Trauma’s Impact on Your Energy Throughout Life

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

It’s pleasure. Thanks, Jason.

Jason Prall

So I’m curious, how did you really get into the chakra system? There’s a lot in your bio, and I really wanna cover a lot of the things that you specialize in. I mean, how did you get into the chakra aspect of trauma? Because that’s not really a place where many people go when they start investigating trauma with their themselves or with their patients or clients.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

The chakra system is wide and vast. So it’s not just seven that you learn in yoga . There are many more beyond what the diagram is behind you, depending on the lineage that you learn. But I used the seven that we learn in the yoga system that came to the United dates, just as a map. So in other words, for those that are familiar with those seven chakras that go up the energy system where your afferent and efferent nerves cross along your spinal column, there’s a lot of energy in each one of the points where that crossing happens. Afferent and efferent nervous system bundles are ones that conduct nerve signals to and from the rest of your body to your brain. And so wherever those cross along your spinal column, there’s a lot of energy. And the word chakra from Sanskrit is wheel. And so this is a wheel of energy, and we set up how that energy flows and reacts based on that nervous system bundle based on our perceptions from when we’re children with a not fully developed brain yet. And we go through our unique experiences as we are growing and developing through our human growth and developmental stages, as from birth forward. So however we set up that nervous system is how that wheel of energy is going to be set for us going forward, until we are in adulthood, and we get some call to action, where we go, “Oh, maybe that’s not the way I want this. 

Maybe I don’t want to have this happening all the time where I trigger to whatever it is, the meaning is, that I’ve created to a trauma from past time.” So the chakra system for me becomes this map where you can track your own system. So the root chakra is considered the survival, at the sacral or at the root perineal area. And so when we think about it that way, it’s all to do with safety and survival. And what I always tell people is, if you don’t feel safe, or you’re going to survive in this body, in the context of your environment, in this life on this planet, then no matter what you do in terms of healing, it won’t stick. Because if you don’t feel safe, then you’re constantly sending that perceptual feel that I’m not safe, I’m not going to survive, you’re gonna send that signal down that nervous system and tell your body what to you next. So it’s going to be constantly moving into this fight, flight, freeze or faint. When we’re children, it’s freeze. And so we have a lot of this frozen into our system. So that survival piece, root chakra, then you can move up. You have to heal those, and if you’re wounded or traumatized in the developmental stage of the root chakra, that’s zero to six months old. So that also means preconception, conception, when you’re in utero. And so a lot of that’s unlooked for, unknown, unwitnessed, it’s preverbal, it’s even pre postpartum, right? So you have to go back and you have to invest these places if you have a lot of survival issues. So that becomes that signal. 

When I talk about the chakra system, I’m talking about, let’s explore that root place as your map. So let’s track your hurt. And I, you mentioned in my bio, the healing unresolved trauma study, I teach people how to track that hurt through that model. And then the second chakra is going to be creativity. It’s your sacral chakra and sensuality. And so my PhDs in sexology, there’s a lot of wounding that can happen in your developmental path along the way toward your introduction and expression of your sexuality and creativity. And so then we track that. If you have wounding in arrested development and either of these two chakra systems and developmental spaces, then again, it doesn’t matter how much other stuff you do for healing. Those have to get, that’s your foundation. Those have to get balanced before you can move on. And when I say balanced, I don’t mean like, here’s your Bija sound for the root chakra, just chant lum, lum, lum while you’re visualizing a red ball of light moving up through your spine, that’s not it. You can balance yourself doing that, chakra balancing, doing a tuning fork, doing chanting, all of that’s beautiful and wonderful, but I’m talking about healing your trauma at those places. And so that’s why I use the chakra system as a way of being able to track it.

Jason Prall

Yeah, it’s funny with the chakras, with my background heavily in science, years and years ago, this was a concept that I thought was pretty airy-fairy. I didn’t really believe in the chakras, right? It was only through these spiritual concepts, and this is what I witnessed too, people placing crystals on their chakras, and it all seemed kind of just ridiculous to me. It wasn’t until I was able to start feeling some of these energy centers, that I recognized, “Oh, there, there actually is something there. There’s a realness to this concept.” And I still didn’t really fully understand because I didn’t really buy into this, kind of what you’re talking about. There was this perception that, “Oh, if I just put a crystal on there, then everything’s good,” right? Or if I just wear this certain color, or this type of thing. And while I now do believe that there is some influence there with color therapy and these type of things, I think what I was really feeling was is that we’re missing the deeper aspects. And so I’m really glad that you laid that out because there’s, and I now have experience with this in my own trauma and experiential conditioning from my childhood, where I’m particularly blocked and where I have a lot of access. And so I do find it a very interesting map, and I love that you’re bringing a depth to that map with regard to trauma. Because this seems to me a massive piece when it comes to healing anything and when it comes to energy. The access that I have, the ability to cultivate energy, the ability for energy to flow and be balanced and coherent seems to be very, very intricately related to these chakra systems in the body.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

It’s very true. And there’s a lot now around highly sensitive people. I mean, I’m a highly sensitive person. About empaths. About here’s what you need to do to protect your boundaries, to protect your energy fields. And what I don’t hear being said a lot is that that has to come from the inside where you set your boundaries with yourself first. Like for example, you’re stressed out and you say, “Oh, this has been such a hard day. I deserve to have a piece of chocolate cake,” or “I deserve to just sit and watch Netflix,” instead of dealing with what’s going on. Or, “I deserve,” whatever it is, right? The boundary to set with yourself is to say, ask your system what it needs, not the mind. The mind will always lead you astray . The mind is not the one that needs to be making those decisions because it has this imprinting from childhood beliefs. So the child will say, “Oh, yeah. When I got my shots, I was given a lollipop.” So that’s a comforting thing. So the mind will say an Oreo cookie is the perfect thing for you right now. So the boundary setting is, “Okay, so what does my system actually need right now?” I am having a terrible day. What does that mean? Does that mean that somebody yelled at me, and I feel unheard and unseen? So then if I feel unheard and unseen right now, then who’s the part of me that feels unheard and unseen? And how can I show up for that part of myself? It’s definitely not with an Oreo cookie or with a Netflix. It’s going to be with you taking yourself, that part to a calm, safe place and listening. 

How can I be here for you? What do you need to say to me? Everything you say to me is so important because you are important. And you’re the only one that knows how to do that for yourself. You’re the only one that knows the exact right language, the exact right timing and cadence and tonality. This isn’t tuning fork tonality. This is you speaking to yourself in a tone that that part of you can receive as loving compassion. And also maybe you reteach, or you teach for the very first time, that little one a skill they needed to know, but they didn’t get when they were a child. And so then that’s the skill right there that needs to be put in and practiced rather than an Oreo cookie in that moment. And so we always just wanna start with our boundaries with ourselves and really learning. And that’s where the chakra system becomes this really lovely map or path that you can track along the way and say, “So what part of me right there was that, and how can I show up for that part? And who do I maybe need to bring with me to that part, because I’m not up to it right now. I had a really terrible day, you know? And so then is there an older wiser version of myself I can bring in?” Because quantum physics tells us that time is not linear and that it’s all like you heal the past, you’re healing your future, so to speak. It’s not a line, it’s a circle. And all the parts of you, including the younger ones, are present in the same cell of time as your older ones, the ones that will draw their last breath and even maybe the ones that are beyond this body, the consciousness, right? You can bring all of that to yourself. And it’s so much healthier than calling a friend to just vent or complain.

Jason Prall

Commiserate, yeah.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Commiserate, which is not a bad thing. Or having a glass of wine to calm yourself down, or all these things may be great. But this is the true self care that I’m talking about. This is true boundary setting. Not, I have to have anyone that pushes that trigger away from me. How do I clip the wires to that trigger, right?

Jason Prall

Yeah, well, and this is what’s interesting right now is that there’s so much that can trigger us, I’m finding in my own life and with others. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world right now. There’s a lot going on, it feels like. Things just feel a little bit heavier, a little bit more chaotic in a sense, energetically. And so I’ve just noticed that it’s, well, uncomfortable sometimes. It can bring things up to the surface to be looked at, to be examined and to be worked and integrated. So there is a challenge with that, I found, is that sometimes I can see when I’m caught, or I’m stuck, and I’m reacting as a child part. And there’s other times where I can’t see it, and I’m so deeply embedded in it. So I’m curious if you have any strategies, practices, tools, tips to get unstuck or unhooked from being in the midst of that.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

I love what a mutual teacher of ours taught one time when you were present too, and she said, we’re all in this field, this grid together, right? And we are, we’re all contributing to it. So we have to be responsible. This is the part that she said, but we all have to be responsible for the emotional field that we have inside of us, ’cause we’re creating the field that’s outside of us. So it’s up to us. And so one of the things she said is, given that we’re all in this field together, you can witness in the animal kingdom like the sea lions. If there’s a baby that’s separated from a mama, you can hear the baby go . Right? And then you’ll hear the mom on the other side where they’ve gotten separated going . And so then they have to find each other, and they use that call. And so the way that I talk about this in terms of if you’re stuck, then you borrow a brain. You do the . And you have set up in your community your particular therapist or person that has, the Chinese always, they say, if you wanna know where you’re going, ask the people that have been there and are coming back. So who has been there and has come back and has some skills that maybe you need to learn and some support that they can offer for you? And that takes a lot. I always think shopping for a therapist of this nature is just as important as the time you spend to find your life partner or partners, that it’s not something where you go, “Well, that didn’t work for me. So therefore therapy doesn’t work for me.” That you find the right people, and they’re not always going to stay the same, much like maybe relationship partners. You may outgrow one, and then you need to put that same kind of energy into finding your next one. So that when you go , that they can respond accordingly . You say, “I’m stuck and I need some assistance.” And so you’re sending out your little bat signal into the field, and you know that you’re going to get it answered.

Jason Prall

Yeah, I love that. And using your analogy, I tend to be polygamous. In other words, I’ve got lots of different people to support me using a variety of different therapies, because there’s so much nuance to some of these things. And everybody’s got, even if people are using the same type of therapy, I found, they have different intuitive of skills. They have different capacities. They have things that they’ve really developed and things that they’ve maybe underdeveloped, and so.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

But, one of the things, Jason, is you’ve spent your time to vet that.

Jason Prall

No question.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

And to practice and to know then, so that when you do get stuck and you lift your voice into the field, you’re going to know the frequency of the one that you need because you’ve spent the time to find those people for your healing tribe. And that’s time well invested.

Jason Prall

Yeah, and what I can honestly say is that this has been a priority that has moved up the ladder in my life. Other things have been pushed to the side, and this has taken a pretty big front and center type of position in my life. Because with enough practice and enough sessions, I’ve recognized how deeply important it is. Not, at first, it was to heal. And then what I’ve recognized is that it’s actually allowing me to become more centered, more aligned, more relaxed, more calm, more easeful. And that then changes my entire reality. So, sure, there’s little pieces that I still feel that I need to heal, but that’s becoming less and less. It’s more of like, how do I become more aligned? How do I become more easeful, more peaceful.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Pushing the big chunks out of the way at first, right? And then you get down to the fine tuning and the nuances. So when you’re healing the big chunks, that’s when you’re having those big triggers, or you’ve finally come to realize you’ve been disassociating your whole life, and you’ve numbed yourself out, and you didn’t even know that there was anything going on. But there’s evidence in front of you because your beach is littered with failed relationships or unhappiness or an emotional state that doesn’t rise to joy, or just, you start to slowly, slowly think, “Oh, maybe there’s stuff I haven’t been feeling.” Or if you’re a real super feeler, you start to realize, “Maybe I don’t have to have all of the traumas of the world run through my system.” Right?

Jason Prall

Yeah.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

So there are time points along your timeline that you start going, “Oh, okay. Maybe there’s something that I can work with here.” And so then that’s Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. You go find a mentor or two or three in our case. Right?

Jason Prall

Right.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Four or five, six. And you continue to gather those skills, master them, as you’re integrating with the inevitable challenges that life sends you so you can practice them. And then you come back as the oracle of that particular skill for your community. And then another challenge will come, and then you have to find another mentor. And that’s just how it works. And so these maps are important because it helps you track where you are. What we know is that we don’t stop developing at the age of 18 when we leave home. That’s where we have some like core basic skills in place. Like we know how to keep ourselves alive at that point. We can leave the nest, and then we continue to develop and evolve. And there several different maps for that too. And I don’t think a lot of adults realize that.

Jason Prall

Mm. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I love about you is that you, I still feel like you’re on this journey, and you know that you’re on this journey, and you’re continuing this journey, as opposed to winding down your life, so to speak. That you’re stepping into a new aspect of your journey, which basically wasn’t even accessible to you when you were young. Now, you’re in a totally different aspect of your life. So maybe talk to me about that, for those listening, that maybe you’re in their 50s, 60s, 70s, transitioning into their golden years. And what I really would love you to hit on is what I’ve noticed, is that we lack elders in our society. And what I mean by that is that what I’ve noticed is that we seem to lack the honoring of the older generations. And we don’t seem to know how to step into that role as an elder. What does it even mean to be an elder? What does that look like? Comparatively to some of the indigenous and other societies that I’ve come across, that’s a really important position in society is the elder. And it really guides the foundation of the youth and even of the people that are in their 40s, 50s and even 60s. And so talk to me about that. What does that mean to you? And what does that look like as you kind of transitioned into that part of your life?

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Well, I was just interviewed an hour ago by somebody else for a different event. And as this is being recorded, we’re moving into the new year, and they ask me like, how am I spending my new year? And I’m spending it in ceremony. I’m spending it quietly. And I’m opening up my system to the messages that I am requesting for how I can be of service for this new year. And so it’s a time period of quiet receptivity is the way that I experience it, where menopause means that you take a pause and you’re quiet. You’re not having to juggle children on your hip and another one on the floor and keeping them out of the fire pit and tanning the hide and grinding the corn anymore. You know that now it’s a time where the wisdom that has been attained through those different stages of life can be parsed out when requested. But then also more. Because as this body begins to degenerate, it’s not now, but it will, then this consciousness will move on from it. That’s the way we’re all designed. And so then what is it that this soul or this spirit inside of this vehicle was here in the first place for? And so then that examining comes up, right? This is the time for that. This is where on the medicine wheel, you’re moving into the winter of your life. Right now, I’m in the fall, and I’m moving into winter, and that’s the time of quiet contemplation. And I’m so looking forward to this time period, and I do every year and have for the last few years. I don’t want to spend it with a lot of other people in a party situation or visiting with small talk. It’s a time when I wanna hear from source, and then take that and offer it when I’m asked, when it’s requested. So that’s what that means for me.

Jason Prall

Yeah, I love that. And that’s one of the things that I really experienced when we filmed the human longevity project, speaking with people in their 80s, 90s and beyond 100. There was a certain energy about them that I noticed, the ones that I spoke with. They were generally full of laughter, pretty lighthearted. They were willing to share. They had deep wisdoms, and yet so simple, their words. And so it just made me, A, cherish the older generations, and also really miss or long for the reemergence of that in our society, where we are not ashamed to be old, that it’s not a bad thing to look old, that we start to put that on a pedestal a little bit and recognize the life wisdoms that one has to share. And so there’s just a treasure there that I think, and I do see it. I do see this emergence of this recognition that there’s something there.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

My 27-year-old daughter at Christmas time, I gave them all human design reports that I had done for them, like 55-page reports. And I have four children, and I gave it to their partners, and I gave it to my husband and my mother. And I did these like, this was a big piece of time chunk. And my daughter came up to me, and she said, “Thank you for always gifting us with things that make us be better people.” And I thought, “Yeah, that’s really sweet that she recognizes that and witnesses it.” And she cherishes and values, both of my my daughters do, and my sons do too, but my daughters really get it. And they just like, they want to ask for that wisdom, and they ask it a lot. And I think that that, I think that that family piece is important where instead of having to, and we have to individuate and differentiate from our family of origin and our parents and find our own paths, but then sometimes I think in our culture, we cut that cord, the apron strings or whatever it is we wanna call it, so completely that we forget that actually our parents and grandparents are those people that have been there and are on their way back. And if we just think that we’re only supposed to figure it all out for ourselves, we’re the bootstrapping society, then we’re gonna have to repeat a lot of mistakes. And that just seems like such a waste. And I think that’s where a lot of that lightheartedness and laughter comes from when you get older. It’s just like, “Oh my gosh, the things that I precipitated over are ruminated on, or I thought were so important.” There becomes a lightness to all of it. And just kind of like, “Oh, here we are in the human field,” and, sorry, it can be a shit show . Potholes and all kinds of things that we fall into.

Jason Prall

That’s for sure.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

And the more that you can start to laugh and really like play with it as this is just a passing moment in time, then then a lot more happiness is yours to be had.

Jason Prall

Mm. So I’m curious, and I never really thought about it this way, but do you think tying back around to your HURT study and all the work that you’ve done with trauma, do you feel like there’s a piece this, is it trauma cost, this idea that we’re not honoring our elders, that we’re not stepping into that, that we’re not relying on others. What is it that about our society that failed to get down that path?

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

It’s a blaming shaming kind of energy that we have, and this is an energy summit, and the energy of blaming and shaming, it causes victimization. And so if you’re constantly feeling like your parents are to blame, the generation ahead of you is to blame, the government is to blame, the president is to blame, the, you name it, right? Someone’s always the cause of your suffering. Then there’s no asking that happens because there’s an energy of rebuffing, of pushing away, instead of an open receptivity of, I’m really curious about your experience and what did you learn from that? And so it’s so black and white, and it’s an arrested developmental state of being. That’s the way children think is black and white thinking. It’s either good or bad, and there’s us, and there’s them. And that’s arrested development. That’s a root chakra and a sacral chakra wounding. And it affects our empowerment and our solar plexus. So all three of those chakras, those lower ones on the map, we share with the rest of the animal kingdom, and the rest of the animal kingdom seems to be doing it a lot better than we do. There’s not blaming. There’s not shaming. There’s not holding on and licking wounds that are emotional and mental forever and ever and ever and ever. There’s lick the physical wound, get up and go hunting again, and let the cubs climb all over you and play with you, and when you’re irritated with them, roar at ’em, and then they figure out your boundary pretty quickly. There’s like this, but they come back, and there’s like this ability to be in that space. Humans have a chakra system that goes above that, where we know we have to hold the tension of, we know we’re going to die, and we also have to live with that.

Jason Prall

Yeah, that’s what I’ve noticed is it causes a real issue in the psyche. Right?

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

It does.

Jason Prall

And I know you’ve.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

That’s up here. Right?

Jason Prall

Yeah, yeah.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Those are those upper chakras. And so if we’re so centered on our survival and blaming those who are making us unhappy, then we never actually, if we just do the spiritual bypass and move into, “Oh, I just wanna do things up in the spiritual space.” And I don’t really deal with what it is that I’m feeling and what my belief systems are and how I trigger around these lower chakras. Then they’re going to wind up biting you subconsciously over and over and over again. And you’ll find yourself triggered in an emotional state of some kind of energy that you’re not going to love, and you’re gonna be spewing it out onto everyone else, projecting it, and that’s what we’re seeing right now. I mean, in my lifetime, I’ve never seen it this way, with human on human violence, the way that we are doing. So this is, I think this is really a time for us to sit down, be quiet and start taking some serious responsibility for the emotional field that is ours, that we generate that connects to everyone else. And to really just stay in your own lane with your thought processes and really they work on those and healing the ones that are causing you suffering and causing you pain. So I think it’s a blame-shame formula that’s causing what we have in front of us.

Jason Prall

Yeah, and that makes sense that you say that. And I think it’s really interesting when you look at two people that’s not you, two other people, and they’re going through the same experience, and yet one reacts radically different than the other. That is a perfect example of how conditioning and traumas and experiences that have been either metabolized, digested and integrated or not can then show up in the world. And it’s so easy because, I wanna make this distinction, and I know you agree with this, that there is, there are things out there that are wrong or distorted or could be improved. So it’s not that things out there aren’t bad, so to speak. It’s just, where are we placing our energy? It’s so much easier to point the finger and say, “Well, that’s broken. That needs to be fixed. That’s malicious.” And the reality is, yes, and how am I responding? How am I reacting? What’s going on inside here? So what are some, I know you have your course of healing trauma through the chakra system, and there’s some deeper work that could be done. I’m curious, how can people manage maybe throughout their day, because that’s a big part too, is just helping to manage energy as I experience things.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

I’ll give three tips for that, and before we do that, I just wanna add to what you were just saying. When the Chinese occupied Tibet, there were a lot of Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns that were killed and imprisoned and tortured. And there’s a story about one monk that was released many, many years later and came to the United States, and the Dai Lama was here, and he met with the Dai Lama, and the Dai Lama said, “So how are you, and how was that experience for you? And I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” And he said, “Well, I was in grave danger,” to his holiness. He said, “I was in grave danger.” And he said, “Oh, tell me.” And he said, “Of losing my compassion for my captors, several times.” And that story has circulated around a lot, and the first time I heard it, I found it very compelling, because I thought how interesting, because here’s a culture and a spiritual path that is devoted to you taking full responsibility for what’s going on in your own mind. And the realization that the mind does not have all the answers, that indeed it’s the one creating the problem. And so you can’t go to the mind for the solution, because now you’re in a circular thought process that’s insular to you. And so, of course, you’re going to think that you have the answer to it, and it can keep you in a vicious cycle. And so if you start focusing on, well, then how do I take responsibility for my own mind, my own emotions, my own thoughts, one of the ways to do that is just to do that very thing. So the first tip would be to maybe just spend 24 hours watching your own mind. 

You don’t have to believe me. Just watch your mind and the way that it speaks. How often do you find yourself blaming yourself or shaming yourself or another or something outside of you? Like how does that work for you? Everyone’s pattern is a little bit different. And maybe write about it at the end of the day. What did you notice? And without judgment, without shaming and blaming, but just notice. There’s an exercise that you can do with this, where you can have a set of white rocks and a set of black rocks, little pebbles, and you can, at the end of the day, go through and put a white rock in for everything that you would deem as a positive thought or emotion or action that you took and a black one for the other way of how you perceived it or how you witnessed it or how you experienced it or what your own actions were. And over time, when you do this, you’ll notice that there are quite a few black rocks in relationship to the white ones. We tend to really, and this is, this isn’t a bad, none of what I’m saying is bad or good. This is actually one of our survival mechanisms that our brain has put in place for us, where if you touch the fire in the fire pit, and you’re burned, then you’re supposed to remember that it’s hot. So you don’t go back there again, and you don’t let small children around it. 

Like, okay, that’s a dangerous thing. So we do tend to remember the things that hurt us, that we consider dangerous. We log ’em in, and we say, okay. We’re supposed to remember the berries that are poisonous so that we can bring it back to the community and say, don’t eat this berry. So and so was out harvesting with me and is dead now. You really wanna know these things, right? So our culture today isn’t fraught with saber tooth tigers and poisonous berries that we don’t know about. We’ve explored a lot of our terrain, and we understand a lot more. And so we still have that in place though. So is it really true that when your partner said X, Y, or Z to you, that they meant it maliciously, or did you take it that way? And so you get to do this little practice with the pebbles, and over time, if you can learn to question your own mind and say, “Oh, maybe that mind thought isn’t actually true in the capital T truth sense.” And so then you’ll start to learn how to shift that so that you have more white pus in the middle, and the process of that, which is gonna be tip number two, is bringing compassion, bringing compassion. There’s a difference between love and compassion. The way humans in our culture to do love is often it’s a bargaining chip. Like, I’ll love you if you love me. And here’s how I wanna be loved. Here are my five love languages.

Jason Prall

It’s very conditional.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Here’s which ones I am. Right?

Jason Prall

Yeah, yeah.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

And I wanna know which ones you are so that I can make sure that I love. But compassion is really wanting the best for all sentient beings, no matter what your experience is of them. Now does that mean that you have to get yourself into dangerous and toxic and violent situations? No, of course not. You can have compassion from a distance. You can realize that your partner that has been manifesting domestic violence in your home is doing this from a place of their own traumatized childhood. But do you need to stay in that home? Absolutely not.

Jason Prall

That’s not very compassionate towards yourself.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

That compassionate towards yourself. And so compassion doesn’t mean you’re a doormat. Compassion means that you’re bringing this open willingness to understand and good boundaries at the same time. And so the more that you learn how to do that, and Kristin Neff is a really lovely researcher at, I think, University of Texas, it’s in Austin. So the University in Texas that’s in Austin, and she’s done a lot of work and written a lot of books that you can access on self-compassion, and just pick one of those up and start practicing these little ways that you can have self-compassion, as well as compassion for others. And that’s a really good practice to start engaging in. Buddhism has a really lovely, and I can make this tip number three, meditation called Tonglen, and Tonglen is doesn’t need to be Buddhist. It’s just a meditation. And what it is is it’s this, when you sit still, and you start getting in touch with your breath, you start picturing like the close people to you that are in your life that you appreciate and have gratitude for. And you breathe in any negativity or pain or suffering they may be going through, and you breathe out light and love and compassion to them. And then it’s like rings of a tree. Then you move out to your acquaintances, and you picture them, and you breathe in any darkness that they might have and sadness and suffering, and then you breathe out love and compassion and healing to them. 

And what you do is you put yourself in a space where you’re part of the gigantic field. I usually like, when I teach this, for people to have a 100,000-foot view. You’re in the cosmos, you’re in space, and you’re just resting in that space. And you can see the planet as this little tiny place far, far away. And it’s got 7 billion people running around on it, and they’re all having their challenges and their differences and their polarities and their suffering and their joys and their sorrows and their loves and all of it that life brings as a human. And you’re witnessing it from that space. And then you’re just bringing in that, whatever that suffering that they might have, and you’re breathing out love, light and compassion. And you start to realize that when you do that, you’re not breathing in anything that’s harmful to you. You’re just transmuting energy. And there’s nothing that can harm you if you keep in that space of love, light and compassion, and you start to go, oh, I’m just this vessel that is energy. And I’m on this grid of energy. And when I’m on the grid, and I’m lighting up the grid towards compassion and love and light, then nothing else can touch me. That’s the ultimate boundary setting right there. And it’s a willingness to be able to sit in that space with all beings and do that. Now, if you have a hard time with that, and you say, “I don’t wanna breathe in my suffering,” then don’t do it. You do it just with the people that you love for a while until you can start to realize you are your enemy.

Jason Prall

I love that. And really what I’m hearing from you with all this is that a lot of this is a practice. It’s a cultivation.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Practice.

Jason Prall

Yeah. And we’re only gonna be as good as we are when we start. And the more we practice, the better we get at this. And I’ve particularly noticed this. I’ve done, as you know, a lot of trauma healing, and work on the conditionings and the things that I was brought up with, and what I’ve noticed is there’s some things that inherently shift when that takes place, when those get metabolized and integrated. And there seems to be this whole other set of things where, what you’re talking about, it’s like, I’m still looking for danger because it’s this negativity bias that sort of.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

We have a brain that senses danger so we can survive. That’s how it works.

Jason Prall

I’m not as triggered, and it doesn’t catch me as much, but it’s still there running in the background. And the thing that’s really shifted that is this practice to look for the good things, to recognize the benefits, to be grateful, like all these, it’s a practice, and then eventually, it becomes a little bit more second nature, and I don’t have to work so hard to reset that switch, but it seems to be like these are neural pathways that need to be massaged in a different direction, so to speak.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

It’s very real. In my book, “Solving The Autoimmune Puzzle,” I actually have a practice in there called the mirror and flexion exercise. And the suffering of your enemy, you start to realize is actually the same as yours, and you start to see the mirror. And again, that doesn’t mean you have to go and sit and have tea with them or reconcile with them, but it does bring you to a place of forgiveness. And that only changes the energy in you, right? You never have to condone the harm that has been perpetrated against you, but forgiving those who have perpetrated it actually gives you a path to forgiving yourself for all the harm you’ve perpetrated and maybe unknowingly, like you have no idea. And so this allows you to clean your energy, and the practice I gave you of Tonglen is cleaning global energy. It’s really beautiful.

Jason Prall

Yeah, and I’ve never heard of the name before, but it’s interesting. One of our mutual friends, a Peruvian indigenous healer.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Puma.

Jason Prall

Yeah, he uses the same type of technique with the breath. I find that so interesting. And then Ayurveda has similar things.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Yes, exactly.

Jason Prall

So it’s clearly something that works if it’s gonna be used in multiple different societies around the world. Keesha, this is fantastic. I love your work. I think it’s really important. Just wanna reiterate the depth of some of the healing when it comes to trauma and how that affects your energy, the consistent practices, and managing your energy on a day-to-day basis. I know you have a ton of books that people can learn from. You’ve got courses. Where can people find more of your work?

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Drkeesha.com. D-R-K-E-E-S-H-A dot com.

Jason Prall

Beautiful.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Thank you.

Jason Prall

Thanks so much, Keesha. Take care.

Keesha Ewers PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc

Bye, everybody.