Jenee: 0:06

Welcome to the Heartlight Sessions, a podcast about lightworking your way through dark times. I'm Jenee Halstead. I'm a singer-songwriter, holistic vocal coach, intuitive guide and plant medicine facilitator. I'm also a survivor of childhood abuse, autoimmune issues and my 30s. I'm on a lifelong healing journey and autoimmune issues and my 30s. I'm on a lifelong healing journey and, along the way, I want to share the ideas and teachings that rock my world.

Jenee: 0:33

Every week on Heartlight Sessions, I call in artists, healers and thinkers to explore what's helped them live and thrive from a heart-centered place, because the heart, it's where the best things happen. If you've ever wondered how to unlock your biggest breakthroughs or how to come back from that stuff that tried to kill you, you know the stuff I'm talking about, the stuff that's supposed to make you stronger. Or if you've ever wondered how to just do you straight from the heart, you're in the right place. So join me, won't you? Let's turn on that heart light. Hello, hello, hello, hi, hi, hey. I'm so happy, I'm so excited about this conversation. I have Nathan Herschel with me and he is one of the most beautiful dancers and I love watching you express channel through movement. He's teaching dance as a spiritual practice and he's Juilliard, trained, trained I like the tagline. It's trained in Juilliard, transformed in temples Exactly 20 years of movement experience. So let's just dive right in with what you're doing right now and maybe we can kind of flow the conversation from there.

Nathan: 2:06

I mean, my whole story and life has been the dance. I found the dance when I was seven. I was watching my sister's dance recital and a guy came on and he wore these white long gloves and he was sort of doing this Broadway routine and I was just completely enamored by it. I came home and I could not stop dancing and so my mom was like okay, we're going to put him into the classes and it was like one class a week. The next week I was like in another class. The next month I was in four classes. The next month I was in four classes. The next month I was in eight classes. By the time I was 10 years old, I was competing.

Nathan: 2:52

By the time I was 12, I was competing internationally by the time I was 15, I got emancipated to move to Arizona to live on my own and train there for two years in like the best competitive dance school in the country, and then I went to Juilliard. So my life was horse blinders dance. I was a major perfectionist, a massive control freak and very hard on myself, extremely critical. And so take that equation and then put it into the highest expectation dance school in the world and you get a break. You know, you get a complete fracture of when I am not achieving the perfection that I expect of myself. I am not worthy, I'm not valued and I don't value myself.

Nathan: 3:52

You know, and so I had a massive moment of being like is this why I do this?

Nathan: 3:59

yeah do I do this to be the best, because the original spark was not that. The original spark was there is a love and there is a joy, and there is an experience beyond the day-to-day life, an experience we could say an ecstatic experience that that person was having, that I was yearning for An expressive experience, that I was yearning for an expressive experience that I was yearning for and um, and so I had a real moment and that was the spiritual awakening, that was the turning point, when I started to realize that I was not my identity, that had been built up, that was this perfect thing and had to be. You know, make no mistakes, yeah.

Jenee: 4:48

Yeah. So you've been writing a lot about that lately and I'm wondering when, because I feel like you've had several like kind of initiations in the past few years. But when was that that first one, and did that coincide with illness? No or was there something early on earlier?

Nathan: 5:07

Yeah, so I was 18 when that first one happened and I read Be here Now by Ram Dass and I started doing just basic asanas and meditation. And I had an amazing friend at school who was a massive inspiration for me spiritually and you know we always have that person who sort of is like the initial hand into the path. Bless them, bless them, bless them, bless them, bless them. And I started just learning that you know, I was not my thoughts and gaining that spaciousness to be able to then change.

Nathan: 5:53

And then I found Guru, jagat and Kundalini Yoga and was studying with her for six years. You know very intimately a very controversial personality, but she helped me tremendously.

Jenee: 6:02

I would not be the person that I was without her Me either.

Nathan: 6:07

So I started I was at Juilliard and then I would finish classes and go to Rama and then go home. So I was almost like doing simultaneous schooling and education, where I was getting this like very sophisticated dance training and then I was getting this very sophisticated spiritual training.

Jenee: 6:25

Yes.

Nathan: 6:26

That was kind of then like created the backbone to what I do now.

Nathan: 6:31

But, so in 2019, I was gosh, I was 20 years old and my dad died suddenly in like a freak accident, and that was sort of like the next catalyst, the next initiator. I went to Egypt with my mom just as sort of a way to find solace, and I went into the Temple of Philae, Isis's temple, and I had a massive awakening there where I heard her say you know, I am your mother and you are my son, and it brought tears to my eyes. I was sitting in between Harijivan and Guru Jagat the sort of two teachers and they were just like holding me in this embrace as I was just like completely breaking down, and I would say that was the point where the healing journey really started, where the deeper sort of you need to go into the underworld now all of these fractured pieces of yourself, and it's no longer about just the spiritual high right.

Jenee: 7:46

Which it is in the beginning, where, like I love the spiritual path, I feel so good and you're like searching for that high all the time.

Nathan: 7:55

Yeah, then it became really a journey into the underworld. And then Guru Jagat died a year or two after my dad died, and then I got chronically ill with sort of a long COVID, you know multivirus strep infection that just would not go away. It was like I got sick in the month in 2022, in like March, april, just cold after cold after cold, after flu, after food poisoning, until essentially I broke. I had this massive migraine, I had shingles all over my body and I mean I was overworking for sure.

Jenee: 8:39

I was not.

Nathan: 8:41

I was not living the life. I am now where I was listening to my body and following its cues I was totally still in control freak.

Nathan: 8:48

I did not want to let go of my ambition. I was like, no, you know, I was this very ambitious kid. I will be successful. I will achieve all of my goals. I will control my life. I thought I was going to be a choreographer. I thought I was going to go down this path in this very specific way. I still had so much resistance to fully giving in to the Dharma, to fully giving in to the deeper purpose. I really thought this other life was going to give me everything I wanted, and like the fame and the attention and the recognition from the institutions and the art world, it was so seductive to me. I was like, oh, this is going to make me whole. This is going to like, bring me the salvation that I've been looking for. Little did I know, and we both know now that you know it's not and the body knows actually so much more about what we really need.

Jenee: 9:45

Right.

Nathan: 9:47

And it was a two year journey with illness really of massive fatigue, sometimes in months spent in bed. I was pretty much in solitary isolation, realized that I didn't have true friends.

Jenee: 10:02

You know, everything was. That's so hard.

Nathan: 10:06

Everything was about what I could get from my friends, how they supported me in my career yeah, and that was then when the deeper teachings really started to settle in and I ultimately had no choice. It was like if you want to get out of this, you have to um, meet these false gods and see through it.

Jenee: 10:30

Did you have a moment during that where you were just on your knees, like where you finally had that, that surrender moment where you were like, okay, all right, I'm here, I'm here for it, like that oh yeah, I for sure had the rock bottom.

Nathan: 10:45

I was. My mom had kicked me out of my house, um, because I wasn't following her medical advice, and so she said you can't live here anymore and I'm not going to financially support you. And so I used my savings account to get an Airbnb five minutes from my mother's house, because I had no energy to go anywhere.

Nathan: 11:09

I couldn't move, you know oh my gosh Went to this place was completely alone, you know like, did not know, Like it was where I grew up, but I left home when I was 15. So I didn't really have friends in that area. So I didn't really have friends in that area and living there alone for a month and just dealing with the obscene pain. I deal with a facial pain condition and it was so extreme and I one night just lost it and I was dealing with ideation at that point.

Jenee: 11:48

I just lost it and I was dealing with ideation at that point and I just didn't want to be alive in that body anymore.

Nathan: 11:51

I was like the body was such a torturous experience living in that body and I tried to make peace with it. But the pain was so intense and I was really also in a place of like that hyper independence, of just like I have to go through this on my own. I wasn't willing to get support, I wasn't getting like the medication that I needed, and then it just sort of crumbled and I reached out to my friend and I was like look, if you want me here, you have to tell me now. And she did. And then everything started shifting when I started letting people in and getting support and getting help.

Nathan: 12:33

And we started doing three Joe Dispenza meditations every day.

Jenee: 12:37

We would like get on Zoom.

Nathan: 12:39

She would get on every day with me like talk about a friend. It's totally saved my life, turned my life around. 40 days later was in a completely different place.

Jenee: 12:50

Which meditations did you do?

Nathan: 12:52

I did body parts space in the morning, Then I did generous present moment, Then I did um. What was the one I did at night? Oh, the blessing of the blessings of the energy centers.

Jenee: 13:02

What was the one I did at night? Oh, the blessing of the energy centers, blessings of the energy centers, yeah, that changed me, my life. I mean, my thyroid does go up and down, but the blessing of the energy centers took my thyroid numbers way down and I didn't stick with it, because it takes a while. But if you're chronically ill like that is an incredible meditation.

Nathan: 13:27

You have to learn how to regulate your system and those meditations gave me sort of the initial, just to get out of that crisis.

Jenee: 13:37

Yes.

Nathan: 13:38

Those meditations became the perfect stepping stone.

Jenee: 13:41

Yeah, when you start to reduce inflammation in the body, you know, when you start to reduce inflammation in the body, you know when you start to regulate, it's like then you can actually start to like peer through the blinds and see. You know, okay, there's some hope yeah, exactly and so from there, after 40 days, what was your next step?

Nathan: 14:04

gosh. Then it was um. I started learning buddhist dharma and I went to land of the medicine buddha and I worked and lived at a retreat center for three months and was continuing to study buddhist philosophy and budd psychology and from that point then I started working with a biochemist in Nashville. I was finally humbled enough to accept the help that had been offered. And also, when you're accepting help, you are accepting something beyond your control. You're having to trust something outside of you, and my trust was so broken that I really had to like restore that trust, because I had tried a lot of different medical medium and different sort of healing modalities and they didn't work. So I was very brokenhearted and kind of was like well, nothing's worth it, like nothing's going to work.

Nathan: 15:09

Nothing's going to fix me. I'm not going to heal, you know, it's very in that place of I can't do it. And then I went and I started working with this biochemist and within four months my entire life changed and my body was 70% healed. I had enough energy to move to LA.

Nathan: 15:30

And then, my first week in LA, I met Saul, which is literally going from living alone, sick in the woods with like no friends around, to like meeting this man who was going to completely change my entire reality. So meeting him was like the boon at the end of the tunnel, to be like there is someone who is so loving, who wants to work with me and do this work, and saw what saw did for me, because he became the permission slip for me to fully embrace myself as a healer and as a spiritual teacher I have goosebumps yeah, as at that point I was still holding on to my identity as a dancer from this sort of like you know concert dance world, but it wasn't serving me at all.

Nathan: 16:33

It really was actually not the life I wanted to live and I had to fully give that up. And that was so hard. There was so much grief in that there was like so much loss. There was so much of like did I fail? Am I?

Jenee: 16:47

a failure.

Nathan: 16:48

And it's like no, wait a second. And so I saw the life that Saul was living and I saw that he was like I want to do this with you, I don't want to do this alone anymore and you're totally the perfect person for it. And I was like so resistant in the beginning. I was like no, I want to do my own thing, I don't want to work together.

Jenee: 17:10

You know I want to.

Nathan: 17:11

I'm still in that control space and just eventually I softened and I gave in and I was like wait, we had the LA fires actually and we left. And that was the moment where I was like this life with Saw and teaching the dance as a spiritual practice and as a healing modality, this is such a better life than anything that the concert dance world could give me.

Jenee: 17:34

Like.

Nathan: 17:35

I'm so much happier, I'm so much healthier. I just feel way better, I feel aligned, and so it's like releasing. That was like the most liberating piece of my story that is so beautiful.

Jenee: 17:48

I know we cling, it's so hard. I was talking to my husband the other day about it too and I'm like there's just remnants of me that are still kind of clinging onto the side. You know, of the wall but it's like, but I actually let go a long time ago. You know, it's just, it's like it does take a little bit of time to sort of get it out of your system. You know I'm being like I'm still just wanting that reflection from the, from the music world, the song, you know, but it's like, but I'm not happy there.

Nathan: 18:20

Yeah.

Jenee: 18:21

I was never happy there. You know, I had my moments, but yeah, it's just, I don't know, like you're saying, there's this, this bigger universe and the beautiful someone can like hop on and see you in like high art. You know, I mean I I poured through your videos today. I was just like, oh, can't even imagine having the opportunity to learn from you, you know same for you.

Nathan: 19:03

I mean, it's like that vocal training that you have it, it, it, pieces of it come in. You know, I haven't thrown the baby up with the bath water. I really loved learning Gaga um, which was the movement language by Ohana Harin, and I got to study with him personally and uh, it it's still all of that wisdom that lives, lives in me. I think it's just like we have to. We have to go where we're meant to go and where we're planted and where the doors are open, some people.

Nathan: 19:33

They're really able to do the healing work in the industry, um in the dance industry, in the music industry, because for some reason their aura is able to like um to work in that space yeah, but for me it was very clear that I was like this, this just there's so much friction here and I just need to go and sort of do my own thing, but I would love to teach temple dance at juilliard um so, juilliard, if you're watching knock, knock, I think yeah, exactly, I think that um artists having a connection to their spirit is essential for an artist's creative development, religion or belief system, and the fact that that could happen through dance or through music, or through the medium that these young dancers are trained in, I think that it's essential for their creativity and I think that it could benefit them tremendously.

Nathan: 20:36

So it's.

Jenee: 20:37

I think it's, it's a missing piece, and I think this is actually the wave of the future, you know, because how many dancers leave school and they're just they're, they're broken or they're just missing something? They don't, they don't understand, you know. And it's also this thing about channeling, which is such a big part of the work you do, and it's part of the reason why I ended up not going into conservatory, even though I had accepted and was with scholarship, was that I worked intuitively and I wrote music intuitively and I was worried that I was going to lose that. Now, someone like you, you got all the tools and then through that, you work, you channel, you know which is the way to go, but I just think we're.

Jenee: 21:31

We're at this time now where, like, those systems are kind of falling apart and people are hungry for this, you know, for these bigger needs, these, you know. It's like what can I bring into this that supports me emotionally, that isn't going to just feed my ego.

Nathan: 21:51

Yeah, absolutely it's. You can create, you can dance, you can sing to develop your ego. You know to, to make it bigger, to possess something. These moves become my moves. You know. This song becomes my song and it's about me.

Nathan: 22:09

None of the dancing that I'm doing or the dances that I'm creating are about me. They're actually a loss of identity. They're about creating a spaciousness where I can. When we lose the possessiveness and the grip of our identity, that's when freedom happens. That's when we can move, we can change, we can be everything at once, and that's, to me, infinitely more fulfilling than trying to like narrow myself into this one dot and owning it. You know that's holding on, it's dancing to hold on. But the dance work that I do is dancing to learn how to let go, and that is about trusting your body. When you learn how to trust and follow your body, when you learn that you can use movement as a way to interrupt your thinking and that life is not a concept, life is not in our mind, life is an experience, that's when that's, to me, infinitely more fulfilling.

Jenee: 23:15

Yeah, I mean I was thinking about your video under the tree and how you were feeling, you know, down, and this is a perfect example. And you have the earphones on, you go to the tree and you're, you know you can actually tell the story. That it's you know. Things aren't really moving.

Nathan: 23:33

Yeah.

Jenee: 23:34

And you're trying to get there and we get stuff forcing. You're kind of forcing it and then you take the earphones off and I don't know if you want to talk about this, because it's a beautiful video.

Nathan: 23:53

Yeah, we get stuck. I say life is movement, life is change, and death it's not actually death as we know it. Death is stagnation, death is fixation. That's when we're no longer alive, we're trapped in an affixed sense of self. And when we're trapped in a fixed sense of self. And when we're trapped in a fixed sense of self. That sense of self it also has all these stories and all these traumas and it creates this paralysis.

Nathan: 24:13

We all feel that sometimes, when a trauma is reignited by something, we get absolutely paralyzed and we can't move. It's like I cannot get out of bed. I feel completely stuck in this sensation and a lot of times then we go to distract, we go to numb. Well, how can I sort of take my mind out of this? How can I sort of distract myself? Because I don't want to meet this feeling. This feeling is too big for me to meet.

Nathan: 24:45

But when we go to the somatic dance floor, the spiritual dance floor, we're using dance as a way to invite change, to let go of that fixation. We're releasing the possessiveness and the story and the identity that attaches itself to all of this pain, all of this trauma. We're releasing it. We're letting those feelings go. So we feel the feelings, but we feel them as an act of generosity. I give these feelings up. I no longer possess these feelings. I set these feelings free. I set my stagnation, my fixation free.

Nathan: 25:21

You know, I release it through movement. And when we start to move, even if we're going to be less philosophical or spiritual about it, when we start to move, things change, things move. It's that simple, right. You don't have to think that much about it. You can just get up and you can just start to move. Move your shoulders, move your neck, move your spine, move your hips, move where it feels stuck. Move your spine, move your hips, move where it feels stuck Right. And as you start to move, then it's like oh, that thing that I was just so fixated on, that felt so paralyzing, sort of just disappears.

Jenee: 25:55

Yeah.

Nathan: 25:55

And I'm okay, you know because, we're supposed to move, Babies move, they move, they cry. They feel that everything's in the present moment, and so I'm yeah, I'm passionate about just getting things moving.

Jenee: 26:10

Yeah, and I think people get hung up on like the fear of the feeling and they don't want to feel the feeling because it feels so daunting and overwhelming. And the fact of the matter and the truth of it is, if you go into the feeling entirely, it's actually much less painful. You can move through in one setting. You can move through a feeling that you've been holding on to your whole life, you know, and especially with movement.

Nathan: 26:44

Yeah.

Nathan: 26:45

Yeah absolutely Suffering is not caused by what is. It's caused by our resistance and reaction to what it is. That's, you know, buddhist philosophy 101, right, and you start to just ingrain that into it. Oh wait, I can be with what is and I can actually see through. I had this moment yesterday where I get overwhelmed really easily, especially after, like, dealing with neurological pain and chronic health issues. Overwhelm is like the thing that takes me out, like it's just like when I start to get overwhelmed, I'm just like I lose all my regulation. I'm like totally like blacked out and I realized, like overwhelm what it does it actually changes our senses.

Nathan: 27:27

You know, trauma and these emotions, they change our senses, so we're not seeing properly, we're not smelling properly, we're not tasting properly, we're totally sort of um warped into, uh, an experience. That is a non-reality and in fact it's not actually here. But what I've been noticing after really working, doing this work, is that I can just sort of like feel that and then I can just like look around my room and be like wait, everything's fine, exist here in this time and space, that. And then I can like look at details and they root me into the present moment. I'm like I'm okay, everything's okay, and I can release this story, because this story is not it's a protective mechanism, but it's actually keeping me from changing, from moving, from evolving.

Jenee: 28:25

Yeah, yeah, the orient. The orienting is huge, you know, bringing yourself back into the present moment, looking around the room and just being aware of just even having enough space to be aware. With that, with orienting, you know, it's like to be able to get that wedge where you're like, oh okay, this story is, you know, it's actually not the truth and it's not even the present moment.

Nathan: 28:54

Yeah.

Jenee: 28:55

You know, but that's that can be huge for people. You know it can be the nervous system. Dysregulation can be so daunting. Yeah, you know.

Nathan: 29:04

Yeah, and dysregulation can be so daunting. Yeah, you know, yeah, when you, when the dance is a place where we feel our feelings, and we feel the feelings that, the baggage of feelings, you know all of the past feelings, experiences and sensations, they live in our bodies. If we, if they have not been felt, they have been repressed into our bodies and so as we move, sometimes a certain movement, you'll just feel, something will click and a whole feeling will start to come through you, and then we just remind ourselves that this feeling is not ours to possess anymore. Right, that's the intention when we go to the dance floor is.

Nathan: 29:43

let me set this feeling free, and as I set this feeling free, I set myself free.

Jenee: 29:50

That is profound. We have to stop possessing feelings.

Nathan: 29:56

Feelings have nothing to do with an I, they have nothing to do with an identity or personality. When we attach an I or a Y to a feeling, then we possess it and we hold on to it. But the joy is not in holding on, the joy is in letting go. That's what we realize through the dance. The dance becomes joyful when we let go. That's when it becomes worship. That's when it becomes worship that when it, that's when it becomes devotional, then the dance, where it's a, it's a celebration of life.

Nathan: 30:32

And what is life? Impermanence? Life is we can't hold on to anything. Yeah, so we talk about surrender in the dance. Surrender is not an act, it's an, it's an unaction, it's an act of undoing. Everything is impermanent. That is the truth. So we just recognize that and then we start to let this moment dance us and the next moment dance us and the next moment dance us, and then we're in that flow of change, of impermanence, and that gives us this ability to befriend change and to learn how to trust life and to learn how to see that when we can let things go, good things come.

Jenee: 31:12

Absolutely. I want to walk back a little bit to you finding Buddhism and how that happened, and it really so much informs what you're doing now.

Nathan: 31:24

Yeah, buddhism was sort of something that Guruji was teaching us all, but it sort of was like you know secretly.

Jenee: 31:34

It was a little crouched behind yeah.

Nathan: 31:37

Yeah, my friend Sita, who I think you probably know as well.

Jenee: 31:44

Yep, Sita who.

Nathan: 31:45

I think you probably know as well, yep, she was a supporter and an advocate of me through the chronic illness journey and she kept telling me, like, learn Buddhism, learn Buddhism, because that's really been her path and I sort of was resistant to it.

Nathan: 32:01

And then I gave in and I read this book called Dharma Art by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and I was just like, oh yep, this is it.

Nathan: 32:10

And it was really actually very profound book for me because it was about sort of decolonizing the idea of you as an artist being an identity as like a separate identity and and realizing that like art is in every moment.

Nathan: 32:30

Art is in the way that we do something, it's in our style, it's in the way we make our bed, it's in every moment there's beauty, it's walking the beauty path. And so it helped me sort of like separate, oh, art is what happens when I'm in a dance studio versus when I'm here in this present moment. And that was very freeing because I was like, okay, well, I can't really dance right now, I can't really make my art in the way that I have, but I can live an artistic life, and that was really beautiful. But yeah, the Buddhist philosophy to me it's just, I'm on a deep quest for truth and for illumination and for enlightenment and I have been for a long time. We see these little trickles of it even in our childhood the questions and the curiosity, and studying Buddhism became a very sort of concrete way to explore that more.

Jenee: 33:31

Yeah, that deep, that deep hunger and the deep spiritual seeking. You know, I think I I had that since I popped out of the womb, you know, and was always like why and what?

Nathan: 33:42

And you know, yeah, I mean for me realizing, like, what is the root of suffering? Right, and does there have to be suffering? Because I was suffering so much and for me I was just like the. What brought me, I think, really to Buddhism was how do I suffer less? Yeah, and the the. The heart of the teachings is is that, you know, our suffering is caused by attachment, aversion and ignorance, which is basically trying to find a way to escape reality as it is. And all of the Buddhist teachings just are saying what all of the somatics people are saying, are saying what everyone is saying, which is the present moment is all we have, and it's actually so beautiful.

Nathan: 34:29

If we can come into this moment and we can meet this moment as it is.

Nathan: 34:34

We can see that there's like an inherent beauty and enlightened quality to it, and finding a way to take, you know, these binaries out of our mind, this like pain, pleasure, good, bad and just see something with equanimity, became like a way for me to be in the experience of pain and acknowledge the suffering that I was having, but sort of not double down on top of it, not create more suffering from that, and then from that place to like see that there can actually be beauty in this right. And oftentimes we see that once we get through the experience we're like oh yeah, there was this reason for it and there was this divine orchestration. But even being inside of it, you can see sort of the ways that, oh, because I'm in pain and because I'm suffering, I'm getting to practice greater equanimity, I'm getting to learn about reality as it is, I'm getting to meet my traumas, I'm getting to heal in all of these ways and reminding yourself so that, especially when your mind is really in the gutter of this sucks, everything sucks.

Nathan: 35:45

I'm complaining all the time.

Jenee: 35:46

Yeah, all the time, yeah, yeah yeah, um just can help you.

Nathan: 35:48

Like it's mind training. You know lojong, you take a, you change your perspective on the situation yeah, hmm, I'm just sitting with all of this.

Jenee: 36:02

It's really beautiful, it's profound. I want to talk about the recent kind of lessons you had posted you know, 12 lessons that I learned through somatic movement this week and talk a little bit about somatics more semantics more.

Nathan: 36:28

And yeah, the body of work of semantics was totally introduced to me by saw and saw. Learned semantics not through, you know, peter levine and um and gabor mate, but he learned that through buddhism. Yes, and one of his famous quotes and posts is you know, semantics wasn't created in the 70s by this guy named Peter Levine, and it was created by the Buddha 2500 years ago by brown people. You know, the word somatics itself is a colonized word and that's like oh gosh. You know, like we, we think everything is new.

Nathan: 36:59

But but it's not, but the work that he's done has been just profoundly influential and inspiring to me in terms of learning how to feel your feelings without a story, and to me then I was like, oh, that's learning how to feel your feelings without an identity.

Nathan: 37:22

So we've talked a little bit about that and just I think he's just platformed me, he's championed me and he's given me the stage to be able to do what I have been doing for a long time, just sort of on my own, and through these conversations he's giving me language also for things of oh, that's a trance state. You know, trance state is something that we practice. What is trance state right? It's when you start to move and your thinking sort of goes away and you're just in the movement.

Jenee: 38:04

Yes.

Nathan: 38:04

And then, because you're in the no self, you sort of have all of this oracular information, you get these psychic visions, you get this wisdom that comes into you, and then you come back into your body and you're like wait, how do I know these?

Jenee: 38:20

things, yeah, yes, Like what?

Nathan: 38:21

How do I know these things? But because you're opening up to that interdependent field, that information can start to come to you. It's yours, it's available to us and the information in our body in our blood in our bones. The dances that we have forgotten but that live sort of in our history can start to come out Even. You know, people can be like 1% African and they can like find themselves doing this African dance and they're like I never studied African dance.

Nathan: 38:53

That's such a great example of the body having all of this intelligence and information and ways that we can sort of understand that we're so much bigger than this myopic self we've believed ourselves to be, and that's very inspiring, like pragmatically. What that can do for you is it can change your story. You get that embodied experience that I'm more than what I believed to be Like. Life is not my assumption of what life is. Life is something like mysterious and ineffable and that sort of creates this curiosity and this like excitement to wake up every day and see what can I discover. One of the massive things that I ask people after every session is what did you discover? Because we're trying to go into the unknown. One of the things of my somatic post was get uncomfortable, like when you are uncomfortable, it's a great sign because you're learning something new, and that's something that I try to, you know really get people to learn.

Jenee: 40:03

When I see you dancing, I feel like you are there, You're in that space that creates great art, that full let go that I think every true artist wants that. When I see you, I'm like I want that for me, but on stage behind a microphone.

Nathan: 40:27

Yeah.

Jenee: 40:27

You can recognize it and you know the irony of it is like.

Nathan: 40:32

getting there requires that that full release, that that the mind you know it's also like about a deep intimacy and honesty with yourself, I think just to be like all of the like things that I'm holding up, all of the masks and the things I'm pretending to, you know the spell of being pretty or perfect, or having my shit together all the time, that it's like I'm willing to sort of expose all that and then, when I expose all that, there's like this deeper intimacy and well of creativity that can start to come through.

Jenee: 41:07

I've been thinking a lot about the mask. I wrote about it yesterday because I'm you know, starting to teach women voice in a way that I mean, I've been teaching women voice this in a similar way as the movement, but I'm taking it to another level now and I've been thinking so much about the mask. You know and how difficult that is oftentimes to put that down you but there is. If you really are hungry for being seen, it does really require.

Nathan: 41:51

You know that that step that can be so terrifying yeah you know of dropping that mask partnership has taught me this a lot, because you can't hide from the person that you love and sort of there's nowhere to go. Like when you're alone and you're on your own. It's like you can sort of escape and be, hidden and like when we go to all of these weird places on our own.

Jenee: 42:17

It's like all of our weird little habits and things.

Nathan: 42:20

Like nobody knows about all our little secrets. On the spiritual path path, there's not really room for secrets like those are all the ways we're still sort of possessing and holding on our territory. You know, yeah, um, and deep tantric partnership teaches us that like we have to expose all of that. So, like all of my addictions, like the porn addiction that I've had till I'm like since I was like 12, I'm like totally exposed and like facing, like having to move through, so me being met with like those honest eyes and those eyes that are, like you know, you can't hide. I think that's also like how can we approach our creative practice, our dance, our, our, our singing, with like that kind of brutal honesty? Um, yeah, because oftentimes people are like well, I don't have anything to say, well, it's like you, you do and you just have to like be very you have to meet yourself in that uncomfortable place yes um, and then it's like then there's like a lot of inspiration there.

Jenee: 43:27

Yeah, it's so interesting because I I went through menopause early because of my thyroid and um when I was 40, and you know I'm starting to experience some of the difficulties of of what can happen when you go through those kind of hormone shifts, and one is that I've lost like a huge range in my voice. I've lost high range and dramatically, like quickly. You know, it was like literally overnight. And at the same time I was my husband and I serve a medicine and we I guide people through their journey with my voice and I, through that, had found, I'm finding this other way you know because I was.

Jenee: 44:22

there was so much judgment around the loss of tone and quality and all of a sudden I can't like stay on a note where I mean my whole life has been my voice, you know, and I think you can identify with that, and and so what?

Jenee: 44:40

what I've come to realize in this is it's taking me deeper and deeper and deeper into the shamanic Um, I guess I would say shamanic cause that's what it is for me Um elements and practice of like what is behind what I'm doing, what is, what is the sound current and what is my intentionality behind what I'm moving, you know, and then and then, like none of that stuff matters yeah it doesn't matter if I'm cracking, it doesn't matter if I can't hold. Oh my god, it's gorgeous because it's human.

Nathan: 45:22

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, break the spell of pretty perfect, have all your shit together. We make people dance chaotically and ugly, and we're like, you know, make, make faces and stick your belly out, stick your your butt out, and you know, do and slap yourself.

Nathan: 45:44

And then yeah and uh, because that that that narrow idea of like what beautiful sound is or what beautiful movement is is, um, is really limiting and really like, actually very harsh on ourselves and so, like you were saying, it's like actually seeing so much beauty in the crack and in the like, the rasp, and in the moment where, like, you didn't sleep and you show up to your work or whatever and you're on social media and you're trying to say something wise, it's like all the ways that we sort of want to hide and become this like perfect version of ourselves that other people will approve of, but instead just like showing up in the vulnerability of like.

Nathan: 46:33

this is where I am. This is the human experience. And wisdom is not found in like the pretty, perfect, beautiful. It's actually found in like the raw, real ugly. And I would say same with healing.

Nathan: 46:45

You, you know, healing is like a frequency of acceptance yeah um, not a frequency of having your shit together all the time, not a frequency of eating the right meal at every moment. Um, healing is is. To me, it's been a journey about surrendering control and learning how, like when my boyfriend messes up my plans or when you know things didn't go the way that I wanted it to go Like how do I, how do I meet that? With compassion and kindness. So I love that and I think some of the beautiful, most beautiful voices we've heard are the voices that, like they move truth, not with beauty exactly, yes, yeah, I agree 100 yeah, that's powerful is there anything on your sticky note there that we didn't cover?

Nathan: 47:40

I think one thing I do want to say is that your body is, like, vastly intelligent, and it knows exactly what movement it needs.

Nathan: 47:50

It knows exactly what sound it needs, and so when we go into our body and move from a place of when we really move for ourself, when we move as our own medicine, we know exactly what to give ourselves, and that's empowering. Nobody has to teach you this. Actually, your body already knows it, and so I try to remind myself and everybody of that before every practice, that we can actually sit here and we can conjure the body, give us an image of how you want to move today, of how you want to feel today. You know of what feelings need to be released today, and we can sort of like we can even feel it before we even do anything. Um, and so your body is your authority, um, and I think it's really important that, especially for those of us that have been trained in institutions, or all of us that are socially conditioned to sort of follow the external authority, that we really remind ourselves that our bodies, our voices are our authorities, and when we listen to them, they give us exactly what we need exactly what we need.

Jenee: 49:10

That's so beautiful. It's food for the soul and the body.

Nathan: 49:12

You know this is, this is the temple, and once you start to like let your body lead, it will take you places you could have never imagined. I mean, I will do movements that I'm like, how did I just do that? And it was just following my body. And when I was fully in like a devotional space of like letting go to my body, let my body lead. My body knows what it needs. I'll like stretch in a way that I'm like whoa. That I'm like whoa, you know, because I'm no longer in sort of the mental contraction of what is possible, what is good, what is bad. I'm going into that unknown, into that mystery. I know you do this too in your channeling?

Jenee: 49:58

Yes, for sure. Yeah, this is really exciting stuff it is.

Nathan: 50:01

It's like I said, this is really exciting stuff.

Jenee: 50:03

It is. It's like I said this is it, this is where we're going. I think, as a planet, this is what we need. This is part of like decolonizing, you know, this is part of healing and de-thawing and de-numbing.

Nathan: 50:23

Yeah and de-thawing and de-numbing.

Nathan: 50:24

And you know, yeah, it's like we get validation through possessing things Like that's what our culture is about, like the more that I can possess, the more territory, the more land, the more success, the more people, the more customers I can possess. Then that builds this enormous ego that then gets fed off of this insatiable greed and we think that, you know, that is what is going to save us, that is what is going to give us the juice, but it's not, and I think people are waking up to that that this is not why am I doing this? This is not giving me what I actually want. And so then, when we start to move into the body, into nature, and we start to into the goddess, you know, which has been a profound part of my path of as a devotee of Isis we start to uncover, like, a much greater joy and pleasure through surrender not through gaining territory, but through surrendering all territory. When you become no one, you become everything and everyone, and all of that becomes yours and not yours at all.

Nathan: 51:41

And it just gets to move through you and you become that free vessel for all of that. That's the greatest gift, it's the greatest pleasure, that's what we pray to as a priest, as a priestess, as a devotee every day. You know it's like. May I be the servant of the magnitude of the universe. And when I sing this song or when I dance this dance, may I allow the powers of the universe and those that are maybe not spoken for. This is where we can also become an advocate on behalf of nature, an advocate on behalf of the voices that have been oppressed. We can let those channel through us and then our dances and our songs become forces of change.

Jenee: 52:24

Reach yeah, reach yeah.

Nathan: 52:27

Yeah, thank you so much.

Jenee: 52:29

Thank you so much. This was a beautiful conversation. I feel so like lit up and just filled up. I'm curious where people find you, how they can come and dance with you.

Nathan: 52:42

Yeah, people find you how they can come and dance with you. Yeah, so my method that is a burgeoning method, but it's been deep in me for so long is called temple dance, and it's about bringing back the dance as worshiping the powers of the cosmos, and through our dances we celebrate the loss of self, the death, the awe, the beauty, the chaos. Dance as a way to become a priest or priestess of change. So I'm teaching this alongside my partner who teaches saw method somatic activated healing in LA on April 28th. I don't know when this will be launched, but we're teaching it all the time. We're going to be teaching it every month. So come do a temple dance class. There's also a free class in my Instagram bio. My Instagram is Nathan Hirschhout. Nathan N-A-T-H-A-N. Hirschhout H-I-R-S-C-H-A-U-T.

Jenee: 53:48

Oh, I said your name wrong. I have to fix that at the beginning.

Nathan: 53:51

Oh, don't worry about it. I said Hershout so, oh, okay, it sounded similar enough. Okay, yeah, it's okay. So yeah, come DM me and um and let's meet and dance together.

Jenee: 54:06

Love it. Um, I will post your sub stack and all the places they can find you, and I'm just so grateful for this conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you, yeah. Yeah, the Heartlight Sessions podcast is executive produced and hosted by me, janae Halstead. It's edited, mixed and mastered by me too, and that theme song you hear, it's called Heartlight and, yep, you guessed it, it's from my record. Disposable Love. Got questions about a certain healing modality or about heart-centered healing, or maybe you just need some advice on life, love or creativity. Send it my way, email me at letters at heartlightpodcastcom. Until next time, I'm Janae Halstead, and thanks for listening to Heartlight Sessions. Thousand volts of sunshine.