His face was totally changed. After 1 week, his face was rosy, not gray, alive. His eyes were shining. And I saw this face and I said, what? 1 week and you can buy it? I want that. And so I just had to see my brother. Then I decided to do Hoffman because that's where he came from. 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. Please be aware that this episode references substance abuse. Please use your discretion. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Hoffman podcast. Michael Venger is with us. Welcome, Michael. Hi. Hi, Drew. So nice to be here. It's great to have you. You know, this is gonna be a great
conversation. You have such a connection to some of the origins of Hoffman in Italy and just so much history as we have this conversation. I'm just aware there's gonna be lots of beautiful reflections about being a Hoffman teacher, but also about kind of cofounding the institute in Italy with your sister. Right? Yes. Absolutely. And well, I mean, I would even say I was there at the origin of the Hoffman process in Europe in general. Europe in general. So would you introduce yourself? Tell us
a little bit about who you are? Yes. I can do that. I think I'm I can say that right now after so many years, I'm really grateful to the life I had because there were so incredible and many, many, many experiences I had. Just that as an introduction. So in the beginning, I mean, I I grew up, was born in Switzerland, in the German part of Switzerland, and, had a normal childhood. Nothing special to say there. Although everything was perfect, I was born in 52.
So 1968, I was 16. And soon after that were the hippies were very present. So I became a passionate, convinced hippie and had a lot of adventures that I need not to tell because many of my age have had these experiences, learned a lot, but fell in a lot of difficult holes, maybe worked on themselves to get out or not. And for me personally, I was a DJ. I was a car washer. I was a waiter for lessons. I did theater school. I was a for 5 years, I was an actor.
Everything you can imagine happened. And then at one day, my brother, who was one of these guys who, was doing psychology, this all these people who are doing this funny work on themselves, I mean, I thought that was all bullshit. But one time, he came back in that time we lived together, and he came back from one of these seminars he was visiting, and his face was totally changed. All of a sudden, he's after 1 week, his face was rosy, not gray, alive. His eyes were shining.
And I saw this face and I said, what? One week and you can buy it? I want that. And so I just had to see my brother, then I decided to do Hoffman because that's where he came from. And so where did he do the process? He did the he did the first process in, in Germany, in Europe at that time. Because Bob Hoffman at that time was very active in in promoting the process and he had been invited to a conference in the Canary Islands that was organized by some German
esoteric people. And there he talked about Hoffman at that conference. And the organizers of this conference, Martin Kramer and Dieter Schmidt and some other friends invited him to Germany to do Hoffman there. And in that first half month in August 86, a lot of people did Hoffman that afterwards would open countries where Hoffman then would be promoted. For the first was Switzerland. That was my sister-in-law. My brother was the first. But in Italy, after Austria, even then France, Spain, Italy.
Oh, then after the UK. So that was quite a lot of them. So the French, institutes, the German institutes, the Austrian institutes, they all were in these first two processes. Guys who did promote it in Germany. And of these processes, they are still functioning in all these countries. And part of that was because Bob was traveling and meeting people that would then take on the process and expand it in Europe? Exactly. It was done in in the German
speaking part. That's why the German speaking countries were the first he would be invited to and to do the process. He met people and, or people heard about the process and promoted or organized it then. There was one thing that was important. After very short time. The esoteric newspaper of that moment, magazine of that moment, made an incredible positive article as the main article of that magazine of that month. It was named in 7 days to the higher self.
And it had a explosion of enrollments in the German speaking countries. And so you took the process. How many years ago was that? Well, I tell you, where we started was immediately after. I saw as my brother did the first process in Europe, immediately after that in 87, I did my process. I liked it incredibly. I would like to say something about my personal experience in the process. One has to know that in my hippie times, like many of these times, I had a lot of problems with drugs.
In that process, I arrived at the moment. It was the celebration of integration. One of the last days, there was a moment where I had an experience of light coming into me and filling me out from all directions and in all directions. And I felt for the first time what it is to be my being and not to be my character. To be what, say, in Hoffman, my I would say the higher self, spiritual self. And not that we are our spiritual selves and we have emotions and
we have intellect, we have a body. That was the first time that I realized that. And the second thing I realized in that moment was that I was as high as I was never before, and I was totally sober. Sober and yet high. And for my drug problems, that was the thing to heal, you know? That was where the healing from my in my whole life started. You could feel high and be sober at the same time. And high in another way also. You know, it's not the high of being, well, fucked up. It's the contrary.
It's the the high of being a total joy. Yeah. But not the high of escaping, but the high of connecting. Of being. Yeah. Of being what I really am. Michael, I just have to say, you're in this conversation in Italy right now. Right? Northern Italy? I'm leaving an hour or half an hour from Italy. I'm leaving in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland.
I see. And the building you're in, for example, like the town you're in, it dates back I imagine that history in Europe is so much different than history in the US. And these are old buildings you you occupy. Right? Yes. We are in we are in old buildings. I think the oldest is about the 15th century times. But this place was also they were living people of, I believe, in the last 2000 years, basically. Only there that the buildings are not here anymore. Europe is old.
Europe is small in a way because the distances are very small. I mean, actually Switzerland has 4 languages that are spoken, and we are 8,000,000 people. Four languages and yet just 8,000,000 people and having really kind of been raised in such a more crowded environment than compared to the United States. It's really culturally you know, it is very different with things that are beautiful in the Europe. It's the depth, it's the past that we have.
And in the US, and in the Americas in general, there is the space, the possibilities, the fact that there is no another past that in some way we started anew as a culture there. Tell us a little bit about Hoffman, Italy. You took the process, you come out, and you say, well, this is what I wanna do. What happens? No. It's not like this that it happened, but nearly. I mean, when I did my first process, I liked it and it was my sister-in-law
that organized the second one. And then I said my to my sister-in-law, listen, can I help carrying boxes or something? She said, yes. And then I came to help and I was sitting in in the sessions, you know, which was very at the beginning, it was very handmade still. Kind of primitive. In that sense. Yes. And and, you know, it was one person teaching, others doing it while doing it. So I helped there and, the American teachers
were teaching here. Bob, Stan Listerfancic, who passed recently, and others also from Brazil who spoke Italian. They came to teach, but I was talking about the German things. And then I saw how these other teachers were teaching this stuff Because I did also, help in the second and this third process to translate Bob Hoffman or Stan Stefanczyk or whomever came to teach. And then I realized, hey, this I can do. What they do, I can do. I just realized I can see people, I can name patterns. So
that was it at that time. And then I asked if I can start the training, and I did start the training. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to teach. And then I taught everywhere in Europe. And not only since I speak the languages, I could teach in France, and I could teach in Austria, and in the UK, and in the US, and in the German. Then at a certain time, Lisa decided and with my support to bring it to Italy.
And then she was doing the administration and organization and the the whole business part while I was doing the supervision, the presentations, the teaching of the teachers. This incredible teacher, Lisa, was my student. Not in the process, but as a teacher. I was so that's really Wow. What was that like before you founded it to teach it in so many different languages, so many different cultures? This thing you got to know so well and yet was presented in these different languages and different
countries. What did you notice in that experience? That is now a very interesting question, Royce. Because the process being the same everywhere, and also not the same because you have to adapt it so that it is understandable not only in the language, so you have to translate all the for the organizers, it's being the same everywhere, the process.
You see the cultural differences, And that's so incredible because how an Italian reacts, how a French reacts, how a UK person reacts is so different and do I understood something a little bit embarrassing that prejudices that we have on people came mostly true in that sense. You know, one believes that, English people, they are a little bit held back and, you know, and a little bit. Yes. That's how they are. And they are very, it's very, very polite.
There are many structures how one does behave. When you meet in English, you say, you talk about the weather, but you don't talk about the weather. That's not what we're doing there. So there are these things, and you have to know that in the UK. In Italy, you can tell to some participant is behaving a little bit not okay, yeah, in the group, let's say. In Italy, you can say, hey, Giovanni, come on. Look at how you're behaving. You can't do that.
I know. Look what what you're doing. In the UK, if you want to say the same thing and have the same effect, you have to say, oh, John, could I have a a little word with you, please? There were times that when I observed you, I could imagine that other people might be just a little bit would feel so well. Same message, phrased very differently. But part of what you're saying, Michael, is some of these stereotypes around different cultural norms actually are kinda true in your observations over
the years. And it's very good to know that. My grandfather, at least our grandfather, said, if you want to be understood, talk to others as if they were donkeys. Talk to others as if they were donkeys. Express yourself understandably. So as you develop as a teacher, you become aware of the nuanced ways you communicate in different cultural contexts, and then you bring the process to Italy? Well, Lisa and I, at the certain moment, decided to do that, to bring that to
Italy. And then we asked Bob Hoffman, of course, to come to teach the first process. And we had a teacher from Brazil who spoke a little bit English. And we had my sister-in-law who was teaching the process in Switzerland. And they came, and we did a wonderful Italian environment, the Hoffman process, like you would imagine a Tuscany with the little hills and the prison, just beautiful. But we didn't know yet how to teach the process. Bob Hoffman sometimes was socially not very
delicate with people. He had a very direct way of speaking and did not have an awareness that cultures are different. So on the way, I can tell you there were so many misunderstandings in that first process. There was so much to laugh about and to be embarrassed about. And if I can make another point of view there, it showed something that I also learned by teaching in other countries. Is that the process function even when it was taught in bad ways. I was teaching
everywhere in the world. Sometimes you have processes that are, let's say, from the professionality, perfect, by the way, the US, one of these countries. But there are many others also where it's done fantastic. And there are some countries where it's not or centers where it is okay, not so deep effect on the people is basically the same. And I thought that is like is one of the miracles of the Hoffman process. It's not so much about the people who
are teaching it. It's really about the people who are doing it, who are taking it, who are going into the experiencing and making it, and using the facilitators that are there to help them do that experience. Michael, you're saying something that I resonate with too as a teacher that it is not about the gurus upfront. It's not the personalities, the dynamic, expansive facilitators.
It's about this students doing it, the container that the process holds, the experiences, the rituals that people engage in during the week. Exactly. And this is for us teachers and for the teachers, so difficult and so important to learn. I was teaching a lot of teachers, let's say. And I loved teaching how to do the process.
This is a difficult one because we as teachers, we are facilitators of such a deep experience for the participant that, of course, she or he thinks it has something to do with the facilitators, but it doesn't. And the facilitator thinks it too, and that's where the problem can be. You know that a teacher facilitated things that I'm doing this work. And it's so it's not so easy also as a teacher because, of course, we try and we must do try to do the job
the best we can. There's a certain amount of humility that you're talking about as an important thing to embrace in the role of teacher. I think so. And I think also that when you are teaching, Hoffman, you learn that also through the teaching. You can become more humble. Yeah. You touched on Bob for a minute. You know, I wanna go back because it is called the Hoffman process. Bob did found it, and he was a unique being.
I think maybe it takes that kind of uniqueness to bring into existence something like Hoffman. I'm just wondering if you could share a little bit about Bob and your experiences with him, getting to know him. It's been a long time since he's been involved with the process. He's passed many years ago. But what was he like? Oh, Bob Bob and I had difficult times together and beautiful ones. But, I was one of the teachers with whom he had, and who had conflicts with him.
Beautiful ones. I had wonderful experiences with him. But we also truly, we were robbing each other somehow. Like butting heads almost. Yeah. Almost. What people forget is that Bob was really a extraordinary being or a unique being, you said. Yes. He was that. And he was filled with the necessary passion for his Hoffman process that it needs to bring into the world a thing like Hoffman. You know, it he was extreme in his passions for the Hoffman process.
With all the negative side, that's an most extremisms, even if it's for a passion, bring. But one of the most important things for me where Bob was extraordinary, that he channeled the central thing that is powerful in Hoffman, he channeled that. He got that boom, gifted through his intuition from in in the Hoffman thing, from his spirit. It was channeled. It was intuitive. It was not thought. It came from somewhere much deeper.
And that's why I believe this structure that the process carries in itself is so powerful because it has a deep truth to it. To see him work because he was just a sensitive person. I mean, I was his student. I mean, I was participating. So he was my the teacher of my small group. Right? Then there was a first meeting with him, and we said, hello. And then he just told me how I was, my patterns and my difficulties, and where I was cheating, and where I was not honest.
I hadn't said anything nearly. And how accurate was he? Totally. He is you look and since I was at the beginning, I was really traveling around with him a lot because I was able to follow him in every process. That's why I think I am by now the most the teacher with the most, oldness, how to say. Years of experience. Yes. I think there's nobody older than me. I mean, I did the last Hoffman in January this year. How old are you? 72. Anyway, but this thing of Hoffman being a channel.
When we were in France, for instance, we had this free afternoon. I took a free afternoon because he wanted to see Carnac. Carnac is just like Stonehenge in the in the UK. Is a thing with menhirs that go in lands onto the sea. It is a very famous, you know, place like Stonehenge. So we went there, and we were walking. He was standing between these things, and then was he was saying, I wonder where they come from. Put his hand on the stone. And then he said, well, I see a
man. He has only some fur as a instead of trousers. And I asked him where they come from, and he says it comes from that mountain, but there's no mountain there. Straight. And then the guy who was with us said, well, there used to be a mountain there. So part of what you're saying, Michael, is that Bob went up to these stones, put his hands there, got a message about the history of how they got there, that they came from this mountain, but you both could see clearly there was no mountain there.
And then he even did it again and got the same message that they came from the mountain. And then the guy jumps in and says, well, there was actually a mountain there in the past. That had been that had been washed down. That had been washed away. Yeah. And so what I want him to say that is that he had that direct thing and he used a lot of tools in the Hoffman process that were more based on intuition that were not now in the Hoffman process anymore. Because intuition you cannot learn.
It's not something that you can just teach to a teacher, You know, you can learn it. So these tools, and for me, unfortunately, are dropped. Doesn't matter on the process. Process works anyway. It was just for they were so magical and incredible tools. I don't know. They still do the Cymbal test? The Cymbal experience is still in the process. Yeah. But it's the last thing
that is still in there. Yeah. You're saying the process still works, but it's lost some of the intuitive interpretation that teachers bring in part because as we have new teachers, it's not something you can necessarily teach these new teachers how to be intuitive. Exactly. It's not it's not such an obvious thing, you know. And I think to make Kaufman as successful as it is, it is important that you do it in the way that you make sure that the quality is stays on a high level of new teachers.
In that context, you would probably lose half the teacher because that you can't teach. As I said, the most important experience in the many experience of of it was that experience of light that I had prepared throughout the whole process. But then after that, okay, yes, I talked to Hoffman for many years and, I mean, I've been on the
professional level. I continued with Liza, Italy and even when Liza went out after some years and my wife came in from the beginning, and then the 2 of us were doing Italy, and then I got ill 10 years ago, severely ill, so I had to be to interrupt. I couldn't work anymore. And in the meantime, like so often it happens, I split with my wife. I sold her my part of the Hoffman Institute and stopped working for Hoffman because for 2 years I
couldn't do it anyway anymore. I started another thing and that has had then to do just with spirituality. And that was so coherent on my life before, on what hit me in Hoffman, what I tried to support in my whole life as a teacher. And now the last 10 years, I'm just busy with non dual spirituality in the context of a Sufi order, but of a western Sufi order that is not connected only with Islam. Not at all. How would you define Sufism?
Well, the best definition that I was given is a Sufi is somebody who feels at ease with paradoxes. There's that non dual. The Sufism, as I understand it, is a very old thing. It's and I believe it has basically to do with people who were working with consciousness and philosophy before philosophy even started. One philosophical thing is that it seems that it started anyway still also that increase came from Greece to the east, then to India, then from India back to Turkey, and now back to
the west again. So that's also in the story. People say Jesus was a Sufi because that's how it looks like. That is just people who were interested in the true mystery of what life is, what is real, what God is, what we are. Why do you think this nondualism and paradox holding is so important in today's world? It seems like we live in an all or nothing kind of up or down, forced dichotomy world. Why is that Sufi approach of holding the paradox so important today? I believe
it's like kind of white blood cells. White blood cells. Yes. You just gave a description of the situation on the planet. If I say more grossly and more uglier, like, is we have a total chaos and we're going towards collective suicide. Right? That is what I believe is our planetary situation. So our system, our human being says, woah, we have to do something and creates like in the sixties, in my opinion, the hippies and the drugs.
It creates something to make a strong change in consciousness to try to go in a better direction. That's why I believe that now holding paradoxes is so important because as you say, it's too chaotic. Mind cannot do it anymore. It's too much. We have to go in another level of being which has to do with love and the heart and being kind and being compassionate and helping. And so in this direction, that can help us. And Hoffman, for me, does the first step in that direction. Absolutely.
Because it starts to be more kind to yourself. Which is a key first step? The critical first step. Critical first step. Absolutely. What's next for you, Michael? You live with Lisa. Your mom is also there. She's a 102, about to turn a 103 and healthy. Fantastic. What's next for you? What do your days entail? The days is one thing, but what does the life look like now? Right? And then I comes, something that a teacher told me once. There are 3 stations in life. No? Youth, adulthood,
and looking good. When you're in the looking good phase. The looking good phase is now that to the old people, you also, you look good. And the subtype is fuck, he's being old now. So I feel at the very beginning of the third phase, at the beginning of a new phase. And it's with the phase of of getting old and at the very end, it's dying. Right? But it's clearly, I'm at the beginning, but I'm not a young guy anymore. I'm
an elder now. You and I taught together some, maybe 12, 13 years ago in White Sulphur Springs in California, and you used to come over from Italy to teach every now and then. Right? Yeah. That was nice. Yeah. That was a beautiful sight, wasn't it? Oh, it was great. But, you know, for the participants, the site where they do the process is the most beautiful sight. I mean, we were once in Italy, we we were doing it in a place that was so incredibly hot
in summer, you could not support it. It was an ugly hotel in a quite nice environment, but the inside and outside ugly. People came back to make vacation steps because, you know, in their memories, the most beautiful. So there you see how the mind the feelings actually colors all. What else should we talk about? I don't wanna wrap unless you've gotten everything out. I've been also for 8 years, executive director of Hoffman International.
And explain for the listeners what role Hoffman International plays in the larger Hoffman Stratosphere. Hoffman is, if you could say, is a franchise system. That's the nearest it is working together. It's it's the nearest description of a system, how we are is it would be a franchise system, but not a very good functioning franchise system. Let's say, like this. There are some very big centers. The biggest is, some who do many, many processes, many, many,
students. And they are very small. They are middle centers, and they have realities that are very different one from each other. And all this is the administrative core of it, or 3 executive directors who are also license holders. That's who are also have also are one of these, license license holders. Yes. They are elected by the others, and they do the administrative things. They're the ones who collect royalties.
They're the ones who coordinate the Kaufman International Conferences where the politics of the next 2 years, etcetera, are discussed. So these conferences where everybody from all over the world, all the Hoffman centers in different countries come together. Come together, actually. Yes. Of course. That's not so obvious. Yes. They come together and meet physically usually for 5, 6 days and discuss what needs to be discussed.
And try to get aligned this difficult thing with so different realities to get them on a coherent reality. It sounds like the differences in the cultural and linguistic presentations of the process can't get too disparate that on some level, we've gotta come together as institutes to have at least some basic alignment. And that's what happens at these meetings. To try to make a a alignment and they are pretty good in it of the quality control. You know? There's needs of quality
control. There needs a way to enforce breaches and stuff and stuff. All that all that stuff. That has to be done. It's an organization. And so you had one fairly recently, maybe 6 months ago or last summer? Since I stopped working because I thought 12 years ago, I didn't work in Italy anymore. But in Germany, once they called me because they needed a teaching the last moment. They asked me, could you possibly come and fill that spot? And I said, why not?
I had already stopped working in that sense since some years. And, then I did it, I liked it, and then I said, Alice, when if you need a teacher, you can ask me. And but I told her, I don't wanna be in the faculty. I don't wanna do anything, you know, outside. If I just come and teach if you want me. So I wouldn't be able to teach in the US, for instance, where you need to be somehow inside that. No. I just come and teach the Hoffman process.
Your life and Hoffman have been so intertwined, have they not? They have been. Yes. Like in my second part of the 3. The second part was Hoffman. The adulthood part, and then the 3rd part now is the looking good part. Well, Michael, you are looking good. Nevertheless. What what's it been like to reflect on Bob and your early years as a hippie and the role Hoffman played in your life? What's that been like for you?
Very nice. It took me back some memories that were that were not visited since quite some times. By the way, memories. My brother was also was a half Natisha at the beginning, and then he became AIDS, had AIDS, and was also dying during that time. So death was already there somehow. That was in when we, Lisa, and I decided to do Hoffman in Italy. I remember one of the moments was when we were he was still teaching in a Hoffman process, but it was the last.
He couldn't do it physically anymore, but then also mentally because AIDS attacked his brain. And so we had to decide to do that adventure without him. That was a very tough decision, but obviously the right one because he then, of course, died. That was a memory that came up now that he was there. Yes. And he was important for me at the beginning because it was through him
that I went there. It was because also his wife already talked about the process to me before that, moment moment when my brother came back. So I had already heard about it. Well, Michael, I'm I'm grateful for this time, your sharing so much about those early years in your life now, and love to Liza. It's been a long time since I've talked with her, but we miss her in here in the US. And she told me, of course, to say hello to you, and, of course, I forgot. You did you did just now.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and president of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Razzi 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 hompaninstitute.org.