ABRACADABRA! Do this and TRANSFORM your life!

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:19

Welcome to the Shadow and the Light podcast with internationally renowned meditation teacher, davidji and heart healer and psychotherapist Elizabeth Winkler, as we guide you through our unique fusion of ancient wisdom and modern psychology.

davidji: 0:35

Get ready to awaken your true essence, heal your wounds and transform your shadow into a high-diverging, and that is truly self-actualization.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:34

But let’s re-look back to that second level of needs, because so many of our listeners and viewers so many of you resonated with this reached out to us and inquired to talk about more aspects of safety. When we’re talking about safety, the beauty of looking at this level of needs is that we can understand why perhaps we’re not thriving in a particular area, why perhaps we’re making decisions out of fear or desperation, and once you know that, then you can make a more conscious choice. This whole journey that we’re on is about more conscious choice making. That’s it. It doesn’t get more complicated than that. If we can make more conscious choices, fewer choices out of fear and or desperation, higher likelihood that our lives are going to move just a little bit more in the direction that reinforces and nourishes and nurtures our dreams and desires. Oh, so interesting because right after that last episode aired, summer received so many inquiries and so many comments about this whole level of. What about other areas of our lives, of safety, such as our physical needs? We just went through three years of pandemic where we were truly fearing for our physical lives. The second we stepped outside, whether you were into masks or not, or into vaccines or not. Bottom line no one stepped out into the supermarket, even with bravado. No one went to the movies. The movies were closed, everything was shut down because of that basic collective fear in the realm of health, which is pure safety and security. So, whether it’s physiological or physical needs, whether it’s emotional safety that we are seeking from a partner or a child, or a parent or a sibling or just someone any type of loved one in our life, these are the types of things that suddenly we realize if I’m unsafe here, I’m not gonna make better choices. Remember when Elizabeth was talking about this car seat meditations back in the day, again conscious choice making. Had she not felt that her kids and her were safe in her car, she couldn’t even have gotten to that state of deeper.

Elizabeth Winkler: 3:55

Still, a little further along that spectrum of the five realms, is safety in the material world. Do you feel like you can park your car without it getting broken into? Do you feel that perhaps there might be some money for you in the future if there is that rainy day or if you should need to access it? Whether that’s a nest egg or a retirement fund or just a week that was very challenging financially. There could be a medical emergency or there could be some other life crisis and we’d need to access it. Do you feel safe that, if something goes wrong, you could at least get by for a week, or are you living with a poverty consciousness? Then, of course, that safety in relationships and safety in the spiritual realm. Do I feel that I’m alone out there, just spinning by myself, or do I feel supported by at least my higher power or my highest expression of myself? So, elizabeth, maybe you could speak more deeply to this concept of safety in these other realms of our life.

davidji: 4:59

Elizabeth. Well, there’s something interesting about finance that I learned when I was studying psychology in my master’s program that and see if this fits for you as a listener there’s some research that the way that people are with finance is related to how they are emotionally. So someone who they hold on to their money they’re also can hold on to their emotions. They’re very, you could say cheap or something they don’t share, or someone who’s really generous shares their emotions.

Elizabeth Winkler: 5:31

It’s poverty consciousness versus abundance mindset.

davidji: 5:35

Right. So it’s an interesting thing just to look at within yourself if there’s a correlation to that within you.

Elizabeth Winkler: 5:41

And we know that expression how you do one thing is how you do most things. And of course this would suddenly stretch out in so many areas of our life. And this doesn’t mean it’s easy for you to say you’re sitting on a pile of money so you can be very generous and say, sure, take a ride in my Lambo. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about a relationship that you have with the essence of life.

davidji: 6:03

Yes.

Elizabeth Winkler: 6:04

Again, you and I talk about this concept of dynamic exchange. In talking and listening are the same things. Are you generous with the time that you have? If someone’s speaking, do you cut them off a lot, or do you allow their thought to take its time to land on you? So, before you know the answer, I know what you’re going to say already, so I finished your sentence. We’ve all heard people say that to us. I know you better than you know yourself. I can finish all your sentences for me, and the answer is please don’t do that.

davidji: 6:30

Well, that’s someone having a conversation with themselves and they’re existing in a label of the other person, which I’m glad you’re bringing that up. We’re all doing that a lot in our lives, especially with the people we interact with the most. We conceptualize our partner, our children, our parent, whoever you hang out with, the most you conceptualize them. They’re this kind of person or whatever. It’s actually the way the brain fills in things in your house. Your brain has been in this room so many times so it just fills it in, and have you ever had that moment? I?

davidji: 7:02

got it, I love this when you look at something you’re like wait, is that a snake? And it’s a snake. And then you look and hold the snake in the rope Story. Do you want to tell that story?

Elizabeth Winkler: 7:11

real quick. So if we go back to the, let’s say, the 700s, sometime late 700s, adi Shankara, the boy of this age so we’re talking about 1400 years ago and one of the great parables in the book the Crest Jewel of Discrimination is this man is walking down this path and the sun is setting, it’s a little dark and suddenly he feels a snake bite him on his thigh and he suddenly shrieks and he looks down and he sees the snake right there and he passes out. And so people from the town rush over to him. What happened to him? And he’s just laying there unconscious and then suddenly he starts to come to and they’re like are you okay? Are you okay? And he says no, a snake bit me.

Elizabeth Winkler: 7:53

And suddenly they back up because suddenly they’re all afraid the snake’s going to suddenly start biting all of them. And they back up to look at the situation and the guy points to the place in the path where the snake was, as he’s pointing and shaking his finger there and he’s just gasping the words out this snake bit me, right there. And they all look over and they see a rope on the ground and then they look where he fell down, where he was supposedly bitten by the snake and he was walking past a bunch of rose bushes with really sharp thorns and they have some blood on them. And when they suddenly realized you didn’t get bitten by a snake, you brushed past some thorns on the rose bush and saw a rope on the ground. Boom, you created the whole snake story internally by yourself.

davidji: 8:38

I’ve never heard that version of the story. I love that. I love that. So what?

Elizabeth Winkler: 8:44

I always heard is like yeah, Maybe that’s my translation.

davidji: 8:46

So I love it, but it’s. We’re all doing this. We’re all mistaking the rope as a snake. How are we doing that in our own lives? And it may be that you’re in a new relationship but you’re projecting your old trauma onto that relationship and seeing things, interpreting things. You ever interpret anything? No, never, never, never, right, you’re constantly interpreting and judging, and that’s how we are to go back to what you were saying. Knowing what the other person’s going to say, you don’t know what the other person’s going to say. My favorite place to live, from which I fail at all the time, is I’m pretty sure I have no idea. When I’m in that don’t know mind. When I’m in that beginner’s mind, I’m open and available to something new coming into my awareness.

Elizabeth Winkler: 9:31

Isn’t that one of your signs, your mantras, that you have?

davidji: 9:35

Well, I don’t have it on a lemon, I’m pretty sure I have no ideas on a sign.

Elizabeth Winkler: 9:38

It’s on a sign. Right when I’ve been zooming with you, you’ve held up that sign.

davidji: 9:42

Const. People come to me and I’m always pointing to that. What’s your opinion? I point to that and they look at me curiously and then over time, if you work with me enough, you know that’s going to be where we go, because when we run to this kind of I know it’s often we’re referencing the past right. And so to be able to evolve and grow, we need to allow the not knowing to create a little bit of space for something new to blossom and grow.

Elizabeth Winkler: 10:10

Yeah, one of your favorite books and you turned me on to it is Rick Rubin’s the Creative Act, a Way of being, and there was this one line in there. Where was I reading this? This is page 120. I just happened to have it dog-eared and underlined with some writing in the margin. This is Rick Rubin writing. We tend to believe that the more we know, the more clearly we can see the possibilities available. This is not the case. The impossible only becomes accessible when experience has not taught us limits. Talking about the computer playing a human in chess, did the computer win because it knew more than the grandmaster or Because it knew less?

davidji: 10:51

exactly how powerful is that it’s brilliant in his docuseries. He did Shangri-La he in the last episode, which is amazing, he talks to Laird Hamilton. Laird’s talking about Surfing waves, how everyone was surfing here and then he started surfing here.

Elizabeth Winkler: 11:08

It’s like the four-minute mile right, exactly, I was gonna say the four-minute mile, but because I’m conditioned, we’re all conditioned. That’s another example of that thing. Can we apply this to our own lives?

davidji: 11:18

How do we go beyond?

Elizabeth Winkler: 11:19

It’s like I was talking to one of my clients. We were talking about that they were gonna launch this business venture and I said, well, what’s your vision? And they said, I think we could talk to these many people and it could be monetized and we could probably make like five million dollars. And I said, oh, come on, five million dollars. Let’s think Chris Jenner Okay, she doesn’t think anything less than a billion. Let’s go there. And so suddenly we were having a conversation not of five million dollars, but a billion. Is it gonna make a billion? I don’t know, but it can’t make a billion if all we’re doing is really dumbing everything down to that smallest number that we know. Well, that’s accessible. I think that is doable. We have to always punch through the board. We can’t just have the board or dinner and stops at the board and then we can’t break it.

davidji: 12:07

Absolutely, and the only way through that is present moment, right, Right. So what’s your anchor? What do you use to help you when you get into your prison of the past? What helps you reorient?

Elizabeth Winkler: 12:23

I’m really big on Breath and I practice a lot of different breathing techniques on a daily basis. I probably spend about 15 to 25 minutes every single morning in some type of Pranayama, in some type of alternate nostril breath. Our right side is our masculine side, our left side is our feminine side and of course, this shifts as we go to the brain. Our Right side of our brain is our feminine side and our left side of our brain is our masculine side, and so we can say, oh, left side of the brain, it’s more engineering, it’s more practical, it’s more logical, and the right side of the brain, that’s the more creative sign. That’s really what we’re trying to do. It’s all about that feminine energy. One of the most important things that we can do when we’re thinking about this concept of Right left is I can say you know what? I’m think I’m a little too masculine in this moment, which is all doing energy. I think I’m a little too extreme, I’m trying to force it or push it, and so I’ll summon my divine feminine side, I’ll summon my left side on. The way I kick that off is to Start breathing in through my left nostril and out through my left nostril and back in through my left Nostril and back out through my left nostril and I’ll awaken that left side.

Elizabeth Winkler: 13:40

Now we know, defaulting too hard into the left or the right or the masculine or the feminine isn’t really good. It might be good for a moment, but it’s not going to be good for the moment after that, and that’s why naughty showed no. Naughties are our channels and showed no is cleansing or clearing them. This is like the cleansing of the channels, the clearing of the channels, and no differently than all the little fibers that flow through us. And one thing that naughty showed me it can do is Theoretically, if you practice it and you just have to do it for a couple of minutes, is harmonized the left and the right side. Here’s what I know it does lowest blood pressure, low as your pulse rate, and in that slowing down yoga, chittavritti Nerota there’s a progressive quieting of the fluctuations of the mind. In that slowing down comes clarity, and I have rarely made a decision right after that at a fear or desperation when I’ve done naughty showed no, or even just left nostril breathing for just two minutes.

davidji: 14:41

I used to do that in the car if I felt tired on the way to work or picking up kids or whatever it was. You can do it at any time.

Elizabeth Winkler: 14:49

Yeah, and I’m a proponent also of I’m just gonna go left you In, left out, left in left out, left in left out of just hang out, just with your left nostril as your sole source of energy and Prana Coming into you, and then, after you’ve done that for a little bit, then you can just close the left and then do the same thing on the right. You really Zone in, you really feel that then, once you’ve done a minute or two on the left, a minute or two on the right, then you start alternating back and forth. You breathe in through the left, out through the right, back in through the right, out through the left, and just using your pointer and your thumb to close the respective nostrils that aren’t doing their job. And of course, I’m a big fan of no hands naughty, because we don’t even need fingers to do it. Keep your hands on the wheel, as Jim Morrison would tell you, and then just keep. Yes, there’s leakage, don’t worry about it, just like there’s a most emotional leakage in every single moment. Do you want?

davidji: 15:52

to lead us through a practice sure, sure.

Elizabeth Winkler: 15:55

This is especially great if you are in a car or if you are Sitting on a couch. Maybe you have a leash in your hand, if you’re right now, if you’re listening to us, we have a lot of dog walkers because we’re big fans of dogs, not dogma, so maybe you have a leash in one hand and maybe a poop bag in the other. This is that moment where I would encourage you to put your poop bag into your pocket and while you’re walking here, remember we typically like to start by breathing in through the left. So if you just rested your right thumb against your right nostril, you could take a long, slow, deep breath in through the left nostril and then you could close that left nostril when you’re done with your pointer, open up your right and exhale through the right and Back in through the right when you get to the bottom of that, and Then close that right with your thumb, open up your left, exhale through your left and it’s okay If you’re mucusy or if your nostrils are not working. This will help you open it up at the bottom of that.

Elizabeth Winkler: 16:58

Now pull back that, inhale through the left nostril and then close that nostril out through the right and You’re starting to get the feel of this, and Now back in through the right and Then close that nostril with your thumb, open up your left, exhale through the left, and now I think we got a little rhythm here back in through the left, close it out through the right, back in through the right, close it, open the left, out through the left and one final round here back in through the left, close it out through the right and now put your hands back on the wheel or the leash or whatever else. I’m gonna put my hands back on the wheel or the leash or whatever else, and I just breathe normally.

davidji: 18:00

So my understanding was, if one side was a little more congested, that that was information for me. Is that correct?

Elizabeth Winkler: 18:08

Well, it is, and it’s so interesting. You’re such a psychotherapist genius here. I usually think of it the other way, but yes, of course. So the one that’s the most open is the most dominant, which, of course, the flip side of that because we are the shadow and the light, the one that’s not wide open or the less dominant, is the energy that’s a little less in your body right now. So if your right was a little clogged, it means your masculine energy was a little clogged. Some are just raised her hand. Elizabeth just raised her hand also.

davidji: 18:39

If you heard a little congestion, that was me. I apologize.

Elizabeth Winkler: 18:46

That’s an interesting thing. We can just think of it as my right nostril is doing energy. My left nostril is being energy. If you’re getting a little hot under the collar or a little overambitious in a particular moment, you could probably use a little left nostril breathing to simmer down a little bit. Just reel yourself back in just by holding a finger against your right nostril and just breathe in and out through the left and just allow that to settle you in.

Elizabeth Winkler: 19:13

If, instead, you’re feeling like a couch potato and someone says what do you want to do now? Stream three more episodes of that muster dogs thing on Netflix, which is amazing, loving that. What do you want to do after that? Maybe stream a little more of the Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary it’s okay. What do you want to do after that? Maybe watch the newest episode of the Kardashians. What do you do after that? Clearly, we have an issue here. That’s when we want to open the right nostril and breathe in and out because we want to awaken that masculine energy. Get off the couch, do something. Let’s accomplish something. Let’s take all that vital, magnificent information we garnered from the Schwarzeneggers and the Kardashians and Australian cattle dogs and then put it to work here in our modern-day world.

davidji: 19:56

So I have another question for you. I think this is such an amazing practice for people to do at any time. However, if I’m in the middle of a meeting face to face, or I’m on a zoom and I’m feeling a little tired or a little unmotivated whatever it may be, because I’ve used this often when I’m tired and it helps me wake up or feel more concentrated what about if you’re on camera or you’re face to face? What is something that you can do that can bring more balance into your life?

Elizabeth Winkler: 20:23

I’m on zoom, probably for eight to ten hours a day, so I’m assuming I’m being looked at or stared at or observed. Certainly there are other times when people are in board meetings or team meetings, whether they’re in person or on a zoom call, and of course there’s the dinner conversation and people are staring at you. They’re watching you chew, they’re watching you swallow, they’re watching you mumble with food in your mouth and they certainly are observing you in one of those given situations. As I mentioned, I love so many different breathing techniques. I’ve created courses on breathing and one of my favorite courses is my course on breathing that I put on inside timer. But there’s a really beautiful breathing technique. I’ve given it many different names.

Elizabeth Winkler: 21:05

The original name of this technique is Quiet Continuous. It goes back to 2600 years, to the teachings of the Buddha. But I call it Ninja Breath or Stealth Breath, and if you’ve seen any of those horror movies, it’s the breath that you would use if someone suddenly comes into the house and you’re behind the door and you know if you breathe a little too loud, they’re going to know you’re there, right? We’ve all seen this in so many horror movies where someone’s under the bed. So Ninja Breath or Stealth Breath. So, so powerful.

Elizabeth Winkler: 21:34

We’re Quiet, continuous, we don’t have to use our hands for it, and knowing can tell that we’re doing it. And that’s one of the beautiful things, the most important rule that anyone could have in breathing slower you go, the more control you have, and the slower you go, the quieter it is. So gaze into my eyes. We’re going to gaze into each other’s eyes. As we gaze into each other’s eyes, we’re just going to do this Quiet, continuous breathing, which means we’re just going to look like moon-faced deer in headlights. We’re just going to be staring into each other. And we breathe in through both nostrils so slow, so slow the slowest breaths we ever took Through our nose, of course.

Elizabeth Winkler: 22:18

And when you get to the top of that breath, you just effortlessly exhale and don’t make any sound with your exhale. Don’t breathe in quietly and then exhale. No, this is total quiet, continuous, silent and seamless. This is Ninja Breath, and you just do this for maybe 30 seconds. It’s guaranteed to lower your heart rate. So if someone pokes you at the dinner table, just rock back a little bit in your seat, maybe an inch or two, put a little energetic distance and physical distance, and then just begin Quiet, continuous Stealth Breath, ninja Breath, fully centering, lowers your heart rate and allows you just to be in that moment. You’re just fully present. You’re not thinking about how annoyed you are, or if you took it personally, or if you’re going to get revenge, or I’ll show them, or I need to be right. It’s a brilliant and perfect pattern. Interrupt that will pull us into the present moment. How’d that feel?

davidji: 23:30

Great. Where were you focusing when you were focusing on the breath? Were you focusing on the nostrils, at your belly? Where were you focusing?

Elizabeth Winkler: 23:37

Well, I don’t use the word focus because that’s Latin, my lexicon or my vocabulary. I don’t use concentrate or focus. I bind my attention. That’s the phrase I like to do, because I’m a high achiever from Queens, so when I’m focusing I’m like shooting laser beams into that thing. So binding my attention allows me, I’m at the very, very back of my nostrils, almost where I’m guessing my sinuses might be. It’s the very, very back, and that allows me to just keep pulling air through my nose into the very, very back, that space where the back of the nose enters the throat. Pretty cool, right, the gap. Yeah, it’s the gap, it’s the gap. So, yes, let’s start using that phrase. I like to use the word drift when we’re talking about our attention and for this, really, it was potentially in the yoga sutras that taught me this Binding my attention to something rather than focus on it.

davidji: 24:43

Just to bring shadow to the light. Yes, of course, when I worked with kids, I would talk about mindfulness and I would say, hocus pocus, where’s your focus? So that was a helpful way for kids at least, and actually adults too, to think about if I’m lost in something, if I’m lost in thought, that I can change my focus. I know you don’t like that word, but I’ve used it. I found it to be effective for some people.

Elizabeth Winkler: 25:10

Yeah, well, I would say, hiking, hiding where’s your binding Bad dad? Check right. Hocus pocus made me think of abracadabra, those magician words, some kind of magician teaching, and abracadabra comes from the Aramaic. We’re talking about the language of Jesus. You might have actually said abracadabra, which means I create as I speak.

davidji: 25:43

Wow, that’s what abracadabra means.

Elizabeth Winkler: 25:45

Comes from ebbra kedebra. Yeah, like, how cool is that? I don’t know, it just popped into my head when you said hocus pocus. Yeah, hocus pocus. Where’s your focus? It’s in my binding. Yeah.

davidji: 26:03

Okay, so coming back to the needs yeah, we talked about finance. Where else do you want to go with this?

Elizabeth Winkler: 26:09

That second level of needs, the level of safety. We could create a podcast that every single conversation is always about safety. But I think, so much of the work that you do, elizabeth, I really believe it’s the foundation of every single thing that we can ever do in our lives. And these little breathing techniques that we dabbled in just for a few minutes here, these are ways to bring us back to grounding. These are trauma-informed meditation techniques or trauma-informed mindfulness techniques, and you always ask people to put your attention on your feet on the ground.

Elizabeth Winkler: 26:43

Anchoring safety, your tush on your seat, anchoring your back against some kind of back support, anchoring binding.

Elizabeth Winkler: 26:50

These are very important connection points for someone who has never meditated or might be afraid or isn’t used to closing their eyes in any way or gets a little triggered by any of those things.

Elizabeth Winkler: 27:02

These are not things that were discussed or really leveraged in the world of meditation. Certainly, when I received my teaching from so many of my teachers, if someone said I don’t really feel safe here, my teachers would say get over it or too bad. Here’s how it is, and I think we have opportunities as people who are willing to just be a little more expansive. But if that wasn’t the way it has to be. Let me try a new way, and I believe that we can bring safety, or a sense of safety, and this goes back to your car seat meditations. This is an opportunity for us, in every single moment, to connect to our safe space, which, of course, always is resting inside, and that will allow you to step into, maybe using one of these breathing techniques, maybe using a mantra. Elizabeth has these lemonade cards and they’re one like I’m fine with that or I’m okay.

davidji: 27:56

I’m fine with it.

Elizabeth Winkler: 27:56

I’m fine with it and this allows you to.

davidji: 27:58

That’s for equanimity, yeah.

Elizabeth Winkler: 28:01

This lets you step into otherwise scary moments and say you know what To go beyond. Right, let me step into the unknown. Let me step into the cave that I fear to enter, and I will find in that process the treasure that I seek.

davidji: 28:16

As you say, all this I was using. I love the word connection and you kept saying connect the connection points that safety and security we need towe can use our breath to connect in, we can use the anchoring of the body to connect into that first. Then for love and belonging, we can connect out right. By connecting in, we can connect out and then for the fourth level, appreciation, we can receive more easily. So it’s like building that connection piece in all of these multi-dimensional ways and then finally the integration of all of it, the self-actualization of connection in all of the ways.

Elizabeth Winkler: 28:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Life is about connection and it starts with our connection to self and then from there beyond and connecting to all the people, and then things and uncharted territories. We always hope to take you on the Shadow and the Light podcast into uncharted territories where you can step into your power and own your impact, and from the sweet spot of the universe. This is davidji. I’m here with Elizabeth Winkler and we are the Shadow and the Light. See you next episode.

Music: 29:58

The Shadow and the Light. The Shadow and the Light. The Light comes in as free. The Light is here to remove our demons and to bring new Light. If I don’t go to the deep to take out the new Light, the Shadow and the Light.