Opening Your Heart After Trauma with Dr. Kate Hudgins

The Therapeutic Spiral Model is about recovery from trauma by accessing your spontaneity and creativity. You will experience a heart opening as you connect with your autonomous healing center. You will experience a strength needed to heal from the past to make a difference in the future.

[00:00-00:50] Nunaisi Ma

Hello and welcome to RISE. I am so delighted to have here today, Dr. Kate Hudgins. She is a Clinical Psychologist and certified trainer in Psychodrama and group psychotherapy. She’s an international trainer and author on the Therapeutic Spiral Model to treat trauma. She brings a warm heart and a lighted spirit and integrates diversity from the 42 countries she has worked in during her career. Welcome, Kate.

[00:51-00:57] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Thank you. Thank you. I’m really happy to be here. It’s an exciting opportunity to be part of your network.

[00:58-01:05] Nunaisi Ma

Thank you so much. I can’t wait to dive into the Therapeutic Spiral Model. Can you please talk about it?

[01:06-03:18] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Yeah, so the therapeutic spiral model is something that came out of my personal integration of growing up with a childhood history of trauma- sexual trauma growing up, and kind of coming into the world as a psychologist and like starting my training and going like, “oh like what’s really going on here” because I was still untreated and in 19- I mean, I won’t say how old am but in the early years, PTSD wasn’t even diagnosed till 1987.

Okay, I got my Ph.D. in 1986, so it was a brand-new diagnosis when I started practice. And what I saw is, I had it. I thought I had it and that there was no adequate treatment for it. Certainly, as a new budding psychologist, I sought treatment from any place I could but nobody really was helpful and so I discovered psychodrama along the way, and psychodrama at the time, classical psychodrama, was very emotive, cathartic, beautiful, and uncontained.

So as a trauma survivor, I would do psychodramas and when I was telling my story, I was expressing emotion but I wouldn’t remember what I’d done. So, I have my like beat a pataka, kind of like anger and after that, I would say who was I even talking to, what was going on and so my Ph.D. professor said, “you know Kate, I think you were dissociated in that experiential work” So how do you make it safe was my question.

How do I make experiential work which I knew the first moment I did it was my healing. I knew to go into the body, to be with the Earth, to be with the- you know. I knew that, so I made it my mission to kind of take classical psychodrama and make it safe through what we call the Therapeutic Spiral Model and that’s kind of the first spark up again.

[03:19-03:53] Nunaisi Ma

I can definitely resonate with what you were talking about. I myself started psychology studies and I dumped it after a few months because I couldn’t see how that’s going to help me where I was with my trauma and then and I think that many of us are in a state of PTSD without even knowing that. It actually became almost a norm and so how do you work with that through psychodrama? I would love to know?

[03:54-06:11] Dr. Kate Hudgins

So, it really has become a norm. I mean in 1987, you know the DSM diagnostics manual said that, oh PTSD is basically war trauma and certainly what the me-too movement and anything else, you know, the racial justice movement shows that, PTSD is not limited to war trauma. It is pervasive and so it’s become a more normalised diagnosis. It’s even a diagnosis that got changed when the DSM got changed, just a couple of years ago in 19‐ Sorry, actually my work as a psychologist but I doubt but it became a stress-related diagnosis like, PTSD became a clear stress-related diagnosis.

So, what it means is that you know, if something bad happened to you, you might have stress about something bad happening to you. If you have good new experiences, experiential therapy, you have good new experiences, then your brain can change in the other way. It can become positive and that’s what we know now. In 1996, when I first started creating- 1992 and 1995 when I created Therapeutic Spiral Model, we did not know anything about neurobiology.

All we knew it’s like is somebody present, stable, able to process something or they just dissociated, regressed, or gone. That was kind of the level of where we were working at, in 1986 and 1987 coming into our work in 1992. in 1996 they did the first neurobiology study showing how trauma dysregulates the brain but we’d already figured out how to do it clinically, so that’s what we do with psychodrama. it’s we said experiential work, we love it, we adored it.

It’s absolutely what has to happen if you can’t get into the experience of things new or old, you can’t change and how to do it safely is what TSM is. It’s like psychodrama, therapeutic spiral model, psychodrama is contributed and I can [UNCLEAR (06:03-06:05)] so you have to like stop me when you want an answer. I’ve spent my life doing this you know.

[06:12-06:43] Nunaisi Ma

First of all, I honour you for that. This is really such a commitment and I love what you’re doing and it’s so needed, so just a huge shoutout for all that you do. You have taken psychology to a whole other level. You widen your horizon say, I know you got some shamanic training interwoven into your work. Can you maybe dive a little bit into that and how all of it fits into your healing model?

[06:44-13:02] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Yeah, thank you. There are three strands of the therapeutic spiral. So, the first strand actually, if I had a diagram, I don’t do share screenings because I prefer to be with the human beings sharing screens. But the first strand is pink and it is about building strength, building safety. So, what classical psychodrama didn’t do with it, didn’t build safety, it would just like you come in and say, “oh I want to confront my perpetrator” and you know, you pick somebody to be your perpetrator and then you start doing that and you’ll be two years old, you know, there will be no adult stage left and it will just be like the person has collapsed on the ground. And they’re supposed to be a two-year-old telling the perpetrator like what happened, but that does not obviously work but they didn’t know that at the time you know.

And so, as a trauma survivor myself who would do these cathartic dramas and then not remember them and as a clinical psychologist whose professor said, “You know Kate if you don’t remember it you were dissociated.” He said, “there’s really no point doing the drama if you’re dissociated, you won’t remember the experience, it won’t make a change. You’ll go back in and you’ll keep beating the pataka forever” and I’m like, Wow, what an aha, right?

So, first strand is safety, building up strength, being able to stay in a conscious state of awareness while you bring the trauma on to the stage, into the therapy office, into the healing ceremony, but whatever, you stay conscious. You don’t leave because if you leave, then there’s no healing possible so like that’s- So scene one in psychodrama now and it’s not just in TSM psychodrama. It’s in most psychodramas. Now, most people know they do that scene first. Do they give credit to TSM? Not likely, not often and it’s okay you know, pass it on.

Then the second strand of the spiral is Experiencing and that is the love I found for psychodrama the first time I met it. I mean it was just like, wow, you’re in your body, you’re speaking things from inside yourself out loud, that’s called surplus reality. So, the internal reality is put out there, the surplus reality you’re speaking things that people don’t normally get to hear and then something shifts with surplus reality, changes to what’s the healing state.

Like what didn’t you get to say what would you like to have heard? I did a session this morning where somebody was leaving their home country and leaving their parents behind and they had to do it and the drama was about what would the ideal parents say to enable that son, a 40-year old man, to make this big turning. So, it’s always that piece. So, the shamanistic influence came in the very first time I did a psychodrama in a psychodrama theatre that I had built. I built it with the help of Zerka Moreno.

Yeah, actually what I want to do is talk about the shamanic connection. And it comes through Zerka Moreno who was the co-founder of psychodrama, a Russian-Jew who came through the holocaust to bring her sister to J. L Moreno and that’s how psychodrama started. So, she was one of my mentors and so she gave me the plans of the original psychodrama theatre in upstate New York and she and I built a second original Theatre, except she said it was more beautiful because the original theatre was like four black walls and no windows and people got locked in there, not really a good thing anyway, right.

So, my theatre, my psychodrama Theatre was called the Psychodrama Theatre Protection because that first time I did the first workshop there, on the land it was a house and there was land where we were going to build the theatre, there was this Native American who was hanging out at the end and so I said why are you hanging out there and she said you’re doing shamanic work.

So, from then on, for 7 years, every time we did work at the Psychodrama Theatre Protection which Zerko Moreno had dedicated every single time, from that we were able to just give back to the earth give- I mean to learn all the native traditions. We built a Sweat Lodge. We got the grandfathers you know, at my age. Now I look back and say, “Oh my God, it’s already something we did.” What because we would get up at 6:30 in the morning, we would say prayers around the Spirit fire. We would have our breakfast then we will do a 3-hour, 4-hour psychodrama then we would have our lunch, and we would do a three- or four-hour psychodrama and we will have our dinner and then we had three- or four-hour psychodrama, and then we would be doing a Sweat Lodge till 1 or 2 in the morning and we will start all over again.

So, the shamanic thing was so embedded in the Therapeutic Spiral Model from the beginning not because I sought it but because this woman came in and she asked not to be named, so I always choose not to name her. She is a native person who believes her path is to teach white women to bring it into the world and prefers not to have her name be part of that, for whatever reason.

[13:03-13:12] Nunaisi Ma

Wow, so this actually found you, looks like, right? It was sent into your world as a gift.

[13:13-14:16] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Well as a gift and a challenge, a gift, and a challenge. I mean I got buried up into my thighs in the middle of the woods and you know a lot of things got happening with the Sweat Lodge and everything else that was going on. You think as a city girl, there’s actually a picture of me in our newsletter from, what was the year? 1995. Anyway, so there’s a picture of me carrying wood up the hill to where our spirit fire is and I have nice little shorts with good pockets, and everything’s good. The title of it is Barbie goes woodsy-Barbie doll Barbie doll goes woodsy. So, this is where it kind of was- it was very interesting that you know, the shamanic influence did seek me out. It wasn’t anything that I actually thought oh I need to study this, I need to do this. It was somebody who actually came toward me.

[14:17-14:26] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah, and how did that influence your work, or what impact did it have on the people that came to do trauma healing with you?

[14:28-16:45] Dr. Kate Hudgins

So, for the 7 years there, we did have people, men, and women who came to do their own personal healing and that’s where we developed the Therapeutic Spiral Model on people willing to come and trust us enough that would say like, “yeah okay, you got something different” because again remember at that time 1992, 1995, it was different.

There was talk therapy and then there became CBT therapy and meanwhile, we’re going like, “yeah I think experiential therapy is the way to go” But how do we do it safely. So, we had- you know many people who came there and we had people internationally that came. We had people from New Zealand and Australia, England, and our first cohorts that came there you know, and so we just kept like kind of sorting it out in vivo lab, really.

Like what is the best way to do this, and the spiritual dimension was always there from the very beginning because of that mohawk woman who showed up in our very first workshop and when I asked her what she’s doing there, you know, she’s trying to help me do shamanic work correctly. She also gave a gift that was the name for the Psychodrama theatre that was going to be built. It wasn’t built yet, the land was just there and so she asked what an image was and I got a bear and then she decided and helped me figure out that the name of the theatre was the Psychodrama Theatre of Protection, so that’s where TSM started.

It was in a big amazing beautiful psychodrama theatre where what is in here, surplus reality, could be put out on the stage and looked at with safety as we figured out how to make it safe. So, I’m a firm believer that experiential therapy is the absolute way to do healing for people. You have got trauma that we’ve been in the Dark World. Right, we’ve lived in the Dark World, we’ve experienced the Dark World, so how can you only talk about that.

It’s not enough just to talk about it. You have to have somebody go back with you and say, “Okay let’s come out of the Dark World.” Anyway, that’s what TSM is about.

[16:46-16:56] Nunaisi Ma

So, is it a little bit like family constellation? is somebody, it’s these people playing different roles and there is an interaction.

[16:57-18:21] Dr. Kate Hudgins

So, a lot of people do compare TSM with internal family systems and in TSM all of the rules are internalised. So, they’re all roles inside your own psyche. So, there may be internalized father and mother, grandparent’s generational trauma and that may be in your body and you may find it in your body through our technique we call the Body Double, which helps you tune into your body, what you’re carrying transgenerationally.

So, it’s very similar. The difference is for me- and I’m not a big stud there, I just know a little bit- is that they use a perceptual field of bringing in ancestral energies whereas TSM is a little more psychologically rigid, I would have to say, where we say like, ok the transgenerational energies are there but what role are they, what role? Was it the grandmother, the great grandmother, the ancient wise woman who’s giving a message, not just the energy of it but what’s the role and then what’s the message for change? So, they’re similar.

[18:23-18:53] Nunaisi Ma

Wow, powerful powerful. I have energy surges through my body because I totally resonate with you saying that we own all those roles within us. Actually, the makeup of our being is exactly consisting of all those that walked before us, right? and that we have their genetic information through epigenetics, and it’s so fascinating.

[18:50-19:00] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Which is so fascinating. How does a role come out of the cells in your body, the cells in your brain, but they do.

[19:01-19:12] Nunaisi Ma

They do and I’m sure you’re familiar with the research of the mice, right? and the cherry blossoms. You have to, I’m sure or the monkeys.

[19:10-19:28] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Or the monkeys. You know the monkeys where 500 monkeys or whatever monkeys couldn’t wash their hands and all of a sudden 500 monkeys could do that, how does that happen? It’s just so fascinating, what is really available in the spiritual, material, cosmic world.

[19:29-20:45] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah, I just want to elaborate on that for the audience that maybe are not familiar with that, so they understand what we are talking about. There has been research done on mice where they introduced them with a very specific scent, cherry blossom, and when they did that they also inflicted some very intense pain using electric shocking and those mice had a very specific reaction where they were swirling.

Then they let those mice have babies and they separated the babies as they were born. The babies couldn’t learn by watching behaviour and when the babies were introduced to the same smell, they had exactly the same behavioural reaction as their parents, without ever being introduced to the pain as well and that actually ran in generations. They say even up to seven generations. So, if mice can transmit that behaviour in seven generations, what happens with us human beings when we go, you know, seven generations backward, right?

[20:46-21:05] Dr. Kate Hudgins

And TSM is also about going 7 generations into the future, post-traumatic growth. So that’s why I reference the monkeys because I think it’s 500 monkeys or is it 50 monkeys, I’m not quite sure but there’s some number. Do you know the number?

[21:06-21:17] Nunaisi Ma

I think it’s a 100 because, they call it the 100th monkey effect – yeah but same-same it’s critical math.

[21:18-22:18] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Critical math that at some point monkeys on different islands start doing the same behaviour and that when 100, 500 whatever it is, critical math, all monkeys seem to know how to do that. It’s like how does that happen. It’s so interesting and curious like how does that happen. What cosmic force and that is part of psychodrama even outside of the shamanic influence.

Psychodrama is a belief that we are all cosmic beings and that we are connected as cosmic beings and you know, we come and we leave, we come and we leave but we are all cosmic beings. So, take what you want from that and leave the rest as we say, but you know that’s the basic thing that we are all connected and if the 99th monkey makes a difference for monkeys on the other island or if the pain of something from generations before is still held in the cells, how do we change it?

[22:19-23:04] Nunaisi Ma

Right, and the good news is that first of all, we can change it, and also when we do that we really heal backward and forwards as you said. So, when we decide to make that decision and make that commitment to heal or make that choice to heal and we decide to actually fill in order to heal, right? because a lot of our mothers and fathers and grandmothers, they couldn’t do it. They were not conscious enough. There were not enough resources out there. They were surviving.

[23:03-25:31] Dr. Kate Hudgins

They were surviving. I mean we talk about being survivors, you know my generation, your generation, and the younger generation. I mean, how-what trans-generational beings dealt with before us they had no choice, they truly had no choice other than the ancient wisdom, you know, and some of them did find the ancient wisdom. That’s the lineage we look for at TSM, is what is the lineage of what came forward not only in the epigenetic trauma track but what came through in the post-traumatic growth spiritual dimension track.

There are some really good researchers about post-traumatic growth, Tedeschi and Calhoun and they’ve actually looked at 6 areas of post-traumatic growth; mental physical- I always get this wrong- physical first physical, mental, emotional, psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual and in each area what the research shows is that only one-third of people actually develop PTSD after a trauma.

Two-thirds of them don’t. Two-thirds of them move to post-traumatic growth. Their mind expands, their physical self-care is better, their emotions are able to tolerate more emotions, their psychological self is better, their connections are better and they have a bigger spirituality. We started out a long time in 1992, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma and the Native American woman came and said, “yeah, maybe there’s something beyond trauma” like it’s been around for thousands and thousands of thousands of years like, you know, it’s in the rocks, it’s in the stone, it’s everywhere.

So, like how do you just, like keep it moving towards something else. Then as a clinical psychologist, I found the researcher. I said, “oh here we go” and anytime you tell me something in research I’m like yah. It took the native American women years to get me to believe what she said. I experienced it all but I was like okay, why don’t you

tell me why your bed is like spinning around underneath me. I don’t think it happened. But actually, it did happen, yeah. I could see the things on the floor. It did happen, alright. So, it took much longer than that than you giving me a research study and saying, “oh the research study says”

[25:33-27:53] Nunaisi Ma

So, I want to share that I have experienced it myself and this is exactly what I wrote about in my book, right? Because its transformed trauma into sovereign power, soulful purpose, and sacred pleasure and I am talking from my own experience because I really believe that this is my sacred mission and my sacred work that I am doing right now. And I had the initiations, if you will, to go through the Underworld and be able to find that within myself, right?

So you know coming from, I like to work a lot with the primal wounds that we all have as a collective, no matter where we come from, right? and I know that you’ve been working with a lot of different traditions which is interesting because you know we experienced- our histories are different but we are all the same, right? and I feel that you know, our very primal wound starts with the mother wound and the father wound, right? as our feminine and masculine role models, creators if you will, and I had a very potent Dumbledore’s mother wounds and very potent Dumbledore father wounds and then I really had to experience it to the core of my being.

When I say very potent it’s from you know, saving my mother’s life from committing suicide when I was 6 years old and instantly becoming her therapist and trying to make her stay alive and be happy. She wanted to commit suicide because she met this new man and she wasn’t happy with my father, she wanted to divorce and then when we moved to stay with this man. He was sexually abusing me. So, I was in a conflict between, you know, worried about what my mother will say and even whether I was safe exactly, and so that was- that lasted for about three years and when I eventually told my grandmother, because I just could not live with that anymore, my mother didn’t believe me. She didn’t believe me.

[27:54-27:57] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Did your grandmother believe you?

[27:58-28:10] Nunaisi Ma

My grandmother did believe me, although she doubted herself later on. But that was the day I moved to live with my father, never to be returned to my mother.

[28:11-28:35] Dr. Kate Hudgins

So let me stop you right here for a moment because this is the TSM way. So you’re telling your trauma story and I feel, I’m with you. I mean much of it is similar and there’s a bit of urgency for you to tell it, so if I just, can I do what we call a Body Double?

[28:36-28:37] Nunaisi Ma

Yes please.

[28:38-31:18] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Ok, so a body double is to help you to feel more connected to what you’re telling and more fully in your body. So, if what I say is right, I’m going to speak it as an I, I. I’m like an internal voice. I, I. So, if what I say is right, repeat it, put it in your own words, nod. If it’s not right then correct it right away. You know 50% chance I’ll be right by luck. If I go a little empathic, I’ll be right a little bit more than 50%.

So, I’m just going to breathe with you because we start with breathing, so just breathe with me okay. I’m going to slow my breath down even more. I’m going to breathe in. I’m going to feel the feelings that are in here as I’m telling my story and I’m going to choose to breathe out what I want to tell. And we’ll breathe in again being really conscious. So, breathe in, what do I want to communicate and I breathe out. How can I be in connection with the beings that are watching this? So right now, I’m being your body double and I’m just going to stay here for a moment as you tell a little bit more of what you wanted to say and I will interrupt if I think you’re running down the trauma spiral without being fully present because your story is beautiful and it’s very important and it’s as important as any other story that anybody will ever tell on your show.

And for me you know, I have created TSM through my own history, through my own thing and if I can support you in this moment as being your body double, I wish nothing more than this. So, breathe and now I’m going to say the rest of my story with my feelings- I’m getting on track- where am I right now as I feel myself in my body on the chair. What do I want to say to you? What do I want to say to the people I’m talking to?

[31:20-31:37] Nunaisi Ma

So first of all, you know I’ve done so much work around it and I’ve cried so many tears and done so many modalities that when I tell the story now, I don’t relive it, so I have a little bit of a distance from it.

[31:40-32:11] Dr. Kate Hudgins

And I was going a little too fast to be truly distanced from it. So, I’m going to slow down so perhaps, just slow down a moment because I’ve got a distance and I’m still a little pressured when I tell it so. I’m just going to slow down now and tell it just at the right time for me, only me. I hope you get it, but it’s for me.

[32:13-32:40] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah, I moved to live with my father that same day, I was 10 years old. Not before my father called the police and I was basically- it was an investigation in front of three policemen, my father, my grandfather, and my grandmother, past midnight asking me all sorts of very embarrassing and-

[32:41-32:42] Dr. Kate Hudgins

I was so scared.

[32:43-32:45] Nunaisi Ma

I was very scared. I was very scared.

[32:46-32:48] Dr. Kate Hudgins

I really didn’t know who I could connect with.

[32:49-32:52] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah, I was scared. I felt shame. I felt guilt.

[32:53-33:23] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Shame that was not mine. I felt shame that was not mine. My adult self knows it’s not mine. Me too, me too, me too, not me, not me, not me. I can say that out loud as I tell my story, so as I tell my story I add something to it. I had shame and today I say not me.

[33:25-34:26] Nunaisi Ma

I felt shame that was not mine but I had to work it through and I’ve done it. I have done it. I also missed one part in that scenario is when my mother first heard the story from my grandmother, her reaction was she took a bunch of keys that were lying on the table and she literally wanted- metal keys so she picked up that bunch and she wanted to hit me. And I will never forget that fire look in her eyes and my grandmother jumped in between us and got hit on her forehead and started bleeding to protect me. So that was a very traumatic moment.

[34:27-35:06] Dr. Kate Hudgins

So let me body double you again. Slow down. So, I’m just remembering that my grandmother protected me. I’m not only remembering that my mother wanted to hurt me, even bigger is my memory that my grandmother protected me and I’m going to breathe that in. I survived this moment because my grandmother protected me. I’m actually honouring the moment I lived.

[35:09-35:11] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah, thank you.

[35:13-35:25] Dr. Kate Hudgins

I’m going to breathe. Take that all the way to my sovereign being, that’s your term? Sovereign being?

[35:26-35:27] Nunaisi Ma

Mmhmm.

[35:28-35:42] Dr. Kate Hudgins

On the top of your head, universally connected I’m sure, to the tip of your toes, you tell us who you are connected to, right now. I’m done being out of body double and back into workshop presenter. Who were you just connected with?

[35:43-35:46] Nunaisi Ma

I really feel, I really feel my grandmother very strongly.

[35:49-36:27] Dr. Kate Hudgins

So, in IFS, Internal Family Systems we would ask you to maybe [ UNCLEAR (35:55-35:56)] and in TSM we do the same thing because it’s a healing role. It’s a post-traumatic growth role so move your butt just 3 or 4 inches in your chair. So now you’re your grandmother and you’re not looking at the camera or the audience, you’re looking at yourself in the chair just 3 or 4 inches close to you. What’s your name, grandmother?

[36:28-36:29] Nunaisi Ma

Leila

[36:30-36:59] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Leila, Leila, what do you say to your sweet granddaughter in this moment? You see how she is today and you see how she was then, you see both because you’re in the spirit world? Yes. You can see both. So, what’s your message today, Leila. What’s your message today?

[37:00-37:20] Nunaisi Ma

You are wise. You’ll be fine. And it’s something she actually did tell me once inwards, and it brought me back to that moment when she told me that looking in my eyes.

[37:21-37:43] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Just breathe that in. Feel it and see if there’s any last thing you want to say to your granddaughter. She really needs you to say new things today. She really needs to hear the new things again.

[37:45-37:46] Nunaisi Ma

I am proud of you.

[37:49-37:50] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Say it in your own language.

[37:51-37:53] Nunaisi Ma

She would speak to me in Russian.

[37:55-38:13] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Can you say it in Russian? If you can say it in Russian, do that. If you can’t say it in Israeli but say it in what- in Hebrew, yes. What you feel is your original language because it makes a huge difference when you say from your own language.

[38:18-38:22] Nunaisi Ma

[Speaks in Hebrew], in Hebrew

[38:25-38:28] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Make it a paragraph in Hebrew.

[38:29-38:34] Nunaisi Ma

[Speaks in Hebrew]

[38:37-39:54] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Just imagine all of your grandparents around you and then imagine another circle, the great grandparents, and then imagine another circle with the great great great grandparents and go out into the infinite wisdom of where your sovereign being came from and breathe all of it in. Use your arms, use your body, bring all of it in. Wherever it is for you, bring all of it in. Yeah, all of your being, all this positive transgenerational peace, right?

This is where we start in TSM. We don’t go for the trauma. We go for the positives and if we wanted to do 3,4,5,6 interviews, we would generally take you down the whole map but this is where we start. So put your hands out and what do you say, look at your hands, what’s the gift you give yourself today from what we did. You just, kind of like spontaneously, what’s the gift you get?

[39:55-39:56] Nunaisi Ma

Freedom.

[39:57-40:09] Dr. Kate Hudgins

What does it look like? What’s the object? What’s the image? because it’s important to take the word which is left brain into an image which is right brain body-based. So, what is the image? So, look there, the image is right there.

[40:10-40:12] Nunaisi Ma

I just see white light.

[40:13-41:14] Dr. Kate Hudgins

White light. Why would you say just? White light is the best absolute thing you can get. I see white light. Celebrate it and I’m going to step back just for a moment, the double; I see my white light. This is my white light. Through all the traumas I’ve been through, I have my light and I’m going to bring it in wherever I want, wherever is just right for me, all the way down my feminine sexuality, breast, body, the whole thing, right? Yes, all white light, all of my being white light. All of my being is white light.

[41:14-41:17] Nunaisi Ma

And also sharing that white light with you.

[41:18-42:56] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Ah yes. Thank you, thank you. And we’ll both share it to the whole audience and whoever has been with us I guess; everyone can have the white light. In psychodrama, it’s called your autonomous healing centre. Ancient Wisdom has its many things but just feel it, grab it, take it, and put it into your being where everyone will leave it for today. Two more breathes, body double is 2 breaths, 3 breaths because you slowed it down enough that your neurobiology knows. Breathe in, pause. One more time, breathe in pause. The pause is where the brain goes like ah and then you let go one more time, breathe in, pause. The brain rests. Find your own natural rhythm of letting go. I feel quite privileged to work with you.

[42:57-43:20] Nunaisi Ma

Thank you so much. I really had such a full-body experience and really integrating quite a lot right now. So, it’s working on very deep levels and I hope the audience can feel that as well as I’m feeling it in my body.

[43:22-43:50] Dr. Kate Hudgins

So, in TSM, it’s important to take it from the body and bring it to the left brain. So, what’s one thing that’s going to guide you forward as a mantra, as an aha, as an insight, like one left brain thing that your body is like, “ah this is what I got but it means that.” This is the same with experiential things. If you don’t do my body says to my mind, says to guide me forward, you lose half of the communication.

[43:51-43:53] Nunaisi Ma

So is it a word that resonates-

[43:54-44:01] Dr. Kate Hudgins

A word, a sentence something that, you know, that you can call back to get to this place.

[44:02-44:08] Nunaisi Ma

What really comes is that white light again, that image of the white light.

[44:09-44:17] Dr. Kate Hudgins

So, do you see it in your eyes? Do you see it full brain? Do see it around your whole body? Like how do you see white light?

[44:18-44:46] Nunaisi Ma

I see it all around my body and I see it inside of me. I actually I feel-you know like you’re walking through the clouds. It happens a lot where I’m staying in Cape Town. We often have the clouds very low and it feels very- it’s not even foggy, it’s just in the clouds. It’s white all around you and that’s how it feels inside of me right now.

[44:48-45:11] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Alright, so what is a sentence that you will use to call this back because we’ve gone from experiential to imagery which is left and right brain together, but we need to end with a full left brain because we’re humans and so like a word, a sentence something that can bring you back to these white clouds.

[45:12-45:17] Nunaisi Ma

What comes to mind is protection. This white light protects me.

[45:20-46:21] Dr. Kate Hudgins

And we all need that don’t we? Yeah, so when we were offering to the group white light it’s because we have it. If we don’t have it, we can’t offer it. Want to offer it with me again? White light. White light for everybody. Take, take, take, take. Take as much as you want. There is enough for everybody and then bring back to ourselves. Yeah, so I feel like I’ve kind of done my gig. You know, I’ll just emerge spontaneously which is how TSM does do and I really thank you for being so willing just to go with the flow.

[46:23-46:38] Nunaisi Ma

Thank you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you do, for this process, and for your- I can feel your spirit and you’re such a white spirit. Thank you so much for that.

[46:39-46:54] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Well, it’s a wonderful connection with you today and I will now ponder a bit more. I mean, I think I can kind of just give what we just did, like what is your gift, you know, I can do something like that and record that. We can have a gift that I can give people following this.

[46:55-47:16] Nunaisi Ma

Great and I will just capture it so the gifts will be offered in time and there will be a link that you can download it. I will write more about it as it comes and if people want to connect with you, I know that you’re also offering training for trainees, right? for practitioners.

[47:17-47:40] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Yes, practitioners that want to learn how to do experiential trauma work safely. We have our website; therapeuticspiralmodel.com and then I have my email drkatetsi@mac.com.

[47:41-48:12] Nunaisi Ma

Great, great. We will have all those details captured for you and if you are already in the field of helping people and you provide some form of consulting or healing and you want to really deepen your trauma-informed training, then please contact Dr. Kate. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Blessings your way and until the next time we meet.

[48:12-48:20] Dr. Kate Hudgins

Thank you Nunaisi. Yeah, that’s beautiful. Thank you so much.

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