Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The first priority is yourself and just commit to doing whatever it takes. I had to do a lot of exploration, exploring a lot of different, developing a whole system of meditation on my own, but also exploring different interventions. But the steps that you take to heal is the most important investment you will ever make.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Welcome to Supernormalize, the podcast, where we challenge the conventional break boundaries and normalize the seemingly supernatural. Join me, CJ, as we explore less uncharted realms of existence and unravel the mysteries of life. Experience. My treasured listeners, if you have a life story or healing modality or unique knowledge that you'd love to share, reach out to me at supernormalizedupernormalized with a Zroton me. Let's together embrace acceptance of the supernatural and unusual as what it really is. Completely normal. Today on supernormalize we have Ben Ufana.
After a successive of destructive relationships in his mid twenties, Ben realized that he was reenacting the traumas of his childhood. And as adolescents, I think a lot of us all do that, and we can relate to that. But Ben actually took that one step further and looked at all that trauma and found a way through. He had an interest in native american culture from a very early age and was integrating partially into local communities of the Kiowa Apache tribes at the time, and was taken under the wing by an elder, a healing elder by the name of Horace Dokai.
He learned different ways of healing trauma and working with it. And today we talk about his process and what he went through to actually help himself in life and in relationships, and how he actually works with that, with people to help heal their hearts and their souls in, in their bodies from trauma.
Welcome to Supernormalized Ben Wufana. Ben, you actually grew up with a fascination for native american cultures from a very early age. What spawned this fascination? And welcome to the show cowboy in.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: India movies sitting in front of the tv.
Our parents in those days used the television set as a babysitter. So when the natives were getting killed off, I would be screaming, throwing fits, and conversely, when they were getting the upper hand, I'd be like, get them.
And then the fascination continued to grow into my adolescence. And so by the time I was 14, when I began to hear the accounts of the traditional native doctors and those profound visionary experiences they had as they'd go through the vision quest, and I'm already thinking to myself, like, well, if I ever have the opportunity, this is what I'll do with my life.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: That's very cool. So you were reading all the books around the cultures that were around you. Is that right?
[00:04:05] Speaker A: As well, initially, I mean, I was isolated in southeast Texas, and I didn't really resonate with the local culture.
I mean, maybe it would have been different or better if I was in a different community, but the one I was living in was.
It was difficult. You know, there was a lot of bullying and just not a good environment for me. And so, again, being isolated, and there's the university library. And so there are all these books from the, you know, written anywhere from maybe 1860s, seventies, eighties, up into, like, maybe 1930s or forties.
And they had a lot of accounts of these native elders or native people, and.
And just, it was that in itself was a whole other world. And a lot of them, you know, they had these various kinds of paranormal experiences. It was just part of the culture and stuff and all that fascinated me. So I started at 15. I was already saving money. And by the time I was 17, I took off on my own, landed in a community of predominantly Kiowa Indians in the southwestern part of Oklahoma.
And friend Pierre, about my own age, and said to his adoptive father, said, hey, dad, ben wants to go into the peyote meetings. And for some reason, he made an exception for me. And so some of the other native elders were hesitant, like, you know, don't let him. And Jack was like, no, this one's different. Let him come in.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: So he could see something in you that needed to be nurtured. And that nurturing he could see was also already coming from the community that he lived in, that you needed.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know that he thought about me getting anything specifically through the community itself, but. But I did. Over time, I developed relationships with a number of the other native elders, and I think part of it, too, is the fact that I was only 17 and naive, and they realized that there's a lot of danger in that community. I mean, there was a lot of very self destructive, a lot of heavy drinking, a lot of violence. And so probably thinking, we better watch out for this kid before he gets himself killed or something.
Yeah. And I think that they did. A number of them warmed up to me, and it was during the peyote meetings that I'd be sitting up all night in the teepees with these native elders and that I first met my mentor, Horace Dokai. And first time I saw him, he didn't say much. But the second time, when he was running a meeting, he was to work with a young man, actually a grandson of this elder Jack, who had some kind of blood disorder.
And I was afraid he would chase me out and say, oh, this is only for native folks. Just move along. Get out of here.
But he was standing across the hall, and at one point, point, as I'm talking with my friend Steve, and Horace is talking with his father across the hall when he just stops, and he stares at me with this intensity, like, I think he knew in that instance that I would apprentice with him.
And later that night, you know, during the meeting, he's took a few moments to speak with me in the meeting itself, with all those people. I think he was knowing, having that, knowing he was wanting to connect with me.
And then about a year later, when my grades were starting to go down in college, because I wasn't doing what I needed to be doing with my life, with the encouragement of a few friends, I went ahead and approached Horace, and I'm, like, shaking.
Prayed that he would again tell me to move on.
But I just said, I want to learn to do what you're doing. And he's like, can you start fasting? What are you doing this weekend? Can you drive down to the Wichita mountains and fast for the next two days? And I'm still shaking. It's like, yeah, sure.
So after the two days, I met him where, you know, came back around and where he is conducting a meeting, peyote meeting. And he said, okay, when you finish your semester, you know, come out to where I'm staying in the Navajo reservation. It's where he lived with his wife. And so I had it on out.
The apprenticeship was very intensive because right off in the beginning, I became his assistant. Whatever he needed me to do to help him, you know, whether it was building sweat lodges or just anything, I would do. So.
But at certain points, and a lot of these traditional native american doctors possess paranormal abilities. I mean, he would actually take, like, the end of a feather, for instance, and he would just physically project it into my body. I'd go into something akin to a seizure when you would do that.
And then in order to earn the right to work with these gifts of healing, what's referred to as medicine, then you're expected to go through the vision quest, which is typically more days and nights, no food, no water, alone in the mountains.
I've been a little hesitant in the past to describe some of the things that I experienced, because, you know, people think, oh, he's making that up, or whatever. But if you're welcome to.
Yeah, I tell people, you're welcome. You're welcome to your opinion. I'll be happy to listen when you actually know what you're talking about. But I encourage people.
You could just go on Google to, and you can look, there's like, photographs of, like, hopi snake dance. And you could see these dancers rattlesnake hanging out of their mouth. They're wrapped around their neck and face. And, you know, these individuals are dancing in the plaza with these live rattlesnakes. They're not getting bit, you know. And so these, there are quite a few individuals that possess these extraordinary gifts capabilities is so in tune with the forces of nature.
And it's just because in our wonder bread culture that's so devoid of a lot of nutrients, is that we just don't, most people just don't have a point of reference. But if you have the opportunity to spend time among indigenous and other ancient peoples, what you find is that there are individuals who develop these gifts and capacities, again, far beyond the range of what most people even consider to be humanly possible.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Right, right. Are you able to share what happened to you on your vision quest? I mean, is that something that you'd want to share?
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Some things I could share.
I just.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: What happened for you?
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Well, I just came down from the mountain again just over two weeks ago, not intending to impress anybody, because I don't care about that in the least. But it was my 62nd time, and part of it was training with this native doctor and also a master from China, Xifu Li Tai Liang, in the internal martial arts of Xin Yi Kuan ba Guo Zhang, that had their roots in Taoism. Those who attain mastery in these ancient traditions, they never stopped training. And it's typical for them to go through hours of intensive daily practice, which I do. And so that's a big part of the reason I've continued to go. And so I'm on the mountain.
Many instances, I could feel this extraordinarily powerful presence descend into my body.
And on many occasions, usually on the fourth night, as this is happening, there are times where I would be. It would be like a near death experience. I'd be reliving portions of my life, many of which I'd completely forgotten about. Maybe I had a vague recollection, but many, none at all. And yet they're all coming back. All the vivid sensory impressions and what I was seeing and feeling and thinking, everything's all coming back.
And often these were traumatic events that I held within my body.
And in many ways, I was very dissociated before. So as I've continued to go through the vision quest and. And I would continue to cycle through these past deeply wounding or traumatic events. And I could feel this extraordinarily powerful presence working to transform or transmute these lived experiences, these traumas or other crazy, stressful events, whatever, and all those highly charged emotions attached to them. And so it'd be like neutralizing all that. And for a while there, say I apprenticed with my mentor Horace for a couple of years, and then I went back to college, but I needed some time to reassemble myself, put my head back together and earn a degree.
So I was slow to get started working with people. But when I did start working, it was like pouring hydrogen peroxide into an infected wound. And that's when a lot of this trauma started resurfacing.
And the way it played out was usually in romantic relationships, just forming attachments to women who were either unavailable or abusive, disinterested, incredible fears of abandonment. But on the vision quest, what would happen is I could feel that presence working within me and it was helping to transform all that suffering that I held within. It'd be like digesting that, and it was building this whole new foundation that I didn't have before.
And then what I mentioned before, what they refer to as medicine, there are times where I would feel very distinct beings or forces or entities, whatever descend into my body. I'd feel their presence and feel them working within me.
And afterwards I'd be working with various individuals.
And while they were on the table, they were experiencing this presence, working within their body.
Some people will describe what feels like this process of reconstruction taking place with downwards or diseased tissue. If there are injuries, or if they're suffering from conditions like a digestive disorder such as ulcerative colitis, are helping them to transform their own traumatic experiences, transform and then digest these traumas and all the highly charged emotions attached to them. And they would describe the same kinds of forces or beings that would be working through me that I had first encountered during the Vision quest while I was on the mountain.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: I'm going to say that vision questing sounds like something that everybody needs to do now. I'm also going to say that my understanding of vision questing is that in the western hijacked sort of version of that, they actually use plant medicines and stuff. I have an intuition that you're definitely not doing anything like that. You're actually just doing on the natch, going into the forest, probably just finding a space, setting up and keeping completely still and sitting with that, like in a meditative space for a very long time. Is that what's actually happening for you?
[00:17:34] Speaker A: I'm not using any plant medicines while I'm up there, but when I'm there, it's, you know, I go up in mountains, Wichita mountains in southwestern Oklahoma. It's.
Oklahoma is plains, you know, the open plains, but they're this chain of mountains running through the southwestern part of Oklahoma, actually the eastern part, too, but they have a different character.
And on the mountain itself, it's a bit desert like, actually. There's a lot of limestone rock. There's prickly pear cacti, these other like, it look like little mini barrel cactus or something. And there's juniper trees, which they don't get that big. They don't provide all that great a shade.
And there's some variation within the tribes and their practices. And my mentor, Horace, he was the last of the extraordinarily powerful doctors among the Iowa people. There were a few others, but Horace was the last really powerful one. So I don't really have anyone that I could go to say, am I doing this right? Should I do this? Should I do that? I've had to figure a lot of things out on my own, and I've heard things about.
I could be mistaken here, but I've heard some things about with the Lakota, about having a vision pit or something to that effect and staying put within that space. But when I'm on the mountain, it's. And maybe it's because of the fact that, you know, modern day life, all that it demands.
I'm moving about much of the time. I'm working with people one on one, individually. There's a lot of work I have to do online now that I didn't have to do years ago because people are so horribly distracted by all the technology, the smartphones and social media. So it's like having a whole second job that I never really anticipated. And so for that reason, when I'm on the mountain, I can be a bit restless. And so there's. There's a lot of times where I'm actually pacing. It's like I'm. For me, it's like a walking meditation. I'll just be walking back and forth up there.
And it's.
It's very. How do I even put it into words? Like, sometimes just feels very strenuous. It could be excruciating to get through it at times because, again, no food and no water.
I do suffer through that, but as much as I can, there are times when I sit and do meditation practice while I'm on the mountain. And other times I'm just there sitting, standing, walking with my eyes open, and I feel the strain, the harshness of the whole experience I'm going through. But what I'll say to myself is just, okay, open to this. Open to this experience.
Breathe into the sense of strain, the struggle, the difficulty being there without the food and water, because as I do that, my body relaxes more into it.
But it's quite challenging. So, no, I'm not just sitting still in a meditative state the whole time, but I do feel pretty trancy going through that I am in an altered state.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: This sounds like the medicine is actually in the being there and in the nature around you, and then. And also in what comes up in transforming and you transmuting that power or the power of those events into something that is released.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And there's also, you know, just the fact that as we go through our lives and, you know, we're more distracted than ever before than at any time in history, you know, we just have massive amounts of input flooding through our sensory channels with our devices and, you know, the 24/7 news cycle. And here in the United States, we have this extreme polarization. It was back in the eighties when President Reagan killed what they called the fairness doctrine. And so you have part of that is you have all these conflict entrepreneurs, and so you have that, and they stoke a lot of controversy and polarized people. And then you have the. Even the mainstream media, it's, like, very click baity, and they're desperately struggling to get clicks because the whole pay structure is just blown apart. And so they're trying to survive. But what it does is it sucks people in and it fuels, it perpetuates the drama and the dissension and the polarization, and then again, social media and people constantly scrolling and all that. And then we're working insanely long hours. You know, a lot of corporate entities that many of us work for or just doing, you know, just sucking everything they can out of those in the workforce. And. And so we, with all the stress and input, everything we internalize that, we don't process it. A lot of it just. It builds up in our bodies. It leaves us saturated, and there's, deep within us, there's this inner authentic core being, and it gets covered over as we internalize the stress. And again, all this, like, digital input that's flooding through our channels, like our brains, our mind, our body has to work to process or digest all the stuff that, you know, our lived experiences and all this input but when we overload ourselves as we do, then it doesn't give us the opportunity to thoroughly digest our actual lived experiences and our authentic emotional responses. And so it builds up in our bodies, this residual.
And that's one of the reasons I find it so crucial to continue to go on the vision quest in addition to my 2 hours of daily meditation practice, because I just feel all this residual that builds up. So I need to get my ass back there to the mountain just to stay in shape and, you know, stay connected to that core. Not only stay connected, but to continue to develop it, to strengthen that core, to build it more.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: So your vision, how often do you do that? It's like. It's like a life reset for you, obviously. So it must be something you do at least once, once a year, for example.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Twice, twice a year.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: Wow. Cool.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Spring and fall. I'm just doing the best I can to anticipate when the weather will be most accommodating. But it's not necessarily accommodating. It's like it's been up there when it's.
Let's see, this past October, we had a heat wave. It got up to like 90, 91, 92, which is extraordinarily difficult when you don't have food or water, and especially because there's not much sun there. Well, I guess sun dancers, which is another practice that many native people go through, or at least did in times past. And they would be out there in the heat, but, you know, the hot sun. But other times I've been up there, thunderstorms and lightning striking around me, looking off in the distance and seeing the funnel clouds. A lot of times those funnel clouds form, but they don't actually touch down as an actual tornado snowstorm, getting buried under, what, six to eight inches of snow. And so what's that expression? You know, you're going to go through some things.
So there. There are times going into it, there's this anxiety like, oh, what am I going to have to endure this time?
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah, but you sound excited at the same time about that when you said that.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Yeah, but when I got buried under snow that time and I had this bivy sack, you know, which is you put it on the outside of your sleeping bag. And so I was very ill prepared, and the weather forecast was inaccurate. And I had this little flip phone that I turn on, like once a day to check the weather forecast, and I turn it on, and it's like it's snow. And I start scrolling and it's like, hour after hour after hour it's like. And I'm up there and I'm like, oh, shit, I am in for it.
And it's like. And I'm just. My mind just goes into survival mode just right off, you know, it's like, okay, what do I have to do to get through this? And so the bivy sack was a bit old. It had abrasions. So when the, you know, first it's raining and then sleeting, and then the snow starts coming and it's just blowing snow and it's just accumulating inch by inch. So I'm like, in that bivouac and I'm getting buried under all this snow. And the friends who drove me down, they actually called, the wife did, and she said, you're going to have to come down off that mountain. There's a snowstorm coming in. Well, I didn't get the message. I wasn't checking messages.
And so here I'm up there, and some of the snow, as it melts on me, it's seeping through. And so I'm in that bivy sack and freezing. I'm freezing.
And the snow that melts is turning to water, so the underside of me is all wet and the. But I'm in that bivy sack and I'm thinking, well, I want to get out and move, but if I do, more snow falls on me. And when I get back in the sleeping bag, then I'm even more wet. So. So I'm just, like, laying my back, turning on my left side, turning on my right side, turning face down, you know, just trying to endure being mummified in that sleeping bag on top of the mountain.
And. And then finally, you know, the weather report can be pretty accurate, inaccurate. So it stops snowing. And so I get out of the bag, but my clothes are pretty wet and the temperature is dropping. And those wet clothes are literally freezing on my body. They're freezing crunchy.
And I'm pacing back and forth. I mean, I've been in the bag sleeping back for hours, and my body's just aching from that. And then the sky clears off. And what happens when the sky clears? The temperature drops. And so I'm like, I was taking bandanas, pairs of underwear, Walmart shopping bags, everything I could find, and I'm tying them over my feet so my toes don't freeze off. And to get through the night coming down the mountain, I was, like, literally sliding and falling my way down the mountain. And I'm just laughing as it happens. And the French show up in their truck to pick me up. And I come walking out of there, and the wife was just both just, were just shaking their head like, you went through all of that.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: I got to ask you though, what did you learn on that one though?
Did you have a chance to let go of a lot of things?
[00:30:29] Speaker A: I don't remember specifically, again, because having gone through so many different fishing quests again, 62 now. And so every time I go, there's a sense of, like, I have this acute sense of my limitations. Like, I go so far and I hit the wall. We all do at some point. And so every time I go to the mountain, you know, it's sometimes I'm very anxious coming up to it. But then after I come out the other side, there's this profound sense of relief and feeling of lightness. Sometimes a lot of emotion can surface afterwards that could be a little uncomfortable, but now it's just part of the process.
And there are times while I'm on the mountain, you know, is just that intensity of that power. And my body's like, physically thrashing. I feel like I want to jump out of my skin.
But, you know, I just. After some time I learned it began to say to myself, it's like, okay, this is what I'm making, the biggest breakthrough. Just open up to it. Let down the resistance. Breathe into that extreme discomfort.
What I find is that previous limitations or barriers are dissolving. So I get out and I'm more comfortable. It's easier for me to engage, to feel more comfortable with myself, better able to assert myself in different situations. I have more presence or power about me, and that has a greater impact. Although some people can be intimidated by it. Because when you carry this presence and if you have people and they're not necessarily willing to face the issues or feel their own authentic emotional responses, it's like you're a mirror to them. And so that presence can be intimidating in that case, to some people. But, yeah, it's, I often say, reach those, you can entertain the rest. So I can't. I can't help how somebody responds or reacts to me. It's just. But, you know, again with, in these ancient traditional cultures, you have these native doctors among the various tribes. You have those who attain mastery, say, in the Hindu vedic tradition, the yogis gurus, those who attain mastery, and like in the internal martial arts, has its roots in taoism. There's a tremendous amount of internal practice one does to continually develop greater and greater power, aligning oneself with the heavens and the earth and deepening that connection to their soul. So you have a lot of these individuals, too, with greater paranormal abilities. And so for me, it's the sense of, like, keep going, keep developing, become an even greater conduit, because those of us who work in this capacity, like a lot of people, you know, we'll go through three weekend workshops, and they'll call themselves blah blah, master healer. And it's just absolute bullshit. You know, you can't be a healer like that. You know, it's like it's years of training.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: There's, in these ancient traditions, one apprentices, it's one on one. Maybe they have a few apprentices at most. There's that transmission. That transmission is protected. It's not handed out to whoever shows up in the workshop that pays the fee. If you hand it out to a bunch of people, it gets corrupted, polluted, it loses its power. And so, again, well, maybe I'm veering around a bit. But anyway, in these traditions, like among the Native Americans, some of these, like in Brazil and the Philippines and Malaysia, that the gifted healers are conduits. And so we have other forces or beings working through us. And to me, a big part of the object is you continue to develop. You keep taking steps to increase that presence and power, to become a greater conduit for that force.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: I can totally relate to that. That's a very good way of putting it to my mind, and I'm sure that listeners would actually grasp that as well. I was only writing yesterday about a. An experience I had years ago where I was actually a conduit of energy for the education of a friend that was going out of his way to undermine me and other people around him, just as a. As a course of action, of taking power in conversations and in situations. And I thought, what?
[00:35:42] Speaker A: This just.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: This is totally unfair, you know? And I. And I was actually taken aside by spirit at the time and taught a way to harvest that negative energy that he was putting out. And I didn't know what this was for at the time, but it said after a while, okay, now it's time to put it back in him. And when I did that, he had an awakening, which was rather sudden and rude for him, but it actually changed him completely. And at the time, I felt so bad that he actually woke up that way.
But the beings I was working with said to me, no, no, no. It's not your place to say that you were the bad person in this. You were just the conduit. And I didn't get that at the time. And then years later, I ran into this guy again, and I was at a. At an event, and he spotted me, and he ran across the dance floor and come up and give me a hug. And I said, wow, what's that for? What's that for? He said, I know what you did, and I forgive you for it. But that actually changed all of my life.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: I was like, wow.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: Okay, I get it now. Sometimes we're a conduit to help facilitate change. And that change, that change is important for those people. And like you say, spirits come in and they do their work, and they do their work. They do their work through you. That's what they do.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: I can't say I do that all the time. It's just something that just happened.
But it was a big.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: And they work in different ways. Sometimes they can be protective.
Remember, like, even when I was back in college, there is an instance where I had this force just fly out of the middle of my chest and smack the person, just literally knock them backwards or something, and startle that individual so much.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's like I'm just, like, watching. I was a little dumbfound. I was like, wow, what was that about? Yeah, exactly.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: What was that?
[00:37:47] Speaker A: I don't see that happen too many times, you know, that sort of occurrence. But usually, as I said, as I'm working with people one on one, that, I mean, they're working on multiple levels. Like, you know, the fact that all of us carry emotional wounding of one form or another, some of us have lived through some pretty serious, severe traumatic experiences, and that affects us on many levels. I mean, we internalize those events along with all these highly charged emotions that we're not able to process or digest. And it also causes changes to the biochemical make up, a neurostructure of the brain, all that. And so, as I work with people, for instance, that presence will come through, and it will take those lived experiences, all those highly charged emotions will be transforming, transmuting that content. Because literally, when it's sitting there all those years, it becomes very stagnant. It putrefies within the body, and the body and mind, on its own, doesn't have the capacity to fully digest it. So this presence, working through me, transforms, transmutes it. And then as I'm working with the individual, they go into a profoundly deep, altered, dream like state, and they're digesting all that lived experiences, all those emotions, and it's building this new foundation framework. So instead of just continually reenacting that trauma and being trapped in all that painful emotion, they come out the other side much lighter, freer, with a new foundation. And it's also like reconfiguring that neurostructure within the brain and the biochemical makeup. And so here I'd work with many individuals over the years. That initially were severely traumatized and and nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks and so on. And as I work with them, they become much calmer, more grounded, more easygoing and able to relax. And I watch them become progressively more functional, even to the point of highly functional. And so I see this transformation within people. See it, feel it within people all the time on a daily basis as I'm working with people. And then on a physical level again, whether it's heart disease or stroke or digestive or respiratory disorders, people injured in automobile accidents, presence. Working through me. A lot of people feel that reconstructive process taking place within the body.
Some people actually feel what feels like hands going into the body to do the work. And so it's 35 years now.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: What do you think that presence is?
[00:41:05] Speaker A: Native people, they have their own languages, their own words for this kind of force or presence or powers. Sometimes they'd refer to it as medicine.
My mentor Horace use the term helper spirits. But basically, there are other beings or entities that, as I said, these traditional native doctors. Serve as conduits. By allowing these beings or forces to work through them to facilitate healing that would not otherwise be possible, they have much greater capacity to. They have the capacity to do what we inhabiting our human bodies here. Don't have the capacity to do.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. Okay. So you've been doing this work with healing with people. And you seem to focus a lot on relationships. Is this because of the fact that it seems that a lot of the trauma scars that we get. That we get. And we also get stuck in happening from relationships?
[00:42:15] Speaker A: Well, it's two things. One, it's I enjoy working with this.
Now I get bored if I'm just seeing the same person and the same issues all the time. And so there's there's part of me that it's it's a mix of emotions. Because on one hand, you know, as I'm working with people with, like, serious injuries or, you know, conditions, whether someone who suffered a stroke or with cancer or something. And it pains me. It pains me to see people suffer. But on the other hand, there's also just excitement that comes with seeing and observing. As people heal, their bodies are mended. And people who maybe didn't expect to survive even go on to live another 510 or 15 years. I've worked with a lot of elderly people where it's extended their lives.
But relationships, as I said, all the hell and heartache and drama that people go through, it's actually something that I enjoy working with. It's very easy for me to work with. And also because I went through that hell and heartache, and as I was going through it, I didn't really have much guidance. I was, you know, those of us who suffer a lot of abuses, whether emotional, physical, childhood, sexual trauma that can severely impact our relationships, it often does, as it did for me, too. And so in my case, as I mentioned earlier, just that tendency to attract women who were unavailable, disinterested, and again, sometimes quite abusive.
And I would just form these attachments, and there was this tremendous fear of abandonment. It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop, this sense of dread and just overwhelming fear and anxiety, and also just holding on to women who were not a good match to me. Again, some that were abusive, some that were actually not that I have any criticism of them. It's not that they're bad in any way. It's just they weren't right for me. They weren't a good match.
But I would be trying and trying to make the relationship work. And that's a way of resistance, resisting the pain, not wanting to actually do the deep internal work that's necessary to heal. And so I was flailing initially, not knowing what to do. And so first thing I did was reach out to a psychotherapist. And yes, that that is an important part of many of our healing journeys. It provided me with a cognitive understanding of why I was so screwed up at the time. But it wasn't actually healing. The traumatic wounding itself.
The trauma was still living within my body, and I was still attracting the same kinds of individuals. And it was perpetuating the pattern. And the fact that I was doing so much to resist the pain, only prolonged it. But somehow, at a certain point, instinctually, I somehow had this sense that led me to dive into the depths of the pain.
I would just fully immerse myself. And the pain I felt at that time was excruciating, torturous. But I would just dive into its depths and breathe softly, very deeply.
And sometimes I would do so for hours at a time. But at a certain point, I could feel it began to break open, come out of my body in waves.
And then underneath that, I could feel these profound emanations of warmth flowing from within.
And as I kept working with this practice, over time, the pain lessened and also making use of these various therapeutic interventions, it became much lighter and freer.
There were other practices I developed just going into the chest cavity, because again, we store all this emotion trapped in the various organs and tissues of parts of our body, later going deep into the intestines, doing this meditation practice where I would center my full awareness in the depth of the intestines, breathing with all its feelings and sensations. And that helped to pull me into my body, whereas I was much more dissociated before by pulling me into my body.
And that's important because if you're a guy and you're really dissociated, it makes it really difficult to attract a woman. They don't find associated guys that attractive. But the wounding, the trauma was so deep and so pervasive that, you know, there are limits to the body and mind's innate healing intelligence. So I began to explore all these different therapeutic interventions, anything within reason, that health promise. It's like I wanted to see if or how it would help me. So everything I came across, again, within reason, the things I found most helpful, I'd say, were deep tissue body work, because a lot of that emotion, those traumas held within the body, and it would help to dislodge them, it would bring them into conscious awareness so that I could access them. If we're disconnected from it, we can't feel it, we can't heal it.
The most powerful of all the interventions were the sessions I did with a few gifted healers, healers at that time who were working on a comparable level to the work that I do now. And I would do these sessions, and I could feel it beginning to dismantle these distorted configurations that I carried within me that caused me to reenact that trauma, that kept me stuck in those cycles where I kept cycling through those destructive relationships. It broke me out of that, free me from that. But the fact is, they didn't come around very often. And that was also part of the motivation to go back to the mount in the vision quest, because every time I went, what would happen is it would continue to deconstruct these patternings that resulted from the past trauma and the trauma, the reenactment of the trauma that was taking place through my attempts at intimate relationships. And as I continue to do the practices on a daily basis to make use of these interventions. It's like there's this gradual process where I just evolved out of that, shifting from that space of toxic, dysfunctional relationships and over time, relationships became healthier and attracting into my, to me, healthier companions, healthier people in general, with whom I could co create more meaningful and more deeply fulfilling relationships. So for me, this has been an ongoing journey. So since I've had to walk this path, to do this intensive work that enables me to facilitate the same healing process, this process of transformation within others.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: So your experience of trauma, then being released through the various practices that you've learned over time, is something that you bring to the table when you're working with other people to actually help heal their hearts and their minds and their bodies from dysfunctional patterns that play out in, in intimate relationships, probably just as a reaction to that trauma. So do you have any stories of massive transformation that you can share that you've, from your experiences of working with people that you could share with us that would help inspire people towards a path of healing as well? Without actually, obviously, any identifying information, but anything that you saw that you walked away from went, wow, that was really super amazing and powerful, because, I mean, they all are, but there's some that probably stick out.
[00:51:44] Speaker A: I see these examples of transformation occurring frequently as I work with people, and it depends.
I will say it was easier to work with people before we had all this distraction, because unfortunate thing is that it literally rewires people's brains in ways so that it makes it extraordinarily difficult for them to focus or pay attention. Like years ago, I would go into Boston, for instance.
I fly up there about four times a year. I'd get into town and people would schedule appointments in advance, like three months prior. But what would happen is that people would remember what had occurred in the previous session and they would share, like, the whole transformational experience that was occurring and what had taken place during the session itself and in the months afterwards. And then we would just pick up where we left off. And a lot of the same people would continue to come back indefinitely, often for years. Many instances, the initial presenting problem would have cleared up, and yet they're like, wow, it's helping me with this and that, and I continue to improve in these other areas, so let's keep going. But what's happened is as people's attention spans became shorter, there's a tendency where a lot of people will maybe show up a time or two and disappear, expecting some kind of instantaneous results.
Healing is very much a process, and there's actually more work to do when you have people overloading themselves, you know, the sensory overload. And so in order to experience this profound transformation now, some people do, even within a session or two. There is an instance where there is a man that I had known in Santa Fe, New Mexico area. He was riding through an intersection in a jeep, was broadsided. The seatbelt actually snapped, and he went spinning into the air and landed on the pavement and slid and had these huge road rashes.
He's in excruciating pain, hunched over and looks, and was walking like an 80 something year old man. And walking, standing.
And I knew his mother and sister ran into his mother at Whole Foods Market, common chain here in the United States.
And I was set up. I was actually reading people's. I have this way of reading people's bodies and minds. I scan their bodies and minds, and. And I could see a lot of what's going on with them, what kinds of issues they're dealing with and where they're at emotionally and what resources they have and deficits they struggle with. And so that's what I do initially when I start the sessions. But so I brought them over to where I was set up, and I just sat them down in a chair and just went to work, just even for a few minutes time there. And he's like, saying, wow, this is the first thing that's even helped me, saying how he could feel the pain being pulled out of his body.
And so then about a day or two, I had gone to his home with the massage table that I work on, put him on the table, went to work, and after that first session, he went to work, back to his construction job.
So I'll see dramatic changes like that.
[00:55:50] Speaker B: Wow, that's huge.
[00:55:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that's just one of many.
[00:55:54] Speaker B: Excellent, excellent.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: Other times, people with, like, maybe ulcerative colitis, and they're passing blood in their stools and work with them, and maybe five or six sessions, and it's like they're no longer passing blood, they're no longer in pain, and they could eat whatever they want within reason or so. Yeah.
[00:56:16] Speaker B: So dramatic change. That's excellent. Excellent.
[00:56:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
And there's a lot of factors that play into it as well. You know, there are times where I've worked with someone, and they're in a marriage that's very relationship that's very toxic or deadening. There are times, I'll see it will just eject them out of the relationship in one session, other times where the extensive trauma in their background, and it could be more labor intensive because the patterns are so much more deeply entrenched. But I've seen people with just longstanding patterns of just attracting really toxic, destructive relationships. And those attachments dissolve, and then they just, like, now they have one of the women I worked with just right before COVID who had that same sort of dynamic going on.
And she met this guy on her birthday, and she had had horrible experiences of men being also grossly inappropriate.
Coming up to her apartment, she told me of an incident where two men that she befriended, and they were propositioning her, suggesting a threesome. And it just felt terrible about it. And I just said, please keep yourself open. And there are so many men that genuinely want a truly deep and loving connection. And soon thereafter, this man came into her life, and they're married now.
[00:57:58] Speaker B: Wow, that's really cool. That's a good change from the.
I don't know. A lot of those things seem to happen from trauma, too, as well, that I've seen. I was in a. I would say a tumultuous relationship with a lovely lady. And part of her story was a jealousy sort of game that she'd had from a previous relationship. And. And it would set up all this trauma for her that she kept on reliving because she was still trying to work it out because it was so horrible. But the thing was, she was reliving that in our relationship, and I was. And she was casting me as the story of the guy that was causing all of that jealousy trauma again. And I couldn't believe it. We'd be walking the street, and she'd manifest so strongly that other women would come up to me and start propositioning me in front of her. And I'm like, what the hell is going on here? Because I never happens, right? But that was her story, that that's what was happening previously. So she was living that out through. Through our relationship. But it took. It took a while to try and get through that. We couldn't solve it in the end, and we ended up breaking up because it was just too strong. And I didn't know what to do. I was. I wasn't at all aware of any way to work with that. It was too. Way too hard. But I've seen that play out, you know, with. With people that they can manifest their trauma so strongly that it does cause things and events and people to react around them.
[00:59:25] Speaker A: I did that, too. That was my experience as well. And it's a real tragedy because, see, what happens is we experience those traumas, and we're not able to process or digest those lived experiences, those traumas on our own and all those highly charged emotions. And the way it rewires us neurologically, biochemically, and we're just fixated in that. And we keep reenacting this and we project that onto our partners, even if they are coming from a good place.
And it's devastating, because if that's your experience, it was for me. And it takes extraordinary work to disassemble that patterning that becomes so deeply entrenched. I had to do that myself. And so now I'm facilitating that level of change within others. But it's not something that just heals or transforms on its own.
[01:00:29] Speaker B: So, Ben, if there's a message that you'd like to get out to the listeners, you know, that actually will help them with healing their lives and finding a new way in life, what would you say just as like a. Maybe a succinct message that helps people to realize there is a path through.
[01:00:50] Speaker A: Initially, I was flailing blindly, and in terms of relationship, there is this just aching, overwhelming desire just to find that special someone that I could heal with that would make me complete, that would be a life companion. But I would say to the first priority is yourself, and just commit to doing whatever it takes. I had to do a lot of exploration, exploring a lot of different, developing a whole system of meditation on my own, but also exploring different interventions. But the steps that you take to heal is the most important investment you will ever make. And also just being, you know, becoming, being your best self.
Because as you heal and you evolve into your best self, you become the person who is far more likely to attract your ideal partner, where you'll be in the right place, and you'll be in a good place where you resonate with someone who will be a good match to you. Explore the.
As I said, meditation practices that I teach are critically important because they get you in your body. And it's so important to learn to work constructively with your emotions. I'll try to make it as quickly as possible to basic outline one. Acknowledge what's happening, what triggers you emotionally, what do you feel in response to to it, where these feelings residing within your body center your awareness and the depth of those feelings and sensations. Breathe very softly and deeply, because as you do so, it enables, it activates your innate healing intelligence residing within your body. Same healing intelligence, like when you get a cut or bruise, begins to heal those injuries.
This is a critically important practice, one of a whole system. I developed that whatever therapeutic intervention that you're doing, even if you're just working with a psychotherapist or doing body work, you're going to get far more, far greater results.
Again, the most powerful therapeutic interventions I found is the work that I've done with gifted healers such as myself and going through the vision quest.
Vision Quest is too intense for most people. Some can work up to it, but if you get to work with someone that working within my capacity, that's again, one of the most powerful interventions to transform the trauma, the wounding, the suffering that so many of us internalize so that you can be that much freer, lighter and becoming, being your best self.
[01:03:56] Speaker B: Brilliant.
Thanks, Ben, for coming on the show today. I've appreciated a conversation.
It's been a very deep and I would say meaningful conversation because of the way you express the understanding of trauma and how that can be released and sharing of your own story of that as well. Well, that's been really cool. How can people find you, Ben, and take up your services?
[01:04:23] Speaker A: The best way to find me is to go to my website, which is my name, benuphana.com.
So b e n o o f a n a so benufana.com.
And there's a contact form on the website so you could message me. And there's also my google voice number which 332-33-5155 so you could reach out to me, leave a message, I'll call you back.
There is a free ebook. If you are in the midst of a breakup force or some other heartrending drama, you could download it. Just go to gettingoveryourbreakup.com dot.
Also, I do have you can find me on YouTube, Instagram and publishing a lot of videos and on my blog. On the website there's like a whole library of articles, many subjects.
[01:05:29] Speaker B: Excellent. I'll provide all those links at the bottom in the show notes. And once again, I want to thank you for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure.
[01:05:35] Speaker A: Thank you so much, CJ. I've really enjoyed our conversation here.
[01:05:39] Speaker B: Excellent. All right, I'll say goodbye to the listeners.
Well, that was a good show, wasn't it? I really enjoyed that talk with Ben and I'm so happy that he shared so deeply of his experiences, of his trauma and how he worked with that. And then going into his story of meeting deeply with the native american tribes and then having the honour of actually being invited in to be able to work with the methods and means for healing. That's super cool. And then his vision quest stories. Wow. Awesome, right? So it does actually prime me with the idea of maybe I should do that. That'd be really cool to get out there and spend four days and four nights in nature and just deeply connect. I mean, where I live, there's lots of apparently, there's lots of yowies which live on the ridges all around here. There's so many stories that I've read online, and it's making me wonder, you know, maybe I could get out there and have a vision request and be very interesting to see what happens there.
So thank you very much for listening to today's show. And if you have enjoyed today's show, please, if you're on the YouTube version of this, like and subscribe buttons turning up down there, okay? And if you are on the podcast apps, please share this to one person that you think that may enjoy or get something from it, because that's the way the show grows.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. And until next episode, it's bye for now.
