We can trust in our own vitality and energy because when you're coming in touch with your own nature, there's a natural vitality and there's a natural energy. I I think one of the most fundamental things is seeing people begin to trust in their own experience, and that guides you the rest of your life. Welcome everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute and its stories and anecdotes and people we interview about their life post process and how it lives in the world radiating love. This podcast contains discussion of sensitive topics, including suicide. If you or someone you know is suicidal, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at +1 80273 1 8 2 7 3 8 2 5 5, or message the crisis text line at 741741. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Hoffman podcast,
Lee Lesser. Welcome. It's great to have you. Thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to this conversation and the work you do in the world and who you are in the world. Can you share a little bit about the work you do? Yeah. Sure. Since I was 19 years old, I was introduced to a practice called sensory awareness. It's a very simple practice. It's a mindfulness practice in which you connect with your own sensory experience.
You connect with breathing, with whatever sensations you're feeling in your own body as a way of being present and as a way of feeling, how to respond to whatever is happening. I was introduced to my teacher, whose name was Charlotte Selver, because my mother came to me when I was 19, and I was trying very hard to, figure out who I was and how to separate from my family and disentangle the patterns, which is quite familiar, I think,
in the Hoffman process. But I was really immersed in it, and I came home for college vacation, mostly hiding in my room. And my mother came into my room and she, handed me a brochure. And she said, you should meet this woman. She can change your life. And then my mother turned and walked out the door.
And if she hadn't done that, we wouldn't be having this conversation now because not only if she hadn't shared that brochure with me, but if she had tried to convince me or say anything more about it, I would never have gone. I would have resisted. But she didn't, and I was really curious in spite of myself. And it turns out this woman, who I knew nothing about, was gonna be doing some two workshops in Mexico. During the month, I had to do an off campus project at college.
So it was somehow kismet in some way. And Charlotte really did change my life. I had no idea I was disconnected from my body. I had no idea how much was stored here in our own, in my own body and in all of our bodies, and that our whole life is right here, our whole history is here, and our whole capacity is here. And I had these very simple experiences, we're talking fifty five years ago, that have continued to guide my life and that I've been able to share with
other people. And I spent many years working with military veterans, many of whom have participated in the Hoffman process. I am doing work right now with wildland firefighters, and I also teach workshops to people, in many different places, helping us return to our senses, which to me is really urgent and urgent at this time. So that's a teeny taste. Well, we'll put some links in the show notes for the organizations you speak about, the work you do, if people wanna check it
out. But sounds like you took that brochure from your mom. You took that workshop from Charlotte. Charlotte Silver. And then you took all of that learning that you were integrating in college, and you made it your life's work. It's true. It has been my life work, and it's what really sustains me. And it really is coming to enough quiet and connection so that we can respond to what's needed. There's a very simple question that guides me all the time, which is, what does this moment ask of me?
And it's not an intellectual question. It's really dropping in and pausing so that I can feel what's actually needed. You know, and in the Huffman process, when you're looking at different paths that we can take and you come to crossroads, we can get caught in following habit and patterns and not being conscious. Or we can come back into our own connection in the present moment and really feel what is needed and allow the natural response to happen.
That to me is a tremendous guide and is very healing when we can allow that and also to stay present so that we can feel what in our lives is shutting us down. And we can feel it. You can feel it in your own body. You can feel when your body tenses. You can feel when you're constricting, when you start to pay attention. And if you pause to stay present there, you can connect with what's stored up there
and what needs our own care. It's interesting because part of what you're saying is to ask the body, pause, and say, what is needed of me in this moment? Mhmm. Yeah. And it's not just the body you're asking. You know, you're asking yourself because there's not a separation, but it's connecting through your senses and then your whole being responds.
I see. I see. But part of what you're saying is in the moment, the part of the answer might be a sense of the constriction, the contraction, the tightness, the struggle of that moment. What are we to do when we ask the question, and what we get in return is some sort of negative experience? If there's tightness there, then that's rich territory. So if I'm pausing to feel, and it could be anything, right? It could be, what
do I wanna eat in this moment? If I pause and feel what's calling me, what what I wanna eat, if I'm in an argument with somebody and I'm feeling something tightening, if I pause to feel, what does this moment ask of me? And I feel what's happening in my body. If I'm tightening and shutting down, then maybe what's needed in that moment is for me to say, you know, I have to go to the bathroom. I'll be back.
So that I can reconnect and listen to what's actually happening so that I can be more clear about maybe I have to say no to a request this person's making. Maybe I have to say, you know, there's something really bothering me that I need to tell you about. But if I land in my body, the tightness in my body, if I pay attention to it and listen to what is it asking, and I approach it with kindness and not judgment and not ignoring it, then there's information here. So there's information
there. It may not feel so positive to do it, but the information is still there nonetheless. And it helps us feel what's needed. So here's an example. This happened in the this class fifty five years ago, and I remember it so clearly because I was there in this workshop. I knew nothing about what Charlotte did. You know, my mom had handed me this brochure. I had nothing better to do. And I was intrigued in spite of myself, but I didn't know anything about it. And in one of the classes,
we call them experiments or explorations. They're not exercises because you're you're just really experiencing and coming in touch with your own experience. So we had been doing something, and then there was a time of sharing. And what I remember is a woman talking about her experience. And then she said, I feel so caught in my throat. I just feel so choked here, and it's like I'm having trouble breathing in my throat. I just feel so uncomfortable.
And Charlotte asked someone to go get a pitcher of water in a glass, And she asked the woman to pour the water into the glass. And as it started coming up to the top, the woman paused. She stopped. And Charlotte said, keep pouring. So she kept pouring, and the water started spilling all over the floor. And she started weeping and weeping and weeping. And what Charlotte said to her was one of the things that changed my life. Charlotte said to her, Can you bow to it? Can you bow to what's here?
Because you're beginning to feel it. And if it wasn't here, you wouldn't be feeling it. But the fact that you can feel it, now something new can begin. That changed my life because I had would never think of bowing to something painful or uncomfortable. And I was raised, you know, get away from it, stuff it, ignore it. And Charlotte's invitation was, can you bow to it? And that's really what I've learned over all these years. You know, there's
nowhere else to go. And when we connect with what we're feeling, a door can open. And it's not about whether it feels good or bad. It's about how we meet it and how we stay present and we listen to what is it asking of us. You know, it may be that it's asking us just to bring our hands and be present there and hold ourselves with tenderness so we can feel grief.
Military veterans I worked with, there's tremendous trauma and things that people had never even shared or touched because it was so difficult. And just even by starting to come in touch with their own bodies and finding the ground to be there, new things could open and they could meet it with a kindness, not judgment and not avoidance. What do you notice as you lead people through this? Is this the kind of thing where you lead a full class or you lead one to one?
What happens as you engage in this experiment, as you say? I love that word. I do. I lead classes, and I also lead one to one. I think people begin to trust and have confidence in their own experience. And that's what to me is one of the things that's most moving because there's not a right and wrong and there's no experience that people are supposed to have. It's helping people come in touch with what's there to be met.
When we allow that, and that's why for me returning to our senses, when we return to this connection with our body, everything is here. And if we just stay present with it, we can feel what's being asked of us, and we can have that confidence to be able to respond and to pause and not just get hooked by what frightens us or hooked by what disturbs us. If we stay present with it, we can
meet it. And also, we can trust in our own vitality and energy because when you're coming in touch with your own nature, there's a natural vitality and there's a natural energy. I think one of the most fundamental things is seeing people begin to trust in their own experience, and that guides you the rest of your life. Yeah. It seems like with younger people in particular in the phone epidemic that moving away from our experience is more the norm. Getting out of discomfort seems to be
the water we swim in. Does it feel like you're speaking of swimming, does it feel like you're swimming upstream as you try and deliver this message? Or maybe now is the time we need to hear it more than ever. I'm so curious about the connection between the work you're doing
and the world we're in today. You know, I was just giving a class this morning online to a group of people in Spanish, And one of the things I was sharing was a quote by the Dalai Lama that moves me a lot and feels so important to these times because we're living in a time of so much harm and chaos and uncertainty. You know, life is always uncertain, but this is a very turbulent and unsettling time. I think it's easy to be caught in despair and powerlessness and even hopelessness.
The Dalai Lama said, despair is never a solution. It is the ultimate failure. In Tibetan, we say, if the rope breaks nine times, we must splice it together a tenth time. Even if we ultimately do fail, at least we will have no feelings of regret. And when we combine this insight with a clear appreciation of our potential to benefit others, we can begin to restore our hope and confidence. This is very encouraging to me. One of my favorite poems is a poem called lost by David Wagner.
You know, we'll all get lost. There'll be moments of despair. But if we keep offering what we can offer, and we have confidence in our own possibility to have impact and our own capacity to respond, then we're not gonna have regret. We may not be able to change things. Maybe we're not gonna be able to change what we want. But the way we're living and what we offer is coming from our own love and our own vitality and our own ability to respond. You know, people come to the process.
One of the things they seek as a goal is confidence. And when I hear you describe this process, the thing that seems like the reward on the other side is confidence because you're unafraid of whatever the world might offer you because you know that you can be with the experience of it. I feel like that's exactly right. That is what I feel like is fundamental because we belong to nature. You know, we are this living creature, this living organism that is being breathed.
We are connected intimately to natural functioning. Our heart beats, you know, blood is circulating. We're not creating that. We're not creating breath either. And when we land in this connection to nature, and we learn that we can show up for whatever's here. It's not about having a good experience or a bad experience. It's how we show up. For me, that gives great confidence. Something else that has inspired me so much is that my teacher's teacher, my teacher, Charlotte
Selver came from Germany. She came to The United States in 1938 when the Nazis took over. Her teacher's name was Elsa Gindler, and she stayed in Berlin the whole time during the war. And she gave classes in this practice all through the war, And she also was hiding Jews under her studio and helping them escape all during the war.
And somebody who had been in one of her classes talked about something that helped save her life and helped her survive the war, which is that Elsa Gindler asked everybody to make a fist and to hold the fist really tight. And people, if they're listening, could try this right now. Just hold a fist and hold it really tight, really tight, and keep holding it. And notice how this fist is affecting you. Notice if there's any other part of you that's tightening or constricting.
And just really stay with it. So are you noticing anything? Yep. My right fist is tight, and then my left fist wants to tighten up as well. So as I feel it, you know, I can feel my wrist tight. I can feel my elbow tight, my shoulders tight, my belly's tight. And she had people stay in this fist for a long time. We're not gonna do that right now, but she had people really stay with it and then gradually give up the fist.
And what this woman whose name was Johanna Kulbach, who talked about this experience, she said that Gindler had them stay with this till they could feel how this fist was affecting them all through them and affecting their functioning. And she said she realized, you know, she couldn't stop her own fear. She couldn't stop the fear of the bombings, the fear of the Nazis. Those were conditions she had to live with, but she didn't have to meet it in a fist.
That helped her survive the war and stay as healthy as she could. To feel the difference between meeting what's here in a fist when we're fighting against it, we're resisting what's here. It's not that you don't use your energy to resist what needs change, but to say no to things when you need to say no. But if you're tightening and fighting against something, living in a fist, that constricts you and shuts down your own aliveness.
And when we don't do that, even if you're meeting horrendous things, there's an energy that has more freedom and more ability to be present. That gives sustenance. Yeah. I'm so curious about the rest of my day. Like, what's what's going to happen that I can ask, what is needed of me in this moment? The word presence comes to mind. This is part of what presence is. Is that right? It is for me. And I what I love about what does this moment ask of me is it invites me to pause and just
discover not to know. I don't have to know the answer. It's just to feel and connect. The more we get afraid or the more we're dis distracted, we lose connection. And this is an invitation to connect and to connect with breath, to connect with the support that's holding us. Literally, you know, we can't be on this planet without being supported, and gravity brings us down.
And so if we connect to whatever's here, because if I pause to feel what does this moment ask of me, and then I notice, oh, you know, even if it's I'm typing on the computer. We spend so much time, you know, at our computers or whatever, you know, machine we're using. If I pause, I may notice, oh, my shoulders are almost touching my ears, and I didn't realize it because it's just my habit. But if I pause, my shoulders can come down, and I can have more spaciousness.
Or I can feel where I'm bracing and feel like I was just reading this story in the news, and I constricted and shut down. And if I feel that, you know, maybe I come with my hands, which I often do, just to hold my chest and just bring tenderness to myself because I'm in pain, because it breaks my heart. You know, I could cry right now, things that are happening in our world and the children that are being killed and the terrible things that are happening. So I need comfort.
And when I feel that, I can come with my hands and I can hold myself. It changes how I continue to meet whatever is next. Part of it feels so counterintuitive. We're just not supported in doing that. It seems like the water we swim in says go away from that. Move away from the feeling. Yeah. But, you know, I think that's true. I think that what you know, we're distracted by everything. You know, it's social media, everything fast, fast, fast.
You know, message this, message that. You know, our commercials on television that are buy this, do this, take this medicine. But if we drop in to connect with ourselves, we can know what's really helping us open and when we're shutting down. And shutting down doesn't serve us very well. Yeah. So, Lee, how does Hoffman get woven into this story? Can you bring us into the ways in which Hoffman got integrated into your work?
The organization doesn't exist now, but I helped run Veterans Path for, I think it was twelve years. It wasn't really my work to run an organization even though I had helped to create the organization. And I left in a few years after that. I still did work with veterans, but the organization disbanded, which I was very sad about. But somebody who was on our board was also on the board of the Hoffman process. And she introduced me to Hoffman. And she felt like it would be something
really useful for veterans. And Hoffman wanted to offer scholarships to veterans. But I felt like it was such a deep and potent commitment and experience. I felt like I had to experience it myself before I would recommend it to veterans. So that's what brought me to go to the Hoffman process. And I found it personally very valuable. I felt like there was a lot that I learned about my own family dynamics and things that I could come in touch with.
And then there were many veterans who I referred to Hoffman who are still connected to Hoffman and come to other, you know, new sessions, and it's been really helpful. The sense of wholeness and the different parts of ourselves is very connected to what is most essential for me because my pathway is through the sensations and being present in the moment, but all parts of us are here. And so to be able to have access to that and to know that the choices we make matter, and they
lead to different outcomes in our lives. And the simple moments that we have choice all the time, which road we're gonna take. You know, again, are we being present and listening to what's needed, or are we being driven by defensive habits or patterns or things we've learned? And whichever path we take is gonna affect our lives. So for me, it's very connected.
We interviewed Megan Lowry, season 10 episode two, and she talks about veterans path and Hoffman and the work and the healing she did as a result of the work she did with you and at Hoffman. It's a beautiful episode. I'm thinking about the people who've done work with you. Do you hear from them later? I imagine, occasionally, they'll pop up with gratitude over the healing you helped them through. Yeah. No. I but that's part of the
joy of my life, actually. I mean, it's really part of the joy of my life. And Veterans Path and the work with, you know, people who are so dedicated to service, how their path of service has been different than my path of service. And even though we think that, you know, we would be in different worlds, but not. There's so much connection and how moved I've been by, so many veterans. And, you know, they put their lives on the line and their whole bodies out of a commitment to service.
But to see people change and to see how they connect, and, yeah, I'm in touch with lots of people who I've worked with over the years, and people will show up at different times and reach out. I've really had the honor of seeing people have the courage to touch what is so painful and to find their own joy and their own capacity. When Megan first came to Veterans Paths, the first retreat she came to, she came after three suicide attempts.
She was filled with despair and had so many things that she was carrying. And then she had the courage to keep dropping in and dropping in and dropping in and, you know, came to many retreats, went through different iterations of how she was gonna function in the world. She be she was a chef and went through culinary school, but then she decided she was gonna be
a social worker. So after all good number of years, she was graduating from social work school, and a bunch of us went to her graduation, you know, other veterans that had been part of Veterans Path with her. And it was such an amazing thing to see Meg towering over most of the people there on this huge stadium. Meg was there in so much of her power and dignity.
Being true to her own gifts, which I feel like that's the invitation for all of us, is how to drop in to feel what needs healing, what needs our care, and honor our own gifts. Let me ask you a question. If sensory awareness is the thing that helped you individuate at 19 years old, how does this work of coming home to your body, coming home to what's present in the moment, how is it supporting you in your own life at this stage? So I don't know how many years I'm gonna
be alive. I'm 74. And what's alive for me now is how do I best use my time and my energy and my life experience, and how do I contribute? What is it that I can offer while I'm still here? Again, it's what does this moment ask of me? What do these times ask of me? And that really lives in me to guide me to what work I offer, where can I be useful? I'm working on a book to try and share what I feel can be invitations to support people. Again, it's trust.
You know, and also as, you know, as we get older, our bodies change, and it's having to adapt to the changes in my body and what I can do and what I can't do and how to meet it with freedom. One of my closest friends who's also a sensory awareness teacher was skydiving champion of Mexico. And her parachute collapsed and she went crashing to the ground from 90 feet. And so has been quadriplegic for about forty years.
And she finds so much freedom and aliveness, but she has to meet all of the constrictions and limitations that her body of what she can and can't do. But how we find freedom to show up for what we can do and be present and appreciate these moments that we have. For me, it's ongoing. And I hope that, you know, my teacher died when she was 102 years old, she was still savoring the moments.
It seems like how one experiences the world might fundamentally change as a result of this orientation, these practices holding these questions. Do you find that people experience life and themselves differently in doing this work? Yeah. When we can be present and when we can really listen and connect to our own hearts calling in a way to what brings us alive. That changes how we live in the world.
And when we're not trying to force something, when we're not jumping ahead of ourselves, when we're not shutting down out of our own anxiety or fear, but we're present in the moment. That gives us room to show up and it gives us room to live with a different sense of relationship to what's happening, even when what's happening is really disturbing.
I was listening to a talk by the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg, and they were showing also videos about passing all these tipping points and talking about what's happening with the climate crisis. There were very important things, and there were different scientists that were part of it. And there were very important things that people were saying.
But what I came away with that struck me that still is influencing me is the Dalai Lama saying, I sleep nine hours every night and I sleep very peacefully. It really struck me because, you know, you're talking about all of these urgent things and things that need our attention.
And just the way he said that, and I realized, you know, I didn't have that sense of equanimity and peace that I can just sleep very peacefully nine hours a night and not be consumed by all the angst that's around us and the suffering and the urgency. And it's not that he's not responding because, of course, he is. But so I'm a you know, I feel like we're all a work in progress, and I'm a work in progress.
But when I come back to being here in this moment and attending to what's here, it gives me more freedom and helps me be more responsive, and it helps me be more open to to joy and to love without denying anything. Beautiful. Lee, what's it like to to reflect on your work out loud and your connection to Hoffman and sort of all of this over the last thirty minutes or so? What do you notice in the sharing of it? I guess, in a way, what does this moment need from you as a result of talking
about it? What's alive inside you in the sharing of it? Surprisingly, there's a lot of joy. I feel a lot of joy, and I feel a lot of love because that's such a deep motivation. And it actually brings me to tears because because of what I've been gifted to work with so many people and as a basis of of love and love of life. And in the midst of all of the suffering and pain, that we can return to what is most essential.
So just reflecting on what I've been given from my mother that opened up this pathway, And, you know, all the work I had to do in relation to my mom, but all the gratitude that she did completely change my life by opening this door to me, and that how much I learned from Charlotte. And just thinking about the legacy of each one of us being true to ourselves and what we can pass on. Elsa Gindler, what she faced in her life and how she led her work and how that was passed to Charlotte.
Just thinking about how I've been able to touch other people's lives and then they're touching other people's lives. So reflecting on it, it does bring me joy, and I'm and I'm moved. And I'm moved also by the commitment of the Hoffman process, not to wake us up, which is to me the work that I'm dedicated to. It's just different we have different avenues of how we all wake up.
Well, I'm grateful for this conversation and for the work you've done in the world and for, in a way, our shared work as Hoffman and the work you do and the importance of waking up.
Yeah. And I think just but something that occurs to me because it's also so present for me is the work with wildland firefighters who are on the edge of what we're doing to this planet and what's happening and how much they're working to protect nature and also feeling how to take care of them, and how much we all need to depend on each other. Keep showing up. Thank you, Lee. Thank you. It's a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and president of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Razi Ingrassi, Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love. In themselves, in each other and in the world. To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.