[PODCAST] PADMA GORDON INTERVIEW – PART 2 – Episode 4 With Show Notes

Summary:  Pamela Stokes interviews Padma Gordon, Spiritual Guide, Embodied Mindfulness Counselor, and author of “BEING TOGETHER: Practical Wisdom for Loving Yourself and Your Partner”. Please join us as we discuss how Somatic Release can help gently clear stuck places; how a Self-Hug can allow us to feel self-love; and why loving yourself sets us up for loving relationships.

 

Topics:

• How Pamela’s modality, Somatic Release, felt to Padma [01:52]
• Somatic Release gets at the subconscious [07:58]
• Creating room for all the parts of you [10:27] “There’s room for letting go, right in the body, and in the emotional self.” ~ Padma Gordon
• How the Self-Hug can help us feel self-love [11:44]
• Experience the Self-Hug from Mindful Motion Essentials [13:05]
• Loving yourself prepares us for relationship [14:08]
• Why everyone should read this book [15:45]

 

Links:

• Mindful Motion Essentials
• Padma Gordon website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube
• BEING TOGETHER, By Padma Gordon on Amazon
• BEING TOGETHER at Barnes and Noble

 

Visit here for your free gift from Pamela.

 

Pamela Stokes links

 

Transcript:

Hello! And welcome to Move Into Coherence. I’m your host, Pamela Stokes. Today we have a special interview with Padma Gordon. Padma Gordon is a spiritual guide, embodied mindfulness counselor, author, and lover of life who invites people to deepen their connection to body, heart, and soul. She teaches about relationships through her lens of awakening. Her new book is called BEING TOGETHER:  Practical Wisdom for Loving Yourself and Your Partner. And now let’s welcome Padma Gordon.

 

MIR:  So i think what I’d like to ask from you is, because we exchanged sessions, so I was able to do some sessions with you. And just wondering nervous system, reorganization of movement, if anything led to resilience for you. If there were any A-ha moments, anything that kind of came from that. The practice that I used is something that I synthesized called Somatic Release, which was all of the modalities that I used myself to heal from fibromyalgia, that were just the most efficacious–the most effective—and bringing those all together and calling it Somatic Release was something that I had done. And so I was offering these sessions to you in exchange for sessions for me, and just wondering if you had anything that you’d like to say about the practice, about the session work, any A-ha moments anything like that.

 

PG:  Well, the first thing I’ll say is I’m glad I said yes to allowing you to work on me.

 

MIR:  Me, too!

 

[01:52]Padma describes her experience receiving Somatic Release sessions from Pamela

PG:  Because when one has a certain amount of body awareness, somatic intelligence, that’s been cultivated over at least my lifetime now, it’s important to be touched by and tended to by somebody who actually is aware and is out of the way. So, first of all, I’ll say that in my work with you, I felt like you, the transmission of your loving presence, and the way that you tended to me, combined with your expertise, your knowledge, your synthesis of the various modalities was really beautiful and allowed me to just open, to really open. And also the fact that it didn’t involve a lot of talking. That it wasn’t really content-based specifically. It also had elements of content, but it wasn’t really only content-based, and it was more energy-based, and based on the kind of places in my body that were holding, that were perhaps not fully aligned.  That were a little a little torqued or tweaked in some way, shape, or form. And I just feel like the way that we worked together, I felt like you were very, it was very non-invasive, very kind of attentive without being invasive, which is really key in my experience with especially bodywork. And in terms of resilience, I would say that something about your work specifically was that its effects were really long-lasting. That’s what I would notice is that, and what do notice, because I still do certain movements and use certain tools that you shared with me and access certain awarenesses of patterns of movement in my own body. And this, and I’m speaking as someone who is really a movement professional. That is, I have a very–I’ve worked at it–I’ve cultivated a very refined movement awareness. And so for me to kind of get to go to the next level, and part of that is addressing those places that were contracted or somehow coagulated. These knots in my system which are both physical. emotional, and energetic. And also that your work addressed, I felt like addressed as a whole being, which is just that I think is what enabled me to open. So in terms of resilience, I feel like the tools and the fact that things are lasting, and even things that had to do with, for example, swallowing and taking small sips of water. And I still am conscious of that. These pieces have stayed with me and I felt like

in terms of a nervous system, as well as physical reorganization, that it sometimes happened immediately. I mean I always immediately felt a big shift. Usually I was pretty expanded and maybe even slightly spaced out.

 

MIR:  Thank you. It happens.

 

PG:  It does happen. And our exchange was happening from, I’m so grateful you came to my home to work on me, which meant I didn’t have to drive, and I could just sort of stay in that expansiveness and relax and just allow it to do whatever it wanted to do. And I felt like the effects would happen over the coming, the following days and even weeks.

 

MIR:  Nice.

 

PG:  And just creating a certain, another level, of spaciousness and trust, and then those places of somatic release which we’re actually interfering with. Just a more comprehensive coherence, and stability, and alignment in my body-mind complex.

 

MIR:  Wow! Thank you so much!

 

PG:  You’re welcome. I’m happy to reflect on it. I hope that people can understand it. Basically, if I just sort of encapsulate:  working with you, Pamela, helped me to shift patterns of stuckness and stagnancy, and allowed for greater flow. Because flow in the physical/mental/emotional system is what creates resiliency.

 

MIR:  Yes.

 

PG:  So this access to flow then allowed me to be more say responsive rather than reactive, and to notice the places of holding and then, because they do resurface. So the patterns of holding and then the sort of simple reminder of, oh this is allowed to settle, this is allowed to shift. So hopefully that’s a kind of encapsulated, simpler transmission.

 

MIR:  Thank you.

 

[07:32] Voiceover:  We’re here with Padma Gordon, author of BEING TOGETHER. You can find her book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And you can find her at Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Her website is padmagordon.com. And let’s get back to the interview.

 

 

[07:58] Somatic Release gets at the subconscious

MIR:  I just have to say it how beautiful to hear you describe me as offering to you the possibility for more than you already had experienced in your life. So even with all the body practices and the things that you know, that somehow this was different. And I appreciate hearing that back because I feel that it’s different too. Because what we’re dealing with is the part of the brain-body, the mind-body that isn’t accessible through talk. It’s not accessible through the logical brain as you know. It’s part of the reptile, or the hind brain, or the primal brain. There’s a lot of names for it. But getting at that, the subconscious stuff that a lot of it we don’t even realize is there until we have something come at us in life. And so perhaps this is the opportunity that we needed to find these places in our body that needed to be released, right?

 

PG: Right.

 

MIR:  And so I feel honored and privileged to have been able to work with you in that way, and to possibly create an easier way of doing life. And that’s kind of the idea here is that we’re trying to make it easy for people.

 

PG:  Yes.

 

MIR:  Life doesn’t have to be a struggle, and I really kind of want to emphasize that with people. There’s a lot of ease that we can have, and we’re allowed to have it. We’re allowed to feel good. We’re allowed to feel all of those good feelings. And then the hard ones are important too, because they help us to identify where we have not been able to let go. Like you said, the little knots and the places where it’s holding on because it’s a pattern. Because it’s just been kind of programmed into us, wherever those programs come from.

 

PG:  Right. And yeah. And it’s true. And then it’s the parts, the patterns, are actually the parts that haven’t been received. So being able to receive them oneself with the space being held, is really, that’s part of I feel like what we’re both offering.

 

MIR:  Yes.

 

PG:  Yes, overlapping, yet complementary ways.

 

MIR:  Right.

 

[10:27] Creating room for all the parts of you

PG:  It’s that when the space is held, there’s room for unwinding. There’s room for letting go, right in the body and in the emotional self. And you’re right those parts, they get to come home. They get to come home. It’s okay, come back. And I mean this is one of the things I feel like I work with a lot with people and myself still to this day.

 

MIR:  Sure.

 

PG:  It’s just those parts, and loving those parts, and loving those younger parts. And then how the body organizes around those parts that have been banished or marginalized, and then that’s where those knotty, gnarly places and those maybe not-so-healthy patterns might come from.

 

MIR:  Right. Right. Yeah, I read your book, and one of the pieces that I saw…

 

PG:  Oh, yay!

 

MIR:  Yes, I read it, and I loved it, and it was hard for me because at the same time I’m going through, you know, having just been divorced. So reading about how to be together was kind of like oh, if only.

 

PG:  If only I’d written the book two years earlier!

 

[11:44] How the Self-Hug can help us feel self-love

MIR:  One of the things that i remember you saying is that even if you don’t have your partner around, even if you don’t have a partner, even if you’re completely alone, you can still feel that there’s somebody there, because you can think of your younger self, and you can hold yourself–the now self. And this is actually one of the things that i have in my Mindful Motion practice, or the program, is the Self-Hug. And this is something new I hadn’t shown you before, because it just came into the, onto the, scene for me. So I’ve added it in. This is what I do. I’m evolving, ever evolving. But the Self-Hug is something that I’ve added in, and when you were mentioning that I was like, oh, Self-Hug, this is great! And the idea of remembering the younger you holding her and saying it’s okay I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. Those pieces to me, that was one of the vitally important parts of my process of coming into self-love was remembering the younger me, and so i liked seeing that in your book that that’s something that you do too to remember, like you said coming home.

 

PG:  Absolutely.

 

[13:05] Video instruction of Self-Hug

Voiceover:

Self-Hug

Place one palm on the outside of the opposite upper arm, and the other palm a hand width below the opposite armpit. Hold here gently, or you can tap the hands, alternating one side and then the other. Enjoy how you feel, and notice any pleasant sensations. And then switch hands and do the same thing on this other side. Breathing gently. And notice how you feel.

 

Resume interview

 

MIR:  So even if we don’t have a partner.

 

[14:08] Loving yourself prepares you for relationship

PG:  Well, even if we don’t have a partner. Because the truth is that loving in a relationship, the first relationship is here (gestures to self) with yourself. And so really learning to fall in love with yourself, and give yourself a hug, and hold yourself in those moments is critical. And then, if and when you meet somebody that feels like they can be a good partner for you, you’re actually much more whole. Every time you make a deposit into your self-love account, you’re depositing into, really expanding into your own sense of loving. Because loving, I mean the name of the book is BEING TOGETHER:  Practical Wisdom for Loving Yourself and Your Partner. So I really just want to say that relationship, because I’m really just excited about relationship, and how the book really does bring in relationship to self and a lot of mindfulness practices that you can do. Really everything that the book speaks to, you can do it on your own. Because I’ve talked to people here in our community and they say, “Oh, but I’m not in relationship right now.” I say it’s a perfect time to read the book, because you’re planting speeds, you’re laying groundwork, you’re opening yourself, you’re doing the prep work for, then you get into relationship and then, great, read the book again with the person. Go through it, and discover.

 

[15:45] Why everyone should read this book, even before relationship.

MIR:  Right. I think it’s a great pre-relationship book for people, absolutely. Because there’s a lot of things that you don’t know are going to happen when you’re in relationship. And so you bring them up, and you bring them forward, and you say and yes, you will argue and yes, you will have disagreements and yes, you will not see things eye to eye. And you might say something wrong and what do you do about it. And so all of these pieces that you have in there are super helpful for people to know in advance of getting into relationship. And you talk a little bit about attachment, and there’s very practical wisdom. I love the title.

 

[16:25] Voiceover:   You’ve been listening to an interview with Padma Gordon. Her new book BEING TOGETHER can be found at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And she can be reached on her website PadmaGordon.com. Thank you so much for joining me. This is Pamela Stokes, and you’ve been listening to Move Into Coherence. Find us at moveintocoherence.com for more information. Take it easy!