Susan Beaulieu
Healing by Reconnecting to Spirit
How is healing related to the connection of the physical body and spiritual body? And what is the Wisdom of Trauma? Join us in conversation with Susan Beaulieu, citizen of the Red Lake Nation, as we chat about healing.
We’ll hear how healing involves connecting to one’s spirit, not just symptom management. And how Indigenous medicines and ceremonies help in the reconnection to spirit. We’ll hear about her own experience as well!
Podcast that Susan is a part of: Remembering Resilience!
TRANSCRIPT
Leah Lemm: Boozhoo, I'm Leah Lemm, citizen of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.
Daniel Lemm: Hau Mitakuyapi, I'm Daniel Lemm, citizen of Lower Sioux Dakota Oyate.
Leah Lemm: And this is Wisdom Continuum. We are bringing you conversations from awesome Native folks to celebrate Native wisdom for a healthier, thoughtful, more just future.
Daniel Lemm: So on Wisdom Continuum today, we have Susan Beaulieu. Susan is a citizen of the Red Lake Nation and a mother. She currently works for the University of Minnesota Extension, where she focuses on historical trauma and adverse childhood experience and how those impact and cycle in our communities. She spends time exploring how we heal individually and collectively from a lot of this unresolved trauma and grief. Leah, I've known Susan for years, we were in a leadership development program together where we learned about institutional philanthropy and Native nonprofit work.
Leah Lemm: Fancy. But yeah, she is super great. And I recently worked with her on producing a podcast as a collaboration with many great organizations. And the podcast is called Remembering Resilience. You won't hear my voice on it. I was in the background, which was super fun, but Susan's wisdom and voice and knowledge is all throughout the podcast, which is really wonderful. And that is linked on our show notes and on the show page on Wisdom Continuum, at wisdomcontinuum.com. So Remembering Resilience, the podcast, is a great place to hear this conversation even more in depth with different people and many hours, let's say. And when I was helping out with the podcast, I learned so much just from doing behind the scenes work, because I would hear a lot of new words, new vocabulary like epigenetics.
Daniel Lemm: Epigenetics.
Leah Lemm: Yes. Epigenetics is the study of how cells control gene activity without changing the DNA sequence. How about that?
Daniel Lemm: You know-
Leah Lemm: You get it?
Daniel Lemm: I think that that is better than googling it. I feel like I just, Leah'd it.
Leah Lemm: I will cite my source is Google.
Daniel Lemm: Thank you, Google Leah.
Leah Lemm: And Susan will talk a bit further about it. She is the knowledgeable one, but it's really wonderful to learn even more about these complex topics that our ancestors, our communities, are actually pretty familiar with. And we'll hear more about that too.
Daniel Lemm: And today we talk to Susan about healing, how healing is related to the connection of the physical body and spiritual body and the wisdom of trauma.
Leah Lemm: That's right. So healing involves connecting to one's spirit, not just symptom management. And that's where a lot of this Native wisdom comes in to really shine. And we hear about how Indigenous medicines and ceremonies help in the reconnection to spirit. And we also get to hear about Susan's own experience with it as well. So let's jump into that conversation.
Well, you got my questions, right? Did you have a chance to look at them?
Susan Beaulieu: I did. I looked at them. They scared the bageezies out me. So I don't know, we'll see.
Leah Lemm:
Those were the questions Dan wanted to ask I'm sure.
Daniel Lemm:
Yeah. Right. I wanted to ask like how are you doing?
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah, yeah. What's your favorite board game? Yeah. Something easy.
Leah Lemm:
Well, the main point of the podcast, I mean, I feel like it's a podcast about flexing Indigenous brilliance and being like-
Susan Beaulieu:
Totally.
Leah Lemm:
Like we know this, and this is like a cool way and you all got to get on board. So that's kind of the purpose. And I think whatever, as we go through this conversation, if we can just keep that in mind, I think we'll fulfill the hope for this. Cool. Well, if you're ready, I'll let Daniel start asking those intro questions. How about that?
Daniel Lemm:
So the intro questions that we sent Susan or the questions about Susan, tell us, what is your favorite board game? I really am interested because like Monopoly and Risk, those are my go to games. Do you have any go-to games?
Susan Beaulieu:
So that's so funny because I hate Monopoly.
Leah Lemm:
What?
Susan Beaulieu:
I totally hate it. And I'm trying to think even like there was something recently like, so, oh what is it called? Life. Like Sierra, my oldest and then my 11 year old loved to play Life. And they always want me to play. I'm like, no, it's such a dumb game. It's such a dumb game. And then we were playing it and it's like, there's actually a lot of life lessons and we can talk about why it isn't the way that the game suggested it, all sorts of things. So sometimes these things can also be tools to help us understand what the current system is and how it programs us and how we can sort of get outside the programming.
Leah Lemm:
That's right. That's, when we try to play Monopoly together, because somehow we never finish a game for one reason or another, but I'm like, this game is really messed up.
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Leah Lemm:
So, there you go Dan. We like Apples to Apples. I think that one's fun.
Susan Beaulieu:
That is fun.
Leah Lemm:
And clue.
Daniel Lemm:
We do get through an entire game of Apples to Apples. So that's how you know it's a good game for us.
Leah Lemm:
Clue is a good one too, I think.
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah, just our family, we love Clue. That's fun.
Leah Lemm:
Just some logic, flex the logic part of your brain. It's brilliant. So, well Susan, since Dan is just going to joke around, I'm going to ask you to please introduce yourself.
Susan Beaulieu:
Oh my gosh. You think introduction should be an easy thing.
Leah Lemm:
Don't you have it memorized from Remembering Resilience?
Susan Beaulieu:
It's like, the thing about introductions is different people want to know different things, right? And so, what do people want to know about me?
Leah Lemm:
What is the most interesting to you?
Susan Beaulieu:
I think when I think about myself, the thing I think is most interesting and I think this can hold true for all of us is that there is no one Susan. Like how I am today is very different than how I was five years ago or 10 years ago or if you went to school with me in high school or if we know each other when we were in kindergarten. And it'll be a different and Susan then five years from now, 10 years from now. And hopefully someday if I get to be a grandma, I'll be very different. So I think that's been one of the things that has been interesting for me to sort of uncover, because I think there's this sort of false narrative that we tell ourselves about we are this person, but often the person that when we introduce ourselves to others, it's like labels and what we do and things like that. And it's not really about who we actually are. So, yeah.
Leah Lemm:
Susan, who are you?
Susan Beaulieu:
I'm still trying to figure that out, which is probably why introductions are so hard for me.
Leah Lemm:
Well, and I think that's totally true. I know when I think about even my day to day self, I'm like, who am I going to be today? Or who do I have to be today to get along in this world, like am I producer Leah who's trying to get everything done on time or am I chill out Leah, who's playing solitaire on her phone for two hours. They're both cool.
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah. Yeah. And they're both legitimately you. Like one is not less you than another and that's something I'm trying to figure out. Who am I? Okay. So I'll just give you the basic. So [Ojibwe Introduction 00:08:54], my name is Susan Beaulieu, I'm a citizen of the Red Lake Nation. I'm a mother of four and that's really important to me when I think about my teachers and who's helped me grow the most in this life, it's definitely been my children. I currently work for the University of Minnesota Extension. A lot of the work that I do is around teaching, training presentations on historical trauma, the impacts of that on our adverse childhood experience cycles in our communities. And then trying to figure out like, how do we heal from a lot of this unresolved trauma, grief, things that we carry both individually and collectively.
Susan Beaulieu:
And that's really something that I'm passionate about because it's something that's very much impacted my life and I'm trying to figure it out. And as I figure it out, and I'm not even close to having it figured out, but as I'm figuring it out and just trying to share what's been helpful for me as I watch loved ones and friends and people I work with also trying to figure this out on the journey. So sharing what I'm learning is really important. And I love to learn. Literally, I just, I love learning. But the thing that I've learned, especially over the last like four or five years is that I have to take that time to integrate what I'm learning, to sort of shift it from knowledge into wisdom, into practices that I use and ways that I show up in the world.
Susan Beaulieu:
Otherwise it's just trivia, right? It's like, it's like jeopardy questions or something, just something you can spout out, but it's not something that you're actually living. And I know that there's a part of me and I think there's a part of all of us that can pretty easily tell when what someone's saying and what they're doing is misaligned. Even if we aren't necessarily seeing what they're doing, the way that we talk about things, if we have a relationship with whatever we're talking about, we can talk about it from a much more authentic, real space than if it's just like something cool I read in a book or a magazine or heard on Minnesota Public Radio or something like that. So really trying to shift that learning from just something cool that I hear or something that I think, oh yeah, that makes sense into like, how do I integrate this into what I already know and the practices that I do so that it can actually make an impact?
Daniel Lemm:
So Susan, as you integrate this new knowledge into your being, how do you do that? Like, do you have a framework that you use or what is that process that you go through to make that something more solid?
Leah Lemm:
Less superficial.
Susan Beaulieu:
I wish I could tell you that I had this framework. I think that's beautiful. I wish I had a framework. I feel like a lot of it for me has been trial and error. So trying things and then trying them again. So I'll just give you a quick example. It's not a great example. But a couple years ago I heard of this person, his name is Wim Hof, he's from the Netherlands. He teaches this breathwork practice. Have I told you this, Leah?
Leah Lemm:
No, but I know who this guy is.
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah. So this breath practice, you breathe really deeply in through your belly, your chest, your head, and then you release it and then do the same thing. And you do like 30 to 35 breaths. And then at the last one on the exhale, then you hold it, he calls it a retention. And so you can go through multiple, doing it multiple times. So the first time the retention is a minute and the second time it's a minute and a half. And the third time, it's two minutes. And the fourth time, it's two and a half minutes, right?
Susan Beaulieu:
So you can, in a window of like 15 minutes, you can oxygenate your body enough that you can hold your breath for significantly longer without you feeling like you're going to die or pass out or something. But when I first started trying to do the breath practice, what it does is it's shifting your body from a more acidic state. A lot of the foods and things we drink tend to keep our body more acidic, coffee and stuff like that versus having a more alkaline pH in our body, which is much healthier for the nervous system. It's able to work more efficiently in an alkaline system.
Susan Beaulieu:
Cancers are harder to grow in an alkaline system. So alkaline body is a good thing. So it's oxygenating your blood, which is helping to alkalize your system. But in that process, I would start to get super tingly. I would get really lightheaded and I would start to freak out because I didn't like the sensations, the things that were happening in my body. So I would stop. Well, so fast forward now to about three months ago, I'm running a mind body medicine practice group with some staff at Four Winds and one of their staff knows this Wim Hof breathing. And he's like, hey, we should do this. And I'm like, okay. I really didn't want to do it, but we did it. And I remember, as we're doing the first round, I literally am feeling all these sensations again and I'm feeling overwhelmed, like I'm going to freak out and I want to quit.
Susan Beaulieu:
And then something in my mind goes, you can't quit, you're running this meditation. You have to keep doing this. So I kept doing it. And what I found is like, oh my gosh, it's so helpful. I felt so energized afterwards. My body just felt, I mean, even though the tingling and all that stuff or whatever, but I felt so alive. I felt so vibrant afterwards. And I was like, the learning in that for me was that a lot of times, and this is something that I'm working through is I let fear become a roadblock. And so in that case, it was this physical fear, which was unfounded. It just was something different. It was something new. And that's a lot of times, we start to fear, get afraid of the things we don't know or the things that feel different to us.
Susan Beaulieu:
And so having to sort of be forced to move through that fear and on the other side, realizing this is actually really beneficial. So sometimes it's like trying something and then it's like, oh no, this isn't working for me. But then if it's something I'm supposed to do, the universe finds a way to send it back around to me like, oh no, you need to come back to this, this is something important for you to start integrating now. And that's, I think, another important piece of it is sometimes we might hear something five, 10 years ago or whatever. Maybe we weren't ready then, but maybe seeds were planted. And then we come back around two years, three years, five years, 10 years later, and all of a sudden it blossoms. We're ready. We're ready for whatever that practice is or whatever that teaching is.
Susan Beaulieu:
And so I think too, starting to have that, just that trust and that when the timing is right, it will reemerge and come back to us has been really helpful for me. As opposed to feeling like every new thing I learn about or experience, I have to find a way to integrate it right away. And then once I find these things that help, we've talked about this in some other podcast, Leah, but soft belly, that's a practice I use every single day. So there are some practices that, because they're really simple, I could do it while I'm cooking. I can do it while my kids are fighting and I'm trying to regulate so I can break up their fight. I can do it before I do a presentation, when I'm super nervous. All of these different times that I can just pull that practice out and use it. So that's something that I do daily. So yeah, maybe someday when I have more time, I can create a framework.
Daniel Lemm:
There you go.
Susan Beaulieu:
That's a great question though. Because it is so important, right, is like, how do we start to shift from just head knowing into really building it into our everyday practice or a more regular practice?
Leah Lemm:
Well, and I feel that aligns really well with what we want to talk about too, is that sort of living in your head versus letting all of your senses, all of your, every part of you, lead you.
Susan Beaulieu:
Absolutely.
Leah Lemm:
So let's just quickly do a little bit of groundwork with the current state of Western medicine in your area. So like healing from trauma and how your childhood ancestry even can affect you later in life. What does that look like?
Susan Beaulieu:
When I think about how things get passed on, I mean, one of the things that science is starting to catch up to Indigenous wisdom, which is what we're talking about is Indigenous wisdom, is this concept around blood memory or how experiences from ancestors can get passed on to future generations. And so the science behind it, the term is called epigenetics and epi means to sit on top of, epi means to sit on top of. So it's what sits on top of our DNA. And I think we're all around the same age, so we remember in school, this really sort of robust discussion about, is it nature or nurture, what's most important, right? And there were people sort of sitting on both sides, but there wasn't anybody that was like, it's both. People would just argue about it being one or the other.
Susan Beaulieu:
But I feel like this is a good analogy for life in general. Things are rarely either or this or that. It often is some of both. There's so much space in the middle. And so what they're finding with epigenetics and what we know through our Indigenous wisdom is that when parents, grandparents, potentially even great grandparents have experiences, and this isn't just necessarily about trauma, because epigenetics speaks to it's very much about survival, helping future generations be able to survive. So it's also strengths and resiliency that gets passed on. But especially when we think about traumatic experiences that our parents, grandparents, our ancestors didn't have opportunities to heal from, then that had an effect on their biology. It had an effect on how their genetic code was read, what genes got turned on and what genes got turned off. And so what that might look like is it might mean that if I'm growing up in an environment that's really chaotic and dangerous and I'm constantly getting harmed physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, then I might become hypervigilant to stress.
Susan Beaulieu:
It might take a lot less for me to sort of freak out because my brain, my body, is wired to believe I'm living in a dangerous world. So any little small thing is going to set me off to increase my chances of survival. So my fight or flight kicks in so that I can run, fight, whatever it is I need to do to try to survive. So I think another thing, and this was really interesting to me. I was participating in a online international trauma conference and they were talking about sort of the difference between hyper vigilance, which is that fight or flight and dissociating. And they said a lot of times, if children are younger and they experience a lot trauma, because they can't run or fight, they are significantly more likely to disassociate, to check out, to no longer have their mind, body spirit connected.
Susan Beaulieu:
And that's a survival mechanism. It's very helpful. It's a survival mechanism. But what ends up happening then is, and I feel like in a lot of times in our Indigenous communities you see this where people are just sort of shut down emotionally. They're shut down, not only to themselves, but if we are closed off to our own emotions, we are unable to connect with others, with their emotions. And so we find ourselves sort of shut down and I call it and this isn't what it is, but it's almost like we're asleep. Like the pain and trauma was so great that we sort of had to go to sleep because it was so overwhelming. So we had to shut those parts of ourselves down. We had to disconnect from our spirit and our spirit is what helps remind us of the interconnection of everything around us.
Susan Beaulieu:
So if we're disconnected from that, then it's hard to remember that, that interconnection piece. So trauma can show up differently, can show up where we shut down or it can show up where we're ready to fight the next thing that we think is a threat. And so we see that both of those things played out in our tribal communities today where people are maybe just really shut down and trying to use anything they can to deal with emotions that are coming up. And so in a lot of the work I do, that's around addiction, people using substances to try to cope with these really difficult emotions that they don't know how to deal with. And part of why we don't know how to deal with it is because that trauma has been unresolved for generation. And so our parents couldn't teach us how to, in healthy ways, deal with our emotions because a lot of times they were struggling with that themselves. I know my dad struggled with alcohol for many years. So as parents, we can't teach our kids what we don't know.
Leah Lemm:
I think that's really great. I mean, so understanding that this is natural, to be expected from trying to survive.
Susan Beaulieu:
Yes.
Leah Lemm:
And is not an irrational response.
Susan Beaulieu:
No.
Leah Lemm:
So many times we're made to feel like with Western or you know, US, North American society at large.
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah, totally. There's two people that I follow a lot in this realm of trauma. One is Gabor Mate, he's Hungarian and he talks about a lot of things, but one of the things that he talks about is this perpetrator energy, that's what he calls it. This energy that harms others, this perpetrator energy is thousands of years old. So it didn't start with us. It didn't start with the generation before us or the generation before us. So we're literally, like all of this has been passed down from for what is it millennia, is that what a thousand years is? A millennia?
Daniel Lemm:
Yes.
Susan Beaulieu:
So multiple. And then the other thing that he talks about is the wisdom of trauma. That when we are in situations that are so horrific, that the body has a wisdom of trauma to try to protect us, to try to help us to survive. And in the short term, it can be incredibly helpful. It can actually help us to survive that. But in the long term, staying in those states lead to all sorts of issues. So there's a wisdom of trauma, but then we also knew as Indigenous people and we had lots of different practices and I don't know what all of them are, but I know we had a lot of practices for healing, whether it was ceremonies, whether it was relationships.
Susan Beaulieu:
So we had really intentional ways to be able to address that healing that needed to happen right away. When our warriors would come home, there would be ceremonies and things that were done. And we don't, I think about my dad who was a Vietnam vet, there was nothing like that. There was nothing like that when people come back from something like that, to help them be able to heal, to address that. Because when we harm another person, we're harming ourselves because of that interconnection. So it becomes a soul wound. There's a healing that has to happen in order for those survival mechanisms not to then turn into ways that we show up in the world that actually end up damaging ourselves and others. In the short term-
Leah Lemm:
Yeah, like perpetuates the problem at hand or the wisdom, I suppose, at hand. Kind of like collateral damage, maybe?
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah, totally, totally.
Daniel Lemm:
Susan, you mentioned wisdom of trauma and that's something that I haven't, I mean, that has never entered my consciousness before. So that's something that I'm going to apply some breathing techniques to really sit with that. And I got to reflect on that some more. And as part of that, you talked about a few ways, ceremonies, other ways that Native people have come back into community and been able to move forward after going to war or horrific events that have occurred. How have you seen change or remembering implemented in communities or individuals towards healing? Is there something specific that you've read about, or that you've experienced or that you could share that really makes that connection between, may even be around this wisdom of trauma?
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, one of the things just that I've seen in the tribal communities is many, many, many more people turning back to ceremonies. Whether it be sweats, whether it be for Ojibwe people, whether it be Maday, I know Lakota people, Dakota, Sundance, like there's different ceremonies that I think more and more people are starting to be curious about and trying to reconnect with. And that's a, this is just my opinion, but that's also, there's a challenge in that, in that depending on where you grew up and how connected you are to people that are connected to those ceremonies, you may or may not have easy access to them, right? You may or may not know, how do you ask somebody about how you can go to a sweat or what you do at a sweat, or if you want to participate in Maday, what is even the first step that you take?
Susan Beaulieu:
So if you are disconnected in any way, shape or form from people that regularly practice those ceremonies, it might be hard for you to connect in. So I think as we're thinking about this healing in our Indigenous communities, being more intentional about how we help connect people who are interested in participating in ceremonies, how can they more easily connect in with that? And not, Leah, you were talking about shame, how do we not shame people for not knowing? If we recognize and understand the way that literally everything in our tribal communities, our Indigenous communities, was picked apart from our family systems to our ceremonies. You know, it was illegal until 1978 to practice in the United States, to go to sweat or Maday or Sundance or something like that. So a lot of those things were underground.
Susan Beaulieu:
They were held very close and secret. So it wasn't something that was super well known in our communities. Plus then you add to that, the churches who were very much like, oh that's the devils, blah, blah. You know, so tons of shaming that happened around that, like Indigenous practices are bad and evil. So we're also contending with that in our communities where you have Native people who have become Christian. And I have nothing against that. But the hard part is that then when they won't touch our own practices with a 10 foot pole, and then they shame others who do. So that becomes a problem then. You also have people who had been adopted out to white families and hadn't been connected to their Indigenous communities at all, and literally are coming back, not knowing anybody, trying to figure out how do they connect in.
Susan Beaulieu:
So there's lots of different reasons why it's hard for people to connect into our Indigenous practices and ceremonies and language and all of those things. But I also have seen where sometimes when people are trying to do that, other people who know, shaming them for not knowing. And that's really hard for me to understand because in our Ojibwe values, humility and love. I mean, those are some of our most important values. And when we're shaming others, that's not humility and it's not love. And so sometimes I think we conflate ceremony with being Native or being Indigenous, but you can do one and not the other. It sort of reminds me of like, you can be spiritual and not religious, or you can be religious and not spiritual. It's not the same thing.
Susan Beaulieu:
And so I when I think about Indigenous wisdom and practices that are so important, I often go back to the values, how we're doing something. If we're doing something in a good way, with love and humility and generosity, we're going to get there. But we can follow the ceremony to a T, and if we are not living the values in that ceremony, we're going to end up doing damage to people. So I think that's an important thing that we often don't talk about, but I think it's something that we need to start to look at in our communities. And then, I will share something in a little bit about an experience that I had that was related to Indigenous practices, but not from the United States. So I can share about that in a little bit.
Leah Lemm:
Great. Yeah, I was going to just summarize that by saying there seems to be, with some people, a prioritization on protocol over the healing and the practice and the ceremony. Which anybody can learn a protocol, but you know, you got to, yeah, it does make me nervous though. Even though every time I've done a ceremony, it seems like I've been totally supported, but I just still, I still get shy.
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I've had something like that happen to my daughter, I think she was like 17, 16 or 17. And so that too, as a parent, is heartbreaking when, like I didn't learn those protocols growing up, so I can't necessarily share with her. I can share with her what I know, but there's a whole bunch that I don't know. And so then she goes in trying to do it in a good way. And then just to... she was just crying when she came back from the ceremony and it was like, I'm trying to explain to her, honey, it's not you, that was them and sort of their own unresolved stuff. Which again, is something that's been helpful for me as remembering. And I know the phrase is sort of cliche, but hurt people, hurt people. So just because somebody really knows the ceremonies and maybe even is really involved in them, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're experiencing the deep healing that they need from it, so that they're not perpetuating what Gabor would call that perpetrator energy.
Susan Beaulieu:
Can I just add one more thing, Leah, when you had asked earlier about Western medicine and what I've been seeing? Another thing that I think that Western medicine is finally starting to catch up on is just how interconnected the mind, the body, our emotions, and even to some degree, they're starting to acknowledge the spirit. And I think that in our own Indigenous wisdom, we recognize the deep interconnection of that, though we don't always... I feel like, and this isn't for everybody, and this was for me up until even just like five years ago. It was very much a head knowledge like, oh yeah, we're a spiritual being in a physical body having thoughts and emotions, right? Those are all parts of who we are, and it's important to have that balance and whatever, but I feel like really understanding it and seeing it is really important.
Susan Beaulieu:
So in some of the practices that I do, we do things where we help people to do some breath practices to calm the body, and then they see how it helps to quiet the mind or they see how it helps to sort of create an opening in their emotions, like an expansiveness. So they start to actually experience the interconnection of how these things influence one another. And it shifts from that head knowing of, these four parts of who we, are to like, oh wow, yeah, my thoughts really do impact the way that my physical body feels and the way that my emotions are. So I think that's important and Western medicine is starting to recognize the interconnection of those things as well.
Daniel Lemm:
So with the interconnection for Western medicine, how could Western medicine take that next step or get there? I can't imagine it'd be something that would happen overnight sort of thing, but what are kind of those ways that Western medicine could start to learn from Native wisdom, Native traditional knowledge, and incorporate those into practices, into protocols, so that not only Native people, but at all of us are healthier?
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah, that's a great question. So what comes to mind right away is there's an organization called MAPS, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Sciences, and the guy who started it, his name is Rick Doblin. They primarily work with MDMA, which is a synthetic psychedelic, also known as Molly. And what they are finding, so Rick had some experiences with Ayahuasca, which is also a psychedelic, but it's an Indigenous plant medicine that's been used in the Amazon for thousands of years. So he had some really profound experiences with psychedelics when he was younger, for healing, and experiencing life in a new way. And so he got really interested in using psychedelics for healing.
Susan Beaulieu:
So right now what MAPS is looking at is things like MDMA, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy with MDMA, for healing things like treatment resistant PTSD. So people who have had PTSD for 15 years or more, medicine hasn't helped, nothing's helped, and they're just at their wits end, there's nothing else that's been helpful. And what they are finding is that with the MDMA sessions, one of the things that so many people report, is a reconnection to their spirit. And so that is something that's new.
Susan Beaulieu:
So with MAPS, I mean, they literally are doing double blind studies and all of these sorts of things. It's hard to do placebo with a psychedelic, because you know if you are on a psychedelic or not, so there's some ways that they're trying to work around that. But he's trying to figure out how can they use some of the scientific methods to legitimize some of these tools and practices medicines that could be helpful for healing and creating protocols around it. But the thing I love about their work is that they are not afraid to talk about how that reconnection to spirit is such an important piece of people's healing journey.
Susan Beaulieu:
That that is one of the most important things that happens. And then the other things sort of roll out from that. So that is something that, as I think about, as Western science continues to try to explore meaningful healing, not just symptom management, but meaningful healing, that they are also considering the importance of the spiritual aspect, and how a balancing and a reconnecting with the spirit helps then, to balance and recenter all the other parts of who we are. Our physical body, it helps to calm our nervous system, because we remember who we are in this world, interconnected with one another. Our mind has a tendency to make small things really big. And what reconnecting to our spirit is, is it reminds us that there's so much more going on than what we're experiencing. And not to minimize what we're experiencing, but just to help us have a more accurate perspective of it all.
Leah Lemm:
I'm just going to say, when you say legitimize, you mean in a...
Susan Beaulieu:
In Western, in a science, Western context. Yes. Thank you for clarifying that, absolutely.
Leah Lemm:
Like academically, yeah.
Susan Beaulieu:
Right. And that's one of the frustrating things about Western science is like, unless you do a double blind controlled blah, blah, blah, no one believes it. People just think... and yet, this is sort of a little bit of a tangent, and yet you look at things like the placebo effect, which people have poo pooed for so long, and now people are studying it and trying to figure out how do we use the placebo effect. Because really what the placebo effect is, is the power of the mind. With the power of our mind, we can reset our biochemistry, we can heal our bodies. There's so many things that we can do with our mind, so the placebo effect is actually incredibly powerful. But it's something that's just been de-legitimized by so many people because it isn't random, controlled, blah blah blind study, blah blah blah. And they haven't been able to yet understand the mechanism of action of placebo, which really is the mind.
Leah Lemm:
Awesome. Cool. Have you had an experience that revealed that Western medicine was lacking in addressing trauma and mental health?
Susan Beaulieu:
Yeah, the really interesting thing is that my journey with healing is actually not that long. It's maybe been, probably seven and a half years since I realized I had healing to do. And probably I've only been really actively working on it for the last six years or so. But one of the most profound experiences I had, I actually went to Ecuador with my husband who, at the time, was addicted to opioids. He had had two, his Achilles ruptured twice, so he had two surgeries and all those things. And he had also been an alcoholic before, so he was predisposed to addiction because of unresolved trauma, we won't get into all of that. So we went to Ecuador because he had heard that ayahuasca could be helpful for things like addiction. And I went down thinking like, oh yeah, I'm going to go support him. I'm going to go down and be a good support for him, and I'll go through this and you know, whatever.
Susan Beaulieu:
But what I realized in the ceremony, my very first ceremony, was just how much work I had to do. And it was the first time that I experienced, I can't even, it's something that you almost can't put it into words. But this incredible sense of love and interconnection that I had never experienced in my life. And when I experienced that, it was this knowing that this was, what I was experiencing in that moment, that is the essence of who all of us are. That is like the stuff that our spirit is made out of. So having had that experience, there have been moments since then where it's easier for me to recognize, am I connected to my spirit or not? Because I know what it feels like now to actually be connected to it.
Susan Beaulieu:
Whereas for most of my life, I wasn't, because of that trauma, that split, that rupture that happens with trauma and when that trauma remains unresolved. And so it's become a lot easier for me to recognize when I'm showing up connected to my spirit. And then I see how everything else around me responds differently. It's really a beautiful thing. But without having had that experience, I would just sort of be flailing around trying to figure out, where am I even moving toward?
Susan Beaulieu:
And now I feel like I have that base. I have that grounding. I have that understanding. And so as I bring new practices in, as I go about my life, it's sort of that always checking back in, and I do not always make the mark, right. I'm not saying, I always show up this way, because I don't. But I at least now know when I'm not, because I feel it. So that when I think about Indigenous wisdom and practices, we know as Indigenous people, we are first and foremost spiritual beings, and this world is a temporary place for our spirit. This is not all that there is. And so that experience really helped me to understand that in a way that I had never experienced before.
Daniel Lemm:
Susan-
Leah Lemm:
Great. Thank you for sharing.
Daniel Lemm:
Yes. Thank you for sharing that. That story, as you were talking about the story with your husband and going through your own experience, your own realization, I was thinking that sometimes, well, a lot of times, we can see things in other people, but we don't necessarily see it in ourselves. And earlier in the conversation I asked you about frameworks, like how do you bring that knowledge into your being and apply it? Because it's great to read lots of things and see what's out there, but what do you do with that?
Daniel Lemm:
And then you came to that question of, am I connected to my spirit or not? I think that's one of those check-in questions, if anything, that I think really resonates with me, and certainly something that I'll be asking myself from time to time. So thank you for that. So as we kind of wrap up the conversation here, there's a wealth of wisdom that you've shared with us during this time. Are there one or two takeaways, in addition to all these resources that you've already talked about, that you want to make sure to leave us with?
Susan Beaulieu:
I'm always exploring the balance between the role of the individual and the role of the collective, in this healing process and journey. And I believe that both are essential, but without there being individuals doing this work, the collective never gets there. And so for me, I have really taken it to heart that I can't control what other people do, what other people say, I can't control a lot of the things that happen around me. But with awareness, intention, and practice, I can better influence how I respond to it, how I perceive it, and how we perceive things, totally influences how we respond to it. So I'll just give you a really quick example. Let me step back for a second and say, given that for me, the most important practice I've had is a breath practice. That grounding back in my body, grounding in my breath, grounding in my heart, that has been critical for me on this journey.
Susan Beaulieu:
And especially over the last 18 months with all of the stressors of COVID and trying to work from home with littles at home, and all of those things. I literally don't know where I would be without those practices that help to ground me and to center me. So again, getting back into that spirit, reconnecting with that and reconnecting with my body. Remembering that I'm an embodied being, I'm not just some head floating around there, because otherwise I tend to live in my head. So breath practices help to ground me. And then I would say another thing is getting outside. Getting outside, touching my bare feet to the earth, walking in the grass, being out in the trees, listening to the birds, just taking all that in, that is medicine.
Susan Beaulieu:
And that's another thing that I didn't realize until I really started. I spent a lot of time outdoors with my dad. I would go hunting. I would go fishing. I would go trapping. But when you're not in your body and you're not connected to your spirit, you're not taking that medicine in. We can physically be present, but not actually be taking in what's happening around us. Now that I'm getting more connected back into my body back reconnected with my spirit, I realize just how powerful that medicine is. To get outside, to ground, to just listen to the birds, listen to the water. So those are some things that I would really encourage all of us to do more of. Get back outside and make that reconnection with the earth, is powerful medicine. But just shifting back quickly to breath practice and the power of perception. My oldest daughter called me today and she has some issues around her menstrual cycle where she just gets horribly sick.
Susan Beaulieu:
And I had the same thing when I was younger, horribly, horribly sick for the first couple days, puking, terrible, terrible. And she called me, she's down in the city, and she called me just crying like, "Mom, I don't know what to, I'm just, I'm so much pain." And she couldn't even keep medicine down because she kept throwing it back up. Knowing what I know, I'm so grateful that I know what I know, that the mind and the body are very much connected, and so I could tell she was dysregulated at all levels. And so I said, "let's do, are you okay with, if we do some meditation, some breath practice?" And she said, "yeah." So we started with a little bit of a breath practice and then we moved into imagery and then we moved back into a breath practice.
Susan Beaulieu:
And then afterwards she said it helped a lot. And then she messaged me later that, she says, "I don't know how I would've been able to calm myself and my body down enough without the guided meditations. Thank you." So again, it's that like, when we're so dysregulated, the breath practice and the guided imagery, it was just basically like going to a safe place and she went somewhere outside, right? So again, we can use the power of our mind to reconnect with those things, even if we can't necessarily get outside. But it really helped to ground her and center her, enough that she was able to deal with the pain, to shift the way that she was experiencing the pain, to be able to calm her body and her nervous system so that she could get some relief.
Susan Beaulieu:
Our brain doesn't know the difference between physical pain and emotional pain, so a lot of times when we're talking about our Indigenous communities, people are in a ridiculous amount of emotional pain. And so, if we can do that grounding, if we can reconnect in that way, it can help us to shift our perspective of what we're experiencing, which can then open up new possibilities to how we interact with that.
Daniel Lemm:
I just wanted to mention, we really could talk all day and we should do that one day. Susan, when you're-
Susan Beaulieu:
I would love that.
Daniel Lemm:
You were talking about the couple of things to take away here, breathing exercises and getting outside. And I know that's oversimplifying what you shared, I just wanted to follow up that. One of the things that Leah keeps saying to me is, "Hey, let's go outside, let's go for a walk on the Mesabi Trail. Let's get out there." And I'm usually like, "ah, I don't know why, I don't want to do that." But I'm like, "Leah wants to do it, so I'll do it." And then it's like, every time we go for that walk and we come back, I'm always feeling better. And that doesn't mean that Leah was right, it just means it was the right thing to do and I felt better. So also thank you, Leah. Its good wisdom to share. Thank you, Susan.
Susan Beaulieu:
Well, I feel like that's been one of the things that's been so frustrating, as technology's gotten better and we're able to measure things that we weren't able to measure before. I think that's part of why Western science is starting to catch up with Indigenous wisdom because we saw and experienced these things firsthand. We didn't need tools to tell us how much of this or how much of that.
Leah Lemm:
It's almost like being quiet and observant in your own reaction and being like, this is provable and repeatable in our own bodies.
Susan Beaulieu:
Yes, exactly. Our bodies are the tool,-
Leah Lemm:
And in spirit.
Susan Beaulieu:
... our bodies are the instrument. Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Leah Lemm:
Great. Well, thank you so much, Susan. We appreciate you taking time.
Susan Beaulieu:
It was such an honor to be asked. I really, really appreciate it. And yeah, thank you so much. And it's great to see you, Dan, and I hope that Leah, we can stay connected.
Daniel Lemm:
Always a pleasure. Thank you, Susan.
Leah Lemm:
All right, Susan Beaulieu. How about that? She is so great. I have a ton of takeaways from our conversation and one big one being how healing involves connecting to one's spirit. It's not enough to take a pill, though pills can be helpful. Yes, yes. But healing doesn't necessarily mean symptom management. Just because you can walk throughout your day and survive, doesn't mean that you're healing. I really appreciate that perspective.
Daniel Lemm:
Right, it's not only, sometimes, how can you make it through the day? It's also, how can you make it through the day and tomorrow and the day after that and over the long term? And I think what Susan talked about, just what you pointed out there, is really, how do we be our full selves, over our lifetimes?
Leah Lemm:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely.
Daniel Lemm:
She also talked about out how integrating ceremony and Indigenous medicines can help with that connection.
Leah Lemm:
Right, that spirit, body connection.
Daniel Lemm:
Wopila tanka and miigwech to Susan.
Leah Lemm:
Susan Beaulieu is a citizen of the Red Lake Nation and a mother. She currently works for the University of Minnesota Extension, where she focuses on historical trauma and adverse childhood experiences, and how those impact our communities and cycle throughout. And she spends time exploring how we heal both individually and collectively from unresolved trauma and grief.
Daniel Lemm:
So we have a question for the listeners. After hearing this episode, how are you participating in ceremony or Indigenous medicines to connect to your spirit?
Leah Lemm:
This is a great question, Dan. Do you have an answer for yourself?
Daniel Lemm:
You know, the first thought that comes to mind is when I pray. When I pray to the creator and burn sage as part of that, in doing so. And how I was taught that the burning of sage and praying as a way to lift up my thoughts and my voices, so that the creator hears me.
Leah Lemm:
And how do you feel after that?
Daniel Lemm:
I always feel a great sense of grounding and inner balance. I feel right. I feel like my thoughts are good and I'm calmer. Because you know, when you do pray, it's not always from a place of, from strength, it can be a place of needing help.
Leah Lemm:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I think I can relate to that. You know, even if it's, like Susan talked about breathing, taking time to breathe, I feel like prayer and burning sage and those sorts of rituals allow for time to breathe and to relax yourself. I know every morning I get up and I open our window drapes and I look down at the river, I feel like that's sort of a ceremony for me. It's almost like an acknowledgement of the water and a new day sort of like a, I don't know, a daily ceremony for me. But at the same time it allows you to start your day, take your breaths. I know I'll need them, I'll need to do it again in not too long, take a couple more breaths as we get our kid ready for school.
Leah Lemm:
I think just taking that time to center ourselves is so valuable. So yeah, that's a good question, Dan. Okay. So we have links to the podcast, Remembering Resilience, in the show notes and on our website, and their second season is in the works too. That's the season I'm helping them with, and they have some really great info and conversations and hosts and stories and more, that get even more in depth, along the lines of some of what we talked about today too. So check that out. It's a pretty cool podcast.
Daniel Lemm:
Here on Wisdom Continuum we are talking with so many great people, and we want to say that your input matters too. Do you know someone who's working on systems change or centering Indigenous values, or do you have a topic or interview suggestion? If so, then email wisdomcontinuum AT gmail DOT com.
Leah Lemm:
And you can find Wisdom Continuum online, at wisdomcontinuum.com, and on social media on Instagram and Twitter at Wisdom Continuum. And thank you to Wisdom Continuum's consulting producer, Multitude. And a big ole miigwech to Manda Lillie for the production help. I'm Leah.
Daniel Lemm:
I'm Daniel. This is Wisdom Continuum.
