The Magic Trick of Transcendence

Summary

Feminist Survival Project: Episode Summary – "The Magic Trick of Transcendence"

Release Date: June 11, 2025

In the "Feminist Survival Project" episode titled "The Magic Trick of Transcendence," hosts Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski delve into the concept of transcendence, reframing it as "the magic trick." This episode explores how engaging in collective, purposeful activities can help complete the stress response cycle, fostering a sense of connection and elevated well-being. Through personal anecdotes, scientific insights, and practical strategies, Emily and Amelia provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of how to harness transcendence to combat burnout and enhance personal resilience.

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1. Introduction: Framing Transcendence as "The Magic Trick"

Amelia opens the episode by introducing the term "the magic trick" as a more accessible way to discuss transcendence. She shares that transcendence often encompasses a multitude of cultural and traditional words, making it a complex concept to communicate publicly.

Amelia [00:00]: “Maybe... we’re going to call this episode the Magic Trick.”

Emily concurs, setting the stage for an exploration of transcendence through this new lens.

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2. What is the Magic Trick?

The hosts define "the magic trick" as an intervention that employs the most effective strategies for completing the stress response cycle by engaging in physical and temporal synchronization with others toward a shared goal. Activities such as marching in a protest, dancing at a concert, or singing in a choir exemplify this magic trick, creating profound feelings of connection and elevation.

Amelia [01:01]: “The magic trick is the intervention that involves engaging the most powerful strategies for completing the stress response cycle and for being human... moving your body in physical space, shared with others toward a shared goal.”

This collective movement fosters an experience of oneness, love, and heightened emotional states, aligning with Jonathan Haidt’s concept of "elevation."

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3. Neurobiological Underpinnings: Entrainment and Collective Neuroscience

Emily and Amelia delve into the science behind the magic trick, discussing entrainment—the synchronization of rhythmic activities—and its role in fostering connection. They reference Dan Siegel's "The Neurobiology of We" and the emerging field of two-person neuroscience, which examines how interactions between individuals can influence brain activity and emotional states.

Emily [07:09]: “All of that is 100% it.”

Amelia [10:36]: “Yes. And there's a title, one of the papers that we cite in Burnout is titled...”

They explain that mere physical co-presence can lead to entrainment, where individuals' movements and physiological states become aligned, enhancing mutual understanding and connection.

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4. Personal Experiences and Anecdotes

The episode is enriched with personal stories illustrating the magic trick. Amelia recounts her experiences conducting choirs, emphasizing how synchronized movement and shared musical goals create a powerful sense of unity.

Amelia [15:08]: “You just feel like, oh, we are all the same. It’s not a cognitive thinking we’re all the same. It’s just this instantaneous knowing.”

Emily shares her own moments of transcendence, such as cycling up a hill and feeling a profound connection with the universe, likening it to the runner's high.

Emily [55:23]: “I was... cycling on a road and I got to the top of a hill and I just, like, had this sense of connection with the universe.”

These anecdotes highlight the universal nature of transcendence and its accessibility through various activities.

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5. Teaching and Leading the Magic Trick

The discussion shifts to the challenges of teaching and leading transcendental experiences. Amelia criticizes the notion that transcendence cannot be taught, arguing that it is a teachable skill requiring conscious study and practice.

Amelia [22:14]: “Is not a learnable, teachable skill. What if you feel like you can’t talk about it... you’re a shitty teacher.”

Emily shares her frustration with traditional group leadership roles, where leading the magic trick can become exhausting as it often centers on her own state rather than fostering collective connection.

Emily [28:06]: “I find it really exhausting. Cause as a teacher ... I'm trying to bring them to the place that I am.”

They emphasize the importance of mutual consent and shared purpose in leading such experiences, ensuring that all participants are willingly engaging in the magic trick.

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6. Overcoming Barriers: Autism and Self-Trust

Amelia opens up about her personal struggles with autism, which affect her ability to instinctively engage in transcendental activities like conducting. Emily relates, sharing her challenges with sleep, perimenopause, and long COVID, which have left her feeling alienated from her body.

Amelia [23:42]: “Does any of that sound similar?”

Emily [42:15]: “I feel so alienated from my body because of like both perimenopause and long Covid.”

These revelations underscore the importance of understanding individual differences in accessing transcendence and the need for tailored approaches to overcome these barriers.

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7. Exploring Transcendental Meditation

In search of a new tool to aid her sleep and transcendence journey, Emily turns to Transcendental Meditation (TM). She describes TM as a non-focused, mantra-based meditation practice that allows the mind to transition effortlessly to a state of deep rest and connection.

Emily [43:57]: “It is sitting down for 20 minutes twice a day and thinking of your mantra... allowing, gently favoring the mantra.”

Amelia supports this exploration, highlighting TM's gentle approach compared to effortful practices like mindfulness meditation.

Emily [46:03]: “Having to learn how to meditate is not the magic trick. It is yet another way to access the magic trick. Easier.”

They discuss how TM offers a solitary yet profound pathway to transcendence, contrasting it with the more energy-intensive group activities previously discussed.

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8. Practical Steps to Access the Magic Trick

Towards the end of the episode, Emily and Amelia outline practical steps listeners can take to engage in the magic trick:

1. Choose an Activity You Love: Engage in activities that naturally bring you joy, such as dancing, singing, or horseback riding.

2. Move in Rhythm with Others: Synchronize your movements with those around you towards a shared goal.

3. Participate by Choice: Ensure that your engagement is voluntary, free from external pressure or intent to achieve transcendence.

4. Allow Self to Dissolve: Let go of individual boundaries to experience oneness with the group or the activity.

5. Embrace the Field: Recognize that transcendence is a state of being that is both neurological and experiential, whether accessed alone or with others.

Amelia [36:09]: “Unless you are Leonard Bernstein...”

Emily [59:16]: “...reaching a real place that actually exists, and the experience of being there is profoundly and inherently nourishing and revitalizing.”

These steps provide a roadmap for listeners to incorporate transcendence into their daily lives, enhancing resilience against burnout.

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9. Conclusion: Strengthening Against Burnout

Emily and Amelia conclude by reinforcing the importance of the magic trick in building personal resilience—"fire retardants"—to withstand the stresses of life. They emphasize that engaging in transcendent activities is not just an experience but a strategic tool for maintaining well-being.

Emily [61:20]: “To become stronger than the fire. That's what it's for, is to strengthen you.”

The episode closes with a reminder that transcendence is accessible to everyone, whether through group activities, solitary practices like TM, or other personally meaningful endeavors.

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Key Takeaways:

• Transcendence as a Magic Trick: Engaging in synchronized, purposeful activities can lead to profound feelings of connection and elevated well-being.

• Neurobiological Basis: Entrainment and shared physical spaces facilitate synchronization of physiological and emotional states.

• Teachability: Transcendence can be taught and learned through conscious study and practice, challenging the notion that it is purely instinctual.

• Personal Barriers: Individual differences, such as neurodivergence, can affect one's ability to access transcendental states, necessitating personalized approaches.

• Alternative Practices: Transcendental Meditation offers a gentle, solitary pathway to experiencing transcendence without the need for group synchronization.

• Practical Application: Incorporating transcendent activities into daily life can enhance resilience against burnout and improve overall well-being.

Through "The Magic Trick of Transcendence," Emily and Amelia Nagoski provide listeners with both the theoretical framework and practical strategies to harness the power of collective and individual transcendence, promoting a healthier, more connected life.

Transcript

[Amelia]

Hi, this is Amelia. I'm going to be doing lives Again, Fridays at 4 in May and June at our YouTube channel, YouTube.coministsurvivalproject I'll be answering questions, singing songs, and talking about Murderbot. I hope you can join us. We're talking about. I mean, what we're talking about is transcendence, but the word transcendence is a lot. So maybe. Really, I think we're going to call this episode is the Magic Trick.

[Emily]

Sure.

[Amelia]

Because when we talk about it in public, we talk about it as the magic trick. And there are lots of words from a lot of different traditions that describe the experience.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

So we're defining the term. The magic trick is the intervention that involves engaging the most powerful strategies for completing the stress response cycle and for being human and, like, doing them all at the same time. And that is to be moving your body in physical space, shared with others toward a shared goal. Moving in time with others toward a shared goal. That's the magic trick. There's so much more to it than that. But that's how you do it. This means that, yes, marching into protest, dancing at a concert or a festival, singing in a choir, or just singing along together, even just at karaoke, playing in a band, being part of musical theater worship, all of these things are moving together in time with others toward a shared goal. And they feel the best that humanity has the capacity to feel. That love lifts us up where we belong, is what it is. It gives us an experience of heightenedness, of elevation, as Jonathan Haidt calls it.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

It's a social experience of oneness with more than just yourself. It's the experience of feeling the truth of the reality that you as a person, your mind and your identity do not end at your skin. Who we are extends beyond our corpus, our. Our body, and into our relationship with stuff around us. Everything that we perceive changes how our bodies act, and that becomes part of who we are. And this is where I'm starting to get all hoobity woobity sounding.

[Emily]

Before you get further hoobity woobity, I would like to add one additional condition to the circumstances that lead to the magic trick, which is that moving in.

[Amelia]

Time with a shared purpose, moving in.

[Emily]

Time with others with a shared purpose. By choice.

[Amelia]

Oh, by choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

And I would say that the only one of those components that is absolutely required because you. You can do it by yourself fully. You can do it without moving your body in, like a gross motorway or even a fine motorway.

[Amelia]

You can do it sitting In a chair with your eyes closed, for example.

[Emily]

But you can't do it without making an autonomous decision to try or to engage in those behaviors. You don't have to be doing it with the goal in mind of transcending. In fact, sometimes having the goal of transcending will actually interfere with your ability to do it. But the magic trick has to be something you are participating in freely.

[Amelia]

Yeah. That is not to say that you have to make the conscious choice to do it, because very often it comes upon us.

[Emily]

Yeah. The first, the earliest experiences I've had with it, I didn't know it existed. And I was just having this experience and I was like, wow, neat. And like, didn't know what I had done. I just stumbled into it. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Most people do. They're kids and they're playing in band and they don't know why. They love band, man. But it feels amazing.

[Emily]

It feels amazing. When I wrote about the magic trick in the last chapter of Come Together, I described the magic trick as a technology of human aliveness itself. If you are alive in a body, I wrote, no matter what else is true about that body, it's true that you have access to the magic, regardless of what else is true about that body. The magic is a field that you can go to regardless of the physical circumstances of your body. I wrote about in Come Together, I wrote about what it feels like. Here's the best I could do at describing what it feels like. And Amelia, maybe you have more better things to say. I wrote, it feels like your individual self disappears or diminishes or dissolves or melts into the other people if they're involved. It feels like your individual self expands to encompass the larger you. You feel bigger. You feel as if you yourself as you barely exist. You feel still and at peace. You feel restless with ever expanding energy. I've talked to several hundred people who've experienced it, and here are a few of their descriptions of it. So other people have written to me that it feels like God or love takes me completely. This person wrote, it's like I become one of those multifaceted sun catcher crystals for a mom. And the light moves through me. I feel for a moment like I am connected to everything on earth. Like the ocean and the leaves and the trees and the stretch and breath of animals and movement of wind and rain and microbes are all part of me. This is what I mean by I feel God. I feel that I am held by and in and with all life. It is both powerful and. And humbling and often brings tears of joy. Someone else said, it feels like I am floating in the universe. I see stars, sounds fade a bit, My skin is super sensitive and I can't stop giggling. One more person said, it feels like I am connected to some sacred energy source in the universe and at the same time I am deeply connected with and in harmony with my spouse. This is a person who is talking about engaging in the magic trick during sex with their marital partner. Do you have descriptions of or a description of what it feels like?

[Amelia]

No. No.

[Emily]

Does any of that sound similar?

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]

All.

[Amelia]

All of that is. All of that is it. All of that is 100% it. There is some science to talk about here.

[Emily]

Some. Yep.

[Amelia]

The Neurobiology of We is Dan Siegel's book about two person neuroscience and sort of the definition of the mind.

[Emily]

Two person neuroscience is very young. The technology is still very much in its infancy to be able to measure what's happening like between two people. This is one of the difficult things, is like, which thing do you measure? Each. Do you. This individual and that. How do you measure the thing that is made by them together?

[Amelia]

A tricky question, right? It's very tricky to study, but because so many of us have experienced this feeling that we're talking about, we know it's a thing. We don't quite know what it is or how it's made. There is a theory that the mind.

[Emily]

Is.

[Amelia]

Self organizing and it is organized through the processing of sensory information. So when you take in information from the environment, it changes what goes on in your mind. That's just the definition of what a mind is. And so when that sensory input involves other people, then the people are changing who you are just subtly, even maybe just temporarily, but also looking further at like the physics of this, how I started learning about this was through the idea of entrainment. If you hang two pendulums in a room and you start swinging one and then you start swinging the other, and they're swinging independently gradually because they share a space and the space is filled with atoms and stuff, the space that they share gradually connects them and so that they start swinging in time with each other. Assuming they're like basically the same length pendulum and you know.

[Emily]

Yeah, yeah.

[Amelia]

Assuming that things are basically like each other when they are in the same room together, they begin to and train. And you see lots of like YouTube videos of like little marching toys, little wind up marching toys that end up like just marching all at the same time. Especially if they share like a wobbly surface and the wobbly Surface kind of connects them and they all start marching in time together. So physical items, things and train they become to move in time together simply because they share space. Is there an aspect of this that occurs in human beings where even just on a cellular or even atomic level, when they are around other things moving in a shared space, there's a kind of entrainment that makes the cells and atoms of a human being move in time with the cells and atoms of the people around them.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

What it looks like is. Yes, of course that happens.

[Emily]

And there's a title, one of the papers that we cite in Burnout is titled. Literally, it includes the phrase mere co presence. All it takes for entrainment to begin happening between two individuals is for them to be in the same physical space.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Because if you look at it as, you know, atoms being influenced by the energy of the atoms around them, we are physically connected. Even when our bodies don't touch each other, our, our bodies touch the atoms that are in the air around us that touch the atoms that touch the atoms that touch the atoms that touch the other person. So there is a physical connection.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And from what we know so far, it looks like the more you like the person that you're near, the more willing you are to be connected to them, the more quickly that happens, the faster those, those stimuli travel. The low road.

[Emily]

Yep.

[Amelia]

Cognitive high road versus low road. The high road is the one that's through like your choice making and word processing and, and information decoding at like a conscious level. And the low road is like just straight through your limbic system, just straight to, to your brainstem.

[Emily]

Right. Jonathan Haidt, in his book on happiness a million years ago, wrote about the elephant and the rider. The rider is the part of you that is aware and making intentional, deliberate choices. And the elephant is the rest of you, especially the rest of your brain. And like, if that elephant gets panicked because it hears a noise and it decides to run, like you might want the elephant not to be running. But let's face it, there's not a lot you're going to be able to do to prevent your elephant from running if it gets startled in a way you didn't anticipate. Right. In the same way, if your elephant really likes and is interested in connecting with somebody else's elephant, like they're going to heard together.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Whereas if your elephant is like, I got beef with that elephant.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

There's going to be more resistance, more reluctance.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

In the body and brain.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

One of the reasons why people may Start out their practice of accessing the magic trick by themselves is because they're not totally sure, like they can even trust their own body, never mind trusting another human.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And this is, to a degree, why a lot of conducting is emotional labor, switching directly to conducting without a transition. Because in my mind, they're of course, directly related. Like, this is how I started to learn about this stuff, is learning to be a better conductor. I wanted to be able to make this happen for the choir members, because this is the best singing there is, is when the whole ensemble is connected to the music and each other in this non conscious way, in this deeply instinctive, atavistic raw. Like, if it's just you and the music and the people who are making the music with you, that's then the sound rises spontaneously through from your emotional state. And that's when the singing is compelling. That's when it's like, oh, what is happening here? Because you can listen to a skilled singer sing anytime. You can listen to a skilled professional choir. Like a bunch of trained professional singers can walk into a room and sing music and it'll be great. But when those people are connected to each other in the music, it is way more powerful for them and for the audience. And that's not only a thing that I aspire to, that I want my performances to be powerful in that way, but also I want to give singers that experience because that's. That's the good stuff. That's why you put on hard pants at 7pm in November on a Thursday night to go to choir practice is for that. Right, right. The sense of being more than your limited corporeal self, being connected to.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

You know, this composer and the feelings that they communicated hundreds of years ago or on the opposite side of the planet from you in a very different way than you had ever learned before, but you still recognize it. And so when you make it and all the people around you, like, you just feel like, oh, we are all the same. And it's not. It's not a cognitive thinking we're all the same. It's just this instantaneous knowing.

[Emily]

So you and I often joke that we got master's degrees in how to listen and feel feelings.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

I did it one way through, like counseling and sex therapy. And you did it through music conducting.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

And I. I truly think it's not a coincidence that Maslow back in the 70s said that the two most efficient ways to access peak experiences. Mm, music and sex.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Maybe sex. Because it's so Sensory, intense. And music, because it's so sensory varied. There are so many ways of experiencing music. It's not just touch sensation. It is touch sensation.

[Emily]

Although far less sex is just touch sensation.

[Amelia]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying that. They are saying.

[Emily]

Look at, Listen to our definition of how you access these, these magic trick. Moving your body in rhythm with another person for a shared purpose by choice. Like we have just described. Dancing, singing, marching and sex.

[Amelia]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Emily]

And this has been framed as a negative thing in a way. Like anybody who's seen the Dead Poets Society, you'll remember this scene where Robin Williams challenges the kids to walk around independently and they entrain into a marching line. And this is taken to be a warning about the perils of the ease of conformity. And on the one hand.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

And on the other hand, like, it feels fucking amazing.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Especially when it just happens spontaneously and you feel yourself. No one is choosing it. There's no leader. It's just happening and all your bodies. And it feels like something magical happened and kind of it did.

[Amelia]

Yes. If you think of magic as the thing that is slightly beyond our capacity to explain in mundane terms.

[Emily]

Yeah. Technically, that magic trick is an emergent property of a dynamical system.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like a flock of birds. When you see a murmuration, it looks magical because a flock of birds, not just a flock, but a murmuration is astonishing. And the characteristics of it are that no one is in charge. No individual bird is leading them and telling them what to do. It's this, this self organization is emerging and creating something that nobody chose and no one's in control of. And no one gets to decide how long it lasts or when it ends. It just happens.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And people think that like in a dancing or music making situation, like the conductor is somehow the person in charge. And there are, there's. There are frankly far too many explanations of entrainment and emergence that are like, oh, the conductor is telling the ensemble what to do. But in actual practice, the conductor is not in charge. The conductor is part of the murmuration. The thing that's in charge is the music itself. And what's in charge of the music itself is the affect intended by the composer. Whatever the composer meant to express the happiness or the sadness or the. Whatever it is that's in the music itself is the thing that is defining what we do.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

With our bodies.

[Emily]

Since both of us are teachers, I think it's important for us to point out that in a group setting where there is A nominal leader. I'm thinking of Aristotle's triangle of persuasion, which involves logic, like, how good is your reasoning, emotion, how appealing is your argument, and also credibility. So when you're the person who's standing in front and you're assigned the role of being the leader, there is a shift of gravity toward you as the leader so that you have, like, a little more pull on the direction that the group moves. There's not nothing to being the leader of a group.

[Amelia]

Yeah. There's only more pull.

[Emily]

If it's agreed.

[Amelia]

Upon by the members of the group.

[Emily]

Yeah. If. If the people in the group consent. Again, it's all by choice. If they acknowledge, if they act as if it's true that the person at the front of the room emphasizing the choice.

[Amelia]

And I'm not sure that's the.

[Emily]

It's agreement.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

It's not. I don't mean intellectual choice.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

But if they.

[Amelia]

But if they have a lack of resistance.

[Emily]

Yeah. They're. They're not disagreeing.

[Amelia]

Their.

[Emily]

Their elephant is not. I got beef with that elephant. Their elephant is like, that's the leader.

[Amelia]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Emily]

So I trust that elephant.

[Amelia]

This is a lot of conducting training. I'm sorry I have to talk about kanakne when I talk about this, because this is the way I understand it.

[Emily]

Yeah. I'm going to talk about sex. That's just what it is.

[Amelia]

Yeah. When you learn about conducting, you learn a lot about, like, music, how to analyze the score, how to come to understand how all the parts work together. And, like, what's going to need to be done by each individual member of the ensemble in order to accomplish what the whole goal of the. Of the big picture says. And that's a lot of what you learn as a conductor, even, like, standing on the podium. What your gesture is supposed to do is supposed to communicate that information without getting in the way of letting the musicians, you know, be artists. And then there's another level of conducting that is. I was so mad to discover that a lot of conducting teachers decided that, oh, you just can't talk about this. I mean, there's just no way to talk about it. There's just. There's no way to teach it. You just have to know it. And I strongly object to that characterization that, like, this. This. This level of connectedness and trainment emergence.

[Emily]

It's not a learnable, teachable skill.

[Amelia]

Is not a learnable, teachable skill. What if you feel like you can't talk about it or you can't teach it. That's because you're a shitty teacher.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

You. You might well understand it and be.

[Emily]

Able to do it. You can do it, but you. You don't. You don't actually understand what you're doing if you can't explain it to yourself.

[Amelia]

If it's instinctive for you, and you think it must be instinctive in order to be accomplished. You're. You're a bad teacher.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And you need to sit down, Go conduct whatever ensembles you want to conduct. Go be a great conductor who can accomplish this. And, like, give me this experience, but never teach it. Like. Like, take a seat and let someone who can talk about it and can. And usually that's somebody who is bad at it. Like, at first.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Now, you can, of course, tell that I have some very specific experiences with this, and I think that autism, a little bit, stands as a barrier between me and the magic trick. I think connection with other people is less instinctive for me than it is for most musicians, for sure. Am I. Am I wrong in thinking that autism is like, a. Potentially, because of the differences in emotional and social reciprocity, that kind of, like, clinically, autism is more likely to be a characteristic that makes you.

[Emily]

I would say, your autism.

[Amelia]

My autism. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

Is a barrier. I would say my autism prevents me from accessing it the way most people do and makes it much easier to access it in other ways.

[Amelia]

Well, I had conducting teachers, and it's.

[Emily]

About my access to my body.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah. It's about access to your body. Absolutely.

[Emily]

Because I got it through exercise, meditation, and sex. First times.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It's about access to your body. I had to be. I had to be trained pretty explicitly about how to do it.

[Emily]

But a lot of people. So I think, like, a typical experience, especially first kind of accidental experience of the magistrate.

[Amelia]

Hold on, hold on, hold on. First, I want to talk about not being able to talk about it.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Amelia]

Just that people who are bad at it, like me, who have learned to do it, who have studied it, like, on paper, and then, like, practiced it really slowly and laboriously, discovering ways not only to access it myself, but also to. To discover the things that work to give that experience to the ensemble. I think when you are worse at it, you're better at teaching it because you've had to do. You've had to try everything to figure out what works.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And so if there's anybody who's like, you can't talk about it. You just have to experience it. You just have to know it. That's because that person is maybe intuitively good at it, and. And they haven't had to try. They haven't had to work at it, and good for them.

[Emily]

Yay.

[Amelia]

But that doesn't mean that you can't talk about it. It just means that the people who are maybe naturally the best at it should. Should shut up.

[Emily]

Don't know what they're doing.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah. And some people truly have, like, an immediate. Like, some people are what I describe as plugged in.

[Amelia]

Absolutely.

[Emily]

Plugged in to the universe. When you think of people who are plugged in, who do you think of as, like, this is a person who just, like, they can go do the magic trick without trying.

[Amelia]

There was a conducting teacher at Westminster Choir College called Joseph Flummerfeld. He was a student of Leonard Bernstein, and he could just do it. He could. Like, Leonard Bernstein, who was another one, could just do it. And singing for him was a very extraordinary experience. And he thought it couldn't be taught.

[Emily]

Yeah. Because he couldn't teach it.

[Amelia]

He couldn't teach it because he didn't.

[Emily]

Just know what he was doing. He always had the capacity.

[Amelia]

And he. And he thought that some people are just gifted with it, and some people are just.

[Emily]

Some people are gifted with it.

[Amelia]

Absolutely. They are. Some people that have it. Yeah. My other. The very first connecting teacher, serious connecting teacher I had was Paul Head, who's a conductor at University of Delaware, who was a student of Flummerfelt, who, when I told Flemmerfeld that I was Paul Head's student, he was like, oh, okay, you're gonna have it too. And within seconds of seeing me conduct, he was like, oh, no, she doesn't have it. And, like, gave up on me, like, just was like, okay, there's nothing I can teach her if she can't just do that. And it was like I could. I feel like I'm capable. I feel like I know what's on the other side of this wall. I feel like I know. I feel like I know where I'm going. I feel like I know what the magic trick looks like. I just don't know how to cross that bridge, how to get through this barrier to discover it. And what I needed was. Was the science of it. I needed to understand actually what it was, which is why, like, studying entrainment and two person neurobiology was the way in for me. But, like, now that I know, I can make it happen for singers who I conduct and I can access it more easily myself.

[Emily]

Yeah. Yeah. So in the way that Flummerfeld would be like whether or not somebody has it. So in the specific context of conducting, I have always been identified as someone who has it. As a teacher or performer standing in front of a group of people. I have like, the magnetic thing that pulls people into my state. And as an adult, have always had it without knowing that that's what I was doing. It is to do it for a group, to get a group of people to come with me.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I find it really exhausting. Cause as a teacher rather than a conductor, I'm not so much like making something with this group of people. Like, I'm trying to bring them to the place that I am. And when I feel them get there, that feels rewarding. And when I walk out of that room, I need to go stare at a wall for hours.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's exhausting when you're making the music. It is more of a, like, self fulfilling, self nourishing, perpetual motion machine because the music itself does some of the nourishing.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

As a teacher and a lot. Look, a lot of amateurs who, like, love a thing and want to share it with others, like amateurs who lead choirs because they're enthusiastic and they want to make some music. I've had a lot of this experience with, like, volunteer church leaders where they love a thing and it makes them feel amazing. So they just. They want to, like, do they want to do that for other people too? They assume that if they access the feeling that it'll just intuitively be spread to the other people around them.

[Emily]

Sure.

[Amelia]

And, like, no, that's not how that works. If you are indulging in your experience of connectedness to the one, and you have done that without making sure that you're bringing the other people along with you. Because there are some things that are required to make that to happen. Like, there has to be a kind of a pace that is set rhythmically in order for people to get on the train. Like, the train has to be moving at a predictable rate. So if you are a person who, like, loves sharing a thing with your church members or with your choir members and your. And like, your pace is. You think that inside you, your pace is a pace. Like you can feel it happening. But externally, objectively, sometimes you stop and wait and like, think about a thing and everybody else in the room drops away like they are no longer on your train.

[Emily]

Does that.

[Amelia]

Do you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense?

[Emily]

Yes. The people who succeed with a group, and I think we're a little bit off track in talking about, like teaching a group of people or leading a group of choir. Because what most people are going to be doing with this information is accessing it in their personal life.

[Amelia]

Sure.

[Emily]

And we can like if dancing or music or marching or sex. Feel like things that are already part of your life and you want to enhance your well being, make yourself stronger than the fire. Make the people in your life stronger than the fire. Knowing that this magic trick is a thing that exists. And when you access that feeling of your personal boundaries dissolving into. I think you called it the one. Maybe what is the thing you call the place where you go?

[Amelia]

I don't have a name for it.

[Emily]

I call it the field.

[Amelia]

Okay. I don't have a name for it because I. No, I don't. I don't have a name for it. I literally think of it as the magic trick, which.

[Emily]

So that's the thing you do, but there's. The place you go is a different thing from the place that you go when you're engaging in the behaviors.

[Amelia]

I don't feel it as a. I don't experience it as a place.

[Emily]

It's a state that you are in. Like it is a neurological state that you're creating.

[Amelia]

Yeah, right.

[Emily]

You're transitioning from one state to another.

[Amelia]

I mean, the magic trick is how you achieve the magic trick. That's how I think of it.

[Emily]

Yeah. So I call it the field. The magic trick is how you get to the field.

[Amelia]

Okay.

[Emily]

And I'm gonna. I'm gonna read some more, come together, about why I call it the field. Basically, it starts with. Unfortunately, I'm sorry, it starts with quantum physics. So I'm going to quote no bad parts, which is a book by Richard Schwartz. Dick Schwartz, the guy who invented internal family systems. In his book no Bad Parts, here's what he writes. Quantum physics tells us. And like eye roll, that's my big feeling is like, are we gonna try and. But okay. Tells us that a photon is both a particle and a wave. I believe the same is true for the self. Most of the time we experience self with a capital S in its particle state. We feel some degree of connectedness with others and to all caps self, while also sensing that we are separate entities with boundaries and individual agency. Through meditation or psychedelics, however, we can lose those boundaries and enter the wave state. We become part of the much larger field of all caps self in a way that feels numinous. We already know about magnetic or gravitational fields, but as theoretical physicist Sean Carroll points out, the universe is Full of fields. And what we think of as particles are just excitation of those fields like waves in an ocean. I believe Richard Schwartz writes, there is a field of self. We can enter that field through meditation, for example, and become part of that field and lose our particleness, become waveness. So I think the magical trick is access to this field of self. And when I was reading this, I was reminded of, obviously, as a middle aged, white, middle class American Lady in the 21st century, I relate real hard to medieval Sufi poet Rumi. And because it's a podcast and we're not making any money on this, I'm just gonna quote the whole first stanza out. Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. One time I married some people and I.

[Amelia]

You officiated a wedding.

[Emily]

I officiated a wedding. I married some people and I use this wedding as a starting place for talking about the ways, like, here we are at a wedding. What the fuck are we doing here? This is about connection, about union. Not just between these two people who are choosing each other today, but also all of us who are here who are connected atom by atom through our skin forever. Rich used to make a T shirt that said, I'm quantum entangled with stupid.

[Amelia]

Mm.

[Emily]

And, like, there are a lot of people who object to the shirt because it uses the word stupid, which has a lot of, like, ableist load to it. But I. I thought it was very funny.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because quantum entanglement is sometimes used literally more often as a metaphor to describe when people who feel connected to each other, even maybe when they're not in each other's physical presence. So that's why I call it the field. So the magic trick is how you get to the field.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So what I was talking about when I was talking about people who are. Who have experienced this and they want to experience it again, and then they try to do it by creating it with other people kind of on purpose.

[Emily]

Who try to be leaders. Creating it on purpose.

[Amelia]

Right. That is not the way in for leading. It is not the way in.

[Emily]

Leading it is not the way in.

[Amelia]

Right. That's what I was trying to say.

[Emily]

Unless you are trained in how to do it.

[Amelia]

Unless you are trained in how to do it.

[Emily]

And even then, or have a miraculous.

[Amelia]

Plugged in identity, unless you're Leonard Bernstein.

[Emily]

Or Cynthia Erivo is a Person I think of as being plugged in.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So, like, how to do it? I think make sure that you're. That you're not doing it with the intention of bringing other people along. I think that is enormously important to talk about, which is why I started that kind of rambly part of the story.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Amelia]

The. The way to do it is to go in as a willing participant, as like being. I'm curious about finding this thing. And it's got to be doing something that you love already, I think, is. It is a great way in. Does that make sense? It's got to be something you're already enthusiastic about doing. Like, you know, the. The concert you go to has to be full of music that you actually really already love.

[Emily]

It sure makes it easier.

[Amelia]

Yeah, it sure makes it easier.

[Emily]

Exactly.

[Amelia]

One of the ways that I've experienced it is horseback riding. This is another thing that, like, is a multi sensory experience. It is about connection to an animal, but it's also about, like, balancing and being able to make minute changes to the way your body interacts with the animal.

[Emily]

And this is a great example of sort of innate ability.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Do you want to tell the story? Yeah.

[Amelia]

So I've been taking horseback riding lessons for several years when Emily was like, maybe I want to try that. Maybe it'll be good for my vestibular disorder. And so Emily came to my horseback riding lesson and. And got on the horse. And my horseback riding teacher was like, yeah, I've never seen anybody get on and just do it that quickly.

[Emily]

Because for me, the connection through my body to the animal's body was instantaneous and intuitive.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It was like in. In the Avatar where you, like, take your tail and you plug it into their tail. And she's like, yeah.

[Emily]

It was actually really validating for me.

[Amelia]

To hear.

[Emily]

Someone else be like, yep, you did that thing.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because I was like, oh, that's a thing I did. And that is a skill I have.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And that, frankly, is I'm so good at sex.

[Amelia]

And I been taking lessons for years on the same horse, on the same teacher, Luke. And I was like, great. But one of the reasons I started taking horseback riding lessons was because the only Grammy winning conductor with whom I am personally acquainted. Well, I know a couple, but like, the one who's won the most Grammys is also a horse owner and rider.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And I was like, I think that there's something both metaphorically and literally about the skill of communicating in this limbic.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

Low road bodily way that is, I mean, Everything that's true about riding a horse is true about conducting an ensemble, which is like the state that your body is in influences the state that the horse is in.

[Emily]

The state.

[Amelia]

The, the degree of interference between what you want to communicate and the actual act of communication is the most necessary thing to learn, to clear away. Yeah.

[Emily]

Anyway, it's so funny that you use the avatar example of like plugging your tail into their tail because it literally felt to me like I was just like plugging my tailbone into the saddle and receiving direct communication through my spine.

[Amelia]

Whereas I had spent years taking lessons being told that my seat mattered.

[Emily]

And you're like, what the fuck is a seat?

[Amelia]

What's a seat? What. What's a seat? And like, literally what seat means is ass. And like, it's just that the teacher can't be like, telling you to, you know, relax your ass or whatever. Like I said, it's too crass for the noble art of equestrian.

[Emily]

Sink your pelvic cradle into the saddle so that you can feel what's happening under you.

[Amelia]

I thought seat was, it was a construct of like a combination of quadriceps and hamstring and calves. And like. No, it's literally just your ass. I spent years not understanding because the word that they used was a word that was a mystery to me. And I just needed somebody to tell me. Relax your buttocks.

[Emily]

Yeah. Sink your pelvic floor right into that and just melt your pelvic floor muscle, your pubic oxygen muscle right into the saddle.

[Amelia]

Yeah. But like, even if I know to do that, like, how do I do that without grabbing?

[Emily]

So there are in my legs individual differences in. And I, I truly think that there's a relationship between interoception and access to the magic trick. Because it really, like so much of it comes through the body. All the things that we're talking about with, like, so the most recent addition to my repertoire of strategies to transcend or go to the field. I recently. I'm only going to talk about this briefly for any number of reasons in your live recently, someone was talking about how neurodivergence made mindfulness meditation really difficult for them. And a lot of people who are neurodivergent in different ways, even people who are not neurodivergent, neurotypical people, find mindfulness to be really challenging because mindfulness is a focus oriented meditation practice where there's effort put into keeping your attention somewhere, even if the place your attention is, is noticing what's happening with your mind and body right now. Right and so mindfulness is effortful for everybody, but it's absolutely a skill that anyone can learn. It's just more difficult for some than for others. I have been struggling with my sleep for a long time. I've mentioned it several times. And when I used the tools, because I have so many tools, I have every tool. I have so many tools. It is a profound irony that someone who literally teaches this shit has access to every tool and none of it's working. Like, my psychiatrist prescribed me a sleep drug that he described as a brick to the skull and it didn't work. This is a drug he avoids prescribing because the risk of unwanted consequences, side effects is so high. And it didn't even fucking work for me. So like my sleep is fucked.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And anytime I tried to use my usual tools, what it did was remind me how much I've lost because my body has changed. And I feel so alienated from my body because of like both perimenopause and long Covid. And when I get swamped with that grief, that does not help me to fall asleep. So I needed a new tool, a new tool that was not burdened by the grief of what I've lost. So I got trained in transcendental meditation, which I had never been trained in before. Because the phrase transcendental meditation is, feels very off putting to me.

[Amelia]

It just, it just feels really pretentious.

[Emily]

So pretentious. Yeah, so pretentious. I'm a net transcend. David lynch talked all the time about you just need to transcend every day. And I'm, I hear that and I'm.

[Amelia]

Like, oh, I mean you kind of, do you kind of transcend every day.

[Emily]

You don't need to transcend every day if you're doing it like through dancing or music or sex. Like it only needs to be like once a month. Like. Cause that's so powerful. But like you spend 20 minutes. So TM, as I'm going to call it, is a form of meditation that is not focus oriented you. And so there are rules about not talking too detailed about what TM is. But anybody will tell you that it is sitting down for 20 minutes twice a day and thinking of your mantra. And your mind is going to move away from your mantra and that's normal. And your mind will return to the mantra and that too is normal. And you just sit there for 20 minutes, allowing, gently favoring the mantra. And gradually your brain experiences a shift. And you will not necessarily be aware that the shift has happened. It is incredibly gentle My favorite thing about it is the phrase trying is prohibited. Not trying is a state that my brain has almost no experience with. And when I successfully don't try to do anything, it does feel very nourishing. And all of the principles about TM are about going to the place that I call the field in a different way. Just by sitting for 20 minutes twice a day with your mantra, that's it seems easy. And it was. It was not. That's the thing is it's supposed to be easy. I really needed something that was easy.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Because I was working very hard. Very hard.

[Emily]

And working very hard is not a great way to fall asleep.

[Amelia]

No.

[Emily]

So doing something easy that is like if you are putting effort into it, if you are trying, if you are, if it isn't easy, you're not doing it correctly. If it's easy, you're doing it right.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And the way, the way to make it easy is not to try to make it anything at all.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Does that make sense?

[Amelia]

Yeah. You need to show up ready to go along for the ride to be a participant.

[Emily]

Except no. There's literally no agenda. You're not allowing. You are not shifting your attention to anything at all. One of the most important moments as part of my training, as I was talking about how we meditated in silence together for 10 minutes and then my teacher said, was that easy? And I was like, it was like 90% easy. There was a part where I was distracted by outside noises and she. She said, distracted from what? And I was like, oh, right. I'm not trying to attend to anything in particular.

[Amelia]

So you just have to show up.

[Emily]

Trying is prohibited. It is literally just showing up okay, for 20 minutes twice a day and gently favoring the mantra. That's was four days, approximately half an hour to two hours per day. Four days in a row. The first of the training sessions has to be one on one in person with your teacher. And I do think there's absolutely an entrainment that happens with the body of your teacher as they meditate with you for the first time, but then they leave you alone to meditate by yourself for a while. They, like put you there and then they leave you and see what it feels like for you to do it on your own. And then they come back and then the other three can either be virtual or they can be in person. How much you pay for TM training is on a sliding scale based on income. It's not cheap, but it is also not expensive. Considering what it is, I really appreciate the attention to maintaining the teaching to the same as what it was 70, 80 years ago.

[Amelia]

Mm.

[Emily]

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is the teacher who transported Transcendental meditation as a component of Vedic practices to the West. But this is ancient, like, thousands of years old as a practice, just like yoga is a practice thousands of years old in the Vedic traditions. And so that is a way to access transcendence that involves less moving of your body. It doesn't involve other people and has been a real surprise. And, like, I've only been doing it for a short period of time, and I do definitely feel like it's making a difference.

[Amelia]

Good. That's good, because you need some sleep.

[Emily]

It's been bad. And I'm doing. I'm doing other things besides the tm. I'm continuing, like, I'm on a. I'm on a journey. I'm, like, trying, like, now the time. Like, my number one job right now is fix the sleep situation. And we will have other episodes where I talk about other shit that I've been doing. But transcendental meditation is a. Is a way to access the field, to do the magic trick that doesn't require anybody else. It is incredibly gentle. And if all of, like, some people experience the field, like, they. They do the magic trick by going to, like, a huge rock concert. Like, you go to Beyonce concert, and you just, like, dissolve into the massive humanity and the music and the lights. And, like, Beyonce is another person who is, like, when she gets on stage, she's plugged in.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

She's plugged into the universe. And she creates a gateway for other people to touch that experience, which is what makes her so magical. And that's a. That's a very effortful way. It's expensive, and you gotta go to the place and you gotta park someplace or get a ride and then go to your seat and then wait for who knows how long, and then you gotta leave. And there's traffic and crowds and noise and people. And, like, there's. There's a lot of, like, other stuff that comes with the experience of the field. With TM, there's just you in a chair 20 minutes twice a day.

[Amelia]

However, that's a really great illustration of.

[Emily]

What people are willing to do.

[Amelia]

Are willing to do, of how much this experience is valued by individuals, that they will go through all of that. And it seems like a perfectly normal amount of energy to expend.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

On an experience because the experience is so good. It's literally. I think, literally the. The best experience humanity is Capable of.

[Emily]

Maslow would agree. Yep. That's. I mean, it's a peak experience. This is what Maslow writes about his peak experience. Sports, ball games. Same thing. Like when your team scores a ball. Sport of the sportball.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like, the whole crowd cheering. Like, that is a. I dissolve into the mass. I personally have never had that crowd experience, which, like, maybe was one of the earliest flags of, like, hey, autism. Hey, do you think maybe autism is because I've never had that experience. And, like, everyone I know has had that experience. I think you also have never had a. Like, I'm an audience member at a massive media something or other. I'm dissolving into the infinity. Like, maybe when you go to a.

[Amelia]

Concert, but, like, not even then. I don't dissolve into the infinity of a crowd. I dissolve into the infinity of music itself.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

It's not other people that entrain me. It is. It is the. It's the sound of the music and the affect of the intention.

[Emily]

When I was in a play way back when I first moved to Massachusetts.

[Amelia]

Way back.

[Emily]

Way back. I actually asked one of the other performers, why do people come to a show? Why is there an audience?

[Amelia]

Like.

[Emily]

And what I realized is that I don't have that appetite for being perceived by the audience. Why I love performing in a play is because I love playing the game with the other people on stage. Like, my experience is, like, locked in to the stage experience. And I can feel the audience responding, especially when I shift my attention away from the stage and out to the audience. Like, you know, at the end of a song, the audience applauds. The song is done. I check in with the audience to see what they thought. But, like, I. It was because we were blocking the bows, and I was like, why do we bow? Why are people applauding? What's really going on here? Like, I wanted to dig into the experience because. And it turns out everybody else who's in the show is there because they love the applause. I live for the applause. Applause. Applause that, like, that feeds something in them. And that. That was not why I did it. But for a lot of people, that is a transcendent. Transcendent experience for them to receive applause.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. Applause itself is a potentially transcendent experience because you're literally all clapping together.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

For the same people and the same. Yeah. No, no, no. For me, it's very intellectual.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

I can access this experience.

[Emily]

More easily.

[Amelia]

Than with an ensemble is with me. And just the score, me and the composer and what the composer had to say. Connected to just that itself without other people to have to, like, shepherd through the experience or even to have to, like, try to find inside the experience. When it's just me sitting in front of a score, coming to try to, like, understand what's in it, that. That feels very outside myself. Being one with, you know, something intangible.

[Emily]

Yeah. I do it most readily when it's just me and my body. Like, we often tell the story of me cycling in the hills of southeastern Pennsylvania and, like, feeling my body dissolve into the bicycle in the road and the grass and the cows in the sky and the sun, having no idea what was happening. I was, what, like, 19, 20 and just, like, cycling on a road and I got to the top of a hill and I just, like, had this sense of connection with the universe. And I've told this story to you, and you kind of thought I was making it up at the time, which is fair enough. It feels. It's. If I describe it that way to someone who hasn't experienced it, it sounds like bullshit. For the other people who have experienced something like that, they're like you. Yes. Yes. Some people describe it as simply something like the runner's high and moving your body in time with or without other people for a purpose, because that's what you're choosing to do right now with your body is. That's a. That's the magic trick. And it is a gateway to the field.

[Amelia]

Perhaps including other people is just a shortcut for allistic minds.

[Emily]

Yeah, it could be.

[Amelia]

My stepson, who is an actor, before he was a grown up adult person, was a. Was a kid in his high school play and loved theater and was like, yeah, someday I'm gonna do a production of west side Story. And at the end, we're just gonna leave all the lights off and the audience is gonna walk out in silence.

[Emily]

And I was like, the audience doesn't want.

[Amelia]

That is there for catharsis. They want to.

[Emily]

They want to. Thank you.

[Amelia]

Express a thing.

[Emily]

Yeah, they want to.

[Amelia]

They want to. They want to be part of the expression too. And, like, that will be less satisfying for them if you require that. That won't make it more intense for them. That'll make it less. Because it'll be a disappointment because they will have not experienced something that is part of the experience for them, which is at the end. Yeah, Being part of the applause and giving back some of what they have.

[Emily]

That is someone who's never had a great sexual experience that ended before they had an orgasm. Like, it's the Equivalent of like, what do you mean we're done? Yeah, I feel like maybe we're not done.

[Amelia]

Yeah, it just is. It's doing a thing that has an idea behind it.

[Emily]

Sure.

[Amelia]

A thought, a prefrontal. I mean like a prefrontal cortex, like intellectual idea that does not achieve the visceral goal that you maybe anticipate because you were doing it for the idea and not for the experience. Does that make sense?

[Emily]

Sure. So we've talked about doing it by yourself. We've talked about doing it with a group. I would like to just to emphasize the normality of doing it with just one other organism. Sometimes a horse, sometimes a person, sometimes is your dog. That is for me, solo is the easiest. And with another person, like one other organism is the next easiest. I'm good at attending to one other creature. Beyond that, it just. It gets too. I have to split my attention in too many ways and I lose access to the magic trick because it becomes very like about the rider figuring out what to do instead of just me riding the elephant. If that makes sense.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So to conclude, to sum up, the magic trick is using your body rhythmically, sometimes with other people for a purpose, shared purpose, with free choice about your willingness to be there and allowing your state to transition from the particle individual self to the wave state universal self. In transcendental meditation, they call the field cosmic consciousness. I believe Jung calls it the universal unconscious.

[Amelia]

That's not really what Jung means by the collective unconscious.

[Emily]

Yeah, he's not talking about it as a destination, but I want to conclude by sort of teasing the idea that. Okay, so there's one even slightly woo thing that I do believe which is in the objective existence of the field as an actual thing. The cosmic consciousness is a real place that you can go to that is the same place other people go to. So that when Beyonce is a gateway to the field, everybody who goes there is going to the same place. And they are not just traveling together. They are arriving at the same destination where they all are together. And you may or may not be aware of other people because you have dissolved into the wave of universal self. Okay, so the wrapping up ness is like this is. So here are the steps that you take. The actual behaviors can be literally whatever moves your body in time, maybe with other people for a shared purpose. You freely are choosing that. This is like what you're gonna. There's agreement in every level of your self selfness that you're going to participate in this. And you experience a dissolution of yourself as an individual. And allow your boundaries to dissolve so that you become one with the one. And in principle, maybe when you go there, you are going to a real place that actually exists, and the experience of being there is profoundly and inherently nourishing and revitalizing. And the reason we are spending a whole episode talking about it is because it is a really intense and efficient way to build up your fire retardants.

[Amelia]

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 100%.

[Emily]

To become stronger than the fire. That's what it's for, is to strengthen you. The reason I spend 40 minutes of my day, each day now sitting with my eyes closed, gently favoring the mantra is because it is, in principle, helping me become stronger than the fire. My therapist, after just two weeks, told me she could tell a difference.

[Amelia]

Wow.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Cool.

[Emily]

She's like, here's this difference. I think it's the tm.

[Amelia]

Wow.

[Emily]

So if you have ever struggled with meditation but are like, I think meditation might be valuable. There's all kinds of reasons why. I'm going to tell one more story, and then we're truly wrapping up.

[Amelia]

Okay.

[Emily]

I had a student when I was the wellness director. I talk about mindfulness all the time. Mindfulness, Mindfulness. Mindfulness. Mindfulness is good for you. And this student heard me say it over and over again. She worked with me in one of the groups that I led. And she's like. And she told me so. A couple of years after she graduated, she came to an event that I did in her town, where she now lived as a full adult. And after the event, she came up and talked to me, and she was like, you were always saying mindfulness helped. And every time I tried mindfulness, I would drop my attention down into my body, and it would be sirens and red flashing lights. And I was like, why would anybody want to be still and present in the moment when it's so terrible there? And eventually, after a few times of trying, this. This person said to me, I thought, maybe there's something wrong. And she went to a doctor and was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Which she had been living with for years and just thought that living with that amount of pain all the time was what being alive felt like.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So if. I mean, mindfulness can be difficult for any number of reasons. But if the reason mindfulness feels difficult for you is because when you drop your attention down into your body, into the less conscious levels of your awareness and it's terrible in there, know that the inexperienced human's brain is not a terrible place to be when you are healthy. When you are not living with chronic pain or illness, when you have not experienced significant and unhealed trauma, neglect, or abuse. Oh, my. The inside of your internal experience is not a terrible place to be. And if it feels like a terrible place to be, therapy, just, like, as a tool for people who are, like, under no circumstances. That sounds terrible. Anytime I've tried something like that, it's been terrible. If it feels terrible, that is an experience you can heal from.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And we're going to talk about shadow work, which is what's going to be necessary in order to do that.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I feel like that was a worthwhile appendix.

[Amelia]

Yes. Very. Yeah. Important. Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah. Okay. Transcendence. It's for everybody. Unless you're not ready, in which case, you know. Therapy. Stronger than the fire. Cue the ukulele.

[Amelia]

I want to give singers that experience because that's. That's the good stuff. That's why you put on hard pants.