Jewish women talking about Torah and the lived experience of our Judaism.
A Somatic Matan Torah || with Shimona Tzukernik
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Shimona Tzukernik: My name is Shimona Tzukernik. Currently, I work primarily as a somatic therapist. I've been a motivational speaker for decades, and COVID kind of put a little bit of a stop to that. But other things were already in the works. So, I do motivational speaking and I teach in seminary. I'm a mother and a grandmother, which is just delicious. My daughter-in-law has been on your show. I actually went to teach in seminary and the girls and the students said to me, “You remind us of Mrs. Tzukernik.” I said, I am Mrs. Tzukernik. They said, “No, the other one.” I was like, “Oh, that's Chaya’le.” Anyway, I teach in seminary and I run an online coaching program.
Tonia Chazanow: Okay, nice. I mean, you've done so much in your life, obviously, being very modest about it. But I would love to know what prompted your pivot somewhat to doing somatic therapy primarily as your work.
Shimona: Yeah, it was a really interesting turn, and just kind of paying attention to Hashem’s guidance, divine providence, Hashgochah Protis really, His way. He's not booming from the mountain, he's speaking to us through the events that occur in our daily life. About 10 years ago, I went to South Africa and there's been a lot of crime there. I arrived, and I didn't want to leave my wallet full of credit cards and that's how I settle myself down and said, to my folks had something to some tea and went out into the garden, to go through my purse, and there wasn't someone who had broken in, someone who was in the garden, and I had a look. I was like, “Whoa, I didn't know that my folks had gotten someone new to manage the garden.” I didn't recognize the person, and then I realized that he was an impostor. He had broken in, and I was very nervous and I tried to get into the house before he attacked me.
I'd actually locked the door because I wanted to protect my father from a potential thief. At the door, he punched me on my back, and my head was popping against the metal gate. We fought, and thank G-d, I was able to fight him off. But in the process, he pulled my thumb out, he ripped the thumb out of the socket. It was pretty brutal and I was giving a lecture that night. I thought, “Oh, I'll just go for therapy, and I'll deal with it right away.” So, I went to the doctor, had the thumb put back, made a session with a therapist, and I talked it out. I thought everything was going to be okay. While I was talking, I started to disassociate. I knew exactly what was happening and I said to the crowd, it was like a mingling, for young singles. I said, “Guys, I'm sorry, this is what I'm –” and then I just left and then I came back. I said, “That's what's happening.”
Weirdly, I thought that I could deal with that with talk therapy, but you can't, because the brain, the way we're made doesn't work like that. We're just not built that way and I did EMDR. But I didn't study EMDR at that time. Then I had a client who had been gang raped, and I thought there is no way to help someone in the situation. The trauma is too great. I felt G-d had made me undergo that attack so that I could help this person. I had a friend and she said to me, “Take a somatic training.” It was a complete game changer. It's changed my life and the way that I work and the people that I'm involved with.
Tonia: Wow. So, can you share with us a little bit about what somatic therapy is for anyone who isn't familiar?
Shimona: Yeah, sure. So, our brain has – well, there's so many ways to divide the brain. I remember reading a National Geographic article that said, we can access the outer extremities of the universe, but we can't figure out what's going on between our ears. The brain is just so mysterious. But one way of looking at it in a cross section is the outer brain is the thinking brain, the cerebral cortex. And then the midbrain is called the limbic brain. It's emotional. So, there's the thinking brain and the emotional brain.
Then, right in the center, towards the base, there's the reptilian brain, or the physical brain. We understand Hashem created us from soil on the sixth day of creation, there we go, but the way that he built us looks like we evolved over eons. I remember learning that there are stars that millions are lit, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of light years away, and that light has reached us. So, from a scientific perspective, you could say, well, that proves that the universe is millions of years old, but our sages tell us that the world was created complete. The stars were created with the light reaching the world. The brain of a person was created with all these layers.
So, we have the reptilian brain, which is physiological functioning, like to pee and to poop, and to sweat and to procreate and all that stuff. One aspect of that brain is breathing. But breathing is the only bodily function that is both automatic and conscious. When you think about Neshama and Nashima, the soul and breath, that takes on a whole other dimension. So, there's this very primitive, so to speak part of the brain. And then there is the emotional brain around that and all mammals have that, and then there's the thinking brain.
I think of it as, like in Noach’s Tevah, in the ark, our kids come home with it all the time. There are the little art projects of the people at the top, and the animals in the middle, and the trash at the bottom, and that's how the brain is and that's how our body is. Your head is the thinking part and the upper torso is the feeling part and the lower torso would be the trash part. But they all contain each other. In the brain, the emotions are in that central part and that is a lot of who we are.
So, when people remember things that weren't charged or traumatic, could be positively charged or negatively. If they’re remembering something that's more neutral, they remember it in words, and you can talk about it and there's a certain objectivity. But when we remember things that are very difficult for us, we remember it viscerally with our body, and with our emotion. If you feel certain physical sensations, you know that you've been triggered, and that's actually a memory. So, somatic therapy helps people by beginning with the visceral, with the sensory and emotional component of memory, so that you can work through and discharge the trauma that has been held in the body because that fight or flight survival instinct is so much of who we are.
I kind of think of Moach Shalit Al halev, that the head should rule the heart. I used to think of it as like this corporal sergeant, running the show, do this, do that. I don't think of it like that anymore. I kind of am more aware of the observer. We should all be observant Jews, kind of observing ourselves from the thinking brain, noticing what's happening in the emotions and in the body. By being present to that we heal. What we resist persists. It's old memory and we stuff it down. So, that's a little bit of how somatic therapy works.
Tonia: Small window. What you’re sharing is really powerful and I think it's something that people are only becoming aware of recently, this idea of the body really storing memories and that when you have a physical reaction, it's because the memory is so much deeper than words could describe. Today, we're going to talk about what it means to have a visceral experience of your Yiddishkeit. So, it's interesting because many mitzvahs are very tactile, and very physical. I think for so long, people just didn't really see the connection between the spiritual and physical in that way. I think what you will share today is going to illuminate that for us, what does it mean that Yiddishkeit and our relationship with Hashem is something that we experience in that visceral way that you're describing, where you can actually feel it in your body and in your bloodstream?
Shimona: I was thinking about the title of your podcast, Human & Holy. I don't know what the back end of your thinking was, but I am so struck by the name of a person. I mean, a person and a human are different, right? There's a human, Adam. And then there's a person, Ish. It's become very common for people to speak about she's a nice human, which I find quite sad, because it's a general category. It's like people speak about the planet instead of the earth, and higher power instead of G-d and a human instead of a person. It’s very different to say, “I'm a human on the planet, in the presence of a higher power, as opposed to I'm a person on earth, watched over by G-d.” That’s really intimate, right? They’re different.
But the word human, like you're human, and holy it is, right on point because Adam, the first person was called that because he was made from the earth, Adamah. But he's also called that, because of the word Adam, alien, he is similar to the supernal. So, he's of the earth and he’s holy. The word human etymologically is from the word humus, decaying organic matter, the earth.
So, the word human is the exact equivalent of the word Adam. In my life, and in my work, I'm always thinking about us at the interface. It's like the hourglass and we're right there between this earthly being and the soul that was breathed into us. When I was a bride, and I was getting married, I learned that classic teaching, which I guess we all learn which is that Ish and Ishah, man and woman have the alef and shin in common and the letters that are distinct are yud and hey, which spells Hashem’s name, khaf, and I was told you have to have the yud and hey, because otherwise, you're just left with the alef and the shin, which is esh, a fire. That's true. If you don't have G-d in your marriage, the sexual passion will burn you up. It's a fiery relationship. It's not a watery relationship. It's fire.
But at the same time, I got married and I was like, “Yeah, but if you don't have the alef and the shin, this is really important. The fire is important.” If you just have the yud and the hey, well then, that's angels. We need the human part of who we are. And personally, I think that somatic therapy is a very good kind of therapy. We're coming to Shavuot, the giving of the Torah and we're taught that at that time, the heavens descended to the earth, and the earth rose up to the heavens.
I think that talk therapy is much more than the heavens coming down, and somatic therapy the earth coming up, and I think that all of the focus on like you're saying, a visceral experience of Yiddishkeit is a redemption kind of Judaism, where you can't leave G-d in the heavens, right? He's got to come down but we also have to bring Him up.
I saw an interesting letter where the Rebbe was speaking about the Baal Shem Tov’s vision. The Baal Shem Tov ascended on high, he saw Moshiach and he said, “When will you come? When will my master come?” And he said, “When your wellsprings go outward.” The Rebbe says, those wellsprings are obviously the wellsprings of Yiddishkeit, the inner dimension of Yiddishkeit, and we know that the water that Rivka drew from the well – this wasn't from that particular letter – but the water that Rivkah drew for Eliezer is the source of the water of Torah throughout the generations.
But the water that was underground in the aquifer, that's the water from the Baal Shem Tov of Chassidus. That Chassidus is taking from the aquifer that feeds the well, right? The Rebbe says, in that letter, he says, “The wellsprings going out would also mean that you have to take your watery consciousness, because the brain is a watery organ, and it's surrounded by this cerebral spinal fluid, and send it outwards.” Your head is a heaven and it has to leave and go down. I mean, I know in that analogy, I gave of the wellspring is speaking about something under the ground. But in that letter, the Rebbe is speaking about drawing this down from above to below, and it has to move down the spine. That light, the light of consciousness enters into the watery fluids around the brain, moves down the spine, influences the heart, and moves into the body. We transform ourselves.
That's a real Matan Torah, that's what we would call an Itaruta Dile'eyla, Arousal from Above. But there's also an arousal from below, the Itaruta Diletata, the female arousal, and that is gut up. I think of it now that way, like bottom up, from the earth, to elevating and that's when we speak about mitzvos, or a woman's unique connection. Her body, all of our bodies are also a mind, in the sense that we remember with our bodies, and there's activity in the gut that's directly correlated with the brain. Women have a very specific way of doing that. And actually, mystically, if you look at the letter lamed, it's three vov’s, a top one, and then a horizontal on, and the bottom one. The top one is Adam. His influence is top down. The male influence is top down.
In a Noach sichah, I think it was in 1990, the Rebbe speaks about that, as memshalah, government. Government is top down leadership, but the bottom above is Chava, Malchus, bottom-up leadership. The middle one is the snake, the nachash, and they correspond to the head and the heart of Adam and Chava. Not to say a man doesn't have a heart and a woman doesn't have a heart, not at all. But where do we come from and where are we going? And then marriage is really challenging because right there, you’ve got to deal with the snake and you've got to deal with the anger of the liver. So, I think that somatic therapy, if talk therapy was a male modality that was top-down, somatic therapy is really this visceral, bottom-up experience of her finding the body and bringing it to heaven.
Tonia: Oh, my gosh. I felt what you said, viscerally. I really felt it. I love that line that you use that your head is a heaven and I think I definitely experienced that. That challenge of this ideal that I know to be true, that I struggle at times to integrate into my body and not just into my human experience, and I'll be knowing this information, and it's this heavenly information, and I'm trying so hard to integrate it, and yet I find time and time again that I'm not able to bring it down in that moment into my body's experience, like trust for anxiety or things like that.
Shimona: You reminded me of a story, actually, because I relate to what you're saying. I happen to be a very cerebral person. I'm also a physical – I love to dance. I love working with clay and my hands, et cetera. There's a big divide between the head and the heart. This is actually – I can’t remember where I saw it, it’s from the Frierdiker Rebbe. I think it's in Kuntres Toras Hachassidus, I think. But he says there that the purpose of Chassidus is to teach the heart to think and the head to feel. It's so profound. And at a farbrengen where the Rebbe was speaking about this, he said, “Chassidus builds a bridge between the head and the heart.” I think it’s in Likutei Dibburim. One of the Chassidim challenged the Rebbe and said, but they're so far apart, and he said, “Well, if you can't build the bridge, because they really are on other sides of the ravine, then have telephone wires. You can call in.” And then and then he says there that Chassidus and generations of Chassim make people more able to cross that divide. When you were saying that, there's the sense of being the head is a heaven, but its distant and removed from the earth. It reminded me of that story of about Rabbi Meisels, a chossid of the Alter Rebbe, and the Alter Rebbe had him at work as an underground spy. He was in a room looking at maps and Napoleon came in and went right over to him because he suspected him of being a spy and stretched out his arm and put it on his torso.
And Napoleon walked in, and marched over to Rabbi Meisels and stretched out his arm, put it on his chest, and wanted to feel. He was trying to discern, was his heartbeat going to be different or irregular? And it wasn't. I mean, that is a remarkable story. Since I've learned what I have about the brain and the body. I always found it to be an unusual – I couldn't say it was inspiring because it felt so out of reach for me. But it was certainly remarkable about another person.
I mean, now, I just think, how is that possible? In some way it means that he was able with his awareness to master the instinctive human fight, flight response. I do see in my work that that becomes more and more possible. I'm not saying that we become un-human and automatically holy, but we have to flay ourselves apart from our experience and watch. The noticing brain is actually the left side of the prefrontal cortex, which has been – it's interesting to me. It's like the internal mother and I will be able to just connect with my awareness, with consciousness and watch what's happening in the body, and then that can help us master ourselves.
Tonia: Wow. So, what you're suggesting is that it's more than just connecting the head and the heart, it's actually connecting the head, the heart, and the body, because like we were saying, the physical experience of a mitzvah, or even just the choice to do a mitzvah is often very much a physical struggle. I'll give an example of covering my hair, leaving the house with a sheitel, for me, is a visceral struggle. intellectually, I only want to leave my house with the sheitel. Physically, I literally feel my head itch and I know this information that is beautiful and true, and this is where I want to be. And then viscerally I feel like I don't want to do this.
Shimona: A resistance.
Tonia: A resistance. Exactly. I would love to be able to integrate it into my visceral experience, so that that same beauty I felt, in my mind, I could actually feel in my head when I put it on.
Shimona: Well, I mean, let's look at that from a top-down approach and a bottom-up approach. That's an interesting example that you share, because hair is so powerful. Hair and air. It’s like, the hair that leaves our head is called the leftovers, the remnants of the brain. That's like the waste matter of the brain.
But each shaft of hair is hollow and light moves through it. The Light of Consciousness is moving through it. That's why people are so attached to it. People are not attached to things for no reason. Their nails, hair. Let's say someone says, “Well, it's just an inch, why do you care?” “Well, if it's just an inch, why do you care?” Do the button up, cover the – but why do you care? It's not just an inch. It's not just an inch. There's a certain power that is there, and I know we’re not talking about that now. But we could and the top-down approach would be to think about it, to think about what hair is, and there's a maamer of it by the Tzemach Tzedek, where he explains why men’s hair is to be revealed and women isn't and then you meditate on that.
I always think about thought, the left and right side of the brain. The being that gives birth to babies, and those are the six middos, our feelings. So, the six children that were given birth to in Egypt, those are the babies, the children of your thought. And then the babies have their own babies. They grow up and they have babies and that’s your actions. So, behavior on the ground is like the grandchild of my thinking. But my thoughts are also born of my beliefs, which are more abstract.
My behaviors, the great grandchild of my belief system, and a top-down approach there would be to say, “Well, I'm going to learn and study and reconnect with my faith” and that's something that you're saying you do. But to look at this from a somatic perspective would be, let me bend my knees and be with that part of me. I'll give you the analogy and then we can try it. The Frierdiker Rebbe in the Lecha Dodi maamer, speaks about a grandfather who wants to play with his child and he says first, he has to bend down and pick up the child. And then the child plays with his beard, which is the highest levels of the 13 attributes of mercy.
So, sometimes we dismiss that part of us that says, “I don't want to cover my hair.” Well, can you be with that part and just attend to her? What is that about? Bend your knees, get quiet, pay attention. Instead of just covering the head, there is a resistance and there is a need there. That allows for a certain sweetness. It may seem that this is abstract, but I have found how has somatic therapy impacted my life? On the one hand, I have much more self-compassion. I also have more self-mastery. My life is gentler. My relationships are gentler. And it's certainly transformed the way I work with my clients.
That place of compassion where you can just say, “Yeah, I'm going to be with myself.” Take your right hand, put it over your belly button. Your left hand, put it over your heart, and just hold yourself. I mean, try that. Just put your left hand over the heart, and the right hand on the belly button, and then just think about the mother is part of the consciousness, and you can hold your own self and be kind to yourself. I know, that's hard for you and you do it. And maybe, maybe one offset part of you. What's this about? That could be a little bit more like voice dialogue. But what's that about? What does your hair showing give you?
There are things that it gives a person, but there’s also a price that we pay. One has to do cost benefit analysis. Ultimately, what you're saying is, I want to be close to Hashem. That's something I don't want to give up on. But when we’re struggling, it's because that gives us something it's like people say drugs are a problem. No, they’re the solution. Drugs are the solution people go to, to solve the deeper problem. And then if we just try – if we try and come with that corporal attitude, do it and regimented. We miss out. I'm not saying we don't have to have that part of the picture. But we also need the gut up approach, that gentle female approach to our Yiddishkeit.
There is a letter, I'm just going to say to anyone who's listening, hear me out till the end?
Tonia: Okay. For sure.
Shimona: It might sound really harsh, but there's a book, it's called Beautiful Within, Rabbi Menachem Avtzon put it out, I think, from Sichos in English, and let's letters about smears. And in one of those letters, a woman writes to the Rebbe and she says, “It's painful for my head.” And the Rebbe tells her, “Then cut your hair.” I remember reading that – I personally love covering my hair. I love it. That's not a specific challenge, but I can relate to that challenge and so many other things that are difficult. But let's stay with the hair.
So, the Rebbe is saying to her, “Cut your hair.” I have met women who have great sensitivity. Their head hurts so much. They've tried cutting their hair very short, or even shaving the head or having it very long and tied up in different ways. That might be a psychosomatic response.When people somatize and somatization would be, instead of dealing with my primary anxiety, I dump the anxiety or the feeling in a part of my body and I dump in the place in my body that makes sense. I happen to have had back surgery. I was in a car accident when I was a teen. So, if I'm feeling stressed, or I'm feeling uncomfortable emotionally, if it's angry or insecure, whatever that feeling is, so then later, I’m very often fine, and my back is sore. Now, I know when my back is sore, I can just say to myself, “Well, okay, what's going on? What's happening right now that you don't like?” That was very much Dr. John Sarno’s approach in The Mindbody Prescription.
With feeling discomfort, you might want to look, let's say, with a mitzvah, have a look at what the resistance is and when I give that analogy of bending the knees and coming to that place, I mean, really, like allowing for whatever is there to have this conversation. I've done that with women who say, like – this is one woman's experience, and it could not be at all. One woman might feel, “My mother was oppressed, and my dad was always wanting her to cover her hair.” Complaining if something was sticking out. Or another woman might say, “I can't be my full sexual self with my hair covered. And my sexuality is a very big part of my identity.” Another woman could say, “I don't feel free. I just don't feel free, and I want to be free.”
And then you have to be with that experience, with that part of yourself and just allow for that. I don't mean allow for, you know, pull off the wig. I mean, allow for that part of you to have a voice and then see what happens in the conversation.
We want to be alive and inspired, and there has to be joy in our service of Hashem. Like an open heartedness and a joy.
The wellsprings have to flow outwards means, let me immerse myself in learning to the extent that it's going to radiate outwards, and shift my heart. The other side, I think is if I can bring joy, Hiddur mitzvah is there for a reason. You make it beautiful. Imagine there was no Hiddur mitzvah. It's like just okay, get it done, next. But we make it beautiful and that brings joy. One of my favorite verses in Tehillim is: “A beautiful sight gladdens the heart and good news strengthens the bones.” That's a somatic verse. So, when we look at beautiful things, when we dress in beautiful and refined clothes, we’re shifted. Certainly, when people hear good news, they feel strong. The limbic brain is activated.
Tonia: That's a beautiful suggestion of Hiddur mitzvah, as a way of creating a more beautiful physical, visceral experience of mitzvahs to really engage all your senses, and that's something that I was recently thinking about because I was learning about AI, artificial intelligence and the whole concept of living in a Metaverse and people not going to parties anymore and sending themselves. I'm thinking that mitzvahs will always keep us rooted in our senses, when everything could possibly be transmitted to us through sight.
If we ever do wind up living in a Metaverse where most things happen on our screens, which I mean, we’re already kind of living there. But the more we get immersed in that world, I think the more mitzvahs are going to ground us in our physical experience as human beings. You have to go out into a physical sukkah and be sweating. I mean, I'm from Texas, so it's hot on Sukkos.
Sweating, mosquito bites, you have to feel that experience in a physical way. People are pushing each other to go out into nature to feel things, to touch things, to look people in the eye, and it's like Tefillin, leather straps. Shabbos candles, the feeling of the wooden stick, the match. All these things are really physical experiences that like you said, they strengthen your bones.
Shimona: I wrote an article about that exact –it wasn't about AI and the Metaverse, because this was like 20 years ago and the world has changed so much since then. But I interviewed Mel Lichtenberg. Rabbi was quite involved in his work. He was the director of Prat for a while and now he runs an art school, art and trade. I'm not exactly sure in his role. His story is written up in my story, but he was speaking in a very interesting way about the three sons of Noach, Shem, Cham, and Yaphes and how Cham was the visceral. And Yaphes was aesthetic beauty and Shem is the name of Hashem in the tents of Torah and to be Jewish, you actually have to have all of that.
As he was talking about it, he said they used to do a very popular performance art where the artists would perform and engage the audience in the performance. The audience became part of it and he said, Yiddishkeit is G-d's performance art – isn't that amazing?
Tonia: Yeah.
Shimona: You go into the sukkah and we're all in this artistic, creative endeavor, and you submerge in a mikvah, and there's someone else there, and then there's the evening with your husband. It's like this – all of life becomes this interactive, artistic endeavor. I don't want to say performance, because I don't mean that we're pretending. But yes. I also think about it in terms of reading on Shabbat and whatever people have. If they have a Kindle, or they listening to Audible, et cetera, that's not happening on Shabbat. It's not going away. The people of the book will always be the people of the book.
Tonia: Actually, I really feel that. I identify with that a lot, that Yiddishkeit gives you this – gives a magic to life, it really does. There's a certain magic to the way we are continuously revisiting the same experience. I felt that this year with the Seder, but you're revisiting it in a deeper way. There are so many textures and there's so much going on. Imagine being invited by a master artist to this interesting meal where every single food represented something else and had all these deep rich life lessons. We would see it as that magical, immersive experience and Yiddishkeit is exactly that. So that was gorgeous.
I want to ask you if you can share any situations in your life where you've had success using this bottom-up approach that you are describing, where you've been able to kind of use your somatic understanding to help you grow within your Yiddishkeit?
Shimona: Well, it has to do, as I said before, the compassion and the mastery shifts the Yiddishkeit. So, there might be something I'm not comfortable doing. With the somatic approach, I'm able to find out why I'm uncomfortable and then that changes the way I do things.
Let's say davening. So, I have struggled with it for years, but I could sit and just notice my resistance, and then come curiously to that. Why am I so resistant? And then I realized, it's like, I have a certain shame about who I am. Well, that's okay. I mean, that's supposed to be something along those lines, but I had to get comfortable being uncomfortable with talking to Hashem and it was so intimate. And then there's another side of it, which is you just need automatic feedback. I happen to be very attuned and I pay attention to people's responses. I can read a crowd. I can read an individual. I was like, “Okay, Hashem, give me, talk to me, talk to me.” And there isn't that I have to get more quiet and more humble.
So, taking that observant approach, which is the somatic approach of noticing, flaying myself, that helps. If I get angry, I'm much better able to manage my anger. It's been a game changer because I'm no longer hijacked by my emotions. So, I'm not like Rabbi Meisels where Napoleon put his hands on his heart, and he didn't even feel it. He didn't feel the pulse irregular from the get go. I might be triggered and activated. But I'm very much more able to calm that down. And then when I'm not hijacked by the feeling, I can make different choices.
The limbic brain is reactive. It's fight or flight. The human brain, human and holy brain is the brain that can watch and make choices. But it doesn't necessarily come because I have ultimatums for myself and I'm harsh with myself. No, I could just notice that and say, “Oh, I'm nervous.”
I'll give you an example that wasn't a mitzvah but a real practical example in my life. We had a postal worker who was very aggressive. The person was fired, eventually, and I wasn't the only person that had complained. But I would be doing recordings and he would ring the bell even if there was a sign there. So, one day I went out, and he had rung the bell and I had been doing a recording for myself and I said, “Excuse me, the sign is there for a reason. I prefer to go to the post office to pick it up. Then you ringing the bell.” And he became so aggressive, and he started walking towards me. And my body went into fight or flight and I was able to say, “This is the memory of seeing the man in the garden.” Ask yourself that question, what does this remind me of?
I could say, these are my sensations, these are my feelings, this is what it reminds me of. And then, all of a sudden, I'm not in the garden. I'm safe. I'm on my street outside my home. It's a postal worker and I'm okay. This is just that memory. So, when we get angry with each other, if we feel intimidated, someone might have to host guests and feels intimidated, you can just have that compassion, notice and then move through the next best action that's been required of us. Also, having those courageous conversations where we need to negotiate with people. Or maybe, to receive correction from someone, and maybe someone's telling me, I need you to do this differently. I have to honor my teacher or my mother or my mother-in-law, but I have very negative memories around authority.
So, being able to – I think of this as a real practical tip. You can think of your sensations and feelings and thoughts as the water moving down a riverbed. And you could be in that river and sometimes rivers are really wild, and they could carry you away and you bump against the rocks or get caught in a whirlpool thrown over the waterfall. Or you could go to the side and sit on the bank and watch the river. It's so powerful to say, “Oh, I'm feeling jealous or I notice a feeling of jealousy in me.” I noticed that there’s a heat in my solar plexus. Now you're the master of the jealousy.” Rather than I am jealous, which feels like I am jealousy. I am the embodiment of jealousy. I’m mad and bad. How could I? And boom, boom, clapping. I'll hit and beating myself up.
It's just like, taking me apart, ripping me to shreds, as opposed to – yeah, this reminds me of when I felt jealous when I was in 12th grade. And I didn’t get the GO position. I don't know, whatever it was. This is how I begin to be able to say, these feelings come with these sensations and I notice these thoughts. Or let's say, you're speaking to your husband, it's very different to say, “I'm mad at you, or a part of me is mad at you.” It sounds a little artificial. But in one, you're in the river being swept away, you've been hijacked. You're just being washed away. In the other, you're watching, you're the observant Jew, watching your experiences. The whole host of human frailty, all of that.
Tonia: I love that advice that you gave for when you are reliving a memory. You're in that fight or flight mode because of a memory that your body has stored, and just kind of removing yourself to watch the river flow through you.
What would be your advice be when someone is disassociating? Because to me that seems a little bit different than being swept up in the current is when they really just disassociate and they actually totally remove themselves from the situation.
Shimona: Look. When a person is completely in a current they can’t even get to the banks. You have a window of opportunity to help yourself and the same would go with disassociation, meaning the opposite extremes. So, when someone dissociates very strongly, they probably can't bring themselves back and need help to do that. Having a witness to the trauma and the disassociation is remarkably healing. I know that bearing witness to someone's pain helps them heal, because maybe they can't be their own observant Jew, but I could.
Sometimes I have a client on the couch, and she's totally disassociated. I know, from the behaviors, and whatever's come before, what is happening, and then I can just tell her what I'm seeing. She can hear me. I have a little bell, that's this beautiful bell, and if I feel they're going to fall, I’ll ring it. So, that's extreme, to bring someone back. People do different things. Ice is something a lot of women use to help themselves not disassociate, but can be. It can perpetuate not working well, not having optimal functioning. So, my recommendation for someone who frequently disassociates is to catch yourself. Start to watch yourself earlier, and so I recommend that people practice sensory awareness. Do it with your children.
I used to play a game with my kids and my students, when I taught third grade boys like 30 years ago, or something, which was the listening game, and I'd have them lie down or put their heads on the desk, and they had to find all the sounds they could hear around them. It's remarkably calming. So, I think that if someone is struggling with disassociation, you want to practice being mindful, having sensory awareness and then there's a split specific meditation I can share for like exercise, a DBT exercise that I could share if you want. A practice that when you're in a more regulated state, and then you'll start to notice when you're moving out.
Let's say, the bottom of functioning where you're at the lowest is death. That would be a zero. When you totally explode, that's a 10. Zero is not good, but neither is 10. You want to kind of be in a four to seven range.
Tonia: Interesting.
Shimona: The Benoni. We don't want – it's like, if I was too relaxed, that would be bad. If I was talking like this in a mile a minute, and you would feel my energy in the – that’s not good either, right? But if I was really relaxed, it would be good. I think that we tend not to be aware of our bodies. Take time to do that. I give my clients a DBT meditation, which is just about becoming aware of different physical sensations and you can practice that, you can watch your breath. Just try it now, if you notice, just watch your breath. Because breathing can only happen in this moment. And then you notice that when you breathe in, your belly button moves a little away from your spine and when you breathe out, it floats back. So then, just notice that, and then you notice that the sternum moves away from the spine on the in breath, and it floats back on the outbreath. That the air coming into your nostrils is cool and dry and when it leaves, it's warm and moist. So just that brings you into the present and I think practicing there will help recognize when you're starting to move past seven into eight or lower than four into three. We don’t want to do that.
Tonia: What comes to mind is the word kavanah, that we stress so much having kavanah when we do a mitzvah that we should really be doing it for the intention of G-d. In order to do that, we have to be so present in what we are doing. I think that I hear this very often from women that when a lot of big mitzvahs come around like holidays, they feel disassociated. They feel like they can't really tap into the intensity or the immensity of the holiness of the day. I'm thinking that these tools that you're saying of just really returning to your body's experience of the mitzvah, of the day, is a really powerful way to connect more deeply to the mitzvahs that we’re anyways, already doing, that we're already participating in. What is kavanah? Kavanah is to be present with it and to really fully be there with Hashem in the moment and not just to be doing it habitually.
Shimona Well, that word is an important word because kavanah, intention is the same as kivun direction. And then you save your intention, and that's where you’ll go. If you want to – I thought on the Yamim Tovim, where I've learned a maamer, some Torah. I'm so much more alive in that mitzvah. At a very practical level, I recommend to women – I used to have a full day Shabbat, a five-hour Shabbat and a one-hour Shabbat. I could make Shabbat in an hour. The soup functioned as the chicken and the vegetables and I remember meeting a fre from South Africa and my kids were little and it was Erev Shabbat and I was outside and they were dressed in their Shabbat coats. It was winter, on little bikes, and driving backing and driving back and forth. She said, “How is it that on Erev Shabbat you're outside and doing this?” I knew exactly how I got to be there.
No matter what time Shabbat came in, I had time to make another salad and another side dish. I learned that it wasn't – I love cooking. I once went to Seattle and someone said, “You're a Shabbat [inaudible 01:11:56]”, and I said, “Yes.” She was a participant at the event. She said, “I heard you are a really great cook.” I went there. I was the speaker but she had heard that I was this cook. I love cooking. But I also know that demanding too much, like Sheryl Sandberg says you can have anything you want. Yes, but you can't have everything you want. I couldn't be relaxed and, in my body, openhearted and joyous with the children and also have all of those salads on the table. Something had to give.
So, sometimes disassociation comes from enormous stress. We can't – the input is too great. There isn't enough output. So, maybe just let go of the input and the demands a little bit. Easy does it.
Tonia: Nice.
Shimona: I know people on shlichus who say, “I need one meal in the month without guests.” Our children need that. We need that. Otherwise the price is too high. For each one of us, it means getting quiet. I know that the Frierdiker Rebbe says our right eye is for looking out, and the left eye in. I think of my right ear as listening to others and my left ear as listening in. Sometimes, I just want to turn up the volume on my left ear. I have to listen in. What do I want? How much of this is about the way I'm showing up? Can I show up for Hashem, with me?
Tonia: Powerful. This was so beautiful. I feel like we hardly scratched the surface. I want to ask you a thousand more questions. Thank you so much for your time and for your wisdom.
Shimona: Thank you, too. It’s just wonderful to be with you and I'm so inspired. Human & Holy is exactly where we're at and where we want to go. That's the kavanah. So, thank you for providing that for all of us.
Tonia: Thank you. Yeah, we’re all striving for that synthesis, and I really feel that you gave great insight into what that could look like. So, thank you very much.
Shimona: Thank you.
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