00:00.00 archpodnet Go. Okay. 00:02.28 alan Ah, welcome everyone this is Dr Alan Garfinkel your host and I think we're ah blessed and honored to have a very special guest today Laura Lee who is one of the co-executive. Directors of the felicitous Goodman Institute and she'll be talking about ecstatic postures and altered states of consciousness and this is a topic that I have a great deal of interest in Laura are you there Laura. 00:33.91 Laura Lee Um, hello Alan I'm here. Thanks for having me. 00:37.20 alan Ah, great sign here in Bakersfield California where are you great great! So and I always kick this off with ah sort of the million dollar question tell us a bit about your background and how you ever got involved with. 00:42.34 Laura Lee I'm in Sedona Arizona. 00:56.14 alan The study of ecstatic postures. 01:01.33 Laura Lee Yeah, it's an interesting story. Um I have a degree in english literature and a minor in art history I speak more mytha poetic than I do science or academia I'm interested in story and the meaning of life and culture and our adventure. What is the world. Mean and what is our place in it kind of questions and I grew up in a radio family in Seattle and so I um was hosting a radio talk show and nationally syndicated for many years and 1 of my questions was well who are my indigenous ancestors. We who are of european stock can actually trace it that far back and in 1 continuous line as in other parts of the world so in in indigenous cultures that manage to retain their identity up to the modern age. And 1 of our listeners called in and said oh well, you need to talk to Dr Felicitus Goodman she has an answer to that and so I did I found her called her up I scheduled an interview and the story. She told me just resonated so deeply that I had to go and. Ah, attend 1 of her workshops. So after this interview at the top of the hour I'm asking her Dr Goodman Paul and I my husband Paul and I we have to come sign us up for your next workshop and so off we off we were what she said to me during that and many other interviews since. 02:28.93 Laura Lee We got to spend the and work with her the last ten years of her life was that we are all empowered for mystical experiences. This was a great answer to me because I'd had spontaneous mystical experiences since childhood. And I was not about to go take any kind of plant medicine or psychedelics or drugs I didn't need to um I was already like one foot in that realm as well and growing up in an age where you couldn't talk about this till recently um, it was. Great soul is to me to know this is normal. This is what our ancestors felt was well if you could do this then there was something wrong with you so and I decided early on um I wasn't crazy the world was and ah, that's very difficult to be healthy in a world that's out of kilter. And so the appeal of the early societies was hey they were all about balance. They were all about writing their relationships within oneself within one's community and with the universe at large and I was on a similar quest. That's what our radio show was about. Talking with the world's experts in all of the fields on the leading edge and asking those questions those eternal questions who are we where did we come from where are we going and what's it all about and so um, after a while after working with her my husband and I just felt that. 03:59.52 Laura Lee Oh it's like Buck. Mr. Fuller would say find what you and you alone can do and um and do that and we had gotten enough out of radio and talkingcking to all the experts we wanted that it was time to dive deep into a practice and um this one appealed to us so much. There was no guru. This was about the relationship between you and the all that there is this was about self-empowerment dial it up on demand and that our physiology held the key to this access code a doorway within to. Amping up I guess you'd call it biohacking of the ancients amping up our awareness, our expanded perception and being in direct communication with direct experience to whatever this larger sphere is and so we happily. Became directors of this institute and it's about hey where do we go from here. This institute has an official title qui manga institute. It's a place name in Santa Fe where Goodman founded this? Um, but the mission is hey we have an ancient technique 1 of many that. Benevolent universe has given us many techniques to open up to its larger. Sphere. This is an ancient one with a fascinating story in history. Very effective 1 and where can we take this so that's what our mission Goodman gave us a wonderful academic foundation. Um. 05:33.98 Laura Lee We have 50 years of archives we have thousands of people around the world who've done this learned this and as an institute for our modern age where do we go from here. 05:55.60 alan Yes, can you hear me? Okay, good. So so Laura the overlap between what you've spoken about and the study of rock art is a rather interesting interplay. 05:56.70 archpodnet Allen yes, go ahead. 06:14.48 Laura Lee Um, oh it is yeah. 06:14.86 alan I've I've been I've been fascinated by the particular gestures that are found in the iconography regularly patterned gestures that appear in both rock art images and also in some of the ancient. Ah, portable. Statuary. Let's call them. Um and and also from the standpoint of a book that I co-authored recently that was published by Bergen um, relating to the study of rock art iconicity. And what we mean by that is basically looking at rock art imagery um in terms of its signification. It's semiotics. Its its metaphors but also hep go ahead. Can you hear me, please. 07:05.25 Laura Lee Um. 07:11.31 Laura Lee I can um, you're speaking about the the postures that are depicted in rock art and indeed in ancient art around the world was what Goodman decoded as ritual instructions and um, it's fascinating that. Many people now are coming to that same conclusion independently. We found many of of them. They reach out the contact or institute and we um were delighted that it's kind of obvious she would describe it as the the clue that's in plain sight that nobody recognized that here. The instructions are. As depicted in figures human figures seen in rock guard and ancient sculptures terracotta to stone to cave paintings I mean the earliest postures we use are from artifacts that are 40000 years old from I say europe so it looks like this was a very long tradition. And indeed the other fascinating thing about this to do with rock art is we find in rock art. 1 of our favorite personally my husband poinized favorite postures and it's depicted around the world everywhere we look. There's this one of the same postures and so you you have to you have to ask. Through time and geographical distances and different cultures. How is it that similar postures show up again and again and again that are memorialized in this world collection of ancient art. 08:36.37 alan Ah, exactly and that's been something. That's that's been fascinating I've I've found very few pieces of literature on this very subject. Um, felicitus goodman is one of those and there's another gentleman who who had a classic piece that. He reviewed this kind of depiction this kind of metaphoric gestures that are exemplified throughout the world. There's 2 levels to this one is that when you see such gestures according to my colleague. Who's an East Indian Professor At Guananawato University when an individual views such images of rock art. It causes one to activate. Certain neurophysiological responses and 1 1 garners emotions. So so in other words, it's not simply viewing something. It affects us physiologically and gives us a bit of a message How's that. 09:35.18 Laura Lee Um, indeed. 09:50.60 alan Does that make any sense. 09:53.65 Laura Lee Um, that's a nice description. We see human flourishing. We see out of every session and our sessions by the way. Perhaps I should describe them and this is the protocol that Goodman established back in the 60 s and seventy s was that there. Are rituals around the world for calling the spirits for setting up a sacred space and by calling the spirits what she did and what she meant was hey let's just activate this larger sphere. Let's knock on its door. Let's recognize this universe as the intelligent and living being. That so many early societies felt it was and um, she would just shake a rattle to the 4 directions up and down as well and ah make me make a bit of an offering she used cornmeal. It was um, classic in the in the southwest. 10:29.65 alan Right. 10:45.59 Laura Lee She would do a little bit of a breathing exercise. She said that early people probably didn't need this. They were so akin to walking in and out of these um doorways these inner doorways like you and I do our physical doorways but that we westerners needed just a few minutes of some deep rhythmic even breathing. And then she would have a stand in a posture that she would demonstrate not show us the artifact at that stage but just demonstrate while she rattled a gourd rattle at a monotone fast beat for 15 minutes it's that fast that this works on us that her physiology makes this shift. And then ah we would have this soul flight or spirit journey. Um, this waking dream is what I like to call it and visionary but also many of the other senses a sense of a magnetic Pullle pulling you down a sense of hurdling very fast through the universe. A sense of expansion contraction. Um a sense of spinning often heat cold hearing other sounds or voices over the rattle. So many things can happen and you know she came from a study of Glossalallia. She was made breakthroughs in that field and her premise there was watching people in a Pentecostal Church in in Mexico City prior to all of this was hey when people move into speaking in tongues she felt it was a trance state that they entered. 12:18.51 Laura Lee From the intonation of the preacher from the expectation the clapping and it was the delight of a monotone beat and swaying often and and letting go and that they would fall not ah, not all that often authentic tongues she felt but it would happen. 12:22.36 alan Um, ah, ah, interesting. 12:37.83 Laura Lee And she was the first to suggest that it was a Trans state that people fell into that would temporarily overtake their speech centers and what I yeah what I find is that now that's a widely accepted and breakthrough. Um position on that. But what I find is that somehow. 12:45.21 alan Fascinating. 12:57.23 Laura Lee 1 of the physiological responses we have is that it must temporarily overtake our vision center. We're not our eyes are closed during this and yet we're seeing visions. So it's something piped down through not our optical an inter center. 13:06.52 alan Correct that makes a lot of sense. 13:14.35 Laura Lee That is delivered much as a dream is um that we're downloading something from from a pace. We know it's not in. 13:20.35 alan Yeah, something something something from our mind that we're we're pulling sort of out of the corridors of our senses. Let's let's stop it there and we'll pick it up on the on the next segment see in the flip flop gang. 13:29.90 Laura Lee Um, sure.