- The more that I find that the more present I am to my life and take those pauses and be present in my life, the more the mystery unfolds, which is really leading me to where I wanna go without even having to try so hard . And that's the beauty of it. It's like, wow, there is something bigger than myself that is directing this and I can trust that. - 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 everybody, welcome to the Hoffman Podcast. Darla Loomis is with us Darla Murray. Loomis. Is Murray your, your maiden name? - Yes it is. - Glad to have you here. Welcome Darla. - Thank you. Glad to be here. - So tell us a little bit about who you are. You're an artist, a business owner.
You live in Telluride, actually above Telluride. What, what is your elevation right now? Uh, - I live exactly at 10,000 feet in the middle of the mountains. Beautiful, serene, - How much snow you have there now? - Uh, we got about 20 feet of snow. Our entire front of our house is covered in snow, so we have to come through the mudroom on the side. 20 - Feet. Darla? - Yes. 20 feet. We get more than Telluride does 'cause we're at 10,000 feet. So we get it all here .
It's beautiful though, but covered in a blanket of white. - A blanket of white. So tell us a little bit about who you are. - I'm a businesswoman. I've been a businesswoman since I was 28 years old, but I don't really like to call myself a businesswoman 'cause I'm more of an artist. I've been creating spaces and places for women and children and families since I was 28.
Kind of a dream in my heart to create workplaces that were in harmony with balance for the family and for our work and for fun and creativity. So that's really what I've been doing. Even though they've come out in forms of businesses like spas and salons, they're really just creating places and spaces for women. And, uh, mentoring young women. You know, a lot of the women that come to me are 19, 20 years old.
They start with me and by the time they're 27, 28, they're got wings and are ready to manage or direct or even own their own businesses. So about 30% of my, uh, employees through the years have opened their own businesses. I hope that I've had some kind of inspiration into that for them. - Beautiful. And you're talking to us today from your creative studio. This is your happy place, you said? - Yeah, it's actually down in the, the dungeon I call it, uh, in the basement of our house.
And, uh, when people come over to our house and have dinner, I always tell 'em, I wanna take you to the dungeon. And it's kind of like that movie Narnia. Uh, there's a door and you go down and there's like tons of junk, you know, it's like our junk place basement. And then there's this door and you open it and it is totally childlike, playful, bright colors. I have a couple windows out, look the mountains. People are like, wow, . It's kind of like this little hidden corner in our house.
My husband, who's a hunter, used to, uh, butcher elk down here. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. You know, even though I do eat meat, so, and he's a really conscientious hunter. I said, I, I want the space for art. And so I cleaned it all up and made it into my playful place. - And you paint down there, you draw, you express creativity. - Correct. I, it's really for process. I don't really sell my art even though a couple people have wanted to buy some of my art. But it's really for process.
It's a place for, for myself to be able to be present in the moment and see what comes out. Let the mystery unfold it. When I started doing this about six years ago, um, I took my first art class at Aha school in Telluride. I didn't know how to draw, so I just started throwing paint on the canvas and doing scribbles and things like that. And I called it celebrating Darla. I have it in my, my art studio today. And that's kind of where it all started.
And then I, uh, created this little, this pretty big space in my basement. And I come down here and just be present and process and be playful because that's been part of my recovery to who I truly am. - Which is to bring more play into your life. - Yes, yes. More play. Being in business, you know, as a woman 40 years ago or 35 years ago, you know, business is serious.
I mean, you gotta get loans, you gotta, you're taking care of people and their finances and their paychecks, and you gotta create spaces for 'em. So a lot of times it's been a lot of pressure. I, you know, was a single mom at the time and I, I needed to find a way to make a living. So I had to put on my, my suit jacket and put on that masculine side of myself and, you know, create this business type of structure.
And so it has been a lot of pressure at times, and yet at the same time it's been really miraculous and playful and creative. So I've had to learn how to balance both sides of my masculine and feminine creative self. That's been a process throughout my whole life that I've been learning how to do. And so, uh, the playfulness helps lighten the load.
, it helps, uh, helps me be more present and just more in tune to my spirit because my spirit is just very playful and creative and it just really loves life. So it's a place that I can go to balance the business side of the seriousness of that. - You did the process a year ago? - Yeah, it was a year ago. Yep. I think I like just a couple weeks ago, a year ago anniversary, - Uh, you celebrated your year anniversary.
So take us not to the process just yet, but maybe to the moment in time where you reached a point, something happened or some conversation ensued where you said, you know what, I need help. I wanna do something different. Where are you? And take us to that moment. - Well, it was actually Christmas Eve and I was at home here in our house out at Trot Lake, and I was making Turkey dinner for everyone like I traditionally do, and just going around my, my normal tradition at Christmas.
And it was interesting because before this day I had this intuition, this sense. And I remember saying to myself, I can't do this anymore. And I remember feeling that the family was all over. They would come a lot of times at Christmas time, a lot of, you know, cooking and cleaning and taking care of the family. And, and at this point in life, our kids were in their thirties or late twenties.
I was sitting there in the kitchen and I had, uh, my daughter had done something that triggered something in me and was very inappropriate. And most of the time I would come through as stuffing it, stuffing my feelings, stuffing what's really going on and being nice. And I remember I just reacted with anger and I just said, stop that. That is inappropriate. Do not do that in my house.
And then we got in this big fight, we were yelling at each other and screaming at each other, and I kicked her outta my house and said, get outta my house. I've never ever done anything like this in my entire life. And here I am, 60 years old and I'm going through this. Never kicked anybody outta my house. Never showed that type of anger before. So I was really in touch with something really deep inside me that I could no longer contain.
And so then my husband came down the stairs and said, oh no, nobody's leaving the house. That kind of thing. And he kept everybody intact, you know, went on our happy way pretending you know, that everything was okay when it wasn't. And then that's when I, uh, reached out to a friend. I had heard about the Hoffman process from a friend had who had done it, and I knew I needed help to figure out a way to break through.
There was something in my life cracking and there was a new stage of transformation that needed to happen for me and for our family too. - Yeah. So you do the paperwork, you head into your process and I imagine the cracking continues. What happens in your journey that week? - Well, when I showed up, I didn't really have any expectations. I really didn't know. I just, you know, showed up. Just go through the process, see what shows up. You know, my heart was broken when I showed up.
I had a lot of pain in my heart. I mean, any mother knows that when there's, you know, disharmony in the family and, you know, there's a breakup of children or family or whatever, there's a lot of pain. And so I was bearing that pain when I came and, uh, wanting to find some way to get through to the other side. Yet at the same time, I knew that things had to change and I, I didn't know what that was.
And so, um, I just delved into the process when I showed up, just did what they told me to do and was transparent and authentic and whatever was coming up to not run away from it, not push it down. That was kind of a pattern of mine pushing my feelings down. - I imagine it's, it's hard to push your feelings down when you're in the Hoffman process. - , yeah. No, it, I wasn't there to do that. I knew it was something I could no longer do.
And so I wanted to start expressing myself and getting that out. It was making me depressed. It was making me a cage, a prison in my own body, . And so I couldn't do that anymore. I had to break out and start expressing authentically really what was going on. And so that's kind of what the process did for me. It helped crack that open more so that I could really truly express myself. And I never felt safe to express anger.
And I don't know why. I mean, you know, I could go into depth psychology of childhood stuff and I, I could find some stuff there, but I just always wanted to have, it's kind of had an addiction to perfection, you know, that perfectionism, looking good, saying the right thing, being nice, uh, being good. And, you know, being bad was, you know, not something I wanted to, you know, that human nature part of myself, I didn't wanna show or being angry, that's a bad person, being angry.
And so I never felt safe and it's, this was the first time ever in my life I ever felt safe being angry . And it surely did come out . - You know, many people might question the value of indulging in anger. And so I just wanna go there for you. Why, why was it important for you to be able to get angry? You alluded to a little bit in the sense that you couldn't get angry and you didn't feel safe previously getting angry. But what did allowing your anger at Hoffman do for you?
- Well, it just allowed me to express what was true. I was angry. I couldn't deny that because every time when I did deny it, I, I felt like I was betraying myself. It was just false pretense and, you know, playing nice. It was the mask. And so I just felt, uh, like I really wanted to just, just feel it and not be scared of it.
And what it did for me was allow me to unclog my channel , you know, like take off the baggage or cut the cords or however you wanna call it, so that I could start being more free. And so that's what it did for me and it allowed me to have a voice. In fact, I have in my room here, my little parrot that I got when I was at Hoffman, which was to like find my voice, like a authentic voice, like, uh, recover my voice. It was like caged inside of me.
It was like I had all kinds of dreams when I left the process the night of. And it was all about like uncovering this authenticity inside of me and that's what it allowed for me. - Yeah. Beautiful. You, you talked about, uh, unclogging the channel. Did you say that earlier? - Yeah, I did. It's like this channel, you know, inside of me. You know, my life since Hoffman, my inner life has been so much richer. I've discovered this inner life that is really infusing my outer life.
I just was able to unclog that channel of all these feelings that I've been stuffing and that have been bugging me, you know, for a long, long time. And I finally would had a place to express them and not feel bad. - That's beautiful. There's this quote by Martha Graham, which talks about keeping the channel open, how it's our business to keep it ours directly, to keep the channel open. And I just love that you referenced that channel.
- I think one of the practices was, you know, learning there about the pause and you know, meditation is a huge part of my life right now. At least one to two hours a day. I get up four or five, six in the morning that allows me to really check in with my channel to see how am I really feeling what's really going on. And sometimes I journal, sometimes I just sit with it and accept what is so, it's that channel inside me that I'm more in tune to on really what's going on.
It's a really good thing. - Another way of talking about that is flow state. And so do you relate to that term flow state? - Yeah, I've been wanting to just write a lot for myself and um, maybe to share with people whatever, but one of the things came to me was when I was writing, I came against the next kind of phase of my, my writing chapter or whatever, I guess you could say. And it's, again, writing is a process, just like art is for me. It kind of gives me something to express.
And what Scott I got stuck at was surrendering to the arms of the creative. That's what came to me. I just thought it couldn't, wouldn't let me go forward because I wasn't surrendering. I was trying to control . And so I had, I, I'm learning that I'm in a phase of learning what that really means to learn how to show up and surrender and be in the flow of things. - Are you saying that when you were in a meditation once the words came to you of surrendering to the arms of the creative?
- Correct. Yeah. - And so now you're holding that phrase and trying to figure out what that means for you. - Exactly, exactly. So I'm working with that now. And I remember when I was a child, I would sit on the grass and I would look at the grass and I would think about nature. I would look at the water flowing and how it would bump up on the rocks and keep flowing even though there's big boulders in the middle of the river.
And I remember looking at grass and leaves how they fall and next season. And I remember this when I was, you know, young, young child, 9, 10, 11 years old. And and I remember thinking to myself, gosh, if if you know, God takes care of these things, why wouldn't he take care of me? Like, you know, even though I'm coming up against boulders or you know, the leaves are falling off and I'm getting kind of dead looking , like they're gonna be new life, you know?
So nature has always been a teacher to me since I was young. And so, um, and I always think of that with each season, just like winter right now and being covered in a white blanket of snow. It's kind of my little cocoon. But that cocoon is breaking open and I'm really looking forward to what the, what that might look like here in the spring and summer of this year. - Fantastic. Because learning and growing and healing is more than just words.
Can you take us to another time in your process where I imagine it wasn't an easy straight line towards growth, that there may have been struggle. And as you, your heart broke, open, cracking open, where were you? Take us to your process. What's happening? Where are you on the site? Do you remember a moment? - Yeah, I remember feeling like my heart was broken because I really have always valued family. Family has always been important to me.
And when it shattered, regardless of it being a blended family, I remember feeling, you know, that, gosh, 25 years of working with my husband on, you know, having harmony in the family and it comes to this what is going on and my heart, my heart was broken. And so I remember I didn't know what to do with that. What I learned in my process of how to, again, kind of like the anger, how to just feel what was there.
And so I, I would just sit in the silence whether we went on a walk and I sat near a tree and I just allowed myself to be in the present moment of what was.
And I remember at times I would just start crying and let the tears flow, feel the sadness again, not stuffing the feelings, like allowing that expression to come through that emotion, first of all, not run away from it and not say, try to cover it up with something pretty and with a bow on it, but really deal with what I was dealing with, which was a deep sadness and a deep pain in my heart.
And so I felt it, - You know, there's a reason we avoid that kind of sadness 'cause it can feel all consuming or we might be the sadness that might be our fate if we allow it. So was there any fear that by opening up your heart to it, by sitting with it, by allowing it, that you might actually be consumed by it? Any fear around doing that? - There was for sure there was fear. Yeah, definitely there was some fear.
I remember again, art, I got out a pencil and I drew a little picture during this process and I remember it was me sitting, sitting down and I had inside of me this like river of tears and I drew a river and tears were coming down from my eyes and it was all inside me, inside my body. I was drawing it inside myself. And it was just this river of tears just flowing and flowing. And so I was able to express it in that way.
- So you are drawing a river of tears because that's what was happening to you in the moment. Tears were flowing down your face as you were drawing. - Yes, yes. - Wow. - Yeah. So I was just able to be in the moment and I, you know, it, it felt good. And I'm just learning how to just allow these things that come up that are life, that are part of being in, in life and human nature.
And usually my, my mojo would be to escape it, to numb it, escape it, cover it up with beautiful things, everything's okay, you know, not have that, that rich iner life that you know of truth and express that truth and not look at it as bad or good. , - The word that keeps coming to me is surrender. We talk about surrender in the process, but it's a kind of surrender to your spirit, your essence, your, your soul. And you were surrendering it sounds like,
during your process over and over and over again. Yeah. - So still am still am I, I I hope that I can live more of a surrendered life. I'm learning to do that more and more each day. And it's part of my transformation. This is where I'm at, learning how to be in the flow, learning to go with the flow, uh, learning to accept what is and surrendering to this mystery of life.
'cause the more that I find that the more present I am to my life and take those pauses and be present in my life, the more the mystery unfolds, which is really leading me to where I wanna go without even having to try so hard . And that's the beauty of it. It's like, wow, there is something bigger than myself that is directing this and I can trust that instead of having to control things and, um, be okay with it. - Sometimes people come to the process wanting more confidence.
And I think what you just described there is what confidence is. It's trusting yourself and surrendering to the force of life coming through you. - That that is true. Yes. I, I would agree. And it's like I just did a painting called Thine and Self Be True that I have in this room. It's a very large painting. It was a poster a friend had had given me and I made it into a painting. And I just really thine and self be true for me is just being true to our feelings.
Like what is really going on and that it's okay to be ourselves, our full selves, our human selves, our, our spark of the divine that's in us to be both sides and not feel bad about either of those. And so that's just where I'm at, is between these two polarities and accepting both sides and, and finding what births from both of those sides living within that tension. 'cause it is, it's, I still have tension in my life after the process a year later,
there's still this tension. , - I'm so glad you went here because let's address this head on. 'cause many people think that when they struggle post-process, like it didn't work or something's wrong with me. So let's talk about this. What is it that's different now?
You still experience tension, you still experience struggle, so can you give an example that might help us understand that I'm still struggling post-process, but there's something different about my struggle post-process as opposed to pre-process that feels really important. - Well, I, I think the struggle is always learning to let go. You know, it's again, that surrender piece and believing in something bigger than just ourselves.
I mean, you know, in consciousness in today's world, everybody talks about oneness and you know, these bigger things in life. And, and I never really understood what that meant, . And so, um, now I just have a little teeny window of what that means.
That there is something bigger than ourselves that we can trust and that wants the best for us and wants us to be happy and fulfilled and all our dreams to come true, whatever those dreams are, or peace in our heart or whatever it is that we want in our life. And so, learning to trust and, you know, I'm, I've been going through that now 'cause I'm changing my career. You know, I'm in my sixties. I did join in the MEA program. I've always felt that being a business woman wasn't really who I was.
I always knew that in my heart. I always knew I was more of an artist, a teacher, a healer. I mean, we all are healers if we choose to be. But I, I had that presence for my transformation 'cause I would share it along the way in my business journey, I wanted to get outside of the context of having a business. So I'm actually in the midst of selling my business. And so again, it's like learning how to let go of something I've, I know how to do. I've done it for many times.
I go back to it every time I get fearful. That's what I do. I just open a business 'cause I know how to do that. And now I'm like wanting to really do something different and I'm really wanting to be more true to my essence and who I am. And one, I really wanna go deeper in my life. And that's what the Hoffman process did for me.
I mean, when you have those moments of, you know, where things are cracking and you have these hard emotions like anger to deal with things, it helps you when you have to accept what happened and accept what was and is, then it allows you to go deeper. And I feel like my life is going deeper. And so that is that essence, that true essence that really comes from all of us. Like, how do we want to give love back to the world? Like what is inside of us to give back to the world?
It's like getting in tune with that essence and that love with inside myself that I can give back in. And I'm wanting to just take off a little bit of that, not little bit, but take off that mask of a business woman and get deeper into who my essence is and, and be able to express that more. And, and right now it, it is through speaking, it's through art, it's through writing, it's through, you know, just being not really doing a lot.
- When you talk to individuals or groups of people, how do you talk about this stuff? I mean, as you said earlier, some people's understanding of this kind of consciousness stuff is very rudimentary. It's, they're uninitiated into this world. So how do you talk about it in a way that lands with your audience? You - Know, I don't really have an audience per se besides my employees.
You know, I'm kind of looking into letting other people run the business and, and move forward with that so I can break free from that. I have had a couple engagements in Telluride where I put an ad in the paper saying, you know, I'm gonna be speaking if you wanna come. And, um, and I did have people come, they're small groups, usually under 20 people.
So nothing big. But it was more the act of coming out, kind of coming out of the closet from being, you know, hidden and not seen to all of a sudden, you know, having a voice and being seen. One of the practices that I could truly say is that even meeting with you today, not to go up in my head, you know, not to think about what I'm gonna say because being in the flow, surrendering as I'm learning is more about showing up in the present moment and see what flows through you.
And that's how I wanna live my life. Not so much pretense and okay, let me put on my mask and show up and in my business suit or whatever. But just show up and just see what flows out. There might be a little bit of an outline of some stories or maybe that I might share, maybe I won't share. But I think the most important thing is the practice of being comfortable within your own skin and just showing up and seeing what flows out.
You know, like I've never done a PowerPoint, never in my whole life, . And, and that's kind of because it, to me, it puts on my mask and I don't want that. And I've always known that about myself and you know, I, as I've aged and you know, had a lot more experience, I'm getting more and more comfortable not having that. And maybe there's a reason for it when you're in a certain settings, but it's just not me. . I show up with my art.
So when I did show up in Telluride a couple times with some talks and one down in Sedona, I put my art behind me just like I'm doing now because this is my happy place. 'cause it's really about expression and getting out what's in our heart out into the world and being playful and being ourselves, you know, whatever that form comes out as. - It all sounds so wonderful.
And I'm just curious, have you been met with any judgment or negative reactions or people triggered by, by stuff you've done and who you are showing up now that you're exuding so much creativity and love as you open your heart to yourself and to the world? Has it only been positive or have you had some negative stuff?
- You know, I mean, even when I've had businesses and I've been creating these, you know, beautiful temples of beauty and healing temples kind of, I call 'em, I definitely have had the, the negative side. You know, a lot of times it's jealousy and you know, I get jealous too, you know, and I think sometimes people get a little jealous because they want that too. They wanna be able to express themselves fully. Like sometimes I can show up with, and, and sometimes, you know, so there's both sides.
There's people that come in and they're so inspired, they're like, wow, you so inspire me. And that's why sometimes even when people at my house, I bring 'em down to my studio and they're like, see a totally different side of me and they're like, I had no idea that you were like this. You know? And so it shows another side of me. And so, um, and, and there are some times that I've, I've seen jealousy and I know what that looks like because I've had it.
I just try to, you know, be soft and, and vitamin and say, you can do this too. And you know, what would you like to express and, you know, engage people in the, their own process and their own authenticity and whatever that might be. So that's probably the two sides, you know, there's that jealousy and, and there's judgment too. Like what is this all about? Like what does this matter? And so it's like, yeah, so what, it's just who I am. You know, you can do it too if you want.
If you don't wanna do it, you don't have to do it. And so, but most of it's positive. I think most people just wanna be free to express who they truly are. And I think that's where we all are. We just all wanna be true to who we are. And you know, there's books all written about it. It's all ev everywhere. You know, like authenticity, transparency, I think that's where our consciousness is growing and growing. People just wanna be their true selves, human and divine, you know?
I mean, we're both got the spark of creativity in us and this love in us. And then we also have this other human side that we make mistakes. We fall and stumble, we carry our crosses, we transform through our egos. And so it's like, how can we just be at all and have that judgment and all that censorship that we think we know what's going on with people when we really don't. And and judging people for being human. I mean, come on. We all, you know, we're all human.
And so being able to be comfortable in both sides of ourselves. - First, I almost wanna just pause after all that, because you were in flow state as you were describing it, you were in the embodied experience of it as well as words. I imagine words were bypassing your intellect there and you were just letting it come from deep inside you.
- Yeah, that's the key presence, finding our center, finding that really holy of holies inside of us, that center inside of us, which some people would say it's a heart, but sometimes it even goes deeper than that. It's connected to that vastness inside of us and finding that center and kind of creates some movement in our soul. Um, when we can get in that place, there's movement.
- So Darla, I want to go back to where we started this conversation, which is the break, the rift, the struggle with family. If you'd be willing, could you share what happened post-process and what happened? Darla - , well, post-process, it was interesting. The first dream I had after I left the post-process was, um, I had a dream that I was wrapped up in a mummy, like, you know, mummy dead in the ground. And I got up and I was tearing all this mummy muslin off of me saying, I'm alive.
And so it, it, that was how I went home. And it was like being wrapped up in this cocoon of whatever, um, this death of not being out there, not being authentic, not being real and just being safe, which, you know, I needed to do for my own survival to some extent. But when I got home, I knew I wanted to walk in my life in a different way.
And so when I came home, I had my husband, my children, they, you know, the kids were all, they're all married and on their own, so it was just my husband and I, and he wanted to go to the process, counseled him to start counseling. I have been in counseling off and on in my life during times of crisis and he never had been. So that was his first post-process along our journey. So he has been in that process now for a year.
So it's not like you come home and everything's perfect and okay, now I know who I am and I'm gonna be totally authentic and transparent. And it didn't, it wasn't like that. It was, it was more like coming home and, you know, walking through the muddy passages of the heart. It was muddy and it was a little sloppy. . - Take us to your daughter. How did healing occur given what had transpired prior to your process? - Well, really, you know, I'm, that process isn't perfect.
I mean, I have, um, a daughter and a stepdaughter and, and both of them, it's not perfect. That's a hard one to talk about 'cause it, it's still in process. But what has changed in me is I can show up and not try to control things, not try to make things perfect, not try to take care of her anymore, let go.
I mean, it's a big stage for any mother to let go of their kids as they get older and let them have their own process and let them make their own choices and not get in the way of their process. And so that's really where I'm at, being a mother with older children, allowing them to just be who they are and give them all the space they need.
And so when I'm with them, that's basically how I'm showing up, is just sharing the love, letting the love flow, being, you know, loving and present and supportive and yet letting them have their process. - I also hear you talking about patience in a way and playing a longer game that you're not gonna demand healing right away right now. Let's all be back. 'cause that would be that controlling side perfectionism.
Instead, you're just gonna allow the healing process between you and your daughter and your stepdaughter to unfold a little more organically. And that might take a little longer than you want. - Yes, yes. And that's exactly what's happening. I did set a boundary at a time, no one in our house at this time that everybody needed their space. And so that's continuing a year later.
You know, I don't really know, you know, I say more often than I had before after this process is, I don't know, I don't know. , like, I don't know. The only thing I could do is allow everybody space to heal and we're all healing. And so, yeah, I I don't really know what the future holds. I just know that it is what it is and I'm accepting where they need to be.
They need their space. We need our space and let everybody just go through their own process the way they want to go through it, - You know, insight and enlightenment pairs very well, it sounds like with the words. I don't know, - And I truly don't because, you know, they could choose something that would break my heart again. You know, I just have to let them be, you know, I mean, I'm sure I broke my mother's heart many times too, you know, um, with some of the choices I made in my life.
And, you know, it's like I've made a lot of mistakes throughout my life and I made a lot, had a lot of successes. I've had both sides and so I gotta let other people have both sides too. You know, I think as a mother we try to cradle our kids so they don't have to fall or make mistakes or go through their dark night of the soul like we've had to go through and, and we just have to let things be and let them have their process so they can transform into who they're meant to be.
And that's the hardest, just giving people space. - Darla, you are such a seeker, but you referenced that the seeking you're doing now is different than the seeking you used to do. Can you share a little more about that? - Well, I feel like I've always been a seeker. Yes. I mean, even since I was a little girl, I, I remember seeking and growing up with no spirit like religion or spirituality around me, completely unchurched.
But I was always searching for something and I would travel around the world, you know, I would go to Brazil, worked with shaman medicine people. I went to Germany and sat at, you know, the foot of mo woman named Mother Mira, who does all her work in the silence. So I really wanted to learn about silence and what the power of silence was. And then I traveled to, um, Egypt, I traveled to Italy, went to the Virgin mother, apparitions, .
So lots of different things I was searching for, and I found a little bit of something everywhere and, and now I, I'm kind of at a point that my seeking isn't like that. I don't feel like I need to go outside of myself to seek it. It's really about, I found this treasure inside myself. And I've always said it's interesting how I grew up in the beauty industry.
My family had a chain of salons and the beauty industry, and then I branched off to more of the healing spa industry and the beauty industry. But it's like I in search of that beauty within myself, and that's within all of us, this treasure I'm seeking more and more of that. My seeking is more in my inner life and really learning how to be within that treasure and see what's in there . And so that's really where my seeking is nowadays.
- Darla, we do show notes and I, I just want to get your permission, if we could put some of your artwork in the show notes. Sure. I'm so grateful for this conversation and for your sharing your creative sort of organic unfolding, surrendering a work you've done through your life and, and and through your Hoffman work. What's it like for you to reflect on the arc of your life and the expanse of your work, uh, and cultivating your depth to share about that
out loud with our audience? What's that like for you? - It feels good. It feels good to just share just what comes up, what is coming through, what, how you feel. Before the call, I was a little nervous and, you know, I, and I just sat and I took a pause and breathed and just got in the moment and got connected to my inner self. And it feels good to be able to just show up.
It's not always easy because it, the patterns are just so strong of showing up and putting that mask on and just showing up the way people will more readily accept you or you think that that's how they're gonna accept you or be in society's norms, whatever those might be. So I guess it's a good moment in my life to learn how to trust myself and just show up and, and just be as authentic as I can and share from my own life experience.
- Darla, thank you. - Thank you for giving me this opportunity. - So good. - , - Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Grassi. I'm the CEO and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. - And I'm Ra Eng Grassi 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 homan institute.org.