Lisa: 00:00 Hello, you're listening to the Super Power U Podcast. This is episode #29.
VO: 00:09 Welcome to the Super Power U Podcast where we reveal the mental models and tactical skills needed to activate your inner superhero. And here's your host, Lisa Betts-LaCroix.
Lisa: 00:20 Hello. Hello my lovelies. Thank you for being here. As always back on the Super Power U Podcast. I appreciate your attention and your presence so much. If you are new to the show today, we interview a wide variety of people, amazing people, super interesting people who have stories to tell and Super Powers to share, and the thinking is that we can all be inspired by and learn from each other in a world that can sometimes feel well overwhelmingly challenging, and even I'd say a bit negative. Putting our attention on our strengths as a starting point can be transformative. So if you enjoy the show, I would be so grateful if you would share it with someone else or post on social media or do a review, which also helps reach more people and if you're not sure how to do that, just visit lisabl.com/review. For my “What Lisa's Listening To” segment where I share about a podcast you might want to check out, today I'd like to talk about The Feisty Life with Kathrine Mcaleese. Some of the topics Kathrine covers in her show are motivation and goal setting for a more meaningful life, putting ourselves first as a strategic act and the episode I'm listening today, episode #7 on identity in relationships and the power of reevaluation. What I really like about Kathrine's show is the empowering topics she covers, the inspiration. It has everything I love in a show, including what you can do and how to keep on living an epic life. It has a smart, articulate host and I could listen to Kathrine's accent all day long.
Lisa: 02:06 My guest today on the show is also Katherine. Katherine Lawson is a dear friend of mine and I am thrilled to have her here today. She's currently enrolled in the Mind Body and Medicine PhD program at Saybrook University and she has a degree in counseling psychotherapy with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacific Graduate Institute. She uses hypnosis as an integrated treatment method and maintains a private practice in Palo Alto, California. And I'm really excited to introduce you to Katherine Lawson. So welcome to the Super Power U Podcast, Katherine.
Katherine: 02:45 Hi Lisa.
Lisa: 02:48 So fun to have you here in this context.
Katherine: 02:50 Yeah, it is.
Lisa: 02:54 So I generally start my conversations with people at the foundational level of how they to be who they are and I believe that so often starts in our early years in childhood, in the way our lives are formed in the early days. So I'm wondering if you would share something and maybe there's a story from your, from your early days or from your first family or some details about your childhood that might give some insight into the path you've taken in your life.
Katherine: 03:20 Well, my childhood was really kind of chaotic. Um, my dad passed away when I was very young and we moved around and I lived with my grandparents for a while and with hindsight I can say that that probably was the beginning of my interest in psychology, although it took, you know, a number of years to manifest. I'm certainly someone who tends to view some of the best healers that I know as wounded healers and I count myself in that tribe.
Lisa: 04:00 I'm wondering about your adult pathway and what you did… you know, because we met quite recently in terms of our adult lives and I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about the trajectory of your life in maybe a couple of decades before I knew you.
Katherine: 04:14 Sure. Well, you know, in the path of not-knowing that I was headed towards a calling as a healer, I started out doing a lot of fashion modeling and then I opened a store of my own. And so I was kind of on a career path that looked like fashion until I had my son, my first son, my oldest son. And after that, a lot of different life events made me think about going back to school. So I went back and got my undergraduate degree after my first son was born and that's when I began to really fall in love with psychology and it was really resonating with me at a very deep level. So I continued on into a master's degree. The master's degree actually came when I really knew that my calling was as a healer. I had moved to Costa Rica after losing my husband, my husband had passed away quite suddenly in front of me.
Katherine: 05:16 It was a huge trauma. And then I remarried, kind of in grief and we decided to have a child and I actually lost my son before he was born and this was all within a couple of years. So I lost my husband and then I lost a son at full term and then adopted. And then my mother passed away of cancer and I did hospice at her bedside. So having all of those things happening to me and it three year period, you sort of have to go under as the result of such a tremendous amount of trauma and grief or you have to try and make meaning and meaning making was really what led me to go much deeper into my path as a healer through the field of psychology. So I moved back to the United States and enrolled in a master's degree at Pacifica Graduate Institute, which is a school that focuses on Depth Psychotherapy.
Lisa: 06:15 So maybe you can just share a little bit more if you're willing about your experience of grief. I mean the way you say it, it sounds like there's grief and then there's healing and then there's a rediscovery. And I, I know my experience has been a lot longer than that sounds. And so I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share a little bit more about what the shape of it was before you came out the other side of it?
Katherine: 06:41 Yeah. I don't know if I would say that I came out the other side of it, like it's something that ends and goes away. I actually don't really view grief that way. I think that it's changed for me as I say, I've been able to find meaning in unbearable pain and sadness and some of that has been through being in service to other people who are experiencing similar kinds of emotions, but you know, one of the main things that happened was I understood that there's a lot of ways that it's comfortable for other people, for us to grieve and because it's very uncomfortable for them to see us hurting and there is no right way to grieve and for me, the way that I managed it was actually to dive fairly deeply into it and begin to understand what the process of trauma is like in a human being, emotionally and spiritually and even physiologically.
Lisa: 07:48 So what does the diving in deep to it look like for you?
Katherine: 07:51 It looked like a lot of therapy. It looked like doing some dreamwork as a result of the trauma that I experienced in my life. Some of it actually as a child, I was just at the mercy of unbelievable nightmares and repetitive dreams and as I began to start studying psychology and fortunately at this school that was depth focused and looked at things from a, uh, what's below kind of a perspective I was able to put into place a lot of my coping mechanisms and then use them as strengths and use them as strengths in service to others first to myself because you have to have something to give and then to others.
Lisa: 08:38 Can you say a little bit more about the coping mechanisms because it's a bit abstract for me. Would you be willing to share some specifics?
Katherine: 08:45 I think I could. So in my personal psychotherapy I was working through some behaviors and dreams that pointed to the fact that I was throwing up a lot of distractions to not really feel or look at things that were getting in my way of achieving everything I was saying that I wanted to achieve and wanting to achieve. For example, relationships. I know that you know this and I always kind of crack up when I throw it out there because people are often shocked, but I've been married five times and so so we can use that as an example. You know, the, the obvious desire to be in working and meaningful and fulfilling relationship and the lack of an ability to really find that there came a point where my dreams in my psychotherapy were showing me all of the protective mechanisms that I had put into place in order to not feel all of my pain and my fears and my insecurities.
Katherine: 09:58 Some of them going way back. Some of the more recent in a way that was sort of empathetic to myself. Like, oh, you put this into place there because that was unbearable, but this is now and so maybe you don't need that anymore. And it came through like a really deep kind of love and nurturing and honesty about what had happened in my life and how someone might survive it. And how once you've put a survival mechanism into place, sometimes your psyche doesn't necessarily register when it's no longer of use to you. So perhaps in my relationships I was not letting people get close past a certain point because I didn't believe that maybe that even existed. So it was that kind of work, real depth and my dreams were showing me in no uncertain terms (well no one certain terms for a dream worker) certainly showing me that there was a lot of trauma very deep down inside and that there was a lot of healing that needed to be done and there was a lot of pieces of me that were dying to be recognized and integrated into my waking world. And I'm just so grateful for that resource, you know? And it took me over 30 years to really find all those pieces and love them back together into a whole person. But grief is a piece of that. And grief was a motivating force for that even.
Lisa: 11:40 So the dream work, did you find yourself engaged in, interested in, and you know, were you always a dreamer or is this something that came to you through the studies that you did in the first program?
Katherine: 11:52 Well, I was always a dreamer, but I didn't know what was going on. I mean, to me these were just crazy dreams. I remember that even as a very young girl, I had one repetitive dream and I was ashamed of it. I was like, what on earth kind of person would dream something like that. I never told anyone about it, you know. So I always had an active dream life, but it was through enrolling in a program that was kind of Jungian and Depth Psychological and archetypal that I came to understand that there might be more to it than, wow, why are you having these crazy images coming up in your sleep? And the more I got into it and the more I used it for healing myself, the more I realized, wow, this is an incredible resource and I want to use it to help others.
Lisa: 12:42 So talk about the beginning of your practice…when you first started your practice after you graduated.
Katherine: 12:47 Well, I'd say six to eight years ago I started, at least that's when I started my internship and I was already interested in dream work. I wrote my master's thesis on Dream Work based on Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey actually. And so I started out my private practice in San Francisco integrating dreamwork and regular psychotherapeutic practice or, or depth psychotherapeutic practice and, and it was just kind of a crazy way that it happened. Some people say you don't choose your clients, your clients choose you. And for some reason I had a very specific client base that just chose me. So for about six years in a row I was treating mainly people who were either sex workers, professional dominatrix, sexual surrogates, strippers, call girls, all of these people who worked with alternative sexual lifestyles and many who as it turned out, you know, had suffered some kind of sexual trauma in their lives.
Katherine: 14:02 I learned a lot. I learned a lot from that. And for those who were brave enough and I was fortunate enough that they dared to explore what their dream life might be trying to help them integrate into their waking lives. It was just an incredibly powerful time of work for me.
Lisa: 14:22 So what did you learn?
Katherine: 14:24 Well, I learned that our dreams are actually working in service to us if we can figure out how to listen, how to honor them, how to entertain them, how to be with them. And so shortly after starting in private practice, I obtained another three year certification in a very specific kind of dream work called Embodied Imagination. And that allowed me to guide people back into their dreams in a hypnagogic state, which is some, it's somewhere between waking and sleeping and we would revisit their dreams and get close enough to certain images. That is at a certain point, they would become embodied by those images. What that means is that they would lose their habitual consciousness, lose their ego perspective, and all of the sudden they would be viewing this environment from the perspective of their dream image. So if it was a dog, they would be in the dog and…
Lisa: 15:30 So is this like sort of like a hypnosis?
Katherine: 15:35 It's kind of like hypnosis, but it's, but it's not. I actually don't think I can explain or know why it is that this dream imagery graces us with sharing a perspective with us once we get back in the dream and close enough and pay enough attention to them. But they do.
Lisa: 15:56 So I mean just logistically… is that work that you would do with another person and say for example, if you were doing it with me, I would be sitting in a chair where you would talk to me and I'd have my eyes closed and you would walk me through going into sort of a subconscious recollection of a dream, that kind of thing.
Katherine: 16:11 Yes. So everybody who does this isn't a dual state of consciousness. So they know they're sitting with me and they know that they're safe and they know that they can come out at any time, but I do guide them into a fairly deep state of relaxation. And then we recreate the dream environment. And then we go, I go with you. So you don't go back in there by yourself, I go with you and we'll choose two to five images that we will get close enough that you will become absorbed by those images. That's the embodiment piece and those images share with you their perspective. So if the dog is frightened, you're going to feel frightened and if the dog is feeling horny, you're going to feel horny and then I would help you to anchor what that was like in your body. So if the dog is feeling horny, I might say to you, where is it in your body that you're most aware of that sensation?
Katherine: 17:08 And he might say, well, I really feel it right between my hips. And I would say, okay, anchor that there. Then we're going to move to the old lady sitting beside the river. In your dream, you'll become embodied by the old lady and you'll see what she's holding and then we'll go to one more and we'll pick up that anchor from whatever that dream images holding at the end. We hold all of those together in your one body and out of cooking. All of those experiences that your dream imagery has shared with you together in one body in your body. It's mind blowing. I don't know how else to describe it. It's incredible amounts of insight. Sometimes really emotional. Sometimes it's such creative or innovative excitement. Um, sometimes it's healing. Sometimes it allows you to grieve for yourself, but it's a big deal. So these images are sharing with us things that we need and it's, it's a gift. It's just an incredible gift.
Lisa: 18:09 So what about for someone like me…that as time has gone by in my life and I've had many different experiences and I've done many different things and I've heard other people speak about their experiences, I have the perspective on myself that what I'm not a very visual person. I experienced interactions and thoughts and emotions almost through words or concepts. And I have a really, really hard time with visualization and I didn't know that. I used to be an actor and in acting school. They'd have us all lie on the ground and imagine a beach and the water would be…the relaxation process would be, you know, like imagining this beach and the sun shining down on you and I could never visualize what was happening and even to this day, if you were to take me through a relaxation exercise, I feel that I would come up very light on the visual experience. And possibly relatedly, I also do not remember my dreams. So what would you say to someone like me as a general principle? I don't remember my dreams.
Katherine: 19:06 Well with regard to the first part about not being a super visual person. That's entirely possible and lots of people aren't. I don't even know if I really am, but in the practice of embodied imagination, it's actually much more felt then visualize and it's not necessarily that you're imagining things because it's.. these entities are there. They're there, the entities from your dream and they're there and I just, you know, take you closer to seeing what was already there. You're not really making anything up, but as far as remembering your dreams, everyone does dream every night. Not everyone does remember their dreams. Lots of people don't remember their dreams. Two things that I would say about that are, there are certainly any number of techniques to increase your dream recall and I don't know that we necessarily want to take a lot of time going through all of those and especially because it's in my course and online, but you can increase your dream recall. There are teas that you can drink. There are practices that you can do, but I would say that it is a practice and I would say that your dreams respond to your attention, which is a kind of crazy thing.
Lisa: 20:18 I definitely have the experience that if I do remember a dream and I write it down, that I'm much more likely to dream the next night or remember my dream the next night.
Katherine: 20:27 Yeah, they want to be in communication with us. I believe that our dreams are trying to help us integrate things that are in the subconscious in a very soulful place into our waking lives. When we're ready to do that and we'll have those dreams and we may remember them or we may not, but the more attempt you make at having them and the more that you do have them and work them, the more dreams that you'll have. It's possible to incubate a question into the dream realm and get an answer. And Salvador Dali, Einstein, Tesla, Shelly (the woman who wrote Frankenstein)… there's just like huge lists of people who used this resource for their creative abilities and for healing and for understanding things. It's pretty amazing.
Lisa: 21:23 I know one of the things that profoundly impacted your life and the course that you took was dealing with your own cancer. Is there some piece of that that led to the work you're doing now?
Katherine: 21:37 Absolutely. For sure. You know, even given the other things that I've told you I've experienced in my life, that was a very difficult piece of time. I nearly perished. And one of the things that happened during my treatment was that I realized that while I was being attended to in a physical way…like, “we're going to get that cancer, and we're going to save your life and these are the things we're going to do to your body”, I was completely triggered into a PTSD state. I was utterly traumatized. Of course I was in fear for my own life and I realized, wow, most people who get cancer probably have some PTSD symptoms because they're in fear for their lives and nobody's talking to them about it. Nobody's saying, well, but how are you doing? Are you sleeping? You know, all these kinds of things. They're not being attended to and when they're not attended to, you can't heal.
Katherine: 22:34 For example, I used pain medications much longer than I needed to use pain medications and the doctors were just very happy to say, you know, you deserve them. All these things happened to you. You should be on them. And I had to take myself off of them. And so I realized there was this huge hole that I fell into of psychological trauma that comes with a cancer diagnosis. My mentor and some of my peers worked Embodied Imagination with me while I was going through cancer treatment and it helped me so much. It just really helped me a lot with the psychological pieces of going through trauma. And maybe even physical, you know, I can't say that for sure, but it might have at any rate. Once I was past treatment I decided this helped me so much, just acknowledging that I was going through a psychological trauma, I need to pay this forward.
Katherine: 23:36 And so, first I took it to the dream realms and asked if I was ready and then I decided to start working with cancer patients and I volunteered for about three years with the Charlotte Maxwell Center, which is the only free integrative healthcare treatment center in the United States. So they give treatment like acupuncture and energy work and massage. And I did my work with them to the lowest socioeconomic status women in the bay area. And that was just an incredible experience, really. And I saw how these women responded to this kind of attention and as a result, that's when I decided to pursue the Phd because I thought maybe if I have a phd after my name, the medical profession will pay attention to what I'm trying to say. You know, I was consulting a little bit and there are few people listening to me, but I wanted to scream it from the rooftops. I was mostly working with women who had cancer, breast cancer and ovarian cancer. These women are psychologically traumatized and there's tons of research that says if you're in stress and trauma, your body's not going to heal as quickly and you all need to start doing A through Z to make sure that they're going to heal. And in order to kind of build my voice, I decided that I would pursue the Mind Body Medicine phd.
Lisa: 25:02 So what kind of outcomes or what kind of experiences did you have or did the women that you're working with having this kind of situation you're talking about?
Katherine: 25:09 Well, for example, I did one eight week workshop here with the bay area cancer community. Um, there were about 12 women and first of all, the most moving thing was the first day of the workshop I said to them, I need you to understand that I believe that a cancer diagnosis is an emotional trauma and half of them burst into tears, you know? And so that was huge in itself. And, uh, I would say one of the most interesting outcomes. I gave everyone a pretest and a post-test, meaning I did an assessment of all of these PTSD symptoms with these women before we did the Embodied Imagination work. And I did one afterwards and I assumed, of course, that afterwards, all of their PTSD symptoms will have diminished. And what I ended up finding is that, that for many of the women, it was the case, but not all.
Katherine: 26:15 In fact, some of them reported increased PTSD symptoms. And fortunately I had thought about not just doing some kind of quantitative measure but a qualitative. So I had them write out what their feelings were and what they all reported was at the beginning when you gave me this, I didn't even realize how much I needed to take care of myself. I didn't even realize how hurt was, how suffering I was, how isolated I was, how angry I was. And now I realize it and now I can go take care of myself the way that I need to. So it was really moving and profound for me and for them because they could then take care of themselves in, in a more appropriate way.
Lisa: 27:05 The pains, the difficulties, the emotions that we're unaware of are often the ones that hurt us the most and just increasing our awareness and surfacing emotion.
Katherine: 27:15 Right. And I will say, you know, because I know that you know this, it's the families too, right? If the psychological piece and the way that manifests in a cancer patient is not understood by the patient and the doctors, it's certainly not also being understood by the families and the family suffer. The families suffer too, you know, along with their loved ones.
Lisa: 27:40 Absolutely. So what could they do and how, how if they didn't know you, they don't live here. How might they start to address it? How do you recommend that people start to address PTSD in your course and in you're in your office work?
Katherine: 27:53 I think it has to start with allopathic medicine, meaning the conventional medicine people that everybody who has cancer or most everybody goes to see because they have access and nurses. Nurses are also another incredible resource. But it has to start with them saying, you know, you don't just have cancer. Not that cancer is a just. It's this life absorbing huge thing. But this is an emotional trauma and you're going to need to take care of that part too. And if that's said to the family and to the person who's going through this incredible round of treatment and suffering, that's a good place to start because there's lots of places that you can get, you know, alternative or traditional kinds of treatments for all of the symptoms of PTSD. The part that's going missing is people understanding that they even have it or that anybody cares and that there's relief and that you don't have to suffer that way and so I think it needs to start right at the very beginning where the medical community starts to acknowledge, you know, I'm not going to take care of everything about this cancer, you know, I'm not omnipotent.
Katherine: 29:14 I'm going to take care of these cancer cells and you are a mind, a body and a spirit and your spirit and your mind may need to be treated somewhere else, but they're definitely going to be impacted. So I actually, I mean I treat people. I treat people by skype, I treat people in person, but I'm not the only one who can do that. The main thing is for people to be conscious of the fact that that's what families and individuals with cancer are dealing with.
Lisa: 29:51 Sounds like you're not just thinking of this from a practitioner point of view, although like you say you did treat people, but it sounds like, or at least I think I'm hearing that there's some other piece having to do with the systemic impact that you want to have. Having to do with influencing other caregivers and encouraging this to be part of a general palliative approach to cancer.
Katherine: 30:15 Exactly. That's exactly right. I, you know, I realized both with embodied imagination and with the work that I've done with cancer patients and a lot of things that I do that me by myself as passionate as I might be is never going to have the kind of impact that's necessary and so it give talks at UCSF and I've given talks with hospice and I'm going to turn my dissertation into a book. I'm just trying to hit it in a way that's a little more profound….not that it's not profound to work one person at a time, but there's an urgency in my opinion. There needs to be a shift in conventional medicine that's more integrative and more holistic. And I just want to be a part of that shift. So I'm doing that with publishing and I'm doing that with consulting and I'm doing that with workshops and I'm doing that with trying to get this phd.
Lisa: 31:14 One of the ways you're approaching that intent to reach more people and to have a larger impact is by the course that you created recently. So do you want to talk a little bit about that course?
Katherine: 31:24 I would love to. That's a kind of a woo story because I was at school and I was meeting with these mentors that I really admire and I was going off in 15 different directions with what I want to do with my dissertation and who should be on my committee and I want to do this and that and she said, slow down, slow way down. Why are you getting this phd? You realize this is an exercise and why are you getting a phd? And I said, well, I just want the most people in the planet that I can to understand that we have this incredible resource called our dream life that every person on the planet does every night and that we should be making use of this. She said, okay, you're talking about impact. How do you do that? And I said, well, I could teach, I could write, I could do presentations in build a kind of a platform as a speaker on this topic, etc.
Katherine: 32:21 And she said, okay, now you're onto something, and she mentioned people who might help me develop a dissertation that could be turned into a book. I got home two days later from this residency and the phone rang. And it was this online platform, The Daily Om. I'd say they have about 3 million subscribers to these online courses that they teach and they said, we've heard really great things about you and we'd like you to offer an eight week course on dreaming. And I thought, isn't that funny that you just have to say it, you just have to own it and a voila.
Lisa: 33:01 There's something to putting out to the universe what you want and don't know whether it's magic, psychology, you know, but it's powerful.
Katherine: 33:10 Yeah. And so it was really an incredible experience writing it. You know, I put 10 years of research and thought and passion into it and it's this eight week course that I'm really happy to release and proud of and I think that there's something for everyone there. And that's how it happened and it's been an incredible experience.
Lisa: 33:33 So the course is called receiving guidance for new dreams and people can find it on https://www.dailyom.com/. I'll put that information in the show notes. You mentioned to me before we started recording that this is taking you in a new direction yet again. What are you willing to say about that?
Katherine: 33:49 I'm willing to say a little bit because I'm kind of rubbing my hands together as I'm saying it because I'm really like cooking this up right now. I've been learning about people who are using virtual reality for psychotherapeutic use and I had this thought. Well, I actually went and visited some people here in silicon valley and I read about some people in Barcelona and I spend a lot of time there and I thought this is amazing what they're doing. They're using this environment that's not necessarily real to help people with psychological issues and that makes sense to me because I help people with psychological issues in the dream environment. But you know what they're not doing? They're not having the people that are using these headsets become embodied in their avatars and from a psychophysiological kind of perspective, a lot more happens, a lot faster if you're embodied. If you actually feel it in your body as if it's you. And what I realized is that I could use the very same skills that I use to help a person who is becoming embodied by a dream image to become embodied in an avatar. So I'm working on a couple of proposals for consulting with a couple of these companies. I mean, there's just a ton of research as far as how that works.
Lisa: 35:23 Oh, that's really good.
Katherine: 35:26 Yeah, and it's kind of fun. One of the things that happened more recently is that I was giving a presentation at Singularity University to a bunch of innovators about how to use embodied imagination in some biofeedback and various things that I've learned as a result of my Mind Body Medicine courses, basically to rewire their brain to avoid anxiety and depression and stress. And as I was standing there giving them this presentation. And they were completely absorbed, I had this huge aha moment and I said, wow, this doesn't always have to be so heavy and so serious and so fatal. I'd been so immersed in the cancer work that I had kind of lost track of how vast the applications are for the work that I do. And so at that moment I decided I'm always going to have the toolbox to offer anyone who has cancer and wants to talk to me about this. That'll be there, but I'm going to have to feed myself too with all of these other things. So I'm finding this idea of using embodiment techniques in virtual reality really exciting.
Lisa: 36:41 That is really interesting. Well, I look forward to hearing where that goes. That's fascinating. So if my listeners want to know more about you in addition to finding your course on the Daily Om how can they stay in touch or follow you? Are you on social media or do you want to share your contact information?
Katherine: 37:00 Yeah, absolutely. So my website, which is www.dreamsheal.com is a great way to get in touch with me and by email, which is katherine@dreamsheal.com and I'm usually very good about that. Additionally, the course has a message board so as the course proceeds people will be able to put notes in there about how it's going with them with the different exercises or the different reading materials or their own dreams and I can chime in. So those are probably three of the best ways of staying in touch or asking questions.
Lisa: 37:41 Great. So that's fantastic. I'll put all that information in the show notes. Before we wrap up, I always have to ask about your Super Power because this is the Super Power U Podcast and for context, a Super Power as I see it as that skillset or that strength or that ability that is innate to you, that has probably been with you your entire life and has probably shown up in all different forms which you may not even have noticed were it not for just showing up so many times or other people commenting on it. It serves you and all you do, and I'm wondering if you might have insight into your Super Power.
Katherine: 38:18 Yes, I'm having a hard time choosing between two. Okay, so one of my Super Powers is turning suffering into meaning and I feel that quite deeply and I'm feel quite humbled even to be able to say that, but it's true. The other one… sometimes I describe my work when I'm doing embodied imagination. I say that I'm Indiana jones of the dream world, so I have this Super Power that allows me to go back into your dreams with you and help you to understand what it is that your dreams are trying to help you integrate into your waking world in it. It feels a little, if not a Super Power, certainly Indiana Jones-ish. It's a tool that I put to that task.
Lisa: 39:12 And I have to say when you said that one of your Super Powers is turning suffering into meaning, I got chills and I felt sunk into that. I just felt myself dropped down into that. I felt that deeply.
Katherine: 39:26 Yeah, I did too. It's one of those things that makes you think, ah, okay, getting older is not so bad.
Lisa: 39:36 And here is life. Like wow, life is right!
Katherine: 39:43 Yup. To be able to step into saying something like that and actually being able to have the perspective of seeing it and how it's come into being, is really a gift. I feel honored and humbled by it and hope I can do the best by it.
Lisa: 39:56 I love that you connect that experience up to, you know, our shared experience of getting older and what that means and I think it's such a fearful thing for so many of us in our culture that what will we do….Especially women, I think getting older and where will we go and what will we lose, but this is sort of a reflection on what we gain that maybe you could not have been doing when you were 30. You know, you might not have been able to do this level of depth in your work when you were 30.
Katherine: 40:26 Right. Well, stay tuned. My next workshop is going to be called Rounding the Bend and it's for ladies like us that are stepping into this phase of our lives.
Lisa: 40:26 This powerful, awesome, ripe, juicy stage.
Katherine: 40:39 That's right. That's right.
Lisa: 40:43 Thank you so much for being with me, Katherine. I appreciate you.
Katherine: 40:46 It's always a pleasure, Lisa, and I think it's amazing what you're offering here. Thank you for including me.
Lisa: 40:55 So that's it for the show today. Thank you so much for being here and come on back next thursday for the Super Power U Podcast. Thank you for listening to the Super Power U Podcast. Please subscribe to the show on iTunes and get more information@lisal.com.