Judith Blackstone on Healing Trauma Through Consciousness

self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the direction how they feed their good wolf. Our guest

this week is Judith Blackstone. She is an innovative experience teacher in the contemporary fields of nondual realization and spiritual, relational and somatic psychotherapy. She developed the realization process which will be discussing in this interview, which is a direct path for realizing fundamental consciousness, as well as the application

of nondual realization for psychological, relational, and physical healing. She currently has six books in publication and has taught the realization process for over thirty five years throughout the United States and Europe. Her latest book is Trauma and the Unbound Body, The Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness. And now here is our interview with Judith Hi. Judith, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm very glad to be here.

I'm very glad to have you on. Also, we've had a couple of needed to reschedule this a couple of times due to various things, so I'm happy we're finally able to do it. Your book is called Trauma and the Unbound Body, The Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness, and we're going to dive into the book in a minute, but let's start the way we always do with a parable There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside

of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandmother and he says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the mother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. Yeah, well, what it means to me is that we can, to some extent at least nourish the better qualities of our being, the better impulses of ourselves. But you know, it's an angel question, certainly since the beginning of psychoanalysis, and quite quite a long ways before that. Philosophically, whether these wolves are innate, whether we're innately good and innately bad, so that these two wolves are are an equal footing, that's an interesting question.

Some people, of course, think that they are. Some people feel that our bad tendencies are are agreed, and our hatred, even our aggression, our perversions or clouding of our goodness, and my experience well as a long term meditator and as doing the work that I've been doing for several decades now seems to bear up the ladder that when we get deeply inside of ourselves. We really make contact

with ourselves. Not an easy thing to do, but when we do, there's an a Nathan goodness that we that we feel that at the same time, as we reach a kind of sense of authenticity, like, oh, finally the masks are off, I can be who I am. This really feels like who I am. At that same point, there's a feeling of one thing of kinship with other life forms, so that other people kidship. And also we draw close to our actual love, our actual actual ability

to love of course, a wonderful feeling. And also happiness there seems to be and I'm just basing this on experience, there seems to be an innate source of happiness that

we can attune to in our body. Of course, when do we feel happy, Okay, you know happy maybe too strong a word, content, yeah, happy, when we feel love you know, like and I remember in my own process, as I began to feel the automatic spontaneous welling up of compassion for other human beings and to myself, was that occurs then that that greet the old wolf gets smaller and smaller. I just want to say one other thing about this, one thing that that bad wolf feeds on.

One of the things that it feeds on is being caged. Yeah, it builds a dreadl and build strength. So we need so even though, yes, we can focus on our better tendencies, and that's a whole lot better. You know, of course, we're talking here also about mindfulness. You know that we know how we're acting, that we know what we're thinking, we know what our responses are, so then we have a way, you know, we can start to look at

least the sources of that change and shifted. But if we just try to squill those bad impulses, they sometimes come out sneaky ways. Yes, I agree with everything you're saying, and I always find that distinction. You know, in the in the West, we tend to have the concept of original sin. Eastern philosophies tend to be more underneath everything. We're fundamentally good. And I think for purposes of practicality, I think that both those things, we have the seeds

of both those things within us. But I tend to agree with you that, you know, my experience has been as whatever the process that sort of clears away and opens me to a deeper nature or increases the sense of a bigger part of me tends to lead almost automatically to a lessoning of those sort of quote unquote bad wolf qualities. Yes, yes, that's that's exactly been my experience.

So that that battle. You know, when there is a battle between, for example, being kind to people and not being kind to people, and there's a battle, I think what we're really battling is our old hurts. Right. If I've been hurt by people, especially when I was young and very impressionable, I didn't have much to compare it to have been hurt by people that I distrust people, then I'm battling within myself. Should I be kind to them? Well? Why should I be kind to them? They will probably

not reciprocate that, but maybe I should. Maybe I should give them the benefit of the death. And that's the battlefield rather than rather than on the or in the level of ourselves. Right. It's kind of always ironic to me that when I am feeling better, like if I'm just in a naturally happier, more expansive mood, then it's just easier for me to be kind to people. And I'm not really having that debate, but when I'm hurting and whether that hurt come from past traumas or whatever,

or wherever it's coming from. But when I'm in a place of constriction and hurting, then it's very very difficult for me to summon kind feelings, even if my intention is to be that way. Yes, that's right. So let's talk a little bit about your book. As I mentioned earlier, it's called Trauma and the Unbound Body, the healing power of Fundamental Consciousness. So what I'd like to start with is do two things. First, I want to talk about what fundamental consciousness is, and then I'd like to talk

a little bit about what trauma is. So, but let's start with what is in your definition fundamental into consciousness. Okay, So fundamental consciousness is an experience. So I really don't know what it is ontologically or metaphysically, you know, I don't know what it is, but I do know that we can experience it, and as an experience, it's an experience of ourselves as actually made of a very very subtle I'm going to say dimension, for lack of a

better word, very subtle dimension of consciousness. So so our most subtle attunement to ourselves uncovered seems to uncover, rather than create, uncovers this very subtle consciousness that we can experience everywhere in our body at once. Now, at the same time as we experience it pervading everywhere in our body, so it feels like this is what we're made of,

we also experience it pervading everything around us. That means that even if we look at it table, the table is appears both to be substantial and permeable, actually pervaded

by consciousness at the same time, we don't know. I don't know if that experience of ourselves and the world around us as made of fundamental consciousness is actually like I'm actually seeing it the nature of the universe, which is what some traditional teachings claim, or whether I'm seeing my own mind after my own consciousness at the same time as I'm seeing what that consciousness reveals, as some other traditional teachings claim. So that's open for debate as

far as I'm concerned. But I do know that we can experience it right right, And I think that is that is an interesting point, And I think it's partially why these things that this deeper level of consciousness is often described as beyond words, because the experience is inefftable in a way, and and the intellectual debates about what's actually happening become kind of unimportant if you're actually experiencing it.

That's right, that's right, it's an experience. There are also teachings that say we can't experience it because there's nobody there to experience it. And I'm not of that school of thought. We can't experience it, it seems to I mean, as the Buddhist experiences itself. You know, it's not a consciousness of something, it's consciousness itself. But we know it right, we know it when when it appears, and we can also and we can also facilitate its appearance or emergence.

And that's what that's what my work is about. It is facilitating that what seems to be a self arising, uncreative experience of ourselves as this very subtle consciousness. Wonderful. And so a couple of things about fundamental consciousness that you say, you say it has three qualities, awareness, emotion, and physical sensation. Um, can you tell me a little bit more about each of those aspects of it or

each of those qualities? Yes, Yes, fundamental consciousness is the basis of our wholeness with that means that in order to experience it, we need to open to it throughout our whole being, our whole body, and our whole being. So when we do that, it's not just blank space. Although we can't experience of this emptiness, it's just empty,

just cheer transparency. We can't experience that way, but we can also experience it the same fundamental consciousness as having in a very subtle form, the basic qualities of our

human being, of our being and um. By the way, this uh acknowledgement of the ground of our being as having qualities innately is again a matter of debate within the traditional Asian spiritual teachings, but many of them, both Hinduism and Buddhism, have schools of practice and schools of thought that say that, yes, indeed, that this ground of our being, this essence or Buddha nature, does have qualities

in the realization process. As the name of my work and the realization process, I name these qualities awareness, emotion, and physical sensation as a way of opening our whole being, our awareness, our emotional capacity, and our capacity for physical sensation, opening all of that to the the whole pervasive ground of fundamental consciousness. So we attuned to the actual felt quality. By quality, I mean feeling only the word feeling I use to too many other contexts. I use the word quality.

We attuned to the experience the quality of awareness around and within in a way above our head, to the actual attunement to feeling of that space. When we do that, we experience that same quality preventing our whole body awareness and preventing our body and environment. When do we attune to it blower down right, like the mid third of our body. It has an emotional quality to it, not a specific emotion, because this is a very subtle, ongoing experience.

Fundamental consciousness is unchanging our experiences. It's unchanging, so we experience it this as steady as stable. In other words, so this emotional quality is deeper and more subtle than any specific quality. But once again, we can attune to it in the mid third of our body has a feel to it. Once we do that, we can experience it everywhere in our body and everywhere in our environment. Right, So even the chair, I don't mean that the chair

has emotion. I'm not saying that, but this emotion little ground pervades the chair right, pervades everything that we experience, both inside us and outside of us. Now, the third one, when we go way down on our body, down on our tour, sat down on our legs, we can attune to another feeling physical sensation, again more subtle and more ongoing than any of the content. Right to make a

distinction between ground and content. In this work, physical sensation as the ground is unchanging, more subtle than any specific physical sensation. Once again, we can attuned to it that lower part of our body, but then we experience it everywhere in our body and pervading everywhere. They blend together, right, They blend together awareness, emotion, physical sensation pervading our whole body and our whole environment, and they make up the

richness of that ground of our being wonderful. I really like that that distinction. So now let's go into the second part of of what I said, is like, let's talk a little bit about what trauma is, and then we'll kind of we'll tie fundamental consciousness and trauma together. But but let's start from your perspective. What is trauma? I'm using the word trauma in a general sense, as it often is used these days to mean anything that is too overwhelming, too abrasive, confusing, or painful for us

to take in as a whole. Mostly, of course, this occurs in childhood, where we're so extremely sensitive to the environment and we don't have anything to to balance it, you know, we don't have any our our understanding isn't developed, and we can't get away. So even angry voices or face that's usually loving suddenly looking very sorrowful or angry, even that something is ordinary commonplaces that can be traumatic and be too much for a child to take in.

Being said, when we're not hungry. All are the things that most children you know experience at some point in their life. Certainly, if there's more severe trauma such as being held down, being abused, being hit, beaten, being criticized, you know, consistently, uh so more severe trauma that will have an even greater effect on us, we will have to keep that out. So it is a realization process. My main concern is the realization of ourselves as fundamental consciousness,

and that requires us to inhabit our body. The more fully we inhabit our body, the more fully we open to and know ourselves as fundamental consciousness. But when the child or teenager, or even if trauma severe the adult. When we experience something that we cannot take in, an experience that we have to keep out to some extent, we constrict the instrument of our experience, which is our body.

We constrict through the through the level of the fast I think mostly fashion being a level of tissue that's everywhere in the body, that surrounds all of our organs. That means that we can constrict ourselves deeply, even within our body. So we're keeping we're keeping abrasive events out right, we're limiting the impact of these events on us so that we're not shattered. This is a very a very good thing that we do automatically to keep ourselves in tact,

to keep ourselves from shattering. We also constrict ourselves to hold back, to hold in anything that that is not met with love or approval from from our environment, you know, at the beginning, from our parents, right, So we hold back our tears, we hold back our anger, anything that's not going to be met with approval. And and so one of the things you say is that even though our basic nature is wholeness, that traumatic events cause us

to become divided. That that is what one of the primary things, as I understand what you're saying, that drives us out of fundamental consciousness. That's right. Either to realize ourselves with fundamental consciousness, it takes a very deep in where the tune into ourselves. There's a question of whether children are just naturally and fundamental conscious I don't think they are, no, because it requires deep in where the

tune into the very core of our being. Children are undefended, they're open, but they're not necessarily realized in this In this way experiencing themselves and their world is pervaded by fundamental consciousness. So it's when we go to then try to realize ourselves with fundamental conscious that we come up

against these constrictions. Now, we don't need to release all of these constrictions in the order to realize ourselves with fundamental consciousness, but we do have to really is a certain degree of them, right as as those constrictions in the fashion of our body, along with the memories of the trauma, right even the mentality of ourselves as as

children or as adolescents. When we when we went into those constrictions, as that releases, we are able to contact ourselves deeply enough fully enough that finally we're able to attune to that very very subtle ground of our being. And so let's talk now a little bit about how your process works. You know, you talk about that you approach the healing of trauma in two ways. You you attune to fundamental consciousness by inhabiting the body, and then

you use fundamental consciousness to release trauma based constrictions. So talk to me a little bit about what the method involves in a sense that the listeners might understand what they would be doing as part of it. Yeah, So,

so realization process is, that's what it is. It's a series of practices, and most of the practices work with inhabiting the body, tuning directly through through the internal space of the body, through that deep contact, being able to let go of ourselves on that very deep level, so that we let go of ourselves into this very very subtle consciousness pervading everywhere. So those are specific practices for

living within the body. It's very different than being aware of the body to actually be present within the body, and those practices also a tuned to these qualities of fundamental consciousness and directly to that permeability of the world around us that we experience when we experience our own permeability as fundamental consciousness. There are also practices for tuning to a very subtle channel that we're through our torso, neck, and head. This has been also in the Hindu system

in Hindu yoga called shashumna uh. In Tibetan Buddhism, it's called the central channel. So many of the Asian teachings recognize this very very subtle channel. Again, it's an experience, not something that we find, you know, you know, if we open the body after death or something. But we can experience this very very fine channel the depth of our being, and that helps us to enter into fundamental consciousness.

So these practices, there are also practices for relating with another person that way, because the more inward contact we have with ourselves, the more contact we can have with others. So most of the realization process involves those practices for realizing fundamental consciousness. But there's also a specific practice for releasing the constrictions, the trauma based constricts within the body. The very deep constrictions within us will not unwind just

by inhabiting the body. They're they're too deep and they're and they're tied to painful memories, right, So so we know better than to simply open our heart when we've been badly hurt. So these constrictions are not just physical, they're tied to tied to our being in a very

deep way. So those deep constrictions within ourselves need to be worked within a very specific way, which we do by tuning within them from the subtle core of the body so that we get a very fine attunement and focusing within them in such a way that they actually move further into constriction and then release. And a very important part of that release work in the realization process is that then after that little bit of release occurs, we inhabit the body, right, So we're not releasing into

just nothingness. We're releasing into that ground of our being. So we get to experience ourselves as as more hows right, it's more love, more voice, more understanding, more power, more sexuality as we release these holding patterns and more capable of opening to fundamental consciousness. So we've got a couple of questions about what you just said there. The first is I'd like to explore this idea a little bit more about the difference of being aware of our body

and living within the body. So let's take a common practice like a body scan. Is a body scan being aware of the body or is that living within the body or does it really depend on how you do it in the depth to which you go, Yeah, it depends on how you do it. But most people who scan the body, it will be just there. They're scanning their awareness through the body right so, or where their feet and then they were their ankles, and then they wear their legs, so so that's not yet living within

the body. Some people may just automatically, maybe because they already have that depth of contact with themselves when they do a body scan, they may actually enter into and be present within each place in their body. We we also, in the realization process, go part by part and then

we go to inhabiting the body as a whole. And that's because if we just simply told ourselves, well, okay, now I'm going to live within my body, we would leave out those parts of ourselves that we habitually leave out right, So if we're a little bit ungrounded, you know, having the clouds, then we won't include the feet in that internal inhabiting of ourselves in the internal presence. So that's why we go part by part, very much like a body scan, except that the maneuver is different. You know,

it's different to tap down find the feet. That's the awareness of you know, from my from my mind I focused down on my feet, or to actually know ourselves from within so that it feels like the internal space of the feet, for example, is conscious. That our consciousness is everywhere in our body, and so when it comes to inhabiting these parts of our body, you know, I've done some some work in this area. Imagine you're familiar with like Reggie Ray's work, who tends to do some

of this type of stuff. And where I find is that in general, what I notice is not a lot happening. Is that just a matter of not being attuned to it enough and needing to just go more slowly, spend more time, be more patient or kind of What are your thoughts on that when you're let's say, you say, all right, I'm going to descend into my feet and really be there, and that the amount of sensation that

is noticeable is very very low. Yeah, If that's the case, then then you're not deeply enough and fully enough in your feet. Of course we have to. We would have to look at what your expectation is, right, you know, what you're expecting to feel, because low is a subjective quantity. So maybe that's that's how it feels. Constant bliss is what I'm looking for in my feel right. Well, that's certainly your birth right, that's everybody's birth right on some level.

But um and in fact, we can attune to bliss within the feet. I actually have people attuned to a quality that feels like self. And it's you know, it's controversial. I'm not saying absolutely not saying that there is a self, whatever that would mean in our postmodern world. If there is a self, I don't know. But so you know, that's like an old, old debate from many, many years ago.

But the quality of self actually enters us into our wholeness. So, especially with people who have some experience meditating knowing themselves introspectively on any sort of sub level, I'll have them and habit each part of their body, and then a tune to the quality of self within the body that helps fill out that experience. But if you dwell there even without a tuning to anything in particular, the richness

of the experience will deepen. Excellent. H So that was the first part you mentioned, which is to a tune to fundamental consciousness by inhabiting the body, and then how

about using fundamental consciousness to release trauma based constrictions. Right, So let me just be clear that we're tuning to fundamental consciousness not just in the body, but we start in the body, but the tuning to it then pervading the space outside of our body, and then the space inside and outside at the same time, and then pervading our body and the environment. So we're tuning directly to it in the environment as well as within our body.

To the three qualities that we discussed earlier, not just that you know, before we get that's a separate, actually separate exercise, but just a tuning to that transparency, that permeability, feeling that we're in our whole body, then finding the space outside of our body, then experiencing that the space inside and outside of our body is the same continuous space, and then experiencing that the space that pervades our body

also pervades the other people in the room, the other furniture, right, even the walls of the room. Without leaving our body at all. So we're finding that very very subtle, pervasive space. Of course, it's not actually space, if it's anything, it's consciousness. But I talk about it as space because it's spacious. It's experienced as expands space. Right, So so we a tune directly to that. Now when we get to too many fundamental consciousness to heal ourselves from trauma, there's many things.

For one thing, just being in the body gives us a sense of actually existing, which you know, heals trauma in many different ways by helping us feel secure within ourselves, that we're in possession of that internal being that we can attune to that we know is who we are. Uh, That in itself is very healing built you know, as a basis for our self confidence, is a basis for feeling that we take up space. You know, that we're as potent as the other human beings around us in

terms of our the strength of our being. When we experience fundamental consciousness pervading our body and everywhere around us, we get to that very very subtle level of ourselves that has never been injured, right, We get to, oh, this is who I am, this has not been it's

just waiting here. This is the experience I'm talking about, not speaking metaphysically, I know it sounds that way, but we have an experience and when we get to it of having uncovered as if it's always been there, just the way they say, like in Buddhism and Zen Buddhism, they say, I've never moved from the beginning. I have never moved from the beginning, I said, We've always been this expanse is for face of space. But that's the

experience we uncovered there we are, We're still intact. Even if no matter how severe the trauma has been in our life, we can get to this part of ourselves that is still intact, still capable of love, right, still capable of feeling power, feeling sexual responsive, news, feeling, you know, understanding, expressing ourselves so forth, so that in itself you know really much. All of the realization process practices have some

impact on the healing of trauma. The locating of that subtle channel that runs through the vertical core of the body very important for our realization but also important for healing from trauma because it allows us to feel centered like that subtle core of the body feels like the center of our being. And then even if people are killing, going berserk around us, we're still in the center of our being. We don't need to get draw into the old powers of reactivity, the old patterns of reactivity, to

those kinds of circumstances that used to trigger us. Right. So, the subtle core of the body also very important, deepens our perspective, connects us deeply inside ourselves, very important for healing from trauma. Now we use that focus, that very refined, subtle, thin keen focus that we cultivate, that we get to when we know that subtle core of our being. We use that subtle focus to focus within the trauma based constrictions in our body as the first step to that

process of release. M HM. And so one of the things that you say is that you say psychological healing and spiritual awakening are you consider them be too intertwined in inevitable aspects of our progression towards personal maturity, And that a lot of spiritual people think that meditation might be sufficient for becoming whole um or if we can release the constrictions without knowing our personal history. And you say that I believe that healing does not occur or

last without psychological insight. So my question do you they're slightly more specifically, is to what extent do we need to, as you say, know about kind of what our traumas were. Obviously, some people have very strong, very clear traumas that they remember really well. But there's a lot of other people that don't have a lot of memory. Myself is one of them. Like, I don't think I had any capital T traumatic events right as a child, but I think

I had lots of lowercase tea. But my memory, my actual being able to recall an event, it's very blank back there. Um, what's kind of blank? My memory is just bad in general. But I'm kind of curious. How does somebody who may not have access to some of the psychological memory these work with this process? Okay, well, it's not that we have to remember everything, you know, but if we start with the body as we release

those holding patherns, that will often uncover the memories. Right as as the release is happening, We're like, oh, wow, I just remember, you know, my father coming into the room that time, you know, when I was three years old. You know, the memory for whatever reason, it's fascinating seems to be connected, associated, or even bound within the tissues. You know of the constriction, the trauma based constriction. So that will help unfold the memory. And then once the

memory starts to appear, if it does. If it does, then we can use that memory to help us be even more precise in how we constricted ourselves, so that the releases, you know, we're actually releasing them the exact pathway of the way we constricted ourselves. That's why it's important. It's not vital. I'm if we work just with the body and release it. The only problem with that, you know there will be released, and if we inhabit the body,

we can maintain it. But we are liable if we come into a situation that is similar to even those low grade traumas that we had as children. Uh, we're liable to constrict again, right because we don't know what

the trigger is. So so it's helpful. I won't say it's vital, but it's helpful to have the memories to I always begin when I work with someone individually, which by the way, I'm retired from that, but when I had worked with someone individually, I always start with talking in front of you want to make you know, established contact and trust in the therapeutic situation. But I also want to know what do people What do people know

about their past? If there's no memory at all, it often means that there was quite a lot of pain, you know that. So there's no rules about this, but that's often the case. The someone says, oh, I don't remember anything, Well, then I will, you know, ask some pointed questions, well where did you live? You know, what was your father like your mother like, just to start that, to open a little bit. But that there's just kind

of sketchy memory. It's fine, we can we can then proceed, you know, just with the memories that are there are usually the more important ones. You know. Of course, severe severe trauma will sometimes really be suppressed completely and even that will begin to emerge with the process of release. I also think it's good to know our our history, so that we know who we are, we know what

what we survived. Uh. Certainly, not to blame anyone, because it's pretty obvious that pain has passed down through the generations that our parents suffered or would not be causing us suffering. So not to blame, but to know, to have a passion for ourselves, what we went through, what we managed to survive, Why we constricted ourselves. How Come it's hard for us to love now? How Come it's

our TuS to express ourselves now? I think it's a good thing to know if if it's successible to you, wonderful. So we're near the end of our time here. Is there anything else that you feel like it's really important to your to your method, to your process that we haven't talked about that we should before we wrap up? Um, I don't think so. I mean, I mean there is one important aspect which I just mentioned very briefly, and

that's the relational aspect of the work. Where are we practice being with another human being in and as fundamental consciousness? For one thing, because we we created pretty much all of our constrictions, almost all of them in relation to other people. So we can open very lovely on our meditation cushion all by ourselves and time. As soon as we see another person, we'll go back into the fragmentation that self other fragmentation. So in the realization process, I

go right away to relational work. And also helps people know that they can experience oneness, real openness which is request the basis of trust and all those good things oneness with other people without losing inward contact with oneself. In fact, that oneness is based on inhabiting our own body, so it's based on inward contact with our own experience. Excellent, Well, Judah, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I've definitely really enjoyed talking with you,

and I really enjoyed the book. Thank you. You mentioned that you don't do individual work with people anymore, but there are a list of licensed teachers on your website. Will have links in the show notes to your website and all that stuff. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Yeah, thank you, Eric. Take care. M. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot

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