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 their music.
So come dive in with us, start cleaning your house, go on that long road trip, because these are long episodes.
Hello there.
Welcome to Scorpio Season.
Welcome to Music By Design.
I’m Anna, your host.
Welcome to Scorpio Season.
I know my husband’s excited.
He’s got a lot of Scorpio placements.
We have been celebrating his birthday since before Scorpio Season started two weeks ago, a week ago.
Last week, we went to see Warren Haynes.
Was that last week?
No, that was two weeks ago.
Time.
What is it?
Who knows?
We saw Warren Haynes two weeks ago.
Last week, we went to open mic at Moondogs.
Tonight, the time of recording this, it is October 23rd, we’re going to go see Daniel Donato at the Westcott.
Haven’t been to the Westcott in a while, but love Daniel Donato.
So I’m going to be doing that tonight.
Tomorrow, we’re going to open mic at Lunkenheimer, a microbrewery out in Weedsport.
Love it there.
Friends of Sean, who, different Sean, Sergot, who runs open mic there.
Yeah, music.
Music is flooding.
As you will hear later in this episode, I think we’re probably going to also go see Mikaela Davis.
Let’s see at the middle-ish end of November.
I think it’s the 20th.
She’s playing at Homer Center for the Arts.
If you want to go, there’s a link to that in the show notes.
So what is going on?
What is going on, people?
I am sitting here with an ice pack on my right sacral lower back area.
I’ve been blessed with some pain there this week that I’ve been managing, so that’s always fun.
The sun is in Gate 50 currently.
I think at the time that you’re listening to this, the sun will have just switched gates.
It will be.
Yeah.
So the sun today, on Friday the 25th, the day this airs, the sun is in Gate 28.
Man, if you’ve listened to any or all of the previous podcast episodes, there’s a pretty good likelihood we talked about Gate 28, because it’s a theme.
It’s a theme.
It has cropped up a whole lot amongst songwriters, people who write music, make music, the people we’ve talked about, people we’ve talked to.
Gate 28 and that whole channel, the 2838, the channel of struggle, because who doesn’t love to hear a story about a good struggle, right?
But we got to remember, but struggle is just where it starts.
Struggle is not the whole story.
Struggle is what moves us into seeking deeper meaning.
So let’s not forget that as the sun moves through this energy, y’all.
I don’t have a whole lot to say on the transits other than that, but I wanted to let you know about some other really cool things that are happening in my world.
First of all, I do have to apologize.
This episode should have come out last week, according to the bi-weekly schedule I set for myself this year, but this is the first time I didn’t make it.
There’s a bunch of different reasons.
I don’t need to spell all of them out, but namely being, I just didn’t have any episodes and I’ve been batch recording.
I’ve been feverishly recording new episodes, new interviews with folks.
The last two weeks, I’ve recorded five episodes.
I’m about to record another one today in about half an hour.
So these are super fresh, super, super fresh.
And we’re like rounding out the year on the first year of Music By Design.
And I’m going to call that the first season, really.
And we’ll see, we’ll see what happens after this.
But anyways, this episode was just recorded, I think, like, I don’t know.
Again, sense of time is all wacky, but I think like two weeks ago.
And so I just have been piecemeal editing and getting things ready for y’all so that I could record this intro and put this out there into your ear holes.
So I think I’m going to try to release, get back on the normal schedule and release another episode next Friday.
So lucky you, you get two weeks in a row.
So a couple things to let you know about.
First, I mean, I’m always excited.
I feel like I overuse the word excited, but I am.
I’m excited.
I’m excited about a couple of things.
So number one, you can go to my website, AnnaWithIntention.love, and you can pull up your own dang chart on my freaking website.
I am so stoked about this.
Like technology is so cool.
And this is something that me with my big emotional wave that takes a long time.
I have been sitting on this for well over a year, I think almost two years of waiting for the right time to make this shift, make this move.
And I do wish I had done it sooner and it’s OK.
And here we are now.
So if you’ve whether you’ve gotten your human design chart before or not, I would love if you would just go check it out.
And let me know if there’s any hiccups, if it doesn’t work.
But it comes with a bunch of little mini descriptions of your type, your strategy, your authority, your your profile, your emotional themes.
And even it even goes into some of the PHS stuff.
It gives you a little description of your environment and your digestion, your determination and your sense and your motivation, all that stuff.
It’s loaded with info for free.
All you got to do is go to the website and put in your deets.
And then if you want to, if you want to purchase a report, which is basically like a PDF version of a reading, because I, you know, I really don’t have a ton of space in my schedule these days for live readings on Zoom with y’all.
And these are a bit less pricey than a one-on-one Zoom reading with me.
There are three different little reports you can purchase.
One is for $11.
You can get a Health By Design little mini report.
It focuses on three different aspects of your design and gives you little tips on energy, which is really cool.
And then there are two different quantum human design reports that you can purchase.
One of them, I think, is a 12-page, and the other one is, like, way longer.
It’s like a 60-page report.
The 12-pager is, like, $35.
And the longer one is, I think, it’s $77.
Don’t quote me on it.
I’m still new at this.
So yeah, and it’s all customized to your design.
The software does it automatically.
It’s just freaking awesome.
And my brain is exploding with all kinds of ideas of different kinds of reports I can make on different things, kind of like the health one.
I can make an intuition one.
I can make a parenting one.
I can make all kinds of different.
I can make a love and relationships that’ll probably come out in a couple of months for Valentine’s Day.
So, yes, it’s exciting.
Please go check it out.
I would love to hear from you and let me know.
It’d be so cool if you could just do something that takes an extra five seconds like screenshot your chart and share it on Instagram or Facebook and tag me.
Or you could just send me a DM saying, oh my gosh, I ran my chart and it’s so beautiful.
It’s so colorful because I customized all the colors.
So, yeah, I could talk about it for hours, just saying the same thing 10 different ways.
But please go check it out.
Anna with Intention.Love.
Next, I have two different things that are StoryLab related.
So I’ve been touching on StoryLab a little bit.
I did my talk at the Intentional Feminine back in September about StoryLab.
And if you missed that talk or you didn’t get to come to cultivating the Intentional Feminine and you want to hear what that’s all about, I am doing the same talk again with slight differences because it’s always a little different.
I’m doing this again on November 13th.
The WBOC, which is the Women’s Business Networking Organization I am a member of, I am hosting what’s called a Connections Meeting.
And everyone that’s a member of WBOC gets to host these Connections Meetings.
They are free and open to the public.
Anyone can register and attend these where you get to learn a little bit more about me and my business and a facet of my business, what I do.
And so I’m going to be talking about StoryLab, which is kind of like an intro to how human design fits into how you create the world you see around you through your own personal narrative.
So you can register for that.
Again, free to attend.
It’s going to be over Zoom, November 13th at 7:30 p.m.
You can register for that at the show notes, at the link in the show notes.
And then on November 16th, just three days after that, I am hosting my first ever StoryLab immersive workshop.
This is called StoryLab, claim your main character energy.
This is all about sussing out the areas of your life where you have been playing small, acting like an extra in your own movie, and where we will take you on a journey of creating a personal myth, a semi-fictional character who goes on a journey of discovering their true essence and moving out of that shadowy place, out of that victimhood place, out of that place of not really being the main character in your life, and into the highest possible expression based on your human design.
We’re going to do it with fun and play and imagination and acting and painting, and just great discussion and in a really intimate container.
It is limited to up to 30 people, but really if we get like a nice cozy group of 10 or 15 or 20, this is going to be such an amazing event.
I already have a couple people registered to attend.
I would love to see you there.
It’s only $44 for a four-hour immersive workshop on Saturday, November 16th from 1 to 5 p.m.
at the Center for Sound and Ceremony located at the Delavan Studios in downtown Syracuse.
That place is awesome.
It’s owned by Meg Thomas and Amy Asante.
And I’m pretty sure they’re going to be there too.
It’s going to be awesome.
Please check it out.
Again, the link is in the show notes for that as well to register and you will get a little email from me when you do and all that sort of stuff.
So these are the things happening and kind of also part of the reason why like I missed putting out an episode last week because I have been creating content and getting ready to launch stuff on social media and sending out emails and just doing all the behind the scenes prep work.
So, you know, it’s not an excuse.
It’s just that’s why.
And I had to I had to let something fall off a little bit.
And it was this.
So, you know, anyways, yeah, as always, thank you for being here.
You’re awesome.
This is a really great conversation with my friend, Brian Grafstein, and actually, like all the episodes that are going to come out, like starting with this one for the end of the year, are all with local people, local to the Syracuse area.
So I know all year we’ve kind of gone far and wide.
We’ve talked to people from all over the place, and now we’re bringing it back home again.
So I think you’re going to really like hearing these conversations with some of the people that you may know personally.
So Brian Grafstein, he is, you know, we didn’t even actually talk about his design, his actual design.
We really talked more about the Gene Keys in this episode, which is cool.
So if that’s something that you’ve heard about, heard me talk about, we kind of talk about it a little bit more and explain it a little bit more.
And he really gives his perspective and insights from it.
But Brian, I’ll tell you his design now.
He is a 4’6 emotional projector with the right angle cross of explanation.
So he’s like, you know, a fuzzy feeler.
And he’s also this like he names it.
He’s like a big person.
He’s this like very kind of bear like, but very like warm, fuzzy, grounding, chill, super chill bear kind of energy.
And yeah, I won’t say too much more because we say it all in the episode.
And yeah, just remember to check out those show notes.
And thank you so much again for being here and enjoy.
Welcome to today’s episode of Music By Design, y’all.
I have one of the coolest people I’ve met in recent years with me today, Brian Grafstein.
He is a massage therapist and lover of human design and Gene Keys and huge music fan.
And we’ve known each other since 2019.
We actually met at a small music festival at the G Lodge.
I think it was the G Jam 2019, pre-pandemic times.
None of us knew.
None of us knew what was coming.
And I had just been introduced to human design and was like full dive in reading all the books and doing all the research.
And I was set up to vend.
And at the time, I was just vending all kinds of random stuff.
It was like candles and artwork and I don’t know, a bunch of crystals and like random stuff.
Yeah, I was doing Hanna and all this sort of stuff.
And we were set up next to each other and you and your soon to be wife, Victoria, at the time, had your massage booth set up right next to us.
And I don’t know at what point in the weekend we started talking about it, but it was probably fairly early on because I was so excited about human design having found it.
And we started talking about it.
And you were like, oh, I know human design and that just like all the questions started pouring out of me.
Tell me something I don’t know.
Tell me a resource I should look into.
My five one was so excited.
So yeah, so we’ve known each other for a while and haven’t seen each other in a little while.
But you know, the way the Internet is, it’s easy to kind of like keep tabs from the shadows.
And so, Brian, why don’t you tell us anything else you want to tell us about who you are?
Obviously, you’re much more than a massage therapist and a music listener.
But tell us a little bit more about who you are.
And if you have any songs that have been stuck in your head today.
And what’s your favorite color in this phase of life?
If that’s anything that has like shifted and changed for you, or if it’s the same?
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
So my name is Brian.
Where to begin?
So I’m more steeped in the Gene Keys than Human Design, but I have since probably around then, I’ve kind of delved a little bit deeper with Human Design.
And so also interesting.
I had this really interesting chance encounter with the Gene Keys in 2014 at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.
And that kind of set me on this path that I’m on.
I became a massage therapist a couple of years later, 2016.
And yeah, really, really wild stuff.
But it’s so resonant.
And I really enjoy Richard Rudd says that doing stuff like this is like, you know, going to a dance.
And he’s like, sometimes you want to dance, sometimes you don’t.
And that has been the way.
There’ll be days or years, months, weeks, whatever, where I am just full on, fully immersed and, you know, super in tune with it all.
And then there’s other times where I don’t think about it very much.
And then the universe will kind of call out to me and pull me back in in one way or another.
My favorite color currently is got to be tie dye, which is not a color, but it is a, that’s just been like where I’ve been living the past few years.
Just if I can wear a variety of colors in fun, you know, patterns that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense, I’m into it.
But I, you know, I have two little girls now, two daughters, two and a half and one and a half.
And they remind me often that one of my favorite colors is purple.
And so that’s kind of where I’m at in this phase.
I’m like, yeah, I’m like, I’m full embrace for purple.
Love it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that’s, you know, upper chakra vibes, crown chakra, you know.
That’s awesome.
Tye-Dye, I think, I think many people would agree that Tye-Dye is a color.
I know a lot of people that would think that’s a color.
For sure.
What about a song that’s stuck in your head?
A song that’s stuck in my head.
Oh, man.
I’ve been really into Les Special lately.
Pretty much, have you heard of Les Special?
Yeah.
I really love their whole album.
I think it’s Gene, C-H-E-E-N, with the different shaped smiley faces on the cover.
Okay.
Yeah.
No one song in particular, but just like the driving beat and the bass lines.
It sucks me.
It’s been a broody couple of weeks with the seasons changing.
So it’s been internal and.
Yeah.
I was going to say, they’re a little bit heavier of a vibe.
They’re more electronic and a little like, I feel like I saw them live at the 80K Fest a couple of years ago and like George and.
Cool.
Yeah.
We just saw them there like a few weeks ago.
A little too heavy for me.
I’m like, yeah, it’s it’s intense.
I was like, I could I could see, you know, if you’re like up front in the vibe with the crowd and, you know, maybe there’s varying levels of intoxication.
But for for me, it’s hard for me to get into.
You know, I could see there’s certain times where maybe that would be appropriate.
But in general, I’m like, I’m going to go look for T-shirts.
We had this like really funny moment.
So they were the second day of the festival this year.
Actually, no, they were the first day.
Yeah, they were relatively early in the festival.
And, you know, having kids going to music festivals gets a lot more, less free flowing, more work.
But, they like cracked open the festival for us because they came on, and it’s something that I will throw on every once in a while around the house on our bigger speakers.
And my little one and a half year old, they started playing and she took off to the rail.
She just beelined.
And she refused to leave.
And it was really just like one of the cutest things ever.
She wanted to be picked up.
She was like standing there, throwing up the hands at it.
Like, got some really nice moments there.
And it just like, it was like, okay, cool.
Like the girls are into it.
Like we can vibe here.
We can finally be back in that sense of freedom, even though it’s still a lot of work.
But there was tons of kids there.
So it was really excellent family festival.
I’m so glad that we went.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
We only went the one time and we got a hotel room and stayed for two nights.
And it was cool.
It was kind of our first time ever going to a festival where we stayed in a hotel rather than camped.
Yeah, yeah, the luxurious stuff.
And then you went to Jam Cruise.
Well, actually, before we went to Jam Cruise, then the next up level was we went to the 4848 in West Virginia, which is at Snowshoe Mountain Ski Resort.
It’s literally, you’re staying at a resort.
Your ticket covers the cost of your room and your pass.
And then there’s, it’s like a little ski town, ski village on top of the mountain.
And there’s all the shops and restaurants and all this stuff.
And there were shuttles, the free shuttles going back and forth to where our little, little, it was like a little hotel, little mini hotel amongst other little mini hotels that we stayed in.
And that was, that was a huge up level experience.
Yeah, and we’re doing it.
We’re doing it.
Yeah, we’re growing.
We’re maturing.
It’s definitely you hit this like age threshold where you’re like, OK, and like having kids and and if you have kids, that definitely like makes the experience just a bit less stressful to have like, like it was rain, it rained a bunch when we were there.
And like clockwork every day at five o’clock, we got a rainstorm that came through.
And so it was really nice to be like, oh, my shoes and socks are getting wet.
Oh man, I guess we’ll just go back to the hotel room and change and put on the fireplace and drink beer while we wait for our shoes to dry or put on our extra pair of shoes and go right back out again.
You know, it’s like not a big deal.
Whereas like when you’re camping, if your shoes and socks get wet and it’s cold, it’s like ruins your entire experience.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that was a huge up level.
And then, yeah, going on Jam Cruise was that that’s been like a similar to when I was talking to Dr.
Lee about it.
Her and I had a similar thing where she’s only a few years older than me.
And so like when Jam Cruise first became a thing, like I think I was on an email list from Jam Base and I got the email about it.
And I was like, I think at the time I was like, I don’t know, probably 20 or 21.
It was like, you know, so far off in Dreamland for me to possibly go.
I was like, that is the coolest thing.
And here 20 years later, we were on Jam Cruise 20.
So 20 years later, finally made it.
But definitely, I mean, there are things about being cruise lines and cruises that are vulnerable to the environment.
And I recommend they do have a huge green program and giving back program and all that sort of cool stuff worked into it.
So I’ve never really had a huge desire to go on a cruise because of the environmental impact and disturbance to all the sea creatures and all that stuff.
But to go this one time, it was a dream come true.
And it really was really.
I get it.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah, it’s one of those things.
We went on, Victoria and I have gone on two cruises.
One of them was for my sister’s wedding.
And the other one was to hang out with her family.
And both of them were kind of less.
Our decision to go is more like family decision.
So we had a difficult time acclimating.
And all of them though, towards the end, you know, is like, okay, I can see why people do this.
Like, I get it.
And now that I have kids, I’m like, oh yeah, I can totally understand why a lot of people do this.
And when you can get them for a really good rate, I mean, it’s like, a lot of them have like childcare programs on them.
And also like, just like all sorts of things for kids to do, you know?
So it’s like, oh yeah, like I could spend 400 bucks or 700 bucks, you know, for a full week to go and eat like whatever I want, which is also kind of one of the downsides, because it’s kind of like, wow, how much highly processed food can I shove into my body?
It was pizza.
Pizza was the thing on Jam Cruise that like they had to have like five people constantly crank them out because it really was like the most delicious thing they had at the buffet.
Everything else was like, okay, but like the pizza was killer.
Yeah.
Victoria and I were all about the desserts.
We would, at the end of dinner, we would get all the desserts that they had to offer just to like try out the pastries and stuff.
Yeah, I did like the cheese.
They had a great cheese, like charcuterie section, too.
The little brie wedges and all that stuff.
Yeah.
Right.
Pile up a plate, bring it back to the room.
OK, so if you haven’t met on a cruise before and you don’t get seasick, it’s worth a try.
So can you give us a little bit of your history with Gene Keys, Human Design?
So before we get into that, for anybody that doesn’t know what Gene Keys is, I’ve referenced it here and there throughout the podcast.
But Gene Keys is basically like a sister modality to human design.
Human Design was founded by Ra Uruhu in 1987 or 89, whenever he channeled it.
And Richard Rudd founded the Gene Keys later in like the late 90s, early 2000s.
He was a student of Ross.
So he studied human design deeply.
And human design is a very like mental information, heavy, very analytical, very left brain kind of a system.
But however, what it would try to get you is to get out of the left brain and into the right brain with the way, with what it is that it teaches.
So it’s interesting.
I like it for that because I feel like it gives my left brain something to do while my right brain is trying to like open up.
But Richard has a more like Zen Buddhist meditative approach to studying all the archetypes in the I Ching, the 64 hexagrams, which is a big component of human design.
So he actually kind of took it and expanded upon each of the hexagrams giving them a deeper shadow, gift, and cidic frequency, and really recommends to all of his students to really take a much more contemplative approach rather than this very analytical approach where you study one of, you study a key and you sit with it for as long as it takes, and bring it into your awareness and let it become part of your just daily just contemplations and it does become a theme.
So he does have sequences you can follow, the genius sequence, the pearl sequence, and the Venus sequence, and there’s a little chart you can pull up, excuse me, online at his website, and it does use the planetary positions from your human design chart, gives you these sequences that you’re contemplating.
So just a little background for anybody that doesn’t know what Gene Keys is.
Did I do it fairly good, Justice?
Okay.
I’m still new with it.
I’ve gone through my genius sequence.
I’m like at the IQ in my Venus sequence, and I’ve been sitting at my IQ for six months.
I feel like I’m ready to move into the next sphere, but man, as soon as I started looking into, actually, it was the one before, the one that’s the moon position in the Venus sequence.
That one’s my Gate 18, and that one hit me hard.
Yeah.
So I actually…
I can’t really see it.
So, sorry.
You finish.
I’ll talk to you.
No, I want you to go.
You got a little thing to flow with.
Go flow with the 18 because I want to hear you.
The 18 has been super resonant with me since the birth of my first daughter.
And I had this really wild kind of synchronicity line up.
I’ve always wanted to have a sleeve tattoo.
And I had like this whole list of things that I wanted to integrate into it.
And my buddy that I worked with to do my tattoo runs this shop in Pennsylvania called Magic Cat Tattoo.
And he obviously loves cats and he loves doing big cat tattoos.
So tattoos for me are very similar to, you know, the Oracle where, you know, I am particular but also open.
And so I got the things that I really wanted and I like let them know.
And then one of the things was like, you know, I really want you to do something that you really do well.
And I like the idea of a tiger or a lion somewhere.
And, you know, like the whole idea behind that whole thing.
And so on my arm up top here, you might not be able to see it too well.
But you talked me into doing a tiger climbing a, like a mountainside, rock side.
I’m going to have a big sunset up top.
But right after I got this big tiger that takes up my entire bicep, it was a huge tattoo that I was not really fully planning on doing.
I started thinking to myself, I’m like, man, like, why did the tiger choose me?
Because it’s like, obviously, like, there’s something here.
And like, maybe a week later, they launched, or they started talking about launching the DreamArc, which is the Gene Keys dive through, like, a handful of different animals that are associated with all of the different gates or keys for Gene Keys.
And they have one that represents the shadow frequency, one that’s the gift, one that’s the city.
And the cities are all birds.
The gifts are like different mammals or like bigger animals.
And the shadow is represented by a bunch of insects.
And the 18 is the tiger for the gift.
So that was like, and the tiger is like, I learned so much about it since then.
That’s been almost four years now since I got this tattoo.
And the tiger is like, I am a creature of isolation.
Like I don’t, I’m not a pack animal.
You know, I am one that I want to be by myself.
I want to be relaxing when I want to be relaxing.
I want to be hunting when I want to be hunting.
And I’m also huge.
I learned that tigers are like three or four times bigger than like most lions, which I thought was really wild.
Like some of these tigers are over 2,000 pounds, like 15 feet long, just giant animals.
And yeah, so in the DreamArc, the animal synthesis of the Gene Keys, the tiger is basically like, you know, if you want to work with me, I’m an animal that wants to be worked with in isolation.
Like, you’re going to pick me and we’re going to be the ones that work together.
You don’t need to work with other animals if you’re going to work with me as your guide.
And I haven’t fully been able to surrender to that yet.
So I’m still kind of building into that.
But at the same time, I have this constant reminder that, you know, like, what is it?
And a lot of it for me has been just like learning to be patient, to also be working towards my goals, you know, working towards my prey, like while I’m on the hunt, without really forcing things or like being like in a rush to get there.
It’s like the tiger eats when the tiger eats.
It’s not always something that you can just manifest in front of you to eat.
You got to wait for the right moment to strike and to get the kill if you’re a tiger, you know?
So, with having small kids, like life becomes tumultuous.
There’s like all these things that you really want to be, you know, I want to be providing and we want to be having these extravagant great meals.
I want to make my kids turn into these other giant animals as well.
But it’s really hard to do.
And as a small business owner too, I’m like, you know, I’m like trying to do everything I can to gear into that kind of growth mindset.
Well, I’m always in the growth mindset for the most part, but yeah, like the actual manifest that growth is, it’s something that takes time and I’m realizing like, okay, so that’s like what this longer commitment is about.
Like we are going to have to sit and we’re going to have to wait and we’re going to have to train.
We’re going to have to do all the things that are necessary to grow into that form.
Because they all start out small, only the successful ones get big.
Only the king of the jungle is going to be the one that’s really doing all the work that needs to get there.
Then as far as the Gene Keys go in general, like I was saying, I had this really incredible chance encounter at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, the Alex and Alison Gray’s place in Wappinger’s Falls in upstate New York.
I was there for Art Church in 2014.
I went there.
Art Church is like, they’ll just go through something.
There’ll be a short lecture.
This particular one, it was like figure drawing.
So Alex did a short lecture and then gave a little bit of pointers and letting the art flow through you.
That was really lovely experience.
At that point, my girlfriend at the time had given me an Osho tarot deck which I really loved and I still love it.
I had that with me.
So after the event, I was hanging out with some new friends that I had made and my ex.
We were pulling cards and we were going through the booklet and talking about everything.
Then this guy walks up to me and he’s like, hey, I used to be super into tarot and then I discovered this really cool book called The Gene Keys.
Have you heard of it?
Apparently, they had just done a retreat weekend at Cosm the weekend before and this person was Elijah who runs all the tech stuff for them now.
It’s like this brilliant wizard of a person.
But he was like, yeah, when I first started working with the Gene Keys, I would just flip open to a page and treat it as an Oracle and see what the Oracle had for me that day.
From that point forward, I was like, all right, cool.
I literally pulled out my phone, went on Amazon and ordered it.
It was like 18 bucks.
It gets to my house and it’s this giant tome, that thick book.
I loved it.
I couldn’t get enough of it.
For a lot of people, I described that initiation as walking up or hiking up this beautiful path up to this great grand vista.
And then once I got up there, I get stuffed into a garbage can and then kick down the hill to walk back up it.
I had gotten so much out of it in such a short amount of time that my bubble pumped and I had to start growing the bubble again.
And I realized shortly after that, that I didn’t actually, I wasn’t taking like the pathways or the golden pathway as he calls it, with like the activation sequence in the Venus and the Pearl.
Like they didn’t have like all that, this whole system that are the structure that they have now online, where you can really follow everything.
They did have the profile maker, but yeah, it was at that point where I decided to go back to the beginning of the book because I had never done that.
And I read through like the first handful of pages where he’s like, okay, here’s how you actually use this book.
And then he’s like, and I highly recommend taking your time with these things and letting things settle.
And I was like, oh, okay.
So that’s where I think I went wrong.
And ever since then, I’ve revisited a lot of it multiple times.
When it comes up, I’ve walked the path a couple of times now from start to finish.
The golden path is as they call it.
But it is different from human design in that it is a more limited view of the chart.
So it’s not the full human design chart yet.
There’s other things that it sounds like they’re going to release at some point.
But I really, really, really enjoyed it.
It set me on a path that I think has really helped my kind of spirituality manifest.
It’s also helped me take time to pause and to feel okay with taking that space.
I’ve always been like a kind of a contemplative person, but I didn’t fully realize it.
So I started playing with the Gene Keys.
Yeah, I highly recommend it to everybody.
At this point, I’ve done everything.
I’ve become a Gene Keys guide.
I work with a handful of clients just to see what’s coming up for them and help them process things and re-envision their life.
Just essentially helping them look through a different facet of their life to get a new fresh perspective.
That’s been my goal for the most part since starting to offer that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Cool.
I love that.
You got Gene Keys first and then you then work backwards a little bit and went into the human design realm a little bit just to kind of familiarize yourself with what the system is based on.
Right.
Yeah.
Also just to see, again, it’s a whole other facet that you can look through for the programming.
Again, it’s a left brain playground.
It really is like, I’ve got in the arrows, I don’t know if you have gotten into the variable arrows at all in the Human Design chart.
You’ve got actually a fairly good amount of left in your four arrows.
You’re personality left, left and then design left, right.
Which is a lot of just like, it doesn’t mean you are a left brain person, but it’s more about just how those variables manifest.
A lot more like active and more active in the way you engage with your environment and the way that your digestion wants to work and stuff.
Mine is D, I’m PRL, DRL, so I have even amount of right and left arrows in my thing.
But my brain does really well because my brain and my mind are both right arrows, so they’re both more passive, where if I try to focus my mind onto learning a specific thing, it can be more difficult.
Whereas if my body is active, while my brain is passively taking in the information.
I am a podcast junkie and I got the Gene Keys, I got the physical book, but I also bought it on Audible.
I just started listening to my activation sequence just while I was cleaning a house or driving somewhere or whatever.
You know, your brain will just like, all of a sudden you realize, just like with meditation, all of a sudden you realize, wait, I’m thinking about something completely unrelated to whatever this person talking in my ear is telling.
I’m not actually listening to what they’re saying, but they said something that sent me on a train of thought.
And I love that because the gene, these Gene Keys are like inciting these, you know, brain side tangents that are that’s like that helps and supports my kind of a brain in absorbing and processing the information.
I do want to pop back around to this Gate 18.
So in your in your human design and in your Gene Keys, like you do not have Gate 18 defined in your chart at all.
And so it’s not anywhere in any of your sequences.
I’m wondering, is there like another connection?
Like, does Victoria or any of your children have a prominent Gate 18 in their designs?
Does that come back through for you at all?
See, I think that’s part of why I haven’t been able to fully commit to it.
Like to fully do like the one-on-one because it is like more of a background thing.
That when I’m in like the right environment, like talking with you right now is kind of helping to fill that circuit, right?
So I’m not actually positive.
So I’m much more slow than tech.
Like I’m also a podcast junkie.
I’m a massive information absorber.
A lot of it, I can’t really fully regurgitate well.
But I do feel like the same way, like where I can, if I get into the flow, and it bubbles out, you know.
So I’m not sure.
Like I don’t have their charts like super memorized.
But I know like one of the things that I find fascinating and useful while working with these systems is just the transits.
So even though it might not be defined right now, you know, there’s moments where it does get defined.
And it can become very tangible.
And yeah, I feel like maybe even accessing from a symbolic perspective, that it may fill that kind of that definition for me in moments, at least.
Yeah, I mean, it just was defined by the sun from the 26th of September to the 1st of October.
So I love that it’s pretty appropriate, too, that we’re talking about this energy, because I think also, let’s see, like Mercury was just in it.
And, you know, some of the other personal planets are either about to go through it or just went through.
Yeah, I think Venus is catching up.
So in your design, for everybody listening, in Brian’s design, he does have Gate 58 activated in his Uranus positions, which that also is not a position that would show up in the Gene Keys at all.
Uranus being like, what makes you unique?
You know, surprise, this is me, sort of energy.
And Gate 58 is the one that corresponds and would make an electromagnetic.
So yes, speaking with me, you’re kind of getting that connection right now, too, because it’s my conscious moon is the 18, and I don’t have 58 activated.
My husband does, so we make that electromagnetic together, too.
I’m going to, I need to just pull the music piece in, because this was one of the one of the handful of things that really came up.
When I asked you about your favorite music that you would take with you forever, and also the music you loved when you were younger, pretty much the same answers across the board, Phish and Primus, Phish and Les Claypool, where you’re like two big ones.
What I love about everything we’ve been talking about so far, is that both of them, Trey and Les, both have Gate 18 in their conscious sun, and they were born one day apart.
So one of them is a 46 and one of them is a 35.
They’re both undefined sacrales, one’s a manifesto, one’s a projector.
That’s it right there.
So they’re bringing you the crosses, the 18, 17, 52, 58.
And 52 is another prominent one for you.
You have that hanging, you have 58 hanging, and you don’t have 17 or 18 activated.
But I just found that really fascinating.
And I was wondering if you could expand a little bit, talk a little bit about what, let’s start with like Les Claypool and Primus.
What, where did it start?
Yeah, where do you, where did it start?
What do you, what do you love?
Like when, how old were you when you first kind of found Primus?
So my brother is a huge Les Claypool fan.
And when I was in sixth grade, I asked for a bass guitar.
I was playing the tuba in concert band.
And I wanted to have something that I could play with at home.
That was a little more enjoyable.
I can plug headphones into it and have to toot my horn as much.
So I asked for a bass guitar for Christmas.
And my brother told my mom to get me a five-string bass because his favorite bass player, Les Claypool, plays a five-string.
And then he gave me a CD with Primus covering Pink Floyd’s Have a Cigar, and Primus covering Rush playing YYZ.
And I don’t know if you’re familiar with either of those songs, but they were pretty much always on loop for me for a long while.
That and his whole Sailing the Seas of Cheese album for Primus, and the Anti-Pop was another album that my brother gave me.
But yeah, so it all started, that’s probably like 27 years ago at this point, 20-something years ago.
And yeah, it was a big influence.
I never became very good with the bass, but I do enjoy just picking it up and using it more as a rhythmic instrument rather than knowing my way around the fretboard very well.
But I could pick it up and I could flap around and I can make things work with other people.
But yeah, I guess I didn’t have the capacity to actually just like sit and work it through my brain to get that left hand to do all that other work.
What about Phish?
When did that come into the picture?
Phish was 2012.
I was convinced to take a ride to electric forests.
I had a very interesting time because I went with a handful of high school friends that were not like super deep friends.
And I went with the intention of being a solo explorer.
And I made a good handful of friends, but I had a very internal, intense weekend playing with different substances and getting myself into strange situations with strange people.
And then I got home, and like two days later, there used to be this really awesome bar on Long Island called the Velvet Lounge.
And that was this like mecca type of spot for musicians, blooding musicians, professionals.
And Wednesday nights, we would have these acid jazz and free curry, because it was attached to an Indian buffet too.
That was really cool.
But I had this friend that was there, and we were friends on Facebook and or Instagram or something.
And she was like, hey, I saw that you just went to Electric Forests.
Like, would you want to come on a road trip with me up to Banger, Maine, and then over to Stac to follow Phish around for their first couple of tour dates?
And I was like, I don’t have money, but I’m down to try and figure out a way to make it work.
If you’re interested in helping me do it.
And she was like, oh yeah, dude, like, you know, I’ll get you miracled in at least for the first show.
And then the other shows, I’m sure you will figure it out.
And I went back to her house and we made a bunch of flower crowns and went and like sold them on lot.
And both got miracled in at Manger, Maine.
And that was like such a wild trip too, because she was, she’d been seeing Phish for a number of years at that point.
And she had a whole group that she was going to meet up with.
So I got there and again, turned into like this big solo trip.
And I had a crazy time the first night, slept really well.
Then we got in the car, drove over to Stac.
And then she was like, okay, I got to go and pick up another friend that’s in South of Albany by like an hour.
So see you later.
I’ll hit you up when I get back.
And she like dropped me off at the campground.
And again, I like really had like very little cash, not much food or anything.
And I didn’t wind up meeting up with her again until like Saturday night, you know, so the second night of music.
And the Phish community kind of helped me quite a bit that weekend, made a bunch of friends, got fed, you know, made some lifelong friends to that weekend from like my area that I, you know, they recognize me, I recognize them.
And then they introduced me to other people from my area on Long Island.
And yeah, it was like, so such a magical time.
I remember having like this really intense evening where I’m at SPAC, and the music hasn’t started yet, but I had already eaten some something that was changing my system quite a bit.
And I’m like, you know, I don’t know if you have been to SPAC, or went to SPAC back in 2012 or around that time.
I think they’ve done some changes, but I don’t really know.
But essentially they have these bridges to the pavilion area.
And I was like underneath one of these bridges, just like being like, man, like, what did I do?
Like, what a crazy decision to do all this to myself.
Like, here I am, like, sitting by myself.
And this dude comes up to me.
This guy comes up to me, and a fellow red-haired, red-bearded person.
And he’s like, hey, man, I like your hat.
And I was like, ah, thanks.
And he’s like, you ever seen Phish before?
You look like you’re ready.
You’re ready for them to start, huh?
And I was like, oh, yeah.
You know, I’m, I’m ready.
I’m like super ready for something to change.
And, and he’s like, what’s your favorite song?
And I was like, the one that came to my mind was like Birds of Feather, Birds of Feather.
You know, I’m like sitting here talking to this other, the fellow ginger beard.
And I’m like, you know, Birds of Feather flock together makes, makes sense.
Like I’m feeling, feeling ready to be, you know, with my flock.
And he’s like, guarantee they’re going to play that tonight.
And literally like three songs in, they jumped into that.
And, and that was when like the whole switch happened.
Like my Long Island people like met up with me.
And we just, that like started like this four year or three year thing where like when Phish started touring, we got together and we couched toward like the entire summer.
And we would do all the things that were within like five or six hours of us.
And then the rest we would do from one of my buddy’s houses.
And very, very magical, wonderful stuff.
Great people.
I actually married the couple whose house we did the couch touring at last year in October, right around this time.
I was there, yeah.
The officiant.
The officiant, yeah, it was really fun.
Yeah, cool, cool.
Wow.
Have you ever seen Primus or any of Les Claypool’s iterations?
Yeah.
How do those experiences really differ for you?
I mean, you just like, it sounds like you could talk about being an official for hours.
Yeah, I mean, I’ve had quite a few experiences with both.
My first experience with Les Claypool was Les Claypool and the Fancy Band, and this was in 2008.
My brother had tickets to a show that was in Columbus, Ohio.
He had a friend out there, and one of his buddies from home bailed on them last minute.
He was like, pick a chair if you want to take the ride.
You don’t even have to drive, you can just sit and keep me company.
And I went for the ride.
And this was like my first real full-on exposure to that band in person.
And also another substance that I wound up very much enjoying that night.
But yeah, the difference, there’s like so many differences.
Like, you know, Phish can get really heavy and dark in moments.
But for the most part, they’re like this like uplifting, you know, soul connecting with the vine.
But they do take you through a full, you know, full exploration of emotions, like from the beginning of set to the end of set.
Les Claypool, he will kind of teeter a little bit up in the upper ethers.
And then a lot of it is further down into deeper, darker territories.
And I like, it’s like thrilling to see his music, you know?
And he’s a, so the fancy band was like him.
And I don’t know if you know Mike Dillon is, but he plays like vibraphone and he had a cello player.
And he had, you know, just like this really exciting, like eight-piece band.
It was just like really wild.
And that was like, you know, they were getting into these darker places and also playing with just like cones, you know?
Like it was just a really wild experience.
But the thing that really stands out for me in this moment while I’m thinking about it is the band that he chose to open for them, which is probably it became like one of my all-time favorites too, called Zvachka.
And that’s a, their lead singer is a violin player, and they have a guitar player, a drummer and a tuba player, sousaphone.
So, you know, when I saw them and I saw the sousaphone, I was like, wow, I’m in the right place.
Like, what are the chances that a tuba player myself would be seeing this random band with a sousaphone, you know, bouncing up and down this beautiful woman in a long red dress.
And you can’t see her face, really.
You just see her legs and this bouncing tuba.
And I’m just like, wow, you know, I was just enamored by the whole experience.
And yeah, and then the rest of that night was just incredible, too.
I was wandering around the empty streets of Columbus, Ohio, watching the buildings kind of morph.
And my feeling like all these feelings that really needed processing is really how I see it at this point.
So it was a really wonderful entry into the psychedelic realm in that band.
Yeah.
Cool.
Yeah.
I mean, I just love them.
I love hearing all of these stories and what really connects people to the music.
With Phish, it overwhelmingly seems that the community aspect is really what really gets people coming back over and over and over and over again.
Like you’re describing, they’ll just take a random person they’ve never met before and we’ll feed them, and help them out and all this stuff.
You get that in a lot of different, it’s not just the Phish community, there’s other places you can go where you get that.
But that seems to be the overwhelming.
If you’re here, you’re already one of us.
So what do you mean sort of a thing?
Yeah.
The cool part was they just would, they see somebody and they act.
They’re like, hey man, how are you doing?
You feeling okay?
It’s different from a lot of places where they’ll see somebody and they’ll just be like, yeah, yeah, you know?
Yeah.
How do you feel like the Claypool, Primus audience, where do you feel like that fares?
I mean, I feel like it’s a bit more diverse from the standard kind of fish gore.
I mean, there’s a lot of overlap, but I feel like because it has those darker tones, you get a little bit different variation in the types of people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I have somebody that’s been to probably thousands of live concerts at this point in my life.
The people are receptive when you’re receptive.
I feel like I’m the kind of person that could go to any music event really and I can make friends somehow.
Primus has a strong history with stimulants.
Their audience will often be, you’ll have like the people that are fish heads, that also appreciate strong musicianship.
And then you’ll have the people that are, you know, really just into the intensity.
And, you know, you’ll smell burning plastic-y, weird sense that you don’t really want to smell.
And you might wonder to yourself, what the hell is that person smoking right now?
Like, why, and why are they smoking in the side?
Like, come on, like go outside, dude.
And then you’ll see their face kind of shift.
And you’ll see their jaw kind of change.
And, you know, I was lucky that my brother was my introduction because he educated me, you know, like on the things to look out for in those kinds of situations, you know, to not put myself into a situation that may not be, you know, very ideal, like getting into a tussle with a tweaker type of thing.
Have you ever seen Oysterhead?
Have you ever seen Oysterhead?
I was lucky enough to see Oysterhead at Peach a couple of years ago, yeah.
Yeah.
It was pretty cool.
I’m fascinated by that project because like I said, they probably unwittingly got together, built this really cool band with Trey and Les together, probably unbeknownst to them that they literally carry very similar energetic message and just amplified that whole cross.
You’ll be curious to see Stuart Copeland’s chart as well.
I’d be willing to bet it’s completely different.
Normally, the drummers are usually the outliers.
So in Phish’s composition, John Fishman is the only one that has the 2034.
He’s the only manifesting generator in the bunch.
The rest of them have a lot of other stuff in common with each other and John and I had talked about this in the episode with Dr.
Lee.
Page is a little different.
John’s a little different.
The two of them have some things in common and some like, but like really it’s Trey and Mike are the ones kind of like vibrating on that similar kind of wavelength.
Yeah, I was like, fast, I was like, oh, waist or head?
And these two guys are literally like the same, different expressions of the same soul message.
So that was another one of the CDs that my brother gave me too, was the Grand Pecking Order.
And once I started driving, I had a sound system in my car and, you know, it’s weird music, but I like, I really love that.
I kind of that vibe to that, so it was your head’s Grand Pecking Order.
Yeah, very fun album.
I wanted to circle back to something, you know, some more stuff in your chart here.
The 52nd Gene Key, or the Gate 52, is actually a prominent placement for you in your sequence, in your Venus sequence, as your Mars placement, which I don’t have all the spheres memorized yet.
Can you remind me what sphere the Mars placement is?
I feel like that’s like the IQ or SQ, I mean.
I think the IQ is the Venus placement, because that’s the one that I’m stuck on right now.
Okay.
So I know that one.
I can’t remember if it’s the SQ or the EQ.
Yeah, let me look real quick.
There’s been a few times where I’ve heard you speak about having a hard time with stillness in some regards, having a hard time being able to sit and learn the information or sit and focus on a specific thing.
And it just kept calling me back to that key.
And I’m curious to hear some of your experiences and your contemplations on that one.
Yeah.
Well, the 52 has been big this year, right?
So it’s like a sitting mountain or something like that.
Yeah, it’s like the mountain, yeah.
As you can tell by the placement, that’s been a big piece of my life.
So my dad was a lawyer, high-stress job, got sick pretty early on in my life, likely because of the stress.
So I have really geared my life towards helping other people manage their stress, and as a way to help myself deal with the stress.
I’m currently teaching a stress management class actually, well actually I shouldn’t see the name, but after the semester, I’m no longer going to do it.
But it’s been really interesting a thing to just be thinking about, especially because a lot of stress that we experience are environmentally caused.
And also thinking about how the Gene Keys and human design, we learn a lot about the unconscious programming that we’re taking in.
And my goal for a lot of the students is to make some of these unconscious more environmental impacts to be a little bit more noticeable so that they can work with it a little more.
People probably have heard about how cell phones are really affecting us.
And that’s been like a big thing that I’ve noticed teaching this course over the past couple of years that a lot of people are bypassing a lot of emotions and discomfort and all these things by switching their awareness into their phone for a moment.
And that kind of is like a hard reset in that moment that makes you not fully process some of this energy that’s flowing through us.
So I try to remind people that it’s so important to be mindful of where you’re putting your energy, especially in like transitional moments, like in between things.
Just thinking like, you know, be present with your time and notice like where you’re pouring your energy.
So yeah, stress has been a big, interesting shadow to work with for me.
And also like with massage too, like obviously a lot of people that come to get massages are feeling the stress and they’re feeling the tension inside of their body.
And my goal in that moment is to help them, you know, reframe the sensations that they’re feeling, help them move that energy out so that their body can feel a little more ease in the moments.
So, yeah, and having the gift of this Gene Key be restrained and the City be stillness is really, you know, it’s like, I love how, you know, how even though Richard Rudd is a poet at heart, you know, just like how poetic some of this stuff can be because thinking like, you know, another core teaching for the stress management class is like, my goal isn’t to teach you methods to deal with your stress.
My goal is to teach you methods to like, recognize the things that you don’t have to do that are causing you stress.
So having the gift to be restrained is like, so, you know, it’s like, there you go.
You just got to, you just got to tune in and restrain yourself.
It’s okay.
It’s okay to feel that this gift is a gift.
Like you taking the space to not do this is a gift.
Like, and it will shift your stress energy.
It will transmute it.
You know, you’ll feel better in your life by taking the space.
It’s like a true defined route.
Like, you don’t have to do all the things right now.
Yeah, I do love that dichotomy between stress and stillness.
Because there’s this like implication that, yeah, stress is equal to constant movement.
You know, like never actually sitting.
And I like you’re tying in the thing with cell phone use.
I actually was talking about this in an intro of a previous episode.
I feel like I’ve been talking about Gate 36 all year on and off because of Neptune having sat in it for so long.
And then we’ve just been having different activations as things have moved through Pisces.
And Saturn is approaching Gate 36.
And there’s just lots of Gate 36 energy.
And with Gate 36, there’s like the shadow of, I don’t know if it’s the shadow exactly, but there’s this theme of boredom with it that comes and I feel like we don’t have space for boredom anymore.
I’ve been working with two children as a part-time nanny.
And when they get bored, the older one will say, I’m bored.
And the immediate knee-jerk response is to try to give them something, to take up that space that’s there.
And we do this to ourselves.
Like, I, you know, like, I’m also the kind of person, like, I just do a lot of things.
I’m Gate 34 in my unconscious earth all day long.
I’m constantly, you know, a lot feels like a lot of my space is full all the time.
But I can’t remember the last time I was bored.
Like, I feel like the only times we’re bored anymore are times when we don’t have cell phone service.
And when does that, you know, it rarely happens, like when you’re on the plane, maybe if you’re flying out in the middle of the ocean, like on that cruise ship.
I was never bored, though, because there was a lot going on.
But, right, you know, it’s like, I was the last time you were bored when you just let yourself be bored and didn’t reach for your phone or didn’t reach for something outside of you to do something.
Because with Gate 36, it teaches us that boredom is the impetus for the new experience that will come.
But if you don’t allow the space for the boredom to be there and you fill that space with something else, then that the true experience that’s looking for you might not find you.
I’m just rambling at this point, but.
Well, one of the things that I really love about these systems is just like I was saying, Richard Rudd is a poet, but so is Ra.
They’re both wordsmiths, and I love thinking about these words.
So thinking about being bored, thinking about boring a whole.
I would feel like that when I think about the felt sensation of being bored, I think of the hole in my belly that’s widening, being bored out.
And I’m like, oh wow, yeah, to think about that, when was the last time that I felt like I was being bored?
It’s been a while to think like that.
And I’ve had these revelations too before where I’m just like, yeah, I don’t need my cell phone, but I will also have an earbud in.
And I’m like, oh yeah, well, here I am stimulating myself also.
So it’s like, yeah, definitely very interesting time to be alive like with all the access to stimulants.
Like all sorts of different types and sizes and shapes, you know, there are less holes to be filled, but there’s more filling all around us.
Yeah.
And we wonder why adrenal…
Yeah, we wonder why adrenal fatigue is like a thing now.
Like it used to be a thing.
Yeah, super common.
And, you know, like from the energetic standpoint, the adrenals are connected to the root.
And all of these things in the root are asking for some sort of space or stillness, you know, and if we don’t ever give ourselves that space or stillness, of course, our adrenals are just going to keep pumping and pumping and pumping and pumping and pumping, and then we crash.
Right.
Yeah, and just to tie it back in, of course, you know, Trey, as I mentioned earlier, Trey and Les have the 52 in their radiance, in their unconscious sun.
It’s fascinating to me because like how to think, you know, we don’t know them personally, you know, none of these musicians that we’re really talking about, we’re all, we’re just speculating.
But I feel like to get to a place in a musical career where you have like their level of success and, you know, renown and all of that, they’ve got to have space for that, you know, stillness and whether, you know, with 52, it connects to the gate of focus and details.
And I love the I Ching name for that one.
Gate 9 is the taming power of the small, where it’s all about, I link it to overwhelm.
It’s like the gate of overwhelm because you can get so caught up in all the details that have to get done and can feel overwhelmed and don’t know which one is the one that you really need to work on, so you don’t work on any.
And that can cause you to be still, but in the stress shadow of the 52.
But then if you shift your perspective to look at it, they’re like, well, no, I’m going to tame these details one at a time.
And you just pick the most urgent or if you knew what the answer was, what would be the next one you would do?
What would be the next step you would take?
And then to have the stillness to sit and work on that one detail until you get it to completion.
Yeah.
It’s such a cool channel.
So I recently started a book.
Let me see.
Cam Newton.
Yeah, that’s, is that who it is?
No, that’s a football player.
But it’s called Slow Productivity.
That’s what I should have been.
Kyle Newport.
I was close.
But yeah, the whole idea is, you know, taking the time to be distraction-free to crank out the work that you need to crank out.
And that once you eliminate the distractions from your environment, your ability to fall into like that flow state is just like, you know, you have this huge uptick in your ability to get into that.
And one of the things that he talks about a bunch is like, you know, like every time you look at your phone or you check your email, the clock resets for you to have to get into like that flow.
So and he says that it usually takes somewhere between like 10 and 15 minutes to get started on something.
So if you, you know, you spend 20 minutes, you get into a flow and then your phone dings, you know, your clock resets.
So I’ve been trying to really embody that wisdom that he is kind of trying to share by setting timers for myself where I’m like, I’m going to take the next hour and a half and I’m going to put my phone in airplane mode, I’m going to put it away.
And when that alarm comes up or goes on again, you know, that’s when I know I can stop, I can check my text, I can scroll on Facebook for a minute or whatever, if that’s what I want to do, check my emails, etc, etc.
But the goal being like, I want to be able to be productive with my time.
I don’t want to feel like, oh my god, it’s like, I’ve been working on this for three hours and I’ve gotten, you know, like barely anything done, you know.
It’s really just so wild to see how well it ties in to what we’re talking about.
Yeah, yeah, I always, I’ve come to learn this about like putting a time container around things.
Right.
So containers are so important.
Yeah, because the brain, the brain doesn’t like the unknown like end point.
If there’s just like infinite time extending out past, like you sit down and say, I’m going to work on my website.
Well, your brain’s just like, first of all, that’s a huge thing to work on.
And then second of all, like we need, we need a week to work on your website.
Like, so like the more specific you get on what the task is that you’re working on.
And then the more specific the time container is, the more that part of your brain that just like will spiral and will look for distractions because infinity is really hard to grasp.
And like the Internet, the website is so such a vast thing to grasp that that this is like the opposite of the what’s the other gene key?
That’s the taming power of the great.
I can’t remember which one that is in the E-chain, but it’s like the opposite of Gate 9.
It’s where like the things are so big that they dominate you.
But as soon as you put a time container around it and you say, yeah, I’m going to work on this thing for one hour.
And you set an alarm so that your brain is not constantly like having to check the clock, but you can put your trust in the technology that the technology will ding and let you know when that time is up so that you can lose the sense of time.
You can lose yourself because when you have time controlling and boxing you in, as you’re trying to be in flow, flow and time are diametrically opposed to each other a little bit, right?
So if you can let that part of your brain relax, and often when I’m doing readings with people, especially, I don’t know really whether you’re defined sacral or not.
But when you put the time container around it, where I usually do this with folks who have emotional authority that have the sacral defined, is like you get your big sacral ooo in the moment that says, oh yeah, I like this.
But your emotional authority is asking you to wait, to commit, to make sure that you’re not just being influenced by your emotional wave in the moment.
So I always tell people like, this is your formula, is first, give gratitude.
Thank you for the opportunity.
And then how does it sound right now?
Not just how does it sound, how does it sound right now?
So thank you.
That sounds great right now.
And then ask for more time.
But can I let you know in a couple of days?
Like gratitude, how is it in the moment?
And then ask for more time.
And that’s the formula for you.
Like everyone that’s in emotional authorities, like what is it right now?
And so like always like putting those time containers.
This is also something I’m not sure whether the interview is going to fall.
This one will, I think, I’m pretty sure will come out before, but I’m going to be interviewing my friend Karen soon.
And Karen is a grief specialist.
She’s written a book, she’s done Ted Talks and stuff.
And I actually met her a number of years ago.
And the most profound thing, like I remember talking with her, we were we were in a car ride on the way somewhere.
And.
I was asking her questions about her book and things like that, and she’s like the number one tip that that she can give for anyone who’s faced with someone else who is grieving, like, you know, your friend’s parent just passed away.
What do we say?
Because, like, everyone’s uncomfortable about, what do you say to someone who’s grieving, right?
You ask them, hey, how are you doing?
Well, that’s a big, big, like, how am I doing?
Like, how am I like, that’s huge, like, in what context?
Like, not great, you know, like all this stuff or blah, blah, blah.
But if you put the time container of like, how are you doing today?
How are you doing this morning?
How are you doing right now?
How are you right now in this moment?
It’s so much easier to give like, oh, well, actually, right now, I’m actually doing, I’m doing pretty good.
I had a good morning.
I had some nice memories pop up and blah, blah, blah.
I’m like, oh, that’s how you do it.
It’s that time container because otherwise the brain just gets overwhelmed by the vastness of the potential answer to that question because it starts scanning every experience in life from birth till now.
Right.
Definitely.
Yeah.
As a massage therapist, that’s really relevant too because I’ll have clients come in and I’m like, how’s it going?
How’s your body feel?
Those start, especially if it’s a first-time client, they’ll start going way back to some of them.
If I’m working with an elderly client, they’ll be like, well, back in 12th grade I fell off of a pommel horse and I fractured my shoulder and then this happened and then this happened and this happened and this happened and then this happened.
And you know, this is going on and this is going on.
And I’m like, okay, well, let’s hit the brakes for a second.
Let’s take a breath, feel into our bodies.
And I’ll reframe this.
How’s your body feeling today?
Is there anything that’s standing out to you in this moment?
Like that you want me to focus on while we do this massage?
Because unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to work with like, you know, too deeply some of these things that are 40, 50 years old, it’s good to have structure and an idea of like where some of these things are stemming from.
But like, you know, we’ll get there.
We don’t need to visit that right now.
I’ll ask for more information once I’m in there and we’ll figure things out.
But yeah, that’s another thing that I like to try to teach people is like, you know, your energy can be so broad and we have tons of energy that really wants to flow out of us.
And, you know, the goal is like, yeah, keep the energy flowing, but focus it so that it can be used as a tool.
You know, you can shine your light where it needs to go, or you can use your laser to cut, you know, the shapes that you’re trying to cut instead of, you know, using this diffuse energy that’s, you know, like just lighting up a room that is, you know, you see everything instead of just the thing that you’re looking for.
And it’s difficult, but at the same time, you know, it’s useful.
And it’s also a good thing to let your energy do what it needs to do because it’s going to do it anyway.
Right?
But trying to tune in to that, you know, harnessing your energy to make it more usable is a really useful thing to think about for a lot of people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cool.
Well, was there any parting words of wisdom or anything you want to leave the listeners with today and also share, if you would share, if anybody wanted to work with you on the Gene Keys or get a massage where they can connect with you to do all of that?
Sure.
Yeah.
I would say, I don’t know, I’m thinking about the donkey from Shrek, where he’s like, it’s like an onion, there’s a lot of layers.
Just keep peeling because it’s a never ending onion.
There’s a lot of layers that you can peek underneath and the skin grows back, and then you peel it again and it’s different.
The things that I’ve learned the most over these past, whatever, 10 years since I started playing with the Gene Keys is like you’re constantly changing, and these things that had one meaning yesterday may have a different meaning today.
It’s worth checking in, it’s worth revisiting, it’s worth just taking the time to observe your life and to contemplate what it is that you’re here for, and even contemplating the purpose of why things might be happening around you or to you.
We all have a purpose one way or another, and we’re going to fulfill it one way or another.
So that’s fun.
If you want to get a massage with me or if you want to do some, what I like to call transformational life work, you can reach out to me.
You can visit the website.
It’s called www.attuned.life.
And I’m about to launch like another website called the Alchemist Fire.
That life, and that’s going to be more geared towards the transformational life coaching.
And yeah, massage therapist, personal trainer, Gene Keys guide, trying to help, you know, do all sorts of things to help people, you know, feed that transformational fire and, you know, hone the body from a blacksmith’s term.
You know, we’ll just, we’ll get you in the fire, we’ll work with you and make things knowledgeable and then see if we like how it ends.
And if not, we’ll keep banging away and making the changes.
We’ll hit you with a hammer a bunch of times.
Yeah.
Cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So anything, any like new realizations or things that have sparked you from this conversation that might take you into a new place with your relationship with music?
Well, while we were looking at the Astro cartography chart, I noticed the Mikaela Davis tab that was open.
And I remember that that was the year that we met.
And man, oh my God, I adore Mikaela Davis.
She is, that is probably one of my favorite like touring musicians that is out there right now.
And I feel so lucky to have her in our neck of the woods.
Yeah.
And have had that intimate experience at the G Lodge that year.
Oh my God.
I love that you saw that and brought that up because I was even going to say maybe I think I had the tab up because I got an email from her this morning saying that she’s got an acoustic solo tour.
And she’s going to be playing at the Homer Center for the Arts on November 20th, which is a Wednesday.
And I was just there two nights ago for a Friends Burlesque show.
And I really like that place and where I live in Auburn, it’s only about a 45 minute drive.
So it’s not too far.
It’s all country roads.
So I’m going to probably go.
And maybe you and Victoria can make plans to have a date and we can see you there.
I would love to.
Yeah, we’re like, my youngest one is a year and a half at this point.
And she’s like, we’re like about to do a trial run with grandma to do a sleepover.
And I’m like, I have no doubt that it’s going to go well.
So like we’re now starting to work with like babysitters.
I’m like, I’m ready to go on dates.
I would love to see you at Mikaela Davis.
I saw that they have a handful of really cool acoustic dates like that are coming up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I like that spot a lot.
It’s like a really sweet spot.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
I’ll pop the link to that show and the show notes for anybody that’s curious or talk about.
Yeah.
Maybe throw out one of her albums for people to listen to.
Yeah.
Delivery is such a good album.
Yeah.
I haven’t listened to anything, any of the newer stuff that she’s come out with yet, but I know what I’m going to be listening to later today.
There we go.
Cool.
Thank you so much for sitting with me and shooting the shit on all things Gene Keys and music today, Brian.
It was really wonderful to re-care.
Yeah.
Thanks for your time and your presence and the insights.
I appreciate it.
Cool.
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 going to go look up some charts of all your favorite musicians?
Well, come on over to my Patreon page at the link of 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.
