Susan Bernstein earned an MBA at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in Somatic Psychology from the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, where she is currently a PhD candidate. Her doctoral research investigates the ways in which body awareness becomes a form of wisdom in the process of navigating major career transitions.  Susan spent fifteen years in high-level marketing, management consulting, and executive development roles.  Founder of Work from Within – a career coaching practice that helps people to find and create a working life in alignment with who they are and what they care about, www.workfromwithin.com – Susan helps people refocus their career paths from being externally motivated to being internally generated; she emphasizes following what is most energizing and satisfying.

The interviewer: Arabella received her B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University, completed one-year’s M.A. coursework in clinical psychology, and spent many years in business management.  A Buddhist student and practitioner for thirteen years, Arabella has written a book on Buddhist reform that is in its final editing stages.

Arabella:  What drew you into Somatic Psychology studies after years of tremendous success in marketing, management consulting, and executive development roles?

Susan:  I had a life-changing period.  I learned later, at SBGI, that it was traumatic.  But when my classmates first started telling me that I had gone through trauma, I absolutely didn’t believe them.  That’s because I thought trauma was something that happened all at once, or was physical.

In February of 2001 – in a five week period – a whole bunch of things did happen to me all at once.  I left my marriage, my father had a life-threatening accident (he survived!), I had two surgeries, and then after all of those things, I got laid off from my job.  So, I had nothing!  I didn’t have a home, I didn’t have the relationship I’d had, I didn’t have my job.  I felt like I was without an anchor. 

But then I recognized that I had incredible freedom to create my life.  It just became really clear to me that for years I had been looking into psychology programs.  I said to myself, “I don’t want to wait to be a seventy year old woman before I start to study psychology!”  So I started looking into psychology programs again, and quite honestly, nothing was striking my fancy.

And then I was at a friend’s house and he had a book on his coffee table by Candice Pert called Molecules of Emotions, and I started reading that.  In her book, she talks about body-centered psychotherapy.  And I thought, “This is it!  This is the missing link. This is why psychotherapy hasn’t really worked for me, because it’s not using my body.” 

Then I found out that there were three Master’s programs in Somatic Psychology:  Naropa, CIIS, and JFK.  I went to JFK for an information session, and they said “There are three Master’s programs in Somatic Psychology, and one PhD program” and I said, “Where’s the PhD program?”  They said “Santa Barbara Graduate Institute” and I went running out of the session.  I never can forget this -- I drove home and called my mom.  I said, “I just found the best school – my gosh, Katie Hendricks teaches here, Peter Levine, too….but this is September and classes are starting in October!  There’s no way they’re going to let me in!”  She said, “That’s not like you – why don’t you call the school tomorrow?”  So, I got on the phone and talked with Marti Glenn immediately.  She said, “You need to be here.  Please apply.  We will take late applications.”  And the rest is history. 

The SBGI program absolutely spoke to me.  I was really following an inner path.  I was really surprised to find that I was disappointed in all the psychology programs I was reading about – I kept saying ,”This program isn’t right for me, and this one isn’t….”  But there was something that kept drawing me in….SBGI was SUCH a right place for me!

Arabella:  In the biographical information on your website, you expressed attention to your body and breath as a response to the personal challenges you’d described.  Since your working life to that point had been so externally-based, what clued you to go within for your answers?

Susan:  There was no other choice….I just could not sort out all the variables at the same time.  There was no way to manage.  Where should I live?  What job should I do?  What new friends should I make?  What new career should I pursue? 

The interesting thing is that right now I’m doing my dissertation studies and I’m reading a lot of Antonio Damasio’s work.  Damasio writes about the Somatic Marker Hypothesis.   He basically says that our body cuts off possibilities for us, since our mind can’t go through so much data at once.  He says that the way that we know how to make decisions is through this inner knowingness – it happens in a physical place in our body that sort of says, “Yup, that’s it!  I know!”  It’s an inner knowingness.  And I think that’s just what I wound up feeling.  I was really listening on the inside and asking myself, “Now, does that feel right?  Or does this feel right?”

Arabella:  Did your life slow down?

Susan:  “I don’t know if I slowed down, but I focused on priorities…on what’s really important.”  In other words, my father’s health was important, my job wasn’t. 

Arabella:  How did the other-focused orientation evolve for you? 

Susan:  “Something I’m a little bit afraid to tell you, but I will.  I had this experience at the hospital with my father back in 2001.  He was not intubated or anything like that, but he was laying there unconscious with this gigantic swollen eye.  The second day that I went to see him, I was really feeling helpless.  I had no idea what I could do for my father, and I wanted to do something. And I believe in God, so I asked God from the deepest part of my heart, “Please tell me what I can do right now.”  And I got this very, very strong intuitive hit to take two of my hands and sandwich one of my father’s between them.  Now, for some people that would be no big deal.  But my father is British and so this felt like a very intimate gesture for me to initiate.  Not something I had readily done before.  And especially, there he was -- asleep, unconscious -- and so I couldn’t ask him, “Is this OK with you?”  I couldn’t check in.
 
Probably thirty seconds went by, and I had a very strange but very meaningful experience.  I felt and saw purple spiral energy come out from around my heart and wrap around my father.  And then thirty more seconds went by and I felt and saw purple spiral energy come out from my father’s heart and wrap around me.  And my mother, who was trying pretty hard to be oblivious in this whole thing – it’s just the two of us in the ICU with my dad – my mom looked up from her book and said, “My goodness, what’s going on?!”  I said, “Can you see the purple spiral energy?” And it was as though I’d said to her, “Can you see that I’m wearing a watch?”  It was no big deal.  And that’s not usually like her, and she said, “No, but gosh, the connection between the two of you is so palpable!” and so she could feel that something was going on with us. 

And I had no idea what to make of that experience.  Here I was Little Miss Corporate – and was living in the so-called real world.  I had no context for what to make of this experience….

So, about a month later, I was on a week-long psychic meditation retreat -- at the suggestion of one of my corporate friends!  A few days into the retreat, I told the leaders about the experience with my father.  They asked me to hold my hands out, so I did.  They hovered their hands above mine, and said, “Yup – it’s on!”  I said, “What? What’s on?!”  And they said, “You have hands-on healing powers.”  And I said, “Whoa!  I don’t know what to do with this!”  And they told me, “Well, first of all, don’t get all swell-headed!  Everybody has this ability.  It’s just that yours is on.”  And so I started taking energy healing classes at that time.  They opened me up to a whole new world that I didn’t even know before, didn’t really understand….the world of sensing energy.”

Arabella:  How do you, personally, keep a balance between a successful and still-driven career – one that now places greater emphasis on the needs of others – and peaceful time to restore, refresh, and inspire you to continue with your work?

Susan:  Let’s see…I dance at least three times a week.  I do a moving meditation form called 5Rhythyms, the work of a woman named Gabrielle Roth.  It’s been life-changing for me to do this with others, in a group.  And, I journal every morning when I wake up.  It helps to keep me focused, and let’s me feel in touch with the day.  I have a fantastic therapist, who has a very somatic orientation, which helps me to feel grounded and gives me a space to talk about my own clients. 

Arabella:  Having yourself moved in the traditional business world prior to your personal discoveries – or, perhaps, not moved would be more accurate – how do you see yourself educating traditional business men and women into a more body and inner aware perspective?

Susan:  Gradually, for sure!  I start small, with something simple.  I offer thoughts and suggestions – like, suggesting that someone tries gesturing in another way.  I sure as heck don’t say, “You’re not in your body right now!” because who am I to know if anybody’s in their body anyway?  I do like to be a little bit provocative. 

I think we all, underneath, crave authenticity, but we’ve gotten away from it.  And I don’t think it’s something we regain all at once.  You know?  But I don’t assume there’s a magic wand and I can touch your body and now you’re more authentic?!  I mean, it’s a process I work with, personally, every day.

I help people in career change.  And I’ve found that the interviewing part is a great place to help people understand their bodies -- because they get nervous.  I just got an e-mail yesterday from someone at an interviewing workshop I conducted who said, “You know, the most valuable thing in the workshop was your reminder about how to breathe.”  This woman wrote to me and said, “When I was ten years old, my mom would tell me to roll down the car windows as we drove past the beach and to take ten deep breaths with a pause in between each one.  And, you know, I always discounted my mom and thought, What’s the big deal?  What’s the big deal?  But you’re bringing me back to this because when I don’t breathe deeply, I get anxious.”

Arabella:  What did your SBGI education give you?

Susan:  More than I can ever know.  First, it brought me home to my body, for sure.  I’m deeply grateful to Judyth Weaver (who founded the program in Somatic Psychology).  She really taught me how to make friends with my body and really listen to its authentic messages.  And that came through Sensory Awareness.  The second, I adore my classmates and am so thankful to have them.  Their honesty with me about how I am coming across, their reflection of me – those things gave me a chance to change.  And just the spirit of care.  You know, I guess we all really want to see who we really are at heart, and to bring out our best self.  That’s so evident at SBGI….I just can’t imagine my life without SBGI, I really can’t!”

Arabella:  Themes in your writing arise as: balance, integration, and complementarity of body with mind – or instinctual with rational processing.  How do you bring your clients to an essential experience of these?

Susan:  Why do you ask?

Arabella:  These are values that you have, and I’m wondering how you get your clients to find them for themselves.”

Susan:  I don’t define them as values, but as experiences.  Balance is an experience.  It’s interesting because in my dissertation I’m really looking at what I’ll call body-centered metaphors, and metaphors really live in the body.  So, if you want to find balance, you’re going to have to feel balance.  If you want a compliment between mind and body, you’re going to have to experience that.  What I feel like I’m doing is more around what some people would call mindfulness.  I don’t really like the word mindfulness because it’s full of mind.  I would love for them to call it body-full-ness. 

I basically feel that I’m doing what I learned to do at SBGI, which is to bring people into their somatic self-experience, and to talk about that.  And mostly, that works.  I have some clients for whom that’s very difficult.  They want to be in their chattering mind.  I get it!  Personally, I still can go there.  I can stay there.  To me, being self-aware – it’s the difference between going on auto-pilot and flying in the moment.

Arabella:  On your website, you wrote, “When it comes to career, we need to get personal, and to look and feel inside of ourselves to know what’s important and express it.”  Could you give our readers just one example of a first step that they can take in this direction, like a tool, an exercise, or a simple suggestion?

Susan:  One of the ways I like to work with people is to take something that they don’t like in their current work situation, and then to read that list out loud and notice how they physically feel.  I encourage them to notice their thoughts when they think about work, their emotions when they think about work, and then, their sensations.  Then, I say, “O.K. – that is what it is now.” 

Then, the next step is to look at the list of things that they don’t like, and then make a list of opposites.  If they don’t like working alone, say the opposite: Wouldn’t it be nice if I worked with others.  If they don’t like working under fluorescent lights: Wouldn’t it be nice if I worked in natural lighting.  Then they can read those aloud: notice the thoughts they have about that list, notice the emotions they have, and notice the sensations. 

And then I ask them to make a list of what they’re wanting in an environment – using or noticing contrast.  When we don’t like something, our bodies signal us.  And it’s our choice whether or not to “muscle through.”  Which is what I did in the corporate world; I muscled through a lot of situations.  I knew I didn’t like the kind of work I was doing, but I was good at it…it was prestigious, I was being paid a lot of money.

Arabella:  What have you not been asked in interviews that you would like to have been asked?

Susan:  “Where do I want the work I’m doing to go?”

Arabella:  Ah – OK.  Where do you want it to go?

Susan:  I have a few things in mind.  One is, I would love to see more people creating self-expressed careers.  We all have dreams and we’re all on this planet for a purpose.  And I don’t think all of those purposes are to work for a huge corporation and get lost.  Now I’m not saying that people shouldn’t work for big corporations – don’t get me wrong there.  I think there are people for whom that is really, really good and important work.  However, I think a lot of people get lost in the machinery.  And I see more and more clients like that.  So, one is – I’d like to see more people create self-expressed careers and I believe that there’s an education process of listening within that I can help with, and that I’d like to see other people help with.

The other piece is that I do want to see business and other leaders learn to listen to their bodies, listen within.  Because I have a fundamental belief that when we listen within, we not only take care of our own bodies, we agree to respect others’ bodies around us – we advocate for more reasonable work hours, for example, or better work conditions.  Or even more importantly, we treat the planet with greater respect!  My guess is that if a business leader really tunes into his own body he won’t be able to pollute the planet in the same way.