Ep 200: Susannah Darling Khan ~ Dance, Empathy & Letting Go

Celebrating our 200th episode, we are thrilled to host the extraordinary Susannah Darling Khan — an inspiring figure in the world of conscious dance and movement. Imagine leaving a promising medical career to follow your soul’s true calling. Susannah did just that, and her journey of letting go is both profound and enlightening. Together, we explore the courage needed to align with our "soul compass" and the lifelong practice of releasing what no longer serves us to live authentically.

We peel back the layers of personal transformation, showcasing how letting go can lead to profound evolution. Starting with a fascination for biology, through a revelation in physics, and a radical career change from medicine to anthropology, we uncover the power of shifting perspectives. By balancing the art of holding on with the necessity of release, we align with our deepest dreams and embrace a life that truly resonates with our inner aspirations.

Our conversation extends into the realm of empathy in healthcare, where we reveal how interoception can enhance empathic connections, improving patient care. We share heartfelt stories of grief, joy, and the wisdom in grieving as a pathway to joy. Finally, we explore leadership through movement, highlighting how dance can unlock personal growth and creativity. Discover the transformative power of movement and how it can ignite deeper self-awareness and foster leadership in our ever-evolving world.

Find Susannah here:
Embodied Listening: https://schoolofmovementmedicine.com/courses/embodied-listening/
Movement Medicine: https://schoolofmovementmedicine.com
Movement Medicine Study Hub: https://schoolofmovementmedicine.com/study-hub/

Chapters

• 0:02 Letting Go
• 13:09 Finding Evolution Through Letting Go
• 27:36 Healing Trauma Through Empathy and Listening
• 40:19 Embracing the Full Spectrum of Emotions
• 47:43 Guidance for Leaders

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence, brought to you by being Space with Katherine Llewellyn, Truth and Transcendence, Episode 200, which I'm very excited about. And today we have special guest Susannah Darling-Khan, who's here to talk about letting go and about her wonderful work. And I'm going to say a bit more about Susannah in a moment, but first let me welcome you and say thank you so much for coming on the show.

Speaker 2: 0:39

Hello, I'm so happy to be here with you, catherine, and I really want to congratulate you. 200 episodes, wow. Before we go on to anything else, can you tell us what does it mean to you that you're on episode 200, as it happens with me Well?

Speaker 1: 0:59

it's interesting because 200 is like a round number, it's something that we learn to see as an accomplishment, an arrival point, and for me the arrival point always affirms the start point. So there's a kind of a journey which is thrown into an extra level of affirmation and validation when one reaches one of those numbers. And I'm also aware of the fact that we've chosen the base of 10, and there are all sorts of other numbering systems that use different bases, and a lot of people are talking about quantum, this and that and the relationship with numbers at the moment. So it also reminds me of that. Okay, so 200 is very important to us, to the Mayans it might have been irrelevant, right, but to us, but also the fact that it's you here today. You and Yakov were my very first conscious dance teachers in 1998.

Speaker 2: 1:58

In 1998, oh wow.

Speaker 1: 1:59

I don't know if you knew that, because you were wrangling a group of well over 100 people for seven days in a dance camp, which must have been quite a thing to hold. So I would forgive you if you didn't even remember me from then. So you were there at the origin for me of my conscious dance journey, which has become a core element of my life. So there's a couple of special things going on here for me in episode 200, right off the bat.

Speaker 2: 2:34

Wow, thank you. That's amazing. What an honor to have been your first conscious dance teacher in 1998. I know I was only four 1998. Is that what you said? I know I was only four.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Wow, congratulations thank you very much. Yeah, so again. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm just delighted to have you. Have you joined me on Truth and Transcendence? So I will now tell everybody a bit more about you.

Speaker 1: 3:12

So, as I've just alluded, Susanna was extraordinary already in 1998. And in fact had already been teaching movement as medicine since 1989 internationally with her beautiful husband Yakov. So they really know their stuff working with conscious movement. And now they are co-directors of the School of Movement Medicine and they have a wonderful book, Movement Medicine, published by Hay House. So an awful lot of expertise and grounded experience working with human beings, working with conscious dance and conscious movement. And Susanna's got a really interesting kind of signature of what she's known for, which is a kind of visionary weaving of the scientific, the psychotherapeutic, along with the systemic and ecological paradigm. So she's kind of weaves these together in a unique and very powerful way. And those who've worked with Susanna know exactly what I'm talking about and those who haven't, I suggest you check out what they're doing.

Speaker 1: 4:21

And of late Susanna and Yakov are doing some very powerful embodied listening work, which I think is incredibly important at the moment because I feel like the evolving of human relating and human connection is a live and present topic for us collectively and individually at the moment, and there's a lot of awareness on it and there's a lot of stuff coming up to the surface in relationship to that.

Speaker 1: 4:52

So the embodied listing work is just fantastic. So when I asked Susanna what might be a great thing to talk about, she said letting go. I felt yes, because so many of us are just so attached and hanging on to things when we should be letting go and a lot of us think letting go is just a decision let go and that's the end of the thing. But I think, as we will explore today in the conversation, it's a lifelong journey, not just something you just tick a box and then it's done. So, Susanna, I would love it if you would lead us off by giving us some idea of what letting go means to you and why it's been so important to you in your life.

Speaker 2: 5:41

Thank you. Well, first of all, I'm just as much learning, and still learning, about letting go as anybody. It's definitely a deep existential aspect of life and it's not the whole of life, but it is there are. Let me start again. When you asked me about what was significant about my life that I might like to share, what was the kind of motif that kept recurring Letting go and having the courage, the confidence, taking the risk to let go of what had been the direction in order to realign with an inner sense of a compass that was compelling. That is something that I recognize looking back. How many times I and then Yakov and I have let go of something that was working really well and showed every signs of going on working really well in terms of status, in terms of status, money, et cetera, et cetera, and let go of it because it was no longer congruent with our integrity or with our desire that's maybe even a better way to put it our actual soul sense of direction, which I call the soul compass, sense of direction, which I call the soul compass. And I think keeping one's soul compass fresh and polished and readable by oneself is very important.

Speaker 2: 7:15

And the first big one for me was leaving medical school and I was on a track to become a doctor and a healer and I was really really good at science and really into science, particularly physics and biology, and also knew that I was destined to be a healer. That was what I really wanted to be and felt I was. And because I was good at science, it made sense to do medicine, go to medical school first and then branch out into whatever alternative modality I wanted to specialize in. And I very quickly realized that that I couldn't do that to myself. It just didn't fit enough and it was going to be just too too.

Speaker 2: 7:59

I would have had to kind of anesthetize myself, was how I put it to myself at the time so that leaving medical school felt like a huge risk because I was sure my parents wouldn't speak to me again, or wouldn't speak to me again for years, and it was completely not true. But nevertheless, that was my feeling and fear, which turned out not to be true. But it was like I just have to. I have to let go here of that road and follow this unknown road. I have no idea how I'm going to do to follow the vision that appeared inside me and I said to myself what do I really really want to do with my life? That was clear, but I had no idea how to go about following that.

Speaker 2: 8:47

But the steps unfolded themselves over the following months and years after that.

Speaker 1: 8:54

How extraordinary. I had no idea that you'd been in what you might call formal medicine at all. I didn't, no, but you had that intention right before that. You were going to be um a healer.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Yeah, I just and now I knew I was exactly. I knew I was and I was really my first ambition. You know, my grandmother said what do you want to be when you grow up? I said a caveman, not knowing about gender at that point, what I would now call a hunter-gatherer or gatherer-hunter, and that became clear. It was about living with nature, living with the seasons, living with ceremony and dance and music and the natural world and community and that kind of sensate, that vigorous physical aliveness and spiritual aliveness together in nature, with us, with humans, and then realizing that actually it's quite difficult for somebody in the modern world to do that. And then that transmuted itself into okay, then I want to be an organic, self-sufficient farmer.

Speaker 2: 10:10

My uncle was one of the first organic farmers of the new era, so I was very lucky to have a childhood with that input of what it's like to milk, to learn to milk cows by hand, to learn to to make hay by hand, all that kind of stuff, which was my heaven on earth growing up. And I just read a huge amount about herbs. I used to treat my, my fellow humans and animals with herbs and no one died. Some people and animals got really, really better, to the surprise of vets and doctors and whatnot. So, anyway, that was my first expression of more holistic healing. But then, at the same time, I was so, so into science and I still am. Yeah, that curiosity about how, the magic, the awe, about how things work, how we're constructed, how our bodies work. It's an absolute miracle, yes, or ingenious genius of 13.7 billion years of evolution that we're here at all.

Speaker 1: 11:17

I feel exactly the same way. I mean, people talk about you know, are there any miracles anymore? You know, is there anything? Does anything extraordinary ever happen? Well, yeah, look my hand yes, exactly it is remarkable. So do you think that that um, that interest in science must have been um had a relationship with faculties that you had, thinking capacities that you had? Would you say that was true?

Speaker 2: 11:54

Yeah, I'll say a bit more about what you mean.

Speaker 1: 11:57

What I mean by that is, you know, when someone says they're interested in science, usually with further probing one discovers that they've got a particular, particular capacities in their thinking faculties, that they're able to explore things in a scientific way, if you like, or they're able to understand or have an interest in understanding those ways of breaking things down and and making sense of them, whereas somebody else, if you say you're interested in something in there, I just want to dig in the garden, or I just want to dance, or I just want to cook, or I just want to sing or I just want to, you know they don't want to go into those sort of inner cerebral realms that you need to work with science that you need to work with science Right.

Speaker 2: 12:48

Okay, got it. Well, I think that is something you know. That's something of my particular signature is I really really need to be physically involved with life in a very kind of muscular, physical way and at the same time, I need to use a very kind of abstract layer of thinking and cognition, and this relates to letting go. I'm so, when I was doing my a-levels, I I was doing physics, biology and chemistry and maths and biology was really really, really fascinating in terms of this the awe of how our bodies work, and I remember learning about how the antelopes nostrils and the how antelopes nostrils are created, create this extraordinary cooling system to keep their brain cool in the heat of the African savannah, for example, and being like like feeling that I was kind of falling to on my knees in reverence for the exquisite perfection and I'm like who could have thought of that? How did that come to pass, particularly the antelopes nostril cooling system? But but it was physics that way which really really ignited me.

Speaker 2: 14:08

And I had a teacher called mr bailey who was um amazing guy, and I remember him asking us in a physics lesson a level physics lesson so were electrons created or discovered, and I discovered, of course. And he looked at me with his piercing blue eyes and went, really, and as he looked at me, my world changed. And he was watching me, at least this is what I think. I think he was watching me kind of awaken to another level of self-reflective consciousness, because I would think what I was going through was ah, we've never seen an electron.

Speaker 2: 14:56

We have made up the idea of an electron in order to help us understand these phenomena, which would be explained by something that we can ever seen. It's an explanation that we have. We've created the image of an electron so that we explain these phenomena which we've observed, and it looks like a good model, it's a hypothesis, but it's not no, it's a no, we created it. So that he kind of he was watching me like go through this, this paradigm shift, like, no, we, oh, we created the idea of it, it's our idea, it's our hypothesis, it's our model, oh, my Lord. And he was just grinning at me whilst I had this kind of like tectonic plates shifting in my consciousness. That was the kind of first. That was the kind of first, that was a kind of cognitive letting go. Well, we see the world as the world is, rather than we see the world as we make it up yeah and then that went on later on.

Speaker 2: 16:09

I remember, yeah, and then I ended up when I left medical school studying anthropology, because I I was like, oh, I can't be a hunter-gatherer, then at least maybe I can learn about hunter-gatherers and how to do it. You know, really I was wanting a practical course in being a gatherer-hunter, but actually I ended up being much more interested in the lens through which we, as Western people, with Western history and philosophy and all those unexamined assumptions which every culture has about the way things are, the lens through which we conceptualize and create the world.

Speaker 1: 16:47

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:47

So it was actually looking at us, not looking at any other peoples. That was the really exciting and profound thing and that's really gone on being part of our work, very deeply finding tools to look at our unexamined assumptions, through which we construct the apparent world.

Speaker 1: 17:09

Yeah, yeah, wow, fantastic. Well, I don't know, as you were speaking that you were obviously clearly in your presence and in your experience of sharing it, but witnessing it, I feel like I've just been told a story of how letting go leads somebody to the unique and most relevant outcome for that person. Because you were practicing letting go right back then, you were discovering that letting go was something that is your signature, and by letting go of things and practicing that as you went along, you've ended up doing this extraordinary work you're doing now, which I very much doubt anyone would have been able to predict back then yes, absolutely, thank you.

Speaker 2: 18:05

What? What a deep um reflection of that process. Yeah, it was definitely. What's happening now is unpredictable and, at the same time, if you look at that little girl dreaming of a life with nature and with the seasons, and with ceremony and music and dance and singing and food and all of that and animals entwined, what I'm living is very, very related to that little girl's dream, but with central heating and dentistry, which I'm very grateful for, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 18:45

And the plumber on today's particular and the plumber, and the NHS, et cetera, et cetera, all those things.

Speaker 1: 18:53

Fantastic, and I was also very struck near the beginning of the conversation when you said about letting go that that you were. You were talking about letting go as being something that one does or ideally might do if the thing we're all, the direction we're already on or the activity we're already involved in does not align with our inner desire, our inner soul, compass, as you put it, which I love, and that notice that you're not letting go of the thing that you love. You're letting go of the thing that you've realized isn't actually what you love, which is very different, I think, from what a lot of people assume is meant when we talk about letting go. You know you've got to let go of that relationship, that money, that home, that this, because you've got to sort of sacrifice yourself, whereas you're saying something very different Let go of the thing which actually no longer is what you want.

Speaker 2: 19:52

Yeah, yeah, that's really well put. Yes, thank you. Yeah, it's like the outdated set of clothes, the outdated um. It's not that it wasn't right, but that, for it's about following evolution, your own evolution, yeah, and yeah, I mean that's. That's certainly one part. If you look at life as a journey, there are these moments where oh, okay, where we are, if we don't let go, we restrict the possibility of our forward motion into something more aligned, and it is always a I think it always feels like a massive risk.

Speaker 1: 20:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:40

I'm certainly not suggesting that everyone should go around letting go all the time, because there's a time to hold on and fight for what you work, labor, put your shoulders to the wheel of the thing that you're involved in and help it become more aligned or keep you know, kind of pulling it back to the road or grow. And and those times you know the times to to labor within the structure of what you already are in, whatever it is, and the times to let it go and begin something fresh. It's a. It's a really's a really delicate and very individual balance.

Speaker 2: 21:23

I don't think anyone can even know, certainly not for anyone else, but even for myself I couldn't have done the letting go as I had done until it was a natural, organic time and often a time of enduring, not knowing or being in the kind of um on the seesaw of is it this? Is it this? I don't know. I love what gabrielle roth used to say, that that if you don't know what to do, do nothing, but do nothing with style. Yes, she was so stylish she was very stylish.

Speaker 2: 22:07

Do nothing, but do nothing with style. Yay, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 22:12

And for anyone who doesn't know who Gabrielle Roth is, she was the founder and creator of the Five Rhythms Dance movement meditation practice, which you were involved, very involved with for a long time and I was very involved with for a long time, and the forerunner of many other practices, and there are still people doing that around the world. And she was an extraordinary, extraordinary human being. She once told me that she felt like she was. She looked like a Jewish New Yorker woman in her 60s or 70s, but really on the inside she was a black male teenager. Yeah, and that's what she was like and she just fully embodied that wonderful, wonderful woman.

Speaker 1: 23:06

And there's something else that strikes me in what you're saying which is about, um, things don't necessarily have to go as predicted. And I've got a memory and I may have made this up, but I think it is a memory of when I was at that dance camp with you and Yakov. I was in the sharing circle and I said something about that. I felt my movement. I felt like I was affected or restricted or in some way didn't like the way. I felt forced to experience a particular thing or move a certain way on the dance floor because of how somebody else was moving on the dance floor. One of you came back and said you didn't have to respond that way to that happening around you and what you experienced when that happened. That's not an inevitable result of that, and that was an epiphany moment for me. That was an understanding that whatever is happening, or however I'm feeling about it, my mind will think of an inevitable path from that, an inevitable predicted path, which ain't necessarily so and that's the gap where freedom lies.

Speaker 2: 24:20

Yeah, even if a microsecond gap of a breath or a dance, or what if something different was possible right now? And that's another letting go, isn't it? It's letting go of the predictable, letting go into the unknown, of what if there were other options, which I don't even know what they might be? But there might be other options, and I think that's the way that our lens that I was speaking about before, or our unexamined assumptions of ourselves as individuals, ourselves as families and as a culture, culture's work is that it's a kind of reduction of possibilities so that we can live, you know, so that we know what to do in this circumstance.

Speaker 2: 25:04

And this circumstance but that is also very entrapping, and I think that's part of the power of embodied listening is can I let go of what I want to say, not forever, but just for a few minutes, to really really put myself in your shoes and see it from your point of view and actually not just hear it, but feel it? What is it like to be over there? And it? It's very simple and it's very radical, and it's very difficult for many of us, particularly when the topic is hot, and there are a lot of hot topics around at the moment. Yeah, well, exactly, and it's a game changer when you really feel understood. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And with the embodied listening work that you're doing, are you incorporating movement with other activities in relation to developing embodied listening?

Speaker 2: 26:05

Yeah, yeah, so it's all about the embodied bit of embodied listening, I think, is the really radical bit, because we many, many people know, know and I wish more people knew about it, but still many people know about active listening, which is really really, um, a very important skill, and a lot of embodied listening is about active listening and letting you know what I've understood by what you said, for example. But the embodied bit is actually about interceptive, which means your inner kinesthetic sensei awareness and your skin inwards, about using that experience to really hear empathically what somebody else is saying. And interception is a skill or an aspect of ourselves as human beings. That capacity to kinesthetically feel what's happening inside, from our skin inwards, physically just very little acknowledged in our. In our education system it's not really acknowledged at all. I don't think in in areas of counseling and therapy and trauma work it is being acknowledged now in movement medicine it's, it's absolutely central and yakov always says it's the most important step in his growth and and a deeply important part of developing shamanic awareness.

Speaker 2: 27:36

Yeah, but the key thing for me, one of the key things and learning about this is that learning that people who have very low empathy, ie people who have psychopathic or sociopathic possibilities or tendencies within their character, normally have almost always have very, very low interception and, of course, also normally have high trauma in their own background.

Speaker 2: 28:10

So the way they've survived their own trauma is to turn off their interception, which means they can't feel internally what's happening inside them and therefore they can't feel empathy for somebody else who they might be hurting.

Speaker 2: 28:25

Yeah, turn that around and say the more interoception I can develop, the more empathy I can potentially have with someone, and there's that what I call empathic resonance then, which means that I not only can understand what you're saying, cognitively, put myself in your shoes in terms of seeing the situation from your, from your direction, but also I can actually feel what it's like to be you, be in your place in whatever situation it is, and feel it with my own being, with my own body. Because how do we know what we're feeling? We know what we're feeling emotionally through our bodies and I'm having this conversation at the moment to do with medical school and doctors and through this extraordinary series of events. I'm just talking very gently with people that are doing medical education with young student doctors about embodied listening and how that might support doctors to learn more skills around listening to their patients, because apparently that is the number one thing listening. Not feeling listened to, not feeling heard, is the number one patient complaint.

Speaker 2: 29:47

It's the number one thing that if healthcare workers can get it better, the patient experience is better yeah so we're talking about this thing about it's not just a tick box exercise of a technical skill of how to listen though there are aspects like you have to actually shut up and just be interested and listen but this, but the next layer of, of actually empathic listening, means you have to be at home in your own heart, which means you have to be at home in your own heart, which means you have to be at home in your own body, and that is deep work, um personal work, I mean, and the person I was speaking to about this was immediately got it.

Speaker 2: 30:27

She was like, yeah, there's a whole undoing of medical training there, um to actually allow oneself to be affected. And then how do we support doctors and healthcare workers to be in their own hearts, which means being in their own bodies? I'm really fascinated that now, in my 60s, I seem to be turning back like the wheel, coming back to medical school, but with something to offer which would be an incredible, um fulfillment of a dream for me if I could bring something of value back that would support healthcare workers and their patients to be more humane with themselves and each other, um more healing within the nhs, you know which, which is so precious in this country and so yeah, so in such a difficult state.

Speaker 1: 31:21

Yes, and I imagine many, many people would be grateful for that. That reminded me. I was once in a situation I'm someone who goes nowhere near hospitals or Western medicine as a general course of things, but I was in hospital and something, a test had just been done and someone came in to give me a piece of bad news. And the bad news wasn't that bad, it wasn't really a problem. It was oh okay then, but the way she communicated it.

Speaker 1: 31:49

I was almost traumatized by the way she communicated it and I could see that she was incredibly uncomfortable making this communication. She was really distressed about this. She was terrified, I was going to be distressed and she was in a terrible state, basically, and then trying to tell me this information. And I remember noticing her and thinking there's something profoundly wrong here that this woman is expected to give people this sort of information and she's not prepared for it. She doesn't have the capacity to own her experience and then communicate in a way which says, oh, here we go, here's the result, and it would have been, oh, great, thanks for letting me know. Good to know, goodbye. But as it was that resonated with me for days and weeks afterwards this awful experience of the distress that was coming off her.

Speaker 2: 32:40

Yes, yeah, that's what I just heard. The distress, yeah, that was in her system and probably in the system that she was part of. Yeah, I think that when my dad was in hospital recently and he died 18 months ago and that's really how all this came about was coming back into relationship with the medical system, was my father being in hospital and then he finally died under hospice care Right here where I'm sitting Extraordinary palliative care, I mean amazing, from the local hospice and the local district nurses. But the experience in the local hospital was so awful that I was coming back. Every time I came back from visiting him. I'd just be walking the hills where we live I don't know if it's the right way screaming, yowling, yowling, with a distress that I was like partly it's mine to see my father in this state and being treated in a way that was so.

Speaker 2: 33:45

It was a mixture of things, but the heavy side was really heavy.

Speaker 2: 33:48

It was really unskillful and disrespectful, but the feeling that actually even just going into the hospital, like the, the bricks and mortar were breathing distress, yeah, out and yeah and and through writing the book that I'm writing about accompanying my parents in their dying time, which was an incredible journey and that's a whole other letting go.

Speaker 2: 34:16

Letting go like letting go consciously and, at the same time, being there side by side with our parents, which almost all of us, you know. Hopefully it's not our parents that will bury us, but they will bury our parents. Hopefully things are in that order for most of us. So that time when you, when we actually get to be with our parents, knowing that death is coming, it was so precious with my friends because they both were able to really meet, that consciously, communicate how they felt, you know what was happening internally in a very honest way, what, what they needed, and have those conversations. It was very, very dear and beautiful. But anyway, as I was writing this book, I realized I've got to go back to that hospital and say something because it was really not okay.

Speaker 2: 35:07

Oh yeah, and I've got to say thank you for the good bits but also address the bits that were not okay. And I received such a incredible listening from complaints person of the hospital. It was quite extraordinary like wow, you know your stuff and she was, and it was empathic as it, what it didn't feel like I was just being, you know, ticked off. I'm, I'm listening, I'm. She was really there with me and as a result of that, I've been put in touch with you know. She was like we need you, we need you, we need your input into the system right so interesting.

Speaker 2: 35:46

that actually put complaining but in a in a very positive way. It was clear I don't want to damn anyone, I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but I do need you to hear this, because it really wasn't okay. Yeah, so I'm trying to fit that into letting go, but anyway, well that was a letting go.

Speaker 1: 36:02

I mean, you obviously did a lot of. It sounded like your parents did a lot of letting go during that process, so that must have they must have been amazing human beings to be able to do that. And you did a lot of letting go of the distress with your yowling, which is just sophisticated, in my opinion, way of responding. You also let go of your disapproval of what happened in the hospital by turning it into a gift, by going and giving it to them and giving it to you know not kind of nurturing it and turning it into a sort of a. People used to talk about the hurt museum. You know, you polish it and you put it on the shelf in the hurt museum and you go in there every night again and admire all the polished things on the shelves in the hurt museum I haven't heard that that's brilliant.

Speaker 2: 36:53

It Well, I've definitely got a little Hurt Museum, but it's really good to get those things off and make use of them in a positive way. That is brilliant. The Hurt Museum, the Museum of my Hurts Exactly.

Speaker 1: 37:08

I was given that by one of my teachers, robert Daubeney, who was on another episode, who created and ran the exegesis program in the 70s and 80s, which was very similar to est, a uk version of est. Right, okay, the hurt museum was something very useful for us to get our head around, because we were treating the hurt museum as if it was like something to be proud of and we we quickly discovered it was not. The fact you put loads of effort into it doesn't necessarily mean it's something to be proud of.

Speaker 2: 37:42

Yeah, and you could say that, yeah, that that hurt museum becomes for many of us the lens through which we view the world. Yeah, the lens of our past hurts, as we've kind of polished them to be, and then we're looking for proof to re unconsciously. But because there is this part of our us as human beings that seems to love predictability, and I don't know if you know that phrase from burt hellinger, the founder of Family Constellations. He says, or said, it's far harder to heal than to hurt. Yeah, because it requires letting go of your story, yes, of the story of the hurt museum, you could say yes. Yes, of the story of the Hurt Museum, you could say yes. And because the predictable, even if it's a terrible predictableness, there's something reassuring in the very predictability of it. Like you see, it happened again. It's just like that.

Speaker 1: 38:49

Yes.

Speaker 2: 38:50

Yeah, and somehow that is actually easier to live with than another phrase that one of my constellation teachers, vivian Broughton, brought to me was the sea of the unknown, that when we start healing and we go into a space where other things are possible than the repetition of the Hurt Museum. I love all these metaphors weaving them together. She said you know, we tend to feel very at sea, like at sea in a little boat.

Speaker 2: 39:19

And it's very unstable, and in that instability because we haven't yet really formed a new landscape, with the goodness in there, as well as the possible difficulties and challenges that inevitably there will be, the possible difficulties and challenges that inevitably there will be. But we're in that, we're between seats, we're between stools and in between lands. And in that Sea of the Unknown it's very easy to scarp back to the known shore, the known land of, let's call it, the Hurt Museum.

Speaker 1: 39:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's the opposite of letting go, exactly, and I love how you just reminded us there that that, when, when we don't let go and we end up hanging on to the things that we really perhaps ought to have let go of, that affects our lens, opposite our perception and and hampers us. It's more than we might think more than we might think.

Speaker 2: 40:17

Exactly I was. I was trying to do something on a computer the other day and and yakov was trying to help me and he was like you know, you see, there where it says whatever it was that I needed, and and then, and then we went through a whole thing. I went through a whole thing. You see, doesn't work, I can't do this. It's not, I can't do this, or it's not being well constructed, or whatever. Now that's my, my, one of my hurt music pieces, like I can't handle new technology, or it's not well, it's not user-friendly. That that old story. Yeah, then he showed me that the thing that I needed was there and he said you didn't look. And I said no, it wasn't, I didn't look, I was looking but I couldn't see it. Couldn't see it because my inner expectation was of it being difficult, my adrenaline was up and I literally couldn't see the thing I needed to see, but it was right in front of my face and I couldn't see it.

Speaker 2: 41:20

And I think that's what happens. And we, when you're in that which we are all the time to an extent, because when we can't be aware of the zillions of bits of information that are in our visual field, let alone our interoceptive awareness, let alone everything else we can hear and be aware moment. So we're on your reception to stephen portis's word. You know we're filtering what we can consciously be aware of, because we can't be aware of it all, and we're filtering according to our filters, our subconscious filters, about what we expect. And letting go of a story, however painful, has a particular kind of quality of kind of I sometimes call it redemptive grief, and sometimes I just want to talk a little bit about letting go, as in letting go into grief Because I'm so aware that at this time, with all the different wars that are going on and the awareness of climate change kind of cranking up to another level, that sense of the horror, of that seeming incapacity as a species to learn to live together in peace and together with the biosphere in a way that is good for us all now and all of Earth's descendants in the future all now and are all of earth's descendants in the future there's a level of distress that I can feel myself moving in and out of touch with, and every now and again my system kind of demands that that is felt, and I was at a healing um ceremony and meditation a little while ago, where I was like the marrow of my bones, started screaming Not that I was screaming out loud, but I felt this scream of anguish and I received these words like Susanna, your prayer is broken unless you can acknowledge the brokenness that you're experiencing when you're in touch with the kind of world wide web, the matrix of life, this feeling that the earth is crying, that the people are crying, that you are crying but you're not admitting it.

Speaker 2: 43:49

And we're in this ceremony, we're not admitting it. I I found a way to express this, this sorrow and this sense of the brokenness in in a, as a prayer, because it was so compelling. It's like you cannot go on and call this a ceremony unless you acknowledge this. That was my, I call it. My teaching voice, my guiding voice was instructing me and and um, it was very important and I and it and I was really quite scared that people might really not, you know, feel I'd kind of it felt like a bit like a taboo to bring that into this beautiful space, the sense of horror, and and yet there was greeted with such relief that somebody had named it. It was very strong and deep and then a few days later I was having a talk with a friend who's dealing with a health issue for herself and she also used the name, the word broken. I feel broken and I and it was such a Like broken, the broken prayer, the broke feeling broken on the personal and collective like broke and we just sobbed.

Speaker 2: 45:09

We sobbed together for about 10 minutes. It was like this eruption and relief to just go there in company. Yeah, it was like the relief of being able to being permitted by by the other's capacity to go there and to go there together and then it was like. It was like um bouncing on a trampoline and going right down and then going right up, like there was this lightness came and a sense of elastic, um, goodness, buoyancy, and then this rainbow came. That was the most stunning rainbow I've ever seen, like literally a rainbow.

Speaker 2: 45:56

I was after that conversation, I was going to get yakov from the station and this rainbow came out and I had enough time to go up the hill and photograph it, like in its technicolor glory, in the rainstorm, this like double huge rainbow, which just really, you know, that's the most amazing um metaphor and actuality of what happens when we allow the grief and and the sun and the full spectrum of the heart and I think I think that's the most important thing I would really want to offer everyone who's listening to this.

Speaker 2: 46:32

It's like embrace your full heart and including the joy and the sorrow, and the sorrow and the joy and the fear and the rage and the compassion, all of it. And you know, maladoma, soma and many West African wise people and ordinary people from particularly it seems to be Western Africa, seem to know this thing about if you want to support your joy, cry a lot. If you want to support joy, weep. If you want to support your own joy, your community's joy, allow grief, you know, create and hold and really give space to the grief. And that's what I've experienced my whole life is, yeah, there is that buoyancy, but it was amazing to experience that again so recently in such a very strong way.

Speaker 1: 47:26

Wow, fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's very powerful. Well, honestly, susanna, I could quite happily sit here talking to you for hours on end, but we don't have time for that, so I'm going to just switch very slightly. And you mentioned about what's happening in the world, and I think we can agree. There's a lot going on in the world and everyone has different opinions about it, about what is happening, what should be happening, who should be doing what, etc. And there are a lot of people in the world who are either in leadership positions of one kind or another or who are simply trying to be leaders in their own lives, and some of those people are listening to this conversation today. People are listening to this conversation today and, as they are listening, I wondered if there's something you'd like to say to leaders or people trying to be leaders in their own lives, who are trying to be part of the solution, but trying to help, and they've been listening to this whole conversation. Is there something you feel moved specifically to say to them right now?

Speaker 2: 48:36

Wow, catherine, thank you. Well, hello, if you're one of the people listening that put yourself feel you're in that role. First of all, congratulations and thank you for taking that level of responsibility, on whatever level it is. I think everybody that seizes that sense of I can make a difference and I want to do my best to make a positive difference. I think the halfpenny worth I would offer is don't forget your body, involve your body and not just doing your peloton or going for walks or stuff. All that's great, but also dance.

Speaker 2: 49:17

Something significant happens when we bring our, I find, when I bring my inquiry into a dancing space where body, heart and mind are involved, where my imaginal world is involved through my consciousness, where my feelings are involved through the music and through the invitation and my body is really engaged as a dancer, I am stunned again and again that I perceive possibilities and I perceive actualities and realities.

Speaker 2: 49:40

My perception opens and I'm not talking about taking any substance except for the medicine of movement and I have recently, a few days ago, been utterly gobsmacked by like, oh my God, I would never have imagined that I would get to that result. I didn't even know that I could get to that result, of that perception about what I need to do next and also what's been happening for me in the last year, if I hadn't done that movement journey for me in the last year, if I hadn't done that movement journey, and it's just, and I've been doing this stuff for decades and I'm still amazed by its power. It's like we really. It pushes us out of our taken for granted kind of rut or groove that we don't even know we're in. So yeah, dance, dance, bring your inquiry into a dancing space.

Speaker 1: 50:37

Wonderful. Well, I 100% concur with that. So I'm just going to remind everybody where to find you, which is schoolofmovementmedicinecom, and there's going to be another couple of links in the show notes as well. And, susannah, has there been a? We've talked about a lot today. I can't believe how much we talked about before you wrap up, can we?

Speaker 2: 51:04

I know this is good, you're going to need to cut this, but can I just say one thing in there in terms of links and then then the wrap up? Sure, okay. So if you want to do that kind of movement medicine journey with us, then I really recommend the movement medicine study hub, which you can find on schoolof movementmedicinecom, where, week by week, we're making these kinds of offerings and that's where we're experiencing it for ourselves, because we have to test them all out and we're just growing in our understanding of how, how radical and helpful this stuff is. But of course there are many other places to do this kind of thing too.

Speaker 1: 51:41

Amazing. Well, that's so fantastic. I'm delighted that you mentioned that, because I knew it was going to go into the show notes, but I think it's really powerful that you mentioned it as well, so people can actually do that.

Speaker 2: 51:53

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 51:55

So I was just going to to say we've talked about a lot today and I almost can't believe how much we've covered today. Has there been a favorite part of our conversation for you today, susanna?

Speaker 2: 52:08

well, you know the bit that's really shining, it's two bits the rainbow. That moment with my dear friend, and then right back to the physics teacher, mr bailey, at the beginning, and have we discovered, created moment of awakening of my 17, 16, whatever, 16, 17 year old self. Right, whatever 16, 17-year-old self. That was a life-changing moment. I really want to. I tried thanking him but I think he must have died. But anyway, if you're listening and you know, you knew Mr Bailey. He was white, curly haired, curly, white hair. He was already in his 50s or 60s at that point. But anyway, mr Bailey, thank you.

Speaker 2: 52:53

Fantastic, so great to value those extraordinary experiences that we've had yeah, and our teachers and, and what you told and, and your thing, the the hurt museum, and I'm going to write the name down of um of that person who's named robert daubeney, daubeney, yeah, you're going to have to spell that for me.

Speaker 1: 53:13

Well, it's on the list of episodes. You can easily find him, okay, fantastic. I managed to get him on for an episode Brilliant, that's interesting interviewing one of your prime teachers. It was great. So, susanna. Final thing, would you like to leave the listeners with some sort of reflection question that will help them to engage with the whole thing of letting go and perhaps also dance?

Speaker 2: 53:51

well, this is my suggestion. Thank you for the question, for the inquiry. My suggestion would be to put on a favorite piece of music that really gets you moving, without lyrics, so that you're not priming your consciousness in any way. Something without lyrics, get yourself really awake in your body and then, and moving in your body, and then ask yourself this question in order to become who I'm longing to become, what do I need to let go now, wow, and to listen with your whole being and the answer, and to really listen to what comes. Even if it's surprising, even if it's apparently tiny or apparently big, it doesn't mean you have to do anything.

Speaker 2: 54:48

You can really, of course, reflect on it and chew it over and talk with people, other people, about it, et cetera, et cetera. Sometimes it comes visually, sometimes it comes like a voice, sometimes it comes in the knowing of your body, and then really thank the part of you that gave that information, because it's when we acknowledge that you know what I call the inner compass of the guidance system that we strengthen it and acknowledge that it takes that deep inner listening and it takes courage to hear that guidance it's not always comfortable and then find a way to take one step in that direction that you are ready to take. So you're not trying to go faster than your system and the context that you're in can tolerate, but you take one step and nothing is too small to make a difference, and that's how you greet your partner in the morning, or how you greet the person on the morning, or how you greet the person on the bus, or how you put on your coat, or all these things change the world. They really do.

Speaker 1: 56:03

Beautiful, amazing. Thank you so much, susanna Darling-Kahn, for joining us on Truth and Transcendence, and have a beautiful afternoon.

Speaker 2: 56:12

Wow, thank you.

Speaker 1: 56:20

Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend. If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about mentoring, workshops and energy treatments on beingspaceworld. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.