Dr. Deb Kern, Health Scientist, Women's Wellness Expert & Creator of PranaShakti™ Dance
How do you integrate body and spirit? Dr. Deb Kern, Health Scientist, Women's Wellness Expert & Creator of PranaShakti™ Dance, has dedicated her career to helping women achieve clarity, purpose, and well-being through a body-centered approach. This week we discuss her transformative spiritual journey and her unique movement technique, which helps release energy blockages and realign the body, allowing you to tap into your inner wisdom.
Highlights:
What impact might a body-centered approach have on spiritual wellness and personal growth?
How does Deb help women release stuck energy and tap into their inner wisdom through her movement technique?
How did she come to work predominantly with women?
What 3 things changed the direction of her research that led to the first ever published on mind body interactions and healing through movement?
Deb shares her personal journey of discovery and learning from cultural traditions in India, Bali & Costa Rica.
Are we living in times where finally Non-Violent Communication can be authentically practiced?
How did her extensive training in Ayurveda, yoga, and sacred sexuality contribute to her comprehensive approach to transformative healing?
What experiences led to the development of her unique healing movement practice?
How does Deb's multicultural merging of traditions reflect a trend of reclaiming ancient wisdom and healing practices?
What’s her dynamic retreat process that emphasizes slowing down, identifying obstructions, and energy transformation?
How did Sister Morris, a benedictine nun, help Deb handle fear and misconceptions around yoga & dance?
How did the Aramaic translation transform her understanding of the Lord’s Prayer?
What are the words of wisdom from Sister Mary that can help us understand & accept Fundamentalism?
DR. DEB KERN is a health scientist, visionary teacher and guide who is dedicated to helping women live divinely embodied lives. Dr. Deb’s years of practice as a nurse, health educator, personal trainer, yoga teacher, Nia teacher and yoga therapist combined with her life experiences have given her insights not found in books. Her varied studies and experiences have helped her evolve practices and tools that help women embody the divine feminine and live pleasurable, purposeful, spirit-infused lives. Learn more at https://www.drdebkern.com and check out her YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@deborahkern
TIANNA ROSER is an Usui Reiki Master Teacher, Soul Plan Practitioner and Certified Clinical Hypnotist specializing in Past Life Regression, Life Between Lives Regression and Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique (QHHT). She uses tools to help people experience their true self, the source of real healing and growth. Learn more at https://www.awakeningtransformation.com. Tianna is the author of the book, “Awakening Transformation: A Beginner’s Guide to Becoming Your Higher Self.” Her book is filled with practices to lighten your spiritual journey and accelerate growth, available on Amazon.
TIM HOWE has always been interested in unusual and strange phenomena and considers himself to be a consciousness explorer. He was born and raised in Table Rock Village, Wyoming, which happens to no longer exist. He currently makes his home in Austin, Texas where he is constantly surrounded by beautiful females (wife, daughter and cat).
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TRANSCRIPT
Tim: This is Season 7, Episode 15 of Beyond the Illusion. Body-Centered Spirituality with Dr. Deb Kern. In this episode we have a conversation with Dr. Deb Kern. She came highly recommended to us and I'm so glad that she did, because Deb has that rare gift of being extremely entertaining while at the same time teaching you something profound. Deb has a background in nursing and a PhD in health sciences. She has dedicated her career to helping people achieve clarity, purpose, and well being in their lives. Her unique approach centers around the body as a pathway to knowing and understanding oneself. Through her movement technique, she helps release stuck energy and realign the body, allowing individuals to tap into their inner wisdom and hear the messages that come from within. With decades of experience and a diverse range of training in Ayurveda, yoga, and sacred sexuality, Dr. Kern brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her work. Her passion for empowering women and couples to embrace their wholeness and cultivate deep connection sets her apart as a transformative healing guide. Prepare to be inspired as Deb Kern shares her insights and wisdom on the transformative power of mind body healing. Let's go to the conversation with Deb Kern, Tianna Roser, and Tim Howe.
Tianna: Deb, I've heard so many really great things about you. From people that listen to this podcast regularly, probably have heard Nina Jolly's name just because she's brought through so many of our really great guests. And then also I know Lizzie Hernandez, who was a guest of ours. They both were just recently at your retreat, but I'd love maybe if just in your own words, you could sort of tell us what it is that you do.
Deb: I work with women predominantly. I help them know from the inside out. Basically, know, and rather than believe or think, but just know what's the next step for them in their life, what's the best thing for them in their life, how to know things. I think that's one of the things I'm really doing a lot of that these days. I started a long time ago and in the seventies in nursing, always wanting to help people be healthy , and. It's turned into this, helping women know. I could really bring it down to one thing. And I do it through the body, so my work is body centered.I've found that knowing generally doesn't happen in the brain. Believing and thinking does, but confusion then comes after that. And so the body really helps people know. And I've developed a movement technique that helps release places where there are stuck balls of energy, and we call them grantis where those areas get really knotted up and keep us in swirls of confusion where we can't trust our own bodies because it's coming from the body. So to release those places and realign so that women can hear what the messages are coming from their bodies. That's pretty much what I do.
Tianna: Wow. That's wonderful. Yeah. That's something for my own Spiritual journey that I only maybe started to really embrace and maybe like the last seven years or something like that. I think before that, a lot of my journey was not disembodied, but not fully connected and appreciating and valuing how much the body has to offer. And so I love that you do that. It seems like you have a lot of different tools and you've studied and practiced in a lot of different places. Can you share with us kind of more in depth about some of those tools, and where you learned them and where you share them?
Deb: Yeah, I mean, I started as a regular aerobics teacher in the 1970s complete with matching lead warmers to my belt, matched my belt and my headband, you know, back in the Olivia Newton John days. And even back then. There was something about the movement that I could tell was doing more than just burn calories and tighten up your butt. So I started like that and like I mentioned, I was in nursing school and from nursing I shifted to preventive medicine thinking, I kept looking for the path to help people prevent getting sick rather than waiting till they were already sick and Preventive medicine in the 80s, it was really more like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Deb: It was still looking for disease, but early. We called it preventive, but it was really just, we were scaring people to death basically. We would run all these tests and say, Okay, well based on your cholesterol level, you have X percent chance of dying of a heart attack. And based on this, you're going to die of this, and you're going to die of that. We were just practicing medical terrorism really. So I kept searching and ended up getting a PhD in health sciences, thinking that I would study more of the same. And by the grace of all that is good, came across Ayurveda in one of my classes, and it was as if I don't know how to describe it.
Deb: I actually knew what the next sentence was going to be. If ever I believed in past lives, it would have been then. Because I seemed to know Ayurveda before I read it. And then I took my first yoga class, same thing happened. I knew the next poses before they happened. Something in my body knew the whole thing. So I had no place in my brain to hang that. experience, but it happened in my body and it opened me to many teachers you know, the saying, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And so I was really blessed, right in the middle of that, I met a physician. I was in graduate school in Denton.
Deb: I met a physician who was an Ayurvedic physician. He let me apprentice with him, old school style. So I would do pulse diagnosis with him and I learned just side by side with him. And I took my first mind body movement class. It was an accident, wasn't meant to be in the class, but you know how those accidents go. Which was a Nia class, which Nia technique is a type of a mind body movement technique. And again, I experienced in my body emotions that were stored in my body. And those two things, the Ayurveda yoga, three things, Ayurveda yoga and the Nia changed the direction of my research. So when it came time to do my dissertation, I did a double blind quasi experimental design study on comparing mind body methods of movement and traditional fitness methods and I was measuring, what I was really interested in is trait anxiety, meaning your general anxiety level.
Deb: Throughout the day because back then the information from the field of psycho neuroimmunology was just coming up showing us that our minds affect our bodies and that anxiety has a cascade of chemicals that suppresses immune function sets up the environment for different diseases. I figured that if I could show that certain styles of teaching would support lowering anxiety that it would be helpful. So that's what I did. And in fact, my research, there's a thing in order to get your research published in a peer reviewed journal - you have to have a p value less than point 0.5. That's just shows that it's not just coincidence that there's really statistical significance to your findings and I got it. Amazing. So my research was the first ever published on mind body interactions and healing through movement and that just propelled me along a career that I never knew existed.
Deb: I sort of fell into it backwards. I was on a speaking circuit for most of the 90s, traveling to different hospitals and organ health organizations, speaking about mind body interactions and healing. And, As I did that, other teachers came to me. So I ended up traveling to India a couple of times studying Ayurveda there. I studied for nine weeks in the jungle in Bali with a Tantrika, teaching synergistic approaches to yoga, tantra, and Ayurveda. just go where the teachers are, basically. I've lived in Costa Rica for a while, studying herbal medicine with. Indigenous women there and I just keep learning.
Deb: So my path has been like a spiral. It wasn't a straight shot. I just followed, whatever was next in front of me. And over the years, because of all the different techniques and modalities that I've studied. That's how I put together the movement class. And that's how I know Nina, and Lizzie also, is teaching my movement class in Austin, which I taught there for, I think, almost 20 years, a couple times a week. So we had quite a community and I was able, it was like my laboratory. We could watch what happened, and we went through this group of women, which I just love, is like a red tent from ages 20s to 70s, all in the same room. And so we were going through life phases together, marriages, divorces, children, parents, dying, moving, losing jobs, getting jobs, all of the phases of life and the roller coaster of our culture in general and with the laboratory of a classroom to answer the question how can we support our wholeness this way in movement and community so that's my spiral journey
Tim: yeah, that's absolutely fascinating so curious, a couple things I guess, I'll ask you this one first. So you mentioned that you mainly, predominantly work with women, and I'm wondering is that just a result of the kind of people that came to see you just naturally?
Deb: I'm not going to say this is going to be just for women. In fact my classes were all co ed all the way through when I lived in other cities. When I got to Austin, I think it was the time of day, I was teaching at 9am. And it was just a time that a lot of women, women in general, were dropping off kids or doing whatever and popping into class right afterwards. And after a while ,men would come to class and they were like, we don't want that. It's interrupting. And I realized what I had created, co created, was this red tent. There was so much vulnerability and sharing that when a man would come in at which it did shift the energy. So that's how that happened. And I almost was going to stop myself about the women only because I also work with couples. it happens as a result of working with the women where their desire is growth in their relationship. So I've also taken four levels of training in sacred sexuality, divine feminine, awakened masculine Institute.
Deb: And I love that work. I know people are listening now, so I'm saying it out loud to the public, but I don't promote it publicly. Because there's so much misunderstanding in our culture about sexual energy and so I prefer to already be working with someone and then we have a working vocabulary. I know what we're talking about. They understand what I'm talking about and we have deep trust and then I love working with couples in that realm and I'm doing that too.
Tim: Okay. I was just going to comment that the reason I asked that question is because I noticed that even in just spirituality in general, you just see mainly women. I'm not sure why men are not really actively participating in these things as much, but that was why I asked.
Deb: Yeah. Such a great question. I want to stick with it for a second. I'm on the board of advisors for the National Wellness Institute and I spoke there probably 20 years. And when I had my awakening about spirituality and sexuality belonging , in the same sentence, which was a huge awakening, I'm sure most of us, we didn't know they belonged in the same room, let alone the same sentence. I started presenting at the national wellness conference and I chose to present to women only. I am a woman and I understand it from a woman's perspective. point of view. I love men. I raised two men. I was married to them. I love men. So it wasn't that I don't love men. And I did receive, several of my male colleagues were like, this is discrimination.
Why aren't you allowing us in there? And I said, “Because I can't be the one teaching you about your sexuality. You guys are going to need to do it for yourself. You're going to need to teach each other. You guys need to do that yourselves.” So, that's where I stood on that particular topic. And maybe, this is what I've thought, I've thought about this a lot because this has come up often.
Deb: How come there's so many women in the yoga classes or in general in the spiritual realm? Maybe because for 10,000 years, the spirituality in general has been male oriented and has been more of a patriarchal system. And for men in general, it seems to be maybe working for them. Maybe it seems like, well, that is working for me. But for us it hasn't been working for us. It doesn't speak to us, as a woman. And so maybe we have a little bit more unrest, and that's why we're more ready and willing to search. And now I think it's shifting for men as well. Men are also going, Yeah, this doesn't work for us either. This whole system. It's just a guess. I don't know. What do you think? Do you think, Tim, does it hold any water in your mind?
Tim: Oh, yeah, I think I agree with you 100%. Yeah, for sure.
Tianna: I see the men waking up. Yeah, I think I've mentioned this before, but I organize this Austin Spiritual Awakening group, and I think we've only been around for like six years or something, but I definitely see a shift where in the beginning it was mostly women and now it's kind of 50/50. And I always say it's hard to see anything objectively. For a couple of reasons, like I was going to say that on social media, I now see a lot of things for men's groups and so forth. But then also, it can be the algorithm. And then even to say in my experience that I see more men coming out to these things, it can just be my energy attracts a certain kind of person so it's hard to really know objectively. But just from other people that I've talked to as well, it does seem like there are more men coming on board on the spiritual journey And that was leading to the question that I wanted to ask you next which is Since you've been in practice for many many years and you sort of alluded to some changes that have happened over that time in the collective perspective. Because we always talk about the shift like we're in this time of spiritual awakening. And I think everybody can see amidst the chaos as well, that a lot of shift and change is happening. And so I'm curious as far as maybe what themes or shifts you've seen spiritually, collectively.
Deb: I would say the chaos is necessary for the shift. If status quo isn't stirred up, then there is no shift. So it makes total sense to me why there's the chaos. Not fun, but there it is. I'm just going to talk about in my view, what's really been coming up is a resurgence that I've noticed and in the micro and the macro, around communication interestingly. So many years ago, probably, I don't know, 10 years ago, I studied non violent communication. I imagine you all are really, yeah. And I see the nods, so yes, we're aware. It can seem like a formulaic process, but as men and women are waking up, I see it coming around again in a different way.
Deb: So especially as I'm working with men together with women, the conversations, the nonviolent communications are becoming more and more possible. It seemed like 10 years ago, they were forced, like, I'm going to say how I feel and this is what I need. And it was clunky. It wasn't being met in the world that I was in. And now I'm seeing there's so much capacity. Not only hunger and definitely a need for this, but capacity in general for people to expand into this, the willingness to be together. And when I say communication, I think about the word communing with each other, to communicate, not just talk at each other.
Deb: And it's so needed. It's just so needed. Social media has made communication, meaning communing, virtually impossible. It's just shouting, I'm going to say the thing I want to say, and then in the comments, I'm going to say the thing I want to say, and I'm going to say the thing I want to say right back at you in the next comment. It's just, it's a lot of the shouting at each other, not communicating. And so I'm seeing this as a new growth edge for all of us spiritually, is this type of communication. It's just one of the things. I haven't thought about this, what's emerging. Let me just pause a second, because I'm living in Mexico.
Deb: I live in the mountains. I'm at 7,200 feet in central Mexico. Uh huh. And so I can speak here what's emerging here. And perhaps it flows together everywhere. I think it probably does. There is a big resurgence of reclaiming wisdom and knowledge that's almost about to be lost from the indigenous people. So I have friends here who are indigenous of this area and they are full force digging into their roots. And it almost feels like they're reaching way back and almost missing the grasp of the last hand that's reaching itself forward and they're just able to get that piece of wisdom to pull it through and they're here. Some of my friends here are traveling all over Mexico, working with curanderas in different areas and Mexico, just like the United States. That's a very different area. They're quite different from each other. So they're learning from each of these areas, the plant medicines, the ceremonies, and they're bringing them through and, very hungry to join that wisdom with, for example, I'm bringing whatever I know about Ayurveda.
Deb: So we're together looking at very interesting combinations, like, so what might be helpful with Ashwagandha and Lion's Mane? Even if it's, one of my friends does a lot of micro dosing, so what do you do with micro dosing? What about turmeric, or what about this or that? And so there's this really beautiful multicultural merging of traditions wIth the deep desire to, couple of things, to maintain connection with the ancestors and also to provide healing to people that's true healing, that's not just band aids on symptoms. So, that's what's emerging here. It's been really exciting to meet people here doing this kind of work.
Tim: Oh, that's incredible. I had no idea you were in Mexico. Because Tianna was saying at the beginning like some of the people we know have gone to a retreat to see you I guess this happened in Mexico. I'm assuming or no?
Deb: I just held a retreat in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. So it's my favorite place to lead retreat I have to say, it's the most beautiful physical representation of the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine right in front of your eyes. The lake is the deepest lake in Central America. It's the top of an old volcano, but it's the deepest, so you've got this ginormous crystalline water lake which is very feminine and then on the other side you have three volcanoes, inactive volcanoes, like holding strong this super strong fortress. So the healing that's possible there is just, it's magnified and potentized and amplified like nowhere I've ever been in the world. So that's where I just came from.
Tim: Oh wow, okay. So, can you kind of describe, maybe give an outline of what a retreat would be like if someone went to one with you?
Deb: Totally. I actually have a formula. This is where, I really believe it's important to have structure, which is masculine. I believe in all people having good divine masculine qualities and divine feminine for men and women. So, the way a retreat works, every time, the first step is slow down. Nothing else will happen unless people slow down. So they're slowing down. I always start with some breathing. And so slowing down and breathing allows them then to identify where the obstructions are in their life. In their life, in their bodies, in their minds, what obstructions are we going to be working with?
Deb: That's why they're coming to retreat, so that they can transmute whatever those obstructions are to release that energy, so they identify their, their obstructions. I create a very, very safe, safe container. I should do that before all of this happens. That's key. There has to be a safe container for the transformation to occur. And so we go through processes of identifying the obstructions, and I have different ways to help people get there. And then once we identify the obstructions, the first two to three days are really dedicated to, I call it, clear the way. So, and there's other ways to language it. You could call it Kali Durga energy or fiery energy.
Deb: Where we, I ramp up the fire, I poke them every which way I can to bring things up to a head. And then we work on, do a lot of releasing the first few days. After the releasing, I always have a time of deep release. Deep relaxation. So it depends on where we are, but at Lake Atitlan, this involves things like floating in the lake, having a Temazcal where we do sweating and praying and singing, which we're doing all the time anyway, chanting and dancing and singing are part of the tools. Once there's the big release, there's space and that's the moment we're dreaming, imagining, setting intentions, and then filling back in with. The divine is what happens. They fill back in with the divine and then at the end, there is an integration assimilation time so that when they go home, they can put that into practice.
Deb: And every retreat, if I'm leading it, there's always a good couple hours of dancing, yoga. I use every modality I can to release the places. So I do fascial stretching, somatic release, somatic experiencing. We use every kind of balls, tennis balls, yoga tune up balls, anything to get into the fascia and straight up yoga. We'll do yin, we'll do regular hatha, lots like that. That's what a retreat will be like. And great food and great food. Always great food.
Tianna: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so curious about your own personal spiritual journey. We got to hear a little bit about how your practice and your offerings have evolved. And I was thinking as well, when you were talking about the masculine and feminine, how balanced you are to have this real, the PhD and the health scientists, that perspective, and then also kind of the more mystical, spiritual aspect and blending and merging those together. Yeah. I would love to just hear more about your spiritual journey and what maybe have been some of the challenges or the highlights along the way.
Deb: My grandfather and his six brothers, so seven of them, came to Texas from Germany to be Lutheran pastors, and I'm the oldest daughter of a German Lutheran family from Texas. That's where I started. So lutheran is a Christian religion, and well it's pretty bland. There's no color in the church. Like everything is either beige, maybe a little light blue. That would be really, whoo, light blue. And, no feminine. No feminine nothing. I mean, at least the Catholics got Mary but Mary came out once at Christmas and that was about it.
There was not a feminine trace. However, I loved church. I would cry. I would be in church and the music would make me cry. I could feel it in my heart. I felt Jesus in my heart. Therefore, When Sunday school teachers would be teaching. None of it made sense to me because that was not my internal experience.
Deb: So I would raise my hand and ask lots. I was in trouble a lot for things that just didn't make sense. For example, one of my best friends in second grade was Jewish and something was said in Sunday school that if you're not Christian, you don't go to heaven. You're not been saved or something like that. And so I raised my hand and I said, are you saying that someone who's Jewish won't go to heaven? And they said, absolutely. And I said, have you met Nancy Burns? If God is a loving God, he would not send Nancy Burns to hell. It just did not make sense to me. So, that's how I started. I was a questioner from the beginning and, particularly the Lord's Prayer really tripped me up.
Deb: And for listeners that may not have grown up with it, there are some lines in the Lord's Prayer. One of them that says, Lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. This is a line in a prayer we were meant to memorize. Lead us not into temptation. So you're talking to God, who we were told was like a loving father. But we had to ask him every day to please don't lead us into temptation. It didn't make sense. And it freaked me out. Like, is God trying to trick us? And if we don't ask him every day, cause he's gotta be really smart. So he could really trick us. And if I forget to ask him, Am I going to get, like, I was really upset.
Deb: So I grew up with this sort of cognitive dissonance going on, which set me prime to be a seeker. But I had many waves back in and out of, I had an early divorce when I was 30. I miscarried twins and ended up in a divorce that really ripped me apart. And in that phase, I jumped right into really strong. What do you call it? What's the word for that? Fundamental, fundamental Christianity. Because I needed something to believe was black and white, when everything fell apart. I can really understand why people are drawn to fundamentalism of any kind because it's so for sure, for sure. So I was in a phase of fundamental Christianity when I took my first NIA training.
Deb: And this is this dance movement technique. And the dance movement technique has in it yoga, tai chi, taekwondo, different movement forms. And at the time I was reading some spiritual fiction by a guy named Frank Peretti, Christian fiction. And in the novels, the bad guy, the antagonist in the novel was a professor at a university who taught meditation. And in meditation, the evil spirits would come and take over the minds of the college students. And so I was freaked out that when I saw that yoga was part of this dancing, I thought, Oh my gosh. They may have to send a deprogrammer after me. Something may take over my brain. I'm just saying all this to say, I understand people who are afraid of what I do, even if they were raised in certain religions.
Deb: And of course my experience. Was nothing like that at all my experience in fact after every yoga class or dance class I can feel the Christ in my heart. The light of it is in me more than if I'm just reading a book. So that's how I started. I just began feeling and Yoga became a really important practice for me. And I would always feel in Shavasana, I could feel, as a little girl, they would say, ask Jesus to be in your heart. and so in Shavasana, I would always feel that. I could feel that presence. In my heart, I saw no conflict between my upbringing in a Christian church and my yoga practice. Zero conflict whatsoever. And I even taught yoga in a Methodist church. One of my main spiritual mentors is a benedictine nun at a monastery in Alabama Named Sacred Heart Monastery. She's passed away, Sister Morris Allen. She's probably the key spiritual mentor in my life. And Sister Morris taught yoga at the convent.
Deb: And she would start every yoga class, and again it was just women who were in there, but she would start every yoga class like this. Oh, she started in Shavasana, because she believed in having dessert first. So we would all come to class and we'd all be lying down. And then, she was from Montgomery, Alabama, so she had a really heavy accent and she would say, “breathe. Breathe in the great, ah, am. I am woman, beautifully and marvelously made.” We would start every class like that and I would just be levitating. So, Sister Morris, I was getting people were frustrated with me or they were scared of me and they would say, How can you say you're a Christian, because yoga is the work of the devil?
Deb: So I asked her one time, I said, how do you handle all this? Or they would say, “oh, it's new age. You're doing new age.” And she said, Well, if they ask me if this is new age. I say, well, I hope it's a new age. I hope it's not the dark ages or the middle ages. I hope it's a new age. I mean, she just, she just was unruffleable, completely unruffleable. She says, and when you meditate, meditation brings you. Into your heart. And if they think the devil is there, they've asked the devil to be there. So, I mean, she just was one of my biggest mentors. So Sister Morriss taught me the Divine Feminine. She got me started on that. and the most important shift she made in me is she had me study the Aramaic version of the Lord's Prayer. And I don't know, do you all know that? Have you ever been exposed to the Aramaic?
Tianna: I was not raised Christian at all. I was an Atheist, so.
Deb: Oh, yeah. Well, so yeah, it would not have the same effect for you, but for any of your listeners who were raised Christian, they would have learned this prayer. And so when Jesus was walking around teaching, he would have been speaking Aramaic. Aramaic is the daily language where Hebrew would be the more erudite, learned language. Sort of like Italian to Latin, in that comparison. And so the prayer in Aramaic is so beautiful, and it opens up. For example, just to give you an idea, in English, we were taught to say, our father who art in heaven. So right away, it's a man probably with a white beard sitting on a cloud. I mean, for most of us little kids, that's how we saw it.
Deb: The opening in Aramaic, it says, our wound. So the scholars say, first of all, Jesus would be one of the master teachers, a master rabbi, a master teacher. He would choose every word carefully. When his students they asked, teach us how to pray. So he would choose every word. The first word is Awoon, which means you have to take a big breath. Awuun. It even has the sound of almost like Om, the beginning sound. It starts with Awuun. So the first line, Awuun dwashmaya, which translates as, Oh, birther of the cosmos. I mean, just in that. Changes everything. Oh, birther of the cosmos, right? Shine your light within me. Clear us, it says, clear a space in me, empty me, hollow me out so that I can be filled with your light. That's how the prayer starts. It starts like that, and there are words that are mistranslated, like in English we say thy will be done. The word will translate better as wish.
Deb: So it translates better as may your wish for my life come to fruition. I mean, doesn't that make you want to pray? May your wish for my life come to fruition. And the line that used to, well, there's every line, I love every line. There's a line where we were taught to say, forgive us our sins as we forgive others who sin against us, or forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.It goes like that. That line in Aramaic is the only one that has a whole bunch of guttural sounds, and the Aramaic scholars say That he would've chosen those sounds to give the idea of like coughing, like a cat coughing up a fur ball, like get rid of this. So it sounds like this. So all that, and it means, Please, please cut, please cut the cords and knots that I have inside of myself, all the knotted up cords that bind me to my own mistakes and to the mistakes of others and set us all free. Wow, isn't it beautiful? So my whole dance class is that. We're going in there and we're cutting the cords, the knots that bind us, and bind us to each other, and we set each other free.
Deb: We set ourselves free, we set each other free. So much easier than talking about forgiveness, isn't it? How about just let's set each other free. So anyway, and then I have to finish the line that got me in trouble in Sunday school, which was, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Mistranslation. It doesn't say that. It doesn't say lead us not to temptation. It says, help me not be deluded by the material world. Help me not be, right? Help me not be deluded by the material world. Yeah. I could say that prayer every day. I need to say that prayer every day. I can be deluded by the material world. Many of us can. So anyway, Sister Morris, as you can tell, had a huge impact in my life. Also, I have to go back, before Sister Morris, I did live at Satchidananda Ashram, in which Swami Satchidananda is a yoga master. He actually was the one who sat on the stage at Woodstock and opened Woodstock.
Deb: So if you go back to any old pictures, there he is. I mean, all the way from India. Peter Max, the artist, flew him over and he sat there on the stage of Woodstock. So I lived at Satchidananda Ashram in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. At Satchidananda Ashram and studied yoga after I got my PhD. And at the ashram it was traditional style, So we all had to all wear white every day. We were not allowed to talk until after breakfast. There are a lot of rules. I was like the bad nun. I was always in trouble for communicating, like, I wasn't talking, but I was like using my eyes and nodding. I was kind of in trouble for a lot of things. And also we were not allowed to have any rock and roll music or spices or all this kind of stuff.
Deb: All right, so we're doing lots of yoga, but I needed to dance. I just needed to dance and I had with me, this is 1992, so I had a cassette tape of Hooked on Classics. hat's all I had, and a Walkman, an old fashioned Walkman. And so we were awakened every morning at 4:30. One of the nuns would come with a violin down the hall and wake us up at 4: 30. So I would will myself. I willed myself to get up at 4 o'clock, sneak out of my bunk bed, sneak down into the basement where they had a Panasonic flip top cassette player. I would stick my cassette in there and hit play. I would just go wild down in the basement to “hooked on classics” and then quickly turn it off, slip back upstairs, get into bed right before the nun came with her violin.
Deb: One day I got caught. One of the sannyasins, the guys that wear the orange, was walking and he had to bend down on his knees and look into that little window in a basement. And he's looking down at me to see me, but he saw me dancing, turned me in. And my punishment was I had to do toilet cleaning all week long during a cleanse week. Anyway, that's another detail. So I was in trouble. The week passed and I felt ashamed and all the things you feel when you're in trouble. Friday night, we always had satsang. Satsang is when Swami Satchitananda would come and he would sit on the big stage and we would all have index cards we could write questions on and he would take those and answer the questions.
Deb:So, I'm sitting there with all of the yoga teacher trainees and Mark White and he's finished answering the questions. He stands up to walk off the stage. He's such an elegant man. By then he was probably 78. 79 years old, stands up, walking off the stage. Then he turns around, he leans into the microphone and he says, Let's dance. And somebody was ready to cue, turn the music on loud. I didn't know what to do. People started dancing, and it was a huge dance party. I didn't know what had happened. That was Friday night. So the next morning, we come into our yoga teacher training, and he comes in. First time he's ever come into our training class. And he proceeds to tell a parable, which I can't remember, but the essence of the parable was something like the master is pointing the way and you're worshiping the tip of the finger. Like you missed the point of the whole teaching. And he was saying, there's nothing in the teaching that says you can't dance. I don't know where that, how did you all get down to thinking you can't dance, that that was sinful? But then he said the magic words: Women must dance. Women must dance And I've never been the same since Women must dance.
Tim: Wow, that's incredible. Those are such good stories, I feel like this podcast may not translate that well because Tianna and I are sitting here like smiling and laughing the whole time, but, , people can't see that on just the recording, so yeah, thank you for those stories.
Deb: You're welcome.
Tim: Yeah. That translation of the Aramaic prayer, that is incredible. That is seriously like that is the essence of like every spiritual teaching right there right like it's incredible
Deb: It's so beautiful. It goes across every religion. It's not a religion. It's good living. It's good living. It's good communing. It's a beautiful prayer.
Tianna: Yeah, there were a few things that you had said in your stories that I relate to. 1) like I said, even though I was raised as an atheist and I didn't have a Christian background, which a lot of Americans do have a Christian background. And so when I was in this sort of now I will jokingly call a yoga cult (and we have a whole episode about that) But anyway, the way I came to Texas was through this organization and I started to teach. I ran a center in Katy, Texas, and I had always lived in pretty, I guess liberal places. And it didn't even dawn on me. We teach this class and a few times people came in and were like, Oh, I don't know if I can continue the class because of the meditation, because my pastor told me that if I quiet my mind, the devil will come in. It just blew my mind. I thought, Oh my gosh. How do people live like that? Like to constantly keep your mind going and being fearful of ever giving your mind a pause. I thought, Oh my gosh, that would just be the worst type of existence. I can't imagine how you could ever find peace in constantly feeling like you're afraid to let your mind get quiet or pause.
Tianna: So there's that. And then the thing you said about the fundamentalism also is something that had been on my mind a few years ago when I started to notice that I saw a trend, I think , people who are familiar with, like Doreen Virtue, someone who put out all of these angel messages and cards and stuff, and then suddenly became sort of a fundamental Christian and kind of spoke against the new age and I had some acquaintances, the same thing. I'd met them on the spiritual journey and then later they were opposing it or even a client who, because I am a past life regressionist and I lead people into past lives- I had a client who emailed me and said Oh, I think that you have a really good heart but you're being deceived and you don't realize that the devil is taking you. And it was just so strange to me. But like you're saying I think it makes so much sense that in these very destabilizing chaotic times people are looking for something that gives them a sense of security, this black and white- this is right and this is wrong to follow. But yeah, understanding it more now from even when I travel, because I love to travel around the world as well. I remember going to Turkey and being surprised because I always heard such bad things about the leader and how their people's freedoms were being taken away. And then I met a number of people that said that they really support the leader because he's a strong man and they feel safe because the country's all around them were, scary. And so it was kind of the same idea of just having this, like, something that maybe feels less freeing for me. I like my freedom, but for others are really looking for safety and security, looking for belief systems that give them that.
Deb: I just remember. Yes. And can I just tell you another story. Yes. Love your stories. So, sister Morris had a protege sister Mary and I was speaking to sister Mary about fundamentalism and I was speaking disparagingly about people who were fundamental Christians. And she said, “No, Deb, spiritual growth is like human growth. You would not expect an infant to be able to eat a steak, you know? An infant needs pre digested protein in the form of breast milk. And then by the time they are a toddler, they can eat smushy food. Then when they have teeth, they can eat food, but you have to cut it up for them. Some people spiritually are infants. They need pre-digested spirituality. They can't digest. They don't have the digestive enzymes to even digest.” Or another way, she said, “And they don't have discernment. So if they haven't developed discernment, they need black and white rules, just like children. To some children, you say, never cross the street. By yourself wait for mommy and daddy, and then later you can cross the street by yourself because you have discernment.” And so it really helps soften me around that. And I have seen in my own experience where I lacked discernment and. Example, and I know you both know this, just because something is in spirit realm doesn't mean it's going to be helpful to you.
Deb: So we have to be discerning and I've gotten into a sticky situation thinking that someone was helping me. They had such psychic powers and they knew so much about me and actually they were using it against me. I didn't have the discernment. And so had I been a fundamental let's just say Christian, but probably anything, I would have never dealt with that person. I would have said No, that's all bad. While it’s not all bad, but this was. Do you see what I'm saying? So it's like oh gosh, I have so much compassion and I personally want to work on my own discernment. And keep going and keep growing, and I may get close to danger. It's gonna happen. And my discernment grows. Have I been burned? Yep. But I haven't been killed, so I keep growing and getting stronger.
Tianna: Mm hmm. That's such a wonderful perspective, especially right now where things are so polarized and black and white and to remind us just to respect everyone's journey along the way and also develop discernment as far as what's aligned with us or what resonates with us. And what doesn't it's okay to walk away from something that's not aligned, but not judging just discerning, which is the important key.
Deb: I think so. I think it's really, super important. The difference between being judgmental and discerning for sure. Yeah, absolutely.
Tianna: I was just going to ask what you're up to right now that you want to share with our listeners.
Deb: Well, I have a retreat coming up in May in Chacala, Mexico, which is this precious fishing village where we have our own cove. The waves crash right up against us and there's no chain store or hotel in sight. And all the food is grown locally and organic. So I have that retreat coming up the last week of April 1st of May and then I teach my classes online right now because I'm still traveling around Mexico. So once a week, I teach my dance class and it's my best medicine that I can offer. Really it's really good medicine and there is no class that's ever the same because I'm addressing whatever is happening in the culture also astrologically, and also whoever shows up for class.
Deb: So I just love when people can come dance with me that way. And I have an online membership that is women. It's called the Shakti Sisterhood, and I started it five years ago, believe it or not. Five years ago, I had this burning desire to somehow offer a taste of what our Austin community had which is just so supportive. And I had the thought there's so many women who live where they can't find this kind of support and so I put us online. And every month I focus on some form of feminine energy, some kind of Shakti. And we use different women as examples, mythological or spiritual. So] we start with Saraswati one month, and then we have Durga Kali, this month is Lakshmi, we switch to Mother Mary. We move around, and the purpose of it is that, for all of this is that we keep opening up parts of ourselves that we didn't know about. And then I tie the teachings to what's happening now. I think it's so important that whatever I'm teaching be able to be used in everyday life, in relationships and being a daughter, a sister, a mother, a brother, a friend, whatever that we can really be using it. So that's what I'm doing online things.
Tim: Beautiful. Yeah, so where exactly can they go? Do you have a website or something that they can go directly?
Deb: Oh, yeah, you can go to my website: https://www.drdebkern.com And that's what I am on facebook and instagram as well. Dr. Deb kern. It's all right there Yeah, just hop on over there and take a look around. I know on my website, I have a free “how to manage your energy” ebook. I just put something on YouTube today. I'm going to start, I feel compelled to put more things , on YouTube. So I just, I've been doing more of some polyvagal, just gentle polyvagal exercises. And so I'm starting to share a little bit more on YouTube as well. I have a lot of free content.
Tim: Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. We'll definitely put a link there so that our listeners can find it.www.youtube.com/@deborahkern Awesome.
Tianna: Yeah, thanks so much for making the time. I know you're so busy and it was some coordination for us to be able to have you here. So i'm so happy that you were able to thank you Yeah, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us
Deb: My pleasure. I'm just honored that you asked. Thank you so much.
Tim: Thank you for listening to this episode of Beyond the Illusion. I'd also like to say thank you very much to Dr. Deb Kern for taking the time to talk with us and for sharing her gifts and knowledge with us. If you'd like to find out more about Deb and her offerings, you can find her online at DrDebKern.com, that's spelled D R D E B K E R N dot com. You can also find her on social media, and I was able to find her YouTube channel just by searching DrDebKern. And thanks to everyone that made this podcast possible. Produced and hosted by Tim Howe and Tianna Roser. Music by Casey Henson. For more information, please visit beyondtheillusionpodcast.com. Thank you so much to everyone that took the time to post a review for this podcast. We really appreciate it. Take care.