Yeah.

Yeah.

And it, I think it distills the essence of most religious traditions.

My father was raised as a Jew, my mother as Episcopalian.

My mother's dream had always been to get married in the church that she h- that her parents had helped found in a LA suburb.

Um, when she approached the preacher who had been her preacher all her life about officiating, he said the only way that he would do that is if my father converted to Christianity.

My mother said nope.

Yeah

Yeah.

So the background is that there's, um, this author, Robert Caro, [clears throat] who has written at, as of now, four volumes of what should be a five-volume biography of LBJ And they're magnificent books.

If you like history, if you like biography, they're really thick, 800,000 pages pop.

Um, but they're great books.

And after the third one was out, before the fourth one came out, I happened to be in Texas.

Um, and I went to Johnson City, Texas, where Lyndon Johnson was raised.

And there's a historical center there that's part of the National Park Service.

Um, and so on the one hand, I see that you are tirelessly and continuously working towards that goal of leaving it better, but, um, how realistic do you feel like that ig- that precise goal is?

[laughs]

Or y- or not, right? And if not, like, how do I get my nervous system to, like, actually realize that, oh, I'm not in any danger right now.

So from that, um, that's where I think a lot of the somatic experiencing has really helped me, because when we start doing somatic experiencing, a lot of the work is simply recognizing that.

Like, it's, you know, me asking, "Hey, so how are you feeling right now?" And then from there, from just that curiosity and that noticing, especially when people respond with like, "I feel really stressed out," or, "I feel really anxious," or, "I feel really afraid," it's usually if you've never examined that, if you've never gotten curious about it, it...

that feels like the whole entire experience.

Which is okay, right? But then we get a little bit more curious and we can say, "Okay, I, I hear that you're feeling anxious right now.

Do you feel that everywhere?" Right? Like, if you were to check in with your feet right now and really notice, like, how your feet feel, do your feet feel as anxious as, like, that knot in your belly or that tightness in your chest? And most of the time there's some place in the body- That we can notice actually feels good, and even if it's not feeling good, it feels more neutral than where that discomfort is? Or even, we can even start with, like, what feels 1% less terrible than everything else? And once we can start to establish that, that's when we can start to, like, open up that awareness and actually start to track these sensations in the body, because we're wired to attach a meaning to our sensations and our experiences.

Mm

Kind of moving back to what you're mentioning with your clients, is there something that you do differently now than when you first began?

yeah when i first began my practice i felt was much more one-dimensional um you know i had some breath work training but it was mainly in this what i would call transformational breath work where you're where you're all entering an altered state through the breath and um Then I had the opportunity to go and work in a residential treatment center with people with substance abuse problems, with anxiety disorders, with depression.

And I mean this in the kindest way possible.

A lot of the people that I was working with weren't ready for these crazy deep dive psychedelic breathwork experiences.

So that's where I started doing more somatic work.

because that was something that I had been doing on my own as a client, not only for my own psychedelic integration, but for healing my trauma.

And, you know, being able to have a much more multidimensional sort of toolkit to know how to support people through nervous system regulation and not just, hey, let's take you out into the deep end of, you know, some sort of altered state of consciousness and hope for the best.

So kind of moving on further and, you know, more back on the, what we were talking about, when you use the word integration, what exactly are you describing?

And to clarify, you mean the deed restriction itself, not the overall program?

Yeah, the workforce designation where the price is being set at market rate, but then there's a cap.

I see its potential.

I'm less confident about whether that potential will be met.

So we have two really interesting things going on right now.

38% of all of our jobs are in tourism related.

And the average wage for a tourism job is about $60,000.

How do you view that in relation to your concern that at some point we begin to subsidize employers? And if so, does that feel like we should not worry as much about affordability and that we should require employers to deal with that part of it?