescapable need that the planet has for this particular ray of the sun. Because our, our work here is about the planet. It’s about her evolution, her bandwidth expanding. And if we knew that we are the planet, I’m not on a planet, , I, you, am the planet. And, , I just came up out of the ground and, but it’s really about her evolution. So that would be, I would say my phase of activation. And that began very consciously around my mid thirties with doing the work of reclaiming and remembering the recovery work of being female. That’s when that whole thing realized like, woah, I’m planetary body.

Therese Jornlin [00:36:23]:
And that is being activated in me through probably one of the most powerful thresholds for me was, pregnancy and labor and, and birth. And then having that heart wide open. I call it the lower heart for the rest of my life and not knowing I could never close it again. You know, so that, that happened then. And then when we are activated, whether it’s through a somatic thing or through plant medicine or whatever, then the task is of stabilizing. How do I stabilize this expansion of energy in that inner template, the inner culture that I’m cultivating. That’s what the cultivations are. I’m creating, building, aligning with the kingdom of God.

Therese Jornlin [00:37:14]:
You know, that to me is what the second coming is, , is when each human being really knows who we really are and why we’re really here to meet each other and help the planet. So I hope that helps touch in on what my teacher said to me that I had to live with for a while. But I have my mother, 3 kids and he, and he says, no, no. The only thing, the only thing that’s in your care, the only thing you’re to focus on is taking care of your birth. And now I understand what he meant is if I take care of my birth as an expression of creation, if I really use my biology, my breath cycle, my menstruation cycle to align with my bio rhythms. If I honor my biography as the primary textbook, as a holy scripture, All of their sources are secondary sources, , because they come through this biology. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s continuing to it’s weird because it sounds to keep putting your, your, your birth and the, and the, and the privilege and the choice of birth to be able to cycle chi, to be able to align and remember source energy as the, the only, actually the only thing I can offer anybody. And I would say to him, but my kids, , when you take care of them, there’s so many things that you need to do.

Therese Jornlin [00:38:49]:
There’s so much that needs help in the world and dah, dah, dah, dah. And, and, and he’s like, and if you’re taking care of your birth and you you’ll know how to engage and you won’t be acting out of lack. You won’t be acting out of something’s wrong or this person coming to me needs fixing, which is so what we have going on now. It’s painful.

Sarah Tacy [00:39:14]:
Yeah. I’ll say for myself, as I was listening to you, the idea of being the planet and here for the healing. I don’t know if you said the healing of the earth. It like Expansion. Expansion of the earth.

Therese Jornlin [00:39:32]:
For her her enlightenment.

Sarah Tacy [00:39:34]:
Her enlightenment. Yeah. It was wholly different than anything I’ve heard before. I really quite understood it. And so I really appreciate that. That’s something for me to

Therese Jornlin [00:39:44]:
Oh, good.

Sarah Tacy [00:39:45]:
Iterate on. So thank you. Before I got on here with you, I laid on a hammock directly underneath a tree and the bottom limb was maybe just 2 feet from my face. And I was just playing with

Therese Jornlin [00:39:59]:
like, I wonder if I lay here,

Sarah Tacy [00:39:59]:
if the tree can see me, I can can see her? Which I know is different than what you’re saying. But but also, perhaps, the similarity of me being part of the earth and trying to really understand that. And as I say this, so I hear what you’re saying and it’s making sense to me. And I wonder as I’m saying back, if there may also be listeners who are like, what is Sarah talking about becoming the truth? Like the truth. But I’ll just I’ll leave that there. And I just wanna say thank you so much because that is really something that lands with me. And you, at the end, were talking about moving Chi. And that brought me back to the beginning when you talked about having this extraordinary experience with your father’s death and how it broke the ordinary and how big the sensations were.

Sarah Tacy [00:41:01]:
Right? The, like, the sounds, the sight, the feel, the that there was and that you weren’t given a place for it to move. And I’m wondering if you could speak a little bit I I kinda have these two things in my head of with a death cycle or with life, death together, moving energy, moving chi, place to go, the individual Re and community. If you could envision a way for our community to be with the cycle and it in I’m I’m guessing that will be part of, , being with our menstrual cycle and being with, but if, if like at the threshold of where the last breath leaves a body and a family is there to be with that, how would you envision a way for people to come together in support of continuing the movement of the energy that’s there and honoring one another?

Therese Jornlin [00:42:12]:
I would say, imagine, a future that’s so textured and layered and is so natural that when, when there is challenge or when there is a drama trauma like that, that the community, that the, that the drums are drumming at a birth is happening, ? So, so for me, that that lives as, as a, as a, as a present awareness, And yet it’s not informed outside me, ? So I think the first thing, which is so different than when I was young is there, there are things at a school, , know that there are psychotherapists. There is talking about this. And now we have, have the word trauma, , trauma, informed trauma. And in some ways I have concern about that too, that I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna go down that exit, but where there’s something about the need to deprivatize quote unquote, trauma. There’s some of what it means to be in skin that includes death and loss and challenge and the whole emotional wheel, , experiencing all of it. That’s what we’re here for. It’s to experience all of it. So there’s something about deprivatizing trauma and normalizing, not even normalizing, reclaiming our cyclic nature and normalizing what right now is called vulnerability.

Therese Jornlin [00:44:00]:
That’s so scary to, to, to, to be just in the feeling, in the energy of something without a story, ? And I, and I see, you see that happening in some groups. So it’s how to circle, , I mean, one of my dreams and I think it’s possible today is how, how to just create the circles that have intent, very simple format where people just firemen get together, , and they’re really supported and a safe container is created so that they can start, and prompts are given that help them share just some of their real experience. And then one starts sharing and then the other start sharing. And some of the thing I experienced is we’re so starved for this. So, so malnourished, starving that when there are groups gathering in, in different ways, People are so starving, , that because it’s not going to come again. There’s not going to be another circle like this where I can do it. So, , I imagine a day where it’s, , I call it like, we didn’t use to have coffee shops 30 years ago. We did not have coffee shops.

Therese Jornlin [00:45:21]:
Like Starbucks started something and now we act like there were always coffee shops, , like imagine that there were, I don’t know, nests, , there was nests in your city or what would we call them? Human being circles, , human being centers or something where you can come get some oxygen, ? So I, I think gathering together, but especially for women, for women, it is a health risk not to be gathering. Period, just in any way, , just to be, to be gathering. But in studies have been done on this, that the activation that happens in the vagus nerve for women, the dopamine, serotonin, all the happy hormones, their brains light up. Then they did studies when women gather in safe containers, healing so much of the divides that have happened between, between women, understandably given our 2,000 year history. But when they gather in safe containers to have a space to talk about the real stuff, just their real experience of fear, lack, shame, embarrassment, rage, whatever that the vagus nerve, it turns on it more so than we, when we gather in a book club or something like that. And these studies are well known. Yeah. So part of my dream is all right.

Therese Jornlin [00:46:55]:
If we get that on a billboard, , women are caretakers and they’re, they’re initiating this whole personal development movement. You know, like if women really knew it literally is a health risk, not to gather period and not to share authentically. So how do we create safe spaces for, for that to happen? And part of my life has been about doing that in very deep ways, but it doesn’t, , also doesn’t need to be in deep ways. So that’s a collective thing. And then individually, we have to be committed to what I call cultivations, really practicing, transforming our days into helping me reclaim the sanctity of the body and the holiness of breath and the preciousness of life in its expressions and other humans and nature or so forth. So there are traditional cultivations, , yoga, qigong, , I think some of that has been confused in the west, , with what are you going to practice in a daily way when life is boring, , so that you have access to it when you’re getting knocked, because what I can’t get to on my own life will help me, , it will course correct me. Maybe it’s diagnosis of which I’ve experienced. Maybe it’s a complete explosion of my marriage, which I’ve experienced.

Therese Jornlin [00:48:41]:
You know? So in those cases, I need life to help me because there’s something very deep that I couldn’t quite get at. Now, thank God I had 20 years of cultivation practices, ? So there was a semblance of a foundation for me to understand what was happening. I just don’t see systemic change without individuals taking care of their birth, , without individuals realizing they, they have the answers and the resources within them. Yeah. So the cultivations are very important and they need not be the traditional, but some kind of routine thing that you create to bring yourself back. So I’ve done things for businesses. How do you slow yourself down in the business? How do you, , that plant you see in your office, you make a commitment to breathe. You build, you have a stone at your desk, , just what are the outer things you can do to help you slow down, which literally changes your biology.

Therese Jornlin [00:49:47]:
So this isn’t like esoteric, your nervous system changes. You go to your car, no matter how late you are to pick up your kid, you’ve made the commitment to walk super slowly. And you do that practice every day. And then we start to slowly transform, transform our shower, our cup of coffee, our, , I hope I had a thread there somewhere.

Sarah Tacy [00:50:13]:
Yeah, you absolutely did. I’m sitting here. I’m trying to think of the word, if it’s awe or gratitude, for right timing for me to hear everything that you’re sharing.

Therese Jornlin [00:50:25]:
Awesome. See, there’s a bigger story, storying us. I love that.

Sarah Tacy [00:50:30]:
And the 2 things come to mind. And one is my great aunt was hit by a car when she was 19 and it was during world war 2 and they gave her 3 weeks to live. And she then lived 3 months. And during this time, she wrote letters to all of the men she knew that were at war. And when they came back and there were people who had, , who were amputees or paralysis, they had access to the latest technology. So they shared it with her. And it didn’t mean to go into too much of her story just yet, but just to say that she had a home called Desiderata. And

Therese Jornlin [00:51:13]:
one of

Sarah Tacy [00:51:14]:
the lines talks about cultivating these practices. You know, it doesn’t say, do breath or do, , but it’s just like, cultivate the practices in time of wellness. So that when you guys that really knock you off your path, have that as a resource.

Therese Jornlin [00:51:34]:
It’s a muscle.

Sarah Tacy [00:51:35]:
The circling that you spoke of for women, I’m I’m seeing that. I was just at one this weekend with a 150 women, and I was just so sure that, like, it couldn’t be great. Right? It couldn’t this is gonna have to be fake. It’s gonna have to be too highly cultivated. And it was one of the most beautiful holdings of space that I’ve ever seen where everyone just got to be there as they were with what they had and where whatever hierarchy was there at the beginning was just really throughout the 3 days kind of diminished. And I’m feeling like sharing the scene, even though it may have nothing to do with what you said, which was on Saturday night, they had this woman who used to be a life coach who was like, I feel so alive when I’m dancing with techno music. And, like, this is all that this is, like, what does it for me? And she’s become a DJ in the last year, and she was out of this, like which they just brought me to these other places and we all it was a silent disco, so we all had these headphones on and

Therese Jornlin [00:52:38]:
it’s, like,

Sarah Tacy [00:52:38]:
raining out. And at some point, it’s like, feel the rain on your I don’t know if it’s face or skin or whatever. We’re outside. And just like anyway, so it was a full weekend of circling and then just all of these opportunities to really feel the sensation of being alive, , no matter what spoke on the wheel we were feeling. And and I can’t put words to what the weekend did to me, except that I’m so grateful I had it. And maybe one other thing I’ll say about except that I’m so grateful I had it. And maybe one other thing I’ll say about circling is also really seeing the power of men’s groups or then when they we come back together in whatever way. And I’m sure there are many other groups that wouldn’t identify, like, women’s groups or men’s groups.

Sarah Tacy [00:53:21]:
Like, however people find their circle, how big it’s been for the people that my husband circles with and that he’s circling with. It’s like, oh, a space to say what’s real.

Therese Jornlin [00:53:34]:
Right. Right. And I mean, back to your aunt, it’s like cultivating practices. And so when I feel the group of women that gathered, it might feel to you like it’s in the past, , this past weekend, but it, when we gather, it generates a field of energy and we are so hungry and in such need, especially women, estrogen must be with estrogen for the system to really come alive. It’s just our, our wiring. And so imagine one day when we gather like this and it’s routine, it’s, it’s not just, , a weekend immersion thing. And we understand that it is affecting the planet, literally the soil and the waters of the planet. It is a social justice action.

Therese Jornlin [00:54:32]:
It extends. We’re creating a field of energy and it extends beyond wherever that gathering was. And then imagine if everybody knows, knows that because you are more than just yourself And dance the whole return of dance. I mean, that’s my, like, that’s my, I mean, I do a lot, , several different practices, but that’s the one where I really get to lose my mind. You know what I mean? It’s like mind gone. My neck probably shouldn’t be doing this, but my mind’s not there. So I’m,

Sarah Tacy [00:55:01]:
My neck snaps so loud. I was dancing so hard. My neck went, like, pop. And I was like and then my knee.

Therese Jornlin [00:55:08]:
I was like, oh my god. But I You can’t think. If you think, then you’ll hurt your back. You know, it’s like, nope. Don’t think. My neck’s just gonna keep doing this, . Hey, keep going.

Sarah Tacy [00:55:18]:
But dance, I wanna also just highlight that dance has been a big one of just, like, not dancing for how it looks, but, like, what wants to move? What wants to be expressed? What? And it’s just been so epic. Like Yeah. I could go from epic to healing to slow to,

Therese Jornlin [00:55:35]:
And the emergence of dance in our culture, , and it’s it’s showing up as ecstatic dance or contact dance or, and okay. Raves or whatever they are, but a seed of, of getting back in the body, getting feeling rhythm, feeling, , our, our, our, , Darrell calls it and he’ll do this little shake of his shoulders. He goes, then you feel the movement, , and what we’re feeling is a movement of the planet, the movement of the planets, that raw, , that we are. So this, this whole return of the dance has been, , where there are humans, there’s the drum where there are humans, there’s been dance, , and it was done consciously, , and joyfully and celebratory, not just for my myself. We just knew that mama’s getting massaged, , with our feet.

Sarah Tacy [00:56:32]:
Oh, I love that. I didn’t really, like, took me a second to know what you’re talking about when you said mom was getting a massage. I was thinking your body in your bed. Yeah. Like, , your body on the earth, your movement of your feet on the earth. And you mentioned the drum too because East Forrest is on this month. And I think from that conversation for me, he has a movie coming out called Music for Mushrooms. And when I asked him a question for it, the way he answered it with how the mushrooms are also just opening us up to be the music, right, and, like, to amplify the music.

Sarah Tacy [00:57:05]:
And I heard him answer the opposite of how I asked it. And so since then, I’ve been, like, just this whole different appreciation for music as well. So yeah. And I know, I did a drum class with you too and just it’s that is growing me. I know that we know that sound heals. You know, that like, I know. But it’s like as the more it gets, like, the different layers, the different perspectives that it comes into me, the different ways I feel it, it’s all really nourishing.

Therese Jornlin [00:57:32]:
Yeah. It’s all sound and light. You know? It’s all sound and light and just becoming conscious of it. And then science is both catching up and helping these beautiful minds that we have that think we need science. And, and, and it does, it does help to have an understanding, but for me, I don’t need a scientific explanation for when I enter the dance. I, in some ways I could say it’s a death experience. I go away. Something is moving me something way bigger than me.

Therese Jornlin [00:58:05]:
Ah, that’s me too.

Sarah Tacy [00:58:08]:
And we’re going to close out there. I so appreciate your time and I almost feel like I might listen to this episode on repeat as my body can take it in. It feels like the right medicine for me here and now at exactly where I’m at, including the idea of how the field of ceremony continues on.

Therese Jornlin [00:58:32]:
Oh, thank you.

Sarah Tacy [00:58:33]:
I tend to close out with a show me statement slash prayer and we’ll see what happens. Help me to honor, see, feel all the way that the micro and macro deaths are birth to have any sense of acceptance for exactly where I am and how I am and the possibility of tending to my birth. Help me to feel deeper in my skin, what it might mean to be here for the expansion of the earth that I might be part of her. Help me to see, feel, and sense the interconnectedness of music, movement, light, embodiment, individual ray, and community. Let me really, really get that circling is part of my birthright and a necessity for this earth. And may I walk forward with my hearts? As Therese mentioned the second heart, my heart’s receptive. I’m noticing myself the desire to take an inhale and an exhale. Thank you all for joining us until next time.

Sarah Tacy [01:00:30]:
And thank you, Therese. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. It’s been such a pleasure. If you’re looking for added support, I’m offering a program that’s totally free called 21 days of untapped support. It’s pretty awesome. It’s very easy. It’s very helpful.

Sarah Tacy [01:00:58]:
You can find it at sarahtacey.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe and like. Apparently, it’s wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom. Subscribe, rate, maybe say a thing or 2. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it. It’s totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again.

Sarah Tacy [01:01:21]:
Thank you so much.