“It was always in a weird way, I wouldn’t say triggering, but I just didn’t like it. And then by the end, I really did love it. It just felt really heartwarming when different people in the Process, even still, since we all – a lot of us still keep in touch, and they call me Bubba, it makes me smile.” – Julie Shapiro
Hoffman grad, Julie Shapiro, found herself at a crossroads. She knew what she wanted to change in herself. Yet, she also felt unable to make that change. There’s change we can make through our choices, and then there’s change that must come from deeper within. The Hoffman Process works in this deeper place within us through the Cycle of Transformation. This is the place where the “magic” of the Process happens.
Julie’s story is one of courage, desire, and willingness. She came to the Process with profound scepticism. But she also came with a willingness to fully enter into the Process to allow change to happen within her, even though she couldn’t understand how it would happen.
In moments of silence in nature, time with a Buddha, and places where Julie knew she had to go deeper, the “magic” of transformation happened. She gained new insights and saw a deeply rooted pattern. In one moment that allowed her Process to go deeper, Julie realized she had to use the childhood nickname her father had given her on her name tag rather than her given name. She knew that, even though her nickname, Bubba, triggered her, using it would be important. And it turned out to be. As Julie shares, using Bubba “was the real way to connect with my childhood, connect with my parent relationship, work through some things that I may not have had the opportunity to do before he died, and just really connect with him.“ Connecting with her childhood unlocked something deeper within. Hearing fellow students call her Bubba began to bring her joy.
Beautiful, ineffable things can happen when you surrender to the Process, as Julie did. We hope you enjoy this heartfelt conversation with Julie and Sadie.
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Have you ever known exactly what you wanted to change about yourself — but felt unable actually to make the change?
It was at that crossroads that Julie Shapiro signed up for the Hoffman Process. At 42, she felt that certain milestones, like marriage and starting a family, were out of reach. A lifelong New Yorker, she’d recently moved to Los Angeles and unexpectedly lost her dad within weeks of moving. A Stanford graduate, she set impossibly high standards for herself, both personally and professionally.
Julie had spent years in therapy, taken meditation courses, and tried other modalities to reduce anxiety. She was self-aware and could name her patterns. But awareness alone wasn’t moving the needle to evoke the changes she wanted.
The Hoffman Process was not something she ever would have considered. She expected it to be “woo woo” and couldn’t imagine that a one-week retreat had any long-term benefits. But despite her skepticism, she attended the Process in 2024, hoping it might unlock something within her.
The Process did just that. Through the Cycle of Transformation, Julie was able to move beyond her lawyer-trained intellect and tap into her emotional and spiritual selves. She discovered a deeply rooted pattern of living in survival mode — pushing through things that made her unhappy just to achieve the end goal. As the Process week unfolded, she began to believe that a spirit-led life, focused on “being” rather than “having,” was not only possible, but available to her.
Hoffman’s Q2 is a three-day program for Process graduates.
Drew Horning:
Julie’s Hoffman teacher and one of the Hoffman Podcast hosts.
Awareness Hell:
In the Hoffman Process, when we’re in awareness hell, we know we are aware of our patterns and the things we do that we wish we didn’t, but we are still unable to change. We understand, but feel stuck in this place of hell, even though our awareness keeps expanding. To get out of awareness hell, our work to grow and transform must include three additional steps for change to take place. These three steps are Expression, Compassion, and New Ways of Being. All four make up the Cycle of Transformation.
The Cycle of Transformation:
The four steps in the cycle are Awareness, Expression, Compassion, and New Ways of Being. All four make up the Cycle of Transformation.
Be-Do-Have vs. Do-Have-Be:
The life we long for comes from Be-Do-Have; the life we are taught we should strive for comes from Do-Have-Be.
Recycling/pre-cycling is a tool and a practice for receiving wisdom from your own Spiritual Self, which gives you qualities that lead you directly to new behavior, authenticity, and the freedom to respond rather than react to patterns. You replace a pattern with an authentic quality of your Spiritual Self and embody that quality. You create new behavior from this embodiment.
Your Spiritual Self ultimately guides you on how to BE so that you DO what supports your being and HAVE what you need to support your living.