Dr. Karen Curry Parker: I want to share with you one of my favorite quotations from Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan writer and journalist. He says, Scientists say we are made of atoms. A little bird told me we are made of stories. The quantum physicist and a frequent guest on Quantum Revolution, Dr. Amit Goswami, often refers to the quantum realm as the realm of archetypes. Archetypes are simply neutral parts or elements of stories.
These quantum archetypes take on shape and form and manifest in our lives once we give them meaning. The meanings we give these quantum archetypes construct our personal narrative: the story we tell ourselves and the world about who we are and how we are. The story we tell ourselves and the world about who we are and how we are creates our experience of reality. Your story programs your brain and your heart to pay attention to the experiences, ideas, and thoughts that match your personal story.
When you tell a good story, you notice all the good in your life, and you create more of it. And of course the opposite is true. If the quantum world is made of atoms, and we have the power to shape our experience of the quantum world through storytelling, then one of the most powerful things we can do to shift our personal and collective experience of the world is to become sovereign over our stories. We get to decide who we are and how we are.
Today's guest is Kamakshi Hart, a spiritual psychologist who combines her years as a trauma informed counselor and transformational coach with her gifts as a storyteller and performer in her two award winning one woman shows, Wild at
A Tale of Trauma and Triumph, and Resilient AF: Rising to the Occasion. Kamakshi is unique among solo theater artists with her background in trauma healing, her deep wisdom, and insights into the human experience combined with her talent to bring stories to the page and the stage. She's also unique as a coach and healer with her profound understanding of the impact of trauma and its effect on every aspect of one's health and well-being.
You're listening to Quantum Revolution with Karen Curry Parker, exploring new frontiers in consciousness, science, and evolution. Join us in intimate conversations with cutting edge scientists, spiritual leaders, artists, disruptors, and visionaries who are working towards reframing the narrative of our future by healing the rift between spirituality and science, reclaiming creativity, and laying the foundation for a new world. And now, here's your host, Karen Curry Parker.
Dr. Karen Curry Parker: Hi everyone and welcome to Quantum Revolution. I'm Dr. Karen Currie Parker and I'm here today with Kamakshi Hart and we're going to be exploring how to transform and explore the story you tell about trauma through art and creative self expression. Um, so I'm really excited to have this conversation because I have really, uh, have enjoyed learning about our guest today. I've spent a lot of time.
On her Instagram page, which I'll give you the link to later, where you can see little cuts and snippets of this beautiful woman who has turned her own experiences, her own challenges into one woman shows, including a show called Wild at Heart, A Tale of Trauma and Triumph, and Resilient AF, um, which, uh, the, the subtitle of that is Rising to the Occasion.
So I have to start with just say, how did you ever get from The heaviness and the pain of life's challenges and traumas to turning it into this really fun one woman, very dramatic shows, all these shows that you do.
Good question. I often wonder that myself. Really? Um, I have that saying has come to me so many times there, but for the grace of God go, I, I, I can come up with all kinds of answers to that. But a lot of it is, I think I came out of the womb. filled with hope and light and the world did everything possible to dim that to, uh, break me down. Um, any, any examples from, from my personal history would cause people to gasp and go, how did you make it? And yet somehow I persevered.
So I do feel that the messages of the show We're called out from me to share with others, to bring that hope into the world, that no matter what you've been through, you can find your way home to your true self. And and live a joyful life again. Dr. Karen Curry Parker: I love that. So I, how, how did you get out of the story of your own traumatic past?
Because I find that when we talk to people or when we work with people, even, even when, you know, when we have nice conversations with our friends in a coffee shop, we oftentimes Start our conversations with this thing happened to me. I have this story. This is the identity of my very painful past. How did you go? Okay, wait a minute. That's not my story anymore, or that's not the story that's going to define me. I'm going to do it different. What, what sparked that in you?
Well, I was a seeker. So in, in the, uh, intensity of the pain, of course, I was seeking help and I was always spiritually drawn. And the first thing that I found that was the most life changing was yoga. And I dove in very, very deeply. I was in my late twenties. So it was a little later on, but I was at a very, uh, a huge crisis. Um, And where the patterns of my trauma had brought me, which is a lot of what I detail in my second show specifically, Resilient AF.
And so the, I lived in this, uh, ashram called the Kripalu Center for Yoga, which is where I received my name Kamakshi, which means seeing through the eyes of loving, and especially seeing myself through the eyes of love. And it was a very deep program, a very transformational, it wasn't just what you think of doing yoga postures. So I started to take on all of these revelatory, uh, ideas about I could change the way that I look at my life.
And I also could have this somatic opportunity to literally bring things up out of my body to be able to heal. And I was in a community where so many other people were, were doing this type of work. And then the next chapter that I then needed to find, which I didn't realize at the time, because I moved out, I started my Washington, D. C. And then, um, I, 9 11 happened and I was in Washington, D. C. and everything went, like, boom. Seriously wonky in DC. It was insane.
And a lot of other things occurred that started triggering my trauma. And at that point, I actually didn't really know the extent of it. And I didn't really know I was a trauma survivor because nobody had given me that context. I didn't know I had complex PTSD. I just thought something was wrong with me. So then I realized I needed more help. And I was leading everybody else in burning out and I was having a health crisis.
So at 40, I moved to Los Angeles, just north of, luckily in a beautiful mountain canyon. And I found this University of Santa Monica and a degree in spiritual psychology. That is where I realized that I had had enormous trauma as a child that had been repressed. And then I started to learn how that. Everything else made sense of the continued traumas and what then developed, uh, in my world.
And so that gave me the tools, the biggest tools of all to recognize that I could, I couldn't change what happened to me, but I could change how I looked at what happened to me and how I felt about myself, about what had happened to me. And that was the ultimate game changer. Dr. Karen Curry Parker: So do you feel like you just. reframed your perspective on the story and took back control over your own story, even in spite of the events that happened that you had no control over.
Yeah. I mean, in essence, it's definitely not as simple as that sounds. there's a lot of emotional work. Um, there's, it's like with all the talk of mindset out in the world. And I know some people are talking about, oh, but you've got to do the heartset in order to do the mindset. And, and that's absolutely true. My teachers said healing happens a hundred percent at the emotional level.
And so in order to reframe in order to, um, become that story editor, I had to go into that very deep place of. Uh, personal healing with my inner child and that the inner child work and the specific compassionate self-forgiveness work that was formulated by my teachers at the university. Those were the two most life changing. and, and healing processes. And then there were so many others.
And, and in my work, I, I teach and train people and, and all of these, um, different tools and principles and practices of spiritual psychology because it, it, and I actually, in my first show, I depict, uh, the process that would go on in the room. At the, in our weekend programs there, when my repressed memories surface. So I have a voice. I have voiceover. It's also because it's solo theater. So I have voiceover and I actually create the entire what's called a trio experience on the stage.
Dr. Karen Curry Parker: Amazing. So you talk a lot about resilience and yet you have this, sort of, background of trauma. How does trauma impact resilience? Well, I actually just heard somebody say, um, you know, you have, we have no reason to find out whether we're brave until unless something Intense and negative impacts us. You know, if nothing happens, we don't ever get to find out. Right? If we're brave, courageous, or resilient.
Um, you know, given the, the, um, way of looking at things that I, that I, uh, Align with, which is I'm a spiritual being having a human experience. And, and there's without question that I came here to have a human experience. Otherwise I wouldn't be here. So I'm in the messiness of my humanness, you know, and I can withdraw from that, that I'm going to have shit happen.
And, and so I wouldn't, there's no way to become resilient unless Again, the same, you know, unless you've had to contend with things. And that does seem to lend to a formation of character and the, the characters of, in terms of people that I know who are characters, you know, who are really. Interesting, amazing people who just blow my mind are the people that I know who've been through some of the worst things.
Not that I want to run out and say, Hey, wouldn't it be great if some bad things happened to me? No, of course not. But there is a correlation, um, and there's also a lot of scar tissue. So it's such a combination of first, the first work and ongoing work is tenderness.
Tenderness and gentleness with oneself and how do I disengage from the very, uh, masculine testosterone world of everything is about product and proving and success metrics and all of these that, that are, um, so persistent in our culture. Right. And that can be the absolute most toxic experience that you can have as a trauma survivor at times, because there's a need for most of us to, um, find safety and it's an ongoing thing. And so the only place we can ever really be safe is in here.
And so that first, first line of comfort. Is discovering how do I make my interior, my own safe haven. So that's a lot. Yeah, please. Dr. Karen Curry Parker: Yeah. Well, and it sort of leads me to an exploration of a question that I asked my guests a lot, and that is it use of term tenderness. How do you know when you're using tenderness as a way of self love and bridging that gap between the old story of what happened to me in the past and reclaiming a new story?
How do you know that you're being tender versus, say, hiding out? How, what would be like, what would be some of the signs that maybe you're being tender and you're also maybe not moving forward? Yeah, well, I would say, and I know this one very, very well. It's all about hiding out big time. And. It is really difficult to not judge myself for hiding out and judging myself. And this is again, one of the cornerstones of my training, judging myself will only basically make it worse.
It will only cause me to want to hide out more. And if I try to push myself. It's just gonna, I'm gonna dig my heels in even deeper and then my inner teenager is going to come out and say, F you. Um, I'm not doing anything you're asking me to do because you're being mean. You know, it's like, I mean, I've done a lot of, you know, inner child dialogues and, and teen Diane, my birth name is Diane. She comes out in both of my shows because she has a big voice.
So it's, it seems like a fine line, but again, it's our, I would say the hiding out is a call for tenderness. So if that's because I don't feel safe, if I'm hiding out, I don't feel safe. And who don't I feel safe with the most is myself because there's no, there's no greater pain I've found in the universe than me betraying myself, not having my own back, me not believing myself.
Um, and so even though it also can include, I don't feel safe in whatever setting I'm in to maybe put myself out there more. And I've had this come up so many times in my life where I've just judged the heck out of myself for, um, Why didn't you speak up? Why didn't you promote yourself more? Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? Well, all that is is, you know, like the giant club coming out and bang, you know, beating myself up.
And it's, it's not going to take me anywhere actually productive. And it doesn't bring me into that. whole and holiness in myself, where when I am loving myself, forgiving myself, tender with myself and saying, Hey, I want to know what's really going on. And what do you need inside to that younger self? That's where the magic happens. And then whatever arises from there is really connected to my soul.
You know, not my ego, or my mind thinking, Oh, I have to do something a certain way to compete in the world.
Dr. Karen Curry Parker: So you do something really clever, and I haven't seen your whole show, I've just seen snippets of things that you do, but I think it's really fascinating, in that you actually, You add a lot of drama to the story of your transformation, and that drama almost gives it a lightness and even makes the story sometimes a little bit funny, almost as if you can get enough distance on it to where you can not be as connected to it.
How do you support people in reframing that perspective? And, and in conjunction with that, I want to know, do people come back to you and they say, Oh, you're just bypassing with this story? It's funny little thing that you do. Yeah. Well, if you don't, if you saw the whole show, uh, nobody has ever thought I'm bypassing which I, I definitely have that on my radar big time. I, uh, I have a nose for spiritual bypass and I totally do and, and it's not something I do.
Uh, it's, and I believe that it's because I've lived it. delved into it all so thoroughly that I can, um, I think a lot of like brilliant comedians, right? You know, I just saw this totally random clip of Robin Williams from years ago, you know, and I was just like, Oh my God. I mean, he was just brilliant. You know, it's in so much pain. You know, and it's, it's, and there's a, an example of unhealed where it's going to the humor to almost an excess.
And for me, when you see the whole show, it's like, there's a quite a balance. There's the, there's the comedy and the tragedy. There's the pathos. There's the understanding. I weave in almost like infomercials about trauma, you know, about sound bites of what, you know, where it comes from, what, what it perpetuates. Um, And, but what I, and obviously it's, I didn't invent this form of solo theater.
It's out there, you know, to do multiple characters and, and, and use music or use all kinds of other things too, because the entertainment aspect in terms of making it theatrical is it helps people assimilate the tragic, you know, cause the stories can be really intense. And so it also is demonstrating, um, in an, in and of itself, it's demonstrating my resilience, right? It's demonstrating that.
And for all of us, it's like that all of the trauma and tragedy and feeling like I'd rather die than keep going through all of this horrible stuff. And yet somehow getting through it and also being able to still laugh and still find the humor in the humanness, you know, is in and of itself, to me, a healing event. To witness. Dr. Karen Curry Parker: Yeah.
I, I think, I think I certainly would encourage people to go watch even just the little snippets because it does lend perspective and it's not like you're laughing at the situation, but, but you are, I think sometimes maybe I'm not wording, let's see if you relate to this wording, you're laughing at the way the direness of the narrative can sometimes hold you back when there's so much good around you and you, you can't see it. Yes. Yeah. I 100 percent hear you on that.
And, and, um, that is so well said. Yes, exactly. Dr. Karen Curry Parker: So you talk about, I want to, before we go, I want to talk about one other term that you use that I'm just fascinated by is you talk about the story editor and how people can become the story editor of their life. Talk to me about that. Well, it's, you know, I mean, there's the things that happened to us.
There are the things, the ways in which we remember the things that happened to us, and, and then there's the truth that we are all perceiving. So I'm not talking about like really hardcore things like sexual assault, which I've experienced multiple times in the past. That is something that needs to be a hundred percent believed. But the story that outflows from that about I'm not enough. I'm not, you know, I'm damaged. I'm broken. I'm, you know, whatever. Or then seeing the what's to come.
Like I try to show within that play. Is that then I took on that I was always in that victim role, you know, I was always in that, like, Oh, what's wrong with her or, oh, other worse names that I was called, you know, um, and then I, then it developed this, this inner self, uh, low self esteem that conducted. And not always really I didn't even know it.
I didn't even realize how all those things had layered in, you know And that's the story that I can edit, you know, that's where I have power I can't change the awful things that have happened from the past but I can change the way I look at them and what I extrapolate from them. And so I can look through the eyes of oh my god, I'm so broken. I it was horrible what happened to me Um, you know, how could how could I have even survived any of that and i'm somehow You know tainted.
I don't know, you know all kinds of things like that, but I can I can instead go Wow. And this is with resilient AF where I portray resilience as a superheroine is because I'm showing those that sense of superpower that somehow some way I got through my life because I had access to that level of strength in me, even when I was young and I have no idea why.
Honestly, except for higher power, you know, so, and whoever I came in at the soul level to be, but I could, I can look back and go, wow, you were so courageous. Oh my gosh, you're so brave. You're so strong that the resilience level of strength that you kept going, you kept finding a way to keep on keeping on. And I love you so much. And you're actually fricking amazing. It's like, you look at the superheroes and Marvel series, you know, for example, right, all their stories are of woundedness.
Right. Right. And they all develop their super powers out of their wounds. Yeah. And, and so we have that ability and we don't even have, we don't have to be up on a stage acting like a superhero. It can all take place in a very quiet life. It's, it's.
But that the truth is, is that where I have control is on how I see myself, how I am with myself, the things I say to myself, and the choices that, that, that then I can then make as a result that are positive and, and self affirming and uplifting. But the healing. It's got to be in there with all of that to rearrange things, you know, like I said earlier, it's got there's got to be the emotional healing in order to be able to start utilizing the mind.
To be that editor to be that critical thinker and be like, ah, look at, look at that. Look how A plus B equaled C in the past, but I could change, you know, A happened. Yes. B, this is what then happened as a result. C is what I'm making it mean. I can change that. Dr. Karen Curry Parker: Yeah, that's powerful. That's powerful. So if people want to work with you, how can they work with you? Well, going to my website. Sending me a message saying, Hey, I want to talk to you.
First conversation is a complimentary discussion. Like, you know, most coaches do, and we find out, how can I help you? Is this the right fit? And then there's numerous, um, modalities that I use, whether we're on zoom or for anyone who happens to want to come Topanga, California, north of Los Angeles. Dr. Karen Curry Parker: It's a beautiful place. But I do help people actually, you know, write their stories.
But, uh, but the most important thing is doing the internal healing work, the transformation work, and they can be done alongside each other, which is very cool. Dr. Karen Curry Parker: Very powerful, very powerful. So you can find Kamakshi on her, on her website, kamakshiheart, that's h a r t. com. I will post the link to the website in the show notes. So if you're watching this on YouTube, or if you're listening to this on a podcast, go to the show notes.
You can go directly to Kamakshi's website. You can also find her on Instagram and Facebook as at Kamakshi Heart. And again, I'll post all the links in the show notes. For those of you who want to connect with her, do go. At the very least go to the Instagram, her Instagram page and, and just watch the little snippets from the show. It's an incredible, where is your show now? Are you still live traveling with it or? I have been on pause.
I had, um, an actual, uh, uh, injury and surgery this past year, so it will come back. So anyone who's interested in more about the shows, bringing the show to where you are, that conversation, same thing, just send me an email. And happy to talk about it. I'm starting to rev rev up Dr. Karen Curry Parker: again. Awesome. Awesome. That's exciting. I'm glad. I'm glad. Thank you so much for being your day. Thank you for your work.
I really I learned a lot and I'm excited to watch you hit the road and do more. So I appreciate your work so much. Thank you so much. Karen. Dr. Karen Curry Parker: As humans, we are in love with our stories. When we go out to eat with friends, when we watch TV or social media drama unfolding, the stories we tell, and sometimes get stuck in, are stories that often leave us the victim of the story.
We define ourselves as survivors, even subtly one upping each other with the horror of our personal stories. But what if we're not supposed to just survive? What if we're here to thrive, to use our life experiences, our stories as catalysts for growth, as a pathway of reclaiming sovereignty over who we decide we are. We are not victims of our stories. Yes, things can and do happen to us that are beyond our control. And yes, we do need time to process and heal.
But ultimately, the power to change your story and rewrite it in your authentic voice is the one thing no one can ever take from you. Before we can reclaim sovereignty over our stories, we need a roadmap. We need a way out of the void where many of us get stuck in survivor syndrome. We need to reclaim the cosmic skills of our innate creativity and reactivate our power to direct the flow of intention. We need to remember that we can rearrange the quantum particles that create our reality.
By telling better stories. You can learn more about the work of Kamakshi Hart by visiting her website, kamakshihart.com. If you'd like to help kickstart your capacity to direct the flow of the cosmos, get your free Quantum Human Design chart at freehumandesignchart.com I'm Dr. Karen Curry Parker. Thank you for joining me for Quantum Revolution. Here's to better stories of possibility, healing, fulfillment, and abundance.
Thank you for joining us on Quantum Revolution with Karen Curry Parker. For more information on how to change your world and to hear more about our guests today, visit quantumrevolutionpodcast.com Make sure you follow us on your favorite podcasting platform so you don't miss a single episode of Quantum Revolution. We'll see you next time for some more groundbreaking conversations with Karen and her guests. How will you impact your world, today?