So have you ever felt like you didn't truly belong in your family, your community?
Maybe even within yourself?
Like there was this elusive sense of home that just always seemed out of reach?
My guest today knows that feeling intimately, having experienced profound abandonment and trauma in her earliest years.
Yet Roopda's story is one of breathtaking resilience and transformation.
So imagine carrying the weight of a childhood marked by instability, violence, and a desperate search for safety.
Now picture finding solace and spiritual connection in a Buddhist monastery at a young age building community and safety and resilience only to have that beautiful world shattered yet again and be left to rebuild your world and your life from the ashes of everything you thought was real and true.
What forces of courage and determination would it take to emerge from the depths of disconnection and rediscover your truth when feel like everything has been taken away, again and again.
In this deeply moving conversation, my guest Rupta shares her remarkable journey from abandoned child to internationally recognized trauma expert and guide for those seeking healing.
And you'll learn her most powerful practices for cultivating self -belonging, embodying trust even when it feels impossible, and creating communities of radical authenticity.
Rupta is living proof that true freedom arises only when reconnect with the core of who we are.
As an expert and trained facilitator in somatic experiencing, trauma therapy and leadership development, her just joyful presence, it creates this nurturing space for profound personal growth and transformation.
So excited to share this conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
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My curiosity in wanting to just spend some time in conversation with you, actually heard you on the Coaches' Rising podcast. There was just this beautiful, generous, kind, and wise energy that maybe want to know more.
So that was the genesis of us reaching out to you.
So I appreciate you making time to do it.
You know, I think an interesting starting point for us and for our community is really to take a big step back in time.
Your early life was filled with, from the outside, looking in what I would call extremes.
And as you shared many times, you also, you were non -verbal, for the first chunk of years of your life.
Take me into young rootless world.
MG and CB The journey in how I came into this world was pretty brutal.
I can really acknowledge that now, Jonathan.
It's taken me some time.
And, of course, much of the work we do as therapists and facilitators and coaches is that realization in our own kind of past and what we've discovered in that and also meeting it maybe from a different perspective, obviously, because my Mother was, you know, she doesn't really speak a lot about it.
But because she was homeless at the time.
She had me And she was a teenage mom Though at that time in the 60s, you just didn't have a kid out of wedlock so she got rid of this kid at birth and I didn't really Think much about it until I start doing trauma work with it, especially supporting people in it and I started to realize it there's something there, of course.
And lucky in a way for me, for nine months nobody came and adopted me.
I got to go back to my mother when she realized that she wanted to keep me, actually, she had to go get married, you know?
And in the sixties just what you do.
And then I think it was around one and a half to when she was in London and someone had robbed her and money passport, the whole thing.
And because she was in a city that she didn't know and she wasn't accustomed to the place and also snow.
She had a breakdown.
It was too much for a teenage mom.
And so, in England, they have a thing called social services.
And so, they came and they took me away.
So, again, for six months, I was taken away.
Now, I don't have any recollection of this, but I have seen some photos, and that's about all I can say of it.
There's a lot to be said in how we store, and of course it can go generational.
Can I pause for a second here?
I do want to hear the rest of the story.
I'm curious. You shared just shared you have no recollection, but you've seen photos of I'm assuming you during that time.
When you look back now with your eyes to those images of you in that moment, what happens?
What comes up? What do you notice?
It's funny, no one actually asked me that question.
And it's something I decided to put on my phone for the first time because that's exactly the little one that I'm taking care of.
And of course, there's a lot we can dig in that in regards to how much wounding we have around there.
Now I can look at her and there's so much love.
I've rejected that part for so many years.
There's so much love and compassion and tenderness and just wanting to hold her and soothe her and tell her everything's gonna be all right.
When I did used to look at her, when I didn't really have that understanding of me, there was kind of a numbness, almost like a disassociation to it, a disconnect.
Obviously, that's probably the way I dealt with it in order to not have to face the pain of what she was going through when I look at that.
Now, of course, it's changed for me because now I've moved through that pain in many degrees, and I can really hold her and say, am here.
I'm not gonna abandon you.
I'm here." BT. Mm -hmm.
It's beautiful. Take me back into the story.
CBF. Yes. Thank you.
From that, when my mother got me back at social services till age five, I saw things that were very, very violent.
And this is part of why I was nonverbal.
Because what I saw was probably not good, I'm not going to say on the...
I don't want to shock your listeners.
which was so violent that I saw was happening to the one person that was my caretaker, my mother, and it was powerless to do anything.
And then things happened in both directions.
So I can look at it now and realize it was an absolute shutdown and disconnect.
And social services came in again when I was five, and they had been hearing complaints about what was happening in 16th floor of that building.
And it was a very upper class building.
It was well -to -do, but people knew that there was a little child in there and something was not right.
And I'll leave it there, cause it's quite heavy.
But what happened then is the moment my mom took me to a very beautiful boarding school, private boarding school in Oxford. And the moment she left me there, That's the moment when I saw her driving away, and that's the memory I have. And I remember her waving through the back of the car window and crying and the headmaster was holding me.
And all I could think of is what I had done wrong.
And the imprint of course is I'm damaged or I'm not lovable or I'm not enough.
And she didn't really know better.
This kinda in England is very common to send your kid to boarding school, especially my age, Jen.
So she didn't think about the boarding school.
She knew it was this private boarding school.
It was a bespoke, but all the kids were 10 years and older, and I was five years and I was nonverbal.
So I was in the hospital multiple times with stitches on my head and other things happened.
We don't need to go there.
But the long short of it was the first seven years were really intense, of this feeling of being not wanted.
I think that was the biggest one that really stayed with me and that was the piece that I had to do a lot of work around and reflection on and it showed up of course in different kinds of relating you know can I really take my space and do I have a right to be here.
So lucky for me Jonathan that my mother this was you know Bob Dylan, Bob Marley on the radio it was like mid -70s all the stuff was going on and lucky for me my mother took to that and we ended up going to the Tibetan Buddhist monastery in still there today, called Semiling.
And in that moment, a 7 -year -old child who is not speaking is observing and because they didn't speak my language, it was a perfect way to connect in the nonverbal, in the unknown.
And also what was happening was there was a lot of connection and there was a lot of compassion.
Buddhists are that way by nature.
They're so soft and peaceful and and it didn't matter if we knew the words or not.
And in that moment, I linked feeling safe with spirituality.
And I don't think I knew it then, but that's what was happening.
Because from that moment on, I turned to my mom and that was my journey.
And I went to meditate every morning, five, six in the morning by myself with the monks every morning, and she would stay sleeping in bed.
and I was determined to continue.
And then I met another teacher who was very controversial and famous around the world when I was a kid when I was nine.
And I said to my mom again, I want to go be with this teacher and meditate and be in the workshops and be in the field of, you know...
At that time, it was spiritual development, and I didn't really know how to put a name on it, but I just knew that this was a safe place and was my place.
Yeah. When you arrive in this spiritual center and you immediately start to feel this sense of being able to exhale, it sounds like, oh, there's something here.
You describe how you weren't speaking up until then and that in this environment in the early days there was a comfort even in that because almost it sounds like what you're describing is there wasn't an expectation that you would, which in a way took the pressure off.
Does that land? Yeah, yeah.
There was so much going on, and the Tibetan Buddhist commune was very different than the next commune I went to, which was more radical in the spiritual time of the mid -70s.
But I really felt like I belonged, which is a big piece as you can imagine, I found my place.
And as deep as… and as much as I loved my mother, I felt like whatever that Ruptas was starting to kind of, her realization of herself, I found my place, my home, and I felt embraced in that, because there was no right way to doing spirituality in this beautiful community I was in, so I could be me, and at the end, I ended up becoming Rupta the rebel as a little kid, which was the complete other extreme.
Yeah, the pendulum swings, as it often does.
I mean looking back, how do you understand the silence in those years now?
HA. I mean, I know it had to do with not feeling safe and that unpredictability, and it was probably my only way of staying alive at that time.
Now I look at silence and turning in in a very different perspective.
But then it was completely a different kind of way of dealing with shock.
Yeah. CB and Bi a. Do you recall when something switch in your brain flipped and something inside of you said, it's time, I'm okay actually sharing my voice?
MR. When I started sleeping in that Tibetan monastery, I didn't know what dialogue was opening up inside of me and I felt like I was talking to something that really had my back all of a sudden.
Because that deep feeling, that somatic feeling of I am home, I am safe, created such an exhalation inside of me and the registration was so strong in my body because the contrast was so large that it was so pivotal and it opened up such a big dialogue inside of me of who am I and this inquiry to, I don't know what you wanna call it.
We've called it 1 ,000 names, yeah?
That feeling where it's something held by something much bigger.
And that dialogue opened, it was very heart to heart, and I felt from that moment and still to this day that no matter if I'm homeless again, I will be okay.
And it's such deeply, deeply, deeply entrenched in me and I have been in rocky moments and I have felt like, wow, how am I gonna get through this one.
And that voice or that guidance or whatever one wants to call it is there holding me.
And I feel like a best friend is there, you know.
And the words are keep trusting everything's gonna be okay.
I mean, it's interesting how you share also that from that young age, you began to equate, maybe not consciously, but just really integrate this sense that spirituality is a part of safety, which is a part of okayness.
And how unusual to have that experience.
I was gonna say at such a young age, but I think the truth is that very few people have it ever.
And granted there's a lot of mixed feelings about, you know, spirituality, however people might define it these days and like a sense of relatedness to particular organized religions or past which they may either embrace or reject.
But for you, it's interesting to hear that at such a young age, that this, just, it landed with you and has never left you since.
You shared you became root of the rebel soon after that.
How did that show up?
So, the community of the commune, the spiritual commune, and I take it that your listeners know what that means.
It was a very, very big place.
And my upbringing was in being in group rooms, being in kind of retreats and seminars, or workshops, whatever people call them today.
And I got to be in the tapestry of that upbringing from childhood, teenage or to adulthood.
So, I loved being in there and I was not understanding fully what the adults were talking about sometimes.
It got very deep, of course, because I didn't have relationship issues.
I was a kid, you know?
but I could understand many things and then you know when I would sit in there sometimes I would get a little bit bored and I'd yeah you know these are not my problems yet you know they're just not mine yeah so I would go out sometimes and it was a big commune so it was kind of you know ashram is another word for it and also was an ashram as well and I would go out and we had our own little local shop and every time they had the big cookies coming out I would take these big cookies and I would find a way to put it under my jacket.
So while everyone is enchanting or doing some deep processing or meditating, here I am stealing the big cookies because currency was not our thing.
And I was a kid, and then when I got caught, the punishment was that we had to go do dynamic meditation every morning for five days.
And as a kid, you're like, oh, that's not what I want to go do.
But today, ironically, millions of people are doing this meditation.
And it's a very famous meditation, active meditation.
So I got kind of dubbed Rupta the rebel.
And every now and then, you'd see another kid in there with you doing the same dynamic meditation.
You go, oh, you messed up too?
Yeah, you messed up too.
That's like solidarity.
That's great. And I mean, larger context here, also, as you describe the world outside the ashram.
and this is when a lot of western culture was discovering this whole world.
This is when the Beatles were heading over and Ram Dass and that whole early crew were stepping into, they're heading to India.
They were in different ashrams, they were meeting different spiritual teachers and bringing them back to western culture.
But often a lot of the people who were open to that they were the quote hippies, the counterculture, the revolutionaries out.
It's kind of funny because you had a little bit that identity inside the ashrama.
Lisa - Yeah, yeah. You know, I want to say, Jonathan, that the intense trauma that I had was so extreme and then I noticed that lightness and playfulness was my saving grace as well.
And then what I started to realize is there were people who would just be like, oh, I'm going to sit for three hours and oh.
you know. And I can see their commitment and their dedication, but it was never my way in that way.
I still would sit for hours and oh my gosh, the amount of time we sat every morning and every night.
But what I came to discover was spirituality was never serious.
And if it was serious, then it kind of took away the fluidity of it or the openness or the spaciousness of it or what might come next, the mystery of it.
So, yeah. It came very natural.
I mean, it's such an interesting observation too, right?
Because I do believe that...
I'm curious whether you still see this or like out there in the world, you know, speaking with so many different people.
But I do see this sense of people equating any, quote, spiritual path to a sense of rigidity, discipline, heaviness, like, you know, asceticism.
And you know, like, this is just what you do, you have to sacrifice in the name of this thing, you have to even suffer to a certain extent in the name of, quote, reaching this point, whether you call it enlightenment or whatever it may be.
And yet, the people that I've run across in my life, who I feel most just have got it.
Like they've gotten the transmission.
They're truly joyful in their lives and their beings and their relationships.
That heaviness doesn't exist within them.
And that doesn't mean that the world and their circumstances around them aren't sometimes really hard and really brutal, but there's something about them where internally, the heaviness doesn't seem to land.
There's an access to lightness.
I'm curious whether you see that same thing.
fully, fully. I love how you put that as well, when we get so restricted on dogmas and doctrines and I'm gonna be very careful what I say because I don't wanna upset anyone.
But if you think about it from the perspective of some of these scriptures were written thousands of years ago, and if we kind of placate to everything, we end up kind of holding a particular construct, but there's also that part of us wants to break free is bigger than what had happened.
I mean, what's alive in your heart today might be different than what somebody wrote for you to do thousands of years ago.
So for some people, it's really hard because it's part of their conditioning.
And if I were to step out of the constructs of the particular religion I was raised in, let's say, then the piece around that is often where do I belong?
Once you dare to step out, It is a rebellious spirit to do so for some people and there's such freedom in it and a lightness in it.
And yes, then I see people who I can see in their faces.
Even if they are challenged in different aspects of life, they've kind of stepped out of the way they think they have to be.
And are in life, in the now, in the present and in enjoyment.
I like that. Yeah, absolutely.
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So you've used the word belonging a handful of times now.
I'm curious. Take me deeper into how this understanding of belonging emerges, and maybe even in the context of these early days in the ashram and studying with a teacher.
How does belonging really enter your experience early on, how do you start to understand its importance?
HA. Well, I think when I look back now, I could see it was a survival strategy to belong and then I'm safe for sure, that part.
Now later on, not only in my own development but because I've worked with thousands of people over the years, I can see that if we have a sense of not belonging or we feel disconnected from those that we would like to belong to or have been belonging to, it creates an excruciating isolation inside for some people.
Obviously, there's people who can go to India, sit in a mountain and chant, and they feel perfectly fine alone.
But there's a lot of people that need for connection is very much connected to belonging and to being part of, and it's also part of our old survival kind of way of being as tribes.
But what I also noticed working with so many different people is that when I ask them, you know, I do many different retreats.
And there's a particular thing in one of them that I do to register what's in the field.
And when I ask about loneliness, that's the biggest one, the biggest one.
And I'm always surprised and I can be in the Netherlands, Mexico, Brazil, Africa, many different countries, Australia, which is my home.
So I'm amazed at how core that is unusually, it's pointing to something where they feel they're not even belonging maybe to their partner.
If there's a disconnect there, they don't know where they belong in their work life or in their communities.
And the way I work with it, Jonathan, is that I work with it starting here because the wounding and the pain of that can sometimes be very outward focused, and we have a need for connection.
We're all aware of that.
But that first point of connection, that the relationship with yourself is the most important relationship because if you can somehow befriend this and feel a sense of home here, the way that we then are able to connect with others and feel a sense of belonging is not that hyper vigilance and insecurity and doubt and worry.
It doesn't come from that place.
It comes from this place, the heart center.
This has been my experience in working with people from these three centers of intelligence.
Yeah. Hmm. No, that makes so much sense to me.
I've always felt similarly that I don't know if it's right to say it's impossible to feel a sense of belonging to and from others, unless and until you feel that sense of belonging to and from yourself.
But I think it's a lot harder.
It seems like, and I'll tell from my own experience, that any sense of belonging comes with some blend of shape -shifting to fit in so you feel some sort of superficial sense of belonging, because it's never you that is actually belonging.
It's the form that you've taken, like the Avatar.
You know, it's a combination of that, or there's a graspiness to it.
There's like a striving for it.
There's like an attachment to it rather than just saying, I actually already have largely what I need internally.
This would be lovely if I also found it around me, but I'm also relatively okay just here with myself at the same time.
And I'm raising my hand to somebody who like moves in and out of all of these things on a regular basis, you know, I've been doing a lot of work.
And I think that's just like fundamentally part of the human condition, but does that land with you?
Yeah, absolutely. and to belong from a place or to be at home in yourself where when you're really at home with yourself, nothing is lacking.
So we're not going out in strategies and how to belong, how to fit in and then we abandon, we split off from our true self.
So absolutely. And that kind of belonging when you're in your heart, then you feel it, and you're not worried about losing it.
It It's connected, and it's a different kind of way of doing, not worrying about when it's gonna go.
Is there a question, a prompt practice that somebody who's listening to this might be kind of nodding along, saying, oh, this feels really resonant to me, but like what's a first step I might take to start to explore this sense of self -belonging.
Is there an opening move that you sometimes invite people into?
I'm going to say something that might rock the boat a little bit, so, with your permission.
I feel like if people are not meditating and being still and slowing down, even for five minutes a day and saying hello to yourself every morning, I wake up and do that, and and open that dialogue and just kind of welcoming yourself in for a moment and just allowing yourself that space and time, then you're going to be chasing from a particular place this idea, you know, of how it's meant to be.
But the moment we slow down, we close our eyes.
I mean, meditation has been around for thousands of years.
And I have to say a disclaimer, been doing it for 49 years, so I now know that it's the foundation for me for everything.
And yet it can be, it's where home is, it's where that deeper feeling of nothing is lacking.
It's so much attunement happens in meditation, even if you can only do it for five minutes.
And what I notice is if I'm not meditating and let's say my partner's not doing something or whatever, anything can show up in relating, everything does by the way, If I'm out of an alignment with myself it's so easy for me to project it on the other Because I often say that everything that's not repaired here is going to show up in the field whether you're working with individuals or in a relationship and When we sit silently close our eyes, we start to connect to ourselves Welcome ourselves say hello open that dialogue and then the invitation is you know?
from there, you start to feel like, oh yeah, I can feel a sense of self.
I feel a sense of, you know, I have a right to be here and the belonging starts to open.
Now that lands definitely.
It's funny that you have to put a little disclaimer out there before offering meditation as a practice, but there's definitely, I wonder if it's really, if it's the practice that people are reacting to or if it's the, sort of, the, I don't know, hipsterization of the practice, the outcome orientation of the practice that's so often, like, the packaging of it, you know?
Tell me a little bit more about what you mean by meditation here.
As you described, when you're, like, earlier in life, especially, like, you were introduced and you're sitting, literally, for hours a day, morning and evening, you know, that is not the typical person's life or lifestyle, and as you just offer, even five minutes a day matters and can make a difference.
are you talking about sitting?
Are you talking about, or can we broaden the conversation around meditation and say like, this can be me watching the clouds come by.
This can be me walking in nature.
This can be just being like deeply present, sitting at a cafe, enjoying a cup of coffee while I really tune in and allow all the sounds around me.
Like, what do you actually mean by meditation?
And I guess the question is like, what counts and what doesn't?
Well said. My form of meditation, obviously with Tibetan Buddhism, was the kind of sitting position that most people know and that with the eyes closed that you orientate from outward to inward. And I think for people who are really busy and over -stimulated and there's so many devices now and so many, you can even strap them around your wrist if you want now, to distract you from being with yourself or being present.
So I think that's a good start for people if they're very hyper, and they have a hard time breathing and slowing down.
But once you start to feel that connection to yourself, and what does that really mean?
It's like you feel like you can feel yourself.
That's the best. I actually work with four centers of intelligence, the head, the heart, and the body.
the body has an amazing wisdom and as a trauma therapist over the years I discovered that more and more.
And when you feel that alignment you start to feel like your awareness is there, your feelings are there and your body's engaged.
You feel that you're connected to your body because I'm working with a lot of disassociation.
In fact it's everywhere I go on the bus in London or I'm on a plane going to you know Sydney wherever I see it yeah because I'm very aware of that stuff.
So that connection when you feel like you're kind of attuned to radio self can then begin to happen in your dance.
Or it can happen when you're going for a walk with your dog or laying in the grass looking up at the Sun, one of my favorite things to do, and the sky.
So yes it can happen in movable ways for people who might just be starting out to get that alignment and that sense of alignment to know thyself.
And What is that because I've been so outward focused on what he's doing, she's doing, they're doing, work and survival and what actually am I and how do I feel myself, am I feeling myself now?
You know, all of these things for the first attunement might take some time for people.
But once you get that ah, there I am, then, yeah, then it can be horse riding or paragliding and so on, definitely, definitely.
It's like you cultivate the core skill, and then you can bring it to different domains.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
Let's finish out the early story here, because it really informs a lot of what you've been talking to.
You've referenced numerous times your work currently therapeutically in trauma with a lot of people, that literally thousands of people, around the world.
So let's fill in the gap.
You move into your later teens, I guess early 20s, you're really guided largely by a teacher and the teacher dies and that sends you into a really hard place.
Yeah that was a big identity crisis which I think of course looking back I can see that you know was okay to do but then in my early 20s I had a big who am I outside of this community the teacher, everything.
And I thought it was going to go on forever.
We were in a kind of conscious community and it was not even a thought that it wouldn't.
And I decided to take a complete contrast decision to go from an ashram in India and live in LA for what ended up being for five years and I'm gonna, you know, I didn't even, I didn't even shave my legs, you know, I didn't even know about beautician things, you know, we were just living in a way that was not, there was no criteria in have to be, in order to be worthy of love, yeah?
And which was quite something for me growing up because I really needed that messaging, you know?
But what I did is that when I got to LA, I really had convinced myself now that, in a way, the rug felt like it was pulled out from under me.
Everything had finished, seemingly.
I tried so hard to be like the people in that city.
Or let's say what we used to refer to, and you would anytime you're living in a community, is the world outside, yeah?
I tried really hard. I got the bank account and the credit card and the jobs.
I went to school, but I also discovered stress for the first time.
I never knew what stress was.
And I went in every direction, so I discovered drugs and alcohol as a way to cope.
And it was really...
I just completely abandoned meditation because I didn't wanna be spiritual.
I didn't wanna be seen as a hippie kid.
I wanted to be normal.
And I wanted to be like all the yous I saw out there in the world.
And I failed because even though I made all the money and I got the house and the big bank account, I got with it loneliness and a lot of isolation and depression.
And it hit me really strong.
I didn't even know how I got there, but that's how I got there.
At the time I was like, how am I depressed?
So I had basically gotten to a point where I disconnected so much from myself.
The self that I had been calling home, the authentic self, I had done everything to be something else in order to fit in, so I did classic, and I got the money, and it didn't hit the spot.
And I could prove to myself I could succeed, but it didn't create anything for me other than a complete opposite, which was such a painful disconnect of who I was, which was now looking back, Jonathan, I can say a really good thing that happened, because I hold people today in that isolation, in that depression, and in their loneliness and in supporting them to come out.
How much do you think the fact that you had the prior experience of how you could feel, how you could look at your life, how you could center something different, how much of your ability to move out of this period of isolation, loneliness, depression, do you think was informed by the fact that you had already experienced and knew there was a different way of being and that you believed that there was a different mode that you could move into.
I think so many other people have actually never experienced that and questioned whether it exists or it's possible.
Yeah, right. I knew it.
And I have to say that some shame came with it because I was like, wow, Rups, come on.
How did you get here?
And the keep trusting voice stayed with me.
He got this. Everything is gonna be okay.
And when I did come out the other side of that, I resisted for some time wanting to come into this work because I'd been raised in it.
And I realized then it was, how am I going to bridge these two worlds, what I know and what I've experienced and what I see around me.
And that became my life journey.
But yes, I was fortunate because I came back to my community, still existed even though the teacher was gone.
And I was fortunate that I had a lot of tools and awareness in how to come out of that.
And that's what helped me to sort adopt the many different things that I do today.
Yeah. So it wasn't like you were starting over, it was more like you were returning to so much of what you had already known, reconnecting with it, and then expanding your set of practices and tools beyond that as you decide, okay, so now I'm reconnecting.
I'm remembering. And also remembering the experience that you've been there.
And it sounds like there was then a second switch that got flipped that said, I'm not the only one who's navigated moments like this.
Like literally the world is filled with suffering people.
And it sounds like there was something inside of you that said, I feel called to turn my experience, my skills, my practices out to the world to help others.
I was like, wow, that means I'm going to devote my life to this.
But intuitively, I already knew it was already happening.
But I had done so well in the dotcom and I was trying to be something else.
And then the moment I started remembering myself again and coming home, it just felt like that that part that it just wasn't serving me, but it was so good that I experienced that.
So it was a big turning point and a ha moment for me.
And I have to be honest that I didn't know how well I would be received, because I was quite out there in my languaging and some of the things I was saying back then is now okay now we can talk about it yeah but I was you know I came from a very progressive mind thinking you know and, and I'd already done some so much inner work you know over the decades so I had to adjust my language ink if I'm sitting in front of you know a parent or a CEO or whoever I was sitting in front of you know and and I couldn't go into this big kind of talk I really had to match people where they were at and that was my
next kind of And how do I meet people where they're at so that they feel safe to go another step outside of their comfort zone and to really start to look at what's happening for them, you know, to get their trust, you know?
I feel like getting people's trust is a huge issue these days.
Yeah. It's almost like the opening stance is mistrust and to assume, you know, untoward motive, to assume opposites and divergence and conflict.
Yeah, it's an interesting moment when it comes to being able to cultivate trust or rekindle trust. And not just trust in others, also in ourselves.
I wonder if you see this in the work that you do that there's so much mistrust in your own sense of identity and beliefs and values and understanding what is or is not right and right for you.
You know, I had moments of really losing myself out there in the world of observing myself through the others.
And the moment I lose myself in that, it's so painful that I have to really bring myself back into a landing in that kind of belly of trust inside myself because it's such a painful separation when I'm not there.
I say that because, just as you said, trust is such a big one and we have so many wounds around trust because of our upbringing and because of where we were, you know, rejected or lied to or, you know, gossiping or all sorts of things.
And then we have it in the climate today, and I'm going to be very delicate here, but it is just in the world, in the collective.
There's so much lack of trust. And I know that the moment people work into my – whether it's my facilitator's training or a retreat or whatever – I know that the first thing I need to establish with them is some form of trust because I can see the hypervigilance in people, I can see the body language in the non -verbal, I can feel it in the tone, I can hear it in their questions.
And this centers of intelligence.
Remember, I work with four.
So the three, one, two, and three.
This one right here allows that vulnerability.
And now people are talking about vulnerability - Not just for those listening, by the way, that you're referencing the heart.
The heart, sorry, yes.
Yes, thank you. Head, heart, and body center, and they all have their wisdoms, yeah?
And the heart center is, for me, the area where, of course, we have our feelings and it allows for vulnerability.
And vulnerability has now really become more and more spoken about and recognized as a strength, which I'm really happy for, by the way.
That vulnerability also helps me as a facilitator supporting others in being very honest in who I am from the very beginning when people come into the space.
And I notice that if I really allow myself to be vulnerable and I really stay grounded on the ground how I meet people and invite people into the space and share who I am and, you know, and part of myself where I can be vulnerable, then it softens that and I give very little for people to push against because I'm not in there to kind of push at people.
It's not my approach, let's say.
I know other people have different approaches, of course, with respect.
I say that because I know that the trauma that so many people carry has created mistrust, myself included, yeah?
So it's such an instrumental thing this word, trust, it's such a big one, and it's my mantra.
Yeah, it's huge, I love the phrasing you used.
You said, how do I land in the belly of my trust?
And I think that's something we're all struggling with.
But the notion of, well, maybe the first step is can I myself just for a hot minute be a little bit more vulnerable?
Not saying you have to just completely open the kimono and bury your soul to anyone and anyone who walks by but, you know, can I just dabble in it at least a little bit?
Can I like run a little experiment with somebody who I feel safe with maybe already and see how it goes and maybe, like then add to that and add to that and add to that.
The moment you start to share your vulnerability with me, Jonathan, I can feel you.
And the moment I can feel you, it softens something.
And then I become feelable, you become feelable and we're not now just functioning from head which is can be where we start to go into the strategy or the warrior or the doubt or whatever and then I can just say becomes palpable, you know So I just wanted to name that for those out there You know when you feel somebody it just changes that chemistry, you know, definitely.
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So you've referenced these four centers a number of times, but you've only named three.
So the head, the heart, and the body.
The fourth being...
The fourth being...
So the fourth center, which I work with a lot, is the unknown and the intelligence of the unknown.
And it's the area that I'm aware that when I look back at little Rupta growing up, how many times she jumped into that unknown, whether it was one commune, whether it was the Tibetan monastery, whether it was jumping into LA of all the places, just that unknown and that willingness to go there.
And now it shows up in my life, of course, it's different in different ways.
But I noticed that the biggest magic that happens when I'm working with individuals or groups of people happens in that center of the unknown.
It's the biggest transformation.
Because even if I have idea of where I need to take you, let's say, supporting you in something, the unknown, I take a step back and something much bigger comes in, and in that journey itself, if you're saying, No, Gupta, I need to go to this mountain top, yeah, that's the goal.
And I say, Okay, but the experience along the way becomes this revelation of many unknowns, and I know that I'm training a lot of facilitators, they get scared of the unknown because the need to know is so strong and the need to be in control is connected to the need to feel safe, and it shows up in many different ways.
So the more we create a space for the unknown, the more actually relaxation comes.
And I often say to people, your ability to relax in life is in direct proportion to your ability to trust. So it's just like, ah, and to trust in the unknown is scary for some people, especially in their lives, but also as they work with individuals, but it's so powerful and it informs. Yeah, and it's the thing that we run from more than I think anything else in life.
I'm a true believer in that possibility and uncertainty are two sides of the same coin.
and you literally cannot have one without the other.
And we're constantly striving for possibilities in our lives while simultaneously constantly striving to try and lock down as much of our lives as we possibly can.
And it's like, you can't actually do both together.
And everything that is truly new and alive came from us stepping into the void and trusting, hoping that something new and interesting would come from it.
Maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a job, maybe it's a gift or skill, whatever it may be, just a momentary experience, you know.
If we stayed in the land of the known, we may feel more comfortable for a hot minute, but then complacency and boredom and malaise, all these things start to define our lives.
And then we complain about the feeling that it gives us, but we refuse to ever let go of this almost maniacal questing for certainty and security.
What's your take on what's underneath this?
Underneath the need to know, you mean?
Yeah. The constant striving to...
it's almost like we revert to a mean of the known.
It's like we're on a rubber band.
And one side of the rubber band is nailed to this thing called the known.
And every time we start to like move too far away from it, there's a tension that builds and eventually it snaps us back to it.
And like, we never realized that we had a pair of scissors in our pocket where we could just cut the rubber band.
You know, I think because of conditioning growing up and especially, and I know it's delicate to say, I mean, religion has been such a strong support for so many people, because it's created faith, it's created hope, it's created prayer.
It's so beautiful. And I can say from my own experience in it as well.
And it can also create conditioning in how you have to be.
Guilt is a big one by the way.
So if I step out of the box and I let myself be free and liberated or wild and passionate, not okay.
So we conform, but like I said before, we split off from those joyous parts, you know?
When a kid is young, it's wild and free, you know?
It's running around, two years old, in a sandbox with other kids, and it doesn't yet know how to be in the construct of how it needs to be, you know?
But then we were told we were too much. You know, pipe down, slow down, you know?
Calm down. And then by doing so we kind of conform and and then we get this It's like almost unspoken contracts and how we have to be in order to fit in and by splitting off from these areas of our lives they become more unknown to us and This other kind of identity and how we think we should be becomes the the comfort zone the safe zone You're allowed to be here and then you're a good girl and then you're a good boy then you're approved of.
Then you're worthy of love or then you're gonna get approval.
And I want to say that I see this a lot Jonathan in how I'm working with people's constructs, yeah?
But what if I really step out of that box and I step out of that comfort zone then what, you know?
They're scared because it's unknown to them and the other thing they're scared of is because if I step out of it and I look back at my life and how I've set it up, what if I They don't fit anymore.
And it's really scary for people to do growth work because they're scared they'll rock the boat.
So this need to feel safe is so strong, but it's under the guise of all these constructs, but it splits them off from their passion and their aliveness.
By the way, another big one is how people feel numb, they feel numb because they don't go to feelings.
That numbness is now getting bigger and bigger in the world.
It's amazing. Yeah, that last point about the way that we, we often, you know, we build a life around a sense of known and comfort, and then we become a part of a community.
We find a sense of belonging with those who have built the same kind of life around the same set of lenses and assumptions.
And we all kind of live and we all make similar decisions.
So there is a sense of like safety in that community of belonging.
Okay, so we're all similar in a lot of ways, we see the world the same way.
And even when you wake up to this notion that I'm actually pretty unhappy and maybe there is a different way, the idea of leaving the current, like the status quo behind, it's not just hindered by our own fear of how we might evolve, but that means we're going to have to leave the safety and the comfort and the sense of belonging in that community Even if it wasn't a beloved community, but it was literally just a community of convenience.
And it gets back to trust, right?
Because then we have to trust that there will be others who are similarly inclined and see the world similar to us.
And there will be others that will invite us into, and we can step into or form our own new sense of community.
And also what we talked about earlier, that if we do the work to cultivate this sense of belonging within and among just to ourselves first. It makes sense this would become less of an issue.
Does that make sense?
Yes. And even when people get scared and they go, if I come to your retreat, I'm so scared, what will happen next and how do I adjust?
And I go, can you imagine that this new kind of tuning fork comes in, and now you're aligned to yourself, www, kind of what brings you peace and harmony and now or passion and aliveness yeah and now that you really stay true to them honest to your authentic self now imagine that you now start to attract and get because you know you know you want to attract people who are aligned to that and of course it changes your world view and it changes kind of who you interact with and these old kind of patterns that you might be seeing in relating whether it's with friends loved ones and you realize they
no longer serve you if you end up being a pleaser or disempowering yourself for connection and love and making yourself small and you realize, wait, I don't know how many more years I have on this planet.
I want to align to my truth even if it means I give myself more permission to be here and have space and have a voice and that I matter.
And I want to align to that.
You're absolutely right.
Then people will start attracting those people that are in resonance to that.
And yes, you might maybe end up letting go of some people who are not able to see you in that new light.
I wonder if one of the thoughts that goes through people's heads when they're even thinking about this is how long will I have to stay in the wilderness?
Like tell me when those new people are going to come, tell me when I'll be able to breathe again, tell me when I'll feel held again.
But I wonder if also so much of the work that you do I know is in community.
Yes, you work individually with people, but also you do a lot of community -based things.
I wonder if, in your mind, part of the quote benefit of doing that is that you're already doing the work of bringing together that next beloved community that people can step into, so their time in the wilderness becomes shortened dramatically, and maybe that makes it feel more accessible.
Yeah, exactly. And is it okay if I say the name of what I, It's actually called deep dive retreat.
So deep dive, it already implies the invitation that we're going to dive deep, which for me now in my mid -50s, it's so important that quality time is really important to me.
So now the invitation is, okay, anyone who wants to come to this, we're going to a deep way of meeting ourselves, you know, and whatever you wanna call something much bigger.
And yes, it becomes a playground where people can go, oh wow, I didn't know this existed.
Now we can really talk and pass the weather and pass the sports and politics and so on.
And yes, it then becomes a community.
And I've probably flown to another country by then, but there's a connection that's happened with those people and it's so beautiful.
And each year I do, of course, fly back and forth and I get to see that community grow.
And it's community that in many ways saved me, yeah?
It's really what is for sure a big part of who I am, yeah?
That makes so much sense.
We did for five really amazing years, we actually ran an adult summer camp for four days at the end of every summer where we would sweep in, take over a kid's sleep -away camp, you know, 168 -acre camp out in the mountains.
and 400 -plus people would come in trains, planes, and automobiles from around the world, the sleep community, and kids' bunks that doesn't do a bunk and stuff like this.
And we had all sorts of programming and workshops and lectures.
But we realized really quickly in the first year, we're like, oh, what this is about is not all the formal learning or curriculum or workshops.
This is about creating a container where people from the outside look at this and say, I think people like me might be there.
And maybe it's not so easy to find those people in my current circumstance.
And they would come, and they would find those people.
And we'd realize really quickly this is about creating the container that allows them to connect to each other.
There's almost no greater work that we could have done.
And it was nice that we offered all these different activities to participate in and let people sign up for stuff and have fun.
But at the end of the day, the grace in that experience was when we would hear somebody talking about how they were flying on the grass with three people from different parts of the world that they'd never met before at three in the morning looking at the moon, talking about life.
Like, that's it. Absolutely, absolutely.
Because in the end of the day, that's not how much money you have in the bank.
it's what you feel in your heart and the connections you make.
I know that I'm speaking to a lot of people today that still want to have the big money in the bank, and I said, in pursuit of that big money in the bank, please, please remember to include your heart so that when you have all that money in the bank, you're not disconnected from it.
Otherwise, you don't see the joy of your children and the joy of the partner, and you can't feel it.
You've just been a workaholic for so long trying to achieve, achieve, achieve.
And actually it comes back to simple things.
Camping, laying in the grass, being with friends.
And that's the most fulfilling meaningful connections we get.
Love it. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well.
So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
For me, for sure, the connection is a big one, and we're on the actual word. So, connection to myself, feeling that I'm okay, that self -dialogue and everything's going to be okay, keep trusting.
Rupta, you've got this.
You're safe. And the connection with others that I allow people in, that I allow myself to trust that I allow and connection for me with natural world as well as the mystery.
Let's call it the mystery because I feel like we're held by something much bigger and for me that's the good life.
Thank you. Hey before you leave, if you love this episode, say bet you'll also love the conversation we had with Bessel van der Kolk about Healing Trauma Through the Body.
You'll find the link to that episode in the show notes.
This episode of Good Light Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields.
Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young, Christopher Carter crafted our theme music and of course if you haven't already done so please go ahead and follow good life project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too if you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring chances are you did because you're still listening here do me a personal favor a second second favor share it with just one person and if you want to share with more that's awesome too but just one person even then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered to reconnect and explore
ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together.
Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.
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