Marialuisa Diaz de Leon Zuloaga: Invoking Presence

Maríaluisa Díaz de León Zuloaga: My professional experience in psychology, somatics, and the arts spans over twenty-five years and includes work in education, private practice, community intervention, and organizational development.

I am the creator of Mythic Life: Embodying Wisdom, Beauty and Courage. Through Mythic Life I facilitate meaningful and transformational experiences to women from all over the globe. I developed a mythosomatic framework, which is a forward thinking integration of myth, arts, somatic movement and archetypal psychology. This framework, while embodied in my professional praxis and ethos, is articulated in an unpublished collection of academic essays, Somaphilia: Re-membering the Soul and the Aesthetics of Being, which is my masters’ thesis. 

I am a registered Expressive Arts Therapist through the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, and I am a registered Master Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator from ISMETA -the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. I served on the ISMETA Board of Directors for nine consecutive years, the last three as Board President. Through my Board service I gained organizational embodied leadership and insights into the work that it takes to collectively support an emerging field and profession. I continue to serve as a volunteer in the Professional Standards and Equity, Justice, and Accessibility Committees. I enjoy collaborating with the ISMETA Board of Directors to grow the field of somatic movement and advance the profession of somatic movement.

As an adjunct faculty at Southwestern College I teach graduate courses on the concentration on Consciousness in Action; as well as in the community programs through the New Earth Institute. I am an Associate Teacher at Tamalpa Institute where I previously served as Program Director and core faculty.  I supervise advanced students’ fieldwork projects and also offer public workshops where I highlight and celebrate the Tamalpa Life/Art Process in my life’s work.

The Boundaries & Belonging Podcast focuses on educators in the United States, who are teaching in colleges and universities, In graduate and Ph.D programs within the expressive arts therapies umbrella.

Interview recorded on 12/4/2023.

Transcript

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I am so grateful and happy to introduce this dear human, Maria Luisa Diaz de Leon Zuloaga Let me do it again, because I said it wrong. I am happy and grateful to introduce you, Maria Luisa. It's so great to have you here. Maria Luisa Diaz de Leon Zuloaga is a registered expressive arts therapist. You are a Mexican American movement specialist, mythologist, educator, researcher, and performer, and an adjunct faculty member at Southwestern College and Tamalpa Institute. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Welcome. And we know each other from working together at Southwestern College. And, you know, I... I have heard so much about, from your students, about how they love what you offer. And again, just grateful to have you here. Thank you. Thank you, Magdalena. I'm also very happy to be here with you. And I appreciate the invitation and that your instinct into what I can bring to the table as part of this series of exciting conversations that you are having for your dissertation. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I'm glad you're a part of it. I, you know, I'd love to start with hearing about your thoughts about boundaries. How, how do boundaries show up in your work as an educator? What boundaries are explicit in this work? What boundaries are implicit? What do you think about that? Yeah, so I guess I'll go into the easy part of it, I suppose, and I guess the explicit part as far as, you know, expectations that are already part of the some contract agreement that the education, the organization makes with both me as a teacher and with students. So there's already something there about what to expect. Uh, you know, as a teacher, I have like a handout handbook on certain things about boundaries. So that's already a given that helps to put some things into place. And, um, and then as far as the implicit ones, those are very interesting ones. Uh, you know, I do think that probably there's always going to be some implicit. boundaries that I won't be able to grasp and see. But I'm often trying to exercise my ability to feel them, to see what's happening, what's needed, and to bring them into transparent agreements as far as what can be expected. So there are boundaries that have to do with creating a sense of cohesion, I call it like a strong enough container in which whatever is being brought, us, you know, a lot of the students bring their own personal experiences there, and I do to a certain extent, but that everything we bring here is conducive to our learning and our own So that's kind of something that I make clear from the very first class. And we work on kind of noticing what are those qualities that may help that. And, um, and what is interesting also is that I, I bring them into the subsequent classes as reminders. Cause oftentimes we do all that in the first class and dot the I's You know, all of that, but then they get kind of shelved somewhere. And then, so I often refer them as kind of reminders. I sometimes refer them as way to frame things that are happening. Uh, let's remember, you know, sometimes something happens in the classroom and someone is having tears in their eyes. So I do call out. Hmm. the not calling out as in the calling out. I mean, I call, I don't know what other word I invoke, I help us remember that we had certain agreements and that we're holding the space together and I invite everyone's presence to be there. So I'm not just there by myself with this other student that is experiencing a sense of tenderness or vulnerability. I want it to be kind of like we're here. So I tried to notice that those things when they happen in the moment and naming them, naming them feels important to me as far as boundaries go. And I don't know, so far that's what comes to mind. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. And I appreciate hearing like the invoking of presence of the whole group to hold together. And I imagine that is also one of the components of how you facilitate belonging. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that further. Like what does belonging look like in your classrooms? How do you facilitate that? Yeah, that's super important. Sometimes I get up, I get caught up in these definitions and what do we understand for belonging? So I'm just gonna run quickly that I don't necessarily see belonging as, you know, you need to fit in. You need to do this, and that, so you get membership and you fit in to this container. For me, belonging is kind of really a given. And again, I put it from the beginning in my, this is how I hold it. And to the best of my abilities, the way I embody it. And from the beginning of class, every quarter, every time we come as a different group together, I speak about us forming this container. the importance of listening all the way to whatever anybody may be bringing to the table to listen with the mind, with the heart, with your guts. Again, the presence part, you know, kind of basic, but so much a big part of all this experience in the learning process. And these I name very clearly. the inviting, the leaning into the different perspectives that could be brought in any given topic in any given day to honor that also we each are humans and that there's some days in which someone will not feel that great emotionally or physically. And whenever that happens, that everyone has a choice to show up or not. And yet the way to show up, it's like the best you can do in the moment, right? And I often invite the students to communicate that to me prior to class. So I hold that, but more and more, especially the last, I don't know, six months. I also say, you know, maybe the whole group can hold that too. So if you can put it on the chat, you know, that you got a migraine today or that you lost your pet a week ago. So not as a justification of any kind. It's more of like. let me voice this and let's all be aware of it. Let's hold that. And so I feel that helps this sense of belonging us in, everybody voice matters. And the way each person is showing up matters. And I put the example just now about, sometimes someone will come with tears in their eyes because something in the material is touching them in a particular way. And then some other times it's more of someone who is really pushing against the material or pushing against the something, or you know, and then tension begins to build out. Then all I do is to, you know, I feel the tension because it's something it's felt in my body. I can pick it up and read facial expressions. And then that's my cue. I'm like, okay. And there's place for this as well. Let's welcome the tension, has something to teach us. And so I name it, again, the naming as much as I can to make things transparent is how I facilitate belonging. Sometimes discussions begin to feel a little bit homogeneous like everybody's gravitating towards the same kind of perspective about a particular topic or. reading we're having and then I noticed that some are not bringing their voices and I often wonder you know is it because yeah shyness can be a factor but it's sometimes it could be because someone is not sure because what the perspective is going to be very different so to the best of my abilities I try to kind of glance at the room and just bring it again you know if anyone's has any other perspective even if If it's very opposing to what we are, I welcome that if you're willing to share because that adds, that just, oh, it's so yummy. And so, as you can see, I get really into it. I get really excited about this to the point of the content and the material can be interesting and relevant, but it's more of the experience of how we invoice all of it. that for me is key in transformational learning. So I just feel every time I have the opportunity to be in class every quarter, every group configuration for me is like, yeah, that's something I'm very passionate about. And something I don't often have the opportunity to share like I am with you right now. Yeah. Hmm. I love hearing what feels also like, you know, spontaneous magic that you are flowing with in the moment as you are facilitating and listening and collaborating. And I, you know, I know that you have deep respect for the Soma. for somatic work and deepening into attending to the body. And it's clear that you use your body as a facilitator. And I wonder if maybe you just talk a little bit about that. What has been your training and how do you use your body? What are the ways in which you listen? Thank you. Think I've used my body all my life. I've used my body to express, to think, to be with. I had, when I was younger, I wasn't very vocal about anything. I was quite shy when I put it that way. And now I'm much more comfortable with. You know, the fact that you and I are here and this has been recorded and I'm speaking without a script and all of that. That's that shows I've come a very long way. Um, so. I, When I was back in Mexico where I started my degree in psychology, I also began training in contemporary dance or modern dance. And to the point where I was like, I think I like dance more than psychology. But because dance became the psychology. And I was noticing how my body continued to amaze me that the discipline of the training in dance, learning certain vocabulary of dance in a particular technique that I was training in was actually like learning a whole new alphabet but in the body. And so... I was just amazed of how much my body could express and hold and how much I could learn to express more with my body. And then I, you know, just fast forwarding to me doing the training on movement-based expressive arts therapy with Anna Halprin and Daria Halprin at the Tamalpa Institute, in which that was really much a decision that came out of a hunch. Like... I think this is what I want, you know, to work with the body. I wanted to do something like dance therapy, movement therapy. But then when I found this, it was more like a, the body is the point of departure into an exploration that can go into different modalities And then the body also becomes the part to return to as a complete in their gestalt of the embodiment. And so there at Tamalpa, I think I want to honor how potent my training had been there because there I learned and Halprin would say, you know, about that as dancers, but also I think as humans, our bodies are instrument. So the tuning of the awareness to deeply listen to our instrument. and learning to sit with and spend time being curious about that really open whole understanding of the body. I've never left. I never left it. So I do feel like the way I bring soma is now really part of who I am. And the other piece that had helped me with this and also in building my confidence has been about making mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake, like the failing experience and the learning, the somatic learning about falling and the beauty of being able to get up again, like that's something our body does. That's basically walking. The mechanics of walking is losing our balance, but catching ourselves every single step, as opposed to losing our balance, which happens and fall with our face flat on the floor. And so I can sense the somatic element as a kind of a physiological phenomenon, but also it's a metaphor. And that's something I learned through my training at the Tamalpa Institute. So one other thing that had helped me Again, is the recovery after falling, after the failures. And, uh, and the, the performance part, I had a wonderful teacher, um, that I've trained in improvisational performance, like physical theater, improvisational performance on a weekly basis for probably seven years in a row. And I really feel that training. of being in front, I mean, remember that I was shy, right? So improvising, not having a script and then having some audience, it was really a training of connecting my voice, my thoughts with my body, being in the present, saying yes to whatever it was. Cause when you're improvising, you're in the stage by yourself, okay, you're in charge, but you share the space with others and you're improvising. You got to say yes to whatever is going on, even though you have an idea where the thing will go, somebody just comes and takes it into a whole other place. I got to go there. I got to say yes. So this idea of yes, this idea of belonging, that everything everybody says is welcome. I think it comes from my performance training and saying yes. That makes so much sense. Yeah. That Allowing and following is what I'm hearing. And being present once again, right, with yourself and with the group. Yeah. I, you know, I'd love to hear more about what you love about teaching and how you got into it. What do you teach? And... What was the journey towards this? teaching in general or graduate level teaching or... Yeah, well, you know, I guess I don't know what your history of teaching is. So, you know, but where you are now in terms of teaching graduate level, therapeutic arts based classes. right. It all goes back to feeling that I had something to offer. that would be helpful that I had something to offer that is valuable because what I have to offer can help others to to tap into their own worth, to tap into who they are. And I think that the idea of liberation comes and it's a word that is being broadcast in many different ways lately, but I feel it's that. I am in my own process of liberation and becoming. And I feel I have something to offer to that effect too. So that, that gave me quite, pretty much the courage to get, I mean, it's not going to sound very compassionate what I'm going to say, but in a way, like tough love, self-tough love, like get over your fear, your shyness, get over that story that is like, oh, just keep it quiet. Like, come on. You know, come on, like step up to the plate. Like, um, so the, The performance training helped me a lot in that. Again, the falling and the get up again, you know, your body can do it. So, so could you it's your bones it's in your system. You can get up over and over again. And, um, so, so then I started to, to teach, uh, workshops. And a lot of the workshops that I started teaching were inspired in this idea of the body part mythology, like your body tell the story through movement to our creative writing through the expressive arts. And then when I went to grad school, I've acquired more of a frame in terms of the mythology as a larger a tapestry of human wisdom and knowledge that is not just verbal narrative. It may be look like it's only verbal narrative, but it comes through the lived experience of the body and also the mythology that live in weaving or in basket making, in ceramics. So for me, mythology is kind of a broad definition as well as stories. I love stories. Always love stories. So that took me into the path of connecting story with soma from that perspective and how different stories, different myths are holding aspects of our humanity. And so When we feel there's something terrible tragic that is happening to us, I'm gonna speak for myself, to me, I can find a resonance with an aspect of a particular myth or different mythologies in different parts of the world and find a sense of belonging to this thing that is being a human being. I feel then I can rest on that. I can feel the humanity in me that is like, yeah, I'm welcome. You're a human being. And you're not the only one who has gone through this, through this loss, through this heartache, through this grief. And yes, you are living in a very unique way because of your own life experience. So teaching at a graduate level had always been like a thirst I had precisely because I, I was feeling like, gosh, like if I have had the body when I was like. my doing my bachelor's or so in grad school. Like I feel like when I bring this to, especially to people who are becoming therapists and, uh, I feel it, I have my bias and it's my passion is both. I really feel that being in the body as a therapist can, can help a sense of, uh, holding in a, in a different way, like in a fuller way. That's been my experience. And so I'm also quite grateful because you're the one who invited me here at this graduate school and at Southwestern College and it's been truly a delight. The first quarter was what I was pinching myself and I was extremely nervous but I am easing my way into it. And yeah, so that's kind of how I came into teaching. Thank you. I love hearing, I mean the way you weave your personal experience into your work it's really fluid. And I just appreciate how you narrate your experience. And I wonder if you could share what you've been teaching, what courses you've been teaching at Southwestern and Tamalpa So at Tamaulpa I've been teaching And they have a training made of level one, level two, and level three. Level one, it's more of a personal embodiment of the methodology. Like it's its own kind of initiation, if you will, where basically the entire process leads to a self-portrait process. And at the culminates with a ritual enactment or performance of their life narrative. So they have a life-size-self portrait and they conduct a performance ritual where they are bringing their story that they have journey, body part after body part, session after session through movement, dance, drawing, poetic writing, or creative writing in general. Those are the main modalities. So in the level two that I've also taught is the training now is a formal training. Now that you've gone through the process, the training is to learn how to facilitate this process. So developing the skill, developing the understanding the philosophy and a lot of role playing as well. So I've taught that too and mostly over the last, because of online and COVID and all of that. I've been mainly working as a, we call it the level three as a supervision course. And the supervision consists of working one-on-one with students on their projects, their field work projects. So it's like now, how do you want to apply this in, in a community setting or one-on-one setting? And that's just. very different for each student. And so I offer feedback in that regard. So they complete that project and those hours and they provide a way of documenting that experience. So that's my teaching at Tamalpa Right now is more about the level three, it's a provision field work. Yeah. And... It's something that it lives in me, breathes in me, when you speak about that fluidity. After developing a practice, it really becomes what I breathe and who I am and what I do. So I am aware of it, but sometimes it just, I just, it's like you don't see the breath you're breathing until you realize you're breathing, right? So it feels like that. Yeah. And in terms of the graduate program, what I've been teaching mainly had been a series of four courses that are, I guess, unofficially named the Consciousness Series, which begins with the Psychology of Altruism. Then there is a course on Consciousness 1 and then Consciousness 2. power of presence and this Consciousness 2, it's about the healing power of love. And then the final course of the series, it's called, it has more of the titles, but it's now it's called the hermeneutics of self. And And so I started working and teaching the, that the hermeneutics course. And, um, I felt that was a great entryway. Oh, and I've taught a couple of times group dynamics, which is also really cool. I love, I love all of them. Um, they're, they're central specifically to the philosophy of, of the school. And, uh, I happen to resonate with it a lot. Mm-hmm. and I started teaching the hermeneutics of self and I felt it was pretty much. what I do working with creativity for personal transformation and the process of an ongoing inquiry about myself through art and through some readings. So the whole process is kind of, it's a kind of a self-portrait process, but in a different. I never thought about it that way. That language of it being a self-portrait process, that really resonates. And I think that, gosh, what's such an important part of the journey to becoming an arts-based therapist is to creatively, you know, what's the word creatively like enter in and explore oneself and untangle and come back out you know and that self-portrait process can look so many different ways like you shared so that's yeah thank you for that description I appreciate it I I'd love to hear you know about your thoughts about responsibility as an educator as a facilitator in these programs, what comes to mind when you think about responsibility in this role? Thinking a little bit about that. It's a sense of. accountability and for fulfilling again the explicit aspects of the contract that I get into quarter after quarter. And also the implicit part of responsibility is... is to teach with integrity and be true. I'm very grateful. Teaching in graduate school, I wanted to do it for the longest time. I feel like I enter into it late. I'm not saying that as a judgment right now. I feel I entered when I was ready because I think I've already gone past the point of seeking approval from students or feeling that my worth is linked to receive success or something like that. I feel I'm really past that. And so I'm freer, talk about my own liberation, I'm freer to just show up and be, and I'm deeply committed. each class to show off with all what I can, all who I am. And I keep track. My Part of my responsibility is also to keep track of myself throughout the class, before the class, making sure I prepare everything that I thought of any of all different possible scenarios as we, you know, do I have didactic material that speaks to people who process more visually as well as auditorially. Uh, Even every, every class I offer a somatic grounding to start. And that's, that's non-negotiable for me because it's an invocation of coming everybody present. But I do it in a way in which I do my best to make it accessible and not bringing something real like, Oh my God, that's just. too advanced or too complicated or, um, and also to offer choice to the best I can. And the choice sometimes goes down to we're doing this. This is what it is going to look like. And if you rather do another practice that helps you come in, that's a, that's a choice, that's part of it, right? So sometimes it goes down to it. And sometimes within the practice I offer, and you can do this here. You can do this there and you can do so, but I'm always inviting and, and I see students responding, um, with openness to what I bring. And, uh, that's probably also part of, because I'm not holding an expectation that has to happen and, oh, if you don't do it, then I'm going to feel bad. It's like, as I said, I'm kind of past that period, which yeah, I went through that. I went through that. So that's part of the responsibility during breaks to also, okay, this is what just happened. So during the break, yeah, of course I go get my coffee and do, you know, step out of my computer, but I'm thinking, okay, and then the next part, based on what I saw happening, maybe I'm going to thread this part into this. So I kind of just reassess. I have a moment to reassess and respond to. Oh yeah, we're in the flow or this took a lot longer. Now I have to make adjustments here. And so that also plays part on the responsibility of being able and available to students to meet with them, also outside of class. For me, it's part of the responsibility. The grading, I mean, not so much the grading as the number of the grade, but the reviewing of the work. It's very time consuming and I cannot help myself but really... taking the time to read their papers. And sometimes it's like twice. And I'm like, sometimes it's like, I'm like astonished. Like, oh my God, this person is just like, I'm learning so much. And sometimes it's like, I don't feel this person's voice here. And I struggle a lot with that. Hmm. And I'm like, okay, yeah, all those great ideas and connections with it, but where are you? It's like, ah, so I do my best to offer feedbacks and, you know, inviting, kind of drawing their voices and how is that their experience in this material? So, um, so that's also part of my responsibility, I believe, to offer feedback in that way, not just the number, like, oh, great, you cover all the play, the thing, the APA format is great. citations are awesome and then you get an A++. It's like, well, um, yeah. I hear the importance of the conversation in there. And I also heard the importance of choice to facilitate belonging and trust. And it makes me wonder a little bit about permission and about consent, student consent in particular. You know, we in these classrooms where we are training therapists, arts based therapists, there is a lot of opportunities, like we were talking about, to experience self-portrait to experience, like, you know, a deepening of seeing oneself. And that can be that can be intense, that can be dysregulating. And there are many requests or invitations that we make with our students that I'm wondering about the opportunity to say no. I'm wondering how you view no and yes for your students with. assignments or experientials. I heard you speak to it with a somatic-based grounding in the beginning of the class and that there's choice, but I'm wondering how does that expand into other parts of the curriculum or the facilitation? Yeah, I feel quite aware of it and there are explicit "no's" that sometimes I hear, sometimes there are implicit "no's" that sometimes I don't catch until much later and so after the fact. But I do my best to try to stay attuned. I'm not... I'm... I'm not gonna say what I'm not, I'm gonna say what I am. I am deeply curious about the "no's" So I do in different activities throughout class when, you know, I open those possibilities, you know, we're going to do this and you may feel a no from the get-go or throughout. Well, I am deeply curious about, and my hope is that you probably get curious about. And if you're knowing something that feels that you and I need to have a conversation. Mm. Afterwards, then please. Yes, of course. Of course. But I, I feel it's important for me to have some balance. So So there is a level of, yeah, like a willingness to take some risks. And yet also notice when that part is not available. And again, I get, I get curious, I get curious as As to what I mean by getting curious is not now like, oh, now I need to know. It's not that type of curiosity is more of, uh, I feel that that's something that needs to be honored and investigated. Uh, so, Because there there's, we're talking about so many general things right now, and when it gets to the specifics. That's what I'm curious because there's always, I don't know the students. I mean, yeah, they may be with me for 10 weeks. Sometimes they repeat courses and I see them again, but I don't know. And there's so many things, you know, and all the whole positionality, intersectionality. So there's a part of me that, you know, I respect the no, and I'm curious about the no on their path. Mm-hmm. whether they're ready even to get curious about it or not, then that's out of my hands. As therapists, we also have reluctance to look at certain parts of ourselves too. It's going to be a lifelong kind of journey of discovering where are my "no's" when I don't want to go to a place or... Mm-hmm. or feel walled off, it can feel very clearly in the system. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, My curiosity around consent and no is related to how sometimes students' "no's" can be weaponized, can be assessed in a way that they aren't participating or aren't showing up in a way that is conducive for learning or becoming a therapist. And I think that line between authentic agency of the students and the responsibility of gatekeeping. I think that sometimes that line becomes really blurred. And it may be because what you just said, maybe there are some blurry, there's some blurriness within the facilitator around. around no, you know, and what a no from a student means. But I guess I'm curious, how do you assess that? How do you assess like, this no is the, I mean, is the right of the student. And it may or may not be conducive to them succeeding in this program or in this field. What do you, what does, How does that land for you? Yeah, at times that causes... Yeah, like... When I have, because I have the students for, I'm a kind of, I'm not responding, but I'm trying to think it through. I'm, I am a slow human being and I let things run. Um, so. If students I feel the no for the first time, I notice it. If the no becomes a recurrent pattern, especially if it carries on from quarter after quarter that sometimes there are three quarters in a row that maybe, or not in a row, but three different quarters that the student, so if something, or maybe within the same quarter, although I don't, I don't think I've have had that experience, but, um, if it's no, no class after class, you know, after the third class, I may invite a conversation. And if the conversation is, if the invitation is met with a no, then I get to sit with that and then assess what is this no about and assess, and it has to come with a place of my, okay. What would be most in service for this student who is choosing to have an education to later serve others? Maybe this student maybe doesn't want to have the conversation with me for x y and z. Mm. I don't want to rob that opportunity to have a conversation and a discovery of what's going on or a discussion. So maybe I would make a referral and I'll tell the student, I'm going to offer, because right now there's a great system of referral that it's really to support students nowadays in the college. So, so I speak to them and you know, there's consent there. If they were to say no, then well, that's it. Right. Then I cannot force anything. I cannot push. I cannot, you know, but if I feel that there's just closeness, then, uh, I may, you know, and if it really disrupts or interrupts the entire class boundaries, right. Well, then I made. go, but I haven't really gone that way. But I'm, I'm often kind of assessing about what's the best thing I can do. Cause I'm considering this student is here because they are choosing to become licensed this and licensed that. And I'm thinking about the people they will be serving. And I, if I feel that the situation about the no here, not that everything has to be solved during class sometimes needs things need to be worked through in supervision or in practicum and stuff like that. But if I can feel I can offer something for the on behalf or a future person who will be in the receiving end of their services, then also I feel a sense of responsibility to those people at that end of our chain. Is this making some sense? Okay. some sense. I appreciate the... how you describe the slowness of your assessment. And also that it's not your job role position to force anybody to do anything, that folks are choosing to be students. And I think that that, it becomes an interesting dance, right? When students want to be there, but don't want to be there. Want to do the work, but don't want to do the work. You know, and we get to witness that. And it sounds like best practice is to just, is to witness it, you know, reflect it back perhaps. And yet, you know, it's, our responsibility isn't to make those choices for our students. Yeah. no, They have the power to make those choices. Yeah. All I can do is offer a perspective and it's my perspective. And again, is this, this situation in this particular time, in this particular class, these are the, this is the environment the student is living with. So I don't, as I said, there's so many things I don't know for me to just make a, just a judgment call about something. So I'm very cautious about that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm wondering if we could pivot to your experience of what emerges in the classroom spontaneously, the third that shows up in conversation, in movement, in creation. And if you could speak to what that looks like, feels like, sounds like. Yeah, and any examples that feel okay to share. Hmm. Well, it's like each group, it's its own constellation. Mm-hmm. and each constellation arranges things in a particular way. So the exchanges and the conversation in class, in some groups, It's very fiery, like controversies. It's called again and again, right? I'm feeling those pushes and pulls at this exercising of the psyche. Can be a workout. Um, and there, there are some other groups that like the, there is a... Sometimes, especially in groups that are new to the college, or the first class that have, it's not necessarily the first class, but kind of on the first two courses is the, I don't know, and the polite kind of glimmer... everything. And I just had an, I mean, I had many experiences of this with individual students, but as a group, the magic of this group was such that I just couldn't believe the amount of creativity and the all yes for everything we're going there. It's a lot of things were quite hard, but people were just like going for it, going for it in the most creative ways that happened during a hermeneutics class where creativity is pretty much all over, all over the curriculum. And, uh, and I think that class, uh, towards the end, like the final class, um, we did some, um, But it was, it was a closing class and it was like the feeling of like, oh, we don't want this to end, but it wasn't like crying or everything. It was just like, we took an extra hour to finish that class. So there was a lot of energy there. So each group is, you know, and then there's some groups that are more, uh, bringing, uh, you know, alive. neurodiversity implicitly and I feel it and then I feel the how different members of the group feel challenged in different ways including myself and that's a very flexible group because it's requiring flexibility. I feel that. Um, and then some that are just so like, ah, they flow, they flow, they get fuller and fuller, like some kind of pregnancies happening and oh my god, yeah, each group has its own flavor. Yes. As you're talking about, I can imagine it and I can feel it. And just there's so much movement in it. Right. And diversity in what that movement can feel like and look like, depending on the constellation of the group. Yeah. And I remember one other group more in the realm of kind of skepticism, sometimes a bit cynical. And that was like very disorienting for me. It's something that, it's a vibration or a tone that is hard for me too. It's like, what? What? What happened? What did I just say? What, which is like, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, When I hear skepticism, I hear, you know, a challenge to trust, right? And what an interesting movement to facilitate. We want folks to feel like they belong and we also want folks to challenge the curriculum and to bring in opposing perspectives, right? So much to, again, to really move with and to flow with. Yeah. You know, We're coming to the end of our hour and... I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about heartache and heartbreak. We've had conversations before, just the two of us and in some of your classrooms about the catalyst that is heartache or the catalyst that is heartbreak. And I am curious how how it shows up in your classrooms and in the movement of this education facilitation that you do. Yeah, it happens. I think it's meant to happen. not saying that every single student at the same time in the same course would experience it, but there are those cracks, right? Of the heartbreak, the heartbreaking open to something. Sometimes I've witnessed them in class and I witnessed how a student moves through it, through the class material, into writing papers. Um, And sometimes it requires some, and sometimes it's very overt. And what I said, you know, I, you know, I, I hold space and I enlist everyone to hold space for whatever is happening. Um, I often also name, uh, not so much as heartache but as, you know, there, there is. something cracking open here. And I offer options and choices to offer some sense of grounding and empowering because not everything needs to, not everyone or everything, feeling exposed is not necessarily, you know, the best thing for, for anyone everywhere at any, or at every single time. So I'm aware of, of that. And it's hard to hold. I noticed there's a lot of heartbreak, sometimes not related to the curriculum or to the syllabus itself, but they just come that heartbrokenness through. Illnesses through challenges at work or even, you know, some recent experience of trauma or... you know, and... So I guess I'm very... through COVID, I guess, that had a huge impact in people. I never taught grad students before COVID and online, so I don't have that before and after, but I know, I feel that COVID had been huge impact in people's lives and experiences and the way to show up. Hmm. as well as injustices on things that are going on around the world, the violence and Yeah, I recognize my own heartbrokenness at times. And yet... Even though I don't talk or say anything in the classroom, because it's not the place for me to say anything. I just, I come to class, I'm there, and something changes. I don't know how to explain it. But for three hours or four hours that I'm in class, I guess because students... are on this path of self-inquiry and learning and transforming and healing. If these were marketing students or MBA students, I don't know, that would be a whole other story. Mm-hmm. But maybe just the fact of coming and being with other human beings that care, care about the preciousness of being human. You know, that's quite helpful for me. Yeah, yeah, part of the digestion process of the facilitator. Yeah. Yeah. And I also, you know, from students when some several of them, not some, several of them write about their own heartaches in their papers and, you know, tied to the material they're reading. And I'm just like, sometimes I'm just weeping while reading a paper. And and also feel, you know, that their trust of sharing those things, because I'm like, wow, like, what? What a thing to open yourself up to me and to share these deep parts of you. It's such an honor. It is such an honor. So yeah, there's certainly a lot of heartache, a lot of pain. Much more than I ever thought I would encounter. Yeah. Hmm. And I guess that kind of helps to bring the archetype of the wounded healer into the conversation because it's kind of quite alive in us who are in these healing professions or helping professions. And again, going back to this mythical archetype to tune into that part of being human. Hmm. Yeah, to tune in, to accompany, to touch, to hold that part tenderly and with respect is what I'm hearing. Yeah. Thanks so much for this journey, Maria Luisa. Thank you. Yeah. It feels so good to share this, give it voice. It's usually just me and myself just reflecting on all these things. So thank you. Great opportunity. Absolutely. Here's to more conversations and dances with all with it all. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Hmm.