Growing up Buddhist and as a bodyworker and pilates instructor, J. Granelli learned the practice of bending so that he did not break. When he had a stroke, that lesson was put to the test. Jenn talks with J. about the importance of acceptance, being in the moment, and their gratitude for breaking intergenerational cycles of trauma.
Guest Bio: Read more about J. here
Guest Location: New York City, US
Resources from J. to Listeners:
Growing up Buddhist and as a bodyworker and pilates instructor, J. Granelli learned the practice of bending so that he did not break. When he had a stroke, that lesson was put to the test. Jenn talks with J. about the importance of acceptance, being in the moment, and their gratitude for breaking intergenerational cycles of trauma.
Guest Bio: Read more about J. here
Guest Location: New York City, US
Resources from J. to Listeners:
Hi everyone, it's Jen Nguyen here. Welcome to this episode of the High Note Healing Inspirations from Life, where today we talk to Jay Grinnelli about healing stroke and quote bending like a reed unquote. Jay is such a multifaceted, multi-talented human being. He is a body worker, my Pilates instructor In fact, that's how I met him in Pilates class. He's also a musician and a creative through and through. You can read Jay's full bio in the show notes. I'll just say this conversation with Jay is everything. The conversation builds over time. You'll hear about breaking intergenerational cycles within families, surviving stroke and the power of staying present to it all, pain included. Jay is funny and playful throughout all of it. This conversation is fun, dynamic and beautiful. Let's get started. Hi everyone, I'm so excited for today's guest. I'll let you introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Hi, my name is Jay Grinnelli. I guess I would consider myself sort of generally an artist in the sense that I try to live my life artfully. Maybe that's a working way to think about it.
Speaker 1:Yes, you create. Yes, absolutely yeah, jay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I find myself seeking joy these days. One of the places is in Pilates sessions with you. Yes, sure you are an amazing Pilates instructor. Thank you. No, I'm thanking you.
Speaker 2:Okay, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:But I'm not curious about my sources of joy. I'm actually curious about your sources of joy. What's a joyful memory for you? It could be a recent one or one from the past, but it absolutely brings you joy. Whoa.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting Because I think my inclination would be to somehow plumb the depths of my memory. Oh, I got one. This is good. This is total memory depth plumbing. Plumbing worked, plumbing worked.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I was in fourth grade, we were living in Colorado and my elementary school went on a field trip for like a week Never going to happen today, that's amazing. In five whole days, seven days, whoa yeah, in yellow school buses and we drove from Boulder Colorado we were living way to Southern Colorado to go to Mesa Verde and the Great Sand Dunes and all this stuff Absolutely bonkers and very cool. Yeah, it was great. But on that first day you're really away from home.
Speaker 2:I had never gone to summer camp or anything, so it was our parents that sent bag lunches that first day. So we're at a rest stop somewhere by the side of the road and I feel a little bummed and I reach in my bag lunch and there's a sandwich and at the very bottom is a piece of bubble gum that my mother had put in the bag. Oh score, unbelievable, it was just like the best feeling ever. And it wasn't so much I mean because, like my mother would never have given me bubble gum, so it was. I think the thing that just makes me so sort of warm hearted about it even now was the thought that she was thinking about me to that degree, like that she would think enough to think about what I would be experiencing later that day and that I needed some special little something. And this she was like an absolute, like ninja master at that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I really took that Like that's something that I've tried to emulate in my own life, that I tell you stories for days.
Speaker 1:It's got love in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, deep love, deep love, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's also got like a little playfulness.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Like a little, I don't know, delightful surprise. Yeah, I would like to tackle you with how silly and fun this is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and kind of willing to break the rules. Yeah, I mean she wasn't hardcore about like our diet or anything, but like that kind of candy she would just never. It would just never be at the half like we would just never have it. Yeah, I would get it when I went out with my friends or something, but it wasn't part of our house. There weren't bowls of bubble gum or whatever.
Speaker 2:And I think it was this kind of. I didn't understand it till later in my life when I would think about it, but it was really like not just that she was my parent and she was thinking deeply about me and something that I would like, but that it was like being very seen as a kid. I know that. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yes, she saw you and also future versions of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how deeply she saw you, yeah, and that it was that she and my father too. They, from my earliest days they were my earliest memory treated us as people not to say that they weren't our parents, because they were very much our parents, but they would talk to you as a whole person, yeah, from a very young age, like they would just get down on the floor and just talk like, have conversations with you about whatever you was on your kid brain, and it wasn't like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just like, oh, okay, there's dinosaurs in this, on this paper, and we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1:you know what I mean. Like they, a fellow human, a fellow journeyman, a journey person in life. Yeah, yeah, wow. How did that make you feel as a kid.
Speaker 2:I think I just felt like a person. I never felt disrespected and I never felt not taken seriously Mm-hmm, I never. Yeah, I can hear that, yeah. Yeah, I never felt like something I was doing was silly or a phase or whatever. You know, if I was like I'm really into whatever they're like, all right, let's do that, wow. And you know it was just like okay, this is what we're into, so now we're into it and they would go with me. However, I wanted to go into it, you know.
Speaker 1:And that was worth exploring because it came up in you and therefore it was worthy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and interesting and something that they would learn. You know they would want to learn more about.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's really cool that it wasn't just an act of parenting or almost like a sacrificial act for you it was. All of us will benefit from this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hear the equality, I hear the respect and mutuality in that, yeah, and I think that in my own parenting that's something that was clearly made like a huge impression on me, so that was something that I tried to bring forward for my kids. I wanted to have that quality with them where it was like, yeah, okay, well, just, we're going to you get down on geographically the same level as them and just trying to be with them.
Speaker 1:So you would get down on the floor with your kids when they were younger, all the time, look at them eye to eye, meet them person to person. Yes, wow, yeah. What a beautiful thing to carry forward from one generation to the next.
Speaker 2:What a gift.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think both of my parents for that. Just like you know, I think I had the opportunity before my father died to thank him for never hitting me. He was hit by his father. He was father's father, was hit by his father for, you know, being involved in substance abuse recovery that he was in. His father was a drunk, his father's father was a drunk. You know, there was a lot of things that my parents stopped. What a powerful choice. Yeah, they stopped like they were like no, this ends here, this ends here, this ends with me. And I don't know that it was. It wasn't necessarily presented verbatim like this is what we're doing, but it but. But you know, as an adult I could see like, oh, okay, that's what, that's what was going on, like they stopped stuff.
Speaker 1:They stopped cycles of abuse, yep, and what I'm hearing is started cycles of self worth and worthiness. Yes, I hope. I mean, as a survivor of domestic violence from my childhood home, I hope to be that cycle breaker in the generations that have come. You know before and after. I do think it benefits both directions. The lineage absolutely will appreciate it in either way. Yeah, I am really struck by your foresight to thank your father for making that choice before he passed. What did you say to him? Do you remember the words?
Speaker 1:I said thank you, Thank you for just thank you, just thanks, you got me right.
Speaker 2:Thanks for the pasta and oh and this other stuff. No, I, no, I, I I thanked him, I said thank you very much. No, thank you very much. It's so formal, but I just I said I just we had a moment it was before he was really sick and I I was spending some time with him and I just we were talking about his father and who I knew, you know, into my teens, before his, my grandfather, his father died, and we were talking about that and the, you know, the family and all that stuff. And yeah, I just I said thank you so much for not, you know, bringing that forward, because a lot of people do, yeah.
Speaker 1:A lot of people hurt people, hurt people yeah.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean that kind of pain. There is like no length that a human being will not go to to get out of pain, and that includes dehumanizing effect of inflicting pain on somebody else.
Speaker 1:Okay, Now I'm curious what was your numbing mechanism?
Speaker 2:If I were to like, really, really distill down. You know myself, the thing that motivates me, that animates me probably as much as anything else, is this sort of desire to learn, like I feel like I'm constantly wanting to learn new things. Of course, the love of my wife and my children and my family, that's all in there. But but you know, like the animate, like the thing that ooh, gets the little chipmunk in my brain going, is learning things. And just like any tool, you know you can build a house with a hammer or hit somebody on the head with a hammer, right, the tool, any tool has, has multiple uses. So that learning tool, the other side of that is disengagement. How so? Because you can be so wound up in the learning that it gives you a way to not have to sit in uncomfortable feelings.
Speaker 1:Because you're moving forward to a new thing every time you learn, yeah. And you can, if you so choose, not look back.
Speaker 2:It's a distant. It can easily be a distant distancing mechanism. I had a chart reader person whom my mom loved to use as she passed away. I can't remember her name but a birth chart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, birth chart, astrologer person, among other things had said to me once that and I'm going to preface this by saying I was raised as a Buddhist, so the reincarnation thing is how I think it works but she said to me that previous times around I had spent a lot of time in a tower, kind of studying books and being removed from people, and that my job this time was to be with people.
Speaker 1:To bring the learning into communion with others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to just be messy with people. So I think that's the thing right. Like you can use the quest for knowledge if that's a particular vice, you can use that as a way to stay away from people. Like you can learn a ton and not be really good at interacting with people.
Speaker 1:Yes, like if an academic chooses to be locked up in his or her ivory tower. Totally yeah, got it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's like that.
Speaker 1:Or you could use it to learn with people. You learn from them, they learn from you. Oh wow, I have experienced that with you, jay. I'm embarrassed to say that, despite having pages of notes from things I've learned from you, we've only had six Pilates together. But I will say one of the first times somewhere in that massive amount of Pilates sessions I've learned in eight years, one of the first times I realized I was learning something so crucial that I needed to write it down in the middle of the session. Yeah, you said to me, jen, rigidity in the body is a stress response. Yes, the goal is not rigidity, the goal is suppleness. When did you first learn that? Because for me that was like mind blown. Can you repeat that so I know what it meant for me and when I learned it with?
Speaker 2:you yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but when did you learn it for yourself?
Speaker 2:I think probably it's one of those things that I don't know when I learned it. I do know when, going through a particular hard time, I understood for the first time that being able to bear something was a function of being able to bend.
Speaker 1:Can you say that again, being?
Speaker 2:able to bear something was a function of being able to bend.
Speaker 1:Wow, why is that? Say more, why is that good?
Speaker 2:If we talk a little bit more, if we relate it back to the rigidity thing. If something is very difficult emotionally or physically or whatever, my ability to bend with it, my ability to be bent by it. To let myself be bent means that I can withstand it, sort of like a wind blowing. My wife and I used to say bend like a reed. The wind blows through a field of grass and everything bends over and then it comes back so that you can let things come over you and I think, part of Without snapping or breaking Without snapping without breaking.
Speaker 1:You can bend and then rebound.
Speaker 2:Yes, Change is the goal, Wow. So if I break sort of following the metaphor, rebounding is very difficult.
Speaker 1:It's not possible or not possible. Right, I'm in shambles on the floor, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So the goal is to be dynamic. The goal is to be bendable, because whatever the thing is, however horrible it is, will change. It might not change for the better even, but the circumstance will change. We change moment to moment, so it's sort of letting being able to bend with the situation until the thing can sort of change in some way. I think the other part of it is that if I'm bendable, it means I'm willing to let go of my preconceived ideas about things.
Speaker 1:And integrate the learning into the next version of myself.
Speaker 2:Whatever it's going to be, yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow. So what's the memory that comes to mind when you realize the importance of bending or suppleness?
Speaker 2:I think there are a lot of places in my life that that occurred for me. I think you know like a root one certainly would be when my parents broke up. It was a big, huge, horrible fight. It was a scene that I was like literally in the middle of. One of them had me the other one was trying to pull me out of that person's arms. I was probably like five, wow, and at that age it just seems like your world is completely torn asunder. I mean, it's destroyed, you know.
Speaker 2:But both of them, after the initial fireworks and it was clear that the relationship was over, both of them endeavored so deeply to make us understand, a that it wasn't our fault. B that they were going to be there for us. And I think, on a fundamental level, that at that moment, sort of, or when that happened, it dawned on my little brain that like, oh, actually this horrible thing just happened, but my world didn't end and in the moment it felt like it was ending, it felt like it was over, and so that was. I think that would have been to me, if I think back on, the root of that idea, that would be. I hadn't really ever thought about it like that up until now. But I think that is sort of the root of it, of this like, oh, here's some horrible, horrible thing and I survived.
Speaker 2:And the people that I love, that I were so dependent on, recreated our life. You know, to the degree that they remained very close friends. There was never any like I mean, I'm so fortunate in this, but they were. You know, there was never an acrimony about who's got who and who's going to live where, and you know they each served like a very different purpose in my life because I had different relationships with them. And even later on, I remember we were all in San Francisco or something and we went to a movie, my brother and I and my mother and my father. I'm just like this is weird. It's like you guys don't know. This is strange, like I don't know what to do with myself.
Speaker 1:I know your grownups. This is too mature. Come on really.
Speaker 2:So I think that was the if I think back on it. Thank you for giving me that opportunity to think back on it. I feel like that was probably maybe the root of it, but I think it has grown. I mean, I think it's some fundamental belief.
Speaker 1:Can you give me an example of it showing up recently?
Speaker 2:You know, I think a bunch of years ago probably eight or nine years ago now, I guess I had a stroke and it was a kind that was I was fortunate in and where it happened. It happened right in front of the hospital and literally in front of the hospital and it wasn't a thing. Yeah, and it wasn't. And it happened to be a hospital that had just invested in a neurosurgery unit and gotten this amazing doctor who happened to be like a specialist in the thing that happened to me. No, I know it's ridiculous. It's not even like if you pitch that as a movie they would be just like oh, come on.
Speaker 1:That doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:That's just dumb, but that's what happened, what it did. But it did happen, yeah, and you know that was a big, huge thing and you know I was in the hospital for a while and had multiple crazy procedures to rectify it and you know it was probably like a three year ish or deal of recovering and then trying to fix the sort of mechanical problems that were, that were in there. But but it was. You know, this kind of thought process really was super useful in that, in that process.
Speaker 1:Can you remember a moment when you chose bending over breaking in that process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean geez, it was just full of them, you know, because it was very painful, you know there were. I had headaches daily, probably for almost three years, of varying, varying degrees. I mean to the extent that like I knew them, you know they were my, they were my friend, a little bit like I could play with them.
Speaker 1:You had different personalities for each of these headaches.
Speaker 2:I knew what I would do and I knew I knew if I did certain things I would get a headache and I could. I sort of knew what the headaches were going to feel like.
Speaker 1:Yeah Cause a stroke is a big deal, Jay. Yeah, this is huge. So take us into that world. What? What were you dealing?
Speaker 2:with Post-stroke. I was very fortunate because the the way it was like a hemorrhagic thing. I I was like a subdural hematoma. So the blood that was bleeding onto my brain wasn't for my brain, it was from a bunch of arteries in my scalp that had gone through, so it was like a congenital thing probably had gone through my skull and we're trying to dump blood into a vein directly in my head, and so eventually that vein burst and I had all this bleeding on my brain, which is not what your brain likes or wants or enjoys, and so it hurts like crazy and your brain swells and my eyes got weird and my hearing got weird and and I collapsed essentially, and so the so I was extremely fortunate in that, like I didn't I didn't, you know all my parts work, I didn't you know parts of my brain were damaged from lack of oxygen or red blood, and so I came out of it like pretty intact. I mean, I was in ICU for like seven days and I walked out of the hospital.
Speaker 1:Oh my.
Speaker 2:And I, yeah, and I felt very altered in my body, like I couldn't. I felt taller and stranger and I couldn't figure out, like where everything was in peripheral, in my peripheral vision, because my eyes were still kind of messed up and I felt like I had been on a plane that had crashed into the ground and I had walked out of it. I don't understand why it was, but it was that kind of like I said, survived a piano dropping on me from a building. It's like it just made zero sense to me.
Speaker 1:I mean a real near death experience.
Speaker 2:As far as I was concerned, and and certainly in that experience, I was the first time I had experienced actual fear on the degree that I had felt. I had never felt. I mean, I had been, of course, afraid in my life many times, but I had never felt fear on the level of I have lost control completely. When the cotton and I stretch that construct as far as I could like, I'm having headache and it's going to be okay. And I was on my way to rehearsal and it's going to be okay, and I'm just going to rehearsal and then I'm a little dehydrated. You know, I had stretched this thing beyond the. You know, even after everything was going nuts. But that was the con, the context that I had created for myself, and when that broke, that was the first I had never felt that we're like, oh, you know, I'm going to die, and it hurts so much, and the pain and the disorientation of it and I mean it was just all. Everything was on 11, all the way.
Speaker 2:And then I was in. They took me to the emergency room. My wife, lana, you know, was there with me in the car and she ran across the street to the hospital and said like hey, this is happening to my husband and she got somebody to come over and look at me Wow, yeah. And they stopped traffic and she got in the car and drove me to the ambulance center. I mean, if it hadn't been her with me, I don't know what. What happened? Lana saved your life. Yeah, totally Wow and so. But there was a moment in the hospital where the they're bringing me out of a CAT scan, and this woman got close enough to me that I could see her, because I couldn't really see, and she said you're going to be okay. Wow. And then the world went snap. Okay, I'm back. I still in pain, still all this crazy stuff, still worried. I don't know what's going on with my body, but the context had come back.
Speaker 1:Wow, like the five-year-old self who thought the world was ended and yet somehow it got recreated and you were able to move forward and move through the world again. Yeah, this was happening again after the stroke.
Speaker 2:After the stroke yeah, like it just. It was like okay, now there's okay. So then there's all the physical problems with it and whatever, and it was a long road. But in that moment, when she said that there was a context again, I could, my brain, could, my mind, could go, could create a reality again which had been taken out of it.
Speaker 2:And in the process of all of the things that I went through to recover, there were many times where things were very uncomfortable, I mean physically very uncomfortable. There was a whole I had to have this whole radiation treatment, yada, yada, yada. But the setting that up required, you know, all these fixtures on my head and CAT scans and MRIs and all this stuff. It was extremely uncomfortable, not to mention the fact that there are these doctors hovering around you and you're just a piece of meat, right, they're just poking you in da, da da, and I would walk out of those sessions and you know Lana would be there and I would just, you know, crumple, because I had been expending so much energy to just like keep myself together in the face of this thing.
Speaker 1:The courage took a lot out of you. It was exhausting.
Speaker 2:It was and I just was trying to survive it, you know and so. But that to me is like one of those places where it's just like okay, this is going to happen to me. I understand this is going to happen to me. And I understand that it's happening to me and that I'm doing my best to breathe, to feel centered, to let it happen to me, and when I get out of it, maybe it means I fall on the ground for a minute, but that, to me, is bendy, like that's dynamic.
Speaker 1:Wow, I am so moved by your courage and I'm also moved by your presence that you chose to stay present to all of this pain. And I'll say I'm also moved by Lana's presence, oh my God, because her presence when the stroke happened saved your life.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I also think I'm hearing is that her presence when she received you each time you felt you were going to crumble after a major treatment also saved your life. It's what enabled you to, after the bending, rebound. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, and I think, yes, I mean, and I think in a lot of levels, like it was harder on her to be a witness. Yeah, because, I was just, yeah, I'm just going through this process. It's happening to me. I have choice. I don't have any choice. It like some part of me in physically was broken and I needed to be fixed, so I had to go through this thing, survival required it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like Maslow's Hari Arachium needs. We got some base needs to take care of.
Speaker 2:It was what I needed to do to survive and she my partner, you know had to hold that space for me and, on top of all of what she was going through, the worry and you know I mean it's terrifying to see someone you love have to go through something like that and to not know what's next.
Speaker 2:We didn't know. And so she actually, and she had, you know, I was out of it Like so she had to manage the kids and the family who had all come to help Air quotes. You know, there was, I think, she, you know, I think it was much harder on her. I just had to subject myself to whatever they're going to do to me.
Speaker 1:But we're not going to take that lightly.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no. But but it was very is very simple. You know, I had to put myself in that position and I think, and then she was able to hold that space and create a pathway for me to have this amazing, you know, bottomless beanbag of love that I could just it was always there. It was just always there.
Speaker 1:And I hear not just love, but also presence and courage and suppleness.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:I imagine she was bending like a reed over and over again to be there for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Wow, is there in I mean a three year recovery process? Is there anything else that was a key moment in your healing journey?
Speaker 2:There was a moment where they had tried a bunch of stuff and it wasn't. It had, you know, like the radiation treatment had to wait 18 months to see if it had scarred everything over and closed everything down, and it didn't. And we pushed it another six months just to see and at some point it became clear that they were going to mechanically fix it, which meant, you know, cutting my head open, surgery yeah, very serious surgery.
Speaker 1:Is this? May I ask is this the big scar?
Speaker 2:That's the zipper you call it the zipper, that's the zipper. My friend, close friend of mine, had heart surgery and he called it the zipper his scar, and I was like, yeah, it's zipper. So yeah, that's what that's from.
Speaker 1:So and may I ask where does it run on your?
Speaker 2:from. You know, maybe just behind on the right side, just behind the crown of my head, all the way down to, you know, my neck, essentially. And so you know, they took some skull out and they got under. They had to lift my brain up to clip this thing off, which they did, and they put it all back together. And but in the process of getting ready for that because we knew that it was going to, you know, it wasn't like get in the operating room right now, Like we had five or six weeks, Got it.
Speaker 2:And in the process of that I was thinking to myself well, I had been through like three very long sort of surgical procedures at that point, plus tons and tons of these weird sort of x-ray processes where you're kind of awake and kind of asleep and they run this big x-ray machine around your head. It was like a cerebral angiogram so they could monitor what was going on. So I had been in and out of the hospital a bunch, I had been under anesthesia a bunch, and there was so much of it that I knew I knew the freaking taste in the back of my throat when they pushed saline into my IV. Wow, you know what I mean. Like there's a, there's a smell, the chemical is there.
Speaker 2:I knew it. I knew it. I knew what it felt like to wake up from anesthesia, like being out for seven hours or eight hours. I knew what that felt like. I knew what my body dealt with. I knew all those freaking needles that they stuck into you. I knew what it felt like to have a pick line inserted into my arm, into my heart. I knew all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:And you're bracing yourself.
Speaker 2:You're bracing yourself and that's what I was doing. I realized that what I was doing was I was armoring myself up and I was doing it very consciously, like, okay, I'm those guys, they're not going to screw them, they're not going to get me this time, they're not going to hurt me. How does it hurt? Yeah?
Speaker 1:It sounds painful.
Speaker 2:And every aspect of it hurt. So I was thinking about that a lot and then the little light bulb went off and I realized that that was like diametrically the wrong approach. That's the rigidity, yes, the stress response. That's rigidity. Right, that is, I'm going to make myself hard and it's going to bounce off me, right, because I'm literally armoring, like metaphorically, literally armoring myself. I'm going to be breaking myself against it, and I'm mistaking that.
Speaker 1:For strength, yes, but really.
Speaker 2:It's extremely weak, not in a pejorative sense, but just structurally. It's weak Because, because, a you know, it's like building yourself a house of twigs to withstand a tsunami. That's not going to work. This will probably work Like hiding behind, like a little teeny bridge, like definitely not going to my armor is not serving me.
Speaker 1:What yeah?
Speaker 2:Because the the hugeness of what was rolling downhill at me and it was date certain, like on a Wednesday or whatever it was I was going to show up at seven in the morning and this thing was going to happen and the hugeness of that thing. There was no way that I could armor myself up enough, other than even if I clenched every muscle in my body and tried to, you know, grip my teeth through the whole thing. I would still be crushed. We're not in control. No, especially there. And so so what I did was I whatever? I realized that I was doing the wrong thing, and so I changed it, I turned it around completely, and and it all became about working really, really hard to learn to accept what was going to happen.
Speaker 1:How.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds hard. Yeah, I just I decided that what I wanted to do and that the way forward through this thing was to start to give myself tools to accept what was going to happen. And that meant thinking very consciously about they're going to do all the stuff to me. And I even had a little thing that I said. I don't even remember what it was exactly, but it was something to the effect of like, when I would think about it and I could feel anxiety rising, I would say something to the effect of I'm in, I'm participating in this treatment and I accept whatever comes with it, because it is a tool that I'm using to help myself heal, to help myself be better, and I so. I accept the pain, I accept the discomfort, I accept the assault of it, because surgery is an assault, it's violent and even though we're not conscious for it or not asleep, there's a difference. Even though we're not conscious for it, our bodies remember the trauma of the attack.
Speaker 1:It's so invasive, it's so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're not designed to be cut open. There's no part of your body that is okay with being cut open because you think you're going to die, like on a very fundamental level.
Speaker 1:And the body keeps the score Absolutely, so the trauma resides there. Yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's what it was about saying like, okay, this is going to happen. And my little mantra I don't remember again exactly what it was, but it was something like I accept this treatment because I know that it's going to help me and that I need to recover and that this is a path to recovery, even though it was going to be difficult, something like that. That's sort of wordy for what it was. Wow. But so there was that aspect of it. There was being able to really try to find a way to be accepting and compassionate towards myself, so understanding that I would have that if I had a hard time with whatever it was, just I was having a hard time and that that was okay to have a hard time and to be hurt that day and to be sad that day and to be whatever I was feeling that day, but that I could have like that fundamentally, that I could be that empathic to myself.
Speaker 2:And accept it. Yeah, and accept it Accept it. It was an exercise in radical acceptance, of really just being like okay, I'm going to be uncomfortable, this is going to hurt and I'm going to just be present with being hurt and sit in. If it meant sitting in the hurt, then I was going to sit in the hurt, wow.
Speaker 1:The presence, the acceptance, the self-compassion, the literal tools, with the mantra, the reframe. I'm going to reframe this away from something that is breaking me down to something that is a tool for my healing. Where did that lead? This story has a good ending. I'm sitting here. What you're doing these days. What happens next? How do I get to still talk to you, jay?
Speaker 2:I think what it how it manifested for me, I felt like was that I was able to just be present through my recovery, and so it became less about trying to achieve normalcy again and became to accept the fact that I wasn't ever going to be the same, that that part of me, that myself previous to that day August 2nd, whatever it was, august 1st was gone. But I could let go, try to let go of that and try to accept what the new version of me was going to be. That it isn't about trying to achieve. I just I hear it with people who are injured all the time Like I just want to get back to how I was. I want to get back to normal. There's no normal.
Speaker 2:Normal is whatever you are in the moment, and so that was a big part of it. Like being able to let go of that, being able to just move forward and being able to just be present in things that were difficult when they were difficult. You know, to just understand. If I understand fundamentally that change is unstoppable, then I understand that at some point, on a moment to moment basis, maybe my suffering will change a little bit. I'm not talking about like from today to tomorrow. I'm talking about like from now to now.
Speaker 1:It might feel slightly different this second than the next second, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:And that's okay, and that includes it might hurt. It can be a good thing, yeah, and that includes that it might hurt more in the next second. But if it can change in that direction, it can change in the other direction. You know, I feel like not only can two things be true at the same time, but a multitude of things can be true at the same time. And so if I can be in pain, but I can be grateful, right, I can.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's some hard stuff to say.
Speaker 2:I understand. You know what I mean. I can be suffering through something, but I can be loved, I can love, I can see a path forward. Maybe that that's way off in the distance.
Speaker 1:I hear yes and both, and yes. One way to think of that is wow, holding all that complexity sounds really heavy and hard. No thanks, yeah, sure, don't really want to do that. I'll pick another route. Fodka, I would say Moscow, but yeah, sure, good enough. Or, holding all of that complexity keeps me present. Yes, enough to make a new way forward. What is holding all that complexity enable?
Speaker 2:I'm not saying this to sound cheeky. It enables you to hold all that complexity more it does. It sounds like it would require a huge amount of energy, but I think very much in the way that a body that is aligned moves easier through the world. There's a certain level of energy that requires me to keep myself physically lined up, but I'm getting so much more back because of so much more ease. It's so much more efficient that it really is. I'm actually on a net plus, I think. In terms of holding all that complexity. It's very much the same thing. It seems like it requires a lot of energy to be present like that, or to try to be present like that, but on the other side of it, being present like that makes it possible to keep being present like that. Once you're in that zone, then it becomes self-perpetuating. It's not an additional effort no.
Speaker 2:It's not harder.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:It's just trying to put yourself into that spot over and over again. I think the compassion component of that self-compassion component of that is going like well today. I ain't going to do that because I can't.
Speaker 1:That's okay, because it will change.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm not like some yogi dude or something, but life is what life is and it's moment by moment. There are some moments when I can be like that and there are some moments when I can't. Probably, if you added it all up, the moments I can't be like that are way more than the moments I could by a lot. But it's okay. It's okay to be sad and hurt and mad and upset, because it's also okay to be jubilant and in love and joyful.
Speaker 1:And both types of emotions require presence. So I've got to practice presence.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, now I'm curious. You've built up all this capacity and awareness within yourself and presence. What's next? What do you hope for your own healing journey Next?
Speaker 2:I don't have a. Next, I don't. You're too present for that. It sounds so pretentious.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not, I'm not, I think I'm just finally catching on, but his presence thing is always present, it's always present.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I feel like there are things that I endeavor to do, such as I endeavor to not compartmentalize my life. I endeavor to not say there's this part of me that's siloed off from this part of me. I endeavor to be kind to people. I endeavor to be in a way that people can be kind to me. It sounds incredibly basic, but you know it's lacking in today's world.
Speaker 2:It's very lacking. Yeah, I mean everything that the world teaches us now is to be separate. And again, the compassion part is to be okay with when I fail at all of these things, which again is a lot.
Speaker 1:I haven't seen that too.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's just To me, it's just being very simple, it's very simple, it's just. Can I be present in the world, can I inhabit my body to the it's fullest when I present myself to people as vulnerable, but not but strong? Strong in a sense of not like from physical strength necessarily, but just that I'm, my vulnerability. I think what I understood finally when we were talking about what I was doing to try to figure out how to deal with the surgical thing, was that I understood finally and I'd heard it in self-help books and whatever but I finally understood that vulnerability was the strongest place to be, because if I put myself in that position, if I could consciously say I'm going to be here and just try to be present and not armor myself up, that that was an incredibly powerful position.
Speaker 1:So you are helping me on my healing journey. You are doing so much for the other clients you come across. You're clearly doing so much for yourself and your family and future generations and your lineage. What do you hope for others in their healing journey?
Speaker 2:I think for me, and what I endeavor to try to do in our work, is to help people find that sort of footing where they can experience whatever is coming from this sort of stable dynamic, there's one person I can control in the entire world and that's me, and I'm not very good at that. So I think if, on a very metaphysical level, I feel like we are boundless, healing capacity is boundless. We are made of the stuff of stars. The universe exists in us and I believe that I believe there's zero end to potential energy, kindness, love, compassion. So all I try to do as much as I can, in any way I can, is to maybe make it so that that is a little easier somehow, and it's just little, little bits.
Speaker 1:As I've seen in my six sessions with you, small ships can have big impact. Thank you, jay, you're welcome. Oh, I didn't drop my register. Oh, sorry, thank you, jay. You're welcome, jay. This was awesome. I think it's a wrap. Woo, what a special conversation. Thank you for sticking around for my love and learning reflection.
Speaker 1:So here's what I'm learning and loving from my conversation with Jay Cyclebreaking, bending like a reed and radical acceptance. So I'll say a little more about what I'm taking away for each of those three things. Cyclebreaking I love how Jay described feeling respected as a kid and being very seen. I really want to create that experience for my own kids. So I'm inspired by the cycle breaking that Jay's parents actively chose to do to stop certain patterns in their families and start new, healthier ones. And it feels like an extra special way to honor Jay's father, for whom it was the anniversary of his passing the day that we recorded our conversation, so it feels really special. Thank you, jay, and thank you Jay's father, and I especially want to thank Jay for sharing the phrase that he and his wife Lana would say to each other during their most challenging times in life and like a reed.
Speaker 1:I'll never forget that rigidity in the body is a stress response and I can feel it in myself whenever I'm present enough and scanning my body in a difficult moment or conversation. And that defense mechanism, that rigidity, is the opposite of what I ultimately need. So I want to remember in the moment of my triggered self that the goal is to be dynamic and be able to bend with the situation until the situation changes. I think of it as riding the wave, not getting stuck in one place, and the fact of the matter is change is inevitable, so it will inevitably change. And, as Jay put it, being bendable includes being willing to let go of my preconceived notions about things. So I am committing to endeavor to face life from that dynamic, stable stance that Jay described. And, last but not least, I was, and still am, blown away by Jay's radical acceptance, as he put it, including of the immense pain he experienced throughout the three year ordeal surrounding his stroke and the massive brain surgery he had. It sounds incredibly hard and incredibly worth it. Worth it because that acceptance seems key to not adding suffering to my life through resistance. From what I am learning from Buddhist teachings and other places, the resistance adds suffering. It's worth it because that radical acceptance will enable me to hold more complexity, which is so needed in today's world, and to have more presence, and I want to be more present to the things and people that I love most in my life.
Speaker 1:So my question for you is what are you loving and what are you learning from this conversation? I hope you were inspired or moved by at least one thing that you heard today and, if you were, please share this episode with someone you love or someone whom you think might appreciate it. It would mean so much to me. And not everything will be for everyone, and that's A-OK. Take what you need, leave what you don't. And, based on what you're loving and learning from this conversation, I have one more question for you. What's one thing you commit to doing next for greater fulfillment and wholeness in your own life? Oh, and one more thing For any listeners interested in checking out BodyCraft Pilates, the Brooklyn-based Pilates studio that Jay and his wife Lana own. It is amazing. They're offering a discount to any new clients who mentioned this podcast the High Note when you email them. See the show notes for more information. Thank you so much for listening. Much love everyone.