INTERVIEW NOTES

Segment #1

• Hitting a dark spot, completely changed her life. “Picking a wild card”, it is the basis for the Lucid Body.  She was a modern dancer, had a company called Impact Theater.  Was married, had a child, living on a houseboat.  Great times.  Then her marriage fell apart, she picked up more work, around 1988.  AIDS was circulating, didn’t seem real back then.  Part of the “demonization” of gay men.  She slept with someone after marriage fell apart, that person came back to her and told her he had the virus.
• She remembers that moment the doctor told her.  AIDS was now ravaging and killing people all around her. 
• Her world changed instantly.  Doors started closing on her.  She started working with chakra healer.  Also worked with russian folk healer.  They all told her the same thing, “you must be comfortable with death”. Once you accept it, your body will relax, it will stop going into stress mode trying to fight off everything.
• It calmed her, knowing that any day could be her last day. She then meant with a shaman woman who then helped accept that fact that her life was still a gift.
• She felt she could not talk about it at all, as her being a single white privileged woman, she did not want her daughter to be ostracized because of her.
• Shaman told her to pick up rocks, rearrange them and assign each one a purpose.  So you can then change your relationship with the virus. She had to do that for 14 days.  
• Each rock assumed an identity such as anger, blame, the body of the virus.  This work allowed her to push that bad negativity around and to pull love and life closer to her and it helped her gain acceptance and move on.

Segment #2

• What came next was an unraveling, the death of the ego.  She had an appreciation for old age, even though she was only 33 at the time.  She celebrated each year and could not see how people tried to reverse age.  She celebrated because she was a survivor.
• She was adverse to taking the medicine at first, because people were dying.  Then she took the triple drug cocktail, and present day she is healed.  Not present in her body.
• About The Lucid Body: it was not her plan, she was helped a lot.  She was fighting for her life, trying to beat the clock.
• She was trying to come up with a dance that would reflect all that was going on in her life.
• She started working on dances, one of the first was one that channeled her ex-husband and it helped her see “his way” of things and it came from a place of understanding, not anger

INTERVIEW NOTES

Segment 1:

• Shamnaistic healer, guide, visionary, and a mom
• Medicine carrier/woman her voice, her visions, her wisdom to share
• 12 years ago in NYC as a student she had a moment, in a yoga class, that jolted her and made her take the training
• The past year a lot of people have had to acknowledge the “dark side” of everything around us, and ourselves
• For shamanic folk, they look at the elemental things in order to understand things and ourselves.  Most in nature is dark, empty, void.  Natural balances.  Dark is also just the unknown, the un-illuminated, not yet known. 
• How do we illuminate the dark?  Helping others with purification.  Purify yourself, you don’t have to go through all of the challenges, all of the mud. Think of yourself and your world as a kaleidoscope, with all of the different outside invasions, media, society, etc.  Purify yourself and get to your innermost self 
• Some things that stop people from getting to those inner most caves: familial problems, trauma, self doubt, no confidence.  The other side is over confidence, arrogance
• How to find time to journey inward?  So little time, with all of life’s responsibilities.  In order to contribute to the great good of what is your purpose, you need to make sure that you are being good to yourself in order to function and be a part of the greater good you are servicing.  Take time for yourself, and ask for help, and realize that you are not meant to do it all alone.

Segment 2:

• On surrendering, it is more a deep state of acceptance.  It is a feeling of feeling loved and accepted, and surrendering to others.  How can I open more deeply?  Sometimes the mind is too limited, and you need to expand beyond that.  How can I more deeply receive this act of surrender, of opening?
• She was a young mother, at 23.  She felt that it was supposed to be a “gift from the divine”, and it didn’t always feel like that.  She was “not ready”
• How do you accept the disconnect between the head and the heart?  It was hard to, as a new mother, accept the “death” of the former self.  When leading others on a path, she sees in others a reluctance to accept and grieve the “death” of all that you used to be, before you can accept the “birth” of the new
• Husband died 6 years ago, she was pregnant at the time. It was a true initiation, some really dark potentials and a dark cave.  The shamanistic community is not immune to jealousy and greed, like all other communities. It can feel more acute because these individuals are really focused on seeing the truth.  It was hard to navigate and move forward.  It took a long time, and she did try to rush through it, but she appreciated how long the journey took. 
• Whenever you are on the path, there is no mistake of the “hell yes” moment to go into the cave

LINKS AND INFORMATION

www.facebook.com/ayamrachaelsessions

www.instagram.com/rachael_sessions

www.untetheredsoul.com/surrender-experiment

www.amazon.com/Heros-Journey-Joseph-Campbell-Collected/dp/1608681890

https://rachaelsessions.bandcamp.com/?fbclid=IwAR2aeW9G3Is5J66SrFHqpcvlUvg1Vd8jOKMNPNcVnqa58j4c8CXlDc_DFnY

INTERVIEW NOTES

Segment 1:

• Recent time she has felt ungrounded- pandemic hit, lost her job at To Kill A Mockingbird
• Brother is ER physician, was keeping family informed, telling them how everything was going to shut down.  To Kill was seeing it’s audience diminish, everyone masked, no way it was going to continue in this fashion.
• Was tired or run down, she slept for 2 weeks after play was cancelled. After that she got up, starting doing things, but felt really unmotivated and ungrounded.  Her husband was the total opposite, he was doing 7 different things…got them both agents…
• Started getting back and getting physical, started walking, going to beach. Got back to teaching online, gave her purpose and felt more meaning in her life again
• Quote: “I often say that to my students, you have to work in spite of how you feel, in service to the audience. So doing that, is what got me going again.”
• How does she feed herself? To be around other creative people.  Get in somebody else’s class, somebody else’s talk, other theater productions.  Reading scripts, watching new things.
• In spite of how she feels, students often still admire what she does and have questions for her.  That “pours” into her as well
• Husband has been a rock through all of this. You have your independent time in life, your “salad days”, building strength, resilience.  Then you have “inter-dependence”, and you have your power source and strength.  Definitely during child raising years.  
• Got married later, but when she did she felt she partnered well and had a person who could help her solve problems and she didn’t have to do it all by herself…an ally
• Trying to teach her son that having an ally is not an excuse to let your own goals be leveraged because of someone else’s goalposts.  You have to want your education to help you, not someone else’s vision of you
• Quote: “Sometimes you need that person who’s gonna be more so the truth teller, that’s a true ally, that’s a true person who is on your side who is your friend who’s helping you.

Segment 2:

• Been very painful to watch the suffering of Black people in the past year.  At first she was grateful to see so many white people and youth participating.  Then it was really exhausting, having to explain her oppression to so many people.  So many people were earnest and wanted to help, but she did not have the answers to give them.
• She had to step back from all of that, she did not have the answers to tell people.  Awareness is a good thing, of course.
• Her son has shut down from all of it.  Trump did that to him, as well as so much talk about color, where he tries not to see all of that.
• She is in the generation that had to “deal” with all of the racism and how the world treats black people.  The younger generation still surprises her with how they are navigating the issue and being able to ask for more equality.
• She also knew that her white friends meant well, but it was a lot to take in from all aspects
• She feels a certain responsibility to her son to teach him certain things about the world/racism, but she does not want to project her fears onto him, that does not have to be his experience, but he does need to be aware of it all
• Quote: “I have this belief, that even if it doesn’t work out, you’re still OK. Because if I leave, if i get fired, if they don’t want me anymore, I’m still me. So If I leave, the party comes with me. So I don’t have to worry about if that one particular situation didn’t work out.
• Ther