TGIF :: An Ode to Play, Intuition, and Magic

#45 || Emerging and integrating after the Hoffman Process

Feb 23, 2024

This week I share some reflections after attending the Hoffman Process. This experience was profound, deeply personal, and is far from fully understood or integrated—it’s “fresh.” I am also careful to share in a way that does not breach confidences or spoil it for future attendees. That said, if you plan to attend and want to limit what you know as much as possible, you might want to skip this one.

The What …and my Why

On Friday I joined the 135,000 humans around the planet who have completed the Hoffman Process, a seven-day intensive retreat in which attendees “learn how to transform counterproductive beliefs, perceptions, and emotional patterns that are limiting their lives.” The goal of the work is “lives that are more free, open, loving, spontaneous, joyous, creative, balanced, and whole.”

Introduced to meditation, yoga, and healing arts as a teen, I’ve attended retreats and workshops on and off throughout my life. This past year has been in part defined by a particularly deep healing journey as I sought to understand and overcome some of the underlying factors of my cancer experience. I believe that my cancer ~~has~~ had a message for me, and I wanted to be sure I got it loud and clear. Last week felt like an ideally-timed, pivotal experience at what felt like near the end of a long arc of inner work.

The Process is not a retreat of mostly women enjoying indulgent vegan food, extended periods of meditation, and Instagram-worthy accommodations (though I’ve enjoyed those too). It was work, indeed a process—fourteen hours a day of structured exercises, bold expression, potent visualizations, and extended periods of reflecting and writing. The experience is designed and battle-tested to help a broadly diverse set of attendees identify and break patterns that no longer serve us and emerge a more authentic and loving version of ourselves. Adhering to instructions, we didn’t have any devices (they were locked up on day one!), we didn’t share last names, and what we do for a living was off limits.

As a result, it was a true human-to-human experience without most of the flavors of armor we typically wear. It was a safe, structured, and well-supported space where each of the 38 attendees could deeply explore our unwanted patterns and their genesis. We were equipped to express ourselves in ways we maybe never have before. And finally, we learned pathways to forgiveness, compassion, and new ways of being that have the capacity to be truly life-changing. Though the Process is not confidential, the experience is most certainly enhanced by going in with an open mind and not a lot of detail on the how, so I’m going to leave the description at that.

Near our home in Mill Valley, Wednesday, 2.21.24.

Rebalancing our Four Aspects

One of the foundational teachings is the Hoffman Quadrinity Model, a framework with which we can understand and honor the four primary aspects of the human experience: (1) the Body: our physical dwelling place, rich with essential sensory guidance, (2) the Intellect: our rational, logic-driven, and mental experience (also the seat of judgment, compulsiveness, criticism, and perfectionism), (3) the Emotional Being: our playful, curious, adventuresome selves (also the seat of impulsivity and addictions), and (4) the Spiritual Self: our pure, unprogrammed, and intuitive essence.

Reconnecting With a Sillier Me

We live in a world (and I certainly grew up in one) that celebrates achievement and productivity (the Intellect). Our identities are all too often shaped by where we are from, what school(s) we attended, the career path we are on, who we know and relate with, and what we have acquired. In my case, I discovered that this orientation was further magnified by a profound sense of unworthiness my mother carried and an intense achievement-orientation from my dad, both of which can be easily understood and empathized with given their own life arcs.

Among the most profound outcomes of the Process for me (and many other attendees) was reconnecting with my long-neglected emotional side—the version of me that is drawn to play, explore, try new things, dance (yes!), and be overall less productive and “right” all the time. Since entering law school in 1998, my left brain, my intellect, my yin, my masculine side—have done more of the leading, often at the expense of play, spontaneity, and the thrill of not always knowing outcomes.

I can see clearly now that this has served me well in innumerable ways, but has been costly to my overall health and wellbeing in others. One of my outcomes of the week was a pact between my Intellect and my Emotional Being to live in more balance, to give my Intellect a bit of a rest, to not shun the inclinations towards curiosity, levity, and joy that make us uniquely and spectacularly human.

Lands End, S.F. Taken with the kids during hike in a break in the rain on Monday 2.19.24.

Reminiscent of The Seventh Awareness

As the experiences has continued to settle, I recognize that the motivator behind such a time (and money) investment is really about time: How and on what do we want to spend this life’s heartbeats?1 The Process does have the capacity to help us shed unwanted tendencies and live life with more more freedom, love, joy, and creativity.

The Seventh Awareness: Time is our most precious currency, invites us to live with presence, intention, and a certain deliberateness around how we spend our most precious resource—our time—at any stage of life. But let’s not let these weighty words confuse us. Our intention can also include to simply be lighter, have more fun, and be more joyful. I thought about this with regard to my kids throughout. They really appreciate, and deserve, their “Fun Mom” and far prefer her over a tense, critical, or worried one.

Coincidentally, when I signed up for the Hoffman Process in July, I was writing this post on time well spent. Little did I know the deep relevance this Awareness would hold in the outcomes.

The first six Awarenesses on Clarity, Choice, Intuition, Healing, Freedom, and Respect invite a way of living that is more free, light, intentional, and authentic. The Seventh Awareness invites us to spend the time we do have in a way informed by the first six: clear, making good choices, honoring our intuition in defining our truest priorities, free of the weight of not yet metabolized difficulties or unhealthy relations. It’s a bid to treat the limited time we have with a reverence and intentionality that will relieve of us of life regrets later because we are true to ourselves.

A Highlight: I GOT THE MESSAGE.

There was a moment during the week when we each had an opportunity to ritualize the letting go of a person or an experience. One of the people/things I bid farewell to was my breast cancer.

I found an old oak tree perched on a bluff, its distinguished canopy creating a natural sanctuary of a room where I found solace in its shade. Dead leaves crunched under my feet as I made my way to a flat spot to linger for a very important conversation. Large fallen branches with girths greater than me wrapped around me, supine, decaying, yet surrounded by signs of new life—mushrooms, sprouts of spring grass, and bright green moss.

Life persists.

Hands on heart, I bid farewell to my cancer out loud, thanked it even. I learned so much on this unexpected and unwelcome journey… how to listen to (at least not ignore) the sacred signals of my body, how to tap into my divine feminine, how to cherish and honor my limited time here on Earth, how to let love in more fully, how to be more, and do less. And now, as a final brush stroke on the canvas, how to celebrate a side of me long suppressed, deemed unsafe or trivial—my playful, curious, adventuresome, emotional self.

I stood in the cool cave of that great oak, a flower cast before me on the earth, and said out-loud:

“I got the message. You don’t need to come back.”

I meant it.

Mom Agrees.

And then this… my (late) mom chimed in a few days later. As if I needed one more reason to believe in magic.

First, some context:

Starting when I was a teenager, she and I had a deal: If her end of life suffering ever grew too great and she was ready to “pull the plug” (her words), our code word was “butterfly.” She’d seen friends and family die in painful, drawn out, messy ways and wanted to make sure her life ended with more grace, less suffering. I always nodded and agreed, part happy to have a special role in her life’s arc, part extremely uncomfortable with this arrangement—utterly denying that it would ever come to that.

In 2011, as she was transitioning amidst a steep decline with esophageal cancer, she gurgled the word “butterfly” to me from the hospital bed in her living room. I heard this several times over as many days, the toughest days. I was incapable of hearing the message, connecting the dots, and didn’t. When she took her last, labored breath, she’d endured days of suffering she wanted to avoid.

It was almost a year later when I remembered our pact. I forgot. How could I?! I let her down—and with her dying wish, no less.

In time, I forgave myself as I know she would have insisted I do. The silver lining is that ever since, butterflies have been a sign to the kids and me that she’s around, with us, paying attention, listening to us, watching us. Butterflies are spotted by us all on hikes, during birthday songs, first days of school, and other moments in which we are gently reminded she is still with us.

So… shortly after receiving my phone back and leaving the campus, my son Tenzin was the first person I spoke with. I’d texted him to call me when he got out of school.

“Tenzin!!

“Mom! Hi! How was it?!”

“It was great, honey. I am so glad I did it, but it was intense, for sure.”

“Cool. What did you learn?”

“The main thing, kiddo, is that mom needs to play more. I’ve been a bit too serious, intense. It’s time for us to have more fun, be more spontaneous and kid-like.”

“MOM! You are not going to believe what just happened! A butterfly just landed on my hand!”

“Tenzin…. really?!”

“Yes, for real. My hand holding the phone! I promise. I’ll send you a picture.”

Taken with Tenzin’s iPhone, 3:20p, Friday February 16, 2024.

No more words on that…

Integration Week

I didn’t get a ton of work done, other than catching up on all things Wisdom Ventures and tending to a few of my ClearLife projects. I have been boldly listening to my intuition (e.g., leaving a room I simply didn’t feel right in), and prioritizing play more than ever. The kids have been out of school and have been fantastic co-conspirators, my younger one having a friend as a guest for a few days. We’ve hiked in mud (one kid in Crocs?), played poker, gone to an arcade, watched two high school baseball games, baked cookies (well, they did, I loosely “supervised”), listened to music far louder than usual, and eaten dinner in a classic 1950s diner.

And, I’ve done minimal errands and household organizing/cleaning. (It turns out busy-ness is as big of a dimmer/distraction as booze.) The sofa is in full disarray after days of of jumping and snuggling, the poker mat is still on the dining room table, and I’m behind on laundry (I’m definitely behind on email.) My Intellect is resting and has been told it will never need to perform at more than 70% of capacity for any extended period ever again.

We’re all adjusting :)

Oh, and lots of self-compassion. I’ve slipped into old ways I hoped I’d left behind several times, feeling tension creep in, wanting to control things I can’t, flashes of unwanted vanity. I remind myself: This all takes time, patience, and grace and it’s the imperfections among us that make us beautiful, inside and out.

These are today’s impressions. They will change, as will I.

Love. ❤️