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Beyond Blind Blaming
Stop Suppressing, Start Healing: How to Unlock Emotional Freedom Through the Body | John Wood
00:41:32
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- [00:01]
John Wood
How do you perform under pressure? Do you shut down? Do you collapse? Do you quit?
- [00:05]
Kevin St. Clergy
Today I'm joined by John Wood, who's the founder of Rageheart. After years of struggling with anxiety, depression and emotional repression, John discovered the power of working directly with the body's natural responses to stress, trauma and suppression.
- [00:18]
John Wood
All the self help things that people say to do, meditation and affirmations. I'd done so much of it, and yet it always felt like something was missing. Something was not really clicking. I went down this rabbit hole of somatic therapy. I was like, this is what I've been searching for this whole time. If you're not able to express your anger, work with it in a healthy way. It'll either go out at the people around you or it goes internal. How do you actually get that anger out? This will make your entire life better. You are going to be happier, healthier, stronger.
- [00:46]
Kevin St. Clergy
So if someone listening is struggling with anxiety, what do you think is the first thing they can do today to start reconnecting with their instincts?
- [00:53]
John Wood
The first thing that I teach people is.
- [01:08]
Kevin St. Clergy
Welcome to Beyond Blind Blaming. This is the place where we explore how easily hidden truths can hold us back, trapping us in cycles of frustration and blame, often without even realizing what's truly stopping us easily. Each week, I'm joined by experts and professionals who share their journey of taking back control of their story, overcoming hidden challenges, and stopping blind blaming from dictating their outcomes. The insights you're about to gain will help you see beyond your current limitations, find the courage to seek new perspectives, and ultimately live a life that's both purposeful and powerful. So if you're ready to break free from blind blaming and discover what's possible, you'll definitely want to listen to my next guest. I'm your host, Kevin St. Clergy, and today I'm joined by John Wood, who's the founder of rageheart, powerful platform and podcast designed to help people reclaim their instincts, embrace their emotions, and unleash their inner strength through a unique blend of primal therapy, nervous system regulation and self discovery. After years of struggling with anxiety, depression and emotional repression, John discovered the power of working directly with the body's natural responses to stress, trauma and suppression. Rageheart was born out of this journey to break free from the mental loops and societal conditioning that keeps so many people stuck. Today, we're going to dive into his story, the philosophy behind Rageheart and how people can tap into the raw, primal power to find freedom and clarity in their lives. Welcome to the show, John.
- [02:30]
John Wood
Thanks for having me, Kevin. Good to Be here.
- [02:32]
Kevin St. Clergy
Well, let's start with your journey that I just read about and what led you to the creation of Rageheart.
- [02:37]
John Wood
Five years ago, I was in Thailand. I was living in Chiang Mai, dating a beautiful woman. And really to. Right around that time, we'd started to work with some coaches. Some was a married couple. You know, they worked with psychedelics and magic mushrooms and did some other different techniques and things as well. And we became friends. We were hanging out, and then one day I did a mushroom ceremony with them. And during the ceremony, which was intended to be a sort of healing ceremony that helps you out, I ended up on their living room floor while the husband is supposedly channeling from aliens from a different galaxy, speaking an alien language as though like something out of Star wars, like a language in Star wars where you hear the aliens talk. So he's talking like that, like he's on the phone to these guys. And anyway, over the course of maybe a couple of hours, it comes out that I've supposedly killed 20 million people in a past life, different galaxy, not on Earth, of course. So there's no way to verify any of it. And it was a whole thing. And coming out of that experience, at first I was like, oh, you know, I rationalized it away. I think, as people tend to do in situations like this, it's not that big of a deal. I'm okay. Like, I'm not going to go and kill myself or anything like that. Like, it didn't mess me up in that sense, but it created a certain kind of doubt. And so after a few months, I hadn't told many people because people. I didn't think people would understand because it's just so far out, so crazy compared to what people's idea of what reality is. And so I just thought that people wouldn't understand. But after about a few months, I started to ask these questions where I'm like, this is wrong. You shouldn't do this to people. You can't tell people this normally, let alone when they're on magic mushrooms and they've trusted you to help them to heal them. And so I started asking questions and then got into a bit of some difficult conversations with these coaches because I was trying to understand, why did you do this? What was the reasoning behind it? It doesn't make sense. And eventually didn't get anywhere with them, of course, and spoke to a friend and he said very quickly, she's gaslighting you. And at that point, I didn't. I heard that word before, but I didn't really know what it meant. But I went online, did some searching and found some articles about, you know, gaslighting in general. But there's also spiritual gaslighting. So just for people who are listening in case they don't know what gaslighting is, it's when you, let's say someone makes a mistake. You're a friend, a family member, it happens a lot in families. One makes a mistake, it's a genuine mistake, you can tell it's a mistake, you know it's a mistake, it was wrong, whatever they said or did. But when you confront them about it and tell them, hey, I really don't like how you did this thing, instead of doing the right thing, which is to apologize, take responsibility, let me know how I can do better next time, that sort of thing, the person turns around and says, hey, something's wrong with you. Like I think you're just a bit, you got a screw loose in the head, man. You've, you're just not grateful for all these nice things we've done for you or it's not that big of a deal. There's all these things that manipulative people ploys or strategies or things that they say to get you to take the blame for something that they did. That's essentially what gaslighting is. So what these people were doing was that was kind of saying, we haven't done anything wrong. Essentially we are fine, but you have something wrong with you. Something's wrong with your thoughts, your feelings. We can help you work through it, but we're not going to apologize for anything. We're not going to take any responsibility, we're not going to admit any wrongdoing. So anyway, that was where all this started. And I had this conversation with this friend and then we learned about gaslighting and then realized, okay, these people are more or less bad people. Simplifying it a little bit. Three months after that mushroom ceremony, I'm speaking to a close friend and she said she's just started somatic therapy. She's talking about some stuff she went through as a, as a child, some traumatic memories that had come up during some work that she'd done. And she told me about this somatic therapy. She told me she started seeing like a one on one somatic therapist. And something about the way she described this sparked something in me where I'm like, I, that I don't know why, but something about that I'd done enough work on myself I guess by that point. Right. I had a feeling or a gut sense That I needed that. And so I went online and looked up Tre verse. Tre is like a shaking thing that some people might be familiar with. You learn to basically tire out certain muscles in your body, specifically the psoas, I think to activate the body's natural. It's like a mammalian shaking response to trauma. And so I looked up Tre Verse somatic experiencing, which is one of the modalities in the somatic space. Read this article and it just landed. You know when you read something and you're like, oh my God, this is what I've been searching for. I don't know how I know, but the way it's explained, I'm like, I feel like you understand what I'm going through better than I ever could have articulated. And so I, from that article went and found a course and that led me to another course and went down this rabbit hole of somatic therapy, learning everything I could about it. Now, the reason, I guess I mentioned the coaches partly because I think it's an interesting jump off point for the story, but also because my intention for that was to add a page of things that they said, figure out what you want. And I did that. But I was like, if I could boil it down to three things, it'd be purpose, which is something I believe in, passion, something I enjoy, and then profit, which was something I obviously can make money from because then it's sustainable, I can keep doing it. And so that was my intention for that mushroom ceremony. And then in a very weird way, in a, I guess somewhat traumatic way, it led me, or ended with me, led me to going into this somatic therapy thing, which is where Ray Chart came from. Because I got into it, I'm like, this is all the other stuff I've been doing, all the self help things that people say to do, meditation and gratitude lists and journaling and ice bars and breath work and affirmations, the self help books, coaching, all of it. I'd done so much of it and yet it always felt like something was missing, something was not really clicking. And having that ceremony with these guys going through that experience, then having to sort of work through it afterwards, which did take a while, various techniques and things I did, but working through that and then it led me to this somatic piece. And within a couple of weeks, man, I remember thinking, man, this. I could feel it in the way that it was finally allowing emotions to move at the time. I could feel the difference that it was making. I was like, this is what I've been searching for this whole Time. And pretty quickly it was like, okay, at some point I'm like, man, this needs to be out there. It needs to be in the world. There needs to be more people teaching this. And yeah, that's where Raychar came from. And now I'm basically just trying to get the word out about it to as many people, to whoever wants to learn more about it.
- [08:51]
Kevin St. Clergy
A lot of times people blame the wrong things and it's actually something else. Sometimes they're not able to figure it out. It sounds like you went through the very same thing.
- [08:59]
John Wood
Yeah, I mean, for the longest time, it's like something's missing, something's not right. I was trying all kinds of things, searching, seeking. You know, there's elements of that that are still at play now. I wonder if that's part of just being human. But it gave me a lot of what. I mean, if you talk about blind blaming or finding, like, what's the actual, what's the real problem here? I think so often we have issues, our overthinking or an emotion, anxiety, whatever it is, and we think we understand it, but we don't. And that was what this system did, was like, oh, now I understand what's actually going now. Now I have clarity on the real problem and I have a set of tools for how to work with that. It doesn't mean it's fixed overnight, but I have the clarity and a path forward.
- [09:39]
Kevin St. Clergy
Great. You're quoting a lot from the book. You don't even realize it. So I'm so glad you're here. But talk to us about some of the biggest misconceptions that you had about mental health, personal growth and emotional regulation before you discovered your approach.
- [09:51]
John Wood
We've got our physical health, so our muscles, our body, all that kind of stuff. And then we have mental health as though everything that's not the physical stuff is just a mental thing, which implies it's just a mind thing. Which I think is why a lot of west typically Western solutions, which is a very mental, mind based, intellectual culture, focuses on the intellectual element. So there's value in that certainly. And it does have benefits. I'm not disagreeing with that, but I think it misses a broader picture, perhaps because I'm like, that mental stuff, we have negative thoughts or we're overthinking anxiety, imposter syndrome, procrastination, boundary issues, a lot of things that people would typically attribute to mental health as though it's a mind based thing. To me now it's. I see it as like a full body it includes the mind, but it includes so much of what's happening in the body and in the autonomic nervous system. So anxiety I would characterize as like a nervous system that's stuck in, we would say, looping and sympathetic activation. So the system, when there's a threat, goes into sympathetic activation, fight or flight. And so if you're in that state, if you were truly unsafe, you'd feel pretty on edge, which to me is just anxiety. You're on edge no matter where you are, what you're doing, how I see, you know, these so called mental issues. Now these are physical issues where, okay, your kidneys and adrenals are pumping out certain stress chemicals, for example, all kinds of things like that depression, I feel like you could do it with all of it. Procrastination to me is a. You don't feel safe. There's a lack of a felt sense of safety in the body. So then the body finds safety by not doing the thing that you want to do because it's too unsafe. There's too much of a felt sense of unsafety to do the thing. And this is, I think that's probably the biggest misconception, that people think they're going to shift their beliefs or shift their mindset or journal about it and change the thoughts around the thing. But if they don't shift the underlying physiology of it, the emotions and the stored stuff from the past that's running the show, if it's really the invisible root of this stuff, I don't think it really shifts things.
- [11:47]
Kevin St. Clergy
You actually answer one of my questions. You must be psychic too. Just kidding. Well, many people have been taught to suppress emotions like anger, fear, sadness, especially in corporate America. But what happens when we suppress these emotions instead of expressing them?
- [12:01]
John Wood
I mean, what happens when you get a pipe and the water is ordinarily used to running through that pipe and you jam it up, the pipe burst, it pops, like there's some. It comes out somewhere. It's a weird thing about our society where when people. It's almost like the human system, the more we block this stuff, it comes out sideways. Like, I mean, the most obvious place that I see it is in families where say a parent, they're carrying a certain, you know, a bundle of shit. Basically a bunch of emotions from the past that they haven't processed and they don't know how. So I'm not necessarily blaming them. It's just sort of the reality that we live in the world that we live in, but because they're not processing that it still comes out. It'll come out in the way they talk to their kids and the way they relate to the kids. And the kids will then pick that up and then pass that on to their kids and then their kids and then their kids. And so I think when, you know, emotions are there and they. It's like their nature is to be expressed. Their nature is to drive behavior. If you think about survival, energy, because that's what I think a lot of this is. Whether we're talking fear to me is people think about fight and fly, right? So there's a loud bang or the tiger appears, something first instinct is to run away, to get away from the threat, which restores a sense of safety. If you get away from the threat far enough, you then feel safe again. So that to me is fear. Fear is going to drive you, make you run away. But if you get cornered and you can't run away, the next step is to attack and destroy the threat. Either just attack it enough to distract it and then run away, or literally destroy it so it's no longer a threat. So that's fear and that would be anger. And then if those things can't be executed, you could say shame to me is. Shame's a tricky one. There's a lot of nuance with this stuff. It's not black and white. This emotion is this response. But you have shame. Sadness, I think, is an interesting one. But these different emotions, they're meant to be. They're there for a reason. They're meant to be expressed. They're meant to drive behavior. So we shuttle that down. It's like you've got all this energy souped up in the system, in it, but it has no outlet, it has no exit. And it will find an exit. That's what I'm saying. Whether it's even through people to our anger. If you're not able to express your anger or work with it in a healthy way, it'll either go out at the people around you and you'll snap at them and get angry at them, or it goes internal and it's like, I hate you. It's never going to work. It'll say all these things. It's like expresses either way. The question is, is it going to express in a healthy way because we learn how to work with it, or is it going to express in a come out kinked come out like you've got that pipe and the pipe, you've blocked out the natural, healthy exit for it, and instead the water will find a weak Point in that pipe and come out that way.
- [14:23]
Kevin St. Clergy
Well, how can someone begin to safely tap into and release suppressed emotions without bursting or feeling overwhelmed or however you want to say it?
- [14:31]
John Wood
I mean, the first step to me is education. You know, some therapies. I think back in. I was reading about this recently, a few decades ago, it was more like you'd go straight into the trauma or the thing. And now the way I was taught, which has been a lot more sustainable and I might say integrated to safer way to approach it, is to start with the education. So that means learning about what we're talking about here, this podcast is an example of that. But going deeper and learning how does your nervous system work? How does your survival physiology work? Why do you go into fight and flight? If those can't execute, why do you freeze? Why is there a foreign response? People pleasing. Where does things like, you know, the vagus nerve, we talk about the ventral vagal. Vagus nerve is a bit of a trendy term these days. The ventral vagal goes down the front runs your social engagement system. Dorsal vagal goes down the back to the gut. And so starting to understand all these bits and pieces. Why does. For example, one thing that's really useful to understand is that when the vet. When we're born, so, you know, in the first one, two, three years of our, you know, of our life, our nervous system doesn't really have. I don't think it's the vagus nerve. It's not myelinated properly. So it has the ability to freeze, to like shut down really quickly, kind of like slamming the brakes on in a car. But it doesn't have this really nice slowdown, doesn't have that nuance there yet. It learns that nuance from its parents. The parents need to have that myelination, that ability onboarding their nervous system. And then through the way that they relate to that baby, they literally teach that baby or teach its nervous system how to actually regulate its emotions. So understanding some of these things, I think can take number one, takes a lot of the blame out of what we're going through. Because we can see, okay, this anxiety, this whatever it is, is sort of just a relic of the past. It's my various issues on neuroses are not flaws. They're survival adaptations. They may not be perfectly functional these days as an adult, but they were once upon a time. They're there because they needed to be there. And if I had a given issue, my parents, a lot of it comes from, I think that especially in western society, A lot of people regulated, to use a nervous system term. And so that just gets passed on. And then you can be like, well, I'm going to blame my parents. It's like, well, they're probably like that because their parents were like that. Those parents like that are probably because their parents were like that. And so it takes the blame out of it. Learning about the education. And then also I think it helps with understanding once you have context for what you're actually feeling. Oh, this anxiety, it's not a problem, it's not a flaw. If my system's in sympathetic, I don't have to be afraid of it. You know, I've personally been lucky that in the sense that I've never had panic attacks the way some people have, but a very close friend has, and she. She would talk about it, she start to panic. But then you panic about the fact that you're panicking. And then you panic about the fact that you're panicking about the fact that you're panicking. It create this loop right where the system can't find regulation. When you start to understand this, you go, okay, I don't need to be afraid of this panic attack. What's happening is my system is moving into sympathetic. And now if I can feel the ground, if I know how to look around and see if it's safe around me, the various techniques, it'll just naturally correct itself. That's its nature. That's how it works. Which then allows the, say, the panic attack or the survival stress, the impulse to complete the response rather than getting stuck and just looping around. So all starts with education. And then I've mentioned techniques. So there's ways of starting to feel, to be in the body. You know, when I say in the body, I don't just mean when you go to like some squats in the gym or go for a run, you're in your body. This is a very distinct sense of like, I'm in. I feel myself landing and taking up. Instead of just being in my head, I literally feel the sensation of being in my whole body. You know, it's learning to feel. You need to go to the bathroom, you go to the bathroom. You need to eat, you're hungry, you eat. You don't ignore and shut down these impulses. So learning to really, it's the education and then the techniques, which really, if I had to boil down the techniques, it's really just techniques of learning how to feel. Again, not the I'm angry feeling, but the, oh, I can feel like A heat in my chest or a tightness in my chest, my stomach's all out of whack. And the direct experience of the sensation, they'd be the two things, man. And if there's one more thing, it'd just be believing that it's possible. These various things, these issues that we think we have, they're not personality traits, they're outdated. Survival programs is probably one way to describe them.
- [18:34]
Kevin St. Clergy
So what I hear you're saying is awareness is the first step. Just being aware when you're in that loop. As you said, we have a blame loop in my book, so it's kind of cool that they're using a loop sample. But I also heard you say things like growth mindset, which means that we don't feel like this is a fixed problem. This is something that we can actually learn or discover how to get out of. Is that what you're saying?
- [18:54]
John Wood
I mean, it's not necessarily going to be quick or overnight like I think our culture worships at the altar of that. There can be some very quick shifts, but it's also. It's a process, man, like years to really bring full regulation on board for the average person.
- [19:09]
Kevin St. Clergy
In the book, we teach a method called rcd. It's reflect, which is the awareness stage. You're talking about Connect, where you find a coach or someone like you as a guide to verify that they're solving the right problem. Because you've said it before in the podcast that a lot of times people get stuck solving the wrong problem. And I think that leads to blaming some other things, other people, or sometimes even ourselves, when it's not always that simple. D is decide. Decide that you want to have a better. You want to do something different. So it's very simple. But simple doesn't always mean easy. Are you tired of feeling stuck in your business, career, relationships, or your health? Are you frustrated by problems that just won't go away no matter what you try? After coaching and teaching thousands of people for over 25 years, I've discovered something powerful. Every unresolved problem has a hidden solution you just can't see yet. That's why I created the From Stuck to Breakthrough Challenge, a free five day live experience where I'll show you exactly how to uncover what's really holding you back and finally break free to the results that you want. Whether it's in your business, your health, your wealth, your relationships. I'll help you discover the real root cause of your challenges and give you the blueprint for permanent change. Join me and A community of like minded people ready to break through. Go to blindblaming.com again, that's blindblaming.com to sign up and we'll see you soon. So if someone listening is struggling with anxiety. Yeah, well, I think it's the story of all of our lives. Anybody that's been there that's figured a way out, I think it is. But if somebody listening is struggling with anxiety or stress, panic attacks, feeling disconnected, what do you think is the first thing they can do today to start reconnecting with their instincts?
- [20:46]
John Wood
As you say, the first thing that I teach people is to. Other than the education, if you want like a practical step that people can do, is to start to orient to the safety in your environment. And what I mean by that is we think about our nervous system, the survival response, what's putting us into anxiety or into fight or flight. A lot of that stems from a lack of safety. Not an affirmation of saying I'm safe, but actually looking around and noticing, how do you know that it's safe right now? And if we've spent our life in anxiety, in danger and chaos, often due to our childhood, but also school, all the different things, we've often gotten very good at detecting or seeing all the things that signify danger. And part of this work is about learning to recognize and notice the signs of safety. So it's, you know, really starts as simple as, like wherever you are right now, look around, look around the room, the space, the environment and see is it safe? Hopefully it is.
- [21:44]
Kevin St. Clergy
I love it.
- [21:45]
John Wood
Sometimes that can be conceptual for people. It's like, what do you mean? And so I find sometimes it can help to kind of go, is there any threats? Can you see any potential threats right now in your immediate environment? That could be people, animals falling, I don't know, rocks from the sky or fireballs or something. If that's not there, noticing that really helps. And one way I think about it is like the language of the nervous system, of the body at least, is not so much words, but sensation, colors, sounds. And so by actually paying attention to the colors, the sounds, the light, the sensations that tell us that we're safe, our nervous system can start to understand, oh, oh, you know, I'm safe. The one caveat though I'd give to a practice like this is, and there's other things we can talk about what to do, but it really starts with that. Depending on what's sort of waiting in the wings, as we feel safe, things can start to bubble up, like the emotion that's behind the anxiety, for example. So sometimes we can do this and we feel relaxed. Sometimes we can do this and we might feel a bit activated. And it's all okay. It's about just going with it, flowing with it, and taking breaks, man. Taking breaks to go have some fun as well.
- [22:52]
Kevin St. Clergy
Can you share a story or example of someone who went through Rage Heart, your process, and experienced a significant transformation? You don't have to use a real name. Just curious.
- [23:01]
John Wood
Yeah, I mean, there's one guy, Logan, he's. I can name him because he sent me a few testimonials. So it's all public on the side. I've interviewed him for the Rageheart podcast. He came in, I think, if I can remember correctly, he had anxiety. I don't know how intense it was or whether it was diagnosed or not, but he felt like he was anxious and he was doing a lot of breathwork. Tea. Transcendental meditation. He'd done a bunch of journaling. The stories are usually pretty similar. I've tried all these things, and I'm still anxious. What's wrong? Or I think for him, he might have mentioned, you know, you could sit down and he could drop into his meditative state and be quite calm, and that would be really nice. But then he'd get up and he'd go to work, or he'd go out with his girlfriend, or he'd go somewhere and he'd feel anxious again. And so I taught him these techniques, starting with that, you know, orienting to the safety in the environment. A bunch of others. He went through the Rachel Academy, which is where I teach people, sort of the. There's tons of stuff you can do here. He went through all that, and he did send me a testimonial. What did he say? He said it worked 10 times better than meditation for him. Silenced his mind like never before. And I remember him saying his specific way of explaining it was that now instead of it just being a thing that he feels when he meditates, it's something that he can do anywhere, which I think is part of the promise of it. This is. As you learn how to do this, something like meditation in some ways becomes less relevant or less necessary because you learn how to regulate the stress response in the nervous system without sitting down and crossing your legs and shutting your eyes. You can do it when you're in the park or at a social event or out with your girlfriend or boyfriend or whoever.
- [24:31]
Kevin St. Clergy
Let's go over some challenging controversies. A lot of people are hesitant to engage with emotions like rage or fear. Have you ever had to address concerns that tap into these emotions and how they can be more harmful than good or vice versa? Any opinions there?
- [24:44]
John Wood
I mean, anger's an interesting way, right? Especially if you get into spiritual circles. There can be a bit of a bad rap, religious places around anger because it can be very uncontained, it can be very destructive. It can really hurt people and hurt society. However, I think that happens when someone's not really good at working with their anger. They don't know how to contain it and discharge it way that doesn't hurt people. So I might take a. If I'm feeling that, like that kind of energy that wants to kill something, which I feel from time to time, I think all human beings do, whether they're aware of it or not. If you don't have a way to let that out not at yourself and not at the people around you, again, we go back to where we were before, where it's like it's going to come out in some way. Whether it comes out at the people around you, comes out at yourself, or it gets all jammed up and can end up putting us into a kind of a shutdown or a freeze. Where because we've blocked that energy, that energy of aggression and moving forward and doing something, we might find that we procrastinate a lot. So because it's all the same energy, that's sort of the downside of not actually working with it. Doesn't mean when you're at work and someone says something that pisses you off, you have to go and do it right there. You could go to the bathroom or come back to it when you get home. We live in a society, and part of having a harmonious society is probably a better word for it, is mastering our emotions. It's not about getting rid of them, but knowing the appropriate place to let it out, basically. But what this approach, what somatic therapy really provides to people, I think is in my experience, is specific tools for how do you actually get that anger out? Because you could get a typical thing is you get a baseball bat and hit something or punch your pillow. They were more sort of cliche things that people talk about fear. I don't think people usually seem to have techniques for working with. But the general idea is that this energy wants to do something. It wants to express anger, wants to destroy fear, wants to run away. So if you go read any of the somatic books, there'll be stories of people who, when it comes up organically, if you just like I'm anxious. And you start trying to do the technique. It probably may help, but it seems to work a lot better when it comes up organically. And you'll feel it when shit really starts to pop off, when it really, truly comes up. That's the time to bring in some of these techniques where you know the stories of when someone's sitting on a couch. Peter Levine tells this, I think, in a book, Waking the Tiger, where he's got a patient on the couch. I can't remember what she was going through, but she was. Had a bundle of terror or something like that. And eventually it came up. And I think Peter Levine says, just imagine that you're running away from a tiger. And so she sits there on the couch, and I don't even think she stands up, but she just runs on the spot with her feet on the ground. And that action allows that energy, the terror, the fear, that survival. At that point, I don't even think about it as fear. It's just energy that's trying to drive a behavior. It gives it, like an expression. It gets it to move. And then in that process, that response can complete. And then that thing that was keeping her looping around and the anxiety and the stress and the terror can start to reset and come down. So there's a variety of stuff like that that you can do for fear, for anger, depending on the emotion, you know, comes out in different ways. Anger for me, has been things like one thing I love to do is get a towel, roll the towel up, and then I'm trying to twist the towel as if I'm trying to rip it in half. And I can pretend that that towel is someone's neck or something's neck, which really. It's bizarre, man. And there can be growls that come out, all kinds of stuff where it feels like you're look at a dog, man. Two dogs. One of them's eating another dog, goes over to try and get some food. The dog that's eating, you know, starts to snarl, like raises up a lip, starts to growl. They might bite. They want to destroy, or at least a back off. And so it's really different techniques for embodying that animal mammalian expression of anger, of fear, which allows it to move. And then as it moves, it can leave. It can sort of. You can either say it leaves the system or it just integrates or gets reclaimed.
- [28:29]
Kevin St. Clergy
It just reminded me of a friend of mine. I don't know if this is a good solution or bad, but it worked for her. She found an actual Service. There was a business that has rooms of stuff, and you get a baseball bat and you go into that room and you just start tearing shit up. I was like, wow, I didn't know these things existed. And she said, yeah, it was incredibly therapeutic for me and I feel better. And she just did it once. I don't know what it was, but they had all these things that she could destroy and beat up from cars to normal household items. It was a very interesting model, but it definitely helped her. But I like something as simple as a towel and twisting it when you get upset.
- [29:06]
John Wood
I mean, the thing that popped into my head just now is that a lot of this work, it'll integrate better if we can stay in our body as it's happening. So if someone's punching their pillow, but they're not really there, they can't feel the bed, they're not noticing their breath, they're disassociated, disconnected from their physical bodily experience. It doesn't always integrate very well. Whereas when we can have the experience, the emotion, the intensity, and stay connected to our sensations simultaneously. Right. So we're not disconnecting. We're not off with the fairies. That is where the magic is.
- [29:39]
Kevin St. Clergy
What do you think are some of the biggest myths or misunderstandings people have about the work that you do?
- [29:44]
John Wood
Well, the first one that comes to mind is that I've got a video on YouTube right now that's been blowing up. And the title is, this weird trick works 10 times better than meditation. And I think part of the reason it's blown up is because so many people who meditate get on that video and comments, they just say, well, this is just meditation. I haven't come across them myself, but it sounds like there are certain traditions which have similar techniques to what I found them in the world of somatic healing. The reason I don't generally call it meditation is because it's been so different to what most Westerners think of as meditation. Meditation to me was always, you know, I sit down in the morning for 20 minutes, I set my timer, cross my legs, you know, make a. Put my hands in my lap in a certain way and count my breath, or feel the sensation in my nostrils as it goes in and out, eyes closed. That, to me, is meditation. And I imagine for the average Westerner, not someone who's really deep into meditation, but the average Westerner who maybe uses headspace or something, I could be wrong, but my assumption is that the average person, that's meditation. You know, if you look up, like on an Image search Meditation, you'll probably see people sitting like that. Whereas for me, this idea of orienting to the safety in the environment, some of the other things I weave in, or can you feel the ground beneath your feet and can you notice your breath, ideally without changing it? We do that and then we start to weave it together. Can you see the see the safety or see the environment around you and feel the ground at the same time? Can you notice your breath and feel the ground at the same time? Can you see and notice your breath at the same time? So we're weaving two things together, and then finally we put all three so we see and feel the ground and notice the breath all together, all at the same time. And there's something about that specific technique or way of doing it. People can call it meditation if they want, but that specific way of doing it changed, for me at least, changed everything. And so I think the biggest misconception around this is that, oh, it's just like meditation. You're just being present, you're just using your awareness. And there are a lot of it is just learning to focus on different things. But when you put it together with the education, the various techniques of learning to feel, in rage art, there's movement, we bring in movement, really slow movements, movement practices. For me, meditation never came close to this, and I tried a bunch of different meditations. So to me, it's easy to write this off as I've tried meditation. I don't need to try this meditation didn't work, or it did work, or whatever the thought is. But to me, when you really get into it, it's a whole lot more than meditation. I'm still figuring out better ways of explaining that, but that, to me, is the biggest myth or misconception around this style of working.
- [32:15]
Kevin St. Clergy
Well, how does this work apply beyond personal development, such as relationships, business, or even leadership? Because I know I have a lot of folks that follow us that either own their own business or in a leadership position in a big corporation.
- [32:28]
John Wood
It's an interesting thing. As you get into your body, your authenticity, you start to feel what's really there, which is a beautiful thing. But if you're, say, doing something that you don't really want to do this work, getting into the body, getting in touch with what you're feeling, it can often get harder to do the thing that we think we should do, but we don't really want to do because it gets harder to go to run in opposition to ourselves, the more connected we are. And this is why I think you see people, really successful entrepreneurs, some of them, I think, are just in functional freeze. The reason they can work the way that they do, right, and sleep very little and get by on that is because they're so shut down and so disconnected from what's really happening inside. And we worship that as a culture. But it's not necessarily this kind of goes back to that blind blaming thing. We think it's a good thing, but often there can be a whole lot of stuff going on beneath the surface that even the entrepreneur isn't aware of. They're just avoiding without realizing it. So that's one aspect. But then there's also, let's say you are doing the thing that you want to do. You're with the person that you want to be with. I mean, that would apply to not just work, but if you're with the person who's not good for you, this work is only going to clarify that. It's not going to make it easy to stay with, probably make it harder because you'll be like, whoa, I can really see what's going on now. So that would apply to all kinds of stuff. But then let's say you are doing the thing that you're meant to be doing. You are with the person that you want to be with. You do have the job or the work that you want to do, you're still going to get triggered. Shit happens, Life happens. Things come up in any of these situations, especially with, you know, we talk about our health, jobs or our wealth, relationships. So much comes back to how do you perform under pressure, when stuff goes sideways, when there's stress, when people are saying things that you don't really like, when you're getting triggered, do you shut down, do you collapse, do you quit? Or do you have the ability, the capacity to keep going in spite of that and make good decisions and do the things that need to get done regardless. And so I think it can really help with that because so often people are triggered and they make bad decisions, whether that's in their relationships or a partner comes home and they're a bit upset, so they say something and then so the other partners gets triggered and they see something back and it spirals out into this big fight that never needed to be. Whereas if you could realize, oh, my partner's come home, okay, they said something, I don't like that. But let's just hold the space right now and wait for them to calm down, to regulate, to me, to co regulate, and then let's have the conversation. Because if I'm being forced with force. It's not going to be good for anyone. You know, same thing in business, especially for emotional, too. Like, the more we are in, you think about, if you're in the jungle, you see a tiger, a bear, the forest, you don't need to think about it. You don't need to get that neocortex fired up and really thinking through the pros and cons and making a really well thought out decision. You need to run immediately, right? And so I think the idea is that if people are emotional, you start to trigger this survival response in them, which happens in an office, driving to work, road rage, whatever, or with your partner at home. We stop thinking clearly because that's not how we think clearly. In those moments. All we want to do is attack or run. And so it's. If we can recognize that and go, okay, I'm feeling a bit activated right now. That means I'm probably not going to be thinking clearly or making the best decision. Let's take some time to take a moment, calm down, relax, use the techniques, the education, all of that to regulate the system. And then I'll come back to this and then see how it looks. So to me, it's. Whatever you're trying to do, it's going to make you better at that. It's actually one of the things I'm trying to do. With Rachel, part of the goal is to. This has ordinarily been something that primarily women are into, right? Feeling, feelings, emotions, all of that. So the lady I learned this from when I go through her trainings, I'm in one right now, man. It's 95% women, which is fine. But I just find it so interesting that women, for whatever reason, we can speculate on it, but women, for whatever reason, are generally more comfortable with this kind of work. And yeah, I love to help women, I want to help women, but I also think, man, this to me, is not a weak, soft, flowery, feminine thing. It can be. There's an element of that, of learning to feel, but it's also strong and powerful and sexy. This is part of the goal with Rage Art is to take this stuff that's ordinarily like, I don't want to do that, especially for men. Like, oh, you see someone crying on Instagram, you look at the comments and it's stuff like that, oh, he's gay. And he's like, no, he's just crying. He's letting some emotions out and really trying to show people that this will make your entire life Better. It may not be easy, it may not be quick. There may be some very difficult changes that need to happen. But in the long run, you are going to be happier, healthier, stronger. Not just in your mind, but in your entire body. You'll have more energy because now you're not wasting all this energy trying to keep all this stuff buried and stuff down. It comes up, you're more creative, more loving, you enjoy connecting with people. More people are safer. So to me it's like, man, it'll make your work better, it'll make your relationships better, it'll make your own mind, your sleep better, your workouts better. Whatever it is, it's going to make you better. Even though ironic way, it's not really about being better, it's about just being you. But I wouldn't be doing it or trying to share it if I didn't believe in it.
- [37:21]
Kevin St. Clergy
Well, I can tell you do and I love it and I love your passion. But what's next for rageheart? Are you working on new projects, courses or expansions?
- [37:28]
John Wood
I'm sort of deep in YouTube so trying to post a video a week, if not two. I'm on Instagram. Instagram's got a bit more, I don't know, it's funny watching the different platforms and how they perform. YouTube seems a lot more engaged, so trying to spend more time there. But I'm on Instagram and TikTok, that's really the focus has been on that, getting the word out because the course is there. That's the Ray Chart academy that's working well. People are getting great results with it. And now it's just about the phase or stage I suppose is just getting the word out. So doing podcasts like this, being on YouTube, doing the Ray Chart podcast, talking to people about it and a lot of it still for me I think still feels like trying to explain something that it's hard to explain. If I was trying to sell fishing equipment, you know what fishing is, you know, if you want it or not. Like it's obvious, it's easy to understand if you want some meditation help. Like meditation is so established as a niche, as a thing, I don't really need to explain it, you just get it. Whereas this is the challenge has been how do you actually explain this to people? Like it's on the surface it sounds like it's just meditation or it's just another self help practice. And yet for me, going through it and having the experience of it, I mean it's like a lot of things where you don't really get it until you've really done the time to learn about it. I play the guitar. You don't really know what it's like to be a guitarist or sing a song or any of those things until you can actually do it. It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. And so alongside getting the word out, it's also part of that process is, of course, seeing what resonates and figuring out what is the best way to talk about this. How do you actually convince people, make them excited enough to give it enough of a go that they start to see some benefits?
- [39:00]
Kevin St. Clergy
I think you're doing all the right things. It's all the stuff that I've been taught to do over the years. And you definitely fit into the blind blaming. So we'll definitely get shown one of our proof. We have a referral network, so we'll definitely get you into that. Because I see a lot of people who are struggling with this or that and they're blaming this or that. And as we get into it, I'll send you a copy of the book. Love to get your opinion. I do run across a lot of people who don't realize that what you teach is at the root cause of every single thing that they have. Because the process that we're teaching people is, look, it's. You go through these five strands of this DNA that we've developed and you'll discover that it's the work that you do that could be the solution. So I think you keep doing what you're doing. I love it. Hopefully we'll have you back on the podcast as we grow too. But I want to thank you for your time. But a couple of things. If people want to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to get in touch?
- [39:47]
John Wood
Best place is just go to. Yeah, there's the website. So Rageheart. It's like Braveheart but Rageheart co. And you can also search Ray Chart on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. That's pretty much it right now. You probably find me pretty quickly. Any of those places. There's an email list, all of that.
- [40:04]
Kevin St. Clergy
Great. We have a resource list under the YouTube once it launches on the podcast and then a regular podcast, we always have a resource list. So we'll make sure we list all the places where people can find you and make sure we announce it on the blog and everything else once we get that set up.
- [40:16]
John Wood
Perfect.
- [40:17]
Kevin St. Clergy
So thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. It was great stuff.
- [40:21]
John Wood
Yeah, dude, thank you so much for having me.