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Emotional and Physical Healing
An interview with Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.
by Raz Ingrasci, President (Edited
by Shawn McAndrew)
An internationally renowned figure in the field of Mind-Body Medicine,
Joan is also co-founder of the Mind Body Clinic at Harvard University
and author of several best-selling books. She spoke with us about
her book, A
Woman's Book of Life: The Biology, Psychology, and Spirituality of
the Feminine Life Cycle. Dr. Borysenko also serves on the Advisory Council.
Raz Ingrasci: Your new book is climbing onto the
best sellers' list. Congratulations!
Joan Borysenko: Thank you. This book is a celebration
of the three inter-connected parts of the feminine life cycle: our
biology, our psychology, and the innate spirituality of the feminine.
It is a book about the transitions we go through in our lives and
how those transitions move us to greater intuition, a greater ability
to find and use our true voice. By mid-life women come into a passage
which I call "the Guardian." What emerges is a kind of
fierce desire to protect the web of life and keep it whole.
RI: When does the Guardian phase begin?
JB: Really, around 40, mid-life. I've defined
three seven-year cycles in each of four quadrants of life. So, zero
to 21 is Childhood and Adolescence; 21 to 42 are the Young Adult
years; 42 to 63 is mid-life, the Guardian; 63 and beyond are the
Elder Wisdom years. What used to be thought of as mid-life crisis
is really a transition in which people naturally undergo a values
clarification. They really begin to look inside and ask: "Who
am I? What is most important for me in this life? What is my purpose?
How can I serve?" Very frequently women undergo career and
relationship changes at this time. A cycle of healing begins near
the mid-30's where old traumas come up, where women start to identify
old traumatic memories that hold them back. Our soul gives us a
call for healing with the recognition that if we heal those things
that hold us back and drain our energy, we're going to have a lot
more energy to use in those Guardian years.
RI: We should all be embracing this transition
but, in fact, our culture does not teach us to do that.
JB: That's right. Our culture tells us you're
over the hill, you're dried up, you're sexless, whatever power you
had is waning. But exactly the opposite is true: you're just starting
to flower as a woman, you're just coming into full power. Women
intuitively recognize that but we need help in actualizing it. That's
why the Hoffman Process is so important. I'd expect that a lot of
people around mid-life come to the Hoffman Process.
RI: Yes. Around 90% of the people who take the
Process are between 35 and 60 years old. Joan, what do you mean
when you speak about finding one's voice?
JB: There's a body of research that addresses
with women the issue of "where do I stop and other people begin."
Because women are so relational and empathetic. A woman will know
what's true for her, what she needs to be happy, what she needs
to do and how to move, but she's so busy taking care for everybody
else that she can't go in her own direction. And furthermore it
turns out that in trying to take care of others, oftentimes she
disempowers them. And this is for women, I think, a lifelong issue.
We cannot fully come into our own power when we cannot choose for
ourselves because we're worried about other people. I told in the
book a story about Heidi-which for me is the archetype of coming
into your own power in a spiritual sense-where Heidi, in the last
part of the story, is able to choose for her own happiness but in
so doing disappoints a crippled girl of whom she is the caretaker.
But as soon as that happens, the crippled girl actually stands up
and walks. The moral of the story is that, if we choose what is
truly right for us, it will also be the right choice for the people
around us. And it takes an enormous amount of courage and faith
for women to make that choice because we are biologically relational
and most of us been trained to be people-pleasers.
RI: So, you are talking about the voice of the
soul, the voice of the spirit. The voice which though not defiant
may not be in accord with what other people want of you. However,
it's a voice which also provides the possibility of true empowerment
and order for everyone else.
JB: It does, and you know what I found fascinating
about the Quadrinity Process is that it clarifies three different
voices that we all have inside of us. One is the voice of the wounded
Emotional Child that's always trying to get love. Another is the
voice of the Intellect which is telling us this is the correct way
to do things, this is the way it's been done before, this is what
society tells us we should be. And then there's the voice of the
Spiritual Self where you speak your true voice and change your life
and it is also going to be nourishing for other people. Coming into
that connection with your spiritual self is an integral part of
our life process.
RI: Yes, the Spiritual Self is the aspect that
allows you to be yourself. Whereas "enabling" keeps others
small because we serve no one by being small ourselves.
JB: We serve absolutely no one. There's a definition
of feminine growth which says that the natural way women grow in
relationship is when our hearts are open and we're not putting on
any masks. When you're relating from that authentic place to another
person, they too can move into that same place. Then something new,
something more creative emerges from the interaction. When you're
in your spiritual self and you attract other people into that part
of themselves, what is potential in both of you becomes manifest.
It is a blessing. And that is what is meant by self-in-relation
and that is innately the way that females grow in relationship.
I think that as men develop their feminine aspect they also begin
to recognize that every interaction has within it the potential
to be extraordinarily creative, and in that way we truly do bring
the world into being.
RI: In your book you draw out the physiological
aspects of this as well.
JB: I can tell you as a biologist that when we
step into the part of ourselves that doesn't judge, that is simply
open to the possibilities of the moment, that what happens is we
feel a sense of peace and gratitude. Enormous biochemical changes
accompany that, changes in the neuropeptides from the emotional
center of the brain, changes in our immune system and our cardiovascular
system that are all consistent with good health.
RI: Joan, do you have any comments about the Quadrinity
Process as an initiation into that spiritual dimension wherein you
are most authentically yourself?
JB: There's an old joke in Al-Anon about the definition
of a co-dependent being a person who at the moment of death sees
somebody else's life flash in front of their eyes. When I took the
Quadrinity Process I had to laugh because that is what it was about
for me as a final closure, recognizing and announcing I am not my
mother, Lillian; I'm not my father, Edward. I'm myself. So many
of us can't come into our power because we think we're someone else.
If we're ever going to use our true voice and our soul voice we
have to answer that biggest of all spiritual questions, that questions
is "who am I?" And that truly is what the Quadrinity Process
offers; it offers healing of the patterns that make you think that
you're someone else and then it offers the experience of what it
is to truly be in your own Spiritual Self and relate to people from
that level. In terms of a rite of initiation, the Process is wonderful
not only for people in mid-life, but for people at all points of
life's transitions. There's a big life transition when young people
leave the family home or leave college and they're in their early
20's and they're developing for themselves their first kind of view
of life, the structure of what life is going to be. That's right
at the point where my son Justin took the Process and I think it
was enormously helpful to him because he was able to say, for example,
well, I know that in our family everybody has gotten Ph.D.'s but
what I really need to do is to take a few years to surf, to meditate,
and to think about what I want to do next. And he felt fine about
doing that. Many people end up too early on a career path because
they feel that that's what expected of them by their family. So,
wouldn't it be wonderful if we all had that opportunity to say,
okay, I know what I need and I have enough faith in myself that
I'm not going to knuckle under to what society thinks or other people
want of me. The Process is wonderful at that time. And there are
so many points of transition when we're in confusion, something
that we counted on suddenly falls away from us and we don't have
ground to stand on. These questions naturally come up in times of
transition. A big problem with our society is that we don't have
rituals of transition which say "this is sacred space and that
all dark-nights-of-the-soul, all difficulties, all times when you're
unsure, is wonderful, holy ground." I'm speaking of those times
and places where the big questions - who am I? what is the purpose
of this? how can I rearrange my life in accordance with my soul?
and be of service? — come up. So, I would love to see the Hoffman
Process given to people at all those different times.
RI: Rituals allow us to move through transitions
completely and without giving our life over to something that's
not our life.
JB: Especially in times of crisis. There are basically
three ways that people go through crisis: they just fight like crazy
to maintain the status quo and nothing basically changes; or they
despair and become depressed; or they transform. I imagine you have
people doing the Process at a time of divorce or dissolution of
other long-term relationships, or people who might have just had
a diagnosis of a potentially life-challenging illness who are really
in that dark-night-of-the-soul time. I can't think of a better way
to come through to transformation, to do the healing that's necessary
and to receive the tools that we need on an ongoing basis, to feed
that transformative process. I really wish, in retrospect, that
at times when I was in those dark nights that I had known about
the Process earlier, known that there was something to do. I tried
everything just to keep myself alive in those times and it would
have been so remarkable to be able to go through the Process. I
feel like I would have had the tools faster and suffered a lot less
during that time. Certainly there's a positive role for suffering,
but you don't have to marinate in it forever.
RI: What we normally think of as crises are then
really sacred moments when something can finally change because
the problem has taken form such that we can now engage it, making
the choice for transformation and growth. Otherwise one retreats
and begins to ossify and live in the past.
JB: Yes, and you can become bitter. There's no
question that illness often follows crisis because the life force
energy simply isn't available, it's all tied up in the past.
RI: Joan, thank you very much. ø
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