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.

The majority of questions for this interview were inspired by Nadia’s enchanting cookbook Cooking Off the Grid; Recipes and Stories from Blue Heron Ranch, written by Nadia Natali and illustrated by Marica Thompson, Nadia’s daughter.  This gem, as appropriate to its being written by a Soto Zen Buddhist practitioner-author and SBGI doctoral candidate in somatic psychology, steps beyond its topic and into the realm of life lessons.

Arabella: You and your husband, Enrico, purchased an unusual piece of property whereby you embarked both on a Zen journey and a lifestyle unplugged from “the grid.”  Could you give us a thumbnail sketch of this path – what led you to it and what it is like?

Nadia: When I first met my husband, Enrico, he told me about a world-renowned teacher named Krishnamurti whose wisdom inspired my life and my relationship with Enrico. For eight years Enrico and I lived in a cabin in Northern New York State. 

Enrico was a photographer.  Each winter we used to travel west, taking the slow back roads – so that Enrico could take pictures.  By April, we would end up in Ojai California to attend the Krishnamurti talks.  At some point we decided to move out here to be near a community of more like-minded people.

Arabella: And your Zen center – that part?

Nadia: Enrico began a serious sitting meditation practice a few years before our move here.  At the time, I had a lot of resistance to it.  Then I met Kobun Chino Roshi who eventually became our friend.  After my first sesshin (meditation retreat), Enrico saw my enthusiasm and we decided to start a small Zen center at our home.  Kobun was delighted and came down to get us started.

For years – since 1990 – we’ve had one weekend retreat each month, as well as two eight-day retreats a year.  I am the cook.  I love that position because I get out of some of the sittings.  (Both laugh.)  Since our retreats are silent, working in the kitchen allows me to talk with the person who helps with the meals.  (Everyone gets to help.)  That has created space for deep connections with participants.  I really have the best of both worlds: the nurturing and warm connections in the kitchen as well as the opportunity to go deep within myself during sittings.

Our retreats include two-hour discussions every morning, where – as a group – we have interesting dialogues about our experiences.  At the very start of our Zen center, we explored and discussed the experiences in the body, what is now referred to as “somatic.”  Finding for ourselves, over and over, that thinking is not reality!  This notion has to be directly experienced anew in each moment.  It is not one that can be recalled in memory, as an idea.

Arabella: In some respects (certainly, not all) your personal lifestyle choice has been a reversion to older ways – ways that contain wisdom largely lost by modern society in its rapid embrace of technology. 

Unhooked from the grid, you seem to have found the educational value in the ordinary.  What can you tell us about its impacts to your life, to your spiritual views, and to your understanding of your studies at SBGI?

Nadia:  My understanding is that the old ways hold thousands of years of experience that have led us to a certain point that is very valuable.  This has supported our understanding of how we as a human beings work.  But the old is also limited.  It doesn’t include how human beings have evolved and have become more aware.  In the past, there certainly were some remarkable people, but they were rare and very much the exception to the rule.

Today I feel that we are collectively becoming more mature as a human species and are, therefore, more responsible for who we are and what we’re doing to ourselves – what we’re doing to the world and to the Earth.

The ancient ways didn’t have the benefits of modern western psychology – and modern western psychology didn’t include the depth of the old ways.  So, I was excited and impressed when I heard about a school – SBGI – that was trying to include studies that tapped into disciplines different from traditional psychology.  Finally, a place where the personal story was not the focus, nor was the therapist required to fix clients’ problems!
The studies offered deeper and broader approaches, including the story, yes.  But, also including the ways we hold the story in our bodies. 

Arabella: Do you feel that somatic psychology itself reverts to some of the old ways?

Nadia: Very much so.  I don’t know whether people in the pastwere aware of the connections we are now making, the influence that body systems have on psychological states.  But I believe that people in the past used practices, such as shamanism, to effect change and create healings. And these healings touched, I would imagine, all systems in the body. 

Our personal history affects many different systems in our body and our body effects many ways in which we are in relationship to the world.  And I think that the older systems – and I’m referring now to shamanism, and even Eastern traditions such Zen, Vipassana, and Yoga – can affect the body and the emotions and, therefore, the attitudes we hold and the way we see the world.

Arabella: Could you elaborate for us some of the non-Zen retreats or workshops – that are of a more somatic psychology nature – held at your center?

Nadia: Since 2000 I have been offering Dance Process Workshops.  These consist of eight-hour days, working with small groups of women, weaving both story and dance so that participants dance their intention and their resources.  Each person may get two or three solo dances to integrate what they were working on during the verbal aspect of the session.  And then we verbally process the dance so that the right and left brains can integrate the experience in a more coherent way.

We also had two workshops – called Integral Journeys – where Enrico, his brother (Francis), and I taught together. Each of us took our strengths and pooled them into a weekend retreat.  Enrico handled the mediation, I provided authentic movement exercise, and Francis taught the concepts (of perception) that we were working on.

Finally, I have a private practice that includes somatic psychology.

Arabella: I’m going to change our course here. 

Engaged in the pioneering fields of somatic and pre- and perinatal psychology, SBGI students can find that part of their work is in skillfully integrating a seemingly alternative lifestyle with their more traditional professional psychology counterparts.  From your direct experience at integration, what advice can you offer prospective and current students?

Nadia: I would emphasize the care that is necessary in presenting the somatic material to people with a more traditional background.  The work that we do has to be brought in very delicately because most people don’t have the context to hear it.  They have to personally experience it, to see its value.  It can’t be grasped conceptually.  And then for it to be accepted as the norm is going to take, in my opinion, maybe another generation.

When you have traditional ways, well…it’s like a big barge that takes a long time to turn.  It’s going to be slow, and I think we have to trust and appreciate the intention that’s in our hearts and perhaps the willingness of others to entertain our ideas.  And if we can be patient with the process, I don’t think it will be quite so frustrating.  It’s just that when we see the problems with the ways that things are being done, we can want to give up --- that’s where we have to be careful!

Arabella: So, do you think the somatic and pre- and perinatal psychology students need to be able to speak “both languages” – the traditional and new paradigm psychology languages?

Nadia: Oh yes!  You have to step into someone’s territory – where they are – before they can hear you.  You can’t impose something on somebody.  You have to listen to what they value and just add something here and there.  You have to show them that their territory can be broadened. 

But, this work is more than just broadening the traditional.  It’s more revolutionary!  And you can’t expect the traditionalists to just turn around.  Their nervous systems can’t handle it.  I see fellow students working in different places, and they’re holding this gem and wanting to bring it in!  But it has to be done very gently.

Arabella: Shifting to the personal, I was deeply touched by your loss of your son, Andrei, in a flood.  As a teacher, can you share your best advice on how to process such loss and not be overwhelmed by grief?

Nadia: Wow!  Well, I’ll just tell you something that happened to me and I’ll see where I can go with that.

I was leaving SBGI and I got a call about my son crossing a river and not knowing whether or not he had made it safely across.  And my husband was at a retreat…and we couldn’t get home.  We couldn’t get across the river, back in.  So we had to wait on the other side of the river at someone’s house, with all the ambulances and all the trucks and search-and-rescue people.  I was stuck, not knowing anything yet! 

I just started to dance.  And I’m not saying that this is for everybody.  But for me, to be able to dance…and I started singing in weird ways.  One of the Sheriffs got nervous and wanted to call for help.  But Enrico tapped him on the shoulder and said, “It’s o.k.  She’s fine.  She knows what she’s doing.”  I was actually finding a place to go to express my anguish – and I was in a place of not even knowing whether Andrei was alive or not!  And to be able to sit within that is extraordinary, and to be able to stay in it with a level of openness and a level of presence.  I was kicking and stomping and singing.  It was wonderful for me to have that resource.

Underneath, the amount of support we got from the community was phenomenal.  There needs to be a community to support someone through that!  It cut my heart open, and I could feel beauty in the horrible pain I was in!

I danced my grief many times afterward as well.  For me, I was able to feel all my different emotions through the movement and through the expression of the movement.  It was, in a sense, integrating.  It allowed all the different feelings – the anger and the grief and the frustrations to be expressed in a contained way.

Arabella: It sounds like it was an outlet, so that the grief wouldn’t overwhelm you, so that you had a way to let it out.

Nadia: Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it.  It was a safe outlet for me, and I needed the support in that.  I didn’t do it alone.  And that was very important.

Arabella: In your SBGI mini-project, you pose the question: What is healing?  What is your personal response to that question?

Nadia: For me, healing is to have my heart open – this isn’t only a process, it is also the result of a process – to have my heart open in the midst of pain, to be vulnerable in stressful situations.  This both brings about healing and is the result of healing.  It’s both of them.  There is no end to healing!  Nothing’s finished.

Arabella: In one of your SBGI papers that you sent me for this interview, you indicated that the therapist’s “presence” constitutes the most important quality that he/she brings to the client’s therapy, indicating that healing cannot be a “solo experience or dance.”  Could you elaborate?

Nadia: I believe that most wounding is caused by challenging or overwhelming early relationships.  In such cases, it is only through reparative relationship that symptoms from the past can be healed.  And so the quality of the therapist, and the delicacy of the therapeutic relationship – is the starting point and the ending point.

Arabella: Right.  (Laughs.)  The process and the outcome becomes one.

Nadia: Exactly!  And it’s the same thing with the healing, interestingly.

Arabella: That’s why, for you, staying open in the midst of pain is the healing? 

Nadia: Yes.  Exactly.

Arabella: As we conclude our time together, is there anything you would like to add?

Nadia: Hmm!  Um.  I am thinking of how my decision to go to SBGI came from a dream.  I went to SBGI’s initial opening in 2000.  I thought, “Why would I want to go get a PhD?!  I hate school!  I hate writing papers!”  And then one day, two years later, I awoke from a very compelling dream that told me I had to go to SBGI.  And I called up that morning and said, “I just had a compelling dream about your school and I want to apply!”  I just made that decision – and they said, “Yes, there’s some space” and, indeed, three weeks later, I started school.

What I’d like to add is that one needs to hold an intention in life and keep remembering it lightly, but truly.  And then things unfold.  You don’t really need to do anything.

Arabella: Thank you Nadia.  That’s a wonderful place for you to leave us!