Wow. This is a woman who had the courage to hear her calling. And move toward it. As she says in the interview, collin can change. And in her case, my guest Joan Boys continued to change and evolve with each 1 of her calling. From her own healing journey at age 10, to her strong and unwavering connection to her spiritual self. To the teaching and healing she's provided for so many. All guided by a force that was larger than her. As she said it, it's an energy that flows through her.
This is a beautiful conversation that left me profoundly inspired, and I hope it does the same for you. Joy. Please be aware that this is episode mentions experiences with Ocd and suicide and may not be suitable for all listeners. If you or someone you know is suicidal, Please reach out to the national suicide prevention lifeline at 800 2738255. Or message the crisis text line at 741741. Welcome to Loves everyday radius. A podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute.
My name is Sharon Moore, and I'm 1 of your hosts. And on this podcast, we talked to Hop graduates about how their courageous journey inward. Impacted their personal lives, but also how it impacted their community and the world at large. So tune in and listen in and hear how our graduates authentic selves, how their love, how their spirits are making a positive impact on our world. Today. In other words, get to know their loves everyday radius.
Joan welcome to the show. Hi. It's great to be with you here, Sharon and great to be with all the listeners. I'm feeling you out there. That's how I feel. I've never put words to it. Well, Joan let let's start this is the Hoffman podcast and many of the listeners tend to be graduates or people who are interested in the Hoffman process. Let's start with the process. You've taken the process several decades ago, around when did you take the process? Oh, somewhere around 19 90.
So my goodness. That was almost 35 years ago. Is most that right? I think it might be. I'm not gonna try to do math right now, but you're probably right. So it's been a while. So I'm curious given that it's been a while. Are you able to still connect to? How it impacted your life, and if it still shows up in your life today? Well,
yes. I mean, first of all, I have to say that I took the process at a time in my life that I had been a medi for a very long time, and I had studied, you know, quite a bit of v, in terms of hindu, some buddhism, I've done a lot of emotional shall say, learning to witness and tame my emotions.
So at the time that I took it in 19 90, there were there was so much awakening happening at once, so many good things that it's hard to pinpoint, how much of my growth came from the process, how much came from other sources that came together, but I can say for sure it helped the entire family. And for for example, my son who was just 20 at the time.
Took it about 2 years before I did, and so did my husband, who I affectionately called my husband because we got divorced a couple of years after the process because I did become clear during the process that he and I had brought each other along for almost 20 years. And we had grown together, and it was time now for us to grow apart. So it was largely due to the process.
That the whole family system was healthy enough and steep enough in presence and our connection to our own families of origin that it made it much easier to actually get divorced a couple of years after the process. So maybe that's a little weird like, I credit the hot process. Grant helping me get divorced really from my best self. I think both of us were able to make it through some of the emotional parts of the divorce because we had the tools and we knew the quad, and that was very helpful.
Well, I I like that you said it was a couple years later. You know, we often as teachers ask students. Hey, don't make big life decisions for a little bit. Let this integrate. And then after it integrates, you can show up with your whole self like you said with your whole quad and start to examine and ask some of the hard questions. So that takes time. Takes time to integrate.
It does. So it was great. You know, I think when couples, take the process, and we took it a couple of years apart from each other, that kind of common language and common experience perm the relationship in a good way so that you're starting from an enriched space when you're trying to process relational issues. Yeah. And and that's not always easy. It...
It's time, it's very charged very scary and imagining that you start from this like you say, enriched space allows it to be the best case scenario for something that is otherwise difficult. Well, exactly. So it's good, and I'm happy to say that we're friends and have been for all of the years, which has now been almost 30 years since we were divorced Well, I can imagine among the people who go to the process have been to the process or are listening to this podcast.
You're not alone in having that be 1 of the questions you're exploring. And so to hear that outcome that you were able to touch into some of the truth that needed to be looked at. And the 2 of you were able to do that and navigate it so gracefully that you're still friends, 30 years later, That's that's beautiful. It is. It really is. And so I'm... I'm gonna switch gears a tiny babe. You...
Have been a teacher. Were you already a teacher at that point when you were was, you know, I've been teaching meditation and mind bodies. Skills since the mid 19 seventies.
In the early eighties, I had founded mind body clinic at 1 of the Harvard medical school teaching hospitals with Herbert Benson, who was really the first person to introduce meditation into medicine, and then my friend John Cabo Zen launched a mindfulness based mind body clinic, about a year before Benson and I launched a clinic based on similar kinds of principles, and it was wonderful. John was so helpful to us And as I said, there was it was a time of great growth in the,
you know, starting in this... Seventies and through the eighties and nineties. So I was steep in that. I'm a scientist and also psychologist. So I was working with people in a clinical setting. We were running 8 week programs for people with cancer, and then in 19 82, the aids epidemic in Boston began. And in the beginning, we hadn't even identified the virus. We didn't even know why. We just knew that it was a great deal of sickness and death in the gay community.
And so I was teaching and working with people who were very ill and people who were dying for the whole decade me before I took the Hoffman process. So the hoffman process was wonderful, and it dropped into you know such a rich pond of experience that was already there for me. Beautifully said. What I'm struck by is 2 things. 1, is that even though you were already steep in it and were... In these cutting edge spaces with people who are pioneers in this space, you still were also a student
so you still came to the process. You still continue to learn as you became a teacher, and I think that's so profoundly important for anybody who's in that space of teaching anything to continue to be a student. Oh, it really is because 1 of the things I can attest to as a teacher is that it's a particular space that you get in. Particular kind of energy that you have to hold, and it's a very different energy to be able to simply let go, receive, learn and not need to be in charge of things.
And I have found that being a student recharge me. It's also 1 of my character strengths. I've been very, very interested in the still emergent field of positive psychology and the various character strengths, that each of us has as individuals, and 1 of my signature character strengths is love of learning. And I do think that it helps me teach. If I also learn it's exciting, It's new. And in a way it's it's really rest and nurturing to be a learner.
Yeah. I I see something in addition to what you're saying is It takes courage to move from being a teacher, the 1 who knows or the 1 who's holding space. To being the student. It's... You kinda hinted at it. It's a little bit of, letting go of control, letting go of the identity of the 1 who knows, and I really think not everybody knows how to do both. Many people know how to do 1 or the other, but doing both is really in art too. Well, thank you, I never thought
of it that way, Sharon. Thank you so much. Yeah. I I mean it for the bottom of my heart. Now, I wanna go back to this what you were talking about in in 19 82 of the aids. I'm also struck by I remember that, and it was scary. We had no idea who gets it, How you get it, Where you get it? I remember funny thing, you know, today we you look at it and say it's funny, but I remember the things we stopped doing as a result. And to think that you went in and worked with that community.
Just fills my heart. You know, it was your spiritual self knows things that you're thinking mind doesn't know. And what happened for me was that I knew I was safe, and this was actually very difficult for some of the people that I worked with at the hospital, Several of them came into my office 1 day was kind of like a little informal intervention and said, hey, what's with you? Do you have a death wish? We don't know how this illness is transmitted, what if it's transmitted through the air.
And here you're seeing people with aids. And because we didn't know the root of transmission, the hospital said, you you can't run a group of aids patients in the same room where we're having other patients it's simply It's not safe. So I began to run groups for aids patients actually in the apartment of 1 of my patients, who was himself a young physician unfortunately. And he was 1 of the longest survivors.
He lived for 2 years. That was being long survivor, and we ran lots of groups in his apartment. And I simply knew that I was safe. That was it. I'm grateful that the hospital continued to allow me to do that. And then, of course, there were many patients who were hospitalized and then I could go into their rooms and visit, and we were we were all covered with Ppe,
believe me. We were were carefully protected in the hospital setting, but not in the individual setting, And I always felt that I was safe. Well, I'll tell you as a member of the Lgbtq community myself, I'm so grateful. That there were people like you who knew. I am called to heal, and I know I'm safe, so I am going to lean in instead of leave this community by themselves. Yep. We know. That's that's what I did and you know remember 1 of the physicians at the hospital where I worked, said,
why do you do this? And I had had a picture taken. It was actually the cover of spirituality and health magazine and I was standing behind a young man with aids, and my hands were on his shoulders. And the physician said, is that safe? Is that a good message to send? Why did you do that? And I said, it's simply the compassionate thing to do, and I wasn't afraid, and I wanted people to know. I think
it... At that point, we may have just found the the Hiv virus said, I want people to know that someone with aids, they need to be touched. People are afraid of touching them. These were difficult conversations where people were like like questioning sanity.
It really breaks my heart on on so many levels, but to think that so many in that time were left by themselves, I know you're not the only 1, but I have you in my presence and to think that you were led by your spiritual self and your innate knowledge that these are human beings who need love and compassion, especially in these scary moments that they were enduring, and then being somebody who's in influential you went ahead and showed that that's what you believe. That's, that's
profound. Well, thank you so much. Those were such times. Honey now I remember, it was actually the second patient that I was able to care for with aids, who looked at me and he said, 17 people that I know have died in the last 4 months. You know, it was like a war zone. It was unthinkable. Just they the incredible.
Post traumatic stress that's set in right away, every time a friend would have a symptom every time you would see somebody and wonder if it was the last time that you would ever see them. There's 1 thing, Sharon about terrible times like that? And that is people drop the bullshit. They drop their masks, and they... Show up authentically is who they are. And so the moments of meeting people, spiritual self to spiritual self
that's what sustained me. It was so real and so present, you know, no time for nonsense. And talk about a j position of here you are with these people who drop the mask are truly in their spiritual self, which brings out your spiritual self then go to your office and here are people who are still in their fear space and their intellect. And what a what a pal difference I imagine? It was a huge difference. And I I understood them. I understood their fear.
So it was We know sometimes you're just called upon to be curious, be spacious and do your best to be able to hold multiple points of view. I wonder if you said at that point you had already been meditating for so long. Do you think that was what helped you have such a clear connection to the spiritual... Your spiritual self and knowing that you were safe? I think so. I've had mystical experiences all my life.
I felt that healing was my calling and I think because of that, I've always no matter even if I'm in the worst mode if I'm in my most contract itself. If I get into a situation where there's a need, something automatically shifts in me. And it's like, whatever the mood is goes away, and I'm able to get straight into my spiritual self and get some guidance as to what needs to happen next. I think that comes along with the calling.
When you're called, something happens so that the path opens for you and something emerges when it's needed. So that that was always there. So I was supported. There such a sense of support from a larger intelligence that you do connect to when you're in your spiritual self. I mean, I look back and I think, how could I have done this because I was wondering at the same time, a clinic for people with cancer, a clinic for people with any kind of stress related illness. I was doing research.
I had a hour commute from the hospital to my home in either direction, and I was raising 2 sons, and it was It was a lot, and also when 1 of my aids patience was dying, I did my best if they asked me to be there to show up and do the death vigil with them. So that meant oftentimes that I was at the hospital really late into the night, keeping the vigil. And doing what people needed. And oftentimes sad what happened in the aids epidemic
it was all men in the beginning. And, you know, then through blood transfusion, it began to spread out through men who are bisexual, but it took while to have women patients as well. In the beginning it was all men and it was just... I don't know what. IIII think about the tender of those times.
I think of what happened a lot of the men had actually not come out to their families or if they hadn't come out, they were not accepted, I mean, we're talking about a long time ago now, you know, in the early eighties, my god, we're talking about 40 years ago, and what would often happen is that their family, their parents so well meaning would arrive on the scene they'd wanna be with their sons, and they would push away the support community the gay friends and other friends,
and it was often very difficult. So that was an added impetus for me to be able to be there and try to make a loving aura that somehow our other made this very difficult time on many fronts a little bit easier. I don't often go back to that phase, but this reminds me of all of it. And I I wasn't yet at a place where I was a professional that point, but just to think of the few that were called and the gift that they gave these men Like you. Is is really something.
Well, thank you. Thank you. It's amazing to look back on that and to be so very thankful that there are now treatments so that Can live full and healthy lives even if they have the virus. If that's it's miraculous to me. Modern medicine, it has some great stuff. It's got... It's difficult side too, but boy, that, that's an amazing thing to think about. So grateful for that.
And I do get what you're saying about it being a calling because given the circumstance of raising the kids and having the the 3 or 4 jobs that you held and clearly it's something beyond you because if you are looking at it just from a logical standpoint you don't have time you're raising kids, there's all these reasons why not to. So the the the visual I get is just you are lead. Like, your heart is just leading you to something that is a calling. That's right.
And when you have a calling, you're not pulling on your adrenal for energy. It's not like you get totally exhausted and you're having to kick your own butt there's a source of energy that flows through you, and then you have to be careful because it's it's easy. To get depleted and not even realize it because this flow of energy is happening. So it's, you know, you get a lot of help from a larger source. Wow. And this feels like this is just but 1 expression of, your calling and your work
as a healer and teacher. Can you take us back to when you knew, Oh, I'm I'm here to be a teacher. There are so many moments of that, but I had a a very serious smell illness as a 10 year old.
It was a really serious case of obsessive compulsive disorder I was hall head hunters that I thought they were gonna kill my family with poison darts, and I could see them but they hadn't quite taken shape in the living room and an order to prevent that from happening I had all these rituals, hand washing, some of the common rituals, other ones I don't wanna get into because we don't have time.
And I was in a health state for about 6 months, and we covered by really recalling an experience of my spiritual self, which was that I'd been for a couple of summers at a Jewish girl's camp. And I was sitting in my room in a thinking, how can I continue to live when I'm living in fear 24 hours a day? I dream it. I live it. If I don't do the wear tools, I'd be crazy. That was already crazy. I would die from the terror. And so I thought when's the last time I was
peaceful? I tried to take refuge there, and it brought me back to the pine grove at the camp and the sabbath services, and you know, the the memory of just the smell of the earth, the sound of the water on the lake lapping the warmth of the breeze, the sound of the ancient hebrew prayers the sounds of all the little girl voices as we sang, and that since, suddenly, I got out of my fear state for a bit into that state of the spiritual self, where I felt held by something larger.
And because of that experience, I was able to stop doing the rituals, cold Turkey in that spiritual state a little, you know, a little 10 year old poem about light, came to my mind, and I had that to calm me down when I was frightened. And so As I recovered from that illness, I started to ask questions that grew was On grew But my first question, it was the fifth
grade. We were actually studying the brain in our science course, and I thought, what could happen to the human brain that it filters reality in such a different way. How could that be and it wasn't too many years after that or I found Eldest Huxley book the doors of perception.
And I became very interested in the nature of mind and the nature of emotions you know, we've only started to recognize the brain science, oh, in the last 10 or 15 years or so what goes on when we have a spiritual experience to our brain, and it's so important it turns out to be able to go back to spiritual experience. And for people who took the quad process.
1 spiritual experience I do still go back to was the closure at the end And I mean, that was the most amazing sense of integration and just being in my spiritual self along with everybody else, the presence of other people multiplies it. And it turns out there's a, some wonderful research done by Lisa Miller, who's a psychologist at Columbia University that when you rerun spiritual experience like that for me being a camp or whatever. We all have them, but boy.
The quad process gives you a heck, heck of a bunch of spiritual experiences that you can way run. And when that happens, you strengthen the neural networks of your spiritual self, the neural networks of presence, you power down the part of the brain, the default mode network it runs old stories and mistakes them for reality so that every time you have a trauma graft onto old traumas, but it takes you out of that rerun spiritual experience.
And so that's That's something I think we can all do and anybody who takes the process will have plenty of spiritual experiences to rerun during the rest of their lives and you keep building that sense of integration You keep on getting, I believe more spacious, more present, more allowing more in a line without larger source, and you mentioned rerun and If I heard you correctly, you on your own were able to as a 10 year old as a fifth grader
rerun to shoot. You kind pieced it. And nobody told you rerun a spiritual experience. You just intuitively did it on your own as a 10 year old? Wow. And through that you were able to basically heal yourself. Exact, and that's where my calling came from because I think a lot of kids who are sick.
Have this natural tendency to say, when I grow up, I wanna help people who have been troubled in whatever way I was because you understand you have an empathy for other people who have suffered in your particular way, you know, it is a sense of, like, common humanity. And so I thought this is fascinating, and I'm gonna grow up to help other people. You know, I thought what do you know is a 10 year old?
I didn't know the difference between a psychologist or a psychiatrist that I knew my parents had taken me to a couple of psychiatrists none of what they did helped, but I thought, I could be helpful. I should be wanting know Wow. I... Not in a hard time wrapping my head around a 10 year olds who knew to do this. I I go back to what you said earlier where there was a source from beyond us. And I'm curious if you... And all you're, working on as a Healer as a teacher.
Have you been able to see anybody else be able to, rerun on their own and heal themselves like that? Well, you know, you never know healing, it's 1 of these multi dimensional processes and so many things go into it. But yes, I mean, what kept me going for the 10 years that I ran a mine body clinic right in the middle of the aids epidemic there.
In stories of transformation, people like click into some part of themselves and they're able to, like, Marshal good health care team if it's a physical illness, or, they have transformative experiences. They see themselves differently. They are able to maybe, I have an emotional breakthrough there are so many ways. I think every person, and I do bought it, by the way, wanna be very clear that After yours in mind body medicine, I wanna tell people, you cannot always
cure yourself. We're all gonna die of something. But you can heal yourself. And to be able to leave this lifetime healed, whenever that may be is what we want. And I think healing is something that keeps continuing. Life has a lot of challenges, and they're all g for the mill where a little by Lily you say, okay. This is a difficult experience.
I'm having my, you know, my difficult emotional time my that But to be able to back up from that a little bit, find a little space, use whatever tools you have, do your best to make choices to become present for me and everybody has a different belief system. But for me and, my way of making meaning everything in this lifetime, including every challenge is there to help us grow our soul to become more compassionate, and more loving. And that's what healing is. It's a long process.
And, of course, as somebody who, I try to, you know, hold the space for healing. I'm not the healer. It's just whatever is needed from what I have to give can come through me, whether it's something scientific whether it's something spiritual or whether it's just the sense of being able to connect with someone in a very real way that allows them to connect better with themselves. So where where do you see yourself today, we're in 20 23, I know that's hard to believe.
You've had such a full and profound and impactful I don't even wanna say career because this is so far beyond career. Career has been an aspect of it, but you have heard the calling over and over again and continue to put it into practice and bring into our 3 life and plain. But where are you today? How do you keep that part of you going these days.
Well, you know, it's very interesting as you say the calling comes over and over for all of us and we show up in a variety of different ways, you know, when my father died when I was a research scientist I was cancer cell biologists in My late twenties, and that was an impetus like, okay. It's fine to wanna heal people of cancer by understanding all the molecular parts of it, but there was no 1 to really support my father in what I didn't even know what way.
But in 1 way, he had terrible side effect from a medicine he was on and created a manic psychosis. Was like a stranger had moved into his skin. There was like nobody to help him. And that's when I left the laboratory because my father ultimately committed suicide jumped out of a window. And I thought I'm not gonna stay in the lab. If I can help even 1 family have a better outcome than ours will be worthwhile So that was a change. Now the pandemic created a tremendous change.
For a couple of years, we were essentially locked in our homes because prior to that, I had been traveling. You know, I was a traveling teacher. No. I taught in the hospitals I taught every kind of venue I taught retreat centers, and that was a wonderful period of my life. But now, what happened during the pandemic was I thought, oh, you can teach online.
So I very much enjoyed teaching online, but I'm also in the period of my life now, where back in ancient India, it was time to go into the forest. And integrate the experiences of your own life in preparation for death, Now, you know my husband and I are both in our late seventies. And we need time to integrate our own lives, you know, I teach memo memoir writing, and I've written 17 bucks and. I've told a lot of stories from my life.
But I wanna tell something I wanna write just a little memoir only from my children and grandchildren. So they will have something. And we just wanna be present and have fun as much as possible. So I was so glad when you asked me to do this podcast that it wasn't a Zoom podcast, because that let me work in the garden all afternoon and show off in my gru to do this because... For me, nature is... And I think for so many people, this is true.
Nature is 1 of those things that allows me to put down thinking and just really feel and see and work with the beauty. It's so beautiful. Spring right now and I live in Santa fe, and we've had several days of rain, and there is nothing more wonderful. Then to feel the plants absorb the rain and to feel the life force rising and to see the beauty So that's my primary job right now is to integrate my life and be present to my husband and family and the garden. So I love to teach,
and that's wonderful too. It's great that I can I can do both and find just the right balance for this time? Well, it seems to me that you have devoted so much of your life for others, starting in the eighties and probably before then and all the way to now, and and it seems like maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe this is 1 of a first times that you're prioritizing you and your time to integrate. And I'm gonna write a memoir just for my children.
And, you know, suddenly, it's like your realm of impact, you're allowing it to get smaller and smaller. Oh, absolutely. That it's so important And the other thing as in terms of the their quadrant, my physical self as you get older you really have got to listen to what what your physical self has to say, because if you don't, it bites you in the butt. So it's very clear. Its feedback is very clear.
And I spend a lot of time on maintenance if I don't stretch or exercise or spend time being quiet and spend time making food that's really good to eat and be with friends, all these physical needs I won't last long. So I wanna last long, and I pay attention to my needs. Beautifully said. Beautifully said. Well, Joan, I thank you for every minute that you gave us on this interview and your humble and vulnerability and beautiful, impactful profound and important contribution to, our world.
Thank you. Well, you're very welcome. Thank you for receiving me with your whole heart Sharon. I could feel that. It was wonderful. Thank you. I'm very nurtured and very grateful, and I feel very inspired. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza and Grass. I'm the Ceo and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Ras Rossi, Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hop 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 hop institute dot org.