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Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them. How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success, and most importantly, find joy.
Your Host is New York Times bestselling author Rupert Isaacson. Long time human rights activist, Rupert helped a group of Bushmen in the Kalahari fight for their ancestral lands. He's probably best known for his autism advocacy work following the publication of his bestselling book "The Horse Boy" and "The Long Ride Home" where he tells the story of finding healing for his autistic son. Subsequently he founded New Trails Learning Systems an approach for addressing neuro-psychiatric conditions through horses, movement and nature. The methods are now used around the world in therapeutic riding program, therapy offices and schools for special needs and neuro-typical children.
 You can find details of all our programs and shows on www.RupertIsaacson.com
Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free
Ride Free, where we talk to people who
have lived self-actualized lives on
their own terms, and find out how they
got there, what they do, how we can
get there, what we can learn from them.
How to live our best lives, find
our own definition of success,
and most importantly, find joy.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling
author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning
Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs
and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
How to live our best lives, find
our own definition of success,
and most importantly, find joy.
Welcome back to live free, ride free.
Self actualization.
Now, it's not always what we think it is.
I realized in the opening interviews
of this show that I have been
interviewing quite a lot of people
who have been doing big things.
In a very noticeable sort of a way
in the world which is wonderful,
but I, I reflected on this.
And I realized that there's an
millions, probably billions,
hopefully billions of people out
there living self actualized lives.
You would never hear of the everyday
heroes, the unsung heroes, but not
just heroes that the people who
just simply are self actualized and
they're not doing it in a way that is.
in front of audiences.
Not that there's anything wrong with
doing it in front of audiences, but
it means that we can sometimes miss
the meaning of what self actualization
is because self actualization is
actually a very personal process.
What everyone's own successes
is very, very much seen through
their prism, their lens.
And so that made me As I was having
this thought, I rather Synchronis,
synchronistically got a WhatsApp
from a, a very dear old friend of
mine, Jill Cohen, and I'm gonna let
Jill Cohen tell you about her life.
But suffice to say, before we begin,
I would say that Jill Cohen is one of
the most self-actualized people I know.
She's not famous she's not public yet
she completely, completely lives life
on her own terms, very successfully,
and in a way that I know has inspired
pretty much everyone who's come into
contact with her, and has healed actually
many people who've come into contact
with her, but has also reached out into
the wider world and had quite a lot of
ripple effect influence, just without
fanfare and I think that there, if you're
listening, And you've been thinking,
yeah, you know, Roo, you're saying
all these very successful people that
you're, you're interviewing is awesome.
What about the ordinary people who
are just out there self actualizing,
you know, and they're so busy self
actualizing that they haven't got time
to make websites about it or whatever.
What about that?
And I think that's a very valid point.
So, you don't have to be a
celebrity to be self actualized.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
So Jill Cohen, welcome
to Live Free Ride Free.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Jill Cohen: Welcome.
Thank you, Rupert.
And so honored to be here with you.
Your abilities and skills of
bringing out the true nature
in people is just mind blowing.
And I'm so honored to be
here to be peeled back.
I'm so curious to see who shows up.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, you do,
it's going to be a great honor.
Before, what I really want to ask you,
so let's just go, who are you Jill Cohen?
Jill Cohen: I'm a little chickpea, just
being cooked, ripened in this life.
I am here and present.
I was born to two parents that deeply,
deeply loved me, grandparents that just
adored me and thought the world of me.
And that gave me such fertile soil
to grow in possibility being seen,
being loved and just saw this life
as such an opportunity to serve, to
love, to give, to grow, to nourish.
nurture and be part of and dance
fully, fully, fully expressed.
So many I feel like I've just
been given this magical lifetime.
I feel like an old soul.
I feel like I've lived through so many
different cultures and ways of life.
I feel like I can relate to every
grain of sand on the planet.
So tell us lifetime, just
Rupert Isaacson: tell
us, tell us what you do.
What do you
Jill Cohen: do?
So I, right now, in this present
time, I have been for the past 40 some
odd years started touching people.
I began when I was 13, working
with clay and touching the clay.
And could do it like, like right away.
And then as that grew over the years,
I just saw that the clay and the
process of clay becoming a pot and
the human element that came into it.
And just the manifestation and the alchemy
of the elements coming together creates
just this amazing vessel that holds life.
Did pottery for many years.
I was living in Southern California.
I had a studio with my husband and
my two little babies, and we were
given notice that we had to move.
So we moved and didn't want to
start up a whole new pottery,
so I began touching people.
I thought, this is such a natural
progression, it's not much different,
and, and there's more interaction.
The clay, you're dirty, you're alone
in the studio, and it's, It's awesome.
I loved it.
But it was like there was so much
more richness in working with the
human added to all the other elements.
And started touching people
and built a practice.
People were requesting my touch.
So I thought, okay, this
is my new livelihood.
It was just like given to me.
And started to see how the emotions,
our mental attitudes our backgrounds.
We're all in that tissue, that fiber,
that fabric and after a few years, I
was just teachers just showed up for me.
It's just, I have, I kind of have to
close my eyes to not have too many
because I'm, I've been not that's
not hungry, but just fertile soil
for this little baby to grow in.
And I've just found beautiful
teachers to help me learn.
Direct ways of getting to the core.
What's at the heart of the
human dilemma of living here.
So I was led to I worked with fellow
from Chicago that had the school of
school of massage, but it wasn't massage.
We didn't use oil.
He worked on athletes
and dancers and it was.
Really fun created.
He showed me techniques of how to
create space in the body through
movement and and deepening and it
was almost like sinking your hands
and clay or you can't force the clay.
I knew that as a potter.
You try to force the clay and it just
flops over and really doesn't give a shit.
So the clay really taught me, how to feel
in my hands and it's an extension of my
heart and the air, my mind and the waters,
my emotions and the fire of spirit and
things started to wake up under my hands.
I could feel the elements dance
and I could feel where there
were imbalances, where there was
lack of movement and freedom.
And it's just, I could
feel in myself, it's like.
I just want to be free.
I just want to be able to move.
I want to be able to express and what
keeps us stuck and I could really see
how the mind and the belief systems
keep our fabric, our tissue stuck and
that the water element that you have
to add to the clay is that the emotion.
So the emotion needs to be in there to
lubricate the mind to free up Stagnant
belief systems that keep us stuck so much.
What it is.
It's like the mind.
It's it's it's it's our attitude.
That's our only free will is our
attitude and when we can step outside
of that, when we can touch into
the pain as being information and
not a bad thing that we need to get
away from, but actually informant.
Things start to unravel, the
layers start to unravel, and
the fear starts to drop away.
And it gets juicy and
you want to go deeper.
So I was led to a teacher.
I was looking, I had moved to, gosh,
this goes off to I had started my
practice and then went on vacation
with my mom to Greece, felt like I
needed to just get out of town and.
Get some perspective on life and
ended up meeting a Swede on vacation
and he asked me to marry him
within the first hour and a half.
And I said, okay, I have to go home and
get divorced, but did that and ended up
moving to Sweden and my practice kind of
changed.
It was going I had a, I had a I deepen.
Do I want to become a acupuncturist
and really work with the
elements in the meridians?
Do I want to become a physical
therapist and be a doctor?
Anyway, I didn't want to do that.
Long story short, sailed partway around
the world, left the Sweden, Panama,
ended up coming back to Santa Cruz
where I really always wanted to live.
Since I was, since I graduated high
school, I moved my best friend up
here and said, I'm coming back.
So I came back here and was.
Gosh, given a massage practice a friend
of mine was a chiropractor and her
massage therapist left town, left her
high and dry and I was able to jump
in and fill in and didn't really, I
blended, I did a little bit of massage.
Because that's what the chiropractic
office wanted to, but within months,
I searched and went, okay, do I want
to do rolfing went to a demo for that.
That didn't really do it.
Cranial sacral work, no, I need to
be more, I'm more, I'm more young,
I'm more hands on, I'm more, I want
it to be more expensive, expansive
than just holding the cranial rhythm.
And then I was working
on a world class athlete.
And she had found something
called myofascial release, and
she went and got a session.
She called me from the office,
put me on the phone with the
receptionist, said, Jill, you got to
learn this and make an appointment
and get treated and figure it out.
So I did.
And I was blown away.
The woman touched me, she
worked in my belly and my psoas.
And it was like, boom, the
birth of my son came up.
I'm sobbing.
I'm reliving this whole thing and
letting go of, I actually had him in
a hospital and that was traumatic.
And I thought, wow, this shit's awesome.
Just, you know, showed me techniques
of how to really get into the emotion
and into the mental belief systems and
the places where I felt stuck, where
I couldn't access my power and, yeah,
I called the office, John Barnes, my
fashion release, sign me up, when's
your next seminar and went and did
a 10 day seminar and just went, holy
shit, this is awesome, but it looks
so big because there's no protocol.
You learn techniques, but you
really have to feel the body.
You have to listen.
You have to really
bring in your intuition.
You have to deeply feel and
look at the big picture.
And it's like, yeah, this is good.
This is juicy.
This will challenge me.
And I found my calling, my
teacher, I could almost mouth.
You know, as he's teaching, it was like,
it was so, it's so resonated with me
and came home and it was like worked on.
People started doing the techniques.
When I get a phone call from
him, will you come and assist?
And that began a 15 year journey,
15 year journey of, of assisting
in the work and really deepening.
And and my practice was just booming.
I was seeing 5 to 7 people a day.
It was ridiculous.
And going to Sedona and traveling around
the country to assist in his seminars
and yeah, and people were getting better.
People were, their lives were changing.
People were changing.
People were leaving,
you know, relationships.
People were leaving jobs.
People were really looking from
that expansive place where they
actually had space inside of
themselves to start to imagine.
You know, what is possible.
So the work has just been a life
away and the way knows the way.
So in a journey, it's like there's no
separation between that work and life.
And then I started working on horses.
Horses have been in my
life for most of my life.
From the beginning of having to babysit
the little kid next door to be able
to get my, to rent my horse, to go to
my lessons So then my stepdad bringing
a horse, surprising me so very busy
practice up until I cut back the pandemic.
Thank God.
I'm so grateful.
It gave me my 1st sabbatical
year time of not working and got
some big time to reflect and and
start to slow down a little bit.
Yeah, where that dove tails into
my mother coming and backtracking
to meeting you, Rupert, which
was a pretty cosmic experience.
I don't even know if
Rupert Isaacson: I've shared with you.
Let me, let me go to your mother and let
me go to how you met me because this is
going to inform readers listeners, the,
the, the, the key word here is stuck.
And basically what you're saying
is you have built a phenomenally
successful, you know, without a
website, without any social media,
without any cheerleaders or pom poms.
My, sort of, myofascial release
practice that began with pottery
went through intuitive touch and
then went through formal training.
And now I do know, I, I, I, Jill, Jill
Cohen listeners is a well kept secret.
Santa Cruz, California is one of the
world's most beautiful places and an
awful lot of people want to live there.
So, of course, it's very expensive and to
be able to, through a bodywork practice,
buy land, have horses, look after people,
support people, as well as running the
business and keeping people on site,
while at the same time being a complete
and total hippie, which is no insult.
And what I mean by that,
because I'm a total hippie too,
is the hippies had it right.
And what I mean by the hippies
had it right was that the
counterculture had it right.
The counterculture came along in,
in, in direct as a direct answer
to what had created World War
II and what created colonialism
that had led up to World War II.
And Those of us who were born
during the counterculture.
I was born in 67.
When were you born Jill?
I was born at 54, right?
So The counterculture was happening and
it was happening for a very good reason,
but we know that it People think that
it imploded and people think now if
you say to people, Oh, you know, you're
just a hippie or that person's a hippie.
It's almost like a a
pejorative and to my mind.
No No, it's actually the highest
compliment because not only
do the hippies get it, right?
but all of the areas now where the real
estate is the highest in the world is
because they were ex hippie communes or
Ex artist communes who went in there and
created an atmosphere and an ambiance and
an aesthetic That then other people wanted
to come in and share in whether that's
Santa Fe or whether that's the left bank
of Paris or whether that's East London
or actually Notting Hill in London or all
these areas that we think of as so shishi,
they, they, they were all hippie communes.
And this will always happen because
the hippies are the pioneers and
what they're about is quality of
life and quality of values and belief
and basically living through love
and, and, and nature and aesthetics.
And community.
And so that you have done that talk like
he'd be act like he'd be look like he'd be
live like he'd be while building a really
solid business that gets people unstuck.
And the reason why I want to go to this
word stuck is because you've had, I know,
quite a few times in your life when you've
been, and you've had to walk the talk,
and now even, one could say, you are very
stuck, and that's why I wanted you to come
on the show, because it's, listeners, it's
not like Jill Kerwin is coming on saying,
oh yeah, you know, I sort of made it into
hippie paradise, and I sort of live in
a Gaudi garden in Barcelona, you know,
independent of any sort of cares or woes,
quite the opposite, quite the opposite.
It's almost like life has thrown
at you, Jill, okay, you want to
deal with stuckness, try this
one, try this one, try this one.
And you keep like sinking those
baskets, sinking those baskets.
So before we go into where you've
been stuck and how your people
might think you're stuck now, yet
are actually self actualized, let's
dial right back to the beginning.
Jill Cohen: I was born in Houston,
Texas on an Air Force base.
My mom got pregnant a year
before my dad was out.
So we lived in, yeah,
outside of Houston there.
And what was funny is God, it really,
Goes into really my work of being
in my mommy's belly and she didn't
acknowledge she was pregnant with me
until she was like, 5 months pregnant.
And I'm just going, why
am I walking around?
Not wanting anybody to look at
me if they're, you know, if they
see that I'm here, it's like, I
always had that feeling of Jill.
What are you doing here?
That I was going to get asked to leave.
Yeah.
So I got to do the Leonard or rebirthing
work back in the 70s and discover that.
Oh, that's not mine.
That was hers.
You know.
And, but that stuckness, it was like
that stuckness, it's, it's just, it's
like the stuckness, it's like the pain,
it's an informant, it's information
and the stuckness is going into it.
It's like using the compression, it's
like, it's like the piece of coal being
compressed and then it's like it's so
compressed and then boom, it's a freaking
star, it's a diamond, it explodes.
Rupert Isaacson: So, okay,
so you're born in 54.
In this Air Force base, outside of
Houston, but you're, you're Jewish, you,
you talk like a New Yorker, your folks
were from New York, moved up to New York.
Jill Cohen: Yep.
Nope, my parents were both.
My father from the Bronx and my mother
from Brooklyn and their families
from Romania and Ukraine Ashkenazis
Rupert Isaacson: Ashkenazis Ashkenazis.
Yeah from Eastern Europe like
my my Jewish heritage is that
side to you Ukraine Lithuania?
Okay How how long do you live in?
How long do you live in New York?
How practicing Jewish was your family?
How Ashkenazi was?
Jill Cohen: Yeah, so my mom's, my
maternal side were not very, they went
to temple my uncle was bar mitzvahed,
girls didn't get bar mitzvahed
then, but on my mom's side, and they
were, they were Jewish, absolutely.
They acknowledged their heritage,
but they weren't practicing.
So much my father's side grandpa
Irving was he came from Romania
as a little three year old boy
with his dad landed in New York.
Mom had died in Romania and grandpa was a
very religious man, but very, very humble.
Didn't push it.
We had Passover.
The prayers, you know, ran
through my head, but I was
never sent to Sunday school.
Thank God.
I went with a friend once and I
just went, you believe this crap?
So that was kind of like,
I was into Baba Ram Dass.
I was into Be Here Now.
I was into All that but there was
something deep in my soul about I mean,
I see fiddler on the, fiddler on the
roof and I sob, I sob, I sob, I sob
through the entire, I'm deeply, deeply
Rupert Isaacson: touched.
It's a tribal thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Jill Cohen: It's so
tribal, so tribal deeply.
It's, it's ingrained in me and
probably many, many lifetimes.
But we lived in New York for about
3 years when I, by the time I
was 3, we moved to to California.
My dad got a job working for
his uncle that worked in the.
Office furniture business.
We lived right below the
Hollywood Hills sign.
It was awesome, in Beachwood Village.
And, lived there.
My dad started to do well.
My little brother was born.
And then we moved to
the San Fernando Valley.
Got a house right above Ventura Boulevard.
And It was kind of cool.
Back then it was awesome.
It was, it's totally different now.
But back then it really was a cool
Rupert Isaacson: place.
What made it so cool back then?
It was more rural?
Jill Cohen: It was a little bit
more rural, but it was a little
bit more it wasn't so glitzy.
It was just, I mean, I could walk barefoot
Ventura Boulevard and now it's like
everybody's in heels and sunglasses,
you know, the whole, that whole deal.
Movie intricacy started, I used to see the
Beverly Hills, Billy granny on her motor
scooter with a little dog in the basket.
The hearty, hearty guy lived 2 blocks
over and there were movie stars
everywhere, but it was so down to earth.
It it was a community.
It was a great community.
We could play in the streets and play
in the, play in the, you know, empty
lots and until the sun went down and
now it's like kids are, don't even.
Walk around at all.
Everybody's on a cell phone and in
a car, but it was a great place.
It was a great place and
and I got into horses.
My parents, they took me to Pickwick
stables in Burbank and they put me in.
I rode with the California Rangers.
We learned equitation and
formation writing and all that.
And that was really fun.
It was begging, you know, begging
for rides to get to the barn.
Yeah, did that.
Yeah.
Growing up, wasn't so much into
school, but I was definitely into
art and gymnastics, jewelry, pottery.
Those were my big subjects and I did
graduate somehow, but when I was 13.
Yeah, no, you go ahead when I was 13,
there was 8th grade art class and there
was a kick wheel in the corner and I just
saw it and went for it and got on it.
And I was able to actually
center the clay and make a pot.
And the teacher, you
know, let me stay on it.
The whole year was awesome.
And then my mother saw that my
interest and there was a pottery
studio called the muddy wheel, right?
On metro Boulevard, like, Just a block
up from our house, I could walk and there
was an amazing apprentice program there.
And she put me into that program.
There was an incredible master
Potter there, Fred Wilson black
man, just brilliant and created
this whole apprentice program
for kids and, and for adults.
I mean, we had pottery
lessons for anybody I was.
Really learned to throw pots to make,
make clay, make glazes, fire the kiln.
My parents would let me stay up till
midnight because we were firing the kiln
and then we would go to pottery shows,
sell our ware had a gallery in front.
I bought my 1st car with my own
money when I was 17 love doing that.
That really.
That really gave me my kickstart
into being self actualized that
I could do what I loved at 15.
I was teaching adult throwing
classes and I was like, my God,
this is freedom and I have a car
and I can go drive to the beach.
You know, I can do.
Yeah, I had a life.
I had freedom.
I had, it gave me my wheels that I was
then able to explore life and gave me it.
Yeah, livelihood.
You know, when I was 18, my
grandparents had left me a little
bit of money for education.
So my parents were just brilliant.
They didn't even talk about college.
They signed me up to go down to
San Miguel de Allende to pottery
school for 3 months and do large pot
growing and glaze calculation and.
You know, that's what I got to do.
And on the way home, I
hitchhiked to Cihuatanejo, and
met some interesting people.
You
Rupert Isaacson: hitchhiked from San
Miguel de Allende Miguel de Allende
Jill Cohen: down to Cihuatanejo.
Rupert Isaacson: Mexico,
down, up and down.
And this is what year?
Jill Cohen: This was in 72.
Okay, so the year when I, so in 72, when
I graduated high school 1st, they gave
me the opportunity of going with the
American Institute for foreign studies.
There were maybe 20 other kids from my
graduating class that met up with with
with pods of, you know, graduates go into
Europe and we all met in South Hampton.
England.
And we went to the University of
Southampton for three weeks and
took Archaeology, Anthropology, you
know, English Lit, all that stuff.
It was a blast.
And then we ended up making our
way, trains and planes, across
Europe and ended up in Venice and
boarded the original love boat.
But they put us kids in the
belly of the boat and we partied.
We had a blast and travelled
the entire Mediterranean.
And
Rupert Isaacson: this all
happened through pottery.
Jill Cohen: Well, no, my grandparents
had passed, had passed away and
left me a little bit of money for
education, but my parents, this
was American and it's too far.
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
But if you hadn't had, if you hadn't
already been exploring pottery
to the degree that you did where
you were already No, exactly.
Yeah.
Self actualized to whatever degree
through it, then these experiences
would be meaningless, right?
You, you, or at least It
would have just been a party.
But no, you, you, you'd
already explored how to.
Jill Cohen: And I was pissed
off because they had signed
me up for, for San Miguel day.
Yeah.
They signed me up for
San Miguel day and day.
And then the pottery studio, they
were going to Japan and they were
going to study with a raccoon master.
And it was like, I was going,
you gotta let me do this.
It was like, it was like, you know,
one or the other, they said, no,
you already signed up for this.
You're going to do this.
And, and it was a, it was, it was
an amazing experience of traveling.
It was my first time, yeah, going
to Greece, going to Italy, going
to Israel, which was just amazing.
Yeah.
And discovering, starting to travel.
So that was the beginning of my
traveling and exploring the world.
I've been everywhere.
And
Rupert Isaacson: then you come,
you, you come, you come back
to California after all this.
And you how old?
Jill Cohen: I was 18.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And
Jill Cohen: and then they put
me on the plane New Year's Eve.
They put me on the plane to
fly to Guadalajara on my own.
I had to find the bus to go over the
mountains to San Miguel de Allende.
They booked a room for me for 2 nights.
And then I had to find, you know,
I found other people in school.
We all rented a house and
did art and lived together.
It was my first time being out
of the house, finding other
people that had common interests
had some great adventures.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm sure
this was what year 70s?
Yeah.
Jill Cohen: So 73.
This was the beginning of
Rupert Isaacson: 73, right?
So, so we're in the we're in the height
of the counterculture here I think I think
people often think that the counterculture
began and ended in the 60s And of course
it didn't it just sort of got going a bit
in the 50s found its feet and its wings in
the 60s Flap the wings and took off in the
70s and sort of has been soaring around
the the metaverse ever since At what point
did you dive fully into full on hippiedom?
And how did you marry that with your...
It was straight up.
your, like, making it all
work financially and so on.
Because people often think those
are two very different things.
And clearly they're not,
but talk us through that.
Jill Cohen: So, a couple of things.
I guess the counterculture,
whatever the hippie it was, I think
when I was 15, I saw there was
a documentary on slaughterhouses
and it fucking blew my mind.
How inhumane that was.
I was at my girlfriend's house.
We went through and we threw
everything away out of the freezer.
It was disgusting.
I became a vegetarian.
It was like, why do we have
to take life to sustain life?
So that began that and then
wanting healthy food and then.
Yeah, when I'm the kid's dad
and the beginning of that, I
was, I had my kids at 20 and 21.
So, backing up, I got home from Mexico,
went and met all my pottery friends.
They were at a pottery show.
My best friend.
Yeah, she was there too.
She was dating this guy, but they
were getting ready to break up.
And I kind of, I was into him.
And so we ended up getting together.
I, I got home from Mexico.
I got a call from, a pottery teacher
that I had met over one of the summers,
I think it was 17 on kill building up in
Idlewild, and he kind of knew I was he was
waiting for me to graduate high school.
And he called me and asked me to
come apprentice with him and hired
me basically to work for him.
So I said, yeah, if I
can bring my boyfriend.
So I brought.
My boyfriend at the time, which is now my
kid's dad and yeah, he learned to build
kilns and make clay and I worked in the
studio and eventually and we lived with
him and eventually he and his girlfriend
moved out and we took that house over
and that's when we start our family.
We had our garden and it was all
really about growing your own food.
So you have healthy, good food to eat.
And I had my babies and
Yeah, we were hippies.
We were just wanting to live a good,
clean life and live on the land.
It was, I remember the book,
Touch the Earth what was happening
with all the First Nation people
and the inhumanity with that.
And that started to awaken in
me and how they had it all.
You know, it was, Going back to
the earth started studying herbs
Jethro Kloss wrote back to Eden.
So it was all the natural remedies
and teas and herbs dry brushing and
yeah, how to take care of ourselves.
We weren't taught that in school.
So that was really my awakening to
yeah, we call hippies, hippies were
just wanting to live in nature with.
The earth and the elements and, and
caring about each other and having it
more about what's, you know, in our
hearts and what brings us joy rather
than making the great, or getting the
job or having the degree or any of that.
How can we live in harmony
with the creatures and each
other and ourselves and,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
You, you married this to a very,
very good sense of business.
Yes.
Why were those two things
not diametrically opposed?
Jill Cohen: Because of
who my parents were.
My dad, he saw my love for pottery and
thought, okay, how, instead of shoving
her into a university, you know, he
gave me opportunities to actually
put my, my dad was a hands on person.
God, he could do a lecture.
He was an amazing shipwright.
I mean, he could remodel the entire house.
He could do all the plumbing.
He could do all the wiring and
he learned that from his father.
Who was an attorney who worked his way
as a little Romanian boy working for
his father, who was a tailor to put
himself through Columbia Law School.
This comes, this is in my,
these are my ancestors.
This is a genetic
part of my fiber.
It's like, anything's possible.
It came from that.
And you gotta do it.
You do it.
You work hard.
I mean, my dad would put me under the
house and I'd be running wires and,
you know, we did, we, we, we worked.
We did it.
Yeah, people
Rupert Isaacson: often think that
hippiness was somehow a counter thing
to work, not opting out of work.
And it seems that it really wasn't.
No.
Jill Cohen: Oh, my God.
Yeah, we built our own kiln.
We made our, you know, our own clay.
It was, it was like, we
worked, we planted our garden.
I had a horse in my backyard and it was
you know, I, I tie dyed my own clothes.
I sewed my own clothes, you
know, it was like, it was work.
It was, you make it, you do
it, you want it, you create it.
And it was like, my parents showed
me that my mother gave me the, yeah.
support that Jill, you can do
and be anything you want to do.
It's like, and I believed her and
my dad showed me how you just do
Rupert Isaacson: it.
We know that you went from this successful
business in pottery to one in human clay.
Talk us through the,
from one to the other.
And by the way, have you
taken pottery with you?
Jill Cohen: Yeah, I can sit.
I sat down at a potter's wheel a
few years ago and I was like, boom,
I hadn't done it for 20 years.
And it's all that's in my hands.
It's, it's, it's there.
It's I still, I'm still a potter.
I'm not doing it as a living and
I'm kind of somebody that gets
into things when I get into it.
I get into it fully.
I'm.
Not a half ass, so it's like, I'm
not going to go to the college and
throw pots and then have to, it's
like, I've got to have my own studio.
So I really looked at it and I
love the clay and I love that.
But I, but I still get to
be a potter with people.
I get to still touch the clay
in with the human element added.
to it with the water, earth, fire, and
Rupert Isaacson: air.
Talk us again through, how did
you, how did that jump happen?
Jill Cohen: Well, we were, we were living,
we were living in our house, we were
renting, we were renting this little
place, we had a huge piece of land, had
a pottery studio, we had our, we sold our
pots in front of our house, the dog would
bark, they'd ring the bell, we'd come out.
And sell pots and then
we got 30 days notice.
We had to move.
So in that time, I had gone, my best
friend had moved to Austin, Texas.
Austin was just an awesome
little town back then in 79.
It was really because the
year John Lennon died.
I remember that distinctly.
And the first Whole Foods yeah, so, so
I went and visited, visited my friend.
I said, I want to live here, so I
rented a place and I came home and
I said, we're moving to Austin.
Let's pack it up.
And we, we, I had a flatbed
truck and we had a Volkswagen
bus and we caravan to Austin.
We brought the kill on the back and
we had the dog and the bird and the
kids and we moved to Austin and, I
worked for, I worked with, with Joy.
She had your heart's desire.
We did vegetarian and
catering and housecleaning.
So we did that together
for a couple of years.
And then I started touching
people and then people started
to ask me to touch them.
And I thought, well, why, why don't
Rupert Isaacson: you
start to touch people?
Well, you weren't doing that before.
And then suddenly you were, there's no,
there's some connection story there.
What is it?
The
Jill Cohen: pain.
I mean, people's pain.
If I could touch people and it helped
them release pain, it was just...
Rupert Isaacson: But you presumably might
have been doing that before, or did you
suddenly only start doing that in Austin?
And if so, why?
No,
Jill Cohen: Ross and I, so we would,
we would, yeah, we were throwing pots.
I was unloading tons of clay
and it's hard work and...
We, I went and found this book called the
book of massage and it had techniques of
different massage techniques of how to.
You know, work on the shoulders or it
was just, it was a hand illustrated book
called the book of massage and we, we
would practice techniques on each other.
And I was like, oh, this is an,
you know, it came really easily.
It was kind of a no brainer.
It's like, I knew how to touch
clay and after a while, got good
at it and it just transferred
over from my hands to people and.
Didn't want to start up another business
of pottery that was too much groundwork.
So I guess I just, I don't know.
It was just, I'm drawn to people.
It's like, that's how I
connect is through touch.
It's really how I
connect is through touch.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So now you're, so yeah, basically you
were working your body out massively
through unloading all this care.
I know you, you're, you're one of
these people who looks small and frail.
You're five foot or so or five foot one
and you're slightly built and so on but
I know how Actually, you know, like many
people like that actually much much much
stronger than you appear But you have this
sort of live Dancers, you know physique.
So that's some toll is being
taken as you're you know Unloading
these many many tons of clay.
Actually, it would be the same
whatever physique you had.
So you get interested in Massage and touch
simply because you and your partner are
hurting because you're working so hard.
Exactly.
Exactly
Jill Cohen: That's the
Rupert Isaacson: missing piece
for me and then and then you start
transferring that over to other
people and people start going.
Oh, actually sure.
You're good at this Wow, I feel better.
So you decide to take it further and
we know from what you said earlier,
that you Then from there found your
way to the releasing Of the, what's now
mainstream, but back then was by no means
mainstream, you know, myofascial relief.
People didn't even know what it was.
Now people do.
Now people pay, you
know, big bucks for it.
But back then it was a, you know,
a fringe thing at best, but you've
been exploring this for decades
and helping people become unstuck.
And yet you found yourself
stuck quite a few times.
So talk us through.
The various stucknesses from the
green ones over to the red ones
How has this practice of yours?
Allowed you to continue to self actualize
even when it's like you've taken a
blind turn in the labyrinth and have
hit the dead end I think many many
listeners here and this is why I want
you to prick up your ears listeners
if you think you're stuck If you think
you've been stuck for years, you're
listening to a podcast like this.
Of course, every single person on
this podcast has been stuck at various
times, but I think Jill has a particular
relationship with this and therefore some
really good pearls of wisdom for you.
So Jill, your stucknesses, how
have you gotten through them?
Jill Cohen: The way out is in,
I had to go deeper, I had to
really go in and feel and feel the
stuckness, really face it dead on.
And I mean, I've had, I've been
a pretty introspective person.
I've
I had to really go into my stuckness.
I had to feel the limitations of it.
What was
Rupert Isaacson: stuckness
number one, would you say?
What was the first big one
that came and went, you're not
moving any fucking further?
You're now stuck.
Sequoia.
Okay.
Sequoia.
Tell us
Jill Cohen: about Sequoia.
Sequoia is my grandson.
He's 20.
He just turned 23 and I was at his birth,
I got to assist in his birth and that
little guy when he was six months old, he
looked at me and it was like, it was like
a shockwave went through me and I just
realized you've come here to teach me.
This, you're the reason I'm here
now, this, you're my teacher.
You're my big teacher.
It struck me so deeply.
There's something about him.
And as we watched him, he
was, you know, he didn't talk.
He would line things up.
Yeah, he'd come in the house and he'd
line shoes up, he'd pull, drag pairs
across my oak floors to line them up
and went, huh, something's going on.
And I had a woman that was a special ed
teacher from Berkeley and I said, you
know, would you come meet my grandson?
And she said, yeah, he's
definitely autistic.
He is on the spectrum deeply.
And I said, will you
come talk to my daughter?
And she said she's gonna hate me
and it was like the most devastating
thing because this child that
had been born as my teacher,
just this golden, brilliant being
was just differently expressed, really.
But it felt like just...
devastation
the challenges and the
ability to communicate.
And yes, his abilities were profound.
But it was like, I could see
the and feel the devastation
in my daughter and son in law.
And that pain was just
like an arrow in my heart.
And
the love,
just so deep, that I couldn't.
make it different.
I couldn't change it.
So I went into it and
let go of the label
and was just with his humanness,
how he showed up and it brought
me into a whole new world of
experience of what is possible.
Yeah, I felt the stuckness.
It was just like an arrow
in my heart in the pain.
Rupert Isaacson: This is of
course, where we first met.
So, for the listeners, I met Jill Right
when the horse boy movie and book came
out in 2009, and we were doing, we did
a screening in Berkeley, California,
if you remember, and you came up and
talked to me afterwards and said,
I've got this grandson and so on.
And what was interesting was
right before you, someone had
come to talk to me who was.
Completely, basically nonverbal,
who came with a minder, who wasn't
autistic, but had suffered from a
40 year old man, terrible, terrible,
terrible Lyme's, Lyme's disease.
And was absolutely stuck inside
himself and the effort of expression
caused his entire body to tremble
and could barely get words out.
And I was just dealing with the
opening up of what autism and
neuropsychiatric and neurocognitive.
Some medically based some less medically
based can do I was just beginning to
because the movie had come out the
book I'm out so, you know people were
coming and presenting themselves in
front of me and I was beginning to the
next person who came up to to talk to
me and I was already I was just sort
of recovering from the basically the
sort of the the 20 minute education
that this dude had just put me through.
I didn't even know about limes.
You know, I sort of knew that
something called limes existed.
I had no idea it could harm
or affect a person like this.
And I'm just, you know, processing that.
I remember you show up and you
say, look, I've got this grandson
who's kind of like your son.
And we, I remember thinking immediately
when I met you, Oh, tribe member.
And you know, I have, I have an
Ashkenazi, an Ashkenazi Jewish
side of my family as well.
And I'm a great believer that probably
we're all sorts of cousins really because
it wasn't that big of a population and
then it got blown into the diaspora.
And then you came out to text ironically
to Austin, which for so long with Sequoia.
And I remember looking at
Siquoia and going, wow, he's.
He's more severe than my kid.
He's, he's, he's in another
league and I saw the
the intensity of the effort and the
uncertainty and the devotion and the
In German you say schwerigkeit,
you know, the, the, the, the, the,
the weight of this whole thing.
And yet you retained, you and your
daughter actually retained joy
and imparted this into Sequoia.
I know that there were many ups
and downs later with Sequoia,
yet it stuck you in some ways.
In that you had to then basically turn
over your land, your practice, your...
Forces your time, your life to
be in service to your grandson.
And then I remember you saying,
you know, sometimes there'd be
something happening and I'd say, Oh,
Joel, do you want to come to this?
He'd be like, Rue, I can't,
I'm, I, I, I'm stuck yet.
I have to do this and, and, and me
thinking, yeah, yeah, you're right.
You, you do.
But.
Wanting to honor the
the devotion that you were that you were
making How did you feel your quote unquote
stuckness with suddenly saying no, okay
I've just got to sit here in Santa Cruz
and create a world for my for my Grandson
who can't yet deal with the outside world.
How do you feel that that stuckness?
Unstuck you or how do you feel?
How do you feel it self actualized you?
Jill Cohen: So I have
been so deeply guided.
I mean, so to back up before I met
you, I was back riding with Sequoia.
It was happening the first time
the kids brought him to the ranch.
I said, here, hand him on up to me.
This was before I met you,
no horseplay happening.
I was just listening
to the inner guidance.
Give him to me, sat him in
the saddle in front of me.
He was nonverbal, pretty much nonverbal.
We walk off and in 30 seconds,
he's singing the ABC song with the
little tune, A, B, C, D, singing.
And then he goes into
some little cowboy jingle.
And I'm just like, I come back, I
ride to the kids, tears are flowing.
It's like, he's here.
It's like, this is, I go,
there's something here.
So started riding with him regularly.
And then maybe a year later, my
mare was just ready to give birth.
She was in the pasture with another
mare that had just had a baby.
That was six months old and I
said, you know, to the mayor, I
said, I said, I said, Rosie, you're
on take care of things tonight.
You know, like, take care of my mayor.
I know she's going to
get birth give birth.
And as I'm driving out of the ranch, I
hear this voice, this vision that says
you need to go find the Mongolian healers.
Boom left with that months later, somebody
says, Hey, there's this movie documentary
that's been made called the horse boy.
It's.
showing up in Berkeley, you
might want to go check it out.
And that's when I got online,
got tickets, made sure.
And then I met you.
How do you feel?
So guidance.
So the inner guidance and listening
and where, where did I got unstuck?
It was like, I stayed open
Rupert Isaacson: in the
self actualization thing.
You know, a lot of people might
feel if they're in a situation like
that, where you're serving a special
needs kid or a sick family member
or something and you've just got to
fucking stay there probably for years.
You've by now built against the odds,
you know, most mainstream Westerners
feel that, you know, you can't be a
good capitalist and be a hippie or
you can't be a good capitalist and be
a tree hugger and we know this is not
true at all, but you've proved it.
You've, you've by this time built
your business, you've bought land in.
Santa Cruz, California, which is
ridiculous expensive and you've got
horses and you've got these beautiful
yurts and you're doing this amazing body
work and you don't even have to advertise
it now everyone and their dog is trying
to come to you, turning people away.
And you've, you've traveled
all over the world.
As you say, you, you were
married to the Swede.
You were married to this other guy.
You, you, you've sailed
all over the world.
You, you, you, you lived here.
You live there.
You've been in Mexico.
This is that and suddenly screeching hole.
And.
I also know that when you have a big
special needs thing like this come
into your life, it can, it can throw
a massive spanner into the wrench of
your business, because the time that
it takes to look after this person
takes time from making a living.
How did the process with your...
grandson help you self actualize
Jill Cohen: further?
I did my work.
I felt my feelings.
I did my own interpersonal work.
I raged.
Okay.
I raged and I cried and I screamed
and I stomped and, and, and I did it
consciously by choice because I knew going
in the way, you know, the way in is out.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: The way in is out.
That sounds awfully
close to Marcus Aurelius.
What stands in that was
a stoic philosopher.
What stands in the way.
The impediment to action increases action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.
Can you go deeper with this for us?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jill Cohen: And the way knows
the way it's trusting the way
it's trusting mother life.
It's trusting the, it's like,
you're not going to paddle upstream.
That's ridiculous.
That's ridiculous.
You know train comes down the track
you get on or you're gonna get dragged.
Yeah, so
Rupert Isaacson: I went into it Okay, so
you you you you you go into your feelings
you rage consciously you cry consciously
You go into your feelings you get in the
canoe you go downstream not upstream.
Where does it bring you out?
I trust mother life What happened though?
Tell us the story.
What, what, what you, you, you
then, you then went away from that
brief time that we had together
with Sequoia in Austin on our ranch.
You then had many, many years
of somewhat what to the outside
I could look like a stuckness.
How, how did that, where did it leave you?
Where did it bring you?
Jill Cohen: I stayed present with my life.
I stayed, you know.
Picking up a lot of horseshit.
That's where I'd get
my biggest revelations.
I stayed, you know, I showed up for work.
I did my laundry.
I, I, I stayed with it.
I cared.
I cried.
I felt the pain.
And I knew that, you know,
I had to pay my mortgage.
You got to pay property taxes.
You got to eat.
I want a good life.
I'm going to show up.
My father showed me
that you don't give up.
You just keep, you do it and it's, and
it's, it's I don't know, I'm stubborn,
I'm, I'm strong willed and and I'm
passionate about life and I'm deeply
grateful for this human birth, sort of,
most of the time, sometimes it sucks.
But I allow myself to feel
the feels and I go into it.
I don't push it away.
I don't I own it.
I don't want to be a victim.
It's like, I'm too, my
ego's too big for that.
I set intentions.
I look into the future.
What do I want in my life?
I don't want to be, I
don't want to stay stuck.
I want to, in my stuckness, I want
to be fucking great in my stuckness.
I don't want to be a miserable, you know,
I don't want to waste this lifetime.
Rupert Isaacson: I suppose you could argue
that clay is a, is a, is a, is a material
that is both stuck and unstuck, right?
It's, it's, it's, it cloys and it
fires and then it holds for thousands
of years, possibly even fossilizes.
And at the same time, it's totally
malleable within its stuckness.
Where did the.
journey with Sequoia and not just Sequoia
because I know that you gave up a lot,
you know, proportion of your property, not
just to him, but to his parents and you,
you gave over a lot of your living space.
To this, you didn't run away from it.
Well,
Jill Cohen: actually, okay,
I have to be fully honest.
I owned my old house.
Rachel and Leon and I said,
let's bring the horses home.
This is the way, you know,
the horse is amazing.
Let's let's group together.
So, I was a landlady
ran into my place out.
I still owned the house.
The bank wouldn't loan me the money.
To go in so really the house is theirs.
And yet I am a silent partner
because the bank loan loan, but if
we sell, I've got a big piece of this
Rupert Isaacson: right.
But nonetheless, you set
up that whole structure.
That's.
And then you had to be physically present.
You couldn't be like, well, you know,
I'll have, I'll have Sequoia maybe
one, one weekend in three, perhaps.
You're like, all the time, hands
Jill Cohen: in the clay.
He, his It was, yeah, in it there's so
many people out there that they, they
know it off as our special ed teachers
or whatever, unless you live with
it day and night, you really get it.
It's huge, huge, huge, huge to windows
broken and holes and walls, even not
in a angry, pick up a stick and boom.
He's singing at the top of his lungs and
banging here with the stick banging there.
There goes a window.
There it goes.
You know, it's like, it's just in
the fridge getting something out.
Fridge doors open cashews everywhere.
It's just, it's constant.
Thank God he sang and he
was, he did find his voice.
Then we knew where he was.
That was a good thing.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so, you have
a son who's so severely autistic that
you then get real estate create a,
basically a family compound where you,
your daughter and your son in law can
live with the horses because you're
getting communication with the horses.
But then you 24 seven looking
after your grandson with,
enormously demanding special needs.
He's incontinent.
He's tantruming.
He's like, my son was, he's wild.
He's all over the place.
He breaks stuff.
He, you know, but you've
created the safe thing for him.
How do you keep earning a
living while this is going on?
I
Jill Cohen: have my little treatment room
and pretty much he went to school for a
time, but then that wasn't really great.
So brought a home and yeah,
Rachel is home with them.
Sometimes Leon would
have to come and help.
I could treat I was on the
property in my studio and work.
There were times when I got surprised
visited visits where he'd come
barging into my treatment room.
And luckily, all my
clients were aware and.
Loving and thank God
these kids are amazing.
I mean, there's just, even though
they're, you know, outside out of the
box, they're, they're mostly beautiful.
And and they're just being them.
So, yeah, I'd get disrupted.
Yeah, he's barged into my treatment rooms.
A few times but it's just kind
of all part of the part of life.
And then
Rupert Isaacson: how, how would you say
that this stuckness, you're now after
all this travel, after this life between
different continents and cities and
sailing around the world and from earning
your own living through your hands from
a teenager, and now suddenly you're
stuck, you're stuck on this property.
And Well,
Jill Cohen: frankly, I was
I was stuck with my horses.
I was stuck with my family.
I was stuck where I love.
I'm not a big, I don't,
I've traveled the world.
I feel like I've been.
So it was like, kind of like, like,
I thought, okay, I guess I'm done.
I mean, it did kind of yeah,
when I had to cancel my trip.
Back to see you guys and ride with Sophia.
That was, that was a pisser.
And at the same time,
Rachel was super sick too.
Yeah, man, everything, everything
kind of came together at that point.
But it was like, you got
to do what's at hand.
It's, it's not, there wasn't, I'm not
going to complain about it or be a victim.
It's like, I still want to
be able to drive my own boat.
So I owned it and went into it
and just saw this is where I am.
This is how life is and I'm
going to live my life a hundred
percent right where it is.
And what did you,
Rupert Isaacson: what did you do to, to,
to deal with the frustration of it all?
Jill Cohen: I wasn't even able
to travel that much anymore.
I got some body work, but not very much.
Luckily, my daughter's
trained in the work that I do.
We could work on each other and
actually Leon's pretty good too.
So we would work on each other.
Smoke pot, dance, get pissed off, garden.
I could take the horses out, go ride.
Did you rage and hit pillows?
I sometimes yeah, but I
could do it therapeutically.
I mean, it was like, yeah,
you got to get it out.
It's like, yeah, I've raged.
I can.
Yeah, I could explode.
You know, I could, and in
the my fascial work assisting
that's that was kind of my job.
I was good at, like, setting
rooms on fire and getting
everybody to rage many pillows.
We had a room.
Yeah, 100 students once and I got
rocking and rolling and it's just
amazing when you can get that out.
It's like how the aliveness, you know,
instead of, instead of smoldering in it
and getting small in it, I got big in it
and I, or, and I'd sit up on the hill.
I'd get outside in nature.
That was my biggest thing.
Thank God we have seven acres here and
I can get out and get away from people.
I can go down and be with the
horses, but really just, I need.
A lot of what I needed was perspective,
and that's what really, really helped me.
God, I remember one time having that
thought that, yeah, they could lock
me up in a prison cell, but they
can't take me outside of myself.
And I can close my eyes, and the
world is so fucking expansive.
It's amazing.
So it's like, it's like
there is no real stuckness.
It's like you can feel, eh.
You know, it's like, yeah, I would
have liked to have been going places
and coming to visit and ride with you
and but it was what it was mine to do
to care for my mom and to be here and
support my kids and Sequoia and love.
Rupert Isaacson: Well,
now you said your mom.
So for the listeners, our internet
pros, I'm getting Jill to, to
retell what she already told me.
So what happened is you're in the
midst of this whole thing with being
a sort of full time Carer for a,
a very severely autistic grandson
Jill Cohen: and wanting to set up a
horse boy camp and, you know, do stuff.
You're wanting to expand that like, ah,
Rupert Isaacson: and
then something happens.
What happens with your mom?
What happens with your mom?
Mom,
Jill Cohen: she gets diagnosed
with lung cancer and thank
god they found it soon enough.
She had a good oncologist.
So I went down every
three weeks I would drive.
I have to LA about a 6 hour drive and go
through, you know, be there to support her
with her chemo and just buy good food and
stock her freezer with really good food
and make sure that she had the nutritional
support to get her through this.
Because she's been my.
Biggest cheerleader in life.
Yeah, did that and came home and
went back and came home and went
back and she ended up getting
through it went in through remission.
But at this point, she's what?
83 years old.
She'll be.
Yeah, she'll be 89 in August and she had
been working but got to a point where
she was not as clear as she had been.
It started to lose her confidence and
didn't feel that she could really,
didn't want to live on her own anymore.
So she called and said,
can I come live with you?
And I said, okay.
I live in a yurt.
I live on the land and she had a
beautiful spotless apartment and gorgeous.
Decoration.
And, you know, it's
like, this is a change.
I live in a fricking yurt
and there's dirt everywhere.
And it, she didn't skip a beat, man.
She came up here and just loved it and
would sit on my deck and she could see
the horses and loves my little dogs and
the birds, and I got to bring my mom to
the country, what an opportunity for her
that had been a city girl her whole life.
And she got to actually touch the earth.
You know, it was such a gift to be
able to share that with her and to
expand her life experience a little
bit, but slowly it's been, it's
been a little over five years now.
And, and I was excited she was going
to come live with me cause we used to
love to play Scrabble and I pulled out
the Scrabble board when she first came
to move and she forgot how to play.
I don't know.
Fuck.
And she was good.
Rupert Isaacson: The dementia.
Yeah.
Dementia.
Dementia.
So, so you go, so you go, you go,
Jill Cohen: autism.
I go, I can do dementia,
I can do autism, I can do
Rupert Isaacson: dementia.
What?
Dementia.
Yeah.
And now you're, you're
still looking after your...
Mother with dementia in a year.
Yes.
Jill Cohen: I put up a second year.
So she has a little her own little
bedroom and then we have the big yard
and I built an awesome bath house in
between and But it's like she's getting
I she's my little girl and she's kind
of It's like, as long as I'm good and I
keep myself together, I'm not a bitch.
She's sweet as pie.
She's just this little girl, wakes
up smiling every day, but she's
putting her underwear on backwards.
She's gets up at the middle of the night.
What am I supposed to be doing?
And it's like three in the morning,
you're supposed to be sleeping on.
And it's like, I'm seeing it just
slipping and slipping and slipping.
And.
It's like, you know, it's like I, I go
in and I feel the vulnerability, she's
aware of what's happening and I feel her
vulnerability and and her fear, but her
fear isn't that big because she trusts me.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So, for the listeners, you don't
know what's just happened here.
I thought Jo was looking away
from the camera and as she was
looking away from the camera.
Gub Rowan, my own beautiful, amazing
autistic son, who's here in Germany,
who just arrived on an aeroplane
from Copenhagen today and found his
own way from the airport here to our
little town in north of Frankfurt
and has his own house, has his
own car, is at college has been.
Going all over Germany by himself.
And he's just coming to say hi!
You're
Jill Cohen: awesome, Scab!
I miss you so much.
I miss your big hugs.
Oh
Rupert Isaacson: my god.
Scab, I'm just gonna put the, I'm
just gonna put the microphone on you.
Do you want to say a
quick word to, to, to...
But wait, wait, wait
till I put these on you.
And now, fire away.
Hang on one further second.
Alright.
Hello, aren't you from square peg?
It's Jill.
I
Jill Cohen: am from down,
down the road from square peg.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, dad Jill, how are
Jill Cohen: you doing?
I'm doing well.
It's good to see you.
I love you.
Oh, thank you.
I remember your wonderful hugs when you
and dad would take me to the airport.
Oh, I can feel them.
I know.
Rupert Isaacson: I remember
a time when I was into a rock
radio station when you came too.
Jill Cohen: In Austin.
Totally.
Totally.
You were into Smokey and
the Bandit, as I recall.
Oh, that
Rupert Isaacson: still
happens from time to
Jill Cohen: time.
It does.
Oh, and Madagascar.
Our favorite movie.
Oh, I've met so
Rupert Isaacson: many fans along the way.
Aww.
I find it so
Jill Cohen: fun to quote it.
Yeah, well, it's so beautiful to
see you and you're just growing up
and just a magnificent human being.
I love you.
I'm also side hugging
Rupert Isaacson: my little bro, Kyrian.
Jill Cohen: All right.
Well, that
Rupert Isaacson: was a, that
was a visit from royalty.
Jill Cohen: What a treat.
Oh my goodness.
I can still feel his last hug
I got from him at the airport.
Rupert Isaacson: The hugs just get better.
And then he's coming to
live in Europe next year.
It's all wonderful as his world expands.
So that's
Jill Cohen: where you can't be stuck.
It's like, how can you be stuck in that?
Exactly.
Well, exactly.
Rupert Isaacson: It's like, hello?
But I, I think listeners need to,
to, could you talk them through that?
Like you said, I got big within
the stuckness and we saw that now,
you know, Rowan coming in and.
Just blowing our world
open in that beautiful way.
How did your experience, how has your
experience of having to basically go into
service to sequoia, to then your mother's
cancer while doing sequoia, then to your
mother's dementia while also with sequoia.
How has this apparent stuckness
actually been self actualizing?
Jill Cohen: It just, it's
deepening my quest for my own self
compassion and my own self love.
It's taking me to an inner
journey of loving myself.
It's like, yeah, the way out is
in and it's like self realization
and then boom, once you realize.
You know, self realizes
there's, there's it all pops.
Rupert Isaacson: What have you
realized about yourself through this?
Jill Cohen: That I care deeply.
And it's been external a lot of
the time and it's starting to turn.
It's starting to turn inward.
Really that there is no other that
they're just we're all doing this
earth block and we all have this
very similar challenges at the core.
They may look different with
different people, but everybody.
Has to get up, everybody has to eat.
Everybody has to, you know,
find a way to provide and
I've got music that keeps popping on that.
I have to turn off that
we're really all doing this.
Our, our journeys are all kind of
the same in the fundamental human
condition of finding joy our own
self expression to, I don't know,
it's, it's, it's not my nature to
go in and feel sorry for myself or
feel like somebody did it to me, or
I was bad, so I'm being punished, or
it's, it's like my nature expanding
into life and I can't deny that.
It's like, it's about joy.
It's about love.
It's about service.
It's like, I, it's,
Rupert Isaacson: it's,
is it service that sets
Jill Cohen: one free?
Oh, absolutely.
That's all there is.
That's all.
There is a service.
And in service we, we come to love
ourselves in our humanity, in service.
All there is a service really, or,
or we're in denial of what life.
The opportunity of life.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
So you say in service we
learn to love ourselves.
Yeah.
In service we learned about ourselves.
I was gonna ask you.
in this self actualization through
apparent stuckness while helping other
people to become unstuck through.
Jill Cohen: How can you be stuck
in loving other and serving?
It's like, it's, it doesn't,
it's like magnets resist.
It's like you can't serve and
not love or it's not service.
It's.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
But some people, some people self martyr.
How have you, and I'm
sniffing the wind here.
I'm not smelling burning Marta here.
So, There's no, there's no barbecue smell.
Quite the opposite.
What, how have you learned?
What, how, what techniques have
you learned for self love and
resilience through all this?
Drinking
Jill Cohen: water, keeping the, keeping
the fluids moving, keeping my heart
open, allowing myself to feel, to cry.
When you say keeping
Rupert Isaacson: your heart
open though, what do you...
What's the nuts and bolts of that?
It's it's it's because that's almost
like a trite thing to say, right?
But how do you actually do that?
What's I
Jill Cohen: keep my feet on the ground.
I feel supported by light.
I I've the earth.
It's it's like this You
know this round ball.
It's like it's I get its support
being supported and held and I'm
being guided when I quiet down and
listen There's constant guidance.
When I don't know what to do, I
quiet down and I ask my heart and
boom, the answer's right there.
There's no mind.
There's no figuring it out.
It's like it's quieting
down and I'm listening.
But how does
Rupert Isaacson: that help
you love yourself more?
Jill Cohen: It's the attention, it's the
focus, it brings me home into my heart
it's, and being grateful, the gratitude
comes with that it's like, fuck, I could
have incarnated in India, I could have
been a beggar on the street, I could have
been a kid that's arm was broken so their
parents could beg to keep me alive I've
seen that, you've seen that gratitude.
It's like, I have air to breathe, I
have water to drink, I have family to
love and if I didn't have family, I
could love my neighbor, I could love
the creatures, the bugs, the birds, the,
it's the presence, and the listening,
and the just, oh, keeping our eyes
open, and God, I had a dream the other
night that I was running this beautiful
trail, and I was running with my eyes
closed, and the trail was right there
in front of me, and I didn't even have
to, I could see with my eyes closed.
So, even to not have external
sight, we have internal sight.
We have internal listening, even if
we're deaf and we can't, deaf and we
can't hear, we have internal hearing.
We have our senses that
bring us to our senses.
And how can you not
Rupert Isaacson: be grateful?
I was going to ask if gratitude
is part of this because I find
Jill Cohen: more and more.
I think I thank every chicken
for every egg they lay.
I cannot pick up a chicken, an
egg without saying thank you.
It's every morning to wake up.
Thank you.
It's for every meal.
It's like, and it wasn't that my
parents taught me to say thank you.
It's just thank you.
It's, it's with every breath that I can
inhale, it's like it's to have this human
experience to be able to experience the
range, to be able to experience the depth
of life and the connection and things
that feel like such roadblocks to be.
I remember being in the arena with
you, and I remember just being just.
It's so filled that if, if Sequoia wasn't
autistic, I would have never known you.
I would have never had the joy
of exploring life and feeling
the depth of connection and
the depth of aliveness and the
it's like, how did I get so
lucky to have it all line up?
It just feels like I'm just, it's like
the, it's like every step is just laid.
And I think it is for everybody.
It's just the noticing.
It's just the willingness to quiet
down and notice and to get out of that
constant dialogue That takes us from being
present being in the present moment so
Rupert Isaacson: so it's Okay, so service
gratitude You continue to you're living
in there on this land in these yurts.
You continue to have this successful
business you your horses are there
Tell us about Sequoia So when I
first met you this is now going back
over over 10 years Sequoia is now 18
Jill Cohen: years.
Wow.
He's
Rupert Isaacson: 23 so
Where's he at now and
Where's he on his way to?
Jill Cohen: He is living at
the beginning of the pandemic.
It was getting out of hand.
Rachel and Leon, it's just, it's
amazing that they're still married.
They're figuring it out.
They're working it.
They're actually doing great.
And it's not the way they
thought it was going to look.
Rachel needed a break, a
mental, emotional break.
So she left for a few months and then the
pandemic hit and Sequoia was here with
Leon and I and a caretaker here, there.
And he got bigger and bigger, and
it was becoming unsafe for him, for
the house everything was, it was
getting to be really safe, unsafe,
so they called social services and.
The only thing that they could find was
there was a rehab place down in Palm
Springs that he could get into and we
thought, oh, this was going to be really
great year long program and then the
pandemic hit everything got locked down.
They freaked out.
He ended up.
Severely medicated because they
didn't know how to handle him.
They didn't know how to be with COVID,
not even knowing what COVID was.
We thought we'd be able to go
down and visit him every month.
And after a month, it was locked down.
And so he'd been down there.
And in that they promised that they
would find a good living situation.
For him, because it wasn't becoming,
it wasn't sustainable anymore.
And I, I have some deep regrets.
If not, I was doing my best with my
mom and working, but so he's in a group
home about 40 minutes away from here.
There's 3 other fellows about
his age and size, and they've got
round the care help and they're
all very loving, but they're stuck.
They're just, it's
like, everything's just.
At a standstill and
he's surviving, but not really
thriving and it's the biggest.
And I've got my mom and I feel in
one sense stuck and he's safe and
Rachel and Leon, we do see him.
We do.
They do FaceTime.
They're in communication with his
caretakers and doctors and all that there.
It's definitely really hands on.
He eats a good, clean, organic
diet, any extra supplements.
It's like they're really working with us.
And yet he's not, I,
he's, he's not thriving.
Rupert Isaacson: What do you think,
what do you think is going to be the
way through that stuckness for him,
given that you've some experience
in getting through stuckness?
What does your gut say?
Jill Cohen: Getting him out of
there, even if he has to go to
Ireland to live somewhere kind
of more, you know, it's like, you
know, Rachel Lance go so far away.
I said, but he's so far away.
Anyways find a place.
It's like, God, if I had the resources
to set something up where it was safe,
it's like, like an island where they
could be free and be in nature and.
have the boundaries of
the water, he can swim.
So that would be safe, but to
find a natural place for him to
be able to, he's nature boy, he
loves, he's outside all the time.
Rupert Isaacson: And in, in the
place where he's staying, they,
they, they can, he can do that.
He can live that way.
Yeah.
Jill Cohen: There's a backyard,
but it's like we wanted them to
get a pool to get a trampoline.
They won't get a trampoline
because it's dangerous.
They can't have a pool because.
It's dangerous.
And it's just, so he's got a big fenced
in backyard and he could ride his bike a
little bit and he can at least sit on the
earth, he can at least sit in the dirt.
Rupert Isaacson: But he's not
able to go down to the beach, to
the water, to the forest, to the,
Jill Cohen: yeah.
Because the caretakers have to be able
to keep up with them, and they're so
underpaid, and so unfed, and yeah,
and and not really educated in what's
Rupert Isaacson: possible.
It's funny you said Ireland.
There is a man called David
Doyle, who will not be a guest.
He keeps refusing to be a guest on it.
Show, but I work with David very
closely and David is as close as I
have come to meeting the modern day
incarnation of the Wizard Merlin.
And he has a severely autistic daughter
who also had a great response to horses
and saw a demo of Horse Boy Method that
we did in 2012 in Limerick in Ireland.
And he went and set up a
place called Li Skin at Farm.
Which is exactly what you've
described and the young adults and
adults whose families are maxed out.
They, they cycle through, they spend a
few weeks there, and then they cycle back
home, and then they cycle through again.
It's, it's, it's a cyclical thing, and
then some of them go on out to something
more independent, and some of them
don't, but they all thrive and then
become working parts of the community.
And he's now setting up
And I'm going to put you in touch with
him because, and the reason I'm having
this conversation with you here on this
podcast is that if you're listening
listeners, this is how things happen.
So unstuckness seems To my mind to happen
often through conversation that it's
almost like you say to the okay universe
show me the you know You're all powerful.
So all power right already, you know Um,
and then one throws that out there with a
bit of gratitude and boom a conversation
comes up where the next potential
Think coming and it's so funny to me.
He said even Ireland like out of the blue.
Why did you say, why just Ireland?
You know, all the way in
California, there's a bazillion
places in America, surely.
However, it just so happens
that in Ireland there is a man
who's setting up these places.
And then there's, there's somebody
else who is just in the early stages
of beginning to set up something rather
similar around people with schizophrenia.
young adults who've fallen through
the cracks, particularly with narcotic
induced schizophrenia, you know,
from the very strong forms of overly
syntheticized marijuana that, you know,
have come in, in the last 10 or 20 years,
you know, which is very different to
the marijuana that we used to smoke.
It's now a completely different thing.
It's, it's, you know, it's so full of THC,
it's almost like doing acid and it can,
it can spark psychosis in some people.
So the world has changed, but it, for
listeners, I know this, this podcast
seems unusually informal in that like
scub came in, Rowan came in and we're
talking with him and now we're riffing
in this way, but this is how it's done.
Don't, wouldn't you agree, Jill, that,
that it's about reaching out and asking
for help and having conversations
with people and not self martyring
and doing this kind of stubborn.
It's good to be stubborn in some ways.
I'm going to get the job done, but not
in that I'm going to do it all myself.
Jill Cohen: Right.
It's dreaming ourselves
Rupert Isaacson: awake,
dreaming ourselves awake.
Go on.
What do you mean by that?
That
Jill Cohen: it's, we had to dream
it to, to have conversations and
dream and start to visualize.
And then it's like, and then
it's like, we can see the vision.
I mean, that's how I,
it's like the vision came.
You need to find Mongolian healer
and boom, there's, you know,
there's a horseplay which led it's.
Dreaming ourselves awake into
actualization, dreaming ourselves, we
have to dream it, we have to desire it.
I mean, desire can lead us down so many
roads, but it's like the desire for
Sequoia to be happy and fully expressed
and living, you know, fully in joy and,
Rupert Isaacson: absolutely.
It seems that we're, we're, we're
going to the territory here, which is
good territory of law of attraction.
And this, this idea of when you're
unhappy with something, you know,
one's experience of being unhappy
with something launches Abraham Hicks
people would say is a rocket of desire.
And those rockets of desire
that seem to come out of
frustration in fact set in motion.
The solutions however, there is
a danger there of if we turn our
attention to what we don't like and
what we don't want all the time, then
we just kind of get more of that.
But, but if we can identify in a
certain moment, I want this and then
start to turn our attention to that
thing then manifestation can occur.
There's something I
really like in the Bible.
Even though I'm not religious there's
many great things in the Bible, and
one of them is this business of turning
the other cheek in the New Testament.
And when I was growing up, you
know, I thought, well, that's
just being a pussy, you know.
Why would you do that?
You know, turn around and smack him.
And then I realized through mentorship
and teaching that, not through my
own realizations because I'm not
that intelligent, that What it
meant was turning your attention.
So literally your gaze if you turn your
gaze from this thing over here That's
causing you discomfort and dis ease.
You can turn your face.
It's to turn your gaze You actually
have to move your head Yes You turn
your cheek to look at something that
is working in your life or that you
do desire or that is positive and you
Simply start going in that direction
because that's now where you're looking
you go in the direction where you
look That's how we ride our horses.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Body weight, you know,
the horse follows it.
So, that was something I
wanted to ask you about.
You seem to be good at manifesting.
You manifested from an early age in
your teens, there you were, buying
your first car and going around
the world from your pottery, and
then started to use human clay.
And it's done the same thing and you've
manifested what many people would look at
it as a dream life when you had to move
your The internet froze so Jill had to
move her laptop into her main house from
her treatment room and I got a lovely look
at her property And as we were walking
through all those oaks I was thinking
that's not bad for someone who's Made
their living through body work as a, as a
hippie to buy a piece of land like that.
That's, that's not too shabby.
I make good money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, but, you know, a lot of people.
Jill Cohen: And I work three
and a half hours a day.
Wow.
Take care of my mom.
And.
Rupert Isaacson: Wow.
So, so, so how does one manifest that?
Because you know
Jill Cohen: desire
Rupert Isaacson: desire go on talk to us
Jill Cohen: more about that So it's
like I think it's like yeah from a
spiritual point of view It's like
that's what brings us, you know into
another hurt a human birth is our own
our unrealized Desires, so it's like
we just keep those desires those, you
know, just keep keep moving it That's
how we get it through desire through
wanting it and then action How does
Rupert Isaacson: one, how does one
desire long term things that have
not manifested without falling
into a trap of frustration, and
then putting one's attention on
what one therefore doesn't have?
How does one dance the dance
between the frustration of desires
that take time to fulfill, to be
fulfilled, years, decades even,
without falling into that frustration
trap where things can't manifest?
Hmm.
What's the secret?
What's the key?
What's the key?
There's
Jill Cohen: staying focused
to where you want to go.
Sometimes it takes time.
Sometimes you have to pause when
you don't know what to do next.
And you wait and you listen.
And you, you, like you say, you
have the conversations, you have the
conversations and out of the conversation
that we don't have to do it all alone.
I mean,
Rupert Isaacson: You weren't
always able to work three
hours a day to make good money.
How does one go from.
having to work 15 hours a day to
working three hours a day so that
you can make good money and still
look after your mom with dementia?
Jill Cohen: You raise your
rates raise my rates in time.
I mean, I've got a way, I've
got a pretty good waiting list.
I'm booked out about six weeks and
I've got a pretty good waiting list.
So if anybody changes, I'm just, Oh, cool.
Then somebody else is
going to be able to get in.
I don't stress about scarcity.
I focus on service.
There are people that are in
pain that want to get out.
You can't come.
Okay.
Somebody else does want to come.
So it's, it's being, yeah, it's, it's like
that pathway of, of service and it just
life shows up.
It's like the, the, the, the Z's part, but
Rupert Isaacson: you
say, raise your rates.
Now that's an interesting one.
So a lot of us undervalue ourselves
Jill Cohen: and I think absolutely.
And I still
Rupert Isaacson: do.
Right.
Yeah.
And you know, we might go through
some years of imposter syndrome.
Before we realized actually no,
we're quite good at our shtick.
We've now been in it for long enough
to know that we're good enough.
However, one thing I would say about
you, it's one thing to glibly say raise
your rates, but of course you can't raise
your rates and have it work unless people
feel that you're worth those rates.
And presumably you're worth
those rates because this is back
to self actualization again.
Jill Cohen: Because I
do my own inner work.
I can't take people further than
I've been so I do my own work.
If I'm going to help somebody that's
got emotional blocks or that's what I
do is a lot of emotional tracing work
and inner child work and even past life
work and ancestral work and it's like
it unless I go in and I do my own work.
I mean, I do plant medicine journeys.
I go in and I, I, I face my.
Myself and it's like if I can
do that, then I can guide others
to go in and support them and
facing what their roadblocks are.
So you can't take people further
than you've been yourself.
I, I know that I get frustrated and
I get stuck and I go, okay, Jill, you
need to go deeper when it gets hard.
Go deeper.
Rupert Isaacson: Right?
Right.
So it's really about upskilling, isn't it?
So, I mean, whether those upskills are
spiritual or whether they're learning
a skill like a computer program.
Or another way of riding a horse, or
a professional skill of some sort.
Or all of the above, which
it seems that you do.
It seems that this
forever student thing...
Humility
Jill Cohen: of being a beginner humility.
It's like, oh, maybe I
don't know everything.
Maybe I need to go learn.
Maybe I need to go deepen my skills.
It's yeah, the humility that I don't know.
And and then, and I come back,
I've been practicing 48 years
and I work on my treatment room.
I still don't know what
the fuck I'm doing.
And I just have to trust and show
up and listen and and the way we'll.
The way we'll show the way the way
we'll, you know, I got to get in the
canoe and I can't dance around it.
You got to do your work.
Rupert Isaacson: Something came into my
mind while you were talking about clay and
then human clay, which goes to the heart
of the Ashkenazi Jewish story, which some
listeners may know is a magical story.
If you don't, let me just
talk you through it quickly.
So, Ashkenazi Judaism, the east,
the Jews of Eastern Europe, the
fiddler on the roof Jews who then
ended up in New York and South
Africa, which is my family and so on.
They were actually
originally not from there.
They were originally
from Spain and Portugal.
And yeah, and they were kicked out with,
If they got out alive at the end of the
15th century, when the final reconquest
of Spain happened and Spain became
under Ferdinand of Isabella, who then
sent people off to the new world, who
conquered the last Moorish kingdom of
Granada and made Spain Christian again.
And basically if you didn't convert.
If you were Jewish, it had been a,
it had been a haven for Judaism and
a very enlightened form of Judaism.
In fact, an alchemical form of Judaism,
in fact, a magical practice form of
Judaism called Kabbalah and which
came out of the middle ages there
mostly in Spain with a mixture with
Islam and, and, and Sufism and so on.
And of course this was anathema and
the Spanish inquisition was formed
under Ferdinand and Isabella and
went after these people massively.
And if you didn't convert, you were.
Killed nastily and even if you did convert
a lot of times you were killed nastily
And so a lot of them went east into the
Ottoman Empire, which was a safe haven
Istanbul's now, you know Constantinople
Byzantium and then from there a lot of
them up into Up the Black Sea and then
settling in the areas north of there
was now Lithuania and Ukraine and so on
yeah, and One of the stories that comes
out of that magical Kabbalistic form
of Judaism, which is a mystic form of
Judaism, about trying to, the world being
in disharmony and trying to bring it back
to harmony through magical use of sacred
geometry and numbers and all these sorts
of things was the Legend of the Golem.
And the Legend of the Golem is it, some
people say it happened in Vilnius in
Lithuania and some people say it happened
in Prague and some people say it happened
here and some people say it seems to be
Part of a general consciousness that there
was a the rabbi low was his name who was
so in tune with the kabbalah that he could
speak to angels and that when they were
going to Attack the ghetto the christians
were going to attack the ghetto At the
behest of the king because of course the
jews had been lending the king money and
the king didn't want to pay it Back so
it's much easier to just go kill them all.
The rabbi low works through the Kabbalah
and takes clay and creates a life in
clay, a golem, this giant made of clay,
who lumbers off into the night and saves
the day basically pushes back the torch
bearing pitchfork waving hordes who are
going to come and rape, rape and kill
everybody in the, in the, in the ghetto.
The reason the word ghetto comes from
the Jewish thing, the name of the,
the ghetto is the area of Venice.
where the Jews lived that and it's
now come to mean, and it had a
wall around it, like as many Jewish
areas did in European cities.
And now that's come to be a ubiquitous
term for any neighborhood that is
underserved and enclosed in some way,
but it, the ghetto is still there.
It's called the ghetto in in Venice.
That's where it comes from.
And so it's interesting to me.
That there you are working in human clay.
You're coming out of
these Ashkenazi roots.
You're manifesting Suffering
suffering and joy in the face of
suffering that's fiddler on the roof.
That's the Ashkenazi Jewish
experience That's the that's why
we cry when we see that film Yeah
spirit the indomitable human spirit.
Yeah, is that not self actualization
Jill Cohen: that absolutely
is Yeah, absolutely.
That's what that human spirit for
life and for joy and our, I mean,
birthright of what it is to be human,
to be joyous, dance and celebrate.
And that we have love and we
have the senses to experience
each other and commune and
touch and affect and feed
and toast and celebrate
Rupert Isaacson: each other, laugh,
Jill Cohen: yeah, ecstatic dance.
I mean, the Sufis were, you know,
they spun to find that ecstatic joy.
We danced the Hora, you know,
the Greek dance on tables.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Dance is a huge thing.
Jill Cohen: And music, music connects us.
Music connects us.
Yeah.
That's one thing Sequoia sang.
We always knew where he was.
He was singing and he would,
it was like his little voice.
Sequoia and dancing.
I mean, he would listen to a Katy Perry
song once on YouTube and he knew every
word and he would just belt it out.
And that's, that was, that's when he's
the most joyous is when he's singing.
He loves music.
Loves music.
I've got the cutest videos and Rachel
dancing and yeah, singing, whether it's
on top of old Smokey or, you know, Katy
Perry songs, or Is it important to dance?
Rupert Isaacson: Is it important
to dance around your kitchen?
Jill Cohen: It's so important to dance.
Oh my, that's what I do with
mom when she gets in it.
I turn, I turn music on.
She loves music and we just dance.
We dance, we dance.
Dancing's awesome because that's
our, in tribal, that's what the dance
we, there's dance, there's singing.
Rupert Isaacson: Right?
It's that, that the dancing
rituals are, are what are healing.
Yeah, there's,
Jill Cohen: there's no place like moves
our body, moves ourselves, produces the
oxys and they, you know, it's Keeping
our joy, moving it through our spines
and feeling alive feeling, even when
I cry, even when I'm sad, I'm grateful
that I can feel, that I can feel that
deep I love to sob, to be moved to
sobbing, to, to, to just be so deeply
moved, whether it be, you know, in deep
sadness or grief or, or, or sobbing
and joy, I mean, it's, it's, it kind
of meets in that place that it's, yeah.
Indistinguishable.
And that's when we feel our aliveness.
Rupert Isaacson: So yeah, there's a,
there's, there's a neuroscience to that,
of course, which is that hip rocking
movement, you know, dancing, sex any
any empathetic touch brings oxytocin.
Oxytocin is not just feel good hormone.
It's communication hormone.
It's strategy hormone.
It's where you begin to strategize with
the other people in your group about
how do we get out of this dilemma.
How do we figure out the next few years
blah blah blah without oxytocin our brains
can't do that Steratonin the same thing
produced in the gut through the movement
The endorphins that come you talk about
sobbing so any Sobbing a good cry brings
endorphins a good meal brings endorphins
lots of hard exercise brings endorphins
another Happiness hormone and therefore
dopamine where you figure it out The
figuring out the figuring out because
all of this you talked about being moved
to do all of these things you have to
move would you say that when you feel
stuck and you talked about going deeper?
In stuckness there you are with sequoia.
There you are with your mother's cancer
There you are with your mother's dementia
Is it the actual physical movement that
leads to the emotional movement that leads
to the movement where you can manifest?
Your way through.
Yeah,
Jill Cohen: sometimes I'll just sit on
my ball and I'll bounce or I'll stand
and just Jiggle everything getting all my
cells going and everything just bouncing
and moving and livening and awakening
And every little cell of my body.
It's happy And you know, it's it's just
and in in and in all the cells is all
the information Oh my god ourselves
every cell holds the information of
everything in our body, every function.
And it's like just waking all those
cells up, getting them going and
community and connection, connection,
feeling the connection, feeling
Rupert Isaacson: how, when you're, when
you're isolated, I mean, you're there
somewhat in isolation in a rural property.
It's very beautiful, but
it's somewhat in isolation.
A lot of people end up isolated because
they have the autistic kid that's going
to kick off in the supermarket so they
don't want to go out, or they're just so
snowed under, overwhelmed with the demands
at home that go, how do you keep that
connection going when you're in isolation?
Jill Cohen: There's just,
I mean, look in the dirt.
There's bugs.
That's like, we're never alone.
We think, you know, I
went through one time.
I remember it was like, long time
ago, beginning of my journey.
I think I was in Sedona and I
thought, oh, I feel so alone.
And it was like, I went out on
the rocks and I took my drum and I
started drumming and it was like,
I looked down and there's bugs down
there and there's clouds up there.
And it's like, it's like, it's
the illusion of aloneness.
It's the illusion of seclusion.
It's the illusion of it's
it's like, try to be alone.
You can't be alone.
There's like, go try to be alone.
You can't be alone.
There's, there's, there's life everywhere.
We're sitting on a planet that
is connected to everything.
And through the mycelium,
we're totally connected.
We're not, we, every, all
the waters flow together.
It's like, we're never, we can't be alone.
Even if we want to be
alone, we can't be alone.
And it's the illusion of aloneness.
It's the illusion of
Rupert Isaacson: the aloneness.
Is it allowing yourself
to go trans species?
Yeah,
Jill Cohen: yeah.
Just have to quiet down and be still
and present and you, you start to feel
the connections and the communication
and you can hear you know, your
horses talking and the dogs and the
birds and the crows and it's like...
It's yeah, well, if we can quiet
down enough to hear, there's,
it's constant communication.
It's communing.
Rupert Isaacson: So movement, movement.
But it sounds also like nature,
therefore, the trans species thing.
The connection to the, to the great web.
So I guess if you're sitting
in a room, not moving, looking
at a computer screen, and...
Not going outside into It's not
Okay, so those two things would you
Jill Cohen: say go outside
sit on the ground go outside
look at the clouds Go outside.
You've got to be able to
find a leaf or something.
There's birds or There's
yeah, get outside, get your
feet dirty, touch the earth.
Rupert Isaacson: Now you're gonna, we're
gonna have some listeners who might feel,
I hate going outside, going outside is
mosquitoes, going outside is getting dirty
and gritty, going outside is, you know.
That just sounds like a
bunch of hippie BS to me.
What's your answer to that?
Jill Cohen: Well, then stay stuck.
Stay stuck, Vin.
Go for it.
It's your choice.
There's a choice.
Go get dirty.
See what it feels like to be dirty.
You may fall in love
with the dirt, you know?
You may fall in love with a bug.
Rupert Isaacson: It seems to me very
much that in the course of the work
that I do, where one's dealing with
depression or trauma or something like
that, and that what it often seems
to come down to for me is sadness.
That there's a profound sadness.
Running through our culture, which
the more I look at it seems to
come from a disassociation with
the environment that we are pre
programmed as an organism to be in.
If you, if you put a goldfish in a
bowl, it's going to be a bit depressed.
If you, if it's swimming out there
in the river, okay, predator might
get it, but nonetheless, it's
again, self actualized or whatever.
But we're like zoo animals.
And even zoos have evolved.
Conditioned.
Well, and they've evolved now.
They've got great habitats and, you
know, they've learned from the past
and now can create happiness for
animals and rebreed endangered species
that they put back in the wild.
But we're not putting ourselves
back in the wild, are we?
Jill Cohen: It's the old messaging.
It's like somebody said,
Oh, don't get dirty.
You'll get sick.
There's germs or it's the programming.
It's like, you know, or don't do
that because you've got to do this.
And it's the programming that we're
spoon fed that comes down from the
grandmas and the grandmas and grandmas.
It's like, who said that?
It's like, it's like, unsay
it, say something else,
choose something different.
Rupert Isaacson: It's really interesting.
Yesterday I was, I live in Germany,
as some listeners know, and we drove
north to a family reunion in a very
rural area of Hessen, where we live.
And Hessen is the area where the
Brothers Grimm stories mostly come from.
The north part of Hessen.
It's a lot of forest.
And Little Red Riding Hood.
Comes from scary stories.
They were scary stories little red
riding hood comes from a the area around
a town called asphalt which is a very
beautiful little gothic town still today
and You think of it as this girl who?
Was you know a bit of a free spirit going
through the woods and of course, it's the
big bad wolf Yeah, and it's it's basically
a story about don't don't be a free
spirit the little red riding hood I didn't
realize until yesterday what the, the,
it, it's a mistranslation from the German.
It's a Rosenkappchen.
It's a little red riding,
it's a little red cap.
And these little caps that they wore,
that they made the girls wear 200
years ago was like this little square
red thing fixed on the top of the head
with a, it's like, a bit like a hijab.
with, with a, with, with, with
all the hair tied rigidly back
and in this top knot on the,
with, with this sort of red thing.
And then a hijab basically
around the jaws, around the face,
basically keeping the jaw shut.
So you didn't talk too much.
Wound tight of black.
Material and the women had to walk around
like this for their entire life from
being a little girl Keep their mouth shut.
Keep their mouth shut and you
know, don't go self expressed.
So weirdly you think you think
of okay You know 200 years ago.
It was so much better.
You know, the world was more
natural And then you have these
stories about don't go touch nature.
That's the big bad wolf.
Don't go walk through the forest
by yourself and Toe the line.
Germs.
Germs.
Yeah.
And
Jill Cohen: everybody's
got stomach problems.
Rupert Isaacson: From not enough germs.
Yeah.
From not enough germs.
And the stomach problems become brain
problems because brain health and
gut health are connected obviously.
Yeah.
So when people are stuck, Jill,
and they're saying, they
say, I'm in Jill's situation.
I'm stuck looking after a sick relative.
I'm stuck.
Looking after a special needs kid.
I'm stuck.
Give us your one, two, three of
Jill Cohen: unstuck.
Go outside and look around.
Just go outside and look around.
It's that's just the dirt.
Sit on the dirt.
Notice, listen to a bird.
How can you not be joyful
listening to a bird?
It takes you into the
present moment of the chirp.
It's like, it's so easy
to just go outside.
I mean, there's.
I mean, we can see clouds here.
It's not smart.
I mean, it's just kind of laying on
Lake Austin, you know, it's like,
just go outside and look at a cloud.
And everything is just,
it expands your awareness.
It takes you out of that tight, stuck,
trapped place to expansion of what's
possible and start to dream yourself awake
Rupert Isaacson: to go outside.
So move, that's the go outside
bit, move, move, and then go
outside and then put your feet
Jill Cohen: on the ground and your
head in the clouds and the head
in the clouds and get bit, expand.
Just let yourself dream what could,
you know, you know, to drink out
what people are afraid to dream.
It's like, who am I to dream?
It's it's like dream there.
Nobody, nobody's died from crying.
Nobody's.
Nobody's, it doesn't hurt anything to
dream and you start to dream and you
any things become possible even if it's
one little thing, one little thought.
Rupert Isaacson: When did we move
away from dreaming as a culture?
That's an interesting one, isn't it?
That you have, we have this
thing called mythology, right?
We have this thing called religion.
We have, what are those but dreams?
You know, we have this
thing called culture.
What is culture but an idea that somebody
had and other people had ideas, which
meant that it came together for a
culture, which those ideas had to be.
Thoughts at some point which thought
is aka dream and then you've got
no choice about dreaming Right.
Anyway, your brain daydreams
whether you want to or not, of
course you dream at night When did
we decide that that was something
to put as a oh, you're a dreamer.
You're just a dreamer Well,
when did that become a bad
Jill Cohen: right in school stop
daydreaming pay attention It's like isn't
that that part of the brain or little
to be able to dream in our imagination?
Hmm.
That imagination, it wasn't
okay to just space out.
You know?
It's like, come back here.
Stop dreaming.
Yeah.
In school.
In school.
Stop daydreaming or pay attention.
Rupert Isaacson: And of
course, what was school?
School was a way to get people
to work in the factories.
Exactly right.
Where indoctrinate to dream.
No one's gonna, no one's gonna dream their
way into a factory, or no one's gonna
dream their way into being cannon fodder.
I mean, unless you give them shit
dreams, I mean, I guess you could argue
that the young Russians that, you know,
sign up for Wagner private minute, you
know, mercenary company or whatever have
been down such a shit rabbit hole of
depression that that's the only dream
they can dream to get out of that.
But it's complete manipulation.
They're being manipulated by men
in power to go and die in that tens
of thousands on the battlefield.
And of course that's been going
on for thousands of years.
But it seems to be about social
control and manipulation.
Wouldn't you agree?
Jill Cohen: Yeah, absolutely.
Because in the old traditions, it's
like, you know, I've I've gone into
the Kiva and we dream for like four
days and that's when we let go and let
our spirits fly in the inner realms
and get informed of what's possible.
Rupert Isaacson: And it seems to
me that, I mean, you're, you're
the living proof of this, that you
can, you can have these values.
Movement, nature, go outside, dance
around the kitchen go into go on a
vision quest of four days, be a total
hippie, and yet still make money.
And yet still run a business.
It's as if, again, back to where
we began, that people think that
these two things are somehow
mutually exclusive from each other.
And what I've found, again, through
this Live Free, Ride Free podcast, but
that's partly why I decided to do it,
was that most people I know who are the
most successful, they dream all the time.
And they, they really prioritize it.
They, they, they go...
Jill Cohen: I love my dream
Rupert Isaacson: time.
So is, is, is that, is that
really the key to unstuckness?
Is the dreaming.
Jill Cohen: It's a piece of it.
It's a big piece of it is to dream
and to, and to, and it's that
young, that, that young messaging.
Sometimes we have to, it's like,
our parents are done bringing us up.
We're 18 or 21.
We're on our own.
And then we get to continue
to raise ourselves.
And give ourselves that positive,
you know, like my mother, when I was
young, she told me, Jill, you can do
and be whatever you want to be, do.
It was like, there was no limits.
It was like, that was the
messaging they gave me.
I was like, oh, oh, oh.
And it's, and, and even if people
didn't get that when they were
little, they can begin now.
We need to then take over our own
parenting and continue to raise
that stuck inner child, which is.
You know, some of the work that I
do is going back to the wounds of
the inner child and letting them
self express and get it out and yell
and scream and cry and fear and.
All that and then go in as the parent
or have them bring their higher self
in to then say, well, what's possible.
What qualities do you want to give
that little child that they didn't
get when they were young and have
them receive those qualities to be
able to dream and imagine a quality.
And and release that old wounded
part and begin to raise and
foster our own woundedness.
Rupert Isaacson: It's our birthright.
Jill Cohen: It's our birthright.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Right.
It's everybody's birthright
to, to actually to live
through their imagination.
And it's the reality of life that you,
everyone does actually live through
their imagination whether they think it
or not, whether they realize it or not,
they, they, they think something up.
And they go off into that reality.
That's
Jill Cohen: creation.
That's creativity.
An artist creates from
something from nothing.
Right, but
Rupert Isaacson: even, even,
even when one's saying...
Angst, and yeah.
Paint the angst.
Jill Cohen: Okay.
Express it.
Don't let it stay in
there, but express it.
Express it.
Let it get big.
Exaggerate
Rupert Isaacson: it.
And then if you do that, how does
that in the law of attraction,
not just make more of it come?
Jill Cohen: You focus on something,
you focus on what you want.
It's like you go into your heart
and go, what do I really want?
So many people have no
clue what they want.
They don't want this, but they,
they don't have a clue of what
they want, how they want it to be.
It's like, well, you don't like this, but.
What do you like and then be in the
realm of, Oh, this brings me joy.
That brings me joy.
And then it just, it kind of blossoms,
it grows and percolates and bubbles up.
And then it's like, you go, Oh yeah,
it's like, yeah, I had a client that
was just got back from Greece and they
spent five days swimming three miles a
day and I just went, Oh my God, I forgot
how much I love to swim in the ocean.
And it's like, I'm going to go
get myself a new wetsuit and.
There's a group that swims Sunday mornings
and I'm going to start swimming again
because I love to be in the ocean I love
to swim and it was just through that.
Oh, yeah, I remember.
Oh, that sounds fun It's like starting to
imagine and then feel and then oh, yeah
I remember what that feels like to be in
the ocean and moving my body and breathing
and being in the you know But so eels and
Rupert Isaacson: so we talk about
dream time Earlier in this podcast,
we talked about that you need to
go talk to people in order to find
solutions, reach out for help, but
also, you know, have conversations.
I think you just hit on something.
What is a conversation but a shared dream?
Jill Cohen: A shared dream.
Absolutely.
We share our dreams.
And that's something that I would do
with a group of people that I was with.
We were studying Mayan medicine
wheel and the directions and
we would go into the Kiva.
We would dream for four
days in the wintertime.
We'd go in and our dreams would
come and then we would share our
dreams and we would inspire each
each other and, and awaken them.
Forgot forgotten dreams, you
know, sometimes we have these
dreams and then we push them away.
We forget them.
Then we remind each other of shared
dreams and and it all starts to happen.
It's like, oh, yeah, I had that idea.
I forgot about that.
And it's the isolation.
It's just staying.
And touch is so important.
It's like staying in touch with
people, but, but touch is so important.
It's like, it's like, I can touch
somebody and it wakes up memories.
Just that touch and being in
touch and connected and having
ourselves all be touched.
And then.
Resonated and then they all remember
because I think all our memories are
stored in ourselves and the water of life.
What do we do to remember to become
whole again to be member to remember,
there's a lot in, you know, there's a
lot of bullshit that we don't need to
remember, but there are a lot of core
things that to remember, to remember
what clean, fresh water tastes like
and crisp air in our nostrils to
remember those feelings of aliveness.
And then when we start to
remember, it's like, Oh yeah.
And that awakens the desire
and, and moves us forward.
And then we We share it, and
we talk about it, and we're a
community, and let's do this.
Rupert Isaacson: What do we do?
What does somebody do?
You talk about touch.
So, for example, there's the good
and the bad of the social media age.
The good of the social media age is,
look, here we are, we're talking on Zoom.
I'm in Germany.
You're in California.
We're in touch.
We're sharing the stream.
We're, we're communicating.
Of course, we already know each other,
but even if we didn't, we could do this.
Yeah.
Jill Cohen: Yeah.
Yeah, I didn't know you
when I didn't know you.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: However, however, you
know, the not so good side of social media
is staring into a computer all day not
being in physical contact with people,
not being in actual contact with people.
And one has to find that balance.
Okay, fine.
Go get touched.
Yeah, so how do you, what do
you do if you live a life where
you've got no one to touch?
What do you do to, to,
to make sure that that...
You touch yourself.
Jill Cohen: Okay.
I mean, you can talk.
We've got ourselves, right?
Ourselves.
I do self work on myself all the time.
What else?
I'm always massaging myself.
And then I'm drinking water,
drinking good water, hydrating.
That's fluidity movement.
We had the fluidity, the water.
And then, and then the fluidity
is like the emotions start to
come up and then the feelings.
And then we, and then we have the longing
Comes to be with other people and then
we reach out even if it's just talking to
somebody or sharing Your sadness or you're
stuck in you you you're you're stuck in
this you you reach out you talk about it
Rupert Isaacson: Is this is this also
where the the the getting out of one
species thing happens to be useful?
So for example, let's say You haven't got
a human in your life that you can touch.
Okay, you can touch yourself.
You could also book a massage,
but but you can pet a dog, right?
Yeah.
And you can put your hand on the
earth and you can go and hug a tree.
And the tree hugging thing
is so interesting to me, how
people feel so weird about it.
And then the science got done on it.
And of course, what did they find?
But that the electromagnetic frequency
is being thrown out by large trees.
Enormous and
Jill Cohen: enormous because those roots
go into the earth and the roots touch
all the other roots and all the mycelium,
you know, that spreads over that's
Rupert Isaacson: the earth itself made
Jill Cohen: and then the communication
comes and you start hearing things
Rupert Isaacson: and it just
flat out makes you feel good.
You know, I mean, you might
feel silly, you might feel self
conscious, but it feels good.
So it's the idea of touch,
the idea of don't, don't
limit it to one's own species.
Now think, think about
rocks, think about animals.
Think about.
Think about the air moving on your
skin, or as you said, the cold water,
you know, being in the water, whether
it's internally moving through you or
moving in the ocean, that's all touched.
And that
Jill Cohen: connects us and then we're
connected and then we're not as alone.
We're not as secluded.
Rupert Isaacson: So there are always
solutions, we just have to dream them up.
Jill Cohen: Yeah, we have to be
willing to get, to be, we have to
be willing to go deeper into our
stuckness, to have it be so stuck
that you just can't be stuck anymore.
Is that...
I mean, it's just...
Rupert Isaacson: Is that what you
find in sort of all, all mythologies?
This idea of the journey through the
underworld, is that what that is?
Jill Cohen: Yeah, I think so.
The mystery.
Curiosity.
Curiosity is soft.
And openness.
Because if you're curious, stuckness
is contraction and small and tight.
Curiosity is like, Oh, maybe
there is something out there.
Oh, maybe there is a possibility
of not having to be stuck.
The possibility.
Rupert Isaacson: And what is
curiosity, I suppose, but movement?
Because the moment you're curious
about something, you move towards it.
Yeah.
You just, you just do, right?
Physically, mentally,
emotionally, you move towards it.
You can't
Jill Cohen: help it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because we're hunting animals.
And that's how children are.
They're curious because they're just,
everything's new and they haven't been
programmed yet to don't touch, don't
get dirty, don't talk to that person.
Rupert Isaacson: It's joy, curiosity.
Jill Cohen: I think joy, yeah, it's
like a full expression of being alive
is joy is the expression of aliveness
of every little cell in the curious of
not knowing we're stuck when we think
we know everything we're stuck being
open to the possibility of, oh, that we
Rupert Isaacson: can be stuck
without knowing we're stuck.
That's interesting.
Oh yeah.
So yeah, so you can know you're stuck.
There you are.
Oh yeah.
You're, you're, you
are doing Sequoia 24 7.
There you are doing your mother's cancer.
There you are, you're doing your mother's
dementia and you say, okay, I'm stuck.
I'm actually physically
can't mo leave this property.
I'm stuck.
But you're right actually.
But I can dream.
You dream and I can dream
and I can dream what's next.
And imagine, or I could be moving
through life making, you know,
apparently successful, but not really
curious about anything and not.
Not developing, that's pretty
Jill Cohen: stuck, that's
stuck, that would be stuck in
my, that's a different stuck.
It's a less, it's kind
of a covert stuckness.
That's obvious.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just going down those, those
neural pathways that have
just been there forever.
And you're not even aware
there's another track to go down.
Sometimes we need to
take wrong turns in life.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: absolutely.
I was just last night interviewing
for the other podcast, which
is Equine Assisted World.
I was interviewing Dr.
Steven Peters, who's a neuroscientist
and neurosurgeon who also happens to be a
horseman and also happens to be autistic.
And he said, Ru, it all comes
down to axons and dendrites.
And I said, what do you mean?
And he said, well, if you're curious.
What happens is you reach out and you
touch things and you have these sensory
experiences Which then inform your brain
about what's out there and that causes
your brain to forge new neural pathways
First in big ways that are called axons
and then out in little like branches and
then Dendrites Little twigs which are the
dendrites and that these need to when they
find other dendrites they fuse with them
And then create neural pathways and that
you can always create new neural pathways.
But if you don't do that, that's
basically what depression is.
And that's what he said.
Rupert.
It's.
Exactly.
And he said, you've got to be your own
internal gardener, your own internal
forester to create as many dendrites
in your brain as you possibly can.
And it was so nice to have
it sort of put in those.
Okay.
Dendrites.
I'm on it.
Let's go get some dendrites.
Jill Cohen: Well, that's what John Barnes,
my, my, a fascial teacher, he says,
you know, it's depression only leads to
something happens and then you have a
decision, you make a decision about it
and then you don't do anything about it.
And then everything tightens up and you're
stuck and it's like, just put your hand
on somebody and then it's like, create
space and do neural pathways open up
the river can flow the fluids can flow.
Right?
And so it's.
Rupert Isaacson: And petting the
dog, putting the hand on the earth,
hugging the tree, jumping in the
water, that, what's that going to do?
It cause dendrites in your brain.
It's going to create new neural
Jill Cohen: pathways.
Absolutely.
Yes.
And awakened and alive and,
and yeah, because depression is
Rupert Isaacson: stuck.
They ought to teach us neuroscience
in school, shouldn't they?
Because if they, can you imagine if one
got these, these, these user manuals to
the brain, you know, these basic concepts,
10, you know, that one could go on and.
Yeah.
Instead of having to try to prize
these neuroscientists out of their
ivory towers to come and talk to us.
Right.
But, you know, when he said that,
Jill Cohen: it's like, and only if you
go to college or university or yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: But anyone
Jill Cohen: can.
Right.
Your kids or the littles could do it.
Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: exactly.
Exactly.
In fact, I'd say the younger the
kid, the more they get it because
they're not, you know, you can.
Right.
Jill Cohen: It's a simple, they don't have
a ton of belief systems that push it out.
Yeah.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Yeah.
Dendrites.
Cool.
Dendrites.
Dendrites and love it.
Getting unstuck.
Axons, dendrites.
Get your ass moving
Jill Cohen: out.
Get your boot, get
Rupert Isaacson: your booty moving.
Alright, listen.
But I need to do . Yeah.
I know you've sat here looking
at this screen for a while.
Well, let's begin to wrap up.
What are you dreaming?
Where are you dreaming yourself to now?
In this apparent stuckness, where,
where, where, where you're going,
Jill Cohen: I'm dreaming
a future for Sequoia.
That's really where my
biggest stuckness is.
My mom has lived a beautiful life.
I'm caring for her.
She's, and it's like, at some point,
her journey is going to conclude
and I will have time and energy and
making good money and saving money.
And I want to keep having conversations
of what's possible for Sequoia and
all the kids that are out there on the
spectrum, because that's the biggest
pain, stuckness that, you know, like
my mom said the other day, she was
in one of her mood and she goes, if
I was gone, you'd be totally happy.
I said, no.
I've got square.
It's like, I'm never going to be happy
until I feel that he is living his,
he's always going to be autistic.
I love that with them.
It's like we were in Scotland
and being, it was like, it was so
much fricking fun being autistic.
It's like, so free.
It's like, as Scott says,
it's like ego lists.
It's like to just be you without any.
You know, committee, they're
saying you shouldn't do that.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so the new dream,
the dendrites are going to come, the
new dendrites are going to come through
now dreaming this life for Sequoia.
What's that life?
So shut your eyes, tell us, let your
dendrites fuse, and tell us the picture.
What does it look like?
What's happening in Sequoia's life?
And then.
How do we dream ourselves?
I
Jill Cohen: can see him out in nature,
being able to wander being able to sit
on the ground, being able to eat from
the garden, be able to pick berries
being able to swim in the lake being
able to sing at the top of his lungs
and feel fully expressed and joyous.
To have community around him
that loves him and supports him
Rupert Isaacson: as part of this dream.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt
you say what you were going
Jill Cohen: to say.
Just to be able to have
peace inside of his own body.
Yeah, for the, for the, for the
volume to come down for him.
I think the volume's so turned up.
Rupert Isaacson: Because service is
so integral to human happiness and
joy, how in this can Sequoia find
his way to service, to be of service,
so that he can find that mature
type of fulfillment and happiness?
Where do you see him serving?
Jill Cohen: I have to see
him out of his stuckness.
I
can see him.
Wow.
I had a vision many, many years ago,
and he was little and projecting
out in time, and he came, and he
goes, Grandma, come, we're going
to go into the kiva now and dream.
It's time to go in and
dream for our people.
Dream for our community.
Like a shaman.
He's a dreamer.
He's a
Rupert Isaacson: shaman.
He's a dreamer.
Like an active dreamer to help people
Jill Cohen: dream.
Come on, Grandma, it's time
for us to go and dream.
Dream for our
Rupert Isaacson: people.
That sounds, that sounds achievable.
Yeah, it does.
That sounds doable.
I mean, one can build a Kiva.
you a dream I had.
You know, Scub just
showed up an hour ago, so.
So, I had this, I had this dream
when he was about three and
at his most severely autistic.
And the dream was, I arrive at
this airport and this tall, young,
handsome young man comes and
picks me up and we get in his car.
And And that, you know,
he's always taller than me.
I'm looking up at him, carrying my bags,
you know, he's a real young gentleman.
And we get in his car and
then we're driving off to
wherever, and it's, it's him.
And I remember thinking, I don't know
how the fuck I'm going to get to that.
That's impossible.
But it's, it's clear as day.
It's in my mind.
It's in my dream.
But I do know that it's the
direction in which I want to go.
Well, in 2021, 15 years after having
had that dream, a waking dream.
I arrived at Austin Airport,
I flew back to Texas.
Scub came and picked me up, and he was,
he was being totally autistic, right?
He was, he was there, dimming
away in the, in the arrivals area.
But nonetheless, tall, taller
than me, good looking young man,
built, has shown up to get me.
And we go walking out of the airport
to his car, it's his car, he's driving.
And, as I'm putting the bag,
well actually he puts my bags in,
because he's always a gentleman.
And I get in the passenger seat
and he starts to back out and
I go, oh fuck, it happened.
This is it.
It, it happened.
I dreamt it and it happened.
And it happened.
And then two nights later, we went to
see a couple of friends and I said,
you know, Scub, I'm going to drink a
couple of beers when we go, so will
you be all right driving me back?
And I thought it was freaking
out that we were even having
this type of conversation.
And, and I found myself in the passenger
seat again at night, we're driving,
we're leaving the pub where we've been.
It's raining.
So he's driving in the rain in
five lanes of traffic, you know, on
the changing lanes on the freeway.
And I'm looking at him going,
I used to, you used to be.
Non verbal and incontinent,
and here am I now, non verbal
Jill Cohen: and incontinent.
And tantruming in the back seat.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm the one now non
verbal and incontinent in this ad.
And we've totally shifted roles.
You know, so your, your dream
that you just articulated
for sure is going to happen.
Yeah.
And maybe it takes a certain
frustration to start launching that
rocket of desire, but for him to be
able to be a person that helps other
people to, that's called coaching.
That's life coaching.
That's, you know, and you
know, and there's autistic
people out there doing it.
You know, Dr.
Peter, Steve Temple Grandin,
Rowan, there's, there's lots of
people out there who are pretty
severely autistic who go on to have.
Careers.
And so let's make that dream happen.
Yeah, let's, let's, he's in there.
Let's build that.
Let's do that.
Let's build that.
Kiva.
I'd love to go dream with Sequoia.
The best heal I ever knew in the Kalahari.
The Bushman Besa was, the
name was completely autistic.
Never looked you in the eye.
Flat, rocked, spoken completely with us.
Wow.
He people, you know, people
travel from all thousands of
miles for healings from him.
Jill Cohen: Why not?
It doesn't have to look a certain way.
That's if we get stuck, those
dendrites are stuck and it's like we
think it has to look a certain way.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
So I'd be very happy
to put my dendrites in.
Oh, for purely selfish reasons, I would
love to go to that Kiva, you know.
Jill Cohen: And dream ourselves
Rupert Isaacson: awake.
And dream ourselves awake.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jill Cohen: Dreams ourselves awake.
Rupert Isaacson: So we, we dream
ourselves, dream ourselves out of
stuckness by dreaming ourselves.
Jill Cohen: Yes.
Alive.
We dream ourselves alive.
And Helen Keller, she says it
takes a person who's wide awake
to have their dreams come true.
We need to be awake.
We can't be stuck in those neural
pathways and asleep at the wheel.
We have to dream ourselves awake
to have our dreams come true.
Yeah.
Okay.
Our heart's desires, those desires,
yeah, those rockets of desire.
And when they're from the heart, they're,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
And for that, we need
to move, connect, dream.
Jill Cohen: Yeah.
Stay grateful, stay
grounded, stay in our hearts.
Stay present.
Rupert Isaacson: Get into nature.
Notice stuff.
Yeah, get into nature.
Be connected.
Jill Cohen: Hug a tree.
Hug each other.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're hugging and dancing
and singing and moving and
celebrating in life until life is a
celebration and not stop until then.
Yeah.
What else is there
Rupert Isaacson: to do?
It's true.
I can't think of anything else really.
Jill Cohen: I know.
Go ride a horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, yeah,
but that's, that's the same
thing, just in a different way.
Just hugging it with your legs.
Exactly.
Instead of your, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jill Cohen: And your butt.
Beautiful.
So my dream is to come
and ride with you guys.
Yeah.
And go to Portugal, visit
my friends in Portugal.
Go, I mean, my dream before the
cancer, it was, I was headed to
Portugal to go see Sophia and
Rupert Isaacson: Valencia.
Yes.
Those people who, dunno, the Valencia
family in Portugal, the, the Valencia
family in Portugal are the, are the apogee
of classical dressage alive on the planet.
When you enter that stable, it's like
you've gone back to the 18th century.
But yes, come, come here
to Germany along the
Jill Cohen: way.
And those are the roots before we
got stuck in Odessa and Ukraine
in the beginning in the 1500s.
That's true, that's true.
I want to go home.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, it's
through the Iberian Peninsula.
The, well, obviously, initially Judea, but
That hasn't been home for since the Romans
sacked it, you know, in 77 AD Romans.
Yeah, well, hey,
Jill Cohen: Home is where the heart is.
Home is where we dream.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So consider that dream done.
The, the, the invitation is wide open.
When you have a chance,
hop on a plane, come here.
The horses are ready for you.
The forest is waiting but
until then we'll dream.
Thank you.
So, normally at the end of one of
these podcasts, I give people websites
and emails for people to contact.
It doesn't sound like that's what
we're going to do here, Jill, does it?
Jill Cohen: No, if you find me, find me.
It's you
Rupert Isaacson: don't have
Jill Cohen: a website, do you?
I don't have a website.
I don't really have the time to
maintain it and life is flowing.
The river, my river is flowing and
I'm working to keep, you know, right,
keep everything moving and flowing and
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, your
business is entirely word of mouth.
I know but listen listeners, if you've
got a question for Jill, if you're in this
situation, if you're Feeling stuck for
really good reasons, like you actually
are stuck physically, you're looking after
somebody, you're, you, you, you can't move
from the situation, and you're wondering
what to do, and you want to send her a
question, or benefit from her wisdom,
send us an email here so, just write
it to info, at info at horseboyworld.
com.
Info at horseboyworld.
com.
Just say question for Jill, and
what we'll do is we'll relay those
questions, we'll collate them, collect
them, and then we'll get Jill back
on and she'll answer them for you.
How about that?
Beautiful.
All right, Jill.
Mmm.
Jill Cohen: It's been a treat.
Thank you.
It's been...
Rupert Isaacson: Till next time.
Oh, pleasure.
I'm going to go off and
have a bit of a drink.
You know what I'm going to do right now?
I'm going to go, because it's getting
dark here, I'm going to take Rowan,
we're going to go down into the creek.
That's outside the house here,
and we're going to go look at
fireflies while we walk the dog.
Jill Cohen: Beautiful!
And it's a full moon out.
Go dream, and we will connect.
I'll go look at the moon, too.
Very good.
Be in dream time together.
All
Rupert Isaacson: right.
All right.
I'll be very sensitive.
Love you.
Okay.
Love you, too.
All right.
Till next time.
Jill Cohen: Bye.
Bye.
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you for joining us.
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