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Staying Clear While Working with Trauma, Grief, and Human Suffering in an Ever More Distracted and Fragmented World

Indigenous peoples around the world, and ancient cultures such as those found in India and China, all developed their own traditional systems of medicine, systems that have been in existence for thousands of years. And in many cases, the therapeutic interventions within these traditions are far more effective for certain conditions than what modern medical treatment is currently able to offer.

At fourteen, when I first learned about the traditional Native American doctors, medicine men and women, I decided that if I was ever given the opportunity, this is what I would do with my life. At seventeen, I left on my own and made it as far as southwestern Oklahoma, where I lived among the Kiowa Tribe. During that time, I spent many nights sitting up in the peyote meetings with the Kiowa elders. It was in one of these meetings that I first met my mentor Horace Daukei, one of the last surviving traditional Kiowa doctors. Horace passed on portions of his own healing gifts to me. He then had me go on the vision quest, a traditional Native practice that typically involves fasting four days and nights alone in the mountains, without food or water.

Initially lacking confidence, my practice got off to a slow start. But as I learned, gained experience, and grew more proficient, my practice began to grow. In those early years, I was so naive, and I lacked so much of the understanding, skill, and capability that I now possess. And yet, despite those limitations, my schedule was filling up with appointments.

There were times when I did radio interviews and the phone would be ringing off the hook with people wanting to schedule appointments. Back then, people were much more connected. They had circles of friends, extended networks, and word traveled fast. I sometimes spoke to groups of people, and it was far easier to attract new people to work with.

There was also much greater consistency then. Over half of the people who started working with me would continue for months or even years. In many instances, the presenting issue would have resolved, yet they kept coming back because they recognized the healing and growth they were experiencing, not only in their health, but in themselves.

All of that began to change with the advances made in technology, smartphones, the internet, and social media. And while these changes have benefited us in many ways, people’s attention spans have grown so much shorter. They’re far more easily distracted, lacking self-awareness, disconnected from themselves, and increasingly isolated. For me, that means it can be much harder to reach people, to hold their attention, and to sustain the kind of focus that real healing requires. And those changes have only accelerated since we went into Covid lockdown in March of 2020.

I used to conduct weekly in-person classes in New York City, and every other week in Somerville, Massachusetts. I do my best work face-to-face, and yet so many people can no longer be bothered with showing up to in-person events.

Northern Idaho: Isolation, and Creativity

At the time of this writing, my mom is in her mid-eighties, and I’ve been spending more time at her home in Northern Idaho. And I’m assuming she’ll need more care as she continues to age. In all these years, I have yet to gain traction in this area the way I have in other cities and parts of the country, where I’ve worked with thousands of people.

I’m also more isolated while spending time in Northern Idaho, so I’ve been using this time to create. I’ve been writing articles, recording videos, creating guided meditations, and building online courses.

Having trained with a traditional Native American doctor, and having gone through so many vision quests, I work as a conduit, as Indigenous healers have done for thousands of years, allowing an extraordinarily powerful presence to work through me. People I work with feel this presence working in their bodies, facilitating a process in which they’re able to digest their lived experiences and emotions, while also supporting the healing of a wide range of physical health issues, digestive and respiratory disorders, sports injuries, and injuries resulting from automobile accidents, and more.

Late one night, years ago, as I lay in bed with my hands resting on my body, I noticed I could feel this same presence working deep within my abdomen. At the time, I was holding a lot of stress and unpleasant emotions in that part of my body, and I could feel them surfacing the next day. What I was feeling at the time was really unsettling.

At first, I was a little reluctant, because the emotions I was feeling were so disconcerting. But then I realized it was helping me bring to the surface, and then digest, the stress and emotions I had been carrying in my body.

During these times I’m staying at my mom’s place, and other times when I’m in Sri Lanka, I’m often up until around midnight. And when I lay down before falling asleep, I’ll place my hands on my abdomen, chest, and other parts of my body. I can feel the stress and emotions that have congealed in these areas. And as this presence works within my body, I can feel that congealing begin to dissolve. There are a lot of nights where I’ll continue to let this process work for an hour or two, or longer. That means I often don’t fall asleep until two or three in the morning.

Surprisingly, I still find I’m reasonably energetic and functional when I get up. And if I need to, I’ll take a short nap later in the day.

A lot of the congealed stress and emotions will surface when I get up in the morning, and throughout the day. I’m human, and having to work so much harder to reach people who are often lacking in self-awareness, distracted, disconnected, inconsistent, and flaky, does take its toll on me. As these emotions make their way to the surface, I sometimes feel engulfed in a thick cloud of stress, anxiety, and at times sadness, grief, and heaviness. I just allow all of it to come up. I make a concerted effort to remain present by breathing into whatever feelings or bodily sensations arise.

Interestingly, I notice that as I cycle through all these emotions, a sense of lightness begins to emerge. Yes, current circumstances are quite challenging. It’s much harder to maintain a practice as a result of the changes people have undergone over the past few decades. But as I continue with this process, I’ve also been getting a lot of insights and creative inspiration for the articles, videos, courses and the series of guided meditations I’ve been working on.

Instead of fighting the changes in people and in our world that have made this work far more challenging, I feel I’m much more accepting of what is. But I’m also feeling more determined to do what I can to reach people. I prefer to work one-on-one in person, because the work is so much more powerful and effective face-to-face. Yet with things as they are, I’m shifting my focus to working remotely and reaching people around the world. If people can’t show up in person to do sessions, or even pick up the phone to make a call, and they can’t maintain the sustained focus needed for true healing to occur, then I’ll create and sell courses and guided meditations.

Caring for Others …and Ourselves Amid a World in Transition

Those of us who carry responsibility for others still have to metabolize our own pain, stress, and emotional residue, or we eventually become compromised. We don’t get a free pass just because we’re the one helping other people. If anything, it makes it even more imperative that we return to our own inner work again and again, especially in a world that’s becoming ever more distracted, disconnected, and fragmented.

If I’m not digesting what life is putting me through, it has an adverse effect on me, even though I’m the one facilitating healing with others. Stress accumulates. Emotions congeal. The nervous system gets strained. And if I’m not paying attention, I can feel myself getting pulled into a diminished state, functioning under load, striving to do what needs to be done, yet not quite as effective, because I’m carrying a weight that begins to affect my clarity, my stamina, and my ability to stay fully present.

That’s why I do these late-night sessions. I’ll place my hands on my own body and allow the same presence that works through me when I’m working with others to work within me. I can feel it moving through the areas where stress and emotion have built up, helping it dissolve, surface, and finally be digested. It’s not always pleasant. But it’s necessary. It’s how I stay clear. It’s how I keep myself intact.

And the truth is, I’m having to adapt, not just professionally, but emotionally and spiritually. These late-night sessions have become one of the ways I do that. They’re part of what allows me to keep showing up, keep working, and keep caring for others without losing myself in the process.

For decades, I’ve been caring for others. And while I have a lot of concern seeing the direction people, and our world, are heading, a world that has gotten noisier, more distracted, and more numb, I’m also realizing I need to adapt. These late-night sessions have been helping me a lot with that.

And while I still intend to do as much as I can to care for others, I’m going to be placing a lot more emphasis on taking care of myself and my own needs.

If you’d like to learn more, you can message or call at (332) 333-5155 or visit HealMyHeartache.com, BreakupFirstAid.com, or BenOofana.com.

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