S8 E4: A Deeper Connection with Our Dogs and Ourselves
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Grace shares how she made a significant change in her career plans to be a doctor when she felt it was not what she genuinely wanted and went in the direction of a more creative career. She ended up in marketing where she had a high level of outward success; however, she ended up quitting the corporate world in 2010 and moved into the more genuine path of animal photography. In the pursuit of doing what she felt was deeply meaningful, she ended up coming across a path that actually led to a career.
Grace shared how many others could not understand her authenticity and so she had to go inward. She connected with spirituality and gardening that helped her be more in touch with her. She felt deeply supported by a force she could not see but was greater than her. Eventually she did find a community that was supportive of her authenticity.
The thing about following an authentic path is that it’s not often straightforward and sometimes it helps to let the path unfold and continue even in the midst of the uncertainty. Grace shares the analogy of seeing things from a vertical perspective at the top of a tall building rather than being at the bottom of a city and only seeing a horizontal perspective, which can be narrow and immediate. She shares how Einstein suggested you cannot solve a problem at the same level in which it was created. So, being able to go into a higher spiritual perspective and have more clarity on herself in terms of who she is and what makes her happy allowed her to gain that perspective from her heart. That gave her the courage to take action from that place.
Feeling uncomfortable may be a sign of an opportunity to a shift or change rather than a ‘bad’ thing.
There seems to be a lack of trust and connection in something outside of ourselves in society. Even when one is on the top of their ‘game’ it may take a leap of faith and trust in a process for oneself. It’s not about finding just ‘one thing’; it’s about opening and widening the aperture to see the bigger picture of what is possible. Gaining perspective by looking inward and also looking outward to see where different paths may intertwine.
Stepping toward your entire ‘life’s purpose’ all at once can feel scary and overwhelming. It’s not like a dramaticized ‘movie moment’ where everything comes together all at once. Moving toward meaning and purpose is not necessarily identifying it as something so huge and far away; it may be something so small in front of you that is calling to you. Even something that is sort of interesting to you is a step in that direction.
So much of what individuals are told from the ‘outer-culture’ may actually not be as important as what internally we are seeking that feels inspiring, meaningful, and reconnect us to who we really are.
Gerald encourages patients to instead of striving to feel confident outwardly, one can strive to feel comfortable with being oneself.
Therapy in it’s own way is a sacred space to feel grounded and have presence to open one’s mind, to reflect, and to allow one’s inner true nature to come out naturally and organically without judgment or ‘fighting against oneself’. Therapy can help people change their relationship with themselves rather it feeling like an internal battle.
The younger generation may get a ‘bad wrap’ for being superficial and yet the conversations Alexis and Gerald have with their clients/patients suggest they actually are seeking something deeper and more meaningful in their life despite living in a more superficial world.
We are in a relationship with everything and everyone around us. Ideas can be considered a consciousness that is alive and looking to exist around us. We as humans allow ideas to be manifested into the world. With animals, we are in pure presence with the animals. Grace seeks to show the viewer through her photography the beauty and presence of the animals.
Gerald shares that photography and songwriting is very similar in the sense of noticing and trying to communicate what is being noticed. Grace shares how people so often are walking around this Earth without fully noticing much in a deep way. Grace shares how the topic being noticed and expressed artistically may be the same between people; however, since the noticer is different, then the artist is able to capture and express it in their own unique way.
Alexis shares how perspective can be shifted and opened up even with something as simple as an image that can be viewed as a person or a duck depending on the perspective of the perceiver.
Life would be very boring if only viewed from one perspective. If a number of different individuals viewed a sunset, they would all describe the experience in their own nuanced way. Our life experiences slightly or significantly shift our perspective in our own ways.
People may not even be having simple conversations with the question of “What was that like for you?” to openly explore each others’ experiences, even shared experiences.
Alexis shares how it can help to make the internal external by bringing opportunities to share one’s internal experience.
Having a reflection partner is very helpful in creating and being artistic.
Grace feels that dogs are the embodiment of unconditional love in a way that we oftentimes we do not experience with other beings on the planet. To be that open with your heart with another human requires a lot of trust; however, with a dog, that could go ‘out the window’ where people can truly feel unconditional love. Petting a dog often can lead to feeling presence and love. That can be considered a healing mechanism.
Grace created a photography project where they stare into the eyes of a dog projected on an image. She wanted to create an experience to lock eyes with a dog in times when an actual dog is not present and with the person.
Dogs create trust as they are not judging you or criticizing you. You can be yourself with your dog and feel loved unconditionally. With other humans there is often an internal concern about being judged and criticized that leads us to put our walls up and protect ourselves. Our subconscious mind can dictate our interactions and lead to walls being put up with other people.
Grace believes that animal communication is a possibility. She has a background in science and tries to look at things in a structured scientific way. She believes that in the natural world there is a whole lot of communication occurring that is pre-verbal (not verbal). And so she believes that animal communication is when a human has the ability to have the perception, nervous system regulation, attunement, and sensitivity to contact with the animal through nonverbal communication. It is being in the same level of communication that the animal is in. Grace sees that we as humans started out this way before we learned language.
There are so many distractions internally and externally that interfere with what Grace believes is our baseline state of mind and being. The signal gets clearer with animals when we can calm our nervous system and be grounded ourselves so that we can attune with the animals. Gerald points out how this is similar to parent-child relationships; Alexis shares how this is also true for teacher-student relationships.
Grace believes that science and spirituality do not need to be an either-or but can be a both-and.
Animals used to be considered not actually having emotions and that humans were projecting their own emotional experience onto animals. Now, the thought in the scientific community are believing more and more that animals do experience emotions. Sometimes science catches up to what could be experienced. Additionally, certain lived experiences cannot be quantified and measured in science. She refers to how people feel with their pets that explains this lived experience of feeling love from another sentient animal being.
In some ways there is perhaps more of a craving for curiosity; yet, there is also an algorithmic influence that leads people to seek certainty and answers even when there may not be absolutes. People are so busy nowadays as well which can lead to not having the bandwidth to be curious and open without just seeking answers and certainty rather than going inward and identifying their own values, meaning, curiosities, interests, etc.
We all discuss some generalized differences (not common to everyone) in the north east where there is more of a drive for certainty and control; whereas on the west coast, particularly in California, there is more of a curiosity to not knowing certainty. Gerald shares how both sides can be important rather than going to one extreme or another, which can be difficult to integrate but very important for psychological health and groundedness. Grace shares the term ‘spiritual psychosis’ where people may go down the extreme pathway of openness and curiosity that they become untethered to reality and dissociate in a way that becomes psychologically unhealthy and unbalanced and creates a vulnerability. Gerald shares how this can lead to everything feeling important when that may not be the case and can make one vulnerable.
Getting to know oneself helps to prioritize when to be open and when to be more focused and narrow.
Gerald shares the meaning of his song “Sea Glass” where shattered glass (the discomfort of life feeling falling apart) becomes beautiful, cherished sea glass after going through the refining process of tumbling through the healing ocean water.
Grace talks about comforting yourself while going through the discomfort and how ending up somewhere you could not end up without going through the discomfort. It is like grief, that you need to go through the grief.
Grace encourages individuals to love themselves and see themselves the way their dog looks at and loves them. The dog views the person as the whole beautiful person they are. That is the foundation. It gives you the courage to do what is meaningful to you in life. It is a reminder that you are not broken; you are not seen as broken by your dog. Feel it in your body that you have yourself and love yourself no matter what. That is fertile ground for what can come next.
Gerald shares how important it is to truly experience ideas of healing and unconditional love rather than just intellectualizing it as an idea. Taking it from the head to the heart, Grace suggests, which is the longest journey. All the content that is shared to a person is in the head, but it goes to the heart when it is put into practice and embodied.
Animals can become incoherent in their energy just as humans can due to the traumas and conditioning we all experience by living life. Dogs are in the body, they are not in their minds. They want us to be present just like they are.
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Alexis Reid 00:11
Welcome back to the Reid Connect-ED Podcast, co-hosted by myself, educational therapist Alexis Reid, and my brother, licensed psychologist Gerald Reid. We're providing you with an expert and nuanced discussion on topics relevant to mental health education and sport and performance psychology.
Gerald Reid 00:27
Today's discussion offers a unique take on a common circumstance, the human animal relationship,
Alexis Reid 00:33
and taking it even further to think about our relationship with ourselves too. So today we're joined with Grace Chon, a former art director in the advertising industry and self-taught photographer, she merges her art director background with her photography work, creating modern lifestyle portraits of people and animals. Her clients include ad agencies, magazines, publishing companies, celebrities, nonprofit organizations, and TV shows when she's not writing about herself in the third person. Grace likes to meditate, grow heirloom tomatoes, and volunteer as a wildlife rehabilitator. She makes a mean guacamole want to challenge her to guac off and loves Korean dramas. Grace is also the author of three dog photography books. What kind of dog is that? Puppy-style Japanese dog grooming before and after waggish dogs smiling for dog reasons. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, sons, and their beloved rescue dog, Charlie. Additionally, we're going to dive deeper into this idea of how we actually find ourselves as Grace's story is a very unique one that will not only traverse the different aspects of looking inward and tuning into the energies around us, but also how we can stay true and honor ourselves
Gerald Reid 01:52
absolutely. So, four years ago, my sister welcomed one of the sweetest, most incredible dogs into her arms and home Raphael the Visla, aka Rapha the Visla. Now, if anyone knows the Visla breeds of dogs, you know one, and you'll never forget one. Alexis named him Raphael because of the healing archangel Raphael, and he surely lives up to his name. Wherever he goes, he looks for people. He walks the streets and beaches of Falmouth, Cape Cod, where our mom lives, greeting people as if he were the mayor. He gracefully approaches, and in the most gentlest of ways, he lofts himself up into the arms of whoever is so fortunate to meet him. It's a hug. It's literally a hug, and people have melted. Greeting a girl sitting on the bench in tears. Rafa brought a sense of comfort in a way only he could. That's exactly what I needed, she said, walking past a group of girls taking a photo for a bachelorette weekend. Rafa approaches and becomes part of the photo in the funniest of ways, and he was welcome with open arms, and he will forever be part of those photos. A family who met Rafa during the summer months a week prior was driving past us while Rafa was greeting another family, and the father saw us and yelled out of his car window, "Rafa, I thought we had something special. The embrace he has with his favorite worker at Port Cargo, our friend Fran, is like a movie scene when they see each other. My graduate students at Boston University, when Alexis allows me to take him to my classes, they huddle up, they just go around him like in a circle between classes, during class, anytime they can get with them, just hugs and love in the most beautiful way, and it is the best medicine, really. And that says a lot for therapists and training who are trying to help people, they can really understand what that type of love means. The amount of photos my students have taken with Rafa, it really just cracks me up. The stories are endless. Rafa is really truly a healing soul on this earth, bringing unconditional love to us and those he embraces. My sister Alexis has a lot of great ideas. This podcast is actually one of her wonderful ideas, and bringing Rafa into the lives of all of us has been one of the most incredible ideas she has ever had. And sure, it took two and a half years of dedication and training and extreme patience as he went through his growing pains of the Sharkies, the Zoomies, the Rafa monster moments. Just look up online how hard it is to raise a Visa, and you'll understand. But like many things in life that has deep meaning, it doesn't come easy, and it doesn't come fast, but it surely is meaningful, and most of all, it requires unconditional love. And so the lessons that I have learned, and that we all have learned with Rafa in our lives, are some lessons we have already learned, but they have been bolstered even more by having Rafa in our lives, learning to forgive those moments where he may. He, you know, gets a little rambunctious learning to accept him for who he is, learning to appreciate, learning to be present, and learning to really understand the importance of recognizing and anticipating and caring for the needs of another sentient being, another person, another animal, and most of all, Rapha really reminds us over and over and over, what unconditional love really means. So we want to say thank you to Alexis for bringing Rafa, and just, just kind of sets the stage for this amazing conversation we have with Grace, who is just an incredible human being and such wisdom to share.
Alexis Reid 05:35
Yeah, and I think this idea of unconditional love is such an important one, and I think it traverses across all of Grace's many incredible gifts and strengths that she shares with the world. So, Grace, we're so blessed and lucky to have you here to have this conversation, because I think it's a really unique one. Not enough people are privy to.
Grace Chon 05:55
Oh, I'm so excited to be here and to talk to you both about all of this, and what a beautiful way to open the conversation, learning about Rafa. I think you named him so perfectly.
Alexis Reid 06:06
Thank you.
Grace Chon 06:07
That, yeah, that could not have been a better name for him, because I think, as I was listening to, you know, all your experiences with him, it reminded me of why therapy dogs are so important, and why, when there are times of crisis, people will intentionally bring in dogs into these spaces, just because they have such a natural ability to bring us back into coherence and to feeling better, whether it's happiness, just meeting him, or if you're feeling sad and you see him, you feel better. I mean, that is the ultimate healing to be able to be in space with somebody and just feel better, so what a beautiful, beautiful gift he
Gerald Reid 06:47
is. Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Alexis Reid 06:48
Yeah, he surely is. And I have to give credit to Mom, who really encouraged us to think a little bit more widely, because given the work that we do, and given the energy that he gave off when we saw him, when we knew him, when we brought him home, he was the healer, right, even before he embodied his name. So it's a really beautiful thing, and I think this idea, and the three of us have talked about this before, this idea of embodying and embracing love and energy, and being able to follow the guidance of something outside of ourselves, I think, is a really important one. So, Grace, can you start the conversation? I don't think I did you justice at all in sharing that short bio of all of your, your story, your gifts, your wisdom, and I wonder if you can share a little bit about your journey and your story.
Grace Chon 07:38
I think my entire life story can be summed up as the person who had the courage to just keep trying to be herself, that's really it. And I feel fortunate that that journey started for me very early in life, because I think for a lot of us we don't start that opportunity, maybe even until midlife. It's probably why people have midlife crisis, but I don't know, is it because my father passed away when I was 13, that maybe that triggers something in you to look at life in a very different perspective that you wouldn't have otherwise, and by the time I was in my senior year of college, I was about to graduate with a degree in biology, which I do, I was going to go to med school or work with animals and be a vet, but either way, go the path of medicine. I realized this is not who I am. This is not my dream. I can't do this anymore. This is what my parents wanted, and so I moved across the country to go to art school, and being artistic and creative and musical was always, always a very deep part of myself, but told by my immigrant parents that you can't make a living doing that, and that there was really just a seminal moment at the end of college when I said no, I'm gonna do it, I am, and that started my journey into really plugging back into myself as a creative spirit, but it was still very constrained because it was working in advertising as an art director, and so when I did get into that field, I did very well in it, but it was not the right fit. It was so toxic and hard, and so, you know, to connect to something that made me feel better in such a hard environment, I started taking pictures of homeless dogs to help them get adopted, so again I think that's like another data point there, where it's like I'm not happy, this doesn't feel right. What can I do? And it wasn't even like I'm going to quit my job and do something drastic. It was as small as listening to myself. There was a part of me that said, get a camera, take pictures of rescue dogs, see what happens, and that turned into a whole pet photography career. And I was eventually able to quit the corporate world in 2010 and I've been an animal photographer since, but even since then, it's always this constant looking inward. What's. Interesting to me, what do I want to pursue? I think a lot of people get really hung up on feeling like there needs to be a point to why you do something. It's very much our logical linear brains trying to keep us safe, right? And saying no, like this needs to make money, you're going to waste time. What's the point? And I've never done that to myself. And what's very interesting is I have very many things that aren't made, aren't for money, but in that pursuit you find the things that actually connect you to something deeply meaningful that can make you money, and so in that process a whole bunch of other things that I never even could have imagined opened, or on the spiritual, intuitive end of things, and that's where I am now.
Gerald Reid 10:43
Wow, great. I have a very specific question, because you know everything that happened after you made that decision has unfolded, and like we can see it, and we witness it, and people are amazed at what you're doing, but I want to go back to the moment of when you did make that decision. I mean, you know we work with people individually all every day, I work with people in therapy, and like it is a lot to make a hard decision, that's a lot of therapy, sometimes just getting to the point of making a hard decision. So I wanted to ask you a little bit, like, did you have anyone supporting that kind of self-reflection, or was this really just something inside of you that was just kind of burning that you just had to pay attention to, and and just almost take a leap of faith, because like you didn't have anybody really kind of understanding it, or or helping you through that, because that's incredible courage if you did.
Grace Chon 11:34
Thank you for saying that, and I think you raised such a good point about having some sort of support system to help you, because my family certainly didn't understand it, and even people when I was quitting my job in the ad industry didn't understand it, because I quit when you know it was during the Great Recession, and 50% of the ad industry had been let go because the economy was in the toilet. I had just received a raise with my partner, so not only is the industry collapsing, I got a raise. We released an ad campaign that was going viral, and I said, 'I quit. So everywhere around me externally, nobody understood me at all. Where I had to go was deeply internal. I had no other place to go but internal, because externally I looked like a crazy person, and I think this is when really my path to truly being myself on my journey, and going deeply inward, and that cultivating my spiritual practice, those went hand in hand. The third thing that happened at this time was gardening, so it was starting my own business, becoming deeply spiritual, and gardening, and I really think all three of them intertwine very deeply, but it was truly my spiritual practice, and believing and experiencing for myself that I am not doing any of this alone, that that I am deeply supported by a force I cannot see, but is so much bigger than I am, and then finding a community of people who could also believe that and support me.
Gerald Reid 13:05
There's another part of this that I just want to point out, just for the listener, because people are, we're all on our own journeys, right? And, and you know, people may see your story and be like, okay, she made one decision and everything just fell into place, which is not the way this works, and you had made an important comment that you tried something and it didn't feel completely right, you know, and kind of had to maybe trial and error, and then kind of continue to follow that in, you know, in internal intuition about, you know, what's next, but you never gave up, you know, which is another, another trait that you seem to have, you know, you could have easily, you know, and we experience this, sometimes people get so discouraged when what they expected or what they wanted didn't turn out the way they, you know, wanted or expected, and it's devastating, or they don't feel like they can kind of continue that path. And you're a great example of letting the path continue and unfold. And I wonder, you know, what inside of you, what kind of thought process, what kind of mindset allowed you to kind of navigate that uncertainty,
Grace Chon 14:03
I think spiritual practice allows you to look at things from a completely different perspective, because I think the analogy I'll use is if you're in the middle of Manhattan and you're at the ground level, you can only see things from a very horizontal perspective, you know, you can see the cabs, you can see the people, and there's only so far you can see from that perspective, but if you were to go to the top of the Empire State Building, and you look down, you have such a different perspective, you get to see something so much bigger, it's more vertical, you get a vertical perspective versus a horizontal perspective, and I think that a lot of us get really stuck at the horizontal perspective, which again I think is so normal. It's part of the very human experience to be in the part that feels so hard and frustrating and not working. Survival, just thinking along. Survival, yeah, and it's just looking at the landscape in front of you. It's so narrow, you feel like all I see right in front of me is all there is. Einstein talks about, you know, you can't solve a problem at the same level that it was created. So, if you are in your narrow, very human experience of looking at what's in front of you and feeling frustrated, you can't solve the same problem from that level, and for me, being able to go to a higher spiritual perspective and sort of getting so clear on who I am, what makes me happy, because my whole life I was told who I needed to be, so when you really go inward and connect more to who am I, what makes me happy, what do I feel here in my heart that then gave me the courage to take action from that place.
Alexis Reid 15:52
That's so beautiful. We often are faced with clients and patients that we work with that feel this friction of something feeling uncomfortable, and I often like to tell them I want to bottle it up, like they're like, "Well, what are you talking about? This feels awful, and I'm like, "No, no, this is a signal that something needs to change, right? And often when we're too comfortable, like, it's difficult to move past it, and I've been a little under the weather this week, and I've been catching up on shrinking on Apple TV, and and they're talking a little bit in the show too, about like when something feels uncomfortable, that's actually an opportunity, and I say this all the time to my clients, and in fact, you know, as you're talking, Grace, there's so many overlaps to part of my journey to what you were sharing, from gardening to like taking the leap, and sometimes it can feel really lonely and scary, and part of why we wanted to have you on this episode, especially, is because we feel that there's this loss and lack of feeling connected, feeling supported, even when there aren't physical people around, this trust and faith in something outside of ourselves I think is really lacking right now, and to be able to take that leap of faith and to try something new, even when you're at the top of your game, it does take so much courage and bravery. I was reading a newsletter by Mark Manson earlier today, and he said something like, for all those people who tell you that you need to find a purpose, that's such a sham, and I'm like, we need more context than this, and of course, there is more context that you know it's not about just finding one thing, it's about being open, and really, you know, we talked in our conversation about widening the aperture to be able to like see the broader, bigger picture of what's possible, and it leads to this idea of gaining perspective from an internal aspect, looking inward, as you mentioned, and also looking outward to see where you know the different lines and energies and paths might intertwine.
Grace Chon 18:00
Yeah, I think you know this idea of if you're feeling lost or you're feeling stuck or you want to make a move and you're scared to, the idea of stepping toward your purpose is like the scariest thing possible you could do. I think the scale of purpose is too big. It's like trying to eat an entire elephant in one bite. That's paralyzing. It is paralyzing patients,
Alexis Reid 18:22
too, right? right, and like, oh, you have to find that thing, that one thing. Well, there's more towards just that.
Gerald Reid 18:26
There's almost like a movie, like everything, like especially with social media, like things could be dramaticized in people's minds of what it means, and it's a magical moment, like, yeah, like a, you know, like a Hallmark movie moment, or something like that, right? Like, and it's not really how that works, right. It's like
Grace Chon 18:41
it's really not. I think you raised a good point, like that's what makes it dramatic for a movie, but like her life isn't a movie. I think the way we actually move toward the thing that's going to bring us meaning and purpose is not identifying it as this thing that's like huge and so far away. It's like what is that little thing in front of me that is calling to me?
Alexis Reid 19:05
Yeah,
Grace Chon 19:06
it's.. I think purpose feels too big. It's more like what's kind of, sort of, kind of interesting to me.
Alexis Reid 19:12
I want to tie it back to the, you know, part of your story that you shared so far, too, because, you know, part of that was finding your, your enjoyment and crafting your art in photography and capturing the animals you saw in your life, right, being able to pay attention to nature that was around you, get your hands in the dirt in garden, right, some of those small little things, even though we feel like we don't have time for them all the time, or you know, maybe this is just something we see or notice in passing to really invest yourself in these things that bring you joy, that feel natural. It's not even just about that one thing, sometimes oftentimes brings you so much more, and that's what you know I love about so many of the messages that you share in your work and in social media and. In our conversations, and I think it's such a beautiful thing.
Grace Chon 20:04
Thank you. I think it's interesting that we're told again, I'm going to talk about this from sort of the voice of the external world, you call it the over culture versus your inner voice, which I think is the voice that's actually true and real, and it's interesting to me that so much of what we are told externally are not important, like what you're talking to Alexis, like these things we kind of want to do, but they seem pointless, so we feel like we should do it, but we'll do it when there's time, we'll do it, put it at the bottom of our to-do list when it's the thing that actually connects you to yourself, it is the most important thing, and so our creativity, our intuition being pursuing things that truly we feel passionate or joy about, those get put on the back burner when those are the very things that actually reconnect you to who you really are.
Gerald Reid 20:54
Yeah, you know, some sometimes like I think people strive to be confident or whatever, and you know, I always say, like, don't try to be confident, try to be comfortable with yourself and grounded, and I think you're speaking to, you know, what that really, the path of that, you know, the path of what that looks like,
Grace Chon 21:14
that's so beautiful, being comfortable with yourself is step one, and even under that, is how do you become comfortable with yourself?
Gerald Reid 21:24
Yeah, that's a journey, and there's no straightforward path, but you know, there is such a.. we talked about this when we connected a week ago.. there's such a overlap between therapy and what you're saying.. you know, I feel like you describe that as a spiritual practice. I would say therapy, and the work we do, is very much, you know, the word spiritual could be something that people may or may not resonate with, but it is a sacred space to allow people to feel that presence and that groundedness to open their mind, you know, because you use the word open, you know. I think that's a word that you know, especially in today's society, people are not necessarily open. They're kind of just their mind is going in every direction that it's being told to go, and so, like, the openness to reflect and to allow your intuition or your thoughts or your deeper beliefs or whatever is inside of you to actually come out naturally and organically, to me, that's the most magical thing that happens in therapy. People really understand themselves and not judge themselves, and not like fight against themselves, like people fight against themselves so much in therapy. Like, man, you're like battling with yourself, you know? And that's the idea of therapy, is to help people to actually re change their relationship with themselves, you know, you say your story really speaks to that, and I think there's such an overlap with therapy, and you can call it a spiritual practice or whatever, but there's something that's sacred, you know, about that space that you've created for yourself, and that we hope to create for people in therapy.
Grace Chon 22:56
I think there absolutely is an overlap, because the only difference I see is it's an inward journey where we're doing everything that you just said, you expressed that so eloquently, and the only difference for me then is taking that, it's like you've gone deep inward and now what happens if this extends outward? I think that's really the only difference that I see in calling it spiritual is there now there's an outward emanating vertical relationship happening.
Alexis Reid 23:24
I love that. You know, the tagline for our podcast is, be curious, be open, be well, right? And it's the curiosity we're inundated with so much information, right? Even, you know, I talked to a lot of young people in my day-to-day work, or they get a really bad rap, right, that they're not that deep, they're just, you know, surface, and, and we have such amazing conversations with, you know, the younger generation. Sounds silly to say, we're not that old, but, but it's, it's beautiful to hear how much they are looking inward. They are trying to figure out who they are, and oftentimes it's difficult for them to get to that openness place, so Grace, tell us a little bit more about this awakening aspect of the work that you're traversing and moving into and helping people to be able to be open in these moments when they find some information out about themselves or about their path or their journey that they're curious about taking on for themselves,
Gerald Reid 24:24
and if you could, Grace, try to try to.. I'm very curious about how this relates to your relationship with animals, which is like so fundamental to your, you know, your, your, your soul, you know? Like, how did.. how did this kind of lead to such a, such a deep connection and curiosity with animals.
Grace Chon 24:42
Yeah, I think we live in a very relational universe. I think that's the bottom line. I think we're in relationship with everything, it's with each other, which is the most obvious thing, but I think we're in relationship with, as I was talking to, something outside of ourselves, this animating force, whatever you want to call that. I think people have many names for whatever you. Don't call that, and I think you know, in me working with animals and as an artist, I am in deep relationship with my work. I think my work has an energetic aspect to it. A lot of people have been talking lately, like Liz Gilbert, Rick Rubin, of, you know, ideas being a consciousness that is alive, it's a force that wants to exist on the earth and I really believe that I believe that as artists as human beings we are in a relational universe with all things and we help these things come come into existence so then they can be in connection with us and so animals are really big obvious part of that because in photographing them you're just pure presence, you're just being, and so what I'm doing as an artist is really trying to translate what it is that I'm seeing and feeling as I connect with them, and I think if there's a through line through anything I do is let me show you this thing that maybe some people would not give a second glance to, but it's so beautiful and alive, and if I can show it to you the way I see it, maybe you'll see that too. And so, whether it's a dog or it's a lizard that's pooping on a fence, which I just did a video of that, I got like 3.7 million views, right, because it's like, so ridiculous, but at the same time I'm like, How cool is that? How often do you get to see this happen? It pooped, and then I like rubbed its butt off of the wood, and like, what about its day, you know, with heirloom tomatoes, with a flower, with all.. I just think we live in such a beautiful world that is vibrating with so much life, and so that's my through line with everything, of just wanting to show you my perspective on that, and so that absolutely is with animals, and you know, with the creation process, to me it's the same thing, it's if we're going to talk about this through therapy or through spirituality, there is a reawakening and reconnection process within ourselves that happens, but I think in doing that, what happens is we become such a precise instrument for this work, then to be able to be created through, we get to be this beautiful tool that ushers this work into the world that can then exist relationally with the people that engage with your work, so to me it all connects. I don't know if it makes sense to you guys, but to me it's like this ecosystem that all connects to each other.
Gerald Reid 27:28
Well, Grace, my sister sometimes will ask me, like, how many are you gonna stop writing songs, because I write so many songs, but
Alexis Reid 27:38
I don't ask if you're
Gerald Reid 27:39
gonna stop.
Alexis Reid 27:40
I'm asking what the goal is.
Gerald Reid 27:41
teasing
Gerald Reid 27:49
you, but there's a point to this comment, is that you know, in taking photography of the beach and stuff, which I try to do, and there's the connection that I have uncovered that I think is exactly what you're saying. Writing a song and capturing a photo to me is the same thing. You're noticing something and you're capturing a certain perspective of what you're noticing, but you're capturing in a certain perspective, and to me, like just constantly being open and aware and noticing and finding that unique or different perspective to describe or to capture what is already there is so incredible to experience, and I just want to see if that's kind of what you're hinting at about what the experience
Grace Chon 28:36
is. Yes, it's you said the word noticing, and I think most of us walk around this planet, not noticing, and I think when you notice, and then you try to articulate that in a way for somebody else to be able to experience it in the way you noticed it. I think that's magical, and that's why I think work a lot of people get caught up like someone else is already doing that, or somebody else has a song like that, or somebody else already wrote a book like that, but you didn't write it. You aren't the noticer, because the topic could be the same, but the way the individual has experienced it, and then they're trying to output it, is going to be completely different, because the noticer is different, and there's that beautiful nuance of just, I think, artists through the ages, we've just been noticers trying to capture the nuance of what we notice and have other people experience
Alexis Reid 29:27
it. I'm going to add to that, because I, whenever I get stuck in my own stuff, and I'm like, I want to create this, but there's so many other wiser people who have said or done this before, you know, my people around me will say the same thing, you know, but they're not delivering it through your message, through your passion, through your perspective, and I just want to say and emphasize this, because oftentimes a couple people get a lot of air time, right? I know it doesn't seem that way with social media, but there's usually a couple of people that rise to the top, and they're the voices that we hear, and we think are experts, but I really want to emphasize how important it is for. Everybody to really capture notice and share their perspective. We need more voices, we need more variability, we need to be able to see things through different lenses. And I work with a lot of young kids, especially the younger ones that I work with, usually have ADHD or they're on the autism spectrum. We talk a lot about perspective taking. There's this great book, I can't remember the author, it's a children's picture book called Duck Rabbit, and I often break that out and say, you know, what do you see, is it a duck or a rabbit? And we have this whole conversation about perspective, about being able to pause and inhibit and just savor a moment to see what comes up for you, what resonates, that that often we miss, like you're saying, Grace, in a moment, and my, my meditation teacher and his teacher have this really beautiful saying, thinking about how we tune in to ourselves, like how do we tune in to this moment, and it just goes right along with what you're saying about, you know, noticing, paying attention, sharing perspective again, when we were talking all together a few weeks ago, this phrase of widening the aperture just comes up, and I think there's so much to be gained in that.
Grace Chon 31:12
Yeah, I agree, and I love this point of just the diversity, the celebrating the diversity in voices and opinions and perspectives, because I think life would be really boring if we only saw it through one set of eyes, and as you were talking, it reminded me of how, if you were to go to a sunset and you put 10 different people there, and people talked about that experience, it would, you would hear it 10 different ways, it's the same setting, same thing, we're all looking at, but because the person is so different and it's being filtered through such a different person, the output will be different. I kind of, I used to have a podcast about creativity, and I used to talk about how we're like all.. sorry, this is sort of like a crude analogy, but I'm gonna go for it. We're all like these Italian. there's these like Italian cookie cutters, where like you push dough through it and it extrudes the cookie, yeah, and the shape of the thing that you're pushing it through, the shape of the cookie cutter is is what makes the shape of the cookie different, right? So there's different cookie cutters, I just think we're all different cookie cutters, and I think our life experience and everything we've gone through in life gives us a different shape, so you could put the same dough into it, but it's gonna come out completely different for every single person. We need different cookies in the world. Love
Alexis Reid 32:33
that.
Gerald Reid 32:33
We also just like don't have conversations with people about, like, perspective, you know? Like, when's the last time you were just hanging out with your friend or just someone, and like, like, hey, what did you think about that? You know, just like that simple question, what was your, what was your reaction to that? That's why, like, I love therapy, because I feel like these are the most meaningful conversations you can have, you know, in life, is like, you actually get like depth, which I appreciate.
Grace Chon 32:58
Yeah, yeah, I think everybody needs therapy, it's great
Gerald Reid 33:04
relationships,
Alexis Reid 33:05
and I think that's important too. They think about, like, how do we make the internal more external, right? This is an executive function technique that I talk about too, because sometimes we get so hyper-focused on one thing, and until we let it out before, until we allow for it to, like, have space to process and to integrate into whatever's happening in our world. Sometimes it just stays that one thing, it stays that one thought, and how important it is to like share and to discuss and to bounce ideas off of people that we don't usually give enough time and space for anymore.
Grace Chon 33:36
Yeah, I always say it's so hard to create in a vacuum, like if I'm working on something, I need to have trusted people I can show it to, and just have some reflection on it. It's really hard creating things or doing anything alone without some sort of reflection partner.
Alexis Reid 33:52
So, in that same vein, you created this beautiful installation, which I wish I saw in person, about dogs as healers. Can you share a little bit about that process and that project.
Grace Chon 34:03
Yeah, it really speaks to where we started this, this conversation on dogs being healers and Rafa being healers, because I really think that dogs are the embodiment of unconditional love. Everybody knows this, right? We get to feel such a state of openness and pure unconditional love in a way with the dog that we oftentimes don't get to experience with any other being on the planet. It'd be great if we could, but we don't always. And I also think that having that kind of openness with a human can also be really scary sometimes. To be, to be that open in your heart with another human being can be very vulnerable, like you really gotta be able to trust that person to be able to do that, and with a dog that all goes out the window. I did, I did a little thought experiment on Instagram not too long ago, where I asked people just stop and think about what are you thinking about when you're petting your dog, this. Isn't like when we're about to go for a walk or just like you're there petting your dog, what are you thinking about? And the responses in and of itself, I felt like could have been an art project, because they all came back so beautiful, and the through line was their presence and their thinking about how much they love them. And then if you want to extend that thought, then it's like, how often in your day do you allow yourself to feel that openness, that presence, and just feeling love, like probably not very much, unless you're with your dog. So, dogs do something so powerful for us that we don't always get opportunity to do, and with a dog, it happens so effortlessly, like you don't, you're just petting them, and you don't even know your walls have come down, and so this idea to me is so profound, because that to me is a healing mechanism. I think we go through life so sick and disconnected because we've erected so many walls here in front of our heart, the most important space I think we have as humans. And so now, what happens if we can access that more easily, and so this idea of healer was, I called it my Jim Carrey moment. It's like Jim Carrey going from the mask to getting really serious, and internal sunshine is a spotless mind. I'm like, oh, people know me for these funny, colorful pictures, like these are gonna be serious. So they're black and white photos where you just are gazing into the eyes of the dog, and you're encouraged to stop, practice slow intentional breathing, and just lock eyes with the dog, and then notice what comes up for you, notice if any messages come up, or how you're feeling, and people told me they felt like they had therapy, people said they would just spontaneously start crying. People reached out and said, "Oh, I'm a guidance counselor, and I have these in my office, and when students are having a hard day, they can just come in and spend some time staring into the eyes of a dog. The idea of it for me was almost like, "Let's see what happens if you can't have a therapy dog in the room for you, with you. Can you lock eyes with this dog? And so that series then got turned into an installation in Brooklyn, which was really cool, because I thought it'd be neat if you're like in a city stressed out in your head, and then you lock eyes with this giant dog and see what happens to your internal state when you do that.
Gerald Reid 37:20
Wow, that, that is beautiful. Can you answer this question for me? So, so exactly what you're saying, Raphael Alexis' dog will greet someone, jump up, give them a hug, but will literally lock eyes with the person. What is he doing when he's doing that?
Grace Chon 37:38
Yeah, he's doing what I just said. He, you're, he's special, he He really is like a different level of being, I think. Just the way he interfaces with people and the way people feel after having experienced that. So, I feel like this locking eyes thing is just like, I see you, you see me, like we're here in this moment together, like just for a moment, like just be here.
Gerald Reid 38:03
That's so amazing that an animal is doing that, and you had made a very important comment that I want to hold on to. You said when human beings act this way towards each other, it requires a lot of trust, and I wonder if that's just the complexity of being human, that there's so many defenses we have and past experiences that we hold on to with our memories, where with the dog, you said that there are no defenses because it's a dog, and you know what is the difference with the dog, you know, as it relates to that.
Grace Chon 38:35
I don't think humans are born not trusting.
Gerald Reid 38:40
Well said,
Grace Chon 38:40
right?
Alexis Reid 38:41
Yeah, it
Grace Chon 38:41
happened. happens as a result of being human, and just everything we go through in the world. And with a dog, you don't feel judgment, you don't feel like they're criticizing you, you don't, you, you feel like you can just be yourself.
Gerald Reid 39:02
Wow,
Grace Chon 39:02
that to me is unconditional love. Is being loved no matter what, right? And so with the dog, you're you can be yourself, you can do anything, and your dog will love you. I think that's why there's no defenses, because with humans it's not even.. it's like a lack of trust and safety, because you feel like you're being judged, or you feel like you're being punished, or you feel like you're not good enough, and we don't have that with dogs.
Alexis Reid 39:29
So, well said, it's like this compilation of all of our interactions with others and the environment that, like, leads us to put up these walls, and I think that's, you know, goes hand in hand with us maybe not noticing as much, because we are kind of looking through more narrow lenses to protect ourselves
Gerald Reid 39:46
or past experiences.
Alexis Reid 39:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Grace Chon 39:48
past experiences. Yeah, yeah. I'm certified in hypnosis as well, and it's amazing how much our subconscious minds dictate our day to day without us even realizing it.
Alexis Reid 39:58
Absolutely, absolutely. And it's interesting, you know, Raphael is technically trained to be a therapy dog, but it was really more logistical because he just has this nature and natural way of almost knowing when somebody needs something, and it's amazing how he can connect to them in that way and just kind of gravitate towards them, and I'm wondering, you know, through your work with, you know, understanding communication from animals and capturing them in that way, what are some of the takeaways and things that you've learned through those interactions with animals or dogs?
Grace Chon 40:30
Yeah, well, to back up for a second, because I'm not sure how open your audience is to understanding that animal communication is even a possibility. Yeah,
Alexis Reid 40:39
thank you. Please, please explain,
Grace Chon 40:40
because I think a lot of people think it's just made up, right, bull donkey, and I really don't think it is. I have a background in science, and so I actually do look at everything in this very sort of structured way, and if you look at the animal world, there is a whole level of communication that's happening on beyond verbal,
Alexis Reid 41:02
yeah,
Grace Chon 41:03
right, and in fact verbal language is is still like a higher function, because under that there is a lot of processing and communication that happens below verbal processing, so I think animal communication is when a human has that ability to be able to have the kind of sensitivity perception and nervous system regulation to be able to be in that space that an animal naturally resides one
Alexis Reid 41:31
more time. It's so important for people to hear.
Grace Chon 41:33
Yeah, I think I think that if a human being is able to experience communication with an animal, it's because they have achieved a ability in their, in their perception, and in their sensitivity, in their attunement, and in their nervous system regulation to be in the same level of communication that an animal naturally is in. I think this is our original nature, because we all start off this way, being able to communicate before we can talk.
Gerald Reid 42:03
Wow, that's like a big statement. And I agree with you. I think it's profound what you're saying. You're saying that, okay, let's just set the stage here. There's so many people who have dogs in their home or other animals, and you're bringing this relationship to an entirely different depth than I think probably a lot of people even begin to think about, and so you're saying that to really relate with our animals and our pets and our dogs we have to find a way to connect with them on their level, which is beyond all this consciousness and beyond all this conscious thinking, and, and wrapped up in our heads, right. It's more pre-verbal, it's more energetic, it's more in our bodies, and the calmness that we bring to the dog, it's more about how we are present with the dog. So, can you, can you almost like talk about that and illustrate it for
Grace Chon 43:05
us. Yeah, I think that our conscious minds and all of our little chitter chatter going on all the time, which is not our fault, is a result of our experiences and the traumas and all the various things we've experienced in the world on top of our subconscious minds, which is the software running behind the show constantly, right. We have so many things in our systems, basically. What I'm trying to say that are distracting our purest baseline signal, does that make sense?
Gerald Reid 43:36
Absolutely,
Grace Chon 43:38
there's just a lot of interference happening, right.
Gerald Reid 43:42
And when we
Grace Chon 43:42
want to noise happening,
Gerald Reid 43:44
and when we calm that, and when we're just present with the animal, they're able to connect with us in a way that they may not
Gerald Reid 43:50
signal
Grace Chon 43:51
gets clearer.
Gerald Reid 43:52
Yeah, there's there's a big overlap,
Grace Chon 43:53
signal gets clear,
Gerald Reid 43:54
there's a big, big overlap with parenting and children, and and how parents could be attuned and connected and very present with their child, and how important that is. It seems like a big overlap there.
Alexis Reid 44:08
Yeah, I share a lot of similar sentiments with the teachers I work with, when I'm training teachers, to think about how our energy that we bring into a room helps to dictate the energy around us. And, of course, it's not as clear of a science as when you come and come, it'll calm everybody down, but it helps, right? It helps to kind of shift and change and shape the energy and the environment.
Grace Chon 44:28
Absolutely, a lot of times when I'm communicating with dogs and they have anxiety, I know that the person, their human, has anxiety because there's just a lot of mirroring happening within that relationship, like you could see with a parent and a child.
Alexis Reid 44:42
Well, the reason why we also wanted to have you on here is because you know me and my work, it's very empirically based, as your background started too, right? And I think that when we have enough of an understanding of both sides of things, we recently went to a concert to see Steven Wilson Jr. who talks about. He's trained as a scientist because he grew up in a very religious community, and he wanted to see both sides, and when he kind of like went all in seeing both sides, he realized that the answer is usually somewhere in the middle, right? Like, there's value to both sides, and I wanted to just emphasize that, you know, all of us, the three of us, have backgrounds in both scientific studies and are very open to this spiritual, energetic layers of our existence, which I think is it would be ignorant to ignore, right, for us to just say it's only one thing, and I think it's so important for us to tune in and think about this, and dogs and animals are such a great example, because it's undeniable when you're sitting with an animal that you just feel such a presence. This is what I love about Rafa, and not all dogs are the same. He has such an energetic, playful sense of self that it stops me in my tracks, right, where there's nothing else that can be more important than what is happening right in front of me with him, to a point where I try to spend extra time by doing work with him on the couch or something, and he'll literally like swap my hand off my computer and be like, no, right now we're just together,
Gerald Reid 46:16
and just making a point, this is not for food,
Alexis Reid 46:18
no, it's literally just for my attention and presence
Gerald Reid 46:21
exactly,
Alexis Reid 46:22
and it's, it's amazing, and I see the same thing playing out with children too, right. So, there's, there's so many connections, as Jerry was mentioning, too, to like appreciating and understanding this presence, and sometimes, you know, the stuff that we forget as adults, this idea of being playful and present, and noticing, and kind of going with the energy instead of going against it, that is just so powerful and so important.
Grace Chon 46:48
Yeah, I agree with you, and you know, going back to sort of this notion that we don't live in a binary universe, it's not science or spirituality, it's both, and, and I think both systems inform each other. I remember in the 90s I was an AP bio and I had to write a term paper, and I chose the topic about animals having deep emotional worlds, and I based it on this book that I read at the time called When Elephant Sweep, and it was a scientific book on the emotional worlds of animals, but this was in the 90s, and the prevailing thought at the time was that animals don't have emotions, and all the scientists said that if you say animals have emotions, you're just anthropomorphizing them, you're just projecting your human emotional experience onto animals, and this book and my paper was all about how that is not true, and it is being proven that that is not true. Well, 30 years later, scientific, it has changed the thought in the science community that animals don't have emotions. It's not true, and I think anybody who shares a life with an animal knows it's not true. So every year, when a new study comes out, we're like, they're like research shows that dogs feel love. It's like, well, no freaking dog. Like, who doesn't know that? Why, you know? But what it comes down to is, I think science is so great when we can get measurements and data and have it show how things work, right? But so much of what I am talking about is about experience. Yeah, you can't quantify an experience, you can't measure love as data. They're using chemicals and stuff to sort of, I guess, infer that it's love and oxytocin, but I think so much of our lived experience as human beings goes beyond what we can measure through science, because it's experience, and anybody with a pet knows what I'm talking about.
Alexis Reid 48:43
Yeah, I love that. And I was queuing you up a little bit, because I know you've been doing a deep dive into the science that is catching up to what we've been talking about, and I think the three of us have felt pretty much our whole lives that this inner energy and consciousness is not really quantifiable, even though people are trying to quantify all it. I don't know if you want to share a little bit about some of your, your research and your studies that you've been on a path and journey to uncover and reveal more about.
Grace Chon 49:12
Yeah, I think you know, I've been studying energy, consciousness, all of this for a few decades now, and I think science is trying now to understand consciousness, consciousness being, I guess, sort of who we are outside of our physical bodies. Does that, is does that stay tied to our brain, or is it something that's beyond that? And I think if you start to explore this from a lot of different doorways, you'll notice that you can go through different doorways, and people end up having a very similar, if not same experience. So, what that makes me curious about then is why, and if you say it's not possible, why are so many other people who are disparate and not connected having. The same experience, so I just.. I think science with science, the biggest question you can ask is why. Just keep asking why. And I think what's being curious, and I think what's interesting in the scientific community is when people don't ask why and say no, this is just how
Alexis Reid 50:18
it is. I think that's.. I think to
Grace Chon 50:19
me is strange.
Alexis Reid 50:19
Totally, I think that's the issue with, like, all these sound bites that we see on social media, in particular, because they distill everything down to, like, one or two things that they think are fact or true, and then that becomes the narrative that a lot of people - I'm not even gonna say just young people, but people believe as reality, as fact, rather than a possibility, right, and I think you know, I say this all the time to my clients and to educators and parents I talk to, it's like one of the greatest prescriptions that we can ever prescribe is curiosity, openness to like ask questions and find out instead of making assumptions or holding on to one factoid as the reality or doctrine?
Grace Chon 51:03
Well, you know what's interesting, because I don't know what life feels like to not be open and curious, like obviously from my life trajectory it probably illustrates that, like, if I'm curious about something, I'm like, let me go uncover that stone and see what's happening under there, but I'm curious what causes people to not be curious,
Gerald Reid 51:22
I think it's.. I think there is a.. there's a curiosity in society now, but I think there's an equal desire to be told what to do and to be told what's right and wrong, and I think it's reinforced with the algorithms.
Alexis Reid 51:34
I think a lot of people are also feeling like a lack of
Gerald Reid 51:37
trust and safety, and that's when people want safety, is to just have the answers and have certainty, and
Gerald Reid 51:43
also
Alexis Reid 51:43
bandwidth, and like energy. People are finding that they don't want to exert that extra energy
Gerald Reid 51:50
thought. I think energy,
Alexis Reid 51:51
yeah, it's like just, just tell me the thing to do.
Gerald Reid 51:54
Yeah, and I think when people don't feel safe, they latch on to certainty, right? And curiosity requires the lack of certainty.
Alexis Reid 52:02
Yeah, it's a great pointer. Yeah, it
Grace Chon 52:05
reminds me,
Alexis Reid 52:06
sorry, it
Grace Chon 52:06
just reminds me of a Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Alexis Reid 52:09
Yeah, 100% And this goes back to how you and I met, actually, with doing the self-actualization course with Scott Barry Kaufman and his colleagues, and you know this whole idea of when certain aspects of life are stable, ish, right? I don't want to say stable, because nothing's ever going to be completely foundationally sturdy, right? There's always going to be some flexibility, some movement, and Scott Barry Kaufman - I've said this before on the podcast - has transformed Maslow's hierarchy of needs from, you know, the token pyramid that marketing people turned into a pyramid, which was never the intention, but turned it into a sailboat, thinking about how, you know, the boat is often on the water, and the waters will have, you know, different changes in tides will have different changes in the environment, in the winds, which might change our trajectory or our stability, but yeah, I think I think a lot of it has to do with feeling comfortable, but you know, at least here in the Northeast, we interact with a lot of people who feel like they need to have a sense of control, going back to that idea of purpose, and like this has to be the thing I'm doing, this has to be my path, because this openness of the what ifs feels really too uncertain, I think, for a lot of folks.
Gerald Reid 53:29
You know,
Grace Chon 53:29
what's interesting too is I feel like there's kind of like a geographic connection to this, because I'm from the East Coast, I'm from Philadelphia, and what you're describing to me is always what I felt living in Philadelphia, and on the East Coast, and just like wanting certainty, wanting control, or you get that through higher academic institutions, and on the West Coast, particularly in California, there is more openness and curiosity to not knowing and still doing
Gerald Reid 54:00
it. Yeah, yeah, and I think, I mean, at the end of the day, too, it's like you kind of need both, you need that openness, and you also need a sense of control and stability, and to me, that's like the hardest part of life, is to find how you can integrate both, and so you know, as we're talking about like being open, I think it's important to acknowledge like both are equally, you know, important for our consciousness to like to be feel like grounded, you know, and to be able to kind of walk through life. I think if you're too one way or the other for too long, or in a way that becomes maybe to the extreme, it could maybe, you know, take people away from navigating their life in a way that feels grounded.
Grace Chon 54:38
Absolutely. I don't know. Sorry, I was just.. I don't know if you've heard of the term spiritual psychosis.
Alexis Reid 54:43
Yes,
Grace Chon 54:44
but a lot of people go down the pathway of openness and curiosity, and really learning more about themselves, and they become so untethered and ungrounded. It's like a form of spiritual psychosis, where they literally kind of disassociate a little bit and. Use their minds, I think, in any sort of exploration where there's an expansion outward, some kind of groundedness and tethering and anchoring to the ground is so important to hold you down,
Alexis Reid 55:10
yeah, yeah, totally. And and I think it could potentially create this vulnerability that could be kind of dangerous when you're like too, too open, right, like that, that anything could kind of come in and grip you,
Gerald Reid 55:22
like everything's important, becomes important,
Alexis Reid 55:25
or it's difficult, you know, from a neuro biological perspective, thinking about our frontal lobes not being fully developed till a certain point, that sometimes it's more difficult to filter and prioritize information to figure out what makes sense, but I think one of the things that you know, one of the themes that we've been talking a lot about is, is that we really need to go inward to understand our values, the things that are important to us, what's true to our soul and our spirit, so that we can be able to prioritize the times, the opportunities, the experiences, and to be able to let in, you know the opportunities that might come our way, rather than keeping it narrow and just shifting the focus.
Gerald Reid 56:08
Yeah,
Grace Chon 56:09
yeah, yeah. Because if you're saying maybe people are less curious and they would prefer to just have someone give them the answers, that's like the opposite of going inward and kind of discovering what your own value system
Gerald Reid 56:24
is. Right,
Alexis Reid 56:24
it's so funny, especially Jerry. I'm sure you have plenty of experiences like this. When a lot of people come in to work with me, they're like, "This is what I've been told is going on, and I'm like, "Cool, what do you want to work on? Right, they'll come in with, like, alphabet soup of all of the things they've been either diagnosed with, or people have, or they've learned about on social media that they think is wrong with them, and I'm like, okay, cool. What, what is our goal? What are we working towards? And I always share, you know, the answer is never anything I'm going to give to you. It's more about how can I help guide you to what is going to be your path and your way forward, and it might come with some different skills and strategies and approaches that I can introduce you, but really the answer is, is what works best for you in this season of your life, right? Things might shift and change, and I think that's also the thing, especially as we get older. You mentioned a midlife crisis that, as we get older, sometimes we get really stuck in our ways of what feels comfortable, what helps us to kind of get through the progression of our days or our life to be able to get to the outcome of being financially stable to be able to provide for our families or whatever the case might be, provide for our pets, of course, but I think this idea of openness is so important because it allows for us to realize that life is not on a linear trajectory, there is a lot of variability. It almost is like an energetic wave, if you would think about the physics of sound or light, how we see the different variability in the waves that create,
Grace Chon 57:56
yeah. And this leads me to think that it's interesting, because we've talked about comfort and discomfort a lot in this conversation, and what it sounds like, what you're saying is, is recognizing that in our pursuit of openness, because it's a way that can go up and down, you're going to hit periods of discomfort. Yes, and to be able to go through it, rather than letting it stop you, because I think that's that's the biggest thing I've learned is that through the discomfort, when you get through it, you get just, you get to a place that you could not have gotten to unless you went through the discomfort, and I wonder, if have we as a society become less comfortable with discomfort?
Gerald Reid 58:37
Yeah, we talk about that in therapy as containing emotions, you know. As a therapist, we have to help people feel contained when they're expressing and feeling their emotions, and part of that is really just being present with them and helping them to feel safe while they experience their emotions. So, certainly, as a society, like, I think it's like the opposite of that, right now. And I wrote a song called Sea Glass. It's one of my favorite songs. I think it's one of the best songs I've written, but the metaphor of Sea Glass just struck me so much, and I noticed that it's exactly what you just said, is that Sea Glass is shattered glass that goes off, it gets lost in the sea, and through a refining process comes out well-rounded and beautiful and cherished, and it is exactly that, and it's uncertain, and it's uncomfortable, and it's, you know, it's all the things, right. And so, to me, that's a therapeutic process, is exactly what you're saying.
Grace Chon 59:32
That's beautiful. I love that metaphor of sea glass, because sea glass is objectively beautiful, and it would not have happened unless it went through the tumbling and crashing through an ocean 50 million times, yeah, and it's just I think you know people for, for whatever, whatever way people can learn to sit with that discomfort of going through life as you pursue your openness and your path, whether it's therapy or spiritual. Practice, I think it's people recognizing I can do hard things, I can be okay with moving through this discomfort, and when I do, there's something on the other side of it. I think of this one of those like silly drawings of like somebody with a little pick in a cave, and they're picking their way through, and they're like this close from the diamond, but then they stop. It's kind of like that. It's like just, just go a little more. I, and to me, this is not theoretical, because I have lived this experience over and over and over again in my life. I am not just reading in a book and like sharing it with you. This is practical, where I have seen over and over again. If you can comfort yourself while going through the discomfort of life and find a way to do that and stay with that long enough, you will make it to the other side, to a place that you could not have reached if you didn't go through it, it's like grief, you can't, you got to go through grief, you can't skip it, right? I think it's the sort of the same thing with any sort of discomfort.
Gerald Reid 1:01:09
Yeah, so true. You know, a lot of so many therapies really emphasize, like, we, it's not that we avoid situations or external things, we actually avoid internal things, emotions being one of them, and that's exactly, you know, I'm just reflecting how important what you're saying really is, from from a psychology standpoint as well, it's, it's just right on point with that.
Alexis Reid 1:01:29
So, Grace, if you were to think about a couple key takeaways from your, your work, and you know, I say your work, but I think of it as, you know, your entire life's journey of getting to this point, and where you see your work expanding from here. I wonder if you can share a couple quick insights that the audience might resonate with, based on what you've learned from, again, your work with animals, your life's journey, and this this next phase of more of a helping people to better awaken themselves.
Grace Chon 1:02:03
I think number one, don't be afraid to move toward what you think is interesting, because you never know what you're going to find. You really don't, and give yourself that treat. It's a treat to be able to do it, and it's important that you do it. And number two, I think you should be able to look at yourself and love yourself the way your dog looks at you and loves you, because I think that's actually the more accurate lens, I think we are our meanest and worst critics, and nobody's meaner to us than ourselves, and your dog is not seeing that version of you. Your dog sees you as the whole beautiful person that you are, and I, if more people could understand that, I think that's the foundation for everything we're talking about. It gives you the courage to do the things, it gives you the ability to sit with discomfort, knowing that you're there to hold yourself through it, that you love yourself, it doesn't need to be outsourced to anybody else, and that you're perfect and whole as you are, you're not broken, you are not broken, your dog and the beings that love you do not see you as broken, so that again is coming through your own filtered perception of the way you see yourself, because of whatever you've been through in life, but that's not the truth. So, if you can love yourself and see yourself the way your dog loves you, and again, not just have it in your head, but really feel it in your body, and whatever it takes for you to feel in your body, I have myself. I love myself, and I'm going to support myself, no matter what. As I go through this, you'll be so amazed at what can blossom from that fertile ground.
Gerald Reid 1:03:51
No matter what, no matter what, no
Grace Chon 1:03:53
matter what. If you have your own back, that's it.
Alexis Reid 1:03:56
It's beautiful,
Gerald Reid 1:03:57
no matter what.
Alexis Reid 1:03:58
I use the metaphor, bringing it back to gardening, because I know this is another part of your passion, that fertilizer sometimes can be really stinky, right? There's another S word that is related to it. So I often will tell my clients, you could either get stuck in the, you know what, or you could allow for it to nurture you and help you to grow.
Gerald Reid 1:04:16
Yeah,
Alexis Reid 1:04:17
and I think it's a really beautiful idea of, like, you know, we can get stuck in it, and doesn't always feel comfortable. It doesn't always smell great. Sometimes we want to, like, brush it off and move on, but oftentimes, if you let it sit, you sit with it long enough, it'll allow for you to blossom and grow.
Gerald Reid 1:04:33
And, Grace, thank you for thank you for emphasizing the importance of experiencing this.
Alexis Reid 1:04:39
Yes,
Gerald Reid 1:04:39
there's so much content talking about maybe similar things, but it is so important to not just intellectualize it, not just talk about it, but like truly take the time to experience it, to really say, hey, like it's normal when I'm going through these emotions, these feelings, it's part of me. It's normal. It's not a bad thing. I can still love myself, despite the challenges, the mistakes, like this or that, like it is an experience, and it's the only way. Like, there is no, you can't intellectualize yourself through this.
Grace Chon 1:05:14
It's taking it from the head to the heart, the head to the body. They say the longest journey you can take is from your brain to your heart, so what you're describing is like we over intellectualize everything. It reminds me of like if you're a student in med school versus you actually go into residency and practice on people, because all the content we get, even in a therapeutic setting, the pot, all of that is in the head, it doesn't get into the body until you actually put it into practice, in the way you talk to yourself, and the way you approach a challenging situation, and the way you support yourself through discomfort, like that's the, that's the residency, that's like the integration, and putting it into practice, getting on the bike, and actually practicing riding the bike, instead of learning about and thinking about how to ride the bike.
Alexis Reid 1:06:01
It's beautiful.
Gerald Reid 1:06:01
We're just giving you permission. The listeners, you have permission. We're giving you permission to do this for yourself. I have a few questions. I have someone I work with who's extremely curious and loves animals, and so I'm like, what do you want me to ask Grace? She goes, Oh my gosh, can I be part of this? Such an amazing human being. So, here are a few questions, and we're gonna see if you can answer them about dogs.
Grace Chon 1:06:27
Okay. Well, I'm ready.
Gerald Reid 1:06:28
One of them was, there's kind of two parts of this question. She's curious about how dogs perceive the age of humans, and specifically she was curious about how dogs approach babies in such a delicate way, and what that means,
Grace Chon 1:06:44
I think not all dogs do. Some dogs are very rambunctious and won't approach in, in a more sensitive way, but I think that I think the energy has more to do with the age of the dog. But what I can tell you is that dogs love children, because if we were talking about how there's a lot of static that prevents us from being at the same sort of baseline place of beingness, I would say frequency, there's a lot of static there, kids don't have that static, right, we talk in.. we talk, you know, we talked about how you come in naturally open and trusting. It's the conditions of the world that sort of start adding the layers onto you. So, when you're a child, you have way less of that, and animals in general don't have any of that. They have complete coherence. If we say incoherence is all the static coherence is when you had no static right, and so animals just have coherence. They are what they are, especially wild animals, especially nature. Pets will have incoherence. This is why you see animals with behavioral issues, because they experience stuff like humans do, right? Then they get the conditioning and the trauma that happens right, but for the most part, animals usually have a sense of coherence. Children are closer to the sense of coherence, and so they're sort of already in the same baseline frequency, and they dogs love that. Dogs want us to be like that. Dogs want us to be like kids.
Alexis Reid 1:08:21
Yeah, it's more a clear path to the energetic connection, I'd imagine.
Gerald Reid 1:08:26
And dogs remind us to remember the youthful part of ourselves too, so it's reciprocal,
Alexis Reid 1:08:31
totally.
Gerald Reid 1:08:32
Yeah,
Grace Chon 1:08:32
because dogs are so present and kids are so present. Dogs, we're talking about the mind and the heart. Dogs are just in the body,
Gerald Reid 1:08:40
they're
Grace Chon 1:08:41
not in their minds, and kids are the same way.
Gerald Reid 1:08:43
Yeah, that's great. Well, I think you kind of answered the other questions in that. So, thank you.
Grace Chon 1:08:48
Oh, okay. What was the question?
Gerald Reid 1:08:49
Well, the other one was, she was curious about kind of, you know, how human beings, we can say, "Oh, this person has maybe has neurodiversity, or maybe has a disability, or their brain is kind of wired differently, right? She was wondering, like, are animals like that, and is it just maybe just not medicalized the way we kind of treat it from a medical standpoint. And you had mentioned, you know, part of that could be conditioning from experiences or traumas and stuff like that, but that was the general question,
Grace Chon 1:09:17
and biological too, right? Because I think there is legitimately chemicals, and the way our bodies and our brains physically are constructed biologically. There's a reason for why then certain chemicals are a certain way, which then lead to how our brains function, right? And so I think that same thing absolutely applies to dogs as well, just because we're all the same meat suits, we all have the same biology and chemistry running through us similarly, right. And so I think there's the same way it is for people, where it can be conditioning, it can also just be biological, chemical, is the same in animals. The
Alexis Reid 1:09:52
great question of nature, nurture comes up everywhere,
Gerald Reid 1:09:55
goes back to your answering both and not either or.
Alexis Reid 1:09:58
Absolutely,
Grace Chon 1:09:59
absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.
Alexis Reid 1:10:01
So, Grace, tell us, in the listeners, how they can find you and learn more about the work that you're doing, or maybe connect with you if anything that's been shared resonates with the audience out there.
Grace Chon 1:10:11
Yeah, so I'm on Instagram, it's at the Grace Tron, and I post a lot of different videos and content there. If you want to look at cute animal pictures, you can go to my website, which is Grace chron.com and my books are also on there. And then I also have Awakening with grace.com which is more about the inner spiritual journey that we've been talking about.
Alexis Reid 1:10:34
Beautiful. Thank you. We'll link everything in the bio too, but our one last question that we want to ask, and we try to ask everybody before we wrap up, is what's something that you're either proud of and or hopeful for in the future.
Grace Chon 1:10:49
Oh, that's a good question. I mean, the first thing that comes up is my family. I have a wonderful partner and two kids, and I'm just really proud of the family life that we've been able to create. We're both, my husband and I are both children of immigrants, and you know, there really is not an emphasis on social emotional growth or really seeing the being in front of you. I, they just, that level of consciousness was not there. It was very survival. So, I'm very proud that our family is just not like that. I think it's not to say that there's anything wrong with either of the families that we came from. We both love our families deeply, but I think we have a sort of a different kind of dynamic with our children than we had with our own parents, which I think is just so beautiful, and I feel like when I look at that, that is generational healing that's happening within our family line through that, especially just for us. How even helping our children through the grief process, you know, because I lost my dad when I was 13, and no one ever taught me how to do that, and so to walk my children through the grief of losing our 17 year old dog to their grandma, like, wow, that's something that's never happened in my family line ever before. So that is very meaningful to me, but also I'm just proud that I can be here talking with you about all these things, and even publicly integrating my own spiritual belief and practice into my public persona, just because, since for the last 15, almost 20 years, it's just been Grace the photographer, and again, if we're talking about being open and curious and having the courage to truly be yourself, and in my pursuit of not only just being myself, I think there's this whole other part we haven't discussed, but it's the purpose of what all of this is even for. Why do you awaken? Why do you pursue curiosity? What is it all for? And I feel that it's to make this world a better place, because we're all connected, and the more you can fully be yourself, the more you are adding your own healing to the world, like a dog adds to the world. And so, for me to be so public in my spirituality and in my abilities was honestly the most terrifying thing I could do. So much of the corporate world and my world in photography, they follow me online, and to really have the courage a year to go to be like this is a me, but there's this also me, and I'm not going to be scared to hide this anymore. I'm so proud of myself for being able to do that.
Alexis Reid 1:13:32
It's such a beautiful thing, and it's there's a through line from how we met to that statement, because the thing that really connected me to Scott Barry Kaufman in his work is he talked about in a talk I was fortunate enough to be a part of about bringing love into the therapeutic environment and how important it is to be love, one of Maslow's concepts too, which led me to study with him, which led me to meeting you in such a chance interaction and feeling an energy just in that really brief virtual interaction to following you and learning so much more about you and your, your passion and your work, and feeling so connected that we knew we had to have you as a part of this conversation in our podcast. So we are so grateful for you being open and brave and courageous and sharing your light and your love, because it resonates through everything you do, and we feel it across the country in all that you share, and we're so grateful for you and for all that you do.
Grace Chon 1:14:31
Thank you. Thank you for this beautiful service you're giving to your listeners too, because I know doing a podcast is truly an act of service, and it's a beautiful and generous gift, so thank you for having me on to be a part of
Alexis Reid 1:14:45
it. Oh, we're so glad for you to be here. It's a, it's a passion, and it is a work of love for sure. So, thank you for for adding your generosity and your time. Thank you,
Grace Chon 1:14:56
thank you,
Gerald Reid 1:14:56
thank you so much, Grace.
Gerald Reid 1:15:01
Announcer,
Gerald Reid 1:15:01
Thanks for tuning in to the Reid Connect-ED podcast. Please remember that this is a podcast intended to educate and share ideas, but it is not a substitute for professional care that may be beneficial to you at different points of your life. If you are needed support, please contact your primary care physician, local hospital, educational institution, or support staff at your place of employment to seek out referrals for what may be most helpful for you. ideas shared here have been shaped by many years of training, incredible mentors research theory, evidence based practices and our work with individuals over the years, but it's not intended to represent the opinions of those we work with or who we are affiliated with. The reconnected podcast is hosted by siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid. Original music is written and recorded by Gerald Reid (www.Jerapy.com) recording was done by Cyber Sound Studios. If you want to follow along on this journey with us the Reid Connect-ED podcast. we'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks each season so please subscribe for updates and notifications. Feel free to also follow us on Instagram @ReidConnectEdPodcast that's @ReidconnectEdPodcast and Twitter @ReidconnectEd. We are grateful for you joining us and look forward future episodes. In the meanwhile be curious, be open, and be well.
S8 E4: Widening the Aperture: A Deeper Connection with Ourselves and Our Dogs
In this episode, Alexis and Gerald are joined by Grace Chon to talk about the way in which we perceive and connect with our inner nature, as well as with animals. Grace shares her personal journey of tuning into her authentic and genuine nature that led to a life path of pursuing her curiosity and deepest values and interests. We discuss the parallels to the therapeutic process Gerald sees in his patients as well as the self-awareness Alexis fosters in her clients as an educational therapist. Grace shares the pre-verbal connection we have with animals and pets, especially with dogs, and the way in which we can learn unconditional love with dogs in a way we may struggle to access with other human beings.
Summary:
The journey of going inward toward discovering one’s authentic self
The idea of inner coherence and how we interact with life
The meaning of unconditional love shared by dogs
The way in which we can attune with our dogs
The values of being open and curious
Be curious. Be Open. Be well.
The Reid Connect-Ed Podcast is hosted by Siblings, educational therapist, Alexis Reid, M.A. and licensed psychologist, Dr. Gerald Reid, produced by CyberSound Recording Studios, and original music is written and recorded by www.Jerapy.com
*Please note that different practitioners may have different opinions- this is our perspective and is intended to educate you on what may be possible.
