Hello and welcome to the Somatic Approaches and Therapy Summit. My name is Dr. Clarissa Sigrand. I'm an assistant professor at Naropa University and I'll be your host for today's session with Dr. Roger Kuhn. Dr. Kuhn is a Porch Creek, Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, Somatic Cultural Sex Therapist, Sexuality Educator, Writer, Activist, and Musician. He is a community organizer of the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirit Powwow and a board member of the Two Spirit and Native LGBTQ Plus Center for Equity. I'm here with Roger to explore the value application and impact of Soma-cultural Liberation Therapy in promoting personal and collective healing. Rog, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you so much for having me, I would have a pleasure to be here. Absolutely, so the first question that we had for you is just this general notion that oftentimes when we're discussing semantics, it's through Western frameworks. Just so from your own lived experience and scholarship, how can we more deeply understand its global cross-cultural roots? Well, there may be a couple of questions you're asking. One may be somatic-based programs like Naropa, like CIIS, like certification programs that have something to do with somatics. I always wanna encourage them, y'all do an audit of your program. Really, really get very curious about what is being taught, not just who's teaching it, but what they're teaching. This work that I that I talked about, somacultural liberation, really was was inspired by a couple of things. One of them though was what what is called like multicultural counseling. And when you're getting your graduate degree in therapy, it's usually like a three credit course that has one or two articles on, "here's how to do therapy with fill in the blank population." And so I really was astounded by the fact that there wasn't much more that had been created around this topic and everybody has a body. And so, I really kept thinking that when we really limit how we're viewing people's experiences based on their identity, we really ignore huge other aspects of culture. and how that culture shapes and informs their lived bodily or embodied or disembodied experience. And I became really curious about that. And that's what I started to focus my work on. And eventually just, you know, started talking about it with other people. It started making sense to other people and before you know it, I've got this theory that I'm running around espousing to really anybody who will listen. Yeah, and so could you break it down for us what you mean by Somacultural Liberation? Yes. So soma means body. Cultural is really a nod to my belief that culture that we live shapes and informs our bodily experiences. And that culture can be micro, which means what I experience in my own day-to-day life. And then macro, things that you and I share culturally, such as, we both like somatics, or we both are living in the United States, or fill in the blank, right? So somacultural is how culture shapes and informs our bodily experiences. My belief is that when it comes to healing, the more that we can know and understand about our identities in the root of where some of the complexities of our life are woven, I believe, the closer we can get to understanding ourselves, which warrants healing. The more you know yourself, the more things begin to make sense and confusion and sort of chaos gets out of the way a little bit. And then I have choice and I can do things and make make different choices in my life based upon that. And I really discovered that even within my own experience and how I understood that living in the Bay Area at a time when there was this real tension in San Francisco between all the tech money that was coming in, and folks that were more working class, and it was suddenly like this experience of the have and have nots. And what I was noticing a lot was like, the haves had this kind of technology, and they could walk around in the world and literally be in their bodies in a different way, it freed them up the certain kind of technologies, whereas those that were a more more working-class we're dealing with a different kind of techno--. And I mean, literal technology that I was noticing, because I was new to the city, like, oh, wow, that person has like the invisible earbuds, or that person, has the earbuds that have the cord attached to them, or, that person has different colored earbuds. And they were all like these signals of almost how people carry themselves. And it just fascinated me because it was directly related to culture. And it would show up like on the subways or the sidewalk. And before I knew it, this theory just kind of, you know, developed in that way. Yeah, thank you. And this really reminds me of something that you shared in your book around cultures of survival and that there's individuals in their lived experience who are walking and showing up in the world, perhaps disconnected from their bodies, perhaps experiencing states of restriction or tight names in order to play small or to kind of minimize themselves. Ultimately, in order to just survive or maybe feel free from harm, and is there anything that you care to speak to about how that shows up maybe in your clients, for example? Yeah, so I do all of my work these days online, which prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, I was always doing my work in person, I would have almost never thought to do therapy online, because you miss so much of the body when you're doing online therapy, because generally I have access to the torso up. So sometimes, in the beginning of the online work, I would miss people's bodies, though because I'm somatically trained, I think I got used to reading different patterns. And one of the ways in which I think it's easiest to notice holding patterns or tension holding patterns in the body is to watch the breath. When folks are talking about things, it's almost like you can feel where their breath is located in their body. And the more that it's up here, the more we know that there's that I ain't missing that restriction, because that requires, that requires this almost like this uplifting of the body. And even if someone has collapsed, that collapse is a similar experience in terms of like what's required somatically for the body to do those types of things. That either that hypervigilant experience here or the one that's sort of trapped here, they do similar things to the in terms of just they're both states of dysregulation. Mm-hmm. And so it's kind of like learning how to watch those in people's breath experiences, especially if it's not that obvious. Sometimes it's very, very subtle. But when you're online, that may be all you have, or you watch for when their shoulders go up or when their shoulders collapse. There's little cues that you can watch for that, you know, I might say to you, like, every time you talk about this experience with this friend, that shoulder goes up. I see it every single time. Is there something there? And sometimes people don't even notice that they're doing it. It's when I may might point that out to them that they go like, huh, I never, or if we stay there and play around with that a little bit, sometimes we learn that that that tension of that holding pattern there, it may be, you know, linked to something in some way. Yeah, thank you. And I'm so curious to explore how you might work with a client on that. Though I first wanted to just bring in something else that you shared in your book that I think was so meaningful to hear. And it's this idea that, you know, even hypervigilance or anxiety is an adaptive strategy for some folks. And so is there anything that you care to speak to about how can we also, especially for people that. you know, their lived experience of their body, they might experience some of these more restricted or contracted states, or kind of navigate hypervigilance in their lives. How that might ultimately also be a part of their own survival or adaptive strategy. That's right. You know, it is when it comes to a question of feeling liberated in one's body, it has completely subjective. So it's not up to me, or my belief is not up to me or you or anyone else to say to someone else, like, you need to let go more or you need to drop that, whatever that thing is, because I don't know how they are using it or how they may be using it for protection. So the first thing that we want to do in a case like that is understand the behavioral pattern. So you know, is this rigidity? Is this vigilance something that you're doing all the time? Or does it only show up when you are outside or when you're at your office or when you're in this particular experience? Because again, we want to help people understand like there's a choice there for you. In order for you to get from tension to release requires what? There's a bridge here somewhere. What do you think is necessary for you to be able to get to that point? And part of that is like really understanding what the person believes they have any control over. Because sometimes the work is about normalizing the things they have no control over. Someone that is experiencing a lot of fear, tension, and anxiety about, say, politics, who doesn't work in politics and who may just be a citizen, there's really not much you can do other than vote or call your representative or those general things to make these huge changes. So part of that is like getting to the acceptance part of the grief, to be with the grief in this particular way. And sometimes when we can understand like, ah, this is a grief piece and here's how my body's been responding to that. If we can shift our relationship to the grief, we perhaps can shift our relationship to how we're holding it. If this tightness is, I mean, so many things we do in our life is in response to grief in some way. But if this if this vigilance is my response to the grief of being traumatized or terrorized or something in some way, in order for me to feel like liberation in my life, I do want to let that go. Though I may need some of these steps beforehand. And that may be some unpacking of my relationship to whatever it is that's caused this. And a lot of times it's not even ours. That's the thing about like tension and vigilance in our bodies. You know, depending on how you identify in the world or how others identify you in the world. Sometimes it's like, Oh, you don't like Native people that has nothing to do with me who's Native. Like, so you're projecting this thing onto my body that makes me want to go like this. But in reality, you should be the one doing that because I ain't got a problem with my body. It's this way that we get these things projected onto us that make us go here. So then for me to let go of that and say, I'll allow myself to be seen. I'll allow myself to be witnessed. It takes a lot of courage and vulnerability to do that. And that is not just a, like psychological thing. That is a deeply courageous, vulnerable, somatic way to be in the world, to trust, to trust that I can open, to trust that I could let go of that tension a little bit. Even if it's just a little bit. Thank you. Yeah, and I just hear liberation in that brief explanation that you're sharing and even just how you're able to just name how we can open up our bodies and that it's just a process of working with what the external world is giving with us in a little bit of a way so that we can reclaim who we really are. And again, I know you talk about that in your book in such a profound way. I was also hearing your kind of depictions of how culture shapes and informs our experience of our body in what you were just sharing. And I'm wondering if you care to elaborate any further on, yeah, how can we understand ourselves more as cultural beings and how culture impacts the lived experience of our bodies? Yes. I'll share a bit about something that's in the book, which is this acronym called the Addressing Model. And the Addressing Model was created by this woman named Pamela Hays when she was doing work. She lives in Alaska and she identifies as a cis white woman and she was doing some field work with Alaska Native populations and realizing she didn't know too much about alaska Native folk. And instead of, you know, taking like this really huge, large swath brush about these people, she wanted to get to know the individual. And when I when I came across her work, I was like, oh, this is so finally someone who's really talking about a lot of these different ways that identity shows up in someone's experience. And I also thought that because I'm somatically based, it was like, Pamela, you're missing the body like nothing here really talks about the body the way that I really wanted to. So I created something called BOLD in front of the addressing model. And the Bold Addressing Model is an assessment tool. That's really all that is, though I do use it for myself and I use it with my clinic, the clients that I work with, as a way to get to know them better. And you know, when we think about our bodies, for example, like I'm about 5'11", and I weigh about 190, 195 pounds, depending on the day. So there's a way that because that's my body, I don't think much about it. It's just I'm 5' 11", weigh 190, and I go about my life. If I didn't know you, and it's dark out, and we're in a part of town that maybe is known for being a little dangerous or something, And I'm coming toward you. You don't know me, you see a body that is 190 pounds and I may be wearing boots that day. So I may be over six feet. And suddenly, for many reasons that I would be able to understand you could feel threatened by my body because it's I'm so much bigger than you. Even though I don't know you, I can understand that because I know what a body like mine could represent culturally. And I think again, that's part of like what helps me understand things about, even though like, I think I'm really nice and friendly and really, you know, I'm very personable. Sometimes it's like when you meet people and they may be kind of like they're a little taken aback by you. It's like again, that's like, it has nothing to do with me, right? It's like, they don't, they they get triggered by people that are six feet tall and weigh 190 pounds, someone that looks like me may have hurt them. Completely, I understand that stuff. Again, the more that doing my BOLD Addressing Assessment has helped me understand these little nuances about myself, that make me go like, oh, okay, that that makes sense. Because I grew up at this time, or I'm from this world, I was raised Catholic or I am biracial or I was raised in all these ways that helps me understand why sometimes in a moment, I may feel very, very triggered, or I may feel very very loved and welcomed and celebrated. And again, I get, I link that to cultural experiences and say that when I am in a environment with people that I feel really comfortable around, I feel... such an expansion in my body, it feels so good to be in my body this way. When I'm in an environment where I'm confused about where I fit in, I want to leave, I wanna leave, my breath is really high in my chest. Oh, I'm protecting, I'm just dysregulated. So it's not to say that only go where you feel comfortable, because that's not the life that we live. Most of us don't live that life. So it's like, how can I choose to stay as open as feels good to me, and be in a space where I normally would just want to do this, I may not go into that space and go, Hey, everybody, I'm here. Yeah. So I may go into the space and go, I'm here and there's a place for me. And that's what I've learned to do. And I help my clients learn to do about their lives and their situations. again, because it goes into like knowledge is power. And when we, David Takacs says, when we develop the key to understanding who we are, we have a key to lifelong learning. And I really love that quote because it's like, yeah, you know, when I know things about myself, it leaves me in this state of wanting to like know more and understand more about how I think and feel and do the things that I do. And it's just really interesting to me. Like, you know, there's a, when I, when I present publicly, I always have what what's called like my positionality slide. And these are the things like, you know, here's where I went to school. And here's what I do professionally. It's what I call my blah, blah, blah slide, all my, my PhD, my Masters degree, blah blah, blah, you know, because it's like, those are things that like, people are supposed to be impressed with from a Western perspective, like, oh, all these things, right? Though that'll only that'll only get you to know me on a very, very surface level. what I usually do on the next slide is I have a picture of Madonna, He-Man, Tony Braxton, Janet Jackson. I'm like, now these are also things that also represent me culturally, you know, then it's like, what can you tell by looking at this slide? But like, oh, you grew up in the 80s. And, you know, you listen to like pop divas as a kid. Yeah. And that shaped so much of how I see the world. You know, I work predominantly as a sex therapist in my field. And folks, you know, always like, well, what got you interested in like sex therapy? It's like, I grew up with the Erotica album in the early 90s Madonna, I mean, come on, like, it's like this is how like, to me, like these things shape who we become, it's because of the culture. And isn't that a much more interesting and rich story about my connection to an album I listened to as a teenager and how I became a doctoral of human sexuality as compared to just saying like, yes, I have a PhD in human sexuality, blah, blah blah, like, tell me the Madonna story, tell me that like the the cultural connection. And oftentimes when when we can share those stories with people, we're more at ease in our bodies to, you know, like let me tell you like a real true story about myself as opposed to this buttoned up, you know, like assimilated. You know, I'm a PhD, blah, blah. Who cares? Like, do you feel comfortable in your body? That's what I'm interested in. Because a PhD that it don't mean nothing to me if it's if it's all in your head, you know, that's not gonna really get you where I think we need to go in our lives, which is to be in balance with both. Yeah, thank you so much. And just really hearing, you have this interconnection between our experience of our body and our experience of our culture. And really loved how you just really like opened up this idea that culture, it can really be anything that influences us in our lives. And of course, like we're working with these larger prevailing experiences of culture that we can't ignore or dismiss, but it's also like what we choose to just really value and where we find kind of comfort and enjoyment and aliveness. And so really appreciate all of that. And before we move into exploring some somatic practices, I would just love to hear a little bit more, Rog, in terms of how do you really invite your clients to be cultural beings in this space with you? Well, one of the things that I've done before anyone actually ever sits down with me is I've made myself available online. And what I mean by that is that I put parts of my own identity out online for folks to know and understand about me. And I put that out there because to me it's important that I know who I'm sitting across from. I've worked with therapists in the past who have who've sort of had that kind of blank slate perspective. Okay, fine if that works for you, but I'm always interested like and who are you like what? You know, what's your story? Like I have you lived at all. Have you had experiences? So even though I don't give all my life experience online, I do let folks know that yes, I have this bicultural background. You know I'm also a musician, I'm married, like these are things that is kind of put out there for people to know. So that way, I think it's easier when I'm sitting down with someone for them to open themselves up to me as well, because they already know some things about me. When I'm doing my assessments, assessments with clients, I'm not the kind of clinician that's going to be reading a checklist with you. You know, like, where did you grow up, blah, blah. You know, I've not that type. But I'm going to weave in aspects of the BOLD Addressing acronym into the work. And you may not realize that I'm doing it. You know, it might be, you know, that if I know things about, you know, like your socioeconomic status, for example, I might just be I might just weave that in a question around, tell me about your relationship to money and finances. And suddenly, I'm getting this huge backstory. That's that's one of the assessment tools, right? Or, you know, what was it like for you growing up where you blank did with such religion, with x, y and z. Like if I pick up little things about you, I will weave them into a question that again, you may not realize I'm doing a BOLD Addressing assessment, though I know what I'm Doing, because I'm a clinician. And on my end, it's, there's a clinical skill that's involved in it. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to do it that way. Some people might just be a little bit more organized by filling out an acronym list that way, that also works. What I've also done is I can give it to folks as a growth work assignment between sessions, which I like to do in my work is to give growth work in between sessions, whether it's values work or a BOLD Addressing Assessment, or something in that line. What I like about all this stuff is that when When folks come back with the information. What they deliver to me is important. Yes. How they feel about what they're delivering to me is the work, right? You can't change the fact that I'm 5'11 and I weigh 190 pounds or maybe I could exercise or something like that. Though what you're able to change possibly is my relationship to my body. If I have like a negative relationship to my body, our work may be able to change the way I respond to my body. And that may be that we need to, you and I may need to dissect the way that men's bodies are portrayed on social media. We might need to talk about that in our work. That's a cultural thing. And like, bring it in, let's discuss it. Or we may need to talked about any messages you received growing up about what your body is supposed to look like, or, you know, that's how culture comes into these. That how like, and then if I know this thing about you, then it's like, I can bring that in in a way that really helps you feel like I understand you. I know this part of your story. I know how this part your story makes you feel. Therapy works with the emotional piece. And that's, that's always what's important. And when it comes to therapy is it's, like, yeah, we're there for the emotions. That's, that's what I'm there to help you with is the emotional piece. Yeah, yes. And I'm thinking back to this quote from your book that was just so profound and it said that our stories are important. The way that we feel about our stories is most important. And so I'm really hearing how you really just weave that into your work with clients, like navigating how they feel about their stories and just how that relates to their own experience of self-liberation and empowerment. And so in light of that, are there any somatic practices that you have to share with us that might help support clients feeling liberated and empowered in their story? Yes, um, I love to do something called the hand experiential. And if you would actually like to join me on this, all it really requires is for you to have access to to both of your hands. So as long as you don't have like any tension or any contraindications, I would say you can easily do this experiential with me. Um, so what I'd love for you to do and for those that are listening or watching along is if you would like to, I like to close my eyes when I do this, it's not necessary for folks to do this with their eyes closed. It's just, it just sort of helps me do that. Um, I'm going to keep my hands sort of up and present for, um, folks to see on camera, though you don't have to hold your hands up like this. You can, but you could also rest your hands in your lap, whatever feels most comfortable for you. And what I'd like you to do is to, we're gonna start with our dominant hand. So if you're right-handed or left-handed, or if you are ambidextrous, use the hand that you maybe lean towards maybe just a little bit more. Then this is gonna be your current hand. And what would like for you to is I would like you to think about a situation in your life that you currently feel challenged by. It could be something. very, very personal, like an interpersonal relationship that you're having a struggle. Or it could be something on a larger, could be an issue around environmental justice or an anti-war feeling, or whatever it may be in terms of this larger feeling. And for a moment, I want you to make a shape of some kind with this dominant hand that takes on as close as you possibly can get it to the feeling that may be in your body around this challenge. So I want you to take a moment and just make that shape. And my eyes are still closed, but what I can notice is this, my hands feel like they're almost in a claw-like sensation, and I can feel a lot of tension in my hand. And whatever you're doing with your hand in this moment, I ask you just to hold it and stay there for just a moment, and just notice. What do you notice about how this feels in your body? And if you can, just stay holding that sensation, stay holding that gesture. And now I want you to bring your attention over to your opposite hand. In my case, it's my left hand. And with your non-dominant hand, I now invite you to make a shape or a gesture of some kind that exemplifies where you would like to be with this challenge in your life. So making some kind of shape with the hand that exemplifies where you'd like to be with this challenge in your life. And what I've done with my own self is I've just opened up my hand so that my palm is facing the ceiling. Now, I want you to go back to that dominant hand and that shape that you have made with the, in my case, it's that claw-like shape. And I want to really, really feel into that. And then go back to your non-dominant hand and feel that sensation. And just for a moment, I want you to go back and forth between your hands and noticing how do you feel between these two hands. noticing your breath. Now I'd like you to bring your attention back over to that dominant hand and I invite you, if you feel ready to allow that dominant hand to make the same shape as the non dominant hand. Now, in my case, I have both of my palms open. My palms are facing the ceiling. Just take a moment here and notice. What feels different in your body? What feels different in your mind? Bring in your intention and your awareness to both hands now, recognizing that we have options that we can take to get us closer to this feeling of openness in our body. Take a breath with me. And if you're ready, as you exhale, you can let this go. Shake your hands out a little bit. Roll your shoulders forward and back if you need to. And if your eyes are closed, if you ready, very gently go ahead and open them back up. Thank you. What a-- Yeah, how was that for you? Anything that you noticed or that you can share with us? Yeah, yes. Well, I certainly feel more resourced and it was nice. Yeah, it was a nice practice because when I was just inviting in that kind of constricted feeling, it was also just making an invitation for that to be there and be a part of my experience and then moving into what that resourcing felt like. It just felt really beautiful to go between the two but then like find the synergy of like kind of working with that, that energy. So. Yeah, it was lovely. Great. You know, I always it's interesting, like when when I noticed when I hold my hand in this way, and then when I move into like the same gesture, like there's this feeling of like, wow, that was that was a lot of labor to hold to hold the body in that sort of constriction. So imagine if we're doing that on a constant basis in that, sort of hypervigilance that we may be doing it so much that we don't notice it, but the body is going to feel it and day by day by date just wears on the body and the body gets tired. That's how we start having all those like muscle spasms and muscle constrictions and the fascia becomes tighter on the body because we're just in this constant state of vigilance. So to get here. Yeah, thank you. It's just such an immediate experience to have. And I'll share I also noticed that my my thoughts and belief system was shifted through that practice. Ah, wonderful. Okay. Well, great. Thank you. You're so welcome. Is this something that you do often with clients and do you even have like a clinical example you might share of how you might apply this like specifically to something that a client was navigating in their life? I love to do this one with couples, actually. Because I work a lot with couples who have something called desire discrepancy, and desire discrepancy is usually, usually around kinds of behaviors that a couple may have when it comes to pleasure. And so it's really interesting to have a couple sit there together whether, you know, you can still do this on screen with couples. But it's really interesting for them to, you know, to lead them through the exercise. And then to have them stay in that space of, you know, holding out that same gesture and not open your eyes and come back into it. And then for them to say, well, what was your attention gesture? Like, oh, you know, tell me about that. And then they learn these things about each other. And it's really beautiful to hear couples who genuinely want to heal that rift between them talking about that space of opening up and like, what do you think you're going to need to get there? And sometimes like, that's what I love about somatics is that sometimes it is such a quick way to get information, because we've embodied it, we've played with it. Now it's like, oh, you know, like, I'm afraid to open up like, you know, someone, I remember one time a client was saying to me, you know, I opened up my, they were right handed, I opened up my right hand to make that same gesture. And I could feel the fear of myself saying don't open up and like this realization that like, she had been holding herself back, right? Like the fear was hers. And she could own it in this new way. And it was transformative for her. Yeah, I've had experiences like that, like with other clients, like I had one time I was doing that same hand gesture intervention with an online workshop. And I will never forget this because it was actually the day after I got my PhD. And I remember being like, hey everyone, you can call me doctor now. Like it was like a really kind of like a funny moment. I just remember that from the next day. And then I did this intervention and it was specifically about love, like people's relationship to love. And in particular, it was about kind of romantic love. And so I had the whole group kind of focused on that. And one of the participants had such an intense reaction that I was not anticipating. Like she had to turn her camera off. She had to like take a break because it brought up so much for her. And that was really interesting because I would have loved to have been like, are you okay? Like, and you know, I'm in the middle of a workshop. So it wasn't. Someone had to go check on her, but it can be very intense for some people. Yeah, and like you said, it just reveals something that maybe folks weren't previously aware of and in a therapeutic space, like just such important material to work with. So. That's right. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And, Rog, we would love to hear if there are any other practices that you care to share. I know in your book, you talk about the SOMA-C. Yes. Yeah, extend Dan Siegel's window of tolerance and kind of apply it to somacultural liberation. Yes. Yeah, anything else you care to share. Well, I think, you know, I like, I like collecting things I like, you know, it's very similar to how I feel about spirituality, where it's like, well, that sounds really cool. And that sounds pretty cool, too. And you could put all these really cool spiritual beliefs together and just have a wonderful way to celebrate life. I feel the same way with like so many amazing somatic based ideologies. Window of tolerance is amazing, right? Because it's like I like to use that language, like, well, where are you right like on a scale of one to 10, 10 being you're out of your window of tolerance, where are you today? And at what point on the scale do you need to start to worry about yourself? And what I mean by that is like, you know, I know for myself, when I'm at about a seven, I start to drop F bombs. F this, F that, blah, blah, and then I'm like, ooh, Rog, you got about this much more room left before before you pop off. So you better find a way to regulate pretty quickly. So I I really, really love that. The way that Siegel talks about that, though I also bring in the medicine wheel into my work. And in the medicine wheel, I call it the four spaces ideology. And a lot of this is like, for me based upon, again, understanding yourself, right. So SOMA-C is something that I kind of came up with because acronyms are great in my life, right? So You know, when we, when SOMA-C stands for, you're sort of scanning your body, you're observing what might be present, you're inviting some kind of mindful movement into the moment you're kind of understanding your awareness about it, and then you may have a change of some kind. And it's just something that I'll work people through. But in practice, the way that these things all work is that you know, we're not going to do all these things in one day. You know, like it's, the client's not going come in, I'm going to throw all these thing at them. Though I may share with the client, like, what I call, what I'm sorry, what Siegel calls the window of tolerance, I may say to them like, yeah, there's this great thing called the window of tolerance. Here's how it's used. And I want you to become really familiar with your one, your one through 10. Where do you feel the most comfortable in your life? Where do feel like you can thrive very easily in your life? And then we might do something with discovering for them what are somatic modalities that work for them. In the book, I talked about ones that work for me, I'm a dancer. So of course, going to something like Gabrielle Ross' 5Rhythms class. That's ideal for me. Like, I love that. You may not be a dancer, so you're not going to get the same thing. You may be a runner, or you might be someone that hikes or whatever it may be. So part of the work too is like trying to bring in a lot of different ways that people could access themselves, and then helping them figure out well, what works best for you. So sometimes those somatic exercises, things as simple as using your hands, things, as simple as rolling your shoulders upward, back and down, can be very, very transformative for people. And sometimes people need a little bit more structure and have them go through different growth work. you know, homeworks, in between sessions. And sometimes it's a combination of all of those things. And that's why I love, you know really discovering, well, what does the client need? And how can I help best serve them with what I know currently, and what I'm continuing to learn? How do I challenge myself to continue to learn. Mm hmm. Got it. Yeah, thank you. And am I having it right that that this is like building the somatic toolkit with your clients? Yes, exactly right. It's, it's, you know, these I think that the great thing about education and education does not necessarily I don't mean like degrees like college degrees. I mean, like toolkits like things that you can use is that they're just things that you can build off of. You like yoga. Awesome. I like swimming, right? Or you like breathwork. Awesome, I like massage, like there's all these ways that it's like, again, what are some tools that help you in your toolbox? They may look very similar to mine and they may be different. And the more we can learn how we can use those tools, the better that we, I believe we can live our life. So somacultural liberation is just an additional tool that someone could use that it's another fun way to look at life, you know, I mean, it's, I say fun, because like, you know, like, to me, it's like, I like learning things about myself, even if it's challenging what I might learn, still fun to me. And so that's why I just think it's, it's just another way to do it. And you can, you can still do a lot of the same things that you were doing before you started learning about somacultural liberation, you just add to it. You're, you're like deepening the layer a little bit more. And one of the things that I've What we said to folks too is that what I love about somacultural liberation is that something that the BOLD Addressing Assessment is something that you can do at least once a year. You can because there are certain parts of our identity that are constantly shifting. And it creates this sense of like knowing that I really don't want to figure myself out yet because I have so many more years left of my life that like, I don't wanna figure myself out yet. I want to keep growing and exploring and and challenging myself. And I hope that I've got at least a good more 40 years left in me that I can keep doing these things. And that's what I'm excited about my own work is that it's giving me this path to say like, you can keep growing your whole life when you because culture is shifting all the time. And I'm changing all the time. That's what's so interesting about it's like, how does my body respond now? To these types of things than it did when I was 20 when I was 30. Now I'm in my 40s. Yeah, so beautiful. Thank you for naming all of that. And again, I'm just thinking about something that you've shared before about just this idea how culture is, it's always emerging. It's always inventing itself. And so we can really participate in how culture is shaped. And yeah, and just such a powerful thing to name first and foremost. And just as we draw to a close, I would be so curious, Rog, if there's anything that you care to share about how somacultural liberation can really help promote greater states of personal healing, as well as collective liberation, because I think that's something that every single person is looking for. Yes. In the Muscogee language, which is the language of my mother's people, the Muscogee people, we have a word called Anoka Chico. And Anoka Chico, when you translate that to English, the closest that you can get is it means community love. And to me, that is the root of somacultural liberation is to understand that you and I will have individual journeys in our lives. Uh, though I truly believe at the core of my being that I cannot be liberated unless you also are liberated as our neighbors are liberated, as the world, everyone needs to be liberated. I really, really believe that. So it's yes, there is an individual responsibility that I have to continue to do my work and then to turn to my side, to turn, to my back and to lean into my future. For those that have done the work, those that are doing the work and those that maybe need help along the way, to use my resourced self to be the example that I've always wanted in my own life. And it makes it worth it to me to put myself out there and to be seen in this way, to know that healing is a lifetime experience. The one that when you travel with it in community is a lot easier to do the work than doing that work on your own. So I'm thankful for you and folks like you and folks, like myself, who are on this path. And even though we may be on opposite sides of the river sometimes, just because of our own unique experiences and differences in our lives, there are a lot of other times when that path intersects, we meet at a bridge and go, what's up? It's so good to see you. I give you a big hug and then we move on in our lives and that's just life. Beautiful, complex, mysterious, curious. Yeah, thank you. In the spirit of that, it's such an honor to travel in community, Rog, and just thank you for your brilliant work. And I just so recommend to everyone listening to this, check out, check out Rog's work, check out his book, Somaultural Liberation. It certainly changed my life, and I believe it will change yours. Thanks again. Thank you. I so appreciate it. Thank you so much.