00:00:00 Soraya
I find that it’s a fine line between, I’m a curious human being trying to learn because I love learning, and my trauma. But I’m supposed to be here. If I’m here, I have to prove why I’m here. BIPOC and the immigrant in Canada is someone who was trying to heal trauma. I don’t know where… if I should be on this planet or not. And then you land in a land that is not really your land, in some way. It is pushing… is really…. I was really pushing myself. Something was really pushing myself towards my healing, and I had a chance to have a session with Gabor, and I remember sharing with him the fact that my mom and my dad never planned me. I wasn’t planned. I was an accident. They didn’t really want me to be here, in some ways. That was my perception and Gabor said, “Is it not amazing that they didn’t want you to be here, maybe, we don’t know, but something bigger wanted you to be here.” And I’m not doing this work by myself. I’m very humble in the sense that I know that when I’m sitting here and talking to my clients, I’m not by myself. I have my ancestors with me. I have their ancestors. My profession is not just me doing this work. I have so many people helping me to do what I do.

00:01:41 Rosemary
This is the Gifts of Trauma podcast, stories of transformation and healing through compassionate inquiry. Welcome to the Gifts of Trauma podcast by Compassionate Inquiry. Today I’d like to welcome Soraya Romao Inglis, Soraya, it’s such a pleasure to have you with us. Welcome to the show.

00:02:12 Soraya
No, thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here. Yeah. Thank you.

00:02:16 Rosemary
Now I’ll introduce you briefly by sharing that you’re a trauma psychotherapist, you’re a psychedelics assisted psychotherapist, you’re a grief educator, a somatic experiencing practitioner, and a Kundalini Yoga teacher who uses mindfulness practice, with your clients. Now I wonder what you’d like to add to that very professional introduction.

00:02:41 Soraya
I’d like to share that I have an incredible partner that supports my journey as a psychotherapist, and I have incredible dog that supports me in this journey too. He’s usually around when I’m seeing my clients. And I’d like to add that I have a team, a wonderful team of people in my life that support me to do this work. They remind me about self-care, yeah. And I’d like to, as well, just thank a couple of people that have been teaching me so many things, people that I respect a lot, Peter Levine and beautiful women in this field as well. I think this Community’s village helped me to be who I am as a professional and as a psychotherapist, and I’m not doing this work by myself. I’m very humble in the sense that I know that when I’m sitting here and talking to my clients, I’m not by myself. I have my ancestors with me. I have their ancestors, in the room. Just to add that, that my profession is not just me doing this work. I have so many people helping me to do what I do.

00:04:04 Rosemary
Thank you for sharing that, Soaya. Yes, being supported by a community is so important and I can understand that personally, being part of the Compassionate Inquiry community, what I can’t understand, and I’d love for you to speak about a little bit more, because I was adopted as an infant, I don’t have a sense of ancestors. So can you talk a little bit? Of course, I do have them. Everybody has ancestors. But I wonder if you could speak a little bit about that support that you feel coming through your ancestral lineage. How does that show up? How does it affect your work? Maybe just steer us around this ballroom a little bit.

00:04:46 Soraya
You know Rosemary, it’s a very important question and yet a very complex question, because some days I feel their presence and some days I don’t feel their presence. And some days what I have been observing, I feel the presence of my ancestors when I’m taking care of my needs as well. When I allow myself to do little things that are important for me, like when I go for a walk in the forest, when I connect, when I have this silence… My experience with my ancestors, and to feel this presence of something, happened when I was 14 and I had a car accident. When I was 14, unfortunately, I had this car accident. And I could say, or I should say, or I may say that what you see right now, it is a miracle I survived. And is a kind of a very uncomfortable conversation in my family. My mom doesn’t like to talk about and my dad doesn’t like to talk about it. But I knew when the car accident was happening, I had this sense that something, someone or something was telling me everything would be fine. So that changed completely my relationship with ancestors, spirituality. So I remember having that experience before the accident. And when the accident happened, I really felt that I wasn’t by myself. I cannot explain, really, but it’s just the sense that something was holding me, was protecting me in some ways. And after that accident, I started having a lot of experiences by myself that I couldn’t really understand what was happening. And then after that I just relaxed because I had a grandmother and my family and especially my grandmother were very spiritual. So I started understanding a couple of things that were happening with me, but I was very quiet after that accident. I became very introspective and reading about spirituality. And so ancestors for me is very… it’s almost like part of my daily life is I know that I’m not by myself, and because probably I had that experience, and something was telling me you’re not by yourself.

00:07:14 Rosemary
That’s… that’s an amazing story. So I’m suspecting from the way you set that up, but it was almost, it could be considered a miracle the fact that you didn’t get hurt in the way that you could have, is that’s how you were protected. So what might have been expected that didn’t happen to you?

00:07:37 Soraya
You’re talking about during the accident, what didn’t happen to me? Yeah. Oh. My life.

00:07:43 Rosemary
That’s definitely… so you survived.

00:07:46 Soraya
Yeah, and I love this, when I say I’m alive, because I see Peter Levine sometimes doing this with clients going through trauma, like complex trauma, veterans. Recently I saw a video with him doing this demo and… This person could be dead and actually, I’m alive. And how I’m saying, when I say I’m alive, my whole body goes, “Yes, you’re alive.” What things could have happened? I could have died. So I’m still alive. I could be, I don’t know, something like disabled in some ways. But one thing happened. Yeah, it’s in some ways reinforced a trauma that I was carrying for a long time and that is a work that I did for my life. The trauma that I had that I wasn’t planned because when my mom and dad got pregnant, they didn’t plan their pregnancy. I always had this belief, this trauma, that I’m not supposed to be here. And the trauma… that trauma brought as well, a lot of shame. I was carrying a lot of shame before the accident and that shame was reinforced by the accident, because I had… I had a big scar on my face when I was 14. I think that is why as well I became very introspective, but it was just reinforcing the trauma that happened when I was in my mom’s womb. The things that I have been working through these years, yeah.

00:09:25 Rosemary
That’s really interesting. And as you reflect back on that, I would think, just from hearing what you’ve shared so far, that the fact that you did survive, you are alive, would perhaps have offered support that, no, I am supposed to be here. If I wasn’t supposed to be here, I would have been gone. I would not have survived that accident.

00:09:48 Soraya
For sure. Yeah. And I had a chance to have a session with Gabor once. This was in 2015, 2016, something like that. And I remember sharing with him the fact that my mom and my dad never planned me, and I wasn’t planned. I was an accident. They didn’t really want me to be here, in some ways. That was was my perception and Gabor said, “Is it not amazing that they didn’t want you to be here, maybe, we don’t know, but something bigger wanted you to be here.”

00:10:29 Rosemary
Yeah, and I notice you used the word accident. You were an accident, then the accident happened, so interesting.

00:10:37 Soraya
So when I heard that something really shifted inside of me, and I had an opportunity to, many times during my journey as a psychotherapist, to give this gift that Gabor gave me. Just someone and see how they feel when they hear that someone, something or some someone, something bigger than us wanted you here.

00:11:10 Rosemary
Yeah, that’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I’m sure that will be resonating with some of our listeners. I think it’s not an unusual belief, because a lot of babies come into this world unplanned. So thank you. I’m just going to go back a little bit and reference all the training. I started out this conversation with all of your credentials, all of your skills, psychedelics, trauma, somatic experiencing, grief education. It’s a lot of training, and I’m curious as to whether you, like me and many people in the Compassionate Inquiry community, might consider yourself chronically curious.

00:11:50 Soraya
Well, that is a good way to say that. Yeah, chronically curious. I am chronically curious, and then I sometimes I see it with myself and I’m inquiring that if I’m chronically curious or if a part of my trauma is still present. And I’m still trying to avoid that sense that I’m not good enough, that I’m not supposed to be here, that I’m not important, because I had training in IFS. I  trained in IFS, I trained in Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, everything, vagal theory, everything that is showing up, the portal. OK, do you have this training here? Let’s try to do that training. So I wonder sometimes. I find that it’s a fine line between I’m a curious human being trying to learn because I love learning. That is a fine line between that and my trauma. And I’m supposed to be here. If I’m here, I have to prove why I’m here. So I’m still trying to understand that part that needs to be involved in so many trainings, and being involved so deeply with some communities, and always thinking that I have something more children. So it’s just curiosity.

00:13:18 Rosemary
Curiosity comes up a lot in Compassionate Inquiry. There’s a power, a strength in curiosity. I wonder what has curiosity done for you? How has it gifted you in your life, this drive to find out?

00:13:34 Soraya
That’s why I’m here with you, Rosemary, today. Curiosity is like my superpower. I have been curious since I was very young. I have this very curious mind. I think that’s why I’m here. I was curious about people’s minds. I was curious about the underground world. I was curious about Kundalini. I was curious about Gabor. That’s why I’m here. And I was curious about Peter Levine, I was curious about Dick Schwartz. And so I think the curiosity is taking me to places. I was curious about how would be to live abroad. Now this is not my… I wasn’t born and where I am right now. So I was curious, how would it be to live in a different place? So I moved to Canada and it was because of being here that I’m doing what I’m doing. So curiosity opened so many doors for me, yeah.

00:14:44 Rosemary
Thank you. And speaking of which, I’d like to reference your background by sharing a few words that I found on your website and then ask you to comment. On your website, you say.

00:14:54 Soraya
I don’t remember anymore what I wrote there. 

00:15:00 Rosemary
That’s OK. That’s OK. I’ll read it. I’ll share it with you. You said that as a BIPOC person who was born in Brazil, who’s been a settler in Canada for over 20 years, that you bring to your sessions, as we just discussed, the teachings received from your ancestors and your experience as an immigrant. So I wonder if we could dig into a couple of these points. Was it purely curiosity that brought you from Brazil to Canada? Was there any other motivation?

00:15:31 Soraya
I think the motivation was to find my true self. I think being in Brazil, in some ways, I was looking for myself and all… I have to see my own experience. When you step out of the bubble, and I was leaving that bubble in my country, my language. So when I had an opportunity to step out of that bubble and said, you know what, I would love to choose to understand myself, I wasn’t happy in Brazil. I was trying to figure out life in so many ways. I said OK, I’m going to Europe, and suddenly this opportunity came to come to Canada and I landed here. Yeah. And being by BIPOC, that is very interesting, being BIPOC in Canada.

00:16:20 Rosemary
Tell us, please, what is it like?

00:16:23 Soraya
BIPOC and an immigrant in Canada is someone who was trying to heal trauma. I don’t know where or if I should be on this planet or not. And then you land in the land that is not really your land in some ways… is pushing… is really, I was really pushing myself something was really pushing myself towards my healing.

00:16:47 Rosemary
It takes great courage. It takes a lot of courage to go to a new country with a new language, a different culture. That takes a lot.

00:16:54 Soraya
Oh, and if you really wanna heal a trauma like I’m not good enough, just move to another country and you’re BIPOC and move to another country, then you really need to work hard. The part of you that believes that you’re not good enough being a BIPOC person in Canada. And I’m very glad that I’m here in this country, and I’m very proud of and now carrying a Canadian passport. But it can be quite challenging because the microaggressions, they happen everywhere and it’s… they’re very subtle and it’s subliminal. There’s a subliminal aspect of the microaggressions when you areBIPOC and an immigrant and it takes a lot of work to avoid and Gabor talks about those beliefs, those interpretations and takes a lot of work every single day to really see your interpretations. And that’s just interpretations. Yeah, so it has been an incredible journey for me, a healing journey to heal so many aspects of myself.

00:18:11 Rosemary
I wonder if part of the challenge is the subtlety of microaggressions. They’re tiny, They’re almost covert. If the experience you had was more obvious, more blatant, do you think it would have been perhaps, a little easier to process because you can see what other people are thinking and feeling? It’s clear, as opposed to this sort of pretended acceptance, yet it’s not acceptance.

00:18:38 Soraya
Thank you for saying that. Yes, I think it would be easier because then you start questioning yourself. Id it just me, my belief system? Is what I’m experiencing now based on my trauma because I think that… I believe that I’m not good enough. Or you know, I believe that I’m not supposed to be here, that I was an accident. So it can be quite confusing sometimes. So if it was more like clear and was really in my face, probably will be… It’ll be very painful, but it will be easier to understand as well.

00:19:17 Rosemary
Something you can recognize, it doesn’t cause you to self doubt, to question yourself. It’s, “Did that really happen or is that my perception?” Yeah. When you get into that territory, it’s a whole different thing.

00:19:28 Soraya
Yeah, and being… my husband is a non BIPOC person, so being with him, how different it is when I’m with him, and when I’m not with him. The intersectionality that happens here when I’m with him as a BIPOC person with a white man, we when I’m without him, I’m a BIPOC person, immigrant and a woman by myself. So that is a lot of things that people cannot see, but my system sees it. And it’s not even something rational. When I observe myself sometimes, for example when I’m crossing the border, when I’m traveling, when I’m going to some places, my whole system gets activated because I know that I need to behave a different way.

00:20:26 Rosemary
Yeah. So it’s almost as if you have two personas. One is you, the BIPOC female immigrant. And then there’s you when you’re with your partner,  BIPOC female immigrant with the white male.

00:20:44 Soraya
Exactly who is not an immigrant who was born in Canada? And yeah, so is it another day? I was thinking about that, if I do have different nervous systems adapting for different situations and different beliefs, different interpretations that I’m having. I’m very glad that you asked this question because it’s it’s…

00:21:12 Rosemary
Totally different, I’m sure it’s totally different, and I thank you for affirming that. It’s… that’s just another burden that a bipolar person gets to deal with when they do fall in love with someone who’s not BIPOC. Thank you. Now on your website, you say you work with a multicultural compassionate lens with your clients. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about how you understand that multicultural compassionate lens shows up in your work.

00:21:46 Soraya
When I put that word there, I remember clearly, I was like, oh, what this word will mean for people when they are reading my website and I really don’t know what they think about it, but they are coming. So I can tell you that it’s 70%, maybe 75% or 80% of my clients. They are immigrants, they are in Canada or different parts of the world, and dealing with all these struggles that come when you’re an immigrant. I can’t say that 60% or 70% of my clientele is BIPOC dealing with his struggles. And I was actually looking the other day because it was like, I’ve been interested to see what percentage of my clients and how the demographic of my clients dealing with those struggles. And it’s incredible to see how I don’t know if people are reading my bio or not, but they are showing up, and how comfortable my system is when I have someone who is having some struggles that I had or that I’m in some ways I have had these struggles. So I feel like there’s a lot of power imbalance in this field, but I can’t feel that I can meet my clients where they’re at and they can… and I hope they can feel that too.

00:23:10 Rosemary
Yeah, I’m sure it makes a huge difference. Just… we all know, those of us who go through the Compassionate Inquiry training, what it’s like to be truly seen and heard and understood. So you may be, that lens may be the first opportunity they’ve had for quite some time to be truly seen and heard and understood. Thank you. I’m sure there’s huge benefits. I’m wanting to connect this to your work. You do a lot of advocating for marginalized communities, you completed an anti racism Indigenous cultural safety certificate, and you support the Crime Victim Assistance program. So can you tell us how these all weave together with your personal experience as a BIPOC woman in Canada?

00:24:00 Soraya
That was my ignorance that took me to those programs, knowing that I didn’t know anything about indigenous peoples in Canada. I remember when I had to study to get my citizenship, nothing was mentioned about indigenous people and their history. And I was appalled that when I was talking to this very intelligent, brilliant friend that I have, a Canadian that gave me a book and said, read more about history of Canada. So I was very blessed that I had some people in my life telling me, but because of my ignorance, I was like, I need to read and to be informed if I really want to work in Canada, to understand the consciousness, the collective consciousness that is in this country about something that happened and is still happening. As Gabor likes to say, the government never said I’m sorry because you’re happening.

00:25:08 Rosemary
I’ve heard that too, and I’m wishing as I listen to you share your motivation, that more Canadian born Canadians had that curiosity, and looked into it because it’s an amazing, fascinating, horrific story depending on which aspect of it that you look at. I had a guest on earlier this year who shared the story of how Canada came to be, an Indigenous elder and wisdom keeper and there was no war, there was no conquest, there was just a generosity of the Indigenous people that has been so abused by the descendants of the colonists, at this point. And it’s really a story and an education that I appreciate you pursuing. And hopefully this conversation sets or fires some curiosity in Canadian born listeners and they actually do the research as well and find out about it because it’s one of those truth is stranger than fiction stories.

00:26:12 Soraya
Yes. And I think it is important to know what happened. It is important to be informed, again so we can really understand people. Yeah, I have some clients, they, their parents are Japanese and Japanese have a very similar story in Canada when their possessions… the government took everything from them. So you understand as well sometimes some patterns that we see in our clients. If you can understand their ancestors’ history, you probably will understand your client better. So when you talk about ancestors, it’s not just like having this acknowledgement that ancestors are here in the room, but is acknowledging that the client is present, but behind this client, there is a history, that this client in some ways is carrying. So that is important for me, very important. Sometimes the elephant is in the middle of the room and you don’t know what kind of elephant is there. Yeah. And perhaps it’s the elephant of this history that the client is carrying and the client is not even aware.

00:27:41 Rosemary
I’m happy you brought that up because there are so many people doing amazing work in this field. Resmaa Menaken comes to mind and Thomas Hubl. Resmas says that the same skin coloured people need to go back and deal with their collective history before they can deal with how they interconnect with different skin coloured people. And it makes so much sense when you track back through that and it’s really fascinating that has such a pull over us. A lot of what Thomas Hubll is doing these days is really helping people expose that ancestral history, and only through healing that can we really fully heal ourselves. So thank you for bringing that up.

00:28:26 Soraya
Thank you for asking those questions.

00:28:29 Rosemary
I’m interested in speaking a little bit about your work now. You say that your particular interest is working with clients who are experiencing trauma, anxiety, addiction, depression, eating disorders, grief, and those who are seeking support with psychedelic integration. And you also specialize in working with people experiencing codependency. So I wonder if you could speak a little bit about any aspect of this work that’s really alive for you today where you’re out there supporting clients with these issues. Is there anything that really pops up for you that you’d like to address?

00:29:10 Soraya
Yes, Rosemary, thank you again for this question. And all the time that we write our bios, this is the what I do this, is who I work with. And in some ways I’m talking about myself. That’s why I’m so comfortable talking and having clients dealing with eating disorders, for example, especially emotional eating. Yeah, because I saw this happening in my family and no one was talking about that.

00:29:42 Rosemary
Another elephant in the room.

00:29:44 Soraya
Another elephant. So I’m comfortable with that and it’s fair enough, I have the amount of clients coming to me and talking about their emotional eating and they… how unhappy they are with the binging part they have been carrying, that they have been doing for so long. And when I look at my clients and then my reflection of my family, I was present when this was happening. So in some ways that really caught my attention when I went to University and I said I wanted to study a little bit more, a little bit more eating disorders.

00:30:20 Rosemary
I wonder, could you unpack that a little bit for us, with your background? You work with anxiety, you work with trauma, you work with eating disorders. What can come together to result in someone experiencing, like using an eating disorder to support or cope with life in some way?

00:30:42 Soraya
Yeah, You know Rosemary, one thing that I have been observing, and many people have been observing that, we have just one word really to… if you could describe everything, it’s trauma, you know. So my eating habits are based on my trauma. My eating habits, they are supporting me. They are helping me to navigate life. They’re helping me to stay away from my emotions, from their reality, what is really happening inside of me. I was even sharing today I have a circle… I just finished a circle today. A CI circle and our CI circle was an emotional eating circle, but it’s using the tools of CI, tools of really talking about emotional eating. I can tell you that yesterday, I’ll just give an example. Someone gave me a certificate for… like a facial certificate. So I went to do a facial yesterday as a self-care, and I was happy and I drove there and I arrived I’m excited this spa, this sound, this music. Well, I’ve doing my facial. So I’m lying there and this woman, a very skillful woman, and she was doing my facial and as soon as she touched my scar, something happened in my nervous system. Yeah, so because I have a scar on my face, she was touching my scar, and she was doing a massage and whatever, beautiful hands and the environment was amazing. But my nervous system said I’m not safe here. We have to do something. We need to leave. I’m there lying on this table, beautiful environment and my nervous system is like,  “Run as fast as you can.” But I have been doing the work. I was like, my nervous system is speaking up, there’s something here. OK, because she’s touching my scar. As soon as I said that I had memories of my accident, when the car crashed and everything. So it was becoming like almost overwhelming for me, and I was like, OK, I’m in 2025. Let’s breathe here. Suddenly, a part of me, a dynamical of behavior came really quick and said, by the way, when you drive home, you’ll be passing by your favorite cake place, called Sweet Obsessions. So you can stop there and eat the Dulce de Leche, because it reminds me of home.  Dulce de Leche. You can stop there. So just to preserve this dynamic of my eating, emotional eating, I was experiencing something that was really sad, terrifying, that memory was coming. My system went and said I can save you, We don’t need to go there. You don’t need to feel sadness now because it’s not appropriate, in this environment, the fear, and you have to be here. So how can we compensate that, after this, we are eating your favorite cake. 

00:33:59 Rosemary
Yeah. It was comforting you. It was in, in a way, dangling a carrot for you.

00:34:04 Soraya
Exactly.

00:34:06 Rosemary
If you can get through this. If you can stay here and not run away. That’s what’s waiting for you on the way home.

00:34:11 Soraya
Exactly so you cannot leave this… I could leave, but a part of me was like no, you cannot leave now because that is not appropriate. Whatever my system was telling me and this part came and said, “Oh well, I can’t. I know a solution for this. I’ll bring some sweetness into your life and I know how to get that.”

00:34:32 Rosemary
And it knew exactly where to go and that it was on your route home. Very clever. Wow.

00:34:38 Soraya
Yeah, a very clever part of me

00:34:39 Rosemary
So I’m curious, did you stop on the way home?

00:34:44 Soraya
I did, but then right beside this bakery is a beautiful supermarket. So I was, I negotiated with my part and said, So what about this? I go to the supermarket and buy something that you like and it’s healthy and I went and bought something healthier than that cake. But this negotiation, having that pause, that moment, you understand, yes, I understand now. When I was in the car and I actually was talking to my husband and I said, oh, this happened to me and I was emotional with him and I said, this is incredible. I’m so glad this is happening because now I can take this to my therapist. That is still something that you need to revisit, but look how my part, my eating part was really ready to go to help me to feel better.

00:35:43 Rosemary
Yeah, it’s amazing. And I’ve wondered for a long time about this. Do you think this obesity epidemic that is taking over so much of the Western world, do you think that is connected to this whole eating for comfort dynamic?

00:36:04 Soraya
Always, I think so. I think studies have been showing that people are eating because their nervous system is dysregulated. Yeah. So we need to find things to regulate ourselves. And some people find that regulation from food, some people find that regulation from alcohol, some people find that regulation from different types of things. And for sure, I think we have a very dysregulated society. Just drive your car around and you’ll see that. When I’m driving here in Vancouver, you can see how dysregulated people are. I’m getting really frustrated. I’m just because someone turned right instead of left and we can see the rage. And yeah, definitely dysregulation, whether our system is dysregulated, we try to find things externally to regulate our system. So for sure. Food, yeah, for sure.

00:37:00 Rosemary
So socially acceptable things. And in Canada in particular, the culture is one that doesn’t necessarily directly express what it’s thinking. So if you can just paper over something with a sweet treat and soothe it, then maybe you don’t have to address the core.

00:37:22 Soraya
Exactly! Yeah, exactly. Especially in societies where people cannot really express themselves or household, kids, they cannot express themselves. Gabor talks about this and Peter Levine talks about this and Dick Schwartz talks about this, so many people talk about this and this dysregulation. One thing that I have been really curious and is this, dysregulation, the nervous system being dysregulated and how can we find ways to regulate our nervous system, is for me, amazing to see how our nervous system tries to regulate.

00:38:07 Rosemary
Yeah. Thank you for taking us a little bit deeper into that and sharing your story. Are there any other major categories of dysfunction, if I can use that word, that are related to this nervous system dysregulation. Like, anxiety would seem to be one, or are they all related?

00:38:30 Soraya
Yes, when you, for example, are doing a CI session, you can easily see those dysregulations happening when the client says they have this anxiety, they have this fear. So the system gets dysregulated. They don’t have the flexibility there when they’re dorsal and they’re very depressed. They cannot get out of this. So this dysregulation of the system, and depression. So you see all the mental disorders that in the labels that people like to give out there, you can see that they are just telling us that the nervous system is dysregulated. The system for me, in my view, is dysregulated.

00:39:13 Rosemary
Thank you. Yes. And that brings us beautifully to psychedelic assisted psychotherapy because as Gabor has spoken of, psychedelics, offer an opportunity to get to the other side of those coping strategies. This gives us a direct access that we can’t have when our rational mind is in charge. So I wonder if you can speak a little bit about how psychedelic assisted therapy deals with issues stemming from dysregulation, and also about the integration support that is offered to clients afterwards.

00:39:51 Soraya
I never talk about this, but it is something that I have been noticing as well. I think in this field you’ll notice something and different clients having different reactions, bringing something new and getting curious. But one thing that I have been observing how some psychedelics, especially for me in my experiences is with the mushrooms. There’s something about being an observer of yourself with mushrooms. Yeah, even Gabor, he sometimes gives some examples and I’m not sure if he’s talking about that, but he can observe himself being a baby, and he knew that he was an adult, he wasn’t a baby, having an experience. So there is something about her becoming an observer and observing your nervous system. You don’t know that you’re observing your nervous system, but you’re seeing your nervous system, how your nervous system got dysregulated. So that is something fascinating for me. In my own experience with psychedelics, I can see my own nervous system being dysregulated because I’ll be observing myself. The mushroom allows me to do it. Not all the time, but majority of the journeys is, oh, I’m observing this. I’m seeing things, I’m feeling things, but I’m observing. So I remember when the journey that I had, I had an intention and the intention was I’d like to know a little bit more why I’m here. I’m not supposed to be here, but I’m here. So what are… what is my purpose here in this life? And when I start my journey, I remember having this silence that my ancestors, they were present in the room and I’m observing that, I was like, wow, this is a good trip. I’m tripping, this is awesome. So I could feel the presence of women behind me. As an observer, I was like, oh, this is interesting what are they trying to say. What is here? And then this message came. Just relax and don’t try to control anything. Your nervous system is trying to control everything all the time. Not with those words, but the message was like, just relax, don’t try to control. So you’re… the message that I got. My nervous system has been trying to control everything, every time. And so when you have something that once you control something has to come to you to relax that system. So that’s why probably eating, compulsive eating is present. The emotional eating is present because of this nervous system. So it’s incredible to see that with the mushrooms, especially psilocybin, gives this ability, capacity that we have to observe ourselves. And when I’m doing this work with my clients, I try to, in some ways, to invite them to observe their nervous system. That is a message there about how they have been regulating themselves in this world.

00:42:57 Rosemary
Yeah, and that perspective as an observer can help them connect the dots between the trauma, maybe the belief, like you said, I’m not meant to be here, I’m not supposed to be here, and the coping mechanism, which could be disordered eating when you’re not hungry, comforting yourself.

00:43:18 Soraya
Yeah, and I had a client, I can give you an example that his client was having a journey and this client claiming to this conclusion that when mom was nursing, mom was very… was in a rush all the time. Mom was in a rush. So this baby learned that I need to eat as fast as I can and stuff myself because I’m not sure when that breast will be here again, when my mom will be giving me food again. I I don’t know when this breast will be available. So let me stuff everything that I can right now, because maybe I won’t be able to survive.

00:44:01 Rosemary
Yeah, definitely a survival instinct. Wow, that is a beautiful illustration.

00:44:06 Soraya
So this person in some ways has been working out with the integration and now which she can understand a little bit more, why she’s compulsive eating, like binging. Yeah, maybe it’s there, We don’t know. But there is a possibility, there is a possibility that binging, that compulsive eating started when she was a baby because she didn’t know if the breasts will be there.

00:44:37 Rosemary
Yeah, it would make sense. It would make so much sense if that’s true, yes.

00:44:42 Soraya
Yeah, I don’t know if it makes sense Rosemary, but I’m so fascinated by this. I’m like wow. I’m don’t know if this is happening, but there is some possibility here.

00:44:56 Rosemary
Yeah, I understand your fascination and I share it, so thank you. I’d like to shift a little bit and just ask you about your work as a healer, as a therapist, is this something you always knew you wanted to do? Was it always your goal to become a therapist, work with people this way.

00:45:16 Soraya
I wanted to be an actor. I was in the theatre company for many years when I was a child until I went to university, but then I had a car accident and I, my scar was something like a big no no for me. And in Brazil at that time, I think it was a big no no for media, or any kind of media, to have a scar on your face. So that was my big dream to, to be a theatre actor, not a film… theatre. I have this passion for theatre. But then I went to university, studied communication, propaganda and marketing and I was in the theatre but not really on the stage. I was behind. So I was designing campaigns for products and advertising agencies and was working in advertising agencies. And I got tired of that because I didn’t want to do that anymore. But I always had this passion for psychology and I was reading about psychology. I was very passionate and I’ve always had a passion for the mind. And I was reading some books of Freud because I could… Really fascinating how people think and how people behave. And I had some, I don’t have my university, I had psychologists now in my universe, but the psychology was a little bit different. It was how, to how to make people believe that they need the product that you’re selling. That was the psychology that I was studying and I thought that was fascinating. So anyways, I decided to not do that and to take a break and I came to Canada and I traveled around and I said oh, maybe we can leave in Canada one day. Went back to Brazil to apply for immigration, got the papers, came to Canada and I was like, Oh my God, now I’m here. And then I took a yoga class and my best friend told me, Soraya, let’s take some yoga class, a training. Not a class a training. Yes, let’s do it. So I did. I loved it. And then I start going and taking courses and bringing that curious, the chronically curious that you mentioned. So taking all these courses then and that included Kundalini and then I was like I wanna do this work, I wanna do this work, but I wanna we just do this work helping people dealing with trauma. And I took some courses, a trauma course using yoga. And then I met Sat Dharam, and then the rest is history. Yeah. Then I went back to university.

00:48:09 Rosemary
And qualified in your masters. Wow!

00:48:13 Soraya

Yeah so one day I did Beyond Addiction. I don’t know if you know this program? It’s a beautiful program that Sat Dharam wrote, this program. So it was invited by Sat Dharam to teach at this program in Vancouver and the people in Vancouver we are here and Sat Dharam said I’m inviting Gabor Maté to teach so he should be part of this program as a special guest. I was like, sorry and said yes, and I couldn’t believe it, because I was reading his books, going and seeing him here and there. And then he came, I looked and I said I want to do this. I looked at Gabor said ohhhhh, not to be Gabor, but I’d like to do this type of work, I talked to him and said Gaboe I want to do this type of work. And then he used a beautiful story about… I don’t think he remembers that… about Wizard of Oz. And he said, do you know this scarecrow of Wizard of Oz? And I said, yes, I know, I remember this story. And as I remember what he wanted and I said that he wanted a diploma. He said he is what he needed. He wanted a brain, he wanted to have a brain, the scarecrow, and he said do you remember what the wizard gave him and I said a diploma? He said yes, go back to university and get your diploma, this is what you need. I went back and got my diploma, did my master in psychology and did my masters in eating disorders and psychedelics and that’s it. The rest… The rest is history.

00:49:34 Rosemary
Yeah. And you answered my question, would that be even asking it of how did you connect with CI? So it was all very organic. You met Sat Dhram through the Kundalini work and then you were introduced to Gabor through Beyond Addiction and… what a journey. So when did all that happen? Can you remember? It must have been quite a few years ago.

00:49:54 Soraya
Well it was in 2018 was when Sat Dharam invited us to be part of the… two groups of people to be part of the pilot, the Compassionate Inquiry pilot. But before that we had in 2016 I believe, it was in 2016 that we had a kind of workshop. The videos that we see from 2016 was when Gabor did Compassionate inquiry in Vancouver. So it was the first time that he was actually talking about Compassionate Inquiry really, and then Sat Dharam, brilliant Sat Dharam put everything together and wrote what we have now, this jewel that we have now. And she invited two groups, and I was in one group. And then in 2018, so you’re starting Compassionate Inquiry and just having meetings, dyads, triads, trying and seeing and giving her feedback. And so she was collecting data and understanding what will be working and what wouldn’t. So I was part of the team and I never left.

00:50:57 Rosemary

So you were part of the development of the current Compassionate Inquiry training process, How exciting!

00:51:01 Soraya
I was there when Gabor was watching us doing sessions. I was there.

00:51:09 Rosemary
You were one of the test drivers. If I can use that expression.

00:51:13 Soraya
Yes, yeah. And I never left. I love this work so much that I stayed and…

00:51:19 Rosemary
Yeah, yes, you are your certified practitioner. You’re a facilitator, which means that you train people in this Compassionate Inquiry approach. You’re a mentor, which means that you work with the more senior people and you’re a CI Circles leader, and that’s the program for people who don’t have the diploma in their background, who are just curious about Gabor’s approach. So I wonder if you could speak a little bit because most recently you’ve become the Compassionate Inquiry Portuguese Program Director. So you get to take the message of Compassionate Inquiry out into the world, and particularly back to the country where you were born, Brazil, speaking Portuguese. Tell us a little bit, how does that feel?

00:52:06 Soraya
It feels fabulous. It feels really good. OK. I don’t know how to thank Gabor and Sat Dharam for this opportunity. I have been talking about this since 2018 that we needed to translate this program into Portuguese. We have 250 million people in Brazil, 500,000 Psychologists registered psychologists in Brazil.

00:52:37 Rosemary
That’s amazing. I had no idea. Congratulations. And I’m sure it was a lot of hard work. It probably still is a lot of hard work.

00:52:45 Soraya
The program is starting. It is quite small now, but the potential of like 250 million people in Brazil, you can imagine how many clients they can have in that country, so many people there. And besides that the psychologists certified psychologists in Brazil are 500,000. So the possibility here is incredible and it’s so nice to teach because now we have Circles in Portuguese. We have the facilitator short course in Portuguese that is a version, a very short version of the professional. We are translating the professional now, it takes time to translate the professional, but it’s so amazing to see the community when you’re teaching your facilitated short course. For example, I’m just finishing your group and starting another one to see how people are thirsty for those teachings. So incredible to see and this inclusion, including people that wouldn’t be able to study Gabor if we didn’t have this program translated. It’s just amazing to give this gift to people there.

00:54:00 Rosemary
Yeah, that’s wonderful. And I wonder if you could share for our listeners, like obviously Portuguese is spoken in Brazil and Portugal. What other countries in the world could take advantage of this?

00:54:12 Soraya
Portugal, Brazil, we have East Timor, Indonesia, so we have a couple of places and you have African places in Africa. So it’s just like the community is not a big community, but it’s so important to, in some ways, invite those communities to learn what we are learning? This is one thing that Compassionate Inquiry is… So in my practice, I cannot really do my practice today without Compassionate Inquiry. It’s always Compassionate Inquiry, my practice. And I can see this shift. The shift is really quick and people can see themselves so quick. They can understand themselves, they can connect the dots, they can feel, they can release things that were there for so long. So when you see that happening and giving those communities opportunity, and especially colonized communities like Brazil, the trauma is there. It’s so vivid. I went to Brazil in March and we can see that the trauma is there, and give that population an opportunity to really understand themselves. It’s pretty amazing.

00:55:30 Rosemary
An amazing vision and what an opportunity for Portuguese speaking therapists to really get in on the ground floor of this brand new program. I will be including a link in the show notes for anyone who’s Portuguese speaking to learn more about how they can jump into this opportunity. Soraya, it’s been wonderful. We’re coming to the end of our time together. I’d love to invite you to share some final words. I know, we’ve explored a lot in this journey and you’ve shared very generously your own experiences, but this is an opportunity to end this conversation with a few words that you think the world is really ready to hear right now. What would you like to say?

00:56:18 Soraya

I’d like to say that there is more beautiful things in this life than we can imagine, yeah, I think we are living in this, in some ways, in this era that people are not believing in, they’re without hope. And I just want to share that the work that we do, the work that I do, the work that I see the community, the Compassionate Inquiry community doing, gives me a lot of hope. There are more good people there than people that don’t want us happy. There’s more people out there wanting us to be happy. I want people to believe that in some ways. When I’m in this community, I have a lot of hope. Yeah. Doing something that will be helping people to see that soon, yeah.

00:57:14 Rosemary
Beautiful words, because if there’s something that the world could use more of right now, given all of this chaos, it’s hope. Hope that there is something better. Thank you, Soraya, thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciate your time.

00:57:31 Soraya
Thank you, Rosemary. Thank you. I’m very grateful and I would like to congratulate you on this journey, this podcast and inviting incredible people joining the people that are doing incredible work. And I’m very humbled that I actually got invited to be here. Thanks so much. 

00:57:50 Rosemary
You are one of those people, Soraya, doing incredible work. It’s interesting that whatever we do never looks as incredible to us as what someone else does, perhaps. You are definitely very welcome here. You are doing incredible work, so thank you for joining us today and sharing that.

00:58:09 Soraya
Thank you for your kindness. Thank you.

00:58:18 Kevin
My friends, if you are or have participated in the Compassionate Inquiry Professional Training programme, please join us from June 17th to June 19th at Renewal ACI Summer Solstice Retreat hosted by Sat Dharam Kaur, an 18 CI facilitators from around the globe. In this immersive journey into renewal and transformation, you’ll experience guided practices, nature immersions, creative activities, small group workshops, connection circles, meaningful conversations and much more, all designed to support your journey inward as we celebrate the solstice in community. Tap the link below in the show notes to learn more and secure your place.

00:59:05 Rosemary

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