- I actually started doing what I was teaching as just moving towards what felt connected to my heart and my values. I just love all of the work I do now, especially my Hoffman work. Don't tell the institute this, but I'd probably do it for free. I like it so much. , - 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. Hey Dorothy Holden, welcome. - Thank you Drew. I'm glad to be here with you. Are - You? - I . Well, we had a little chat yesterday about me being a little intimidated, but uh, here I am in all my vulnerability and authenticity. So let's see what you pull out of me. - .
And you know, I mean, I guess if we expect our students to show up vulnerably and authentically, we as teachers should do the same. No, - Yes. That's a very good point you're making. We absolutely should. Yeah. Go through our discomfort and just be present. What's going on? That's - Right. Presence. Thank you for bringing that word into this conversation. Maybe in the show notes, I, I think I'll say this at the beginning.
So Julie Daly, our producer, does such a wonderful job on show notes and many of the things that guests reference in their episodes often have a definition and further explanation. Explanation. So that is no more true than in this conversation as well. So let's see what we dig up. Will you introduce yourself a little bit and tell us who you are? - Sure, yeah. I'm Dorothy Holden. I live in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia and Canada.
I'm a Hoffman teacher and coach and I've been a Hoffman teacher since 2007 in Canada and I joined the US faculty in 2020, the same week that white sulfur springs burnt. That was a very interesting time to come into your faculty and witness the resilience and support that was available. And I'm also a licensed, uh, clinical counselor, uh, at some points in my life. I've been a registered psychologist when I was in another province.
Yeah, I live with my amazing husband and have grown kids and grandkids and I'm very grateful for the life I lead. - As you've been thinking about this conversation and reflecting on the life you lead, what are some of the through lines that you've either become aware of or have already noticed? - Well, I'm not really sure where to start the thread with that because there are a lot of through lines that I've identified.
But, you know, just starting off with my childhood, seeing that it was a stable household and that it was safe, but it was also very chaotic. I had four brothers. - You are right in the middle, aren't you, Dorothy? - I'm right in the middle, yes. Two older, two younger. While that was a lot of fun as a kid and everybody in the neighborhood wanted to play at our house 'cause there were no rules and we could jump off the garage roof with a rope and things like that.
I realized when I did my Hoffman process, how I developed a lot of self responsibility and I learned to take care of myself as a kid. And I see that absolutely as a thread that runs through my whole life. Sometimes a blessing and oftentimes it shows up as a reactive pattern. - Yeah. So let's go there for a second because I think listeners and grads of the process can relate to the teasing out of something that has so many good qualities.
No one would argue against the power of self-responsibility, such a good thing to develop for kids. And yet you're also alluding to maybe it as a pattern and so will you just share a little bit more about that? - Yeah, going back to my childhood, I remember being a little girl and I would get ready for school the night before and lay out my clothes and everything and I'd head off to school really early. I could walk to school.
It was just a few blocks away and I just think back to being that little girl who must have felt so anxious that maybe she'd be overlooked and not sent off to school on time that I was taking care of myself at, you know, five, six years old. And that has then developed in me skill, great skills of organization, planning, being on time, being really an organized person. But the downside is that it also makes me rigid and judgmental of people who may not be organized.
And of course I married somebody who was a rebel, so he's, he's my opposite and just a real gift for me to be practicing, allowing other people to be who they are. That's taken a bit of work in my life. - Yes. So your partner is your practice? - Yes, my partner gives me lots of opportunity to practice and I do to him as well.
- That's awesome. So this little girl who's scared at times, I mean, I imagine rigidity doesn't just show up as a pattern or a way of being in the world because we wanna be rigid. It can be in reaction to being overwhelmed or afraid. - Yeah, absolutely. It was a survival skill, a coping mechanism that I learned and uh, it made me feel safe, but it also shuts me down to, you know, it's definitely left road.
It shuts me down to being present to what might be there right in front of me and being open to possibility and curiosity. I've, I've had to work on developing those skills and attitudes because they didn't come naturally to me. - Hmm. I appreciate your vulnerability, Dorothy. Thank - You Drew - . So I wanna ask about that because how do you know when it's a left road pattern? Like how are you aware, uh, of it being problematic?
What prevents you from saying actually being organized is a really good thing? Being prepared is a really valuable thing. Well, - A lot of the time I do recognize that it's valuable and helpful and supporting me being who I wanna be and doing what's important to me. But I know that it's a pattern when it can show up in relationship.
When there's friction with someone who's different from me on that spectrum, I recognize, you know, the energy that's in me, the reaction, the transference that happens when somebody isn't doing things the way I think they, they should be done. So I notice it in my body. I notice acid as friction in relationships and when I'm on just doing something on my own, it's harder to notice when it's a pattern and when it is serving me.
But I do use the Hoffman tools and practices to check in with what's going on with me on a regular basis. And yeah, I can pick up when there's some pattern energy around my self responsibility. - That's great. You know, I just wanna circle back to this thing that it's easier to recognize patterns when we're aware of the friction it causes in relationships. Is that what you said?
- That's what I said. For me, I don't know if that would uh, be true for everyone, but absolutely for me that's when I notice it most easily. - What a redefinition of the value of relationships they help us see ourselves and the less developed unhealed parts of ourselves. - Yes, , that's for sure. And you know, I would say that my husband is my greatest teacher, as I we said earlier, it gives me lots of opportunity to practice stretching and getting outta my reactivity.
- He sounds like a, like a hoot, like he lives a free spirit life. - Yeah, that would be a big part of him. We got married really early. I was 21. We've been married 52 years now. So I mean we've had an amazing life together, but it was a little rocky at first. We were both young and didn't really know who we were. I grew up again in a household where I had become quite responsible and organized and he's a rebel and he's anti-establishment. So of course, why wouldn't I pick a teacher like that?
Someone to marry who's opposite for me. - And do you end up being a teacher for him as well, I imagine? - Oh, absolutely. - So where do we take this scared little girl who's incredibly responsible? What happens next or where would you like to go next? - Well, I'd like to maybe talk about the process a little bit and what made me decide to do the Hoffman process. Yeah, - Great. I love that. - So I was on a, a career trajectory to get into being a therapist or in the helping profession.
And in fact I did become licensed in I think 1992, had a good practice as well as having some other very interesting contracts. And you know, in the early two thousands I started hearing about people going and doing this Hoffman process. It had to do with family of origin and childhood issues. So I heard about this Hoffman process that had to do with childhood and family of origin issues.
And I thought, you know, my husband needs to do this process because I had the sense that my childhood had been, you know, pretty safe and stable. He'd had some challenges in his family, uh, mental health challenges and, uh, with one of his parents and some, some things he had to grow up pretty early in, in some ways. And I thought it would be amazing for him to do the process. And as I mentioned, we were quite different in our approaches.
So we had some areas where we would tend to bump heads often and, and argue. And I thought, well, maybe he'll go to the process and he'll discover that I am right and then we won't have these arguments. I realized that was at the back of my head, but he was not ready to go at that point. So I marched off to the process. I think maybe with a little bit of arrogance or vindictive energy, I'm not sure. But I marched off to do this process and just decided I'm gonna put myself into this work.
I did discover again how self-responsibility had been developed as a pattern in my childhood. But the, my main takeaway from the process was I fell in love with myself. I had never developed the ability to be self-compassionate and to really feel genuine love for myself even when I messed up and make a mistake that I could still treat myself kindly and with curiosity.
So I had an amazing week at the process and then lo and behold that, you know, I had a weekend by myself after the process and then I flew home and when my husband picked me up at the airport, I could not believe how much he had changed while I was away. That was my genuine experience. I just thought, wow, what happened to him?
And of course I, I know what happened is that I had changed, I had started to turn the focus towards me, not in well using the positive aspects of self responsibility and bringing love and kindness to myself. And that allowed me to just let him be him. And wow, what a gift that was. - That's wonderful . And I hear self-effacing humor as you reflect on what we often tend to do, which is to over attribute other people in our lives.
In other words, I'm unhappy 'cause they're in the way or I'm happy because they're different. That's in a way what the process really fights against that actually the change lives inside you, right, - Absolutely. And my husband eventually did the process as well and um, he also became a regular meditator around that time related to some challenges he had with cancer. And he took up meditation as a practice and he, he still meditates regularly and does self-compassion and gratitude regularly.
So he has also taken away so many gifts from the process and from other work he's done. So, you know, we just don't tend to bump heads as much anymore. Or if we do, what I'm noticing is that, you know, one of us is able to stay present and connected to the fact that we're actually an adult while the other one might be having a bit of a temper tantrum. And it's a, it's a balance, it's a beautiful balance. So it's very rare that now that both of us go into, you know, our patterns at the same time.
- It's nice to have one adult in the room. - Yeah, that's my thought. . Absolutely. - So how did Dorothy move from grad to teacher? - Well, I built up a really interesting career in Calgary where I lived at that time and my kids were, um, grown, they were off at university. We decided to move to the west coast. It took me a long time to be ready to do that because I loved the work. I was doing so much in Calgary, but I did the process in 2004 and we finally decided to move in 2007.
You know, knowing that move was coming up when the Canadian Hoffman Institute put out a call for teachers, I thought, well that would be an amazing thing that I could do no matter where I live. As soon as I did the process, I was one of those graduates who got in touch with the institute and said I'd be interested in teaching. And so the timing just worked out really beautifully for me. And I did become a teacher in 2007 and I have found the work tremendously satisfying and meaningful.
It's just right up my alley of wanting to support people in being who they are in their lives and figuring out who that person is. - And um, when I hear that, I hear like right livelihood, it's your right livelihood, - Yes, right livelihood, but I'm not sure if you're using livelihood, just thinking of career and making money, making, I am interested in supporting people in living as their full selves and all aspects of their life.
Feeling like, you know, what I'm doing is aligned with what really matters to me and we can always know that ahead of time. So also supporting people and developing the confidence that you can check in with yourself moment to moment and know in that moment what's right so you don't have to have all of the answers to move forward.
- You referenced this before we pushed record, but do you see a connection between your life and you figuring out who you were and the work you do with graduates and students in the process in helping them figure out who they are? Can you reflect on that a little bit? It seems like there's some energy there. - Absolutely. Absolutely. There's energy there.
Well, somehow in um, high school, there was some career event at my high school and there was a guidance counselor who talked about the work they did and I, it just resonated with me. I thought, yes, this is what I wanna do. I wanna help young people figure out what sort of work they wanna do, what sort of career they wanna move towards. And so I got onto that academically, that trajectory. I did an undergrad in psychology in Montreal.
I lived in Montreal then, and then I also did a bachelor of education. Was on the path to do my master's in guidance counseling. Really feeling pretty excited about this idea that I'm gonna help people figure out who they're gonna be. And there was a big roadblock that kind of came up in our life. We were newly married then my husband was in law school and we realized one of us had to earn an income.
So I ended up working for a few years at some pretty interesting jobs that were in the social service field, but they weren't involved really with the one-on-one contact with clients. And I was going through the motions and doing the work, but it was not filling my soul, it was not making me feel I was using my gifts and I was not passionate about it. So, you know, fast forward eventually had a couple of kids and stayed home with them until they were both in school all day.
So when my son started kindergarten, I decided I'm gonna go back and do a master's in counseling psychology and now I'm gonna be a guidance counselor. So I started that program, went and sped, did some job shadowing in a high school and realized I would hate to be a guidance counselor when I saw what they actually did with their time. I had some fantasy about what this would be like.
And so that, again, I still had the same passion, but I shifted perspective and started working with an older population. I worked at the University of Calgary, um, doing career counseling and general counseling for a number of years. And I still don't think that university students are supposed to have absolute clarity on their career direction, but I really became comfortable with supporting people with that uncertainty of not knowing.
But as you get more clarity on yourself and what's important to you, there start to be some road signs, some directions of where you could go. And I also at that time started working with Olympic and national athletes in Canada on their, who are they gonna be? Who do you wanna be once you've left sport?
Obviously that's a population of people who live a very focused structured life where everything is planned out and regardless of how successful they'd been in their athletic career, I mean I worked with gold medalists who were terrified of starting over and trying to figure out what else they could be. And so I did find ways through my work to use my passion to support people in managing change in their life, managing all kinds of transitions, not just career transitions.
Again, one of the main themes is what we talk about at Hoffman. It's a process. So there was just a beautiful alignment that developed as I actually started doing what I was teaching. It's just moving towards what felt connected to my heart and my values. And I just love all of the work I do now, especially my Hoffman work. Don't tell the institute this, but I'd probably do it for free. I like it so much. . - Wow, it feeds you that much.
- Yeah, well I'm very lucky in that, you know, my husband's retired, I don't need the income. I don't know if I could have said it with that certainty earlier in my life, but I wanna keep doing this work because it's so meaningful to me and satisfying and it's helping people figure out who do you wanna be? Just like I figured that out.
- And just like you've helped so many people, whether it's Olympic athletes who are now reentering the workforce or college students who are about to enter the workforce. I guess what a question to hold as a north star. Who am I and who do I wanna be? I guess I'm curious about how do you feel like you help students do that in the process? Answer those questions.
- Well, I think that that is what the process is designed to do from the pre-work that students do, writing about their childhood and answering all those questions, looking back and seeing what it is that emerges for them as patterns, as themes, you know, both positive themes from their life, strengths and gifts that they have, as well as areas of reactivity, which we call negative patterns.
And then moving into everything that happens at the process where they're connecting to their spiritual self from the first day when we go through the Quadri model and we talk about the spiritual self and then all of the visualizations in which they're tapping into that sense of getting wisdom from within. And one of my very favorite practices is the self-compassion practice that was developed by Kristin Naff.
There's a part of us, no matter what we're facing in terms of a struggle, there's still a part of us who can be there to support and care and give genuine care and concern, even though we don't have all the answers and that our spiritual self doesn't have uh, you know, a rule book or an instruction book, it's, it's just able to guide us and support us moment to moment and lead us to towards who we really are.
- If you had to reflect on what's challenging for students in the process or why they struggle, what makes their processes better or what makes them worse, what do you notice about having taught some hundred plus weeks? What do you notice in the student experience? - Yeah, , that's a great question. And when you say a hundred plus weeks, I mean I realize I've had over, oh, well over two years of my life at Hoffman processes, which is, wow, that's quite a statistic noted like that.
So what makes it easier or harder for students to really enter into the process and receive the learnings and the experience? There's a lot of, to me about how ready students are to do the work in terms of how anxious they are, how resistant they may be to trying out different, uh, exercises and activities. And I know that that's all fear-based. They're generally not, they're resisting because they don't want to get the benefit or they don't want to try things out.
It's just scary, it's unfamiliar. And so that's tricky as a teacher to work with resistance and you know, the intellect gets in their students have all kinds of great reasons why they, this exercise didn't make sense or this bashing is ridiculous and I'm not angry with my parents. And you know, as teachers we've heard so many different explanations, the intellect of the students can give why this isn't working. So I just trust in the process.
I just support them in, let's just keep going, put yourself into this and just see what it's like at the end of the week. You get to decide what you keep. So I do think that when there's anxiety or fear based resistance coming up, it can be hard for students to put themselves fully into the experience. - There are so many experiences in the process that it can be relentless at time. It's one after another after another. It's an experiential journey. It's not an intellectual journey.
So I'm imagining at some point you've had experiences where students drop in to the essential part of their nature, their spirit, that the deeper soulful part of their being. It may happen earlier in the week or middle of the week or end of the week, but it generally happens. Is that true? Is that how you feel? - It almost always happens and I trust in that for each student. You know, it happens at a different time of the week.
In my experience, almost every student leaves at the end of the week having figured out, not in a a knowledge sense, but in a felt sense that I am connected to who I really am and I can tap into this part of me for support and guidance and wisdom. And we call that your spiritual self process. It's at a different time of the week, but as you say, they, they all get there.
- I wanna ask about post-process and your experience with grads and all the work you do with them coaching and as they stay in touch with you, what do you notice about what works for grads or maybe some don't, don't do in their life post-process? Listeners might appreciate a little reflection on how do I keep this alive and what will make it what'll kill it? - Yeah, yeah. Well like another great question Drew.
So post-process, we encourage students to find a regular practice daily if possible, that allows them to be really bringing themselves to presence and awareness of themselves, noticing what they need, what patterns may be stirred up, what's going on. So that practice, for most of us as human beings, it's hard to develop a new habit. And I mean, you know, you take up yoga and you do it for two months and then oh you notice I haven't done it for a few days and now I haven't done it for a week.
It's very hard as human beings to have these practices really become part of how we live our lives. So I like to both normalize the fact we're not perfect, we're not going to be having a practice that we do absolutely every day, but also really pump up the benefit of that, those regular practices. And I think there's two reasons students fall off the wagon with their practices. One is they get complacent and feel like, ah, you know, I got this, things are going okay.
I don't really need to keep doing that. And the other is they get overwhelmed by stress and challenges in their life and they just sort of abandon ship, you know, I think Hoffman does, the institute does a great job at having lots of grad events and web classes and ways they can touch in and remember, oh yeah, oh yes, I actually do know what to do. I just have to go back to it. - Yeah, that's beautiful.
You know, earlier you talked about not from a knowledge base place, and I think I just wanna linger here for a little bit because in a world where knowledge and the intellect really do dominate the process and the tools and practices that we help students use during the week and encourage them after they graduate, those tools and practices are really somatic based. It's an experiential journey.
Can you just talk a little bit about either your own process or your work with students in the process about the difference between something that we know conceptually versus something that we understand from an embodied place?
- Yes, I can do that, drew, because one of the kind of catchphrases we talk about at the process is this, be, do, have, and talking about the strategy that many of us approach life with is if I do certain things, then I'll have what I want in my life, the, the job, the money, the car, whatever it may be. And then I'll be happy. So it's that do have Bess is our normal strategy. - Well let's just pause there for a second.
'cause part of what you're saying is that's the, the rushing river we all live in pushing us downward that don't just sit there, do something, do something, and if you do something, you'll have something. And then coming in last place is be, well then if all those things happen, if I do something, if I have something, only then will I be happy. Will I be content, will I be at peace? - Exactly. Yeah. It's very conditional and it's based on, again, striving.
So what we do at the process is we really talk about flipping that. And if you can just be who you are and that's not knowledge based that okay, great, now I have a checklist of exactly what I want in my life and I can plan out how I'm going to get each of these items. It's just a sense of that felt sense of knowingness as we connect with our spiritual self that this is who I really am.
And we know at the process through various experiences and tools we use, when you hang out there, then what you do next, whatever action is called forth, is coming from that authentic place. You don't have to have a game plan necessarily. I'm not saying game plans are bad in and of themselves, but if you think that's how you're gonna get happiness, this is again, much more spirit driven. What we learn at the process, - That felt sense of knowingness, that felt sense of knowingness.
Wow. And then from that place, you'll know what to do - And then guess what? You're gonna have a fantastic life and you're, it's gonna all just come from you being you. - Wow. It feels like the process really is answers that question, who am I? And then how do I show up in this be, do, have, is that part of what you're saying? - Absolutely. You know, it hadn't actually been that clear to me until I started thinking about themes in my life to talk about in this interview.
And I realized that yes, my mission in life is to myself and support others in figuring out who they wanna be so they can live their life that way. And I just saw how Hoffman, how the Hoffman process, that's exactly what it does. So what a beautiful synergy there is for me. I knew I loved it, but now I can explain my intellects, helping me explain why I love it so much. But I knew I loved it. I always knew I loved it.
I felt that it's very aligned with my mission and, and what's meaningful to me in life. - What's it like to reflect on your life, speaking of, and your mission in your life? What's it like to talk out loud about it? - It's vulnerable. Drew , I feel very grateful for my life.
And we're at the stage, I'm at, you know, I wake up in the morning and uh, you know, we sit, we're looking out at the ocean here, we're looking across at the San Juan Islands and sitting with my husband, drinking coffee, sometimes talking, sometimes not talking, but just both of us being who we are and knowing we've, you know, we've got a lot of flexibility in our lives now.
We're very, very happy to be grandparents and enjoy, we have four grandkids now and see our adult children living, you know, living their lives and being who they really are. So I feel very grateful looking back at my life. I think there's a lot of places I could have gone in a different direction. I love where I ended up. I love it. - I'm so grateful for your willingness to be vulnerable and talk about your life.
You know, it's good for, for all of us to see that in our support of students really guiding them through their experience, that there's a human being behind that who has done the process, who has patterns, who shows up to the practices and the tools that help them reconnect with their spirit. - Yeah, that's right. We're human beings and and uh, as teachers, we do practice what we teach and preach. Yeah. - Dorothy, thank you.
You and I just taught a process together and it was our first time teaching. And what did you notice? You know, you, you've taught in Canada for so many years and you also taught in the US and uh, it is the same process. Is it not? - It's absolutely the same process. There are very minor differences in how, uh, few things are presented or how they unfold.
But the time, the timetable is exactly the same, the experiences people move through the, uh, Hoffman Institute Foundation in the United States is now managing the process in Canada as well. Canada was a much smaller organization with without as much background support for students and teachers.
So there's a real benefit into tapping into the resources that the Hoffman Institute Foundation in the US has their amazing enrollment team, all of the grad events and resources available that's gonna be available to students, whether they go to the US sites or the Canadian sites. Everybody's gonna get all of that. - Dorothy, thank you. - Thank you, drew. This has been, this has been great. Thanks for the opportunity. - Well, I appreciate you. - I appreciate you too, drew.
- Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Insi. I'm the CEO and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. - And I'm Ra NSI 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 hoffman institute.org.