- I just have faith in this space of spirit when I can let go and relax and just allow what's true to come out and be articulated. I have faith in that and I think that's what's Hoffman's given me, is I can spot when I'm in my patterns and I can also spot when I can trust myself and I absolutely trust myself. - 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 it's stories and anecdotes and people we interview about their life post process and how it lives in the world. Radiating love. This episode contains explicit material and may not be suitable for all listeners. Welcome everybody to the Hoffman Podcast. Ella Horgan is with me. Hi Stella. - Hey Drew. - How are you feeling this afternoon?
- I'm feeling happy to see you and yeah, I'm feeling tender at the prospect of our conversation, but really happy to be here with you. - I'm grateful for this conversation and I know it's gonna be a deep one and one that's rich in your story. There is so much that is unique to you. So will you just share a little bit about who you are and introduce yourself to our listeners? - Sure. Listeners, I'm currently in South Africa, up in the Northeast in rural Oppo province.
I'm a senior supervising facilitator of the Hoffman Process. I trained in Australia, but I currently am based in England and I'm a member of the UK team. Concurrently with that, I am the founder and director of the Center for Women's Independence, which is a project run by the Nonprofit Impacts Organization. I founded with Friends in 2014 here in South Africa. Yeah, a rural impact organization.
- Wow. There's this nonprofit you founded in the work you do in South Africa, and I'd love to talk more about that. And there's also your work. I think you're one of the few teachers who has taught, both you and I taught together six months or so ago in the US you've taught, you're certainly a part of the UK faculty, yet you are also trained in Australia. Lots of a breadth of experience as a Hoffman teacher in all these countries. - Yeah, and I also taught in Canada in August.
- Okay. So I just have to ask four countries the same process or process as they say. What do you notice? I mean, are there any general reflections about being a teacher and the differences and uniqueness of the process in each of those countries? Yeah, - Absolutely. I think the cultures of the individual countries really influence, you know, how the process is held and taught. You know, there's obviously a difference between the how Canadian people are and how American folks are.
There's just a very clear difference in them culturally, the pace at which they work and their orientation to life. Yeah, each country has quite a distinct feel to it, but in essence, the process is just this magical, extraordinary, mystical event that miraculously somehow catches people as it goes along whichever country you're in, you know? Um, I was recently on a process and had a client who'd by day three was going, nah, no, no, I can't.
I can't. I don't know. No, no, no. And then suddenly bang, he dropped in and he was there. He got it. It's an extraordinary piece of work. It really is. It's like some kind of it extraordinary ballet or opera or piece of music that is so finely tuned and so beautifully orchestrated and held by people who really love it and who have deep regard and deep respect for what it opens in humanity. So yeah, I can speak more if you like about the differences between the countries.
- You highlighted a creative tension there, a both end that I think is worth just noting. The process is both very structured, it's outlined, it's very kind of disciplined in how it progresses from one step to the next step. It's very timely, and yet it also at the same time, within that kind of structured discipline approach to the weak, there's also space for the magical, as you said, the mystical, the unknown.
And so it seems like it holds this kind of paradox of the concrete minute by minute and yet also the openness of the unknown and stepping out into that territory. Do you see it that way? What do you notice? - Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, that's, its genius. That is the quality of any mystical work or mystic orientation is that it holds a foundation that may not even be apparent. It's not obvious, but it holds an orientation.
And any human being can move within that orientation and locate themselves and open facets or aspects of themselves to find a pathway to in some kind of integration or healing or opening. So you're absolutely right, you know, it's not a purely didactic piece, is it? It actually sets platforms with different kind of performance pieces. It's almost like a drama. So we set the stage for each piece as we go along.
And in that way it's so brilliant because it appeals to different types of people and different cultural experience, different sensory experiences. It is really fascinating to drill down into the different aspects of it. It's a deeply empathic human piece of work, isn't it? - Yes. Um, I love your descriptions. Is there a part of the process that in this moment or in this chapter of your teaching experience that you are inspired by?
Or you wanna note to us that feels important to the weeks' journey? - Um, oh gosh, so many of them. I think there's a combination, I'm going to pick two because I think they feed into each other.
I think what is absolutely primary to the process, what is one of the most important things we can take out of it is the installation of a positive parent or a, the positive parent within, so that we can dismantle and dissolve the negative parent, the negative imprints of mom and dad, and let that leave our beings. And then it's the, the work is then the cultivation of the positive inner parents, which is our spiritual self, isn't it? And then that leads into the I am that I am, you know?
So I think really right from the get go, the very early meditation where we are contemplating how we were parented, how we were mothered and fathered, and you know, the pain associated with those gaps and those voids of love and holding and care and attachments, it evolves into this discovery of our spirits of who we really are and our agency and that we are actually valid. I mean, what an idea that we are valid. That's kind of mind blowing, isn't it? You know?
And then in that the I am that I am meditation, you know, which I feel is a very powerful visualization where the spiritual self is speaking to each participant. And there's, to me, that's always strikes me as this potent moment where the love of the universe, the universal spirit, is stepping forward and saying, you human being, this is what you are. You are in the driver's seat. It's up to you. You choose, you do it. You be wonderful, you be love, you be light.
- Beautiful. - I dunno, drew, if I'm allowed to swear on this podcast, - , what, what, what? How would that be expressed? Sure, go ahead. - Well, to quote a friend of mine, stop fucking around. Get on with it, you know, and it's like that, you know, just stop. You've only got so much time. It's such a gift to locate your spirit, you know, stop wasting time. - Yeah. Beautiful. There's that piece of the strong no stop fucking around. And then also this locate your spirit.
You are this thing and you're sort of pointing, saying, you human, you have it inside of you. - Yeah. It's this disease of the great forgetting of who we are, you know, and where we are on planet earth, on this outrageous planet, you know, with all of its complexity and perfection and which we fail to see. - Beautiful. As we're talking, I'm thinking about like, how did she get here? Like how did you get here?
Will you tell us a little bit about Stella and her sort of origin story and how she came to be this Hoffman teacher, this founder of this nonprofit? And by the way, we didn't talk about your artwork, but we will get there. Will you take us back in time? 'cause we do that so much with students, what's your story?
- Sure, sure. Yeah. I grew up next to Johannesburg Airport in an entirely unromantic setting of a suburb, a suburb like any other suburb in the world, oddly, but a, I suppose a South African suburb in that it was, um, like a jigsaw puzzle where they divided, you know, the races and cultures. Everybody had their section with either a road or a railway line or a mountain or a river in between them. So we this kind of patchwork country of people on, on land.
And so, yeah, so I grew up in the thick of apartheid South Africa. I was fortunate in that my parents worked for the airlines. So part of my dad's salary package was that we got family travel, we were able to travel abroad frequently and, and that was really important. I really appreciate my parents for that, for showing us the world because back at home it was close, you know, it, we were hunkering down and I think we had as white people in an African country, we had a perception of ourselves.
We are at the baseline here of white supremacy. And at the same time there was a narrative of danger out there, them out there that are out to get us, you know? So there's that justification of a militarized country, states of emergency, et cetera. So yes, I grew up in this ordinary suburb going to my parents, sent me off to a Catholic school because I needed a decent education. So there I had that as well in a country that was heavily militarized, a, a very Christian country.
We had Christian nationalism. So it was part of the government, you know, my childhood felt to me entirely suffocating. And I always felt that I had to be this perfect good little girl. I had a fairly narcissistic mom, so my orientation was always outward to kind of gauge where she was. I mean, she was a fantastic woman. She was an air hostess back in the sixties, traveling the world, glamorous, wonderful, funny. She really did the best she could as a mom, as all our parents do.
But because of her very, very traumatized childhood, my brother and I had a pretty rough time with her. And so, you know, having this orientation towards a mother, I was constantly gauging her needs. I was constantly constructing myself according to what I needed to be in any given moment. And so I learned to have that presentation that I knew could keep things calm, so be the good girl, get, you know, reasonable grades, dress well, look good, whatever it might be.
And you know, that's one thing that the process has really helped me to dismantle, because what it means is you, as a child, I learned how to live a parallel life. I had my good girl running, and then I had my whole secret side of who I really was. And there was no availability for that. You know, there was very little attention span for inquiring into who I really was as a kid. So naturally then, as a teenager, I grew into being very rebellious and just having a secret life.
I also have been excavating of late how shame really defined my life. And in the last process I taught just a couple of weeks ago, I presented the piece on shame, helping participants to identify their core shame beliefs. And this beautiful example floated into my mind.
I had a, an image of myself as a little girl, sort of anything from 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, standing rigid to a attention, smiling pigtails, tired, not doing anything naughty, and still being told, you're a bad girl, you are naughty, you're a bad girl. I really felt it in my body of how my body just reverberated with this through my childhood. And you know, in a way I think that was kind of ordinary parenting in those times. That children are there to be molded, you know,
spare the ride, all of that business. St - I wanna just jump in here because you talk about a couple things worth highlighting. One is the generation that we're brought up in as a part. There's some patterns that get woven in based on the generation in which we're raised and then also the country we're raised in. And so to what extent is that part of the South African legacy of parenting and the restriction and constriction on who you are, the secret life you had to be.
But you also referenced that as a teacher, you are learning right alongside the students that your presentation of the shame to the students and facilitating them in that experience also had you reflecting on your own relationship to shame. Do you find that is the case that your journey often, uh, doesn't interfere, but it can coincide with the student's journey at times? - Oh, very much so. I think that's part of the job is a continual self-reflection.
I don't believe that any human being gets to an end point where you're kind of done and dusted with your learning and your teaching and your evolution. You know, really we are far too complex for that. You know, for me it's a continual unfolding. So I love that I'm able to teach this work because it helps me to depth it and it requires me to self-reflect I have to own it or I can't teach it. Hoffman doesn't work like that. You don't just present facts, you have to embody it.
And also I think a very big part of teaching Hoffman is that participants can feel the facilitator, they can feel if you're real or not, you know, because we're in such a deep space. And so I've been fortunate to work with some magnificent people who really are generous with their own experience as a teaching tool, you know, when appropriate.
- So, so your authenticity and your own sort of, I guess, emotional integrity with what's happening inside you becomes part of the student's healing journey because they can feel it, sense it and trust it in themselves if they can feel the resonance of it within you. - Absolutely. You know, absolutely. And in this phase in my life, I'm very focused on leadership and really crafting new ways of leading.
And so exactly what you say, being authentic, being in integrity, being aligned, coherence is just critical because I think that's what leadership requires is a humbleness, you know, that I am floored, I have a, a messy past, but there are ways to harness our messy past and really turn it into something potent in the world for whatever that is. If it's for beauty or justice or wisdom or kindness or family, whatever it is, you know, I think that's what the beauty of what Hoffman offers.
- Beautiful. You talked about shame, and you also talked about white supremacy is part of it, as you said, excavating. I love that word of what you're doing. You're excavating shame lately. To what extent does that journey into your own shame also coincide with being raised in a country that was suppressing black people and completely white supremacist? What's the crossover there?
How do you navigate that journey when so much of what you're, you're dealing with internally also is reflected maybe as a part of what was happening in the country with apartheid? - Oh no, it's a huge, it's a huge piece. That's a massive piece. Um, you know, as I mentioned before, we traveled. So whenever we'd go to London and we'd need to go to the South African Airways office, we'd have to make our way through a wall of protestors, you know, which was always humiliating.
And so I was aware because of leaving the country of what pariahs we were seen as around the world, you know, how we were seen, we weren't allowed into any of Africa. We weren't even allowed in the airspace over Africa. We had to go around the coast and, um, refueled on the islands to the on or West Africa. And there were many countries we were not allowed into because of apartheid.
There was this strange, you know, the strange sense of having these good middle class lives, but with this other reality going on. Actually, when I was thinking about my conversation with you, the song came to mind, which is a song that describes what we are talking about. It's by a band called Bright Blue, and it's called Weeping. And the line is that describes South Africa at that time in the eighties, is it wasn't roaring, it was weeping.
So the perception that the apartheid government was putting out was that we were under threat. They were coming to get us as were all the countries to the north who were communist threat, and they were all coming to get us. So it was all justified. All my peers, my male peers, my brothers all went off, were conscripted for two to three years and went to fight in really savage border wars. Everyone got mangled. Everyone, all those young men, you know, were mangled by that.
And so we grew up in a lie that told us that black people were inferior and that they had to be managed, you know, had to be contained. And so that song, it wasn't roaring, it was weeping, really spoke to the despair of actually what was going on. - Stella, we will, for listeners, we will put anything you reference, including that song in our show notes so that, uh, listeners can have a sense of what you're talking about and a link to listen to that song.
What's it like to talk about this Stella? - Well, I'm passionate about it because it's so deep in my bones, and I knew when I left, you know, in high school and leaving school, I knew that apartheid was wrong and I knew that I had to take a position on it. And, you know, I started to orient in that direction. And then I had a very pivotal event when I was 19 years old. I had left school, I'd matriculated at 18 years old, my nice Catholic school I passed.
I didn't quite know what was going on, so I worked at an incredibly groovy record store in, um, Hillborough, which was the most densely populated area of Johannesburg Highrise buildings. It had always been very edgy and a kind of a mixed up space, a a, a space that was rebellious to the institutions. It was fantastic nightclubs, lot of art galleries, creativity bands, fashion, just, um, you know, the heartbeat of the South African le I'd been working there.
And as a 19-year-old going clubbing, you know, having a good time, you know, I'd started using substances when I was about 16, essentially, to deal with the shame that was crippling me, because I just always felt wrong and not good enough and bad as I'd been told. I was all through my childhood. So the chemical departure from the shame that drugs gave me was something that just increased as I headed into my twenties.
And one night I was in the city of Johannesburg, deep down in the city, quite a fairly dodgy area at a nightclub with my friends getting absolutely loaded and having a good time. Drove home at the time I was staying at my parents' house, and, uh, stopped to get petrol at a petrol station. And in South Africa, there's always an African gentleman who will put your petrol in for you. He was putting in, he was an older man and he was kind of, you know, just looking at me.
And then this young man stepped forward who was dressed very neatly, very tightly. And he asked me if I would give him a lift to the station. It was three o'clock in the morning at that stage in my life, you know, I'd been going to all these anti apartheid concerts. I was aligned with the left. I knew what was going on in the townships. The army was in the black areas, raiding homes. At any time of the day or night, people were dying, being tortured.
It was an appalling time. We'd had a state of emergency. It was a terrifying time. I mean, now that I think of it, you know, that white mentality of specialness, how we somehow always above it all just blows my mind. So this young man asked me for lift. I say yes, because I realize that he's stuck and he's a young guy. It's one way I can help. The older guy who's putting the petrol in glares at me, glares at me, really trying to convey a message.
I ignore him and move on, drive towards the railway line. So it's wintertime in Johannesburg, it's cold, dry, we have very dry winters, it can drop below zero. And I pull over next to the railway line. It's dead quiet. There's no one about there, no cars. The street lights are on, the houses are some distance away, but all is quiet. And I pull over the car thinking he'll jump out. He leans over and starts to strangle me. He, so he tried to kill me, and I just fought and fought and fought.
And, uh, it was just a nightmare. I fought for my life. And it was a very strange situation because I managed to get out of the car and he was so quick, he was like a leopard. He would be around the other side of the car before I could get away. I'd get back in the car, he'd be back in the car. It was just this impossible situation sometime after this had been going on for a while. So I saw some headlights approaching in the distance and something in me said, hit the horn, which I did.
And he suddenly jumped out and ran away across the bushes, across the railway line and disappeared. And then I drove home to my parents' house and they heard me coming in, and they came and saw that something had happened. And I knew in that moment that I couldn't tell them that I'd given him a lift. I could not admit that I had been such an idiot as to give a strange man a lift at three o'clock in the morning.
And so I told them that I'd been hijacked, I'd stopped at a traffic light and he'd jumped in and hijacked me. And I held onto that story, you know, for about, oh gosh, years and years. I think I probably told friends what happened, but not for a long time. You know, I was so used to telling one version of my life and keeping people happy and then keeping the shameful stuff to myself. And so that shame just ate me up. So I took more drugs and I drank more alcohol.
And then I, you know, I started working in film and television, which was perfect for an addict, you know, because there was just vast amounts of drugs and alcohol going around, and the intensity of the anti-apartheid movement. And then the, uh, that was in the early nineties. So the, the national context was apartheid was crumbling. There were mass democratic movement where these huge marches of 40,000 people through the city streets were happening.
Bombs were going off in the cities and around the country. There was a really wild time. So, you know, that was now, that moment. He was a guide that man, because he blew me open into serious PTSD for about 10 years. You know, by the time I got to Australia, I was messy. I moved to Australia when I was about 30. That was a real refuge for me to get away from the violence of South Africa and to reflect on what had happened.
I, I was involved in a lot of violence in the filmmaking industries as well, because we were doing work that is against apartheid and against all of that business. So that man, he was very neatly presented. His trousers were ironed. Very tidy guy. That man really blew open the doors of my life to explore trauma and healing. And that's what I did, you know, when I finally had space in Australia to figure out what had happened in my life.
Then I went in and did the work and thankfully found the process, you know, and that's really been the foundation of my professional life. - Wow. Stella, I imagine you've told that story a number of times. - I have told it a couple of times, yeah. But it's always puts me in a bit of an altered state, to be honest, because I also know that I think, you know, one of the key books that I read in my life was James Hillman's, the Soul's Code.
His kind of central thesis as I recollected, was, if you don't make the choices for your life that are generative and aligned with your spirit, then life will correct you. Life will, you know, your spirits or your guides or life or the universe, whatever, will nudge you in the right direction. And clearly, you know, at that point, I needed a very serious nudge. You know, it was a bit more than a, quite,
a lot more than a nudge. But yeah, - You know, part of the process is deeply embedded in the idea of self-compassion. And so on some level, compassion for that young adult who felt ashamed of white supremacy and apartheid and was trying to do something good to counteract the havoc that her country was having on this whole population of black people, Africans.
- Yeah. And, you know, it got, it was even extended after that because immediately that had happened, you know, that was before trauma counseling was a thing, so you kind of just got on with it, you know? And immediately after it happened, I knew, I just understood, I knew why he did it.
I knew it. I was a young white woman in a car at three o'clock in the morning, all my privilege on display, kind of like out of it being partying while in tebia, which is the, the township next to the suburb I grew up in was burning. You know, the South African army was in there locking the place down, violating people, killing children, really in the psychotic violence of an apartheid military. It was psychotic and brutal, brutal. You know, you know how these war mongers justify their wars.
That's what they were doing. And it wasn't roaring. It was weeping the suffering. I knew the suffering that he would've witnessed. There was a deal there, the point being that I didn't hold it against him. So that happened when I was 19. I just knew like we white people come on.
You know, I had benefited from a system that thrived on violation and violence, hoovering up all the resources just for us, for this tiny population, people going hungry and not having their needs met because we mattered so much. So yes, you're absolutely right. There was a deep shame in that. And I really tried to apply my life to addressing that. I mean, I won't be grandiose about it. It took me a long time to kind of be effective in that.
It took me a couple of decades, you know, to have any real effect on that. - You've said it's taken me a couple decades, but I imagine in that moment, and maybe when you were born and that soul's kind of code, it's been your north star of who you are and how you show up and the work that you do in your life has been addressed to that problem of apartheid. It seems like you've dedicated your life personally and professionally to healing. - Yeah, yeah, definitely.
You know, 'cause I had to sort my own self out because it was, there was just so much fallout from having PTSD and not knowing I had it. And, and you know, the absolute carnage of my relationships and the inability to be close to people because of that shame. What goes with the shame is the blame, right? Everyone else is also wrong. You know, that was the gift of Hoffman was actually just going, hang on a minute, let's just lay this whole story out in front of us.
Let's get forensic about it. What are the wounds? What are the associated patterns? What are the compensations? What are the adaptations that have resulted in me living my life like this? - So if that happened at 19, then you go to Australia, you take the process a couple years later. Yeah. - And when I was about, just about around about 31, I took the process. Yeah. - So you're, you're navigating PTSD, you're navigating trauma. And you say, I love that.
Let's get forensic about it at the beginning of the week and the pre-work. Certainly there is a laying out of a, taking stock of what happened. What do you mean when, when you say forensic? - Well, you know, the process is so brilliant because it starts off by acknowledging the agility of our intellect. And then we have to identify all our patterns and our parents' patterns, and it's tick boxes, and it's very meticulous.
And then we have to contemplate in that writing before we've even set foot in the venue. We are contemplating how we were raised, and we are contemplating how our parents got angry or sad or, and how all of that happened. So I love that Hoffman presses a pause on our life and just goes, hang on. Let's see. What are we comprised of here? We have a software installation. We have a defense system that is designed to protect us from perceived wounding.
It may or may not be accurate in our, our current life. So forensic in being very detailed about what our defense strategies and systems are, and then what wounding they're related to so that we can unravel for complexity of our behaviors. - And so if you were to take us into your process there in Australia with, uh, Volcker, I imagine leading the Australian process, he's the, the founder and director of the Australia Institute. Take us to some, some moments in time during your week.
Do you remember however many years ago? - Yeah. Gosh, it's so long ago now. But I do remember Volker was on my process as was Craig Tennell and Chen, and in the Dandenong Mountains outside Melbourne, which is beautiful, old growth forest, beautiful environment. You know, I was still at that age where I was just discovering that I was vulnerable, that word vulnerable. I had been to a workshop and discovered I was vulnerable. And never in South Africa, you couldn't admit to that.
You know, the whole personality of the country is how tough we are, how hard we are. And, uh, so this was this whole new . I went to a workshop and that was my outcome. I'm vulnerable. And so this was a new experience because I was, was, I remember myself still being tough and in my personality and kind of, you know, being very confronting and rebellious, uh, just, just not rebellious, but being a rebel in, you know, shocking people and that kind of thing.
Yeah. It was beautiful though, because the process is such a great leveler in, in that we get to see each other's vulnerability and authenticity and just journey together. And there were lovely people on my process who, yeah, it's just that beautiful support. One of the moments that really stands out for me on my process is, um, after the dark side bash, so in Australia they used mallets. You know, some countries use, uh, use a shoe, but in Australia they use mallets, big heavy mallets.
So you feel like a real badass, right? Having identified the dark side, that vicious inner critic and the messaging and the tonality that the dark side brings to your life. I worked so hard at it 'cause I'm a very like 150% person. I always really give my absolute to everything. So I went in there and just gave it all I had. And when it, they said stop. And you know, we had to put the mallets down.
I was enfolded in this column of light, I had this visceral experience of being in a column of white gold light. And, you know, I was sweaty and messy and panting and snotty and crying. But man, there was this column. And I think in that moment I got it that I am valid. I am valid. I'm not some throwaway, superfluous mistake. I'm not the shameful evil, bad white person.
And I knew, I knew in that moment that that niggling feeling that I'd had where I've got work to do on this planet and in this life, I've got stuff to do. And I knew absolutely I knew in that moment, this is it. I am here and I'm gonna do this work. And then I knew in that moment that I would teach the process and also like I could go and do my thing in the world. It was a massive liberation. Also that experience of the spiritual self, really, I always knew it was there.
I was a very spiritual child. I had a deep, deep meditation practices in nature, very private on my own that I didn't discuss with other people all through my life that I had, that in that moment, after that dark side, there was a claiming of my being, - Why not just go into the light, take students into the light right there. But what is the relationship between having been that messy, sweaty, dark, side filled journey with the mallet and then immediately followed by the light?
Why are those things so intricately and importantly related? Because - The shame belief, it's purpose is to shut us down and keep us small and to keep us from extending ourselves. It is its purpose, its usefulness is to keep us safe. So-called safe and safe is the collection of all of the messages we got in childhood about not extending ourselves, not going beyond the boundaries of what is known. Because out there there'd be dragons, right? Yeah.
And, and so that dismantling of the mantle of shame, that straight jacket is essential because it's directly in the way of the light. I mean, it's very difficult to be connected to spirit. If I'm in my shame, I'm straight in my patterns, you know, it's such a different experience. The light is expansive and restful, almost relaxing, as opposed to being in my patterns where I feel wrong and bad and criticized and critical. Gosh, I don't know if that even remotely addresses your question.
- Yeah. You said that essentially how can I be in connection to the light in my spirit, if all these patterns in these dark side messages, these shame beliefs are in the way? - Absolutely. You know, I mean, it's just astonishing to me. I think Bob Hoffman referred to it as the disease of humanity. That him and the Professor Fisher we're trying to figure out what's this disease of humanity?
You know, how on earth does it happen that we come into this world and then we, through childhood, we, we have the great cutoff. We build up this fortress around us that cuts us off from who we are to greater or lesser degrees. For a lot of people, there's just no recollection of any goodness. So we have to quest, don't we? We have to quest for our goodness. And when you located, you're like, oh my God, I, how much time have I got left? I don't have enough time left.
Now that I've really freed myself from all of this, because there's such potential in us and we are scraping the like 0.5% of potential as human beings, I believe we could do so much more and so much better. - So you become a teacher and you start this nonprofit and your artwork is a reflection of it. Tell us how your spirit stepped out into the world post-process and made this work so much a part of like, I can do this, I will do this, this is who I am.
I will contribute to healing all the ways you've done that. - Yeah. Well, you know, I was blessed, really fortunate to spend 10 years living in Australia, which is a very well resourced country, and, you know, had a lot of healing and training. There are studied trauma intensively and healing. I also went to the school for social entrepreneurs because I had ideas about programs that could help South Africa all the time I was in Australia, I couldn't quite relax.
I just felt I couldn't just bail on South Africa, like just trot off and say, okay, bye, I'm off to have a nice life. You guys sorted out. I always felt the need to go back there. And I tried a number of ways to, to get back and I just couldn't quite pull it off for a number of years. But became a Hoffman process teacher, studied a lot around trauma, went to the school for social entrepreneurs, extended my training around working with victims of torture, refugees, et cetera.
Designed some programs that I thought would be helpful if I implemented them in South Africa. And that's kind of where it began. I wanted to get back to South Africa and I just couldn't make it happen. I couldn't get the programs funded or locked down a job. It was very frustrating. And so I didn't quite make it back then. I had an incident in, in a workplace I was at, which again, kind of blew me out.
Something happened that was very difficult for me and it was quite traumatizing, but it meant that I stopped all my work. I shut down my consulting business and spent some time just recovering in a friend's flat in Melbourne. I was in a very bad state. I was in a, a kind of a breakdown. I discovered some beautiful spiritual texts while I was in this sort of retreat that ultimately led me towards, I suppose the more shamanic side of things, specifically into species communications.
So, you know, collaborating with nature, living with nature and the spiritual dimension of life. I'd signed up for a newsletter and somehow one day I received this newsletter and there was an advertisement for a job at the Global White Line Protection Trust, which is in the Timba, which is a famous wildlife area next to the Kruger Park in South Africa.
Long story short, I got the job and managed to get back to South Africa, and I worked alongside Linda Tucker, who's the keeper of the white lions in the mythological world. The white lions are the guardians of life. They are the apex predators. They only come from this one region in the Tim. So it was, I spent a year working with Linda. It was extraordinary, like so, you know, all the shamans and medicine people of the world come to visit the lions to pay homage to them.
So I had this extraordinary introduction to back to my homeland through this lens. At the same time, Linda was working with local communities, forming partnerships, working with land claims, land reclamation, that kind of thing. Very difficult political work. And I was so grateful for her to, for introducing me to all of that. I got to know the area. I thought that I would like to craft a more specific intervention. So I started, um, zing Azi, which is our nonprofit organization.
It means hunt for wisdom. Initially we started out building and developing libraries in schools. We did some art and conservation projects. Uh, the complete, there's many complexities in this area, one of which is that there's communities living alongside wildlife and wilderness spaces, national parks communities are often very under-resourced and cut off from the mainstream economy. So very difficult times.
So we went through a few iterations and I landed on working with a friend of mine who was running another, another nonprofit, and we devised a leadership forum for this area called Acorn Hook. So I, I'll try and paint the picture for you. So we are up in the northeast of South Africa. It's a rural area. We are next to the Kruger National Park, which is a game reserve that's bigger than the size of the country of Israel, and that is next to Mozambique.
So we've right up in the thick of it in rural Africa, and it's very, very traditional. The one village we work in started out as a government housing project, and there's a lot of refugees there from the Mozambique war. There's, you know, people from all over the place live there. And it was a, a very tough, very difficult area with a lot of orphans, a lot of unemployment.
We devised a number of programs with local folks where ultimately we teach permaculture, small business developments and self-defense to women permaculture. We help people to set up a garden, we give them infrastructure for water catchments and fencing, et cetera. And women can then grow food to feed their families and sell the surplus business development, you know, teaching about cash flow, managing money, et cetera, running a business.
And then the woman requested, because there's a tremendous amount of sexual assaults in the area, they asked if we could help with teaching self-defense. - So that was led by their request to protect themselves. - Yeah. So we found a two times world champion, Muay Thai Kickboxer, who specializes in teaching South African women how to defend themselves. And that was just a complete game changer. So absolute. It's, it's a lovely, lovely program.
- I think you referenced that you're stepping back a little bit so that it can be self-led by the local African women. Yes. - So at the moment, so I've been the director of the organization for 10 years, and it's time for me to, to be on the board and have a hand, you know, in the backend of things, fundraising, which is perpetual and, um, you know, and connecting building networks and et cetera. Now we are getting ready for a local person to take over the directorship or persons.
It might be one or several, but already our team of local people is running the Permaculture Explorers, the business developments and permaculture course is completely run by the local team as is, uh, sa the, the, uh, self-defense class, which means enough is enough. We are looking for some leadership to help us take the organization to the next level because also we, I forgot to mention the other project that we're doing, it's called 10 Trees.
And we partnered with an American guy called Zach Bush, who you may or may or not know of. He's a, he's got quite a big presence online and he's very much into regenerative agriculture. So we've partnered with him to plant 10 trees in 165 households in the village to bring nutritional diversity and climate adaptation strategies and permaculture into the village. So we're busy with that at the moment, which is just a cracker of a project is wonderful.
- So trees in a household for nutritional diversity. - So every household gets 10 trees, indigenous and some non-indigenous food and medicine trees. So all the trees are productive and shrubs, the area is very denuded for multiple reasons, but it's getting really, really hot here. We have extremely hot summers and water shortages. And you know, it's one of the areas where there's a looming crisis here because of the heat, the predictions are that within 10 years we'll be hitting 50 degrees here.
And I think it's within 20 years, you know, people won't be able to live here, which is a, is a big issue, 122 degrees in Fahrenheit. - Oh my gosh. And so that's causing water shortages. And, and I imagine crops can't survive in that. All kinds of a crisis. - Humans can't. It's dangerously hot. Yeah.
- Stella, will you talk about your artwork a little bit, because so much of, of what you've just shared is service both as a Hoffman teacher and in your co-founding and co-leading this organization that is so embedded in the local community. How do you see your artwork vis-a-vis all those efforts? Is that a newer piece to who you are stepping into this creative space? - Um, it's reasonably new. I started making art about 10 years ago when I was, you know, starting out this work in South Africa.
And I'd moved to the bush here to this remote bush, and I became very ill. I had a chronic fatigue situation, and a friend got tired of me complaining about the lack of creativity in my life and arrived one day with calico fabric and embroidery threads and needles and said, here, make something. So that journey began, and yeah, it's been incredible. You know, the work is painting on fabric and embroidery and the contemplation is largely around nature.
You know, how we intersect with nature, how we live with nature, and the mythic creatures that are so generous to have themselves seen and experienced by us. So the artwork was deeply soothing. I've often placed myself in very dangerous and difficult, challenging, traumatic situations, having this kind of warrior archetype. Apparently my surname in Irish means warrior. And so being in the thick of it with activists in other communities, mining affected communities, et cetera.
So being in these places of deep trauma and deep environmental degradation to sit and make art, and particularly to embroider, which takes a lifetime. I mean, the artworks can take three months to a year to make one. And there's something about that patience and that slowness that was deeply healing, deeply contemplative, you know, and also to make something that is unique and that no one else has made in the world is a deep treasure. It's a very special thing.
And I'm forever grateful to the people who mentored me to, who encouraged me to do it. - This feels important. You've described so much struggle as, as you've said, both in your country and in your personal story, and it just feels like we should pause here to say that this has been part of an important healing journey given so much trauma, this artwork, this expression, this creativity. Do you see it as critical? - Absolutely, absolutely critical.
It's so liberating, you know, it's a very important way for one spirit to engage, especially through the mythic. - When you say more about mythic, because you've, you talked about these mythic creatures, what do you mean when you say that?
- Taking guidance from indigenous traditions, you know, and living with animals and seeing them as beings rather than objects, they become mythic, you know, so when I was cooking dinner one night and an owl flew into a window and passed out outside the door, and I went and sat with it, waiting for it to come around, and it kind of this big aisle, it eventually came around and kind of stood up and shook itself out, and then turned its head as they do 180 degrees round,
and looked at me for this long period of time. You know, to me this is, this is a very strange engagement. Why would an animal with such precise vision fly into a glass window? What is going on there? When I've been bitten by scorpions and ticks and they've taken me into places of deep pain and discomfort and sometimes hallucinations, you know, instead of seeing it as the inconvenience and the dirtiness of the bush, if you see, if it's seen as a medicine, it's okay, what's going on here?
You know, what is the, how is the world talking to us if we are so fixed on our intellectual understanding of life? We miss the layers of all these thousands of beings in nature who have something to communicate to us. And we in our arrogance, can't slow down to listen. That's the mythic realm is all that they hold, all that they broadcast here in the bush where I live in the mornings when the baboons cross over the river just at the bottom of the property.
And then they walk up, they embody the most profound peace, and they broadcast peace in the morning, and then in a heartbeat they will leap up and tear the windscreen wipers off your car and throw them in the bush. And it's this inexplicable behavior that reminds you that you are just human. You are not the top of the pile. You are part of a whole. And that's, I think, when life gets interesting. - That's fantastic. Are you, I see you looking out a window.
Do you see so much there as you look out? What are you, what are you looking out on? - I'm looking out onto, yeah, beautiful garden. And then beyond that is the Drakensberg Mountains, which means dragon mountains. They are a huge mountain range that extends across a few provinces, and there's these beautiful, beautiful mountains. So I'm at the mouth of the world's third largest canyon, the Blader River Canyon or the MLA Canyon. Yeah. So in this space of, it's very powerful.
The, the energy here is very, very strong. And there's all sorts of creatures. There's big antelope, there's a leopard that comes through the property in the evening. I mean, oftentimes when I've been working with clients, you know, creatures will show up, the zebras will come and hang out outside the window and that kind of thing. So it's, it's very magical. I'm very fortunate to have access to these beautiful - Spaces.
Do you feel like you are rewriting the story of your childhood, of that trauma, of the country's trauma as you engage in this work and live in the bush and experience the, the rivers and the trees and the beings and the creatures - Constantly? You know, when, when I came back to South Africa, before I started the nonprofit, my big question was, is Africa going to accept me or spit me out? I was terrified because I'd been, someone tried to kill me, you know?
And so that's been my journey and what I found, I have been deeply worked over here by the most profound love and care and gentleness. The people on our team here that work for the nonprofit, a guy called Try Give nor, uh, he's our permaculture educator, Lillian Maru, they, Agnes Rap Powell, oh my gosh, these people have been so gentle and generous with me. You know, they've, they've really worked with me and observed my frustration with the dysfunction of South Africa and the injustice.
They just be with me. And honestly, their leadership is what's changed my life, and they've taught me how to be a leader. The African way of being is nothing like Western leadership at all. It is full of humbleness and respect and kindness and never taking anyone down in public or saying someone something's to shame someone in public. It's deeply kind and inclusive. It's completely changed my life being part of this project. And it really overhauled my, um, experience of race.
Now, I think what there's a blessing in that, um, I'm part of the UK team, which has a phenomenal leadership under Serena, who's taken this very bold step to make the Hoffman UK on our website is a statement. We are an anti-racist organization, and we've been doing very intensive work around diversity and inclusion and just hats off to Serena and Tim, you know, for enabling this to happen.
It's so important to dismantle any trace of racism in the organization to, and to orient as a team to a very clear mission. You know, we cannot tolerate this. We cannot be doing, we cannot have racism in our field. It's imperative. And so I'm just loving that process completely. I'm learning so much about the British experience. It's a bit like starting again actually, because a whole new cultural context.
So it's lovely coming back to South Africa and landing in the familiarity of the coding here, which is very different to anywhere else in the world. 'cause South Africa's really navigated race in an unbelievable way. - The healing that you see happening in the, in this field, in the UK Institute and in your own journey with the people you work with in the bush, you alluded to it there, but do you feel like South Africa as a country, is, is healing from its oppressive violent past?
- Well, that's quite a loaded complex question. You know, if you, if you look at race, then yes, definitely because the legislation's been dismantled and you know, I think that's where South Africa has an advantage because it was blatant. It was overt. - It's obviousness made it almost easier to address and dismantle. - That's right. And you know, now in South Africa, if you are a racist, people won't tolerate it.
You'll be outed on social media, you'll be reported to the Human Rights Commission. It is illegal to be racist, you know? And of course not everybody takes action against it. And of course there's a lot of white supremacy, which is kind of tolerated in by some people. It's just like, ah, gosh, yeah, they're just kind of doing their thing, you know? But there's a beautiful possession of self that South Africans are, you can see it like Johannesburg is a extremely cosmopolitan city.
It's absolutely fantastic. And racist behavior is absolutely not tolerated there. Brilliant, brilliant to be there. The rural areas have different cultural referencing and practice, so that's slightly different.
But certainly there's been healing in that department, but not entirely, you know, and we, we've worked with it on our team as well, where people have let us know about discussions that they've had, like amongst their families where they really clocked that they'd been holding this shame belief of unworthiness because of their skin color. It hadn't even been apparent. And that's what it is, isn't it, with shame. It's not apparent until it is.
There's a lot of deep healing happening, and there's still a lot of bad behavior. Unfortunately, we have a, like many countries, a a very, uh, bad criminal problem and organized crime problem, which is very corrosive to the wellbeing of the country. But somehow South Africans are navigating a lot. There's a great tenderness here as well that goes alongside all the violence and all the rest of it.
It's a very complicated place, but honestly, the people are just lovely in most instances, you know, just lovely. - You referenced, there's a real tenderness. And so I guess I just wanna ask from that tender space, what's it like Stella to Stella? Who in Gaelic or Irish is warrior? What's it like to tell your story, the breadth, the depth of your story, your country, your healing? What's that like? - Well, let's see. So Hogan means warrior, not stellar, just by the bye.
So what's it like to tell my story now? It's good. It's good. It feels really good. You know, I had such a wonderful connection with you teaching with you, so I really know your integrity and I really trust you. It was frightening approaching this, my, my being was anxious, always, always anxious that I'm not gonna be good enough. I'm not gonna do well enough. So I had to spend a lot of time today just talking to that scared part of me and just saying, it's okay, it's okay.
Telling my story is a privilege. I'm having faith. I'm trusting that the telling of this story is potentially helpful to somebody interesting educational. I just have faith in this space of spirit when I can let go and relax and just allow what's true to come out and be articulated. I have faith in that, and I think that's what's Hoffman's given me, is I can spot when I'm in my patterns and I can also spot when I can trust myself. And I absolutely trust myself.
I totally trust my spirit and I completely trust life, that there's goodness and benevolence in the world, and that actually the world wants me to just do whatever I wanna do. If I wanna have a good time, that's cool. If I wanna suffer, that's also cool, but it's all, it's all available. And so now as long as I'm kind to myself and gentle and loving to myself, I trust that this process is valid. - I'm grateful for this conversation. Thank you for putting it all out there
and for trusting your essence, your spirit. Thanks - Drew, what a privilege to talk to you and to be part of this organization. And yeah, just send a lot of love to you and to whoever listens to this many blessings. - And, uh, yeah, may you be happy. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza in Grassi. I'm the CEO and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. - And I'm Ra Rossi 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.