transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] The Sounds True Podcast Network. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, I'm joined by Dick Schwartz, someone I'm honored to call a friend, the founder of Internal Family Systems, and Tamala Floyd, a psychotherapist and the first ever Black individual to become a certified IFS lead trainer and the author of Listening When Parts Speak. They join together here for a dialogue on the ways that IFS and Ancestral Wisdom intersect to heal intergenerational trauma. Welcome, friends. Stay with us. It is my joy and honor to welcome you to this special session, Healing Across Generations, a dialogue on internal family systems, IFS, and ancestral wisdom with Dick Schwartz and Tamala Floyd. Dick Schwartz is the founder of IFS, and with Sounds True, he's the author of the bestselling book, No Bad Parts, and a recent book with Thomas Hubel. It's called Releasing Our Burdens, A Guide to Healing Individual, Ancestral, and Collective Trauma. Dick is working on a new book with Sounds True. It's on the spirituality of IFS, and we're also offering a course on the spirituality of IFS, which you can still join if you're interested. We're running the course now for the second time, and the second cohort is still open if you want to join us. We're being joined for this conversation. I'm so pleased by Tamala Floyd, who has written a gorgeous practical guidebook to IFS. It deepened my understanding of IFS in many new ways. I'm very grateful to Tamala. It's called Listening When Parts Speak, A Practical Guide to Healing with IFS Therapy and Ancestral Wisdom. Tamala is a psychotherapist, a consultant, an educator, and an IFS lead trainer. Here, during Black History Month, I want to note the historic role that Tamala Floyd has played within the IFS community as being the first Black person to become an IFS trainer. Tamala, Dick, welcome.

Speaker 2:
[03:04] Thank you for having us.

Speaker 3:
[03:08] Always great.

Speaker 1:
[03:09] Here at the beginning, I want to open it up and ask you both a very general question, which is for both of you, how does working with ancestral presences, the intelligence of ancestors, and your IFS work come together, whether that's personally or in your work as a clinician or both? Tamala, I think let's go ahead and start with you.

Speaker 2:
[03:42] Absolutely. I would have to answer that question saying, it happens in both my personal life and professionally with clients. I have done quite a bit of work with my ancestors through ancestral healing medicine, working to heal my ancestral lines and my own legacy burdens. But I also do that work with my clients and helping them to come into a relationship with their ancestors. It's primarily happens healing intergenerational trauma with my clients or what we would also call legacy burdens in IFS. The beauty of bringing the ancestors into the work is that this ends up creating a long-standing relationship, at least the beginning of that, for clients so that they can then continue to connect with ancestors, have these deepened relationships, and have guidance from their ancestors moving forward.

Speaker 1:
[04:42] Tamala, just to be very specific, when you say working with ancestors, tell me what you mean specifically. I use this general term presences, which to me is my way of covering all my bases.

Speaker 2:
[04:56] Yeah. When I'm looking at the ancestors and I'm working with the clients, I'm looking at their four, typically their four primary ancestral lines. So that would be their mother's mother, mother's father, father's father, and father's mother's line. So when I'm looking at those legacy burdens, they may see that, oh, this legacy burden comes from my mother's mother's line. So when I'm talking about ancestors, we're looking at all the women on that line going back as far as it needs to go in order to heal that legacy burden. So these are their blood relatives, but they also include chosen family, also includes adoptive family numbers. So it's not just their blood family that I'm referring to when I'm saying their ancestors.

Speaker 1:
[05:48] Okay. And Dick, tell me how these two streams, if you will, come together for you in your work with IFS.

Speaker 3:
[05:58] Well, I'm thrilled to have Tamala in the community because she's much more expert on all that she talked about than I am. I don't have conscious personal relationships with, you know, I sense my father around sometimes, and mainly my father and her friends, and otherwise, yeah, so that's about it for me personally. But I got interested in legacy burden some years ago, because I would ask parts where they were stuck in the past with what they were carrying, and often they would show scenes from, that were clearly not from their lives, and often were from ancestors they could identify, but they would see these traumas. And so I just got more and more curious about that phenomena. And so the legacy burden side of things has become a big focus of mine. And as we do the legacy work, often we'll invite whatever ancestors also carry this burden to come in. And much more than me, people will see various ancestors and sense their presence. And they can all unburden this stuff together. And so I will do some of what Tamala does, which is to try to foster an ongoing relationship with these ancestors, with the client. But it's still kind of foreign to me personally.

Speaker 1:
[07:46] And just in terms of setting the stage here, I really want everyone to come along with us. And by that, I mean, you're both referencing legacy burdens. And this is a technical term, if you will, within IFS, meaning people may think, I get it. I get it. It's this thing I inherited and it's weighing me down. But it has more specific meaning within the IFS model. So Dick, maybe you can explain that. What's a burden and then what's a legacy burden?

Speaker 3:
[08:17] Yeah. So I don't know if your audience knows, but the model is based on the idea that we all have these parts, which are all valuable and we're born with and have valuable roles to play. But they become burdened by traumas you experience, by bad parenting you experience, by peer shaming you get. And when you have those experiences, the emotions and beliefs that come from those experiences attach to these parts, almost like a virus, and then thereafter drive the way they operate. And so that's what we're calling a burden. Basically, extreme beliefs or emotions that came into your system from some kind of a trauma and attach to these parts. And a lot of the healing involves unburdening, helping parts let go of the extreme beliefs and emotions or energies that you've been carrying. And with legacy burdens, so the ones I just described generally came from your direct experience of mine. But we all carry burdens, extreme beliefs and emotions, that came down through the generations from some trauma that might have been centuries ago or at least decades, and that didn't have much to do with your life, but gets transmitted. And there are various ways they get transmitted, including epigenetics, which is the biological way it happens. But there are a number of other ways. And again, the legacy burden you got maybe from your mother then comes in to you and attaches to your parts and then drives the way you operate. And these legacy burdens can be extremely powerful drivers of your personality and your view of the world. And so it's often a big deal to find them and send them out.

Speaker 1:
[10:30] To make this real for people, I'm wondering if you could each give an example of the unburdening of a legacy burden from your own life. How you identified it, how you first saw, oh, I think, and said, oh, this is not just personal. This is a legacy burden. And then the unburdening process that you went through.

Speaker 3:
[10:53] Do you want to start, Tamala?

Speaker 2:
[10:55] I will certainly start. So one of the legacy burdens I became aware of had to do with anxiety, that I had this overwhelming sense of nervousness to the point of panic attack. And it didn't make sense to me why I was experiencing this extreme anxiety. I knew that my mom was an anxious person, my grandmother and also my great grandmother. And so I was just like, I don't, did I somehow inherit this? How did this become a part of my system? Now, at the time that I was experiencing the anxiety, I wasn't familiar with IFS. I didn't understand that this was something that had also been inherited. It wasn't until learning about IFS and understanding my system at a different level, and actually having a, what we call an IFS demo in my level one training, where I actually, the trainer took me through an IFS session, did I get in contact with the fact that I inherited this and this was legacy burden, and then eventually later doing the work to unburden the legacy piece. Now, there was a personal burden piece of my anxiety that definitely came from my lived experience, but the intensity of the anxiety didn't make sense. That was the part that I was dumbfounded, like why is it to this extreme of panic attack and I'm in the ER? And that is what helped me to appreciate once I learned more about IFS, that this was a legacy burden. And I did do work with a therapist to unburden that.

Speaker 1:
[12:45] And can you tell us more what happened? What happened in the therapy session? How did you unburden it? I think a lot of people feel a sense of chronic subliminal anxiety that's running their life that they think, I inherited this from somewhere. I can't, I mean, there's nothing in my personal history that makes sense of this, but I don't really know how to track where it came from. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2:
[13:07] Right.

Speaker 1:
[13:08] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[13:09] So the therapist understood once I talked about other women in my family also having this, explaining to me that this sounds like a legacy burden. And so she took me through the process of inviting in, it's interesting, we did invite in the ancestors in that work, everyone who holds this burden. So for me, I'm thinking mom, grandma, great grandma, because that's who I know. And she helped me to appreciate it may even go back further than that. So just invite all of your family members. And back then we were asked that I was asked to take that, find that legacy burden where I carried in my body. And it was always in my stomach. I just would have this pit, this heaviness in my stomach all the time when I was anxious. And so that pit, that heaviness, is what I was gonna unburden because that's the way it presented in my body. And so I was asked to release that from where I held it and to hand it back to the person I inherited from. And in this case, my mom. And then she would hand it back and hand it back and hand it back to have that released from the ancestral line. And then we decided, I decided how that would be released. And I don't remember now what I chose, but typically we're given one of the elements. And so I chose some element in order for that to be released. And it was released from my system at that time. And then I was left with the personal burden of anxiety, which we, it took more work than, actually for me, releasing the legacy burden was easier. And often that's true for folks because that burden didn't belong to us in the first place. It was inherited. Whereas your personal burden comes from your lived experience. And so there may be, it may take longer. And in my case it did to release the personal burden and more witnessing was necessary. What that means is that my parts needed to be seen by myself. What they experienced, what the anxiety was like for them, how they came to become anxious. So that witnessing needed to happen with my personal burdens before I could release them, before the parts could release them.

Speaker 1:
[15:28] And friends, just so you know, I've asked Tamala if later in this session, she will guide us into calling in our ancestors and offering us a chance to work with a burden we're carrying. So we'll have a chance, you're gonna have a chance to explore this for yourself. Dick, make it real, telling a story from your life.

Speaker 3:
[15:52] Okay, so I don't think I've ever disclosed this, but.

Speaker 1:
[15:56] I love it when people start sentences like that. Those are my favorite sentences.

Speaker 3:
[16:02] Yeah, I used to be a world-class powder. And the story in the family was, I'm the oldest of six boys. And when my brother came along, when I was two and a half, I wouldn't hug or kiss my mother again until I left for college, which, which is true. And I, and my family would say, boy, Dick can carry a grudge. He's really talented that way. And I kind of brought into that. And if I ever felt rejected by anybody, I would have a similar kind of big hit. And then at some point, I decided I needed to work on it. I was getting in the way of my marriage. And so I focused on that feeling, that sort of pain and resentment. And as I did in the IFS process, you focus on it, then you find the part that's carrying it, and you get curious about it. And so in that process of asking what it wanted me to know about where it got this in the past, and I expected to go some place in my life, I started seeing scenes from my, what ultimately became clear was my grandfather's adolescence. And his story was that he grew up in Hungary, and his family wanted, this was before World War II, he wanted to move to the US, and they saved up money, but they could only afford to take a couple of his siblings, and they were going to move to the US and get more money, and then send for he, when he was 15, and his brother, younger brother, when they got the money. So then they left these two kids in the custody of some neighbors who said they'd take care of them, and the neighbors promptly kicked them out. So my grandfather and his brother had to beg for a year in this village, and was, then they did send for them, after they saved the money. And I always knew my grandfather was kind of a sourpuss, but I didn't know much about that story. I just started to see pieces of it. And so then I asked the part, is this where you got this? And they said yes. And then as Tamala said, actually, legacy burdens in many cases are easier to unload because it didn't happen to me. So I asked the part, does it want to keep carrying this? And it said, no. Once you get the part to agree not to carry it, then they can unload it. And that's a whole another process. But the part was carrying it, and it's where I felt it a lot of the time, just sort of in the middle of my chest. And I sent it out. And now my wife is very grateful because I still can pout but not world class anymore. So.

Speaker 1:
[19:41] What would you say to people, and I'm going to put myself in this category, who have seen an image, like one slide from something that feels like a legacy burden, but I don't know the whole story. I'm not really sure what to make of it. I start doing some research. I don't know if it makes sense in my biographical lineage, but I saw an image or a picture.

Speaker 3:
[20:05] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[20:06] Do I need to do this forensic activity or just let it go?

Speaker 3:
[20:13] You don't need to do it, but it's certainly worth pursuing and checking out, and it's not hard. Most of us need somebody to ask the questions, and it's harder to do on your own. But I don't know if that's true for you, Tami, but if you were to just focus on that flash that you got, and then stay focused on it and get curious about it, generally, the story will flesh out. Tamala is going to lead this exercise a little later, and that's one way to start, is to start focusing on something that has come to you, but you don't know how significant it is, and it often turns out to be quite significant.

Speaker 1:
[21:03] Just to continue with the question, but if you don't know how to make sense of it from your own biography, but yet it feels like it's somehow imprinted in you.

Speaker 3:
[21:15] Yeah, well, that's the beauty of IFS, that you don't have to know. So we have T-shirts that say, Just Ask. So instead of trying to figure it out and stay in your head, we have you find where you sense it, and then get curious about that, and just wait for the answers to come. And when you can open that portal, you'll be amazed at the kind of information that comes, similar to what I was describing with my grandfather.

Speaker 1:
[21:45] Okay, I mentioned-

Speaker 2:
[21:46] Tami, with what you're sharing, I would also be curious about what you saw in that image, how is that impacting you? Like, is there any impact on you related to that image? Things that- beliefs you have, ways of being in the world. So that would be a curiosity too.

Speaker 1:
[22:10] I want to ask a little bit more about releasing our burdens, legacy burdens. And I know, Dick, I mentioned in the introduction that new book you and Thomas Hubel have written with this notion of individual, ancestral, and collective trauma, collective burdens. And I want to kind of get right in here. And this is difficult stuff to talk about, but I want to talk about it, which is, you know, Tamala mentioned that this is airing in Black History Month. And I think of the collective trauma and the collective burden of slavery and racism in North America and how an individual works that out in their own psyche. And then, Dick, I think I myself was raised in a Jewish family, and I know you also have some connection to a biographical Jewish family. And when you think of the persecution that Jews have suffered in different parts of the world, in history, how that burden then is transferred to you and your life. And each of our call to work on that, and I'd love to hear from each of you on that from your own experience. So that's the big hard question I want to put out here for us to just address directly.

Speaker 3:
[23:44] Let me see if we're in time a little. I'll hand it to you. So.

Speaker 2:
[23:47] Absolutely.

Speaker 3:
[23:48] Yeah. We categorize these legacy burdens into at least three categories, maybe four. So one is from your personal lineage, and that's what we've been talking about so far and most. That's when the ancestors get involved. But we all carry burdens from our ethnic groups, like you're talking about, Tami, and the kind of catastrophes they've suffered. And then there are also cultural legacy burdens that we just grow up in. In the United States, there are a bunch that are pretty pernicious, and racism is one of them. And so we can't help but absorb those cultural legacy burdens. And then a lot of the time, because they're so pernicious, we deny them and try to push them out. And quite a bit of exiling the parts that carry them, so. But anyway, there are those three categories. And when I'm working with Jews, I do a lot of Holocaust legacy unburdening. And those Holocaust legacy burdens are really, really potent.

Speaker 2:
[25:02] Yeah. And you spoke about the cultural burdens, and certainly in my work with black women, I'm doing legacy unburdenings and cultural unburdenings related to the history of enslavement, and the ways in which they were. Big ones are the separation from family, needing to work all the time, finding their value in work. So there have been times where we've done these unburdenings with a group of women collectively, which you were just mentioning, the collective unburdening. So if we're holding, well actually, we don't, I was going to say if we're holding the same type of burden, or like a burden that came from enslavement, and we know that this has been passed down, and it's cultural too, but we also do collective unburdenings when we bring folks together that don't hold the same burden, but can release it in a group, you know, have the self-energy of the group present in order to release burdens that are not the same. So I've done it both ways, where we're holding ones that are related to enslavement in particular, and then a group of folks that may not have the same cultural background, but still are holding cultural burdens, and then we can work to release those as a group too.

Speaker 1:
[26:24] And I wonder if you can say more, Tamala, I'll start with you about how the ancestors play a role in this, in your experience, direct experience.

Speaker 2:
[26:35] Absolutely, yes. So one of the things that I do differently than the way in which I release my burdens to an ancestor, you know, I said that how I passed it back down the line. What I do is I ask for folks to bring everyone on the line that holds this same burden, and ask those folks to bring themselves present in their highest self-energy. What's different is I ask for a well ancestor, and what a well ancestor is, is an ancestor that does not carry this burden, and it doesn't carry any burdens as it has transitioned to the other side, and this ancestor is capable and willing to help unburden this particular burden from the ancestral line. And every time we ask, because people will say, well, I don't know my ancestors, how do I know someone's going to step forward? There's been so much harm in my lineage. I don't even know if there is a well, this thing that you're calling a well ancestor in my line. There always is. When we ask, when we make the request, that well one shows. And the reason I ask for a well ancestor, because that ancestor knows exactly how to release this from the line for the greatest benefit. And when we do what we call an IFS, the invitation, which is when we ask for the gifts or heirlooms, or what I like to call the medicine from our ancestral lines, instead of me being the one saying, well, this is what I believe I need moving forward, which is fine. By having the ancestor, that well ancestor, that ancestor also knows the medicine and gifts of our line and what to bring forth that is going to be beneficial to us from the line itself. So in bringing that well ancestor forward means that we're also getting the intelligence from our ancestral lines also.

Speaker 1:
[28:38] You used this beautiful word, Tamala. You said the heirlooms. Tell me what that comes from.

Speaker 2:
[28:45] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[28:47] I'm not even sure, Dick.

Speaker 2:
[28:48] I don't know if that was part of IFS or IFS just says gifts. But I think of an heirloom as this precious gift. Or item that has been cultivated for many generations in our lineage. And that we can have access to that. Like great-great-grandma's cameo or earrings or crystal or china. We consider those heirlooms. These are heirlooms of our lineage, instead of these physical things in our lived lives that we may consider heirlooms. These are these gifts and qualities and ways of being that are heirlooms.

Speaker 1:
[29:34] Can you share with me some of the heirlooms you've received from your biographical lineage?

Speaker 2:
[29:41] Yeah. A big one, huge, is rest. Rest. You think about coming from a people who were enslaved, and the particular, my well ancestor is always someone who is an ancestor before enslavement. And one of the things is that we rested. You know, we danced, we played, we had lots of joy. And when our lineage went through that time period of enslavement, rest was no more. And so you have inherited this need to work, to prove your work through work and achievement. But rest is important. So that has been a really big, and that, I mean, it sounds so simple, but it really was something hard, really hard for me to do. It's like I needed to be doing something at all times, which also, that was another legacy burden. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[30:50] Dick, you mentioned that working with the trauma from the Holocaust is a challenge for a lot of Jewish people that you work with. Tell me a healing story.

Speaker 3:
[31:05] Okay. I think there is one in the Thomas Hougel book. There, I was working. There's a group that's trying to help people in Israel, a group of mostly Jewish therapists, both Palestinian and Israeli, and one woman was really having trouble opening her heart to Palestinians. And so in one of those sessions, I had her focus on that part, that was keeping her art close. And long story short, she saw things from the Holocaust and was able to unload that to her, to fire. And it was a huge transformation. And she just said, no, I can't other people anymore. And I see Palestinians as human beings. And yeah, so that, and I think there's an account of that in the other book. I don't know if I got to your question.

Speaker 1:
[32:15] I think you gave me a healing example. So, yes.

Speaker 3:
[32:21] And I did come up with heirlooms, but Tamala is pioneered in the using them and making sure that people follow up and connect with the ancestors that way.

Speaker 1:
[32:36] Do you have any heirlooms from your lineage, Dick, that you want to share?

Speaker 3:
[32:41] Yeah, I think there's a level of courage that came down through the generations in resilience in terms of what they all suffered, and particularly with the anti-Semitism on my father's side. And then on my mother's side. My grandmother came down as a 23-year-old woman from Canada, and by herself with a prefab house, and stayed the claim in Montana, and lived by herself, so it's like a frontiers woman. So there's a lot of courage on both sides that, I credit them with some of the courage I've had in my life.

Speaker 1:
[33:37] And Tamala, you were going to offer something.

Speaker 2:
[33:40] Yeah. So I was thinking about the, when we were talking about heirlooms. The heirloom from mom's side, and another one was that of working with our hands. And, you know, I was really not someone who worked with my hands, but they were, at least I didn't see it that way. But what the ancestors shared with me was the writing of books and my desire to be an author was my gift, was the heirloom of working with our hands. And then from my father's father's side, very recently, I've connected with his ancestor before, but the heirloom was a recent inheritance, where that, on my father's father's side, there were men, again, this is pre-slavery, who were medicine men. And so they were the healers within their tribes. And so these medicine men elevated me to a female, the woman medicine man is what they call me, the woman medicine man. And what that was about is being what they also called a living ancestor, being the one. And they said, there are many living ancestors. I'm not the only one, there are many living ancestors, but the role in this time of history of a living ancestor is to heal their lineage, access the heirlooms and the medicine and bring that medicine forth in order to create healing in the world, in however we show up in the world, whether it's in the different, you know, the work you do in your family, but to bring that medicine forth because it is so needed in the world with all of the things that we're experiencing right now.

Speaker 1:
[35:41] In your book, Tamala, Listening When Parts Speak, you offer 10, 12 different meditations that are written, that you can read and take yourself through. And many of these meditations, as I read, actually came from your ancestors communicating through you and you were writing it down. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that in the process. And then here's the big thing, take us in to a bided process so people can have a real experiential sense of what we've been talking about.

Speaker 2:
[36:20] I love both of those questions and the opportunity to lead the group through one of the meditations. So yes, I think there are 12, 13 meditations in the book. Eight or nine of them came directly from my ancestors. The very first one is in chapter 13, where we talk about legacy burdens and it's the cabin with the ancestor. I was asked to do that, to do a meditation for another group. And at that time, I was doing some connection with my ancestors. And while sleeping, they gave me this meditation. And the way they gave the meditation to me, Tami, is that they literally, they're all guided meditations. You find yourself in some place in nature, typically. But they took me through the meditation physically. So I was actually experiencing the meditation in my sleep. And then I would waved up and write the meditation down. This would happen with each meditation they gave me. And the thing that just was so surprising to me, but now I get it because our ancestors love us so much, is that every meditation they gave was connected to IFS, which is what my book was going to be about. When I received the first meditation, the ancestors said to me, now I thought I was just doing this meditation for this. I can't even remember what it was, but I thought that's what I was doing the meditation for, for this group. And it ended up being that the meditation was going, the ancestors said, this meditation is one of many that we will give to you for a book that you will publish. And I was just like, okay, if you say so. Not really sure, but I, I adhere to their guidance and listen. And so they continued, they gave me meditation having to do with exiles and meditation having to do with polarization, meditations having to do with legacy burden. So over and over and over again, I would get these meditations. My ancestors also, which I love, is that as I was writing down what I dreamt, they would stand behind me and say, not that word, or you didn't quite get that imagery right. So they were helping me to really make sure that I captured the meditation in the ways in which they gave them to me and they meant for them to be shared with others.

Speaker 1:
[38:53] Who was standing behind you, specifically?

Speaker 2:
[38:57] They called themselves my writing clan. And it was three black women with white head wraps on and white tunics. And one much, to me, representing the three times in a woman's life, the maiden, the crone, and during the time of childbearing, the middle time of our lives. And so they were in those ages. And they just helped me, that that's who would always show up, that's who showed up in the dream, that's who showed up to help with the corrections. So I have also, if you know fondly, I refer to them as my writing clar.

Speaker 1:
[39:42] All right, let's do it together. Let's do this, Tamala.

Speaker 2:
[39:46] All right. So the first thing that I'm gonna ask is that you get comfortable. And whatever that means for you, you can sit down, you can lie down, you can keep your eyes open, you can close your eyes. And I want you to bring your attention to your breath. And just notice how your breath travels through your body, nourishing every place that it touches. Envision yourself near a body of water at sunrise. It could be a beach, river, lake, even a stream, or any other body of water. Notice that the sun is just over the horizon, and you marvel at the colors dancing in the sky. You start walking the shore, and in the distance, you see a robed figure walking toward you. A calmness embraces you as you get closer and see a serene smile on the other's face. You recognize them as a wise and benevolent guide or ancestor. The guide says, I've come to help you release something that no longer serves you. They go on to say, I'd like you to consider a belief, behavior, feeling or thought that has outgrown its usefulness. This could be something inherited from your ancestral line, but this can just be something that you personally carry. Once you identify what no longer serves you, notice where you find it in or around your body. Place your attention on what you notice there. The guide tells you, absent this belief, behavior, feeling, or thought, you can be your true self. All you have to do is release it. The guide shows you different ways to release the burden. Then choose how you want to release it. The guide walks you to the water's edge and says, you can release it to this body of water. The guide then digs a hole in the earth and says, you can bury it in the earth's belly. A bonfire appears and the guide says, you can allow the fire to consume it. The guide then waves their arms and says, you can release it on the wind. Then they turn to you and ask, in which way would you like to release it and be free of what no longer serves you? If you are ready to release it, the guide helps you in the way of your choosing. If you are not able to release it, the guide asks, what are you afraid would happen if you released it? It's okay to spend some time getting to know about the fears. After the release, you and your guide walk and talk the shore together. In the silence, take time to be with your guide. Take another minute to finish up with your guide, knowing that you can come back and connect with them at any time. When it feels right, bring your awareness to your breath, and breathe your way back into this moment in space.

Speaker 1:
[48:05] Thank you, Tamala.

Speaker 2:
[48:07] You're so very welcome.

Speaker 1:
[48:10] Dick, do you have anything you want to add or any comments here?

Speaker 3:
[48:15] Yeah. There was a point where Tamala said, if you're not ready to give up the burden, the guide will ask you what you're afraid would happen. I mean, legacy burdens are easier to unload when the part's ready to unload them. But there are often a lot of fears the parts have about giving them up. I don't know about you, Tamala, but I'd say the most common is, I need to carry this for my people. They suffered and it would be disloyal to not carry this all the time. It took me a while to figure out how to address that, but speaking of ancestors, at some point, and this is people who aren't at all spiritual or ordinarily wouldn't think about doing this, but when they're in this inner world, I'll say, invite the ancestors to come and ask them if they want you to carry this for them. Invite your people to come and see if they really need you to do this. Almost invariably, if I had one or two episodes where they said, yeah, we need you to keep it, but almost otherwise, it's always, no, you don't have to carry this for us. And that frees up the part to let it go. And then there are a number of other common fears they have about letting them go. And so we've over time come up with ways to address each of those kinds of fears.

Speaker 1:
[49:50] Tell me more about that, Dick, because...

Speaker 2:
[49:52] Yeah, I also wanted to share the one that I run into the most is the identity one, where I'm afraid that I will lose my identity if I let go of this burden. Because what I've noticed, I primarily see folks of color. And what I notice is there's this, the burden also keeps them connected to their family, to their community, to their culture. So that ends up being the biggest fear of the parts. And so one of the things that I say is that you will actually be more of yourself, more connected, have your true identity releasing this burden. But the idea that the burden isn't them is like a surprise to the parts. So knowing that they will be more of themselves and really be connected with their true identity is something then that relaxes the part and allows them to release that burden.

Speaker 3:
[51:09] The other fears include, you know, I took this from my father because he was so depressed and I was wanting to help him. And it did seem to help him that I took this in. And I'm afraid if I don't carry it, that he's going to get depressed again. Or I took in this fear that I know came from long ago, but it's made me hyper-vigilant. I think it really has saved me at times. I really don't trust that it's safe to let it go. Things like that.

Speaker 1:
[51:42] Yeah. Now, Dick, I know that you've said before in sessions we've recorded together that you don't see things in a visual way, like in a guided visualization like this. And I'm imagining that there may be other people who are like, gosh, there, Tamala said, imagine this person wearing a robe, walking down the beach and big fat bagel, zero, nothing happened. How can you help that person who had that experience?

Speaker 3:
[52:14] Yeah. Well, I don't so often lead guided meditations like Tamala did, partly because I couldn't do it. And so instead, like if I was working with you, Tammy, I would say, go inside and just ask around if any parts carry any energy or beliefs or emotions that don't belong to them, that came from somebody else. And people can do that. They'll find right away. Even people who don't know much about their parts, that question seems to elicit the legacy burdens. And then we're kind of off and running.

Speaker 1:
[52:58] Tamala, do you have anything to add to that from the way that you take people into this meditative space?

Speaker 3:
[53:06] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[53:07] So I would definitely, if I had a client that could not go in and see the images, I wouldn't use this way, obviously, to take them into the space. It's interesting, though, that the ancestors wanted to create this space of this visualization, because every single meditation takes us into this visualization space. But when I'm working with the clients, I just want them to go inside and notice what's there. I don't guide them using the meditations from the book. That's something that they can do in addition. I really want them to go inside and connect with, find the parts that they're noticing within their system.

Speaker 1:
[54:01] Healing Across Generations. I wonder what your sense is of the gifts that we give to our quote unquote descendants by doing this work, even if we don't have children ourselves. What are the gifts that we're offering forward?

Speaker 3:
[54:26] You know, for me, the biggest gift is to not pass on these legacy burden.

Speaker 2:
[54:32] That's right.

Speaker 3:
[54:33] So, you know, the kind of buck stops with this generation is what I've really worked hard to do. And that's a huge gift for my kids.

Speaker 2:
[54:47] And I do this very intentional way with clients. When we're doing the legacy burden work, if the client wants to, we welcome in the highest self of the descendents, descendants that are already born and descendants that are to come later. So to do exactly what Dick is saying, to not pass these burdens. So not only are we releasing it from the past, ourselves, we also want to not pass it on to our descendants.

Speaker 1:
[55:22] You know, here as we come to an end, I'm going to share a comment, which is the kind of comment I would make after the show, but I'm going to make it during the show. It's kind of like, Dick, when you said, I'm going to tell you something that I don't. I don't think I've told anyone else, people pick up their ears and for good reason, which is I notice sometimes in doing special sessions like this on IFS, I'm imagining that person who's done a lot of IFS work and thinks, wow, this was really kind of beginner-like, not as brilliant as I was hoping. Then I'm imagining the person who's new to IFS and is like, what's going on? I think I understand these different parts and I think I understand this unburdening process, but I'm not even sure I get it. It's just so interesting to be in that middle space because there's so many people now that are interested in IFS who are beginners and who are quite advanced. I wonder what you each might have to say about that and a dialogue like this.

Speaker 3:
[56:28] What I would say is that is a big challenge for me these days because I get both in a lot of these kinds of seminars and it's generally not enough time to fully explain the model or not enough time to please the more advanced people. It's a challenge and that's why I'm glad that Tamala wrote the book because people can take pieces of what we said and then go and research it and use the exercises.

Speaker 2:
[56:58] I would also agree. It is very challenging and I find myself trying to find the middle road. But then I feel like I didn't explain enough or I went too far this way for this group, but it really is challenging. But I try when I know that I'm going to have groups where the novice and the experience to find some things in the middle, and then do some things that hopefully that are really at the novice level and some things that really answer those questions that someone who has more experience may have.

Speaker 1:
[57:34] Listening When Parts Speak, this is the book by Tamala Floyd that I'm so pleased to introduce you to. It's a great book if you're new to IFS because everything is explained in detail for a newcomer and a great book for anybody who's interested in this combination of ancestral healing and IFS work. And Dick, when you said to me as part of our spirituality of IFS program that you were doing sessions with people and in your clinical work and ancestors just started appearing in the sessions and you said, what part are you? And they said, no, I'm not a part. I'm an ancestor and you took them seriously. I thought to myself, that's one of the things I love about you is that you let the clinical experience speak for itself and have its truth without discounting it, but saying, no, this is what's happening. People's ancestors are showing up to be part of these healing sessions, and we have to include them and make them part of the process. So I really just want to acknowledge you for that and appreciate that you're including that in the spirituality of IFS.

Speaker 3:
[58:57] Thank you, Tami. And that came along somewhere down the road. By that time, I had worked with any parts of me that wanted to presume what was happening and interpret it. So that just in developing IFS, I really learned to just stay in this very curious self-led place and learn from the clients. And to follow the data, even if it takes me way outside my paradigm, just keep following it. And you don't have to necessarily believe in the existence of ancestors to use it pragmatically, because that's what I was finding, that whether or not I believed in it, they would show up. And when they showed up, everything would go better, it would increase the kids for the healing. So why not?

Speaker 1:
[59:52] And here, just to end, I wonder if you could each share a suggestion for somebody before they go to sleep tonight, if they want better, stronger contact with an ancestral intelligence, what might they say? What you said, Dick, just ask. What might be the asking?

Speaker 3:
[60:16] Well, a lot depends on the place from which you ask. So if you have a part that's desperate to have that connection, it's not likely to happen because they don't respond when you do it from certain parts or from parts in general, burden parts for sure. So if you can get that part and other parts to open a lot of space, so you're in this non-attached, no agenda place of curiosity, of pure curiosity. Then you ask from that place, generally something will happen and it may not be exactly what you expect. When I'm working with somebody, I try to prepare them. It may come as something way outside your experience, but don't disregard it because it's not what you expect. Then just stay curious. When I'm working with clients, again, even people that are atheists, at some point in that process, because they're in this inner world anyway, I'll have them ask, and more often than not, somebody shows up.

Speaker 1:
[61:30] Tamala?

Speaker 2:
[61:31] Yeah. I think what I would say is, if you did the meditation, whoever showed up, revisit that person, that entity. If an ancestor or a guy did not show up, or your parts didn't allow that to happen, then be curious about that. Because like Dick was saying, one of the things for us to connect with the ancestor, and I was like, very true, is the more self-energy we have, the more likely they're going to show themselves. If there are parts that were fearful or didn't allow connection, then spend time with those parts so that eventually the door will open, the curiosity will be there, and you can connect with their ancestors moving forward.

Speaker 1:
[62:21] Tamala Floyd, Dick Schwartz, Healing Across Generations. Thank you both so much. Thanks for this special dialogue.

Speaker 2:
[62:29] Thank you.

Speaker 3:
[62:30] Thank you both.

Speaker 2:
[62:31] Thank you both.

Speaker 1:
[62:33] Bye friends. Thank you for listening. I'd also like to invite you to join us on Sounds True One, where you can enjoy early ad-free access to episodes of Insights at the Edge. Sounds True One is our premium membership platform. It's built around live classes and online events, award-winning specials, intimate learning experiences, and Q&A sessions with the world's leading wisdom teachers. You can get your first month free at join.soundstrue.com. The Sounds True Podcast Network.