Below is a transcription of the podcast:
There is so much music out there, and so many people with different preferences.
But have you ever wondered why it is that you like some music and not others?
Have you ever pondered the possibility that your unique energetic blueprint might have some influence over that big Y?
And how are these artists creating their music and lyrics?
Is there some secret formula that anyone can follow?
Or is there more of a soul-led endeavor at play?
On the music By Design podcast, we are doing the research and finding out through deep interviews with both lovers and creators of music, to find out exactly why it is that we love the music that we do, and how the way it’s created can impact who’s going to like our music.
So come dive in with us, start cleaning your house, go on that long road trip, because these are long episodes.
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to music By Design.
You know how much I love you, you, who’s listening right now, because I know you’ve probably listened to other episodes too.
And you and I both know what you’re about to get into.
I just love it.
I love that you’re here.
I love that you’re with it.
You’re on the ride, and it’s just so cool.
This is the coolest thing.
Like making a podcast is something that I don’t know.
I just wanted to do for a long, long time.
And, you know, of course, my imagination thinks it’s going to be some huge, expansive, incredible thing.
And it is, but not in the way that my Instagram lens of things would have me believe.
And also, I’m fully aware of how much, exactly how much energy I am giving to it.
I’m giving, not bare minimum, but I am, I’m not giving it everything I could, as far as how much I’m marketing and putting it out there and all that sort of stuff.
This has just been a really cool, like I always say, it’s a research project.
It’s just been a really cool sort of excuse to just talk to people about music.
Not like you need an excuse, but I have experienced personally so much more confidence to just ask totally random people what kind of music they like because I have follow up questions.
And I’m just curious.
And without, I don’t even look up their charts.
I just like to hear people’s stories and what are, what are people going to see live music for?
You know, which, which aspects are the parts that really stand out for them?
Like Sean and I have been going down to Moondog’s Lounge and here in Auburn fairly frequently, at least once a week.
And I love asking the crowd there.
It’s a little bit older crowd generally, and they’ve all been listening to music for a really long time.
And it’s just, it’s such a great way to just meet people.
And, and yeah, just hear people’s stories.
I love it.
I’m here for it.
So just a couple things.
I do have some things coming up very soon.
If you want to come visit, see me in person, check out maybe a place you’ve never been to before on.
October 12th, Saturday, October 12th, I think it’s from like 10 to three or four in the afternoon is what’s called the Fall into Wellness event at the Zen Den here in Auburn on Seminary Street.
It’s in their new location.
It’s big and spacious and beautiful.
I’ve gone to a few yoga classes there already.
They have a tea bar with snacks and stuff.
It’s a cool spot and I’m excited to go check it out for the day and hang out and have cool conversations with people about energy and stuff.
So if you want to come check it out, that’s a Saturday, October 12th link in the show notes.
After that, it’s a little far out.
It’s about a month away.
But I’m part of this organization called the WBOC, which stands for Women, business, Opportunities and Connection.
It is a membership driven networking group in the Central New York area.
And I love it.
I’ve been a member there for, I think coming up on two years.
I’m at my two year anniversary very soon.
And they host what are called connections meetings on Wednesdays.
Usually, so usually we meet the first Wednesday of every month, we meet in person, but then they do other events on the other Wednesdays throughout the month.
And so I have scheduled a connections meeting with me, where this is open to the public and as well as for WBOC members.
And this is basically going to be the talk that I gave at the Intentional Feminine, introducing what Story Lab is and talking about quantum creativity and how the human design chart is a tool for helping you create personal narratives.
So if you came to the Intentional Feminine but missed my talk or you want to do it again or you have no idea what I’m talking about and just are curious and want to see what it is I’m talking about, come to my Connections meeting on November 13th.
As soon as I have the link, registration link for that, it’s free.
As soon as I have the registration link for that, I will put that in the show notes and I’ll add that to my link tree on Instagram.
So that’s going to be cool.
And following that on November 16th, I will be officially doing hosting, leading, guiding a group of folks through the Story Lab process.
The event is called Story Lab, Claim Your Main Character Energy.
It’s going to be super cool.
I’m definitely going to be talking about it more in coming intros as we get closer to the date.
But if you would like to scope out the sales page and read all about what it’s about, you can go to the link in the show notes.
And it will be in person at the Center for Sound and Ceremony, located in the DeLavan Studios building, pretty much right in the heart of downtown syracuse.
So again, more details for that in the show notes.
So planets, what are they doing?
Well, let’s see.
This comes out on October 4th.
Well, two days before this, we had the New Moon Solar Eclipse that we’ve all been waiting for.
In human design speak, this has been taking…
This took place in Gate 48.
Mercury was also in Gate 48 on the same day.
So Mercury and the Sun had a kazeemi, I think a little bit before the Moon lined up with the Sun.
So it wasn’t…
They weren’t all three perfectly aligned at the same time, but they’re all pretty freaking darn close.
So there’s a lot of this Gate 48 being super activated.
What is Gate 48?
Gate 48 in the I Ching is known as the Well.
In traditional human design, we call it the Gate of Depth.
And in quantum human design, it is the Gate of Wisdom.
This is all about knowing what you know.
When you know it, this is all about depth.
I love that the traditional human design name for it’s pretty good, I think.
It’s all about knowledge, depth of knowledge, and in its shadow, it is a fear of not feeling like you know enough, not feeling like you know how to know what it is you know.
It is a spleenic fear gate, so in the spleen, there’s this intuition that comes, and often it is not explainable.
However, ironically, Gate 48 is part of what we call logic circuitry, part of the collective, overall collective circuitry.
At the same time, we’re having this eclipse and Mercury, Sun, Moon, Mercury, all in this Gate 48 around.
How do you know what you know?
simultaneously, we have Saturn is retrograde in Gate 63.
It has been for a hot minute and will continue to be.
Gate 63 is located in the head center.
It starts the collective logic circuitry pattern.
And then as it goes, it crosses, goes down through the Ajna and links up with Gate 16 and flows out of the throat down to Gate 48 in the spleen.
They’re connected.
Gate 48 and Gate 63.
Gate 63 is all about doubt and confusion.
And here’s the thing is, these are supposed to be collective energies.
These are supposed to be about having doubt and confusion around bigger systems that are not working.
It’s the questioning to find out, does this really work and if not, how can we fix it?
Gate 48 is also collective energy.
So it’s supposed to be about how are we improving systems for understanding?
What are the larger systems out in the world that maybe have collapsed or have been built that either hinder our ability to trust ourselves or help our ability to trust ourselves that are instinctual knowing?
These are not meant to be directed inward.
All the shadow aspects of these collective energies can often show up as self-doubt, doubting ourselves, feeling inadequate with ourselves.
But really, when those thoughts, those stories, those meanings pop up, it’s supposed to be an invitation into, ooh, I’m feeling this about myself.
So what is it actually showing me about the larger collective narrative, the larger collective feeling of humanity as a whole?
What is failing us in our larger collective systems that is creating this sense of self-doubt and inadequacy?
That’s what it’s supposed to lead us into.
But a lot of us, we get just stuck in the self-doubt and the inadequacy, and we don’t move forward.
So how has this theme popped up for you in the last week or two?
And moving forward for the next week, I feel like often these eclipses can have a little bit of reverberation on either side of them, not just always on the day of.
And I typically consider the two weeks after the last of the eclipses in each set, two weeks after until we get to the next lunation, whether it’s a full or new moon.
In our case, it’s going to be a full moon on the 17th.
That’s what I consider sort of the post shadow of the eclipse or the integration period.
Still continuing to sit with what wanted to be eclipsed out, what wanted to be eclipsed in, what are the things, they’re not things that you necessarily were choosing.
They’re things that literally got plopped in your lap.
So around those themes of that doubt and inadequacy, what’s popping up?
So that’s all I’m going to say about the transits for now.
It’s some big stuff to sit with for a minute.
And I want to just intro into the episode.
So in this episode, we talk with Dr.
Leah Taylor, who’s wicked cool.
She’s got a whole thing.
She’s out in California.
She has this.
Her business is called Embodied Groove, and she’s a huge Phish fan.
And we met on Jam Cruise back in March, and she agreed to come on the podcast with me.
So it’s a really cool episode.
I hope you like it.
We talk about her love of Phish and the energetics of the folks in the band and hers and her whole background with music and what Embodied Groove is all about.
And I know you’re just going to love it.
Thank you again for being here and enjoy.
Welcome, everyone, to this week’s episode of music By Design.
As always, I have an extraordinarily special and wonderful guest today, Dr.
Leah Taylor.
Dr.
Leah Taylor, she and I met on the cruise ship, Jam Cruise, this past March of 2024, or late February, early March.
And she was part of the Wellness at Sea program and she did a number of different workshops.
She presented her signature Embodied Groove workshop, which is like flow, dance, intuitive kind of body movement, right?
And I also sat in with her manifestation class that she did, which was cool.
I had like a big, I had my own kind of little personal breakthrough aha moment.
And yeah, it was cool.
And I really loved it.
And we got to meet and chatted.
And she agreed to come on the podcast with me today.
So welcome Dr.
Leah.
Would you give us a little intro, a little bit more in depth into who you are, what you do, where you’re at, favorite color you’re grooving with these days.
And if you had a song that you are really, really into today or something that was stuck in your head, what was that?
Awesome.
Okay.
Yeah.
So my name is Dr.
Leah Taylor.
You can call me Leah.
I just go by Dr.
Leah Taylor for my business name.
And I have been working in the field of integrated mental health for the last 15 years, working in hospitals and clinics, helping people with all kinds of things.
But I am actually recently, and this is like recent in the last couple of weeks, am shifting my focus into doing more relationship coaching and consulting, which I’m really excited about because everything is about relationships, whether it’s the live music experience or, you know, our, the quality of our relationships has everything to do with the quality of our life and our health.
And so I am really excited to make that shift and have a lot to say about relational trauma and how it impacts how we show up in life in general.
So a lot of my work is going to be focusing on that moving forward.
And as I was, had that epiphany and started reflecting on things, it’s like, it’s what everything has been about anyway.
I mean, I feel like our primary relationship is a relationship to ourself.
And that’s what I’ve really been helping people to strengthen is knowing how to source their internal navigation system to be able to navigate life in the best way possible.
And then of course, Embodied Groove, which you mentioned is all about coming into a deeper relationship with all parts of our body and being as well as the environment that we’re in, the other people that are around us, which is also why I’m really excited about the healing relational trauma, which absolutely impacts how we show up with other people day to day and how we interact in the world.
And most of us are kind of run by a three-year-old at the control panel of ourselves, and we’re not even realizing it.
So once we can really heal the patterns and the trauma that happened early on, then we can show up more wholeheartedly in this world.
And I think that is really the mission in life is, how can we live wholeheartedly in a world that seems scary and cruel?
So that’s what I’m all about, helping people be able to do that.
So that’s where I am professionally, where I am physically.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and my favorite color is purple.
I love teal as well, though, so I’ll throw both of those in.
And as far as a song that I’m grooving with, I have to look it up because I’m really bad with song names, and we can get into this about how words with songs don’t really stick in my brain.
But I have this playlist that I listen to every day, and this one is called Life Is Good by justin caruso.
And I love it so much.
And I put that on, and also I Am Here by Pink.
And those two songs have really been bringing a lot of joy to my day.
And they’re out of the normal genre of music that I listen to, but I just really love them.
Nice.
Is that a playlist that you just found on Spotify somewhere, or you made the playlist?
I made the playlist.
Yeah.
Cool.
Cool.
Do you use those songs in any of your workshops ever?
So the Life is Good, that’s the name of it right?
Yeah.
Life is Good is part of a free resource, actually, that I just released today.
It’s called Stress Less Joy More.
And it’s part of the increasing joy in your life part.
So, yes, I am using them in some of my work.
Awesome.
Awesome.
I was going to ask you and you kind of you touched on this.
I think I wonder if this is related to the shift that you’re making in your work.
I wanted to ask you how the eclipse portal that we had in late March, early April, what sort of initiations did you kind of receive or experience or feel or witness that was that coinciding with this shift that you’re making or how did what kind of came through for you during that?
because as I as I mentioned earlier, I definitely got hit with a big bag of bricks, so.
Yeah, I do.
I mean, it felt really powerful for me.
I didn’t see it in totality or anything like that.
Besides watching it on three streams, I live in California and there wasn’t anything nearby and I didn’t travel.
But I did really was very intentional in that day.
I actually planted some wildflower seeds that I had had forever.
It was just like kind of a thing that morning.
I was like, I want to plant these.
And so I’ve been watering them every day and took some time to do some journaling.
And I’ve been in like a huge just kind of growth spurt for the last year, reclaiming different parts of myself that had kind of been cast away.
And I feel like this time that I’m in right now is just like the culmination of all of the work that I’ve been doing for so long, but especially healing work over the past year.
And yes, I feel like this shift was, you know, the eclipse kind of preceded this and like set things in motion to really help.
There’s just a lot more clarity that’s been coming through for me and my professional path.
And I lived a lot.
I live a lot of my life just guided by intuition, not really knowing like how things are going to work out, but knowing that this is just the next step that I need to take right now.
But like the future sometimes will be a little unclear.
But I feel like it’s all crystallizing into this like really clear vision now, which is really exciting.
Yeah, definitely.
I also, can you tell us a little bit more about your experience on Jam Cruise?
That was your first time, right?
Not first time on Jam Cruise, but that was your first time as a wellness at sea practitioner, correct?
And you kind of, you told us a little bit of your story during your workshop.
But if you can just expand on that a little, because for me, I felt like that was the pre-initiation.
Like for my husband and I, that was our honeymoon.
We got married in September 2023, and we had, it was our intention from the beginning.
We’re like, we’re going to delay our honeymoon.
We’re going to go on Jam Cruise.
It’s been a dream for both of us for the longest time.
We’re both huge music people, music festival goers and all that.
We’re not first timers, just first time on Jam Cruise.
And for us financially, it was a big investment.
That was the biggest investment we’ve ever made in music, really, you know, ever.
And it was absolutely 100% worth it on our end.
And then exactly one month later, we got this big initiation with the lunar eclipse.
And it just felt like since Jam Cruise, it’s kind of just been like these like opportunities to up level and push ourselves and expand.
And yeah, so I’d like to hear how that how you had a similar kind of maybe expansion experience from that.
Yeah, well, I have to say, I was actually reflecting on this in the hot tub last night.
And I went on Jam Cruise for the first time in 2020.
I had wanted to go since the very first Jam Cruise.
I was like, I don’t know, 23 maybe, early 20s working in Colorado at a ski resort had just moved from North Carolina to Colorado.
And Bonnaroo had been announced that same year.
And so I made the trek back to Bonnaroo because I was like, I can’t miss this music festival with all these amazing people.
And then came back, was working at Winter Park.
In Colorado and saw Jam Cruise announce.
And I was like, oh my God, that’s amazing.
I really want to go.
But it was during the winter.
I had a seasonal job at the time and also just didn’t have the money to travel back to the East Coast.
But ever since I found out about that first one, I was like, I have to go.
This seems amazing.
And so, 20, well, almost 20 years went by.
And finally the timing worked out for me to go.
And as I was on the plane to the first Jam Grooves that I went to in 2020, I was pitching a podcast that I wanted to have on Osiris Media.
And because I did my dissertation on the experience of live music and how it relates to well-being.
And I was like, I want to talk about this more.
And so I was like, well, where would I host it?
Well, I’m going to shoot for the top.
I’m going to go for Osiris.
So I was putting together that pitch on the plane to Jam Cruise.
And I think that’s so fitting because, you know, fast forward four years, 2020, the pandemic hit.
Osiris told me that I didn’t have enough following to, for them to allow me to host my own podcast.
But they were like, if you want to hook up with Tara Lee Weathers, she also wants to host a similar podcast.
I think that you guys would be really great together.
I said, yes, she said, yes.
We started our podcast, Groove Therapy, during the pandemic in 2020, during the summer, ran that for three years, and decided that in 2023, that we were complete with that.
But we had also pitched Jam Cruise to go on as wellness at C instructors, which when I was on my first Jam Cruise, I saw the Wellness at C team, and that was really the first year that they had had a more robust Wellness at C as opposed to just being like some yoga classes.
2020 was their first full Wellness at C team that they were building out, which props to Jam Cruise for having such an amazing wellness program, because Wellness is not something that is really supported and, well, I’ll just say supported in music most of the time.
It’s like something that’s an after thought.
It’s like, oh yeah, we’ll have some yoga classes for people.
They’ll want to stretch in the morning before they get up and do their day.
Jam Cruise is like, no, we’re gonna have classes on this, and we’re gonna have classes on this, and we’re gonna have it all throughout the day, and we’re gonna take care of our instructors and all of the things.
So I saw that, I told myself, I said, when I come back on Jam Cruise, I’m gonna be on the Wellness at Sea team.
I talked to one of the people that was on it.
I was like, how did you get on it?
How can I get on it?
They said a couple of things.
That actually didn’t end up working out.
But as Tara Lee and I pitch to be on Jam Cruise for the Wellness at Sea team, our podcast ended.
They said, come on for 2024.
They sent us an offer.
We said yes.
And I went on my second Jam Cruise as part of the Wellness at Sea team with this woman who I had actually never met in real life.
We did the podcast for three years.
We had been connected for close to eight probably, but only online, had never met in person.
We roomed together.
It was so amazing.
I mean, we just had the best time.
We really complement each other very well.
We’re like the same people, but we’re very different people.
And so being able to room with her was so magical.
And it was such an elevated experience to what I had in 2020.
In 2020, I left there going, that was life beyond my wildest dreams.
But then 2024, as I was reflecting last night, I was like, wow, I’ve actually never placed them side by side to really look at them.
Like after the last Jam Cruise, I knew it was amazing, and I was really doing a lot of integrating it into my whole experience.
But looking at them side by side, I was like, oh my God, that was like 12 times better.
And then my wildest dreams in 2020.
So it just felt like so many things coming full circle, but then also like going up 12 times.
I don’t know why I chose 12.
It’s just a number that comes into my mind.
Is that the deck you were on?
No.
I don’t know what deck were we on?
I think we were on 11.
Yeah, anyway.
Nice, nice.
Yeah, I feel like listening to your stories, you were telling it during the manifestation workshop.
I was like, yeah, how do I get on the wellness at C-Probes?
So like, you know, low key goal for the next time I go on Jam Cruise, you know, just trying to build my thing more.
And I know I have some unique things to offer too.
So it’s just cool to hear that story because it just feels like, okay, that’s actually totally tangible.
Yeah, cool.
Who is your favorite act on the boat?
Top most favorite thing you saw or music you heard?
Yeah, well, lotus on the pool deck, the last night really stands out to me as the most transcendent experience that I had throughout that whole set.
It was just amazing, incredible.
The moon, everything being outside, the people I was with, like, and new people that I didn’t know until that night.
That set stands out to me.
There were some other transcendent moments here and there.
And then Kenneka Moore was really the new to me artist that I was like, oh my God, this woman is amazing and incredible.
And I can’t wait to see more of her.
Fun fact, she came on that Jam Cruise as a guest.
And now on the next Jam Cruise in 2025, she has like three things that she’s doing, you know, officially for Jam Cruise.
So I love that so much, because she worked her ass off.
I mean, she was everywhere.
So shout out to Kenneka Moore.
And yeah, and to lotus too.
Nice, nice.
I allowed my husband to kind of just steer us through that ship for most of that ride.
So there were some things that I wanted to, maybe in reflection, I was like, oh, I wish I had gotten to see this band or that band.
And I didn’t see anything Kenneka Moore did.
But I think my favorite overall show, really the only show that I think we saw from start to finish completely, because there’s six different things happening, bands playing at the same time.
So it’s like you go to one, catch 20 minutes, go to another one, catch another 20 minutes, and just try to sample everything.
But the Remain in Light set was above and beyond, just awesome.
If you like talking heads, that was a really cool experience.
And as far as like new acts, the new master sounds, I really, really loved, really loved their set.
We caught them on the pool deck.
And, you know, there was so many great moments, but those were the two that really stood out, stood out for me.
So, so one of the things I like to ask everybody is if you could only have like one aspect of music, which would you choose?
Really great lyrics, the rhythm or beat, or some like killer instrumentation, solos, sort of stuff.
Do you remember, do you know what you would have chosen?
Yeah, for sure.
The rhythm and the beat, absolutely.
I go to live music to dance.
Yeah.
If it’s not danceable, I might not go.
Right.
I interviewed with someone recently who also, I mean, there’s so far, most of the interviews I’ve had have been very much focused on the lyrics, people who are songwriters who write words and music.
And so generally, they choose lyrics as the most important thing for them because they’re trying to convey a specific message or something like that.
Or a lot of people who are very poetic or have a lot of emotional themes in their life that they’re wanting to be related with.
They choose music that’s very poetic too.
You know, like the whole emo music scene is very much into the like the poetry and the stream of consciousness and that sort of stuff.
But there is this whole other faction of people that are just like, no, I don’t care about words, like I don’t care about lyrics.
I just want to dance.
I just want to move.
And you’re one of those people.
And part of my, why I asked this question is because in the Energetics and the Human Design Chart, there is a gate of rhythm.
And it’s called, it’s gate number five.
It’s the gate of rhythm.
And it’s located in the Sacral Center.
And usually people who prefer rhythm over lyrics tend to have this gate defined, highlighted in their chart, somewhere in some planetary position.
For you, it’s in your uranus position.
And it’s on the unconscious side of the chart.
So we have like conscious and unconscious, or what we call personality and design.
The unconscious design side is basically the body.
It’s like the physical life purpose.
And so this rhythm is defined in your uranus, which is the thing that makes you very unique and wants to pull your uniqueness out of you through your physical expression.
It’s not about what you think or your personality or who you are in a more like higher sense.
It’s very much your physical body just needs to move.
And I think it’s really, really, really cool.
So I love that.
Also, I always ask about what reason for creating music resonates the most for you based on what some anthropologists have theorized.
And a lot of people tend to choose it as an outlet for emotional and creative expression.
You’re actually the first person I’ve interviewed who selected as attracting a mate.
Can you expand on that a little bit more?
Yes.
Well, this goes back to that whole relational thing.
To me, and I’m speaking about live music and not necessarily music in general, but it’s so relational and it’s a dance of the feminine and the masculine to me.
And in that dance, and I will say when I was answering that question, I completely believe that music is also here to help us feel and express emotions, but there was something that called me to answer this question in this way.
because of the dance that I see, I mean, it is an energetic dance, and I can see both masculine and feminine energies present.
Although most of the time, there’s a lot of masculine energy that is present during live music because typically there are males up on stage that are creating the music, especially in rock and roll, which is the music that I tend to go see.
There’s a lot of like that rah, rah, rah, we’re just going to rock you so hard.
And like, that’s really masculine.
But that’s why I love to bring the feminine embodiment of the music, you know, it’s like, and there’s this sutra that I’m looking for a book around here somewhere that really, that kind of encapsulates this, where it’s like, you know, the feminine and the masculine, the idea and the bringing it into form and that dance that they do.
And I just see that being played out in live music.
And with feminine and masculine, there is, you know, that attraction, that energy.
It can be very sexual for people, but in a way that’s like, that’s not specifically about a specific person, although it can become about a person.
And this is where it’s really interesting.
So again, my like love and passion for relationships, I love to just watch dynamics with people that get like, especially passionate fans.
It’s like, why are you so passionate about this?
So often they’re like, they’re keyed into this one specific person that brings the feelings, here comes the emotions again, that like brings out these feelings and these emotions, and they attach it to a specific person because there’s this physical being that’s creating this for them, with them.
It’s very intimate experience that’s happening between these people.
And then they get really addicted to that, attached to that, like passionate about that.
And, but yet it is, it’s so much more than just an individual kind of thing.
It’s like much more of a collective experience, much more of a universal experience.
And when we can see it as that, I think it can be extremely healing.
So on the like micro level, it could be about male, female, or female, female, male, male, whatever you like, you know, attracting the mate, that kind of sexual energy.
But when it, but when we bring it out into the macro level, it’s actually just about creation and the dance of life.
And the energies involved in that.
Yeah, yeah, I definitely, I, as I was listening to you, I’m like, my brain’s starting to look into the layers of this masculine feminine duality.
So like you said, they’re generally or usually like these men playing these instruments, like penetrating our awareness with this music, which has a masculine feel, all of that.
But music in itself is a like a right brain, which is the feminine part of the brain, which is creativity and it’s more intuitive and it’s in flow.
So it’s also like they are actually embodying both, while also the audience is the one are the ones receiving in that receiving receptive, divine receptive kind of side of the duality, and also then being incited to move and bump into each other.
And so it is this like layers and layers and layers and layers and layers of everyone embodying all of it at the same time.
And some light research I’ve done on like what music does to the brain when we listen, is it actually like knits the two hemispheres together more, which allows for just more fluid communication of neurons firing and neurotransmitters and all the things.
Whereas like, you know, it’s like being isolated or having, you know, lots of negative thoughts and all these sorts of things are the things that separate the two hemispheres from the brain, right?
So just music, just any music, listening to any music is activating and creating this harmony between the two sides and actually bringing us back to this like feeling of oneness, right?
On an individual level, as well as, as you indicated, like on a collective level.
I love so much of everything you’re saying.
And as I’m like looking at your chart, too, your human design chart, I want to pull this in and just talk about your human design for a second for everybody that’s listening and for you.
So in human design, Dr.
Leah here is a, what we call a four one emotional manifestor.
So a couple of things that I want to pull in from some of the things she’s been saying over and over again, as part of like what she loves about music and what she’s pulling into her work.
So all the stuff about relationship, I see in your chart so strongly in a number of ways.
First of all, with your profile as a four one.
The four represents what we call the opportunist character role, or in quantum human design, we call it the stabilizer.
This is very much about creating foundational intimacy in your relationships.
In order to feel secure.
It’s both the four and the one relate to security, but in different ways.
The four is about security in relationships, and the one is about security in knowledge and information.
And so as you are here to learn about yourself in these relationships, and in the way you network, and just have very vulnerable and very intimate relationships with, doesn’t like you may be with a lot of people all the time when you go to music festivals, but really it’s about having this handful of people that are your support network that you cultivate really, really strong connection with.
And they’re the ones that kind of serve as a conduit for energy and opportunities and different things for you to kind of like flow in and out.
And it’s in the cultivating of those relationships that you may get some recognition from the outside, just purely by the fact of you have these deep, intimate relationships and people see that and they want to know how do I do that.
And then as you learn about yourself through that relationship process, you then want to go in and research with the one line.
You want to research and ask questions and dive in.
And research isn’t just like reading a book or googling it, but it’s getting experiential knowledge.
And like I have a one line in my profile as well.
And I love social media for this.
I just put a question out there and I just want to know like what do people think?
What do you think?
What is your experience?
I just want to hear your opinion.
And also like why I love this podcast, because this is me doing my own research so that I can better understand what it is that how I’m learning about myself and relationship.
I have a different conscious line, mine’s a five.
But yeah, so that four one interplay, I’m just hearing you speak it in everything that you’ve expressed so far about like where you are in your work and all of that.
Anything you want to reflect back before I continue?
No, I think it’s fascinating.
It is fascinating.
What else I love about this too is there’s so many other, there’s a few other pieces that really stand out to me about how important relationship is for you in particular.
So compared to my design, I have what’s called single definition.
I’m a manifesting generator, I have the sacral and the motorized throat.
Like I have a lot of individual energy in my chart.
I have this very just kind of, I have an energy that doesn’t really, I don’t really need anybody to live a fulfilled life, but I want people.
And so there’s a difference there.
Whereas I see in your energy, there is very much this you need other people.
Like you really, really do.
It’s a big driving force in a lot of what motivates and drives you in the world and the things you, decisions you make and things you do.
So the other way I see that is, you have the head and Ajna defined here.
They’re colored in with this channel 6447.
You also have the throat defined to both the identity center and the solar plexus.
And then you have the will center defined to the spleen.
But if you notice, they’re all like, they’re three different groupings of these defined centers.
This is what we call a triple split, where it’s not bad.
Like there’s, I want to make sure everybody remembers, there’s no good or bad or there’s nothing that’s better or worse in all of this.
It’s just the, this is the curriculum your soul chose for this lifetime is to learn how to be in relationship.
And so when you have this split, you need other people or activations through the transits to bridge those.
So when you’re around someone that has gate 56, it bridges the split between the group of your head and Ajna and the throat.
Or if you, like when we had that eclipse, the eclipse was in gate 51.
And that bridged the split between all of these centers.
And so when you get that bridge activation, it just, things can move much quicker.
You get the understanding processes, the information processes, the experiences process, things just kind of pick up speed and get a little bit of momentum.
It’s like the little kick in the pants energy.
And if you’ve been standing in the doorway, it’s the thing that pushes you through.
And so in combination with all of this, you also indicated that you prefer going to live shows with thousands of other people, more so than listening to music at home by yourself or going to a small venue somewhere.
Like you want to be around so many people.
And I see that a lot with people with this kind of configuration.
When you have this many splits, it’s like you want to taste the flavor of every possible way you could get that bridge, those energies bridged.
And it’s just this mix up.
It stirs up the matcha powder from the bottom of the drink.
You know, it really just like, I’ve drank one today, so that’s why it’s weird.
But it just kind of mixes everything up when things have maybe started to feel like they were a little stagnant or a little, just starting to get stale.
And it’s something that I find that triple splits tend to just really crave that like, just big mix up in energy.
Some people can get really overwhelmed by it.
If they’re not fully self-aware or they’re not, if they don’t have tools and practices for regulating, it can be a very overwhelming experience.
I wonder was, I would assume, I don’t know, maybe you weren’t always so self-aware as you are now.
Were there times, can you think back on times where maybe it wasn’t as desirable for you to like be around so many people because of this kind of energy overload or what do you have to say about that?
Yeah, yeah.
I think that’s why I would always use substances whenever I would go to shows because it helped me to, well, and I have some relational trauma in my own past which put up barriers and layers of protection that didn’t make it comfortable in being in relation with other people.
But I could drop those layers when I had a couple of drinks, or if I was smoking pot or doing other drugs.
And so the beginning of my live music history, I was always intoxicated.
And sometimes that would get to the point where I wouldn’t remember much of the show.
I had a great time, but I didn’t really remember it.
And honestly, Embodied Groove is partly because or is designed as a tool to help myself remain grounded and centered within that whole activation of energy, as well as allowing other people to know that they can be in their bodies and move freely in their bodies without having to rely on any kind of substance to help them get there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, if anyone has ever experienced a powerful breathwork session or my husband and I practiced Kundalini Yoga very, very, I don’t want to say religiously, but every morning we woke up at 4 a.m.
So we could do an hour of breathwork and stretching and movement before starting our day and doing that morning sadhana.
For about a year, we did it every day.
And yeah, you can 100 percent elicit the same serotonin and dopamine to be released in your body naturally as you can from these external sources.
And yeah, it is something that, especially when we’re younger.
You know, and also when we’re in our 20s, we’re like, oh yeah, let me try this and I’ll try that.
And you can bounce back really quickly.
And, you know, when you get older, you’re like, oh, I can’t, I shouldn’t do that anymore.
Whether I want to or not, it’s not a good idea because I’m not.
It’s going to take a week to recover from a tiny bit of anything, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
The the other piece that I find fascinating, too, is that in your incarnation cross, which is the Gate 11, 12, 46, and 25, these four gates make kind of your like soul’s energetic mission statement.
The 11 and 46 are both part of what we call the sensing circuit.
And then the 12 and 25 are part of some individual circuitry.
And the sensing circuit is what we call collective.
And it’s very much like a big prominent part of your mission here to exude and express and show people the way is through this very collective theme.
You have three, four channels to find.
And the first one is the 64, 47 in the head in Ajdan.
And that’s a collective sensing circuit that basically starts with being confused and winds up when you’re surrendered in the moment, all of a sudden, the realization of how to do what it is you were confused about just pops in.
And then you’re here to convey just so many thoughts and ideas and put them into words for the right people who want to hear them.
And your 1222 channel is all about just having this sense of grace and surrender in the moment and knowing exactly what to say, when to say it.
And then your 4426 is very tribal.
It’s about knowing how to dress up whatever it is you’re selling in a way, right for the people that are in your immediate kind of circle and group, knowing exactly how to…
We call this the channel of sales.
It’s knowing how to say the thing, how to present the thing, how to massage the idea in.
So you have this really cool, just kind of little energetic mission statement.
And then the 81 channel is all about just being creative, like being just…
You have this conviction to be creative and to be your own kind of hype person and be the hype person for other people.
And I hear so much of all of these little pieces and everything you’ve said so far.
It’s really, really cool.
Yeah.
So anything else you want to reflect or pop in there?
Um, not really.
I mean, I haven’t really ever had my chart read by anybody.
You know, I’ve I’ve downloaded a chart and read what it said myself, but I’ve never had anybody else look at it.
So it’s interesting just to hear you talk about it.
So when did you do you remember when you were first first heard about human design or what do you remember about like what what it said about?
Like, I’m sure you just like read about your your hype and authority and strategy and stuff.
Yeah, pretty much.
Um, yeah, I mean, it was a few years ago, maybe four or five.
It was probably pre pandemic.
So like five, maybe six at the most, like just kind of started hearing the word and was like, Oh, that’s interesting.
And I think it was my friend Krista, who was also on Jam Cruise, who was really looking into her chart or her design.
And then, you know, people that she was close to.
And so she was like, hey, I want to pull yours for you.
And she did.
And she looked at it and that she sent it to me.
You know, something that I will say just from looking at this that we didn’t talk about, that I read at some point by looking at, you know, somewhere online, talking about my design is the environment and the kitchens.
I knew you were going to talk about that.
Yeah.
Tell me more.
What did you read about kitchen?
Well, it’s funny because I do not cook.
Like, I’m so undomesticated.
So when I saw that kitchen was my environment, I was like, what?
That’s totally wrong.
Like, I don’t spend much time in the kitchen.
My husband does all the cooking and I love him for that.
But when I really started reading it, it made a lot of sense because the kitchen is where everybody gathers and the kitchen is where the people are.
And so as I was reading that and that resource that I found, I started relating kitchens to the live music environment because live music is like the kitchen.
It’s like where the people gather, it’s where they get their nourishment.
It’s like the kitchen is about, it’s where there’s ingredients that come together.
And it’s creative energy and there’s often some sort of heat that’s in there.
And there’s all the elements are there, the heat, the water, the air, the fire, the spirit.
There’s the creative spirit is there mixing it all together.
And I recently interviewed a friend of mine from college, who he also has kitchens as his environment, and he loves to cook.
And like every time, most memories I have of him, we were always cooking something.
And but he has set up his space kind of not a little bit neater than mine, I think, but some not too different from my space here, where like everything is right.
It has to be well organized.
It has to be right at your fingertips.
But so that when the moment of creativity strikes, you can just grab it and go.
Whereas he was describing that before, before he lived in his current place that he lives, he didn’t have a room for all of his recording stuff and his instruments.
It was kind of like everything was kind of just packed away in a closet.
And he would get the inspiration for something and he’d have to go to the closet, dig out the instrument, pull it out.
He’d pull it out.
It’s not in tune.
He’d have to tune it.
Then he felt, oh, now this piece of it is broken.
Now I have to fix it.
And then he’s lost the creative urge.
And so he spoke so beautifully to this idea of how supportive, what a supportive kitchen’s environment is.
And it’s having everything right at your fingertips.
Like I kind of see in your environment a little too, like having your bookshelf with all your books and your crystals and your singing bowls and your cards and all your things have to be.
I’m similar too.
I don’t have kitchen’s environment, but kitchen is what’s called my transferred environment, which is interesting.
But that’s a whole different rabbit hole to go down.
But to have just everything just available, labeled, you put it back where you got it from and all of that.
So that, yeah, when that creative urge strikes, you can create and you don’t have to stop and reorganize or be in repair mode and that sort of stuff.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Definitely.
Yeah, the music festival scene is 100% a kitchen environment because you have so many ingredients coming together.
And then when you add in like being on a boat, it’s like that’s one more ingredient that like, you know, doing, dancing on a boat that’s rocking in the waves or you know, like the rocking of the waves is one more ingredient being added to that.
That creative stew and all these people from so many different places that came together to create this, like almost like it’s like a cooking show.
Like you have just like all these different things that come together for this production.
And yes, yeah, Kitchens very much.
That’s really interesting that you say that because talking about Embodied Groove, like initially Embodied Groove was designed for live music.
And I have since because I started it in 2017.
And then of course, in 2020, COVID hit and I don’t play music.
My husband doesn’t play music.
Our son doesn’t play music.
I don’t have any musicians available to me in my house.
And we don’t have family here.
So and none of my family plays music.
So anyway, I didn’t have access to live music, but I still had to do Embodied Groove.
And so at that time, I started creating playlists, which is something that I never really wanted to do because for me, it was more fun to have that.
Even though I will do it with musicians that I have never played with before, like sometimes I don’t even know their music, but it’s like it’s more fun for me and more fulfilling for me to have these different ingredients all coming together to create this creative stew where some people would go all my like my embodiment dance teacher.
She’s like, no, never.
I need a playlist that I know exactly what it’s going to sound like.
I know exactly what’s going to happen.
Whereas I’m like, yeah, bring on the people like, you know, I had the last Camp Deep End, which is usually the most musicians that I have.
There was like nine plus musicians up on stage, all creating music for Embodied Groove.
And I love that.
So I think that’s in line with what you’re just saying too.
Yeah, totally.
And I think like that also, it’s having that triple split in your energy, I think, lends to that improvisational, adaptable in the moment, like able to just kind of go any direction that you’re given.
And also your Sun Gate 11, that’s in the mutable fire sign of sagittarius, right?
because you were born December 18th.
So that’s the end of sagittarius, which is all fire, creativity, and mutable, being able to be adaptable and shift and change.
Like I feel like it’s all in there.
It’s all in there that like, yeah, that’s, it just shows like different strokes for different folks, right?
Like you could have 10 embodiment, embodied dance teachers that all just have different ways that they feel led to, you know, incorporate the modality or work with music.
And it just feels so in alignment that you’re just like, yeah, no, we’re just going to.
And so empowering to have that kind of confidence for everyone that you’re impacting, you know, just to be like, yeah, we are literally just going with the freaking flow.
And your unconscious Sun Gate, the 46, this is what we call, it’s the one of the love gates, all the gates in the G Center here are what we call love gates.
And your 46 and 25 are both love gates.
And the 46 is what we call the love of the body.
And it’s very much about being surrendered in the moment and moving and loving the body in physical movement.
And then gate 25 is the love of spirit.
And that’s ultimately what’s grounding your whole kind of mission statement is bringing it back to the spirit and the heart.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
Cool.
So I want to just shift over to, I want to talk about Phish for a little bit.
You were, you were like the biggest Phish fan.
I mean, I feel like, I feel like every Phish fan would argue for that title.
Yeah, I will.
Somebody else can have the title.
I do love Phish though.
You do.
I mean, you talked about them a lot on the cruise and you put them in your musical preference questions.
I think on both of them, like who did you love when you were a teen?
And also, who would you take with you on the desert island?
It’s just Phish all day.
First, I want to ask, it’s okay.
You don’t have to feel bad by picking one, but which one is your favorite member?
Like who’s the one that you feel like?
Paige.
Paige is my favorite.
He’s just always been my favorite.
He’s kind of quiet.
Yeah, he has that like kind of quiet reserved energy.
And there’s something about…
So I love Phish for the emotional roller coaster that they will bring me on.
And for me, Paige has the greatest range of emotional expression, because he can play like a beautiful piano that just like tickles my heartstrings and makes me float in the air.
But then he can also play like really down and dirty, like synth keyboards that like make my whole body just want to get down and groove.
And so that’s why I love him so much.
It’s funny, I try to guess if I’m looking at like a band and I’m looking at someone’s chart.
And who would you have guessed?
You know, it’s the sort of thing where when I’ve done this in the past, like I did this with the Beatles, with some friends of mine, I was trying to guess and then I asked them, just based on looking at charts.
So often, there’s kind of this dichotomy, this binary that happens, where people either love someone who, like they have a lot of similar energy in common, or they like the one who has more like what we call electromagnetic energy, where like you have half a channel and they have half a channel.
And when you listen and tap into their energetic expression through the music, you’re getting this like spark, which sometimes a spark can be challenging, but it’s usually something that’s like pushing us towards growth and expansion.
Whereas when you’re relating to music that you have more energetics in common, it’s more like a validation and a feeling seen and feeling understood, which both are beautiful and valid.
And so I was looking and basically Mike, Trey and John, you have tons of stuff in common with them.
Like, it’s like almost silly.
And the three of them with each other, particularly like Trey and Mike, have a lot of stuff that’s really similar and companion.
Whereas Paige is the one that kind of stands out a little bit.
Paige and John actually have some stuff in common with each other.
But you and Paige have like the least common energy shared.
But it’s just what you two do have in companionship is very different from Mike and Trey.
And it’s interesting.
So what I pulled up, I originally did not even pull up Paige’s chart for some reason, because he’s, I don’t know, the keyboardist.
I don’t know.
Keyboard’s fantastic.
Don’t get me wrong.
I just, for some reason, I had this inner resistance to pulling up his chart.
And then at the last minute, I was like, no, I’m going to pull it up anyways.
I’d be really curious to see Paige’s chart against my husband’s chart, because I feel like, I mean, it was a while into our marriage before I was like, oh my God, you have total Paige energy for my husband.
And we are very different energetically too.
So I would be curious to see like, where the parallels in theirs are.
And I will say that I am definitely one that goes towards growth and expansion.
I mean, it feels good to be validated, but I’m just such a personal growth seeker and always up for expansion.
Yeah, and this is a trend that I’ve seen with folks who are very much on a very like self-awareness, personal development, spiritual, evolutionary path.
Typically, what they loved when they were teenagers, which this is what goes for most people, that there was that companionship energy, but then at some point, like the thing that they would take with them on the desert island, that’s usually has more of that electromagnetic energy.
And it’s just, I think it just shows the evolution.
And like where you’re at when you’re a teenager, like when you’re a teenager, you are confused and feel lost and just want to feel like you belong somewhere.
And then if you’ve been on this evolutionary path, you eventually are like, well, I belong to me, so I don’t need to seek that belonging outside of me.
I want the thing that’s going to help me grow and expand and learn more, right?
So I wonder if you would have had a different answer when you were younger versus now.
Probably.
Yeah, I would have guessed probably like Trey, you know, like maybe Trey because he’s the front man, you know, and all that sort of stuff.
And also like, well, so I guess it depends on when you mean younger, because, I mean, I got into Phish when I, well, even I would say Paige was my favorite even from like 19 on, which was the first time I listened to their music before I went to my first show in 19.
But oh, how were you introduced to their music?
Yeah, but I will say if I if I could only meet and talk to one of them, it would be Trey.
Yeah.
Okay.
Why is that?
because I just have a lot of things to talk to them about.
That I think we have in common and we could come together and common goals and get some stuff accomplished, and I’m all about furthering my goals in life.
Exactly what kind of a bird whose feathers we’re talking about here.
Yes.
So I pulled up here, I have your chart on the left and Paige’s chart here on the right.
So pretty much like the main thing that you two have in common, like when we’re looking at a chart, we’re looking primarily first at just like the big definition pieces, so the things that are colored in and primarily like full channels.
And the thing I really see as the thing that really stands out here is that you both have the 8-1 channel, which is that channel of creativity and self-direction and contribution.
Like you want to have this just huge drive to want to contribute to the world in a very individual way.
And that gate 8 is his sun energy.
For you, your gate 8 is your unconscious moon energy, and the moon is very much about like what drives you on the unconscious side.
Again, it’s that body in your physical body.
So it really is driving and motivating you through life is this very visceral need to be a contribution to the world.
As this is his sun energy, it’s like he’s showing you what that, an example of what that could look like in the way that he is presenting and playing music.
And at the end of his sequence of the incarnation cross here, we always end in the unconscious earth.
His unconscious earth energy creates an electromagnetic for you with your unconscious sun.
So the 4629 channel gets highlighted.
So like one of the main things, I’ve talked about this a bunch on the podcast before, but one of the grounding principles in my theory, theorizing here is that, you know, when you create anything in the world, you’re imprinting it with your unique energetic blueprint, your signature, and then when someone consumes that or taps into that thing you’ve created, they’re basically tapping into and connecting with your energy in this very ethereal meta-distant kind of a way, but it’s still there.
You know, it’s still a thing, just like how like we can send Reiki, you know, we can send energy remotely across time, space, distance.
And so like creating a song is kind of like a way of doing that or creating a course or creating a painting or anything that someone else can take and then tap into.
So when you create something in the physical reality, so you’re getting both a little bit of companionship and a little bit of electromagnetic through his energy.
But he’s a very, he has emotional authority, but they’re different channels.
You’re a manifesto, he’s a generator.
So it does, and like he’s open in the head and Ajna, you’re defined in the head and Ajna, you’re defined in the spleen, he’s open in the spleen.
So you do have a lot of this kind of like opposite energies that where like you’re kind of like witnessing how it is to maybe have limitless sources of inspiration, have limitless sources of perspective, have limitless ways of connecting to your instincts intuition and all these different things by kind of tapping into his energy.
So where he’s defined, you’re undefined.
Where you’re defined, he’s undefined.
And yeah, it’s very much…
If these were two people just out in the world, and we put them together in a speed dating thing, they might not like each other because it is a little bit more challenging energy in some ways.
I’m just looking to…
Does he bridge any of yours?
Oh, he does bridge your split too with the Gate 56.
He bridges your split with the 11.
So there’s that too.
So it is like this push-pull kind of energy there with him.
Whereas if I bring up…
So Trey’s chart, I had to do a birth time range because I didn’t have an exact, but I’m going to think…
I think he is a 4’6 emotional manifesto.
So here you can see you two have almost perfectly mirrored energies, very similar.
He does bridge your split.
You both have the asana and the throat defined and the identity and the same emotional channel, the 1222.
So the 1222 is the thing that I saw as this biggest common denominator.
If I bring up Mike too, he has the 12 defined with a different full channel, but he also has head, asana, throat, emotional solar plexus, heart.
So there, you two also like him and Trey together are very similar, and you and him and Trey are very similar in like how there’s a lot of similar just energy flow kind of happening there.
And then John, John was different.
John’s the drummer.
He’s similar in some ways.
Like him and Mike have the same 4323 channel here.
But he’s like the only one that has the sequel defined, which totally makes sense because he’s driving the rhythm with that energy.
This is the center.
This is the center that is the engine of the car, you know?
So it’s just like it’s just running and it’s kind of fueling.
And these guys are taking it and reflecting it back.
But then I also like glanced at you also put that you loved primus when you were younger.
He has the same that same channel, the 6447.
There was just like a couple of different through lines I saw repeating over and over again.
John Fishman has the 64, Mike Gordon has the 6447, Trey has the 64.
So there’s like in your biggest pieces of your definition, these fully defined channels, the 6447, the 1222, those ones are big parts of maybe what you were feeling reflected back to you through that music that gave you that sense of belonging and that sense of feeling like you were part of something that got you.
I’m curious, did you have much of a musical upbringing in your family at all?
Well, yes and no.
I mean, not in the traditional sense.
My dad owned a music store.
So my dad owned a music and video store.
When I, ever since I can remember, I mean, it started as a record store before I was born, then transitioned as the times transitioned.
And we lived in Greenville until I was 10, when we moved to the mountains of North Carolina.
So when I was, you know, like I started listening to records at our house and then got into tapes and his manager was always very sweet to me.
And he would, you know, is a big college town.
So he’d like give me all of the tapes that the college kids were listening to and kind of help to foster my love of listening to music.
And so I really used music as a way to just escape into myself and to be able to feel my feels and to express myself.
I love to dance.
I have always loved to dance.
So I listen to music and just make up dances and my neighbor and I used to have performances for ourselves, for our families.
And yeah, so I was never around any people creating music in the traditional sense of, you know, with instruments, but had an environment that really fostered a love of listening to other people’s creations.
Well, well, we’re, I asked you this earlier, and I don’t know what your answer was.
How did you first get introduced to Phish?
Yeah, I didn’t answer it actually, because I said something about Trey.
I’d like to talk to him.
And then we got back on a pages chart.
So I had the Hoist album or the Hoist tape.
That was my first Phish tape that I had when I was probably like a sophomore in high school.
And a friend of mine had some bootleg, Phish bootlegs, but they were really difficult to hear.
It was not great quality.
It was like, I just didn’t know what I was listening to.
But then I went to school, I went to college at UNCW in Wilmington, North Carolina.
And the summer after my freshman year, my friend from Raleigh was going to a Phish show and she was like, you should come with me.
And so I did.
And that was my first show.
It wasn’t the best experience.
We partied a little too hard the night before.
And because my friend was like very excited to check out these mushrooms that she had just gotten, and she couldn’t wait until the next day.
So we were a little run down at the show.
And so I was like just chilling on the lawn pretty much the whole time, just like taking the music in.
But my second show was in Charlotte the next summer in 1999.
My first show was Rowley.
It was august something, 98.
Second show was in Charlotte in 99.
And that was when I was really just like so captivated by the whole experience.
And it was actually rusted Root was the band who really brought me into my body and like blew me open, I like to say.
Right after I graduate from high school, I had been to live music before I had seen why I took Panic, Dave Matthews, like other bands.
But it was that rusted Root show at the house of Blues, North Myrtle Beach in 97, the summer of 97, that like my whole body was just taken by the music.
And I danced my ass off the whole time.
And I remember at the end of the show, there was this guy that I guess had seen me dancing.
And he looked over at me after the show and he’s like, well, you had a good time.
I was like, yes, I did.
That was the first time that I like, did not care who was looking, what was happening.
Like I was just in the music and that was it.
That was like, and then I found Phish that next summer.
And just going into that community where like, I mean, there is not another crowd, maybe the Grateful Dead, but like I never got to see the Dead with Jerry.
So it’s, you know, and Phish is my first love.
And I love the emotional range of Phish.
You know, the Dead may have better lyrics, but for me, Phish rocks my body better than the Grateful Dead does.
So, but I, like, you’ll, you go to a Phish show and everybody is dancing with Abandon, pretty much, you know, whether they’re like, you know, that, that invitation is there.
People are just getting down to get down, whether you’re in the front row or you’re all the way in the back, or, you know, in the, the, like, if you’re in an arena, like, in the doorway, whatever, like, you look around and you see people moving, and there is an invitation to just move as big or as little as you want, and I love that so much.
And last night in the hot tub, I had this, like, vision and experience of me talking to Trey about that, and I got extra, like, it was almost like a manifesting experience, so I can’t wait.
I know at some point I will be having that conversation with Trey, but, like, to be able to just let him know just, like, how much his music has really impacted me and how amazing it has been.
But, yeah, just, like, on a visceral level.
For me and for everybody, but, and that’s, you know, I draw a lot of my inspiration from Embodied Groove, from the experience that I’ve had with Phish.
And then as a local, smaller version of that, with Animal Liberation Orchestra, ALO, which I’d be really curious to see those guys’ charts too, because they’re, like, my local live music love.
Yeah, I got into them just a little bit looking into their music, but I didn’t pull all their charts, because I just felt like Phish was just a little bit bigger of a true line here for you.
Yeah, yeah.
I love all of that so much.
Thank you for sharing all of this.
Oh, so good.
I just wanted to share, my first introduction to Phish was the farmhouse album when I was a junior, sophomore, junior in high school.
So it was like 99, 2000.
And my first boyfriend introduced them to me.
And that was how I first started, like listening to Phish and Pink Floyd and all that.
And then when I was in college, there was a guy who lived across the street from us, from our apartment, named Vinny, Vince.
I don’t even remember his last name, something Italian.
He had like a seafoam green truck with the cap on the back, and he had a mattress in there, and that was his like Phish tour mobile.
He was so excited to show me his corkboard with all of his ticket stubs.
He’s like, I’ve been to like 62 Phish shows and blah, blah, blah.
And he’s like telling me, and he’s like, oh, he’s like, have you ever listened to the like 1997 show at blah, blah, blah?
I’m like, no.
He’s like, okay, I’m going to burn you some CDs.
He burned me like a stack of like 60 CDs, all live shows.
Like you said, most of them were trash bootleg recording.
There was one that I really loved.
I think it was either 94 or 97 in Red Rocks.
That show, that was of 60 CDs he gave me.
Those were the three that I could actually listen to over and over again.
Really loved.
I do love what I love about them.
I like The Grateful Dead too.
But what I like about Phish is that when they’re on, they’ve got some good vocal harmonies that they’ll pull out.
And I really, I’m a sucker for harmonies.
I love like Rift.
I love the song Rift for that specifically.
Love that song.
Yeah, yeah.
So, thank you so much, Dr.
Leah, for coming on and shooting the shit with me about all these things.
Where, if anybody wants to learn more about Embodied Groove or connect with you or start a conversation, where would be the best place for them to do that with you?
Yeah.
Well, you can always visit my website, drleahtaylor.com, that’s going to tell you where the latest Embodied Groove happenings are.
You can also follow me on Instagram or TikTok, at DrLeahTaylor, and yeah, I’m pretty active on both of those.
Yeah.
And you kind of come back to the East Coast fairly regularly for different things.
Do you have anything that you planned coming up?
Yeah, yes.
I’m actually, so my family still lives on the East Coast, and I like to take my son there during the summer to spend a month or a month and a half on that side of the country.
So I have actually an Embodied Groove retreat that I am leading to Phish Bethel, which is the site of the original Woodstock, which I’m really excited about.
And so that is august 8th through the 12th.
The Phish shows are the 9th, 10th and 11th, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
But we have the house rented Thursday through Monday.
And it’s a very intimate retreat.
There’s a couple of spots left right now.
So it’s for women only.
And I am going to create the safe environment where we can really just dive in and create some deep relationships with each other, get what we need to and go back out into our life feeling fully nourished, as opposed to ragged and haggard after a three-night run.
So we’re going to have a spa day on Sunday.
We’re going to do Embodied Groove every morning.
I’m going to have nutritious brunch for us.
And we have like a very, there’s like a fairy land in the backyard with a stream running through and a hammock and all kinds of things to balance our nervous system outside of the amazing live music that we’re going to be experiencing.
Yes, that sounds amazing.
If my life wasn’t so intense this summer, I would totally, I saw your ad for it not long ago.
I was like, oh, that sounds so good.
That’s how I want to experience Phish.
I know.
Yeah.
So it’s for seasoned Phish fans or Phish curious if you’ve never even been to a show.
Come on, we’ll show you the way.
It’s going to be my 100th show that Saturday.
Oh, yay.
That’s so much fun.
Well, thank you so much for being here.
And thank you, everybody, for listening and for being with us.
And be sure to pop over to patreon.com/musicbydesign to see all the charts that we referenced and talked about today, as well as some more links to some of Dr.
Leah’s work.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
It’s been great.
Hey, you made it to the end of the episode.
What did you think?
Are you fascinated by this all?
Do you have loads of questions now?
Are you gonna go look up some charts of all your favorite musicians?
Well, come on over to my Patreon page at the link in the show notes, and let me know all about it.
I would also really love it if you could leave a rating and review, and share the podcast with a friend who you think might enjoy it.
Until next time, keep on rocking, my friends.
