- I get outta my car and the first thing that happened was there's this rabbit who hops over to me with these huge ears in my body. I just started feeling really both sad and kind of ashamed, just filled with all sorts of things in my heart. A kind of a pain really in my chest. So I just said, wow, you know, it's already starting and I'm just getting outta my car. , you know. - 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. My name is Drew Horning and Dr. Dan Siegel is with us today. We are so excited. Dan, welcome. - Thanks for having me, drew. It's great to be here with you. Well, - We're excited for this conversation. I mean, you have done so much.
You're a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. You're the founding co-director of the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at UCLA. You're an educator, a distinguished fellow with the American Psychiatric Association. You're an author of so many books, you've done so many things, prolific writer, speaker. Here's my question is because in preparing for this, I was aware of the enormous scope and depth of your work.
So is it possible even for you to share a little bit about the things you've done over the course of your life as an introduction? I started here and then I moved here and I was fascinated by this. Can you give us a sense of that - ? Uh, sure. I can try Drew. Thank you. Um, well first of all, it's an honor to be here with you and what a joy to speak about the Hoffman process and to think about the many ways it can really support people's evolution and growth in terms of this body called Dan.
I don't know exactly where to begin just except to say that this journey of this body and this life has been about trying to see if there's kind of a common ground or consilience is the word EO Wilson would use for it across lots of different ways of knowing about reality. Like what's it like just to be in a person in a body?
What's it like to understand history or you know, what's it like to know a little bit about science or the whole world of contemplative exploration, spirituality, deep psychological growth? So all that has kind of been fascinating to me as a person, but as a professional, I think the biggest challenge was to try to find a, uh, pathway that felt grounded in those kinds of broad pursuits.
So initially I thought I was gonna be a researcher and was trained as a researcher through the National Institute of Mental Health. I basically studied biochemistry, went to medical school, ultimately went to pediatrics, and then psychiatry. Then went to child and adolescent psychiatry, and I became a researcher in parent child relationships, studying how those attachment experiences influence the way we think, uh, of ourselves in terms of our autobiographical narrative.
So I became a narrative scientist studying stories, but at the same time I was a therapist working with patients trying to figure out how to help them as best I could. And I was very frustrated to be frank about it, with the kind of things that were presented in psychiatry and the emphasis, even though I was trained in brain studies, the emphasis on reducing people just to brain problems. So this was now kind of the beginning of the decade of brain 1990 we're talking about.
So a while ago, and you know, I was disillusioned with that branch of medicine. So I sort of set out on this course to try to think how psychiatry as a branch of medicine could really link with all the other fields of mental health. And I was trained in this narrative science, but also trained in neuroscience. And I was trained in, you know, biochemistry. So I was very comfortable with empirical, you know, research based, statistically analyzed data, but I was also a therapist.
So I was really focused on the internal world of a person in my practice trying to help them. So all that led to me being invited to be the training director in child and adolescent psychiatry where I was really, for me anyway, felt an obligation, not just to repeat the same limited views that I had been taught myself. So that being an educational administrator at UCLA really made me say, well, okay, well let's start from the beginning.
If I'm teaching mental health professionals about mental health, what was I told about mental health? And I realized the answer was zero. And then I said, well, let's get even more basic. What was I told about the mental of mental health? And I realized in all my training I was board certified and everything. No one told me what the mind was. So then I kind of had this weird almost, it was really embarrassing actually, to be like accredited in all these medical board things.
And I realized the fundamental idea that you're helping someone's mind, no one had said what the mind was. So anyway, that led me to bring a bunch of scientists 40 together in a room and said, look, let's just look at what the mind is and what's its relationship to the brain. 'cause this is the beginning of the decade of the brain. Anyway, that group didn't really get along. There were anthropologists, there were physicists, there were neuroscientists, there were all sorts of folks.
They didn't get along with each other, but they were intrigued by the question, what's the connection in the mind and the brain? And it's a long story that I write in different books. But the, the take home message was I had to come up with a definition of the mind back in 1992 that would allow these 40 scientists to communicate with respect with each other, with collaboration.
And that definition turned out it was a working definition, meaning this could be completely wrong, but let's work with it and see if we can talk to each other. We went on to meet, not just for one meeting, but for four and a half years using this definition of the mind. That definition has been incredibly powerful to invite people to explore different ways of studying the mind and realizing basically the mind is bigger than the individual.
It's, it's broader than the brain, bigger than the body. It involves our relational world as much as the fully embodied nervous system. And then it became really intriguing to say, what's a healthy mind? It then goes from defining the mind to saying what a healthy mind is. And then what's been really fun and fascinating is it's really actually useful. It actually works to help people in therapy . So that's been a long time.
Now that's like 32 years now of working with this definition and seeing its applications in the world, whether it's working with individuals like we can talk about Hoffman or you know, I work with groups that work with the United Nations and work with governments. And these views of the mind and mental health turned out to have kind of universal application across cultures and across disciplines. And so it's been a busy and beautiful time.
Uh, it's a frustrating time because when you see the foibles of our human family, you know, that we see in political systems and the way we're mistreating each other and we kill each other. I mean, so being human is both wondrous and you know, horrifying at the same time. So I, you know, holding those two, even though you can say here's what the mind is, you can understand why we have so much trouble.
But I, I hope these ideas, I'm sort of speaking of generalities, but these ideas have been useful across all these different realms of our human pursuits. - You really have done this thing where you've done both professional research for the, the journals and the institutions. You've also written very much for the public and lay people and created very practical ways for people to hold their own mental health.
And you also see systems and as you said, the larger group of us as the human experience. What's that been like to take such a broad survey but also such a deep dive into the human experience? - I think two things. I think one, being a therapist has really shaped who I am, you know, so having those really close relationships with people that I care for and take care of and seeing their growth and really, really being inspired by their courage to change and dive deep into really painful places.
And then seeing that going to those painful places liberates them from the prisons they've often been in when they come for therapy. So I am who I am because of my patients, you know, in so many ways, and this is gonna sound like another weird number, but I had to add it up and I was a little bit in shock. I've been a psychiatrist for 40 years, even though I feel like I'm 17, so the number really doesn't make any sense at all.
But I, I actually have been practicing psychiatry for four zero years, for four years . So that's a lot of patients. I see a lot of people. I always said to myself when I finished medical school, I said, if this is gonna work, I better choose to do something that if I had been fortunate enough to win the lottery and I got a billion dollars or whatever, what would I do if I wasn't doing it for money? And I said I'd be a therapist. I said, well then dude, go do that.
, you know, I didn't win the lottery so I still have to work for a living. But it's been just a privilege to be on journeys with people. So that individualized journey combined with my training as a scientist, you know, knowing about, you know, how to look at all these studies, all this stuff, that was one level of it to answer your question, to try to be very careful about those two worlds. 'cause one is about the individual, the other is like statistical analysis across many subjects.
But the other thing is looking at systems that you're bringing up. And I just became absolutely fascinated with systems back in 19 91, 92, when the question came is what is the mind?
Because the only way I could make sense of a mental, uh, pattern I had seen, which is that the people that at that time that I'd been seeing as patients were either coming with chaos or they were coming with rigidity, meaning chaos, meaning flooded with stuff and it was overwhelming or rigidity, meaning it was shut down or some combination of the two. Every human being I saw with mental suffering had chaos or rigidity.
So I would go to my supervisors and I would say, what's with the chaos and rigidity? They go, well what are you talking about? And I said, well, have you ever noticed that people either have chaos, rigidity or both? And they go, I don't know what you're saying. So I went looking for some answer to the question, why might that be the case? And the only place I could find an answer anywhere was a math book. And I like math a lot.
And so I know this is gonna sound weird, I'm gonna sound like a such a nerd. But the math book said that in the 1980s some mathematicians and physicists got together to study systems called complex systems. And they found that these unusual systems, which are not unusual in the sense that they're rare, but they're just unusually beautiful.
I'll just say that they're chaos capable, meaning they can become chaotic, they're open and they're non-linear, meaning a small input leads to a large and difficult to predict result. When these complex systems unfold, they have something called emergence. It's like the wetness of water. No single water molecule is wet, but when water molecules interact with each other, you get wetness. It's an emergent property.
One of the emergent properties of complex systems shown in the eighties is self-organization. When you look at the properties of the mathematical equations of self-organization, it says if you optimize self-organization, you get basically harmony. If you mess up that optimal self-organization, and here's what blew my mind, you get chaos or rigidity. And I went nuts. I went, oh my Lord. Hallelujah. Exactly. You know, happy dance.
And it's like that's what sold me on systems thinking because it comes from mathematics. Even though a lot of people don't like math, so, and therefore they don't like systems thinking. But ultimately you don't need to talk about math and numbers to talk about systems. It's the way basically there are mutually influencing factors. A, B, C is be linear. A goes to b, B goes back to A and A goes to C and C goes back to B and A, and they're all like lines of mutual influence.
So anyway, that's, so systems thinking for me was the way I could come up with a definition of the mind is being an emergent property of energy flow. And that one aspect of it is the self-organizing, emergent, embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information. And with that definition, then suddenly the entire panoply of mental suffering became clear.
And so far every study that's ever been done, like on the brain, for example, of someone with significant mental dysfunction has had impaired what's called integration in the brain. And then any intervention you do, like mindfulness for example, or I think Hoffman would be an example. Anything that's integrative can lead you from being stuck in cast and rigidity to having more harmony in your life.
- Fantastic. For listeners, if you need to press, rewind and play that again as a way of understanding your journey to understanding harmony on one end and chaos and rigidity on the other end, Dan, that's fantastic. So how does someone with that in their brain and a job committed to understanding the multifaceted nature step into this experiential journey called the Hoffman process? What led you to us?
- Yeah. Well, I, I think the first time I ever heard about Hoffman, I was actually, I was interviewing someone for a residency position 'cause I was the training director and I actually met a relative of Bob Hoffman's and he said, oh, I'm Bob Hoffman's, you know, whatever, well I'll keep his identity separate, but so I said, oh, who's that? He goes, well, that's the Hoffman process. The Fisher Hoffman process. And I said, what's that? And I had never heard of it.
And he explained it to me and I said to him, 'cause then I was at a, I was fully trained as an attachment researcher through the National Institute of Mental Health and, uh, actively doing attachment stuff. So I said, oh, it sounds like a deep immersion in attachment. He goes, well, what's attachment? I said, well, attachment to this study, blah. You know, it was a great conversation. That was, let's say 1991 or something. That's the last I heard of the Hoffman process.
I never heard anyone mention the name. I I know you guys don't do marketing, but I, I literally didn't hear anything about it until a year ago or less. You know, some cousins on their own who are not particularly in the mental health world, they just did it on their own. Their therapist recommended or whatever for them, and they did it. And my wife, Caroline, is extremely close with one of our cousins. So Caroline said to me, we should do that.
And I said, do what? She said, do the Hoffman process. I said, well, what that's like from 30 years ago? What's the Hoffman process? So our cousins gave us like a really super brief no details thing, like they should have done. They, they didn't, you know, disclose anything about the actual process.
And so Caroline was so gung-ho on it, and she said to me, I mean, to be very frank about it, she said, I think this would be really good for us as a couple, and I think this would be good for me as an individual and for you two. And I said, I'm open to it, but it, I probably never would've thought about it on my own if our cousins hadn't done it and I didn't hear about it, so why would I even think about it? Um, and I was open to it.
And at the same time it was very helpful because I'm busy and I had to really work on, well, I write books about this subject. I'm a researcher and attachment, I'm, you know, a therapist. How could I be going to, you know, look at my own issues. That was just some kind of inner conversation I had to have with myself. And I was super excited about doing it actually. And you know, I felt really, um, open to it and then Caroline did it and her experience was profound.
That's not an overstatement, to use that word. Our cousin's experience was profound. So I was really game to do it. And I had the good fortune of having Mark as my teacher. And so that, that was great too. And, and - Let's jump in here, mark. I want to do something we don't normally do. Welcome to the podcast, mark Kaplan. - Hello. Hi Drew. Hi Dan. Nice to be with you guys. - Hey, mark. - Mark is a Hoffman teacher and coach and you know, there was something about the connection you two had.
And as we step into your process, Dan, I wanna bring Mark in because there were some things that were really powerful for you. Can you take us your week and reveal a little bit about what that was like for you? I'm just so curious. Yeah. - Well, the first thing to say, and, and I don't, I don't wanna sound like a, a preacher, but as a therapist, I just wanna say I, it was really important for me not to be a therapist when I was there and just to let myself be a person.
And at the same time, I'm gonna say this, this is the part. I don't wanna sound like a, I'm preaching to the, you know, some kind of gospel or something. But I think every therapist should do the Hoffman process. Uh, I, I've never said that out loud. I don't think I've said that to you, mark or anything. I'm, but the more I think about it, it does something that therapy itself can't do.
And I'm saying that as someone who's been practicing therapy for 40 years, it also offers, in terms of the professional stuff, it offers the therapists the humility to go deep into stuff that they're gonna help their clients with. They're gonna help their patients with help. And you can't replace that with anything. So I, I'm not a training director anymore, although I run a school, the Mine Site Institute, you know, I would basically urge everybody to do it. That's, that's, I'll just say that.
So I didn't know that ahead of time. So I'm, I'm starting with this because I had to let my identity as a therapist go to the side. I had to let also my identity as, you know, someone who is trained in the science of attachment. I had to let that go to the side. I had to let, you know, as you mentioned, you know, I write books also for the public, you know, which is exciting. 'cause I write books for professionals that are, you know, really super scientifically dense.
But because I'm a therapist, I'm used to speaking to people. Like I have a book written for teenagers to read themselves. So I just channel that aspect of me when I write those kinds of books. So, so I let my writerly self kind of go to the side and say, dude, you don't need to know anything. You just need to show up and see what happens. - That's a whole lot of surrender. - Yeah. So I just wanna start there because the magic happens when you get outta the way.
- And I was gonna, I was gonna follow up on Drew's question, which was, what was that really like for you? Not so much in the intellectual knowing about needing to get out of the way, but the experiencing of it with the, oh, I'm in my head right now. Oh, I get to feel right now. Oh, I'm experiencing the land right now.
That's so much just as a witness, being a witness to your process, what was happening, or at least what I experienced in you, what was happening for you in the context of the process was also being mirrored in your experience in nature and your ability to notice just so much When you allowed yourself to almost turn off that part of your brain and really allow yourself to move in to the emotional work of the week, could you just share what was that like for you?
- You know, the mind can be a constructor, like building stuff and it can be a conduit, like letting stuff flow through it. So I really tried to invite my own experience to be open to being more of a conduit. Like let stuff flow rather than use constructed, you know, in Hoffman terms you'd say patterns, you might say strategies of adaptation or survival or whatever phrase you wanna use.
So that was the first thing was to, when we say, you know, get outta your way, it would be like, let yourself be open. And so the first thing that happened, just to be very specific about it, is I show up on the grounds of the Petaluma campus, which already for me, you know, had some deep meaning. 'cause I had been at that same campus for another immersion on consciousness meets quantum physics when it was the Ions campus, the Institute of Noetic Sciences.
So, so I had all these memories and you know, I'd been, I'd written a couple of books already about what I learned on the Petaluma campus about the connection between energy through the lens of quantum physics and consciousness, and that's a whole nother topic. But, so I was filled with kind of both excitement and also saying, you know, all those ideas about quantum physics, consciousness and the mind and development just to let them go.
And I get outta my car and the first thing that happened was, there's this rabbit who hops over to me with these huge ears and in my body, I just started feeling really both sad and kind of ashamed and just filled with all sorts of things in my heart about like a kind of a pain really in my chest. And so I just said, wow, you know, it's already starting and I just getting outta my car , you know, so there was an imprisoning pattern that got set up when I was four that I, I kind of knew about.
But the journey of the week would invite lots of different moments of experiencing deeply what it meant to be a 4-year-old, getting my first pet rabbit being so excited, so exuberant, so thrilled with this cute little rabbit, wanting to make sure, sure I was gonna take care of the rabbit, giving him some water to drink and petting him and snuggling with him. And I thought he was hungry.
So getting a leaf and you know, letting him like nibble on the leaf and then he dies because that leaf was an oleander plant leaf, which is poisonous. And no one told me that in our backyard it was poison. Now I had two parents from New York, they probably never even had a bush in their life. And there were all these bushes in their new California house, so I can't blame them. And at the same time, it was an experience of my exuberance without knowledge of danger.
It led to the death of something I really cared about. You know, so that was, you know, the beginning of just arriving on the Petaluma campus was meeting this rabbit, feeling all these things in my body, having this sense of a younger aspect of myself filled with shame about having killed this rabbit and all the adaptive strategies, patterns you would call them to deal with that conundrum that your enthusiasm can kill somebody. That's a pretty heavy burden, which I carried.
And then other things happened that the week would reveal that basically reinforced that belief that if I'm too grateful or too joyful someone or something I love will be severely hurt, even killed because of my joy and my gratitude.
And so working on that was something Mark you helped me with and something I, I knew was an issue, but I I, you know, to spend a week where all you're doing is letting yourself be with this unfolding in what I think is an absolutely genius sequence of stuff that you do. And it's good if you're gonna do the Hoffman process not to know the details of the stuff. So I'll just use the technical term stuff. Uh, but there's stuff that you are guided through in this absolutely genius way.
And I'm not using genius in a haphazard way. I think it is absolutely brilliant. I say that as someone having gone through the ING process, but I'm saying that as a therapist, and I'm saying it as scientists knowing about, a little bit about the brain. I just think there's like, there's gold in them hills, you know, there's, it's just, it's just really, uh, absolutely, uh, brilliant and beautiful. - Thank you so much for that.
And I'm struck as I was in your process by your generosity of sharing your generosity of not only what you're seeing from that place of awareness, but also when you're speaking about the rabbit, when you're speaking about, nobody told me there's a tenderness there, there's a, a deep emotional recognition.
And as you talk about kind of how the week unfolds, a big piece of the week is expressing emotionally in multiple different modalities, ways that we as children might not have even known we could express or what we repressed or weren't allowed to express.
So just as, you know, you've referred to yourself in many ways, but as like therapist Dan, and as well as like the body we know as Dan or you know, younger, younger Danny for that matter, what was it like for you to really give yourself permission to engage in cathartic emotional expression were in this environment? - Yeah, you know, that's a great question, mark. Thank you. The visualizations, the poetry, the immersion in expression in the very specific ways.
So we're talking in generalities on purpose, but when you're there, it's super specific in a way that's not controlling, it's inviting and it's inviting in a way that is absolutely brilliant to guide you sequentially. And this is to answer your question, that the, the layers of unfolding are so wonderfully crafted that it allows you to just be with very intense emotions that you might not otherwise let yourself be there with.
And also, I kept on thinking this and I'd love to ask the two of you this question. I kept on thinking, you know, if you were some like, I don't know, some person, some Silicon Valley mogul who said, I wanna do the Hoffman process, but I don't wanna be in public. And it's so sad for them, right? They couldn't be in public, but, so I'm gonna bring five Hoffman teachers to my house here and I'm gonna do the Hoffman process by myself.
I would love to do a study to compare that to what it's really like to be 39 other, at least in California, we have 40 people to be with this group of people. Because there was also something about bearing witness and doing it as a community that I don't think if you were that billionaire alone and having five Hoffman teachers, I have a feeling it might be wrong, but you wouldn't get the same impact.
There was something about, you know, even though you're, you're anonymous, no one is saying where they're from or their full name or anything like that. It was beautiful just to be Danny, you know, when I was there, I'm still Danny with my Hoffman group, which is fun. And just to be a person and just, you know, I could just be a person which I always wanted to be in my life. And so finally, I mean, I could just be there with whatever comes up.
So the catharsis was yes, yourself coming from inside your body, but then you could see different people the way they were holding those intense emotions. And the beautiful way the staff and I, I keep on saying beautiful, but it was like that, that the teachers were really honoring the vulnerability, the tenderness, the courage that the participants had. So in that whole unfolding, there was a belonging that emerged, which is something that I long to have in my own family.
And that all the specific stuff, just to say stuff that was happening day by day, by day by day. 'cause you have these seven amazing days was held within the community compassion. And you were never forced to reveal anything at all. You could reveal whatever you wanted in a small group. There were some opportunities in a large group to do that, but you didn't have to ever be put on the spot.
I had no idea how that was gonna go, but it was really respecting people's privacy, ironically, even though you're doing this all as a group. And in that respect, for me at least to speak about this body, you know, there was a permission just to be completely transparent and say whatever I was feeling and going through. Yeah, - I appreciate that.
And no, it, it really, you do such a beautiful job of moving through, you know, as you say, each of those seven days and the ability to really go deep and to have your own experience while also being witnessed and cultivate that sense of belonging without the micromanaging of that to really have your own experience in that group setting. And so one final question for you and then just something that if you'd be willing to share that was so powerful.
The first is you brought up the seven days, you know, each day, you know, we recommend that people that go through the process spend two days to kind of allow the integration. You spoke about integration earlier on this session. If you could speak about your two days of integration post-process, what that was like for you to kind of let it all begin to settle and emerge within you.
And then there was also a moment in your process where, you know, you mentioned the rabbit, but there's also a moment with, there's deer on the property in Petaluma and there is such a, a gorgeous moment with you and the dear. And so if you'd be willing to share a little bit about what your post-process weekend was like, but also this moment with the dear and how profound that was and how that impacted the arc of your week.
- Yeah, there was so much happening during the week and during the two days you're referring to that were just filling me up. And I really made a commitment to do exactly like the Hoffman teachers were telling us to. So I have a regular meditation, for example. I didn't do that. You said don't do the regular meditation, I didn't do it. I have a regular exercise routine. You said don't do it. So I didn't do it. I just followed everything you guys said to do and I'm glad I did.
And one of the other instructions was take two days, which for people who are busy, that's hard to take another two days. But I listened to what you said and I did exactly what you said. Now part of it was Caroline, you know, my partner, she said, you gotta take these two days. So I said, oh, I should probably come home and get back to this and that and this and that. She goes, no, you take those two days for yourself.
And, and I've noticed in my Hoffman group, those who didn't take the two days didn't have a lasting integration of the effect. And those of us that did, like I did have had a very different outcome in therapy terms. You could call in an integrative period of whatever the immersion immersion was in the two weeks, in the one week. And then these two days are extremely important.
So I urge anyone listening to us to take to heart everything, not just the two days, but everything, but especially these two days. Give yourself that respect to do that. The other thing to say is that I just had this book in me to try to make sense of everything from all these things, from the stuff happening in Petaluma, from the quantum physics and consciousness thing that kept on coming up when I was at the Hoffman thing.
And then, then my relationship with John O'Donohue and John and I were like brothers and this all sorts of things related to John and the poetry. So when Hoffman finished and I finished my two days of the integration, this book came outta me. The bottom line of that is it allows you to see, I hope, without revealing details, what the science of the Hoffman process is in a way that I, I just couldn't help myself to write a book about it.
And also the poetry of possibility that John and I were always teaching about before he died many years ago. And so part of it is my relationship with John part of is relationship to Petaluma through Hoffman, through quantum physics and consciousness thing. I have that in me now, having written that where it takes those two days and says, how do you carry the learnings of Hoffman with you forward in your life for whoever you are?
And so for whoever I am as a writer, writing and basically completing this book since doing Hoffman was my way of integrating it. 'cause I write, someone else might want to just write songs or poetry or just go for walks or just have their relationships change. So the integration of those two days, certainly something the two days begins, but it doesn't end there, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
It was really helpful for me to review my notebook from Hoffman during the writing of that book and to really let the pieces that emerged come to peace to really have a kind of grounding. So I feel like a different person I'm gonna say. And I feel since Hoffman, I feel like you guys have given such a gift to this person called Dan, but also to the world. You know, I don't want to become like this big Hoffman preacher, but I want to say, I think it's like Crate the Bomb .
I think it's just fantastic. And I do think when you, if this book ever comes out, you know about the science of the Hoffman process, I do think there's a brilliant way where the sequencing that you see in the brain, what is going on. For example, just to talk about the deer, uh, I've never said this publicly, so I'm a little nervous about it. I gotta say, and I know I say it in the book, but that's not out. I got up early in the morning like we do to go out for a walk at Hoffman.
You go out on these beautiful grounds and there was a group of deer that were out in the meadow. Uh, so I started my walk and then there was a young deer, you know, a fawn to one side of me on the path. And then there was the mother on the other side. She was not happy about that configuration. So she started getting pretty agitated, like, I am threatening her, her child, you know, her fawn. So I stepped outta the way right away as fast as I could so she wouldn't be upset.
And the phone popped over to her mom, you know? Then I just became very, very sad. You know, I have a 94-year-old mom who back in the day when she was younger, when her friends were still alive because she's one of the last ones surviving. They were therapists and they were my students. And she asked me not to talk about my family of origin life because it would embarrass her. 'cause her friends were my students and they were therapists, you know?
So I didn't, and for all these years, I never have. I just don't to honor her. She's older now, and those friends sadly are gone and she has given me permission to say whatever I feel. I'm saying , you know, at this, this moment in her age. So I'm in a different little bit of a different place, but I've never said what I'm about to say publicly. I do feel a little protective of her. You know, she was in a very oppressive marriage with my father who was a rageaholic sadist narcissist.
And, um, I've never said that publicly either. Not only was I terrified of him, my brother was terrified of him. My mother was terrified of him. But she withdrew emotionally because of his nightmare way of being a human. He's gone. He is died now 12 years ago. And she not only withdrew emotionally, she withdrew in all of her maternal instincts to protect her kids. So the dear encounter reminded me of this reality that I, I've been able to talk to my mom about since my father passed.
And even when he was alive, once came up, she went to such survival mode that she abandoned her maternal responsibility. And I've worked with so many patients where that's the case, you know, where had you come to grips with that, that a parent is doing the best they can, but for me, just in terms of countering the dear and to sit with the pain inside of me, that I didn't have a mother like that doe protecting her fawn.
And so as I stood on the path, just having this ache in my heart about, you know, not having a mom who was going to protect me like you could see in the energy of that deer to do what nature told her to do, you protect your offspring.
And so the Hoffman process gives you this step-by-step journey to, and, and not only, you know, become aware of these things and feel them, but also to move through them, you know, in a way that the stuff that, that is, uh, prescribed to you day by day, by day by day lets you get in touch.
For me, countering the deer on the path, going deeply into what that meant for me as a little boy, what it meant for me as a teenager, what it meant for me as a young man, trying to find romantic relationships, how that melted with this very painful belief that if I'm grateful or joyful, I'll hurt someone I love. So you better not be grateful or joyful. Curb your enthusiasm in a huge way, you know, for life. It all started getting unraveled and unwrapped and exposed.
And the sadness could be there fully, anger could be there fully. The compassion for what everyone was trying to do, do their best. But it just didn't quite work for everyone involved, including my father. Just led to this incredible liberation at the end of feeling I could be aware of what I needed to do as a little boy believe I was not worthy of being exuberant and have this freedom that arose in other things, other stuff that comes up that also was a, a incredible resource.
Then doing the two days of integration of all that, writing about it, feeling about it, walking about it, just being by myself, maybe checking in when you get out of Hoffman, but then taking the two days with not checking in, just being with yourself.
And then, you know, since then it's been a couple months now, it's been this incredible shift where, just to give you a teeny little example, this sensitivity of having a mother who didn't really tune into me or protect me or stand up for me, whatever meant I was projecting onto my wife, Caroline. All sorts of expectations. Some of them I think are realistic, actually some of them are over the top, but a certainly a huge sensitivity to, you know, rejection and all this kind of stuff.
So the day after I got back from Hoffman's integration, two day period, you know, we're going for a walk with the dog, we run into a neighbor right in the middle of telling her something 'cause she's done Hoffman. So we can talk about the details. We don't just say the word stuff. So right in the middle of telling her some really exciting detail of this or that, we run into a neighbor who helped us place some rocks in the front of our house and we put the rocks just like the neighbor said.
So Caroline says, Hey, your, the rocks turned out really great. Your suggestion was a great suggestion. You want to come see them? And I'm like, in the middle of telling her this deep thing, I take a step away, I'm like enraged and I'm rejected and I'm feeling hurt and she doesn't really care about me and she's not standing up for me. And all this stuff happens like within the first 20, 30 seconds of her encountering, you know, this neighbor and invite her to come over to our house.
And then I just let it go. I just say to myself, you know, that's your reaction to what your mother didn't give you. You remember the deer, you remember the whole Hoffman thing? I said, she's just excited about the rocks. So I went about and did whatever I did and then afterwards we, she brought it up, she said, you know, I noticed, you know, you stepped away. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. She goes, that's really different than what it would've happened before Hoffman.
I said, oh yeah, that would've been maybe a one day, you know, being pissed off and pouting and you know, huge explosion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Totally unnecessary but reasonable. And, you know, ah, it would've been an argument, this and that. It, it was beautiful. It was a good example of just like, you know, the freedom because this little boy inside of me who wanted to be loved, who, who deserved to be loved but wasn't, I could love him now.
And, and just 'cause Caroline is getting focused on the rocks and the neighbor doesn't mean she doesn't love me and him and the whole shebang. So that was just like, it was just like letting it go, you know? And it was really fun. And, and I feel in terms of that issue of relationality with, with her and just in my life, it just feels really different that I can have a kind of spacious awareness, objectivity to be with some very painful places.
It happened when I was teaching in Costa Rica also, our whole family came and something came up and, and then I had to realize this issue that was arising was a symbol that I could just name and just let it go and say, oh, I see. That was like a symbol and it was getting all agitated and I could just let it go. And, and so it's not like you ever, I, I don't think you ever just become clear of these issues, you know? 'cause these are all real things, but they just can arise.
Inner awareness be explored. You understand the context. They don't grip onto you. You say Aha. How interesting. As my mom says, when I taught her with Caroline, you know, to be mindful, Caroline is great. This great book called The Gift of Presence, which my mom read. And so she learned mindfulness through Caroline and through a little bit of what I do, my mom has this great phrase. She says, when you're mindful, I think I know what it means.
I said, mom, what does it mean? She goes, what used to annoy you now? Amuses you. That's exactly it. So you're able to become very mindful of stuff that arises 'cause you're still in the same body. But in that amusement, you have a freedom where instead of being prisoned by the annoy reaction, you have the annoyance, you are now amused. So it's kind of becomes fascinating and fun. And so, yeah. So, okay, so she showed the neighbor of the rocks cool.
And I went and did something else. That was fun. , you know, that was, that was it. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. - You know, having been a therapist, you know, the role of teacher at Hoffman is, is very different. There aren't a lot of one-on-one, uh, deep dive exploration conversations like there are in therapy. And so we are that witness. So will you just share a little bit about the difference between those roles?
'cause my experience is that it's found by the student themselves and the therapist is on the sidelines. And because the work is done by the student on behalf of the student, that there's something that sticks a little more because they did that journey on their own. Do you see that? - Yeah, absolutely. Drew, I think that's a really powerful way of describing it.
There is a, an element of what you're invited to experience in the Hoffman process that is a direct invitation to tap into a resource that allows the individual in this community of deep explorers to then develop this capacity to release this process that I named earlier called integration, which is things being differentiated and things being linked through what in my writings I call a plane of possibility.
There's a whole deep discussion in whether it's the book aware or interconnected or developing mind or mind or whatever. There's lots of ways of reading about it. But just to say that I believe that through this thing, I'm not naming but that Hoffman names, it overlaps in my experience completely what, what I've written about as the p of possibility. And that p of possibility is the portal through which integration naturally arises.
My science take and my clinical take and my personal take on the Hoffman process is that it is brilliantly guiding the participants to access the resource of the p of possibility in this beautiful non-intellectual way that then on a daily basis gives you a, a, a training in tapping into the plane of possibility. So that even though I do it every morning when I do the wheel of awareness practice, so people can do, come to my website, do the wheel, they'll get into the hub.
That's cool. Even though I wasn't doing the wheel of awareness during the Hoffman process, this specific invitation from Hoffman to me was an invitation to get into the plane of possibility. And because it is the resource through which integration arises, my experience with my colleagues going through the process was that that specific aspect of the Hoffman invitation was really the key element to them finding this pathway to integration out of the chaos and rigidity that had been their life.
And some of the magical transformation that I was bearing witness to just as a fellow journeyer to me, was that Hoffman was inviting 'em to get access to the plane. They, the participants were then getting out of their own way, letting this resource liberate them being stuck in these things I would call plateaus of chaos and rigidity, and then this stuff would arise. That was a transformative integrative process.
So that's my take on how the, the Hoffman journey then allows you to develop a new capacity that's often not talked about in standard psychotherapy. And so your question drew about, well, you know, you're not meeting one-on-one very much, you know, you're not meeting one-on-one really much at all. You know, it's not therapy. This is not therapy. This is different from therapy. I won't even use the word beyond, it's just different. I'm gonna send my, some of my patients to Hoffman for sure.
You know, because there's something in therapy I can't do that I think Hoffman can do. And I, and I think there's a, an incredible synergy that some people will need to do Hoffman and we'll need therapy because to really integrate this element I'm talking about, it can be confusing. One of my hopes about this book, about the Hoffman process, so, and Synapse, that's the name of the book.
I love that. So, so, and Synapse invites the reader whether they're gonna do Hoffman or not, you know, without talk, it only stays at the pretty much level of stuff. It doesn't get into the details. So you're not, it's not ruining your experience, but it does give you an invitation to say, wow, there's an aspect of life that many of us going through the journey of modern culture don't tap into.
And I thought Hoffman beautifully invites you not only to become aware of that element, but to actually experience it on a regular basis and to honor it in a way that is absolutely beautiful and transformative. - Dan, I'm just curious, what's it like to have your Hoffman teacher here with you and to reflect on your experience, but also to integrate for the listener, the work you do and the experience you had. What's it like to talk about over the last hours?
What do you notice in as you say, this body that is Dan? - Well, you know, I love Mark. I love you, mark. And, and there's a beautiful relationship that I think everybody develops with their teacher. There's something super tender and vulnerable and special and supportive. And my experience of all the other teachers who were there during the week I was there is, they were all fantastic in their own ways.
The experience during the week at Hoffman with the instructors broadly is that they were real, they were vulnerable, super smart, caring, supportive, uh, giving the right amount of space, right amount of guidance when it was needed. They were all over it in terms of group process and making sure people had their respect. And so being here with Mark as an individual is fantastic, but also you're asking sort of general about instructors.
I think that the world would be a better place if people could be really authentically present in their journeys. Whether that's meaning, you know, how we interact with each other on the street, or someone, you know, deciding to pursue a career in this and that, or how we work in organizations, even like governments, how you would make national policy, how you would run the United Nations, you know, I mean, I once did this event in, in another country, in a parliament.
And when people did the wheel of awareness, they got in the hub. This guy got in so in touch with the feeling of love and connection in the hub, but he wouldn't share it with his colleagues because he said he would look weak in front of his parliamentarian peers. And I said, well, can I ask you a question? He goes, yeah, sure. I said, are you leaving love out of the reasoning when it comes to making national decisions?
So Hoffman is love, you know, Hoffman is the way that we had to survive the distorted kind of love we sometimes got or didn't get at all. And then how to liberate ourselves from those protective patterns in Hoffman terms or strategies of survival in the terms I would use that then keep you from letting love lead the way and love comes from that plane of possibility. I did this wheel practice with over 50,000 people.
And when people respond about what the hub is, like, one of the most common words, just like the parliamentarian, is that it's love. So when I say Hoffman is loved, and just earlier we're saying, well, this secret ingredient is tapping into the resource of the plane of possibility. In my science view, those are synonyms, right? That plane is the source of love.
So my experience with you, mark, and you know, with you Drew, and my experience with all the Hoffman teachers is the light that is coming from their essence, their soul, their, their psyche, their mind that that's coming from them is the light of love that comes from the planet of possibility. And when people learn to live from that plane, everything changes. And that's the gift that keeps on giving.
So that's, so the feeling I have now, uh, having been through Hoffman and that being here with the two of you speaking about the Hoffman process for the first time publicly like this, it's actually for the individual's growth. Sure. But it actually is a way to think about changing culture from what you could call cultural evolution.
Because instead of seeing love as weak, like the parliamentarian did, what if we saw love as the fundamental fabric of the universe that when we're away from it, from we lead to chaos and rigidity, but when we're with it, we're freed to live a life of connection and meaning. - Beautiful. Mark, thank you, Dan, thank you so much for giving of all of you during this conversation. I'm grateful it was - Such an honor for me too, to be here. Thank you.
- Thank you, drew. Thanks Mark. And, uh, what a, what an honor to be here with you too. - Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Rassi. 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 hopin institute.org.