Thomas Hübl: Welcome back to the Collective Healing Conference. My name is Thomas Hübl. I’m the convener of the summit, and I’m very happy to be speaking today to Dr. Shefali. So Dr. Shefali, warm welcome. We’re very happy you’re joining us.
Dr. Shefali: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Thomas: So of course, I think we have some passions in common it looks like, and because of course, parenting, developmental trauma, conscious parenting, how does our world mature? And so these are all topics I think both of us are very passionate about. So I’m curious, when you define for us, what do you mean when you say conscious parenting? What is conscious parenting? And if people never heard about conscious parenting, so what would you tell them, what that means for you?
Dr. Shefali: So in a nutshell, conscious parenting is really the parent realizing that they cannot impose their needs, their desires, their expectations on their children. And until they heal themselves, they will project onto their children their own unmet fantasies. So conscious parenting really is about the parent understanding that they need to raise themselves. And what does that mean? That means they need to understand that they have inherited a lot of unconscious baggage from their childhood, that if they do not heal that, they will pass it on to their children. And our children do not deserve to carry this burden. It’s up to us to heal ourselves, to clean our wounds, to become whole within ourselves. Otherwise we will control and micromanage and over try to helicopter our children’s existence and rob them of their right to their emotional destiny and their emotional freedom.
Thomas: So as a parent, if I were that parent now and I have no idea, how would I just notice my unconscious behaviors? So what are the first steps when you say, okay, a parent that somehow resonates with what you’re saying? So they’re interested, but they don’t have a lot of experience with doing that inner work. So how, from being more unconscious, how can we become conscious parents?
Dr. Shefali: Yeah, I think the first step is to watch and become aware of when we are being triggered. So if you are losing your temper, if you are really frustrated all the time or you’re really angry or impatient, exhausted, that means there’s something going on in your emotional world that you are not taking care of. And it could probably show up as fights with your children or arguments with your partner or your procrastinating and missing deadlines or a little bit of everything. And that’s a wake up call to realize that there’s something that is not aligned and either we’re taking on too much work or we are caring too much about what people think or we are knitting out of scarcity and lack. There is some pressure inside that is creating this outer conflict so no one can help anyone become aware. So sometimes parents come to me and say, oh, do you think I should put a rubber band on my wrist so I can pull the rubber band every time I’m triggered so that I will remember not to get triggered?
So I say, great idea. And then they say, but how will I remember to do to pull the rubber? So then I say, oh, you remember, because every time you’re upset, that should remind you. And then they’ll say, but when I’m upset, who will tell me in that moment? So awakening is a very individual idiosyncratic process, and no one can do it for anyone. But if one is in a lot of distress and a lot of pain, that is the best wake up call. So I often will tell my clients, okay, okay, come and see me when you are in more pain because you’re not in enough pain right now, you’re too comfortable. And when people are comfortable, they don’t grow. They do not change. It’s only when there’s enough pain in their lives that there’s a slight chance that the ego will fall apart and they’ll be ready to try out a new way.
Thomas: Let’s stay there for a moment. So what you’re saying basically is that when we are in discomfort, there’s a higher chance to grow. So that’s a pressure to grow. Is there any chance that for people that feel that they have a drive to grow, they want to grow? If I understand you correctly, you’re also saying if somebody has anywhere strong drive to grow, then there’s a motivation also.
Dr. Shefali: Yeah, I grew and evolved in my early twenties, not out of pain. I did it out of curiosity, out of seeking, out of joy, out of excitement. So that is also possible though most people don’t do it that way. Most people are forced into this very shocking, staggering, epiphany, prophetic awakening because everything is taken away from them. And that’s a good thing. It seems like that’s a bad thing, but that’s actually a good thing because the reason it was taken away is because it wasn’t meant for us in the first place. So if a person who wins the lotto and then loses all his money in two weeks, that’s a good thing because they were not aligned with keeping the money from the lotto. Or if your marriage falls apart and you’re like, oh my god, that’s a bad thing. No, that’s a good thing because it was not sustainable, it was not aligned. And when we are not aligned, things will not be sustainable at some point or the other, it’ll fall apart. So whether today or tomorrow it’s coming,
Thomas: Can you say a few more sentences about when you say it was not aligned, what does it mean to be aligned?
Dr. Shefali: So for example, if you are friends with someone and you actually don’t like them, but you are keeping up the appearance, so you are in the role or the persona of being a good girl. So you keep talking to the friend, you keep talking to the friend, but you just don’t like them. And it keeps building up at some point without you realizing you or the friend are going to say something that will expose this inauthenticity. And then both of you may be surprised, how did we break up so fast? Or where did this come from? It came from a lot of suppression that we are not aware of. And I see this a lot in couples where the couple is not willing to confront the truth of what’s really going on. So they suppress, they suppress, they suppress, but then the anger builds up and the resentment builds up, and then before you know it, they’re cheating or before it, they’ve left that marriage and they’re like, oh, it happened all of a sudden. It never happens all of a sudden, it’s like a buildup. We’re just not aware of it in real time.
Thomas: So what I hear is also that you’re saying alignment is when we are more in touch with what’s authentically true for us, and the more we can live from that place and share and relate from that place.
Dr. Shefali: Yes, yes. So for example, if your friend is mean to you and you really don’t feel good, you feel hurt, but you don’t bring it up and then again in six weeks, she’s again mean to you and you feel you’re feeling something but you don’t express it or you don’t even honor it or you don’t even pay attention to it. And that’s what is misalignment. So alignment is when you are aware that you are having a feeling in the moment, but because you’ve been trained over years, decades to ignore that feeling because you were told in childhood that your feelings are not important. You learn to bypass those feelings, but the feelings keep growing in you and eventually they will affect your behavior. And then before you know it, in two years, you’re cursing your friend out and your friend is like, what’s wrong with you?
And you’re like, you always do this. And she’s like, I always do this? You haven’t even told me this one time. This is what the buildup is. And it’s a good thing when it exposes itself, but it would be a better thing if you could learn in the moment, if we could all learn in the moment, okay, what’s going on? Just this morning I had somebody send me a text and my initial reaction was like, oh, it’s okay, no problem. But then I checked in a little later to myself and I realized, no, it was a problem. So then I texted her back and I said, you know what? To be honest, I am having a problem and I need to be honest with you, and here are my feelings. And then we took care of it in the moment and we could move on.
But most of us cannot do that and many of us cannot receive that, but we try, at least we have to try to acknowledge, honor and become aware of what’s going on inside. But because in childhood we were so disengaged from our inner knowing, from our parents, we were so cut off from our inner power that it’s very quick for us to do it, especially women. We do it without even realizing we do it. We are not even aware that we should check in with ourselves every moment and see how we feel. We’re not even aware that we can leave a room. I’ve had to tell clients that’s why you have two legs you can leave or you can keep your mouth shut. That’s where your lips, you can keep it short and they’re like, oh, I never realized that was an option, right? Because we’re so indoctrinated to just react.
Thomas: That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Also, your example. So you’re saying basically when I check in with myself and I feel some discomfort, the healthy part of it would be to share it as soon as possible and to bring it into connection. And whether the other part can take it or not is not so much the focus, but it’s very important that I can share it. Right?
Dr. Shefali: Yeah, but don’t – if you’re feeling that you are in a volcanic turmoil, then it’s good not to share it in that moment. What’s most important is to create a red flag inside yourself and let your body talk to you and tell you, oh, something’s off. And you can go process it in a journal. You can call another friend, you can sit on it, you can meditate. There are many things you can do, but what I’m saying not to do is to just bypass and learn to tap into yourself every hour or any time there’s a big decision or something comes at you, you can tell yourself, you know what? I have a friend and that friend is me, and I can check it with my friend. How is my friend feeling right now? And give yourself validity and the space to at least explore it for yourself.
Thomas: So that’s beautiful. And when you say check in, let your body talk to you. I mean, for some of us, maybe that’s very natural that our body is a place where we feel at home. For some of us, it’s not natural at all. So we are much more in the thinking, should I do this? Should I do that? I have all kinds of thoughts about situations, I think in the night, I think. So maybe you can share a little bit because that’s a very powerful tool that you describe. Listen to your body, let your body talk to you. What do you recommend to people that feel that they have a harder time connecting to their body in the first place? Maybe you can speak a bit. How do you work with your clients that don’t have immediately such a good access to their body?
Dr. Shefali: Yes. So if anyone’s listening and they are thinking to themselves, I don’t even know what she’s talking about, I don’t, I’ve never had my body talk to me. For example, when that friend texted me immediately, I felt queasy in my tummy. I had felt unsettled. My body was very clearly telling me that, oh, something’s off, but that’s because I’m listening and I’m connected. So if anyone out there is listening and saying to themselves that they don’t know what this is all about and you’re curious, then the body awareness is like a whole journey you need to undertake. But in a nutshell, it’s practicing with a timer every 10 minutes. If my chest could talk, what would it say? If my stomach could talk, what would it say? Where am I feeling the stress in my body right now? Am I feeling it in my throat, in my shoulders?
What would it say? What are its feelings? And we begin to use the wisdom of this very important knowledge source to tell us what our emotional weather is like. It’s like you’re going to Antarctica or the Arctic Circle. You would check the weather all the time, or you would check the conditions. Why don’t we learn to check our own conditions, right? Well, what am I really feeling right now? And let me, what are my thoughts? What are my feelings? It sounds so simple and basic, but we are not doing this. And when we don’t do this, we slowly begin to drift further and further away from our truth. And then before you know it, you live 20 years married to someone who you don’t even like, and you’re like, where did the time go? It’s because of this soul erosion I call it in one of my books. It’s this gradual erosion of the soul that begins in childhood as a girl especially. But then we are the biggest perpetrators of our own abandonment, and we kind of then just give divorce and give away our power, and then we are facing autoimmune diseases. We’re overweight, we’re exhausted. It’s because we’re not living for ourselves. We’re living for the validation of others.
Thomas: That’s very powerful. So I think you’re sharing one very important thing, at least also in my understanding, the deeper embodiment as a source of wisdom, as a source of knowledge, and then listening to these impulses. And also you said that it’s a journey for many of us, our journey to re-inhabit our body. So what’s actually the reason why we are not in our body? Why do we need to go on a journey to reclaim our body? What’s the process of not being in the body then?
Dr. Shefali: Yeah, yeah. So there’s two reasons we are not in the body. Number one, because collectively, and that’s why your work is so important collectively, we have steered ourselves so far away from our original blueprint. We are living in just completely toxic ways compared to how we should live. We should be living in community and interconnected, and we shouldn’t be living in nature and moving and not be indoors and living in these nuclear families where we are bound to one person in a marital contracting, don’t feel like we can move out of it, or we are racing ahead of time and trying to achieve or succeed or fit in. So all these parameters can lead to a lot of stress. And the second reason is because as children, when we were in our bodies, because we were in our bodies, our parents were not in their bodies, our parents were out of control and unconscious and cut off. So they took us into survival mode. And to be in survival mode, we couldn’t be in this safe place inside our body. We began being in our ego to protect ourselves and to defend against the craziness of the world. So because of these two forces which work really interdependently, we are now in this place where we are so out of alignment with not only the way we should be living, but who just who we authentically are.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And you also, what I hear you say is, on the one hand, as children, moving out of the body is actually an intelligent process because of the world that we don’t feel in that way. So that because we cannot stay in that overwhelm that we are in. So I think I feel for many people, it’s very important to see that when they say they can’t feel their body, I often say, yeah, but you could leave your body.
There’s an intelligence in leaving. So it’s not just a pathological thing, it’s a process and we can reverse the process. So that’s beautiful. And I think also what you said collectively, that gets amplified a lot and have also a world where the intellectual, rational thinking, it gets so much validation versus it seems too simple to have a body wisdom speak. What can we do that our children can stay in their bodies better so that they can develop for themselves like the deeper body awareness over time as we develop and keep it in a way and grow through their body and anchor themselves. And what’s the interrelation between embodiment and relationship, like a proper relationship and embodiment?
Dr. Shefali: So as parents, it’s so important that we don’t do so many things. So number one, we don’t put our stress onto our children’s lap because then they’re absorbent and they’re young and they’re not ready to get the burden of that. Number two, when they are having emotions and feelings, we tap into them, don’t get them to tap out so that they realize that they can have feelings. It’s okay, it’s safe. And I would say number three is really to allow them to trust their inner voice, because that’s going to be the ultimate power source to tell them who is a danger, who is somebody they can trust, whether they should put all their investment in a career of this kind or that kind. It has to come from here. But if parents don’t train children to stay in their bodies and to honor their bodies, the children will keep doubting themselves.
And culture keeps taking us out of our bodies anyway to get external validation anyway. How much money do you have? How many cars do you have, how do you look? What kind of Instagram following do you have? It’s all external and it’s not connected to the internal. So those are the things that parents can do. And in terms of your question, what is the relationship between embodiment and relationship? Oh my goodness. If we’re not safe in a relationship, we cannot stay embodied. So a good relationship, a healthy relationship allows the child or the human being to stay in their body, not in our body, not in a culture’s body in their body. And the person feels safe to cry, to want to have sex, to talk about their fantasies, to talk about their anger, to talk about their regrets. That’s the embodied experience, and they feel safe to do that.
So relationships can really help people feel safe. And in your adult life right now as you’re listening, and if people don’t feel safe to you, then that is a wake up call for you. Also, if you don’t have a lot of people coming to you saying that you make them feel safe, that’s a wake up call too. So I check in with my relationships and I know for the most part, people will tell me, oh, I feel safer with you than anybody. I can tell you anything that’s not to give me praise, but that’s to make me validated that, okay, I am doing my inner work where I’m not imposing my fantasies and thoughts on other people, and I check in all the time to make sure my daughter feels safe with me. She may not like me, but does she feel safe with me?
You see, because liking someone or not liking someone is not the question. It’s about does that person feel they can be authentically themselves? That is the greatest gift you can give your children and anyone else not, oh, do they feel loved by me? We can feel loved by a lot of people, but still not feel safe with them. Safety is a whole other level. For example, I have a client who tells me that a mother adores her and she knows her mother adores her, but she doesn’t tell her mother anything because she knows her mother will fall apart. Her mother cannot handle the emotions. So for me personally, I think if someone tells me, I feel so safe with you, wow. That to me is the ultimate compliment because it takes a lot to be able to create emotional safety. It means you don’t judge the person. You don’t impose your way. You truly attune to them and listen to them, and you don’t give them sermons and lectures and commands. Wow. That takes a lot. And you don’t take it personally. Most of us don’t make our partners feel safe with us. Most of us have partners who do not tell us everything.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s beautiful. I love it. And also most probably to add to the list that we feel safe ourselves in order to create safety for other people.
Dr. Shefali: Yeah, that’s aA great point. Do we feel safe with ourselves? Would we be the first person we go to? Most of us won’t even think of that. I didn’t even think of it. So I take it as a given. You’re so right, most of us will not even count on ourselves. We should put our own name as our first SOS contact, but we don’t rely on ourselves.
Thomas: And all the things that we named now, they are so powerful because there’s a lot of intellectual talk now and organizations and in different places in society. How do we create psychological safety, but that we can create it only when we feel safe inside and that if we can listen and if we don’t text, other people, don’t speak and hold the lectures. All these things that you mentioned, they are super important. So now let’s say as a father, let’s say my daughter triggers me. So maybe you can first say a few words about trigger where maybe some people that they understand what you mean when you say trigger. And the second thing is, so when I’m triggered, so what options do I have? Because most of the time it feels like when I’m triggered, the options are very few. So how can I create more possibility when I’m triggered that I have a little bit more choice? Otherwise, what I often say, my past decides for me, so I just react. Or how can we increase our options when we are triggered?
Dr. Shefali: So first, actually, if you’re a real seeker of wisdom, which I think your audience is, we have to have agree that there is no real trigger on the outside. So what we have is a flame that makes a fire out of the inside, right, the inside explosion, explosive. If there’s no explosive inside, and if it’s only water, then you can put the flame, the water will take the flame out. So first we should get rid of this delusion that it’s him, it’s her, it’s them right? No, it’s him, it’s her, it’s them that is igniting the explosion that already exists. I had explosives. If I didn’t have explosive, it wouldn’t light. So the next step is to understand that we play a huge role in our co-creation in taking things personally as a trigger or not. So the co-creation is very important. Number one, there’s no trigger. Number two, if there was a trigger, it’s because its co-created, and then number three is, okay, what in my past is showing up in my present?
So these three awarenesses is a constant engine that our awareness needs to run on because we can be triggered any moment, anytime. So you have to always be aware. Then the most important thing is to practice present moment awareness. Yes, always keeping that awareness in the here and now and kind of creating an insulation against the rest of the world. Because right now, if you and I could just tap into ourselves and tell ourselves right now, I’m here right now, I’m alive right now. Look at the sky right now. Touch the ground right now. If you just do this grounding exercise, you will realize in this moment, as long as you are breathing, you are really okay. You may not like what’s coming out of Sandra’s mouth, and you may not like what’s coming out of Becky’s mouth, and you may not like what’s coming out of Rebecca’s mouth.
You may not like the weather, you may not like the traffic, but all those things are on the outside. If you could just get back into your little bubble and go, I’m here. I’m alive, this is fine. I’m okay. The sky is beautiful, the warmth is amazing. This moment is fine. Then you created this insulation and that creates the space. But if you’re someone who has not done all this work, then you’re going to be hijacked because you truly believe that the outside is a trigger. You truly believe you have nothing to do with it, and you have no power, and you truly don’t know how to stay in the present moment. So it’s not your fault, but you’re going to get hijacked every day. Just yesterday I was with someone and I saw them lose their shit and they had no control over themselves because like you said, their past, their unprocessed pain took over. And that’s why we have to live in the present moment and keep cleaning our internal chaos every single day. We need to take that bucket and look at our chaos and then you know, empty it out through some sort of healing work. But most of us don’t think it’s important. Most of us don’t give the time. We will take our kids to Six Flags and Disney World and to a movie, but we won’t do this work. But yet, this is the work that if not done, if undone, can cause the greatest damage.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s beautiful. So what you say, we take our kids to the Disney World, but we don’t do this work. And I think that how entertainment that even things that we do not to feel not to do this work are actually so popular, which also says a lot about our society, how anesthetized we are, and we keep ourselves being anesthetized through all kinds of ways. And what I also hear you say is, okay, there needs to be some kind of commitment to this work, and I love your emphasis on commitment. I need to put some energy into this. And it’s not just a one time thing. And maybe you can speak a little bit about, because I think that there are many suggested pathways that sound to me often like fast food, okay, in three steps you’re going to be the amazing parent, or in three steps you’re going to be enlightened or in three steps … So there’s a lot of that out there. And I think it kind of pollutes a bit the real work environment that we need to say, okay, we set expectations that are doable and that it’s a longer term path, a developmental path. So maybe you can speak a bit how you look at this. What’s actually to say, okay, what can I count with when I say, okay, I want to do your work. How long will it take me? Or how is it working?
Dr. Shefali: Yeah. So because everyone is under this mad idea that there’s not enough time and things need to happen in the moment, what we do is we give them the illusion that, okay, I can fix. You take this course. So you start with a little bit of a teaser. And so I have courses that are just 15 hours, so they can be done in three days or four days. I mean, that’s the minimum. Nothing’s going to happen just because we say one two three. Right, so you have to do a little bit of work, 15 hours is nothing. So I have short courses and then I have bigger courses, and once I get the person through the door, then they are more open. But I think it’s a mistake of spiritual teachers to make it too scary right from the start. So I give one or two tips for the parent.
I say, just try this. And then they try it and they’re like, wow. The other day I was with the client, she’s like, I’ve done so much therapy, but you in one session changed my mindset in one session, but the session, it took like an hour and a half. So we do need to invest something, but there are results that you can see right away. But then to sustain those results, you need to do this work. But once you start, it’s so addictive because you begin to see the beauty of it and you have the mental peace and the liberation. You will want to do this work yourself. So anyone listening who is liking this summit, you should explore, take a course, read a book. I’ve written seven books. I have a podcast. There’s enough information out there for free or very cheap that you can begin to listen to accelerate that journey.
Thomas: Yeah that’s beautiful. So there are smaller bites, and the smaller bites are the flame more and more until it’s really burning, right? And so let’s come back to the parent-child relationship now. So how as a parent can I grow? So I start to do my work? That’s the suggestion. And then how do, because some people say, okay, now it was great for a few years, but now it’s really difficult with my child. How do you work on this disentanglement that now it’s really difficult or now my child is really difficult if somebody comes to you like that. So how would we go deeper with something, these kind of family situations?
Dr. Shefali: So typically parents do find it harder as the children grow older because the children are out of the control of the parents. So I just deal with it in the moment. I go, okay, it doesn’t matter what you had before. It doesn’t matter how bad it was or how good it is or how good it was. Let’s start with the present moment. I don’t really care what happened two weeks ago. If you are in stress right now, I prefer to just focus on what’s happening right now. And I teach parents to let go of this fantasy that their relationship with their children will remain the same. Very few relationships stay the same. So you may have had a great childhood bonding with your children, but they’re in teenagehood. They say they hate you every day, and then in adulthood they don’t want to live near you or see you.
And then maybe in their forties they’ll come back to you. We cannot control this more than we are supposed to. The main control we are supposed to have is just over ourselves. So as long as we’re working on ourselves, then the relationship will kind of work itself out as it’s meant to. Many times you can be the most loving parent and the child still wants to live 5,000 miles away from you. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. It just means maybe you’ve done an even better job because your child thinks they can live on their own. So don’t focus on how the relationship looks on the outside. Focus on how you are showing up from the inside.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And so let’s say parents lived for some years as parents and they know that some things went wrong in the relationship with their kids. Then they find your work and they start to become more conscious. And then often people ask, okay, but how can I take care now that I see all of that? I see also everything that was there before and then how it affected my child. So what would you suggest to parents that see that awaken suddenly to a deeper understanding and then they see much more what happened in the first five or six years with their child? So how would you work with what happened before somebody had this kind of expansion and deeper understanding?
Dr. Shefali: You know, so, if it’s something in the past, again, as much as it hurts, we have to find compassion for our past mistakes and just surrender that I did the best I could with the consciousness I had with the wounds I had, with the history I had. But I’m here now. So whatever I can do right now to clean it out in the present moment, whatever I can do right now to salvage the present situation, that’s the best I can do. I cannot do more than this. So we have to learn to release ourselves from the brutal unconsciousness of our histories because there’s not a single person who wasn’t unconscious until they became conscious. And even those who are conscious are not a hundred percent conscious. So we cannot put this idealistic utopic expectation on ourselves that, oh, we should have been perfect. No, you tell your child, I came from a really fucked up background. I’m really sorry. I did the best I could. I didn’t know any better. I suffered with you. I’m sorry you think that ruined your life and doing the best I can. Part of having children is this utter humility, this realization that we are really, really, really flawed. And there’s not a single parent in the world who is perfect, not one. And we have to just accept that, that we are flawed.
Thomas: Yeah, right. And even the thought that the idea that there is something perfect is interesting to explore, what does that mean when I put that on myself, right? So there is individual therapy that goes often back into our own childhood experiences. And then there is also kind of the more ancestral dimension of our own past. So how our parents felt, how their parents felt. So what was actually part of the family system before we were here, and you said many of us went through hardship ourselves and then now we are parents. How important do you think it is looking at the kind of a little bit, the family system that we came out of and some recurrent patterns that keep replaying themselves. Is that important? Should we do that? Should we not do that? How do you look at that?
Dr. Shefali: Well, the patterns are going to repeat themselves whether you like it or not. It’s just a matter of understanding which are the disruptive patterns that you don’t want to repeat. And becoming conscious in that moment to disconnect from the past. But the patterns are going to show up. There is no way. These patterns are so profound. The reason why is because the pattern created who you are, because you lived in that pattern. So it’s who you are. So it’s just going to show up with you. People think, oh, I don’t want to relive my pattern. Then you’re not alive. If you’re alive, you’re reliving the pattern. You are the pattern. And the only way to break out of the pattern is if you really are aware moment by moment. And even then, it’s just a matter of doing the pattern a little less or a little worse or a little better. But you’re going to do the pattern in sun version or the other because you are the pattern.
Thomas: So, here is ,let’s say when we switch a bit to the collective, that’s a great transition. When we speak of patterns, we can say, okay, there are these individual patterns. Then there are family patterns. And I believe that’s why we also do the summit. There are many collective patterns that we are relieving again and again as societies until we maybe find ways to become more aware and to change the course of that pattern. So one pattern I think is, nowadays you have coaches for everything to say, oh, you have a coach as this, have a coach, as a supervision, as a therapist. You have all kinds of things. But what I think we don’t have yet substantially given how important the parenting process is, and I think you speak a lot about that, we don’t have parent schools, where parents can go and that it’s built into the society that there is some kind of supervision for one of the most important processes in society. We don’t have actually a structure. And maybe you can share your thoughts. What comes up in you when I say that? And the other part is maybe why not?
Dr. Shefali: So no, I’ve been working on actually a concept like that. And you are absolutely right. There’s no license, there’s no supervision, there’s no continuing education, there’s no minimum requirements to become a parent. It’s just free for all. And why not? It’s because it has to do a little bit with the indoctrination by religion, which says, this is your divine right, and you are actually a good Catholic or a good Jew or a good Muslim if you have children. So there was no requirement. It was seen as a divine indoctrination. It wasn’t seen as biology. It was seen as divinity. So once you tell the parent that they’re divine for having a child, why would they go and look at themselves? But if they’re told that it’s a biological cause and effect, you’re not nothing special, go to school, then you see there’s a different mentality. If I’m told that I’m doing this for God, and God is giving me blessing, this is God’s blessing, that this is all a secret, why would I go and question myself? So it’s very deep and it’s very insidious and sneaky, but it’s also very anti-child.
Thomas: So what then would be a healthy spirituality for parents? How would you put this and put this into a more healthy spiritual alignment? Maybe you showed us now a shadow of the spiritual, the religious dimension. How would that look like for people that have a more aligned spirituality
Dr. Shefali: For people who have a more aligned spirituality, it’s doing this work that I talk about, about really being connected to yourself so that you can then be present and available for your child and be able to tolerate their unique manifestation without needing to stroke it with your paintbrush. It takes a lot of work, but this is the beauty of this journey, and it has a lot of power, this relationship. If you are present and aware and attuned, children do respond to it. So if we learn how to do this more, and one I’m still learning and that’s what my books teach and my podcast, then you have a path forward to make sure that as best as possible, you’re not passing down your unconscious legacies.
Thomas: Beautiful. So if you have one more thing, I see your time flew by, if you have one more suggestion, one more practice, anything, or have something that our listeners can take away that you think is important. So maybe you can share that with us and then we can slowly wrap up.
Dr. Shefali: Sure. So I think the main thing for listeners is that we don’t have to be bound by the cages of our childhood. There is a way to liberate ourselves. There is a way to live a life of beauty and abundance and lightness of being and transcendence of the ego. But in order to arrive at that path, you need to study and cultivate your wisdom and your knowledge and take courses or join an institute or join a collective like yours. You have to do something, because culture has taught you everything but consciousness. So in order to clean consciousness, you need to do a lot of things. But once you do, you will live such a more productive, purposeful, carefree, creative life.
Thomas: And maybe one more thing now that you’re saying that, I would be very interested if you can say a few more sentences about when this disembodiment that we spoke about and social media, because many of our kids or teenagers are now on social media, they’re often in all kinds of virtual spaces. Maybe you also have some suggestion or some recommendation how we can find a healthy balance there for us.
Dr. Shefali: Yeah. I think social media is the epitome of disembodiment and dissociation and disconnection. And I think parents of young children, at least till the age of 13 or 14, should keep their children away. And if you are a parent listening and your child is already addicted, well, I have a course on this, but to help your children to be more in your presence, even if you’re playing the video game with them, that’s better than they’re playing on their own and create connection because children need real life in-person connection.
Thomas: Very good. Thank you so much, Dr. Shefali.
Dr. Shefali: Thank you for having me.
Thomas: It was lovely to meet you. I’m happy for this conversation. Thank you very much.
Dr. Shefali: Thank you.
