Malcolm Stern: 0:47

Welcome to my podcast, Slay your Dragons with Compassion, which I'm doing in conjunction with my friends, john and Sandra Wilson, at Onlin events, and what we're exploring here are sometimes ordinary or extraordinary human beings, but all of us have a story to tell and we have ways of overcoming adversity, overcoming Adversity. So this series was dreamed up as a result of my own having to overcome adversity and what it took to do it, and I've interviewed more than 60 people so far to explore that. Today, my guest is an old friend, Caroline Born, and Caroline's a movement practitioner, and we're exploring her adversity, which has been how she's managed a disability with the creative process, so how she's managed to work with a disability. So, caroline, perhaps you could tell us something about that to start us off.

Caroline Born: 1:43

Sure, just to give a little foundation. I've been working with the body as a kind of conscious being a part of us for over 45 years, with groups and individuals, working as a movement therapist and training and also as a performer. So through that experience I've understood that creative expression is very powerful to actually transform and change things in people. I've seen this, I've witnessed it, and when it's actually really embodied and grounded so I'm doing less teaching now and 35 years, 44 years ago, I began to have a symptom which was a contraction in my hands and I just started working with it for myself, as something, because I've always seen the body as something very wise in its own self. You know just as much, if not more, than the mind. It just has a different timing, a different biological timing, but actually it has its wisdom. So I was asking this symptom, why are you there? And I was doing that by a lot of movement, work, artwork, and after about 20 years I thought wait a minute, this amount of material could begin to form a book, which is what I've been doing the last six, seven years.

Caroline Born: 3:13

Um, how I've done that is I want to just name my teacher and honor her, because there's a particular practice that I've used that's been sort of central to this whole process is something called the life art process, and what it is is through when you move, you get in touch with your body, you get in touch with your emotions, you get in touch with your spirit.

Caroline Born: 3:37

So a whole point of it is to get different levels of ourselves present, and then, if you make an image from there, you take immediate drawing materials that are easy to use and just translate that somatic experience. There's a sort of um somatic immediacy that then goes on to the page. Information can come out that can surprise our minds. So that's, I've made 50 paintings and drawings of my hands in this way, and so she called it the life art process. She called it kinetic visualization, the idea that from movement you go into visuals. Um, so that's been the kind of backbone and it's just been the most amazing process of uh learning in a way. If I hadn't had this symptom, I probably wouldn't have oh no, I wouldn't have increased the level of experience I've had with my own self through my body.

Malcolm Stern: 4:35

The symptom has been a gift, for sure okay, it's not life-threatening, but no, but I see that often that what we see as as the place of adversity, the place of challenge, is the place where there's often room to grow and there's room to actually develop beyond who we thought we were, because we've had to find something outside of the tram lines. And obviously you've done that. You've done that with a lot of effort and energy, with life, art, but also you're, you're also writing about it and you're you're a movement practitioner, so you're also working with it in quite an embodied way, presumably yeah, I just want to read you a little bit that I wrote some time ago, which is about the challenge.

Caroline Born: 5:16

You know how to put an embodied practice into words. So this is how I've been working, is it okay? I'm just going to read. Yeah, far away, so it's a chapter on movement.

Caroline Born: 5:26

If I only sit and write, I run the risk of coming from the mental level without the participation of my body, as being conscious in my body underpins work. Sometimes I show up to write and I feel like resting, which I do, or I show up to write and I go and move instead. Making a commitment to my body means accepting its needs, its real needs, and not forcing it in another direction with the mind the dominant way. We all know. When I move, maybe all that shifts is a hand rotating, or my pelvis may offer a tiny sway. Small movements bring subtle awarenesses. Lunger movements can't access. Alternatively, a fast and furious expressive dance brings discharge, vitality and expansions. Between those extremes, any movement can arise. Sleep or just resting can bring an insight unavailable to my wide awake self. Each morning, I show up to move or write and see what happens. Instead of my mind being executor for my body and ordering to act. I listen to my body.

Malcolm Stern: 6:35

That's lovely. Well, that's obviously come from a deep place inside you, which is you know you're actually writing about your own process, which also will sort of segue with other people's processes, and presumably what you're wanting to do with the book is to help educate people to be able to use movement or whatever creative expression. They have to make a shift in their own perspective.

Caroline Born: 7:03

I hope so, I hope so yeah. I mean, I'm also aware my symptom, which I can describe, is not life-threatening. So basically, I can show you on zoom it's a contractor in my hands so I can't open my hands and it's progressive, and I only have two fingers on each hand. That is normal, as it were. I can't lay my hands flat on the table. So, um, maybe another reason I've been pulled by my body to relate to them is that they're in front of me every day. You know they're there.

Malcolm Stern: 7:41

They're not an internal symptom you know, and it sounds like a bit of a sort of a new agey sort of weird question, but I just it just came to me do you love your hands?

Caroline Born: 7:51

well, that's the journey, malcolm. That's the journey. I have hated them. I have hated them and I have loved them. So through this whole journey, I've been on this kind of weird, you know, maybe like narcissistic journey, but I don't think it is actually. It's um, yeah, I've been through like any relationship.

Caroline Born: 8:15

You know, I've been through all kinds of things I've, I've. I've certainly been furious with them, I've certainly felt abhorrence, and that's my journey and I feel that that's all really important, all of that, you know funny because I feel like I could sort of, as you said, in a relationship, I feel like I'd actually transpose your hands to a partner.

Malcolm Stern: 8:36

Sometimes we feel abhorrence and sometimes we feel fury, and there's a challenge to find our way underneath to what's genuinely possible within that frame, before we give up because it all feels too hard and presumably well. You've been going for a long time with this now and and what have you discovered along the way? What have you? What's, what's been the, the teaching with this?

Caroline Born: 9:01

well, lots of teachings and still like I'm still coming up, which is amazing. So it's like a treasure chest, but obviously my hands are not cut off at my wrist. My hands are an expression of my whole body. But in particular, I've really, really um searched into up my arms, my shoulders, my shoulder blades, my chest, my rib cage, my heart, and I've looked at the connection which a lot of different disciplines talk about the hands connected to the heart. In acupuncture, the little finger which was the first finger to bend is connected to the heart. But thing that I I discovered was huge rage in my shoulder blades and it's through all this process that they showed me that. And that particular phase of work happened in lockdown. Lockdown for me was the most incredible time of having a container, a container to condense the work I was doing. And I discovered my shoulder blades just had such a strong voice.

Malcolm Stern: 10:14

And of course, you know I'm sure you know that our shoulders carry a lot of responsibility and feelings and tension so you know, having the weight of the world on your shoulders is yes so it was extraordinary to get such an um specific and direct experience, and the dreams that came out of that were also very strong and that's interesting because Jung calls dreams the royal road to the unconscious and often we ignore our dreams or think we don't dream or can't make sense of them, but actually they're not delivered as a linear process. Our dreams, which is a big area of study for me in psychotherapy work I've been doing are actually an incredible voice and an incredible resource. So tell me a little bit about your dreams.

Caroline Born: 11:04

Well, I'll tell you another dream. There was one, then, but I want to tell you another one which came nearer the beginning, when I I've seen several surgeons and consultants, but I hadn't I've decided not to go with them because you know, I want to listen to the message of my body, not cut it out. So one of them told me, well, it is genetically connected. So one of them told me, well, it is genetically connected. And so I felt it was to do, and he agreed, it was the mother line. So I did a ritual to clear my mother line, and while I was preparing for a long, long path and I met a lama at the end, a woman who was sitting there, and someone offered me a comfortable chair.

Caroline Born: 11:55

I took a hard chair, but then this lama started telling us about her hands, that through her spiritual practice, had softened all the tendons, and it was so, such a lovely dream. It felt like an affirming of the ritual I was going to do. It was, I think, halfway through that year. I had it and I was, it was with me a lot of the time and then in the end, you know, I enacted it and did it. My hands didn't soften, but there was a message there.

Malcolm Stern: 12:27

Yeah, I was going to say that's not the point of the dream. We often think the dreams are literal and need to be translated exactly as they are. But I'm hearing Lama, I'm hearing a sort of your own internal wisdom, or reaching into a place of wisdom, and your hands may not have softened at a physical level, but something may have softened at a psychic level psychic is not the right word, but at a sub, at a subconscious level as well, because this is your work, and that's what I find really interesting is that we get we get support for our work in the oddest places as well.

Caroline Born: 13:00

yeah, yeah, yeah, in fact, the dream I had after, which was about 10 years later, when I was in lockdown with my shoulder blades, was of a young, a very vibrant, very young, live, young man who needed to stand on my shoulder blades to perform, and it didn't feel it felt hard to perform and it didn't feel it felt hard work, but it didn't feel wrong. And you know, for me that's going back to you and that's the my anima, uh, and I always forget, is that the male? Is anima, isn't it?

Caroline Born: 13:39

um, I always get a male archetype inside me, um feeling kind of like a new life force, which is what it felt like that work with my shoulder blades was doing.

Malcolm Stern: 13:54

As a young boy as well. New life force.

Caroline Born: 13:56

Exactly yeah.

Malcolm Stern: 14:00

This is an ongoing lifetime work on your hands, but also on more than that as well, I presume. Yeah yeah.

Caroline Born: 14:10

It's like you know, being a teacher facilitator gives us a sense of identity, you know, and it's a way of developing our skills. But there's something about I've been the facilitator for my own process has somehow gone so much deeper for me, ultimately, and yeah, yes, I think the more we we we overcome in ourselves, the better the teacher we are.

Malcolm Stern: 14:40

I know, when I was younger and as sort of a quite brash therapist who thought I knew it knew a lot, it's not until I've been through quite a lot of life experiences that it humbled me to some degree, where the teaching became more authentic rather than and I think that's part of that process as well as part of the wisdom- of aging.

Caroline Born: 15:03

Yeah, I don't have an impulse to facilitate, but I hope it comes. I'm not going to do it just because you know I could.

Malcolm Stern: 15:17

It feels like for me it has to come from an impulse of. This is what I need to do. Well, I often think with groups. What I say, without being too mystical about it all, is that if I I'm actually in tune, then the muse is with me, and so I'm hearing something similar with you. That's if it comes. So it's like it's almost like if it comes from the, the, the larger, the, the, the cosmic unconsciousness, or cosmic consciousness as well yeah, I really resonate with that.

Caroline Born: 15:43

Yeah, I do feel. I feel like there's been a lot of invisible support for this process. I've been in massive you know, massive and and uh, yeah, I just loved it and it's like every time I return to it I feel um so much pleasure well, it's not quite the right word so much much interest, you know, and meaning. It just seems to give back to me so much.

Malcolm Stern: 16:12

Yes, and I think that's something that we, you know this is. The theme of this series is very much that we're exploring how our adversity does give back to us as well, even though it's at a time, you know. I think about the events in my life that have been particularly painful, difficult, challenging, and at the time you know you don't want them, but actually, years on, often there's a sort of a recognition that they've actually had some real value for you. That's what I'm getting at yeah, I actually.

Caroline Born: 16:43

I mean, i've've had, I've tried so many things and I recount all that. But you know, at one point I find online a guy who claims to heal this particular symptom and I pay him quite a lot of money and I I receive this distant healing and two things came out of that. Nothing happened to my hands, but I felt a feeling of belief that it could change. Oh, that's interesting, yes, and just the feeling of possibility was worth paying that money. It may seem strange, but you know I understand.

Malcolm Stern: 17:21

I think we often think of healing as removing the symptoms, removing the problem. It feels much deeper that the whole process of genuine healing of ourselves as human beings is a very deep process and often involve years and years of exploration and experience.

Caroline Born: 17:41

Exactly. Yeah, you know, curing is usually one single action. Yes, you know, most people have surgery for this symptom. Um, but it can come back, and I know it can come back. So it's like, why would I do that when my body's a messenger?

Malcolm Stern: 18:00

yes, yes, it sort of reminds me, as we're talking, about stephen levine, who you probably you probably know, I'm sure who wrote books on death and dying, and he used to say that when people were dying, the healing wasn't necessarily that they would get better, but that something would unravel or something would mutate within themselves that would take them into a different space. So I think we're we're exploring that as we explore, um, the whole process of consciousness in our, in our time as well yeah, absolutely, absolutely that you know.

Caroline Born: 18:34

I mean, I don't think, um, my hands will kill me. They may turn into fists and of course that's been a fear I've worked with, with, but I can say that they've stopped progressing in the last five years.

Malcolm Stern: 18:50

So it's a progressive condition that's stopped progressing.

Caroline Born: 18:53

Yeah.

Malcolm Stern: 18:55

So something is taking place.

Caroline Born: 18:57

Something is taking place.

Malcolm Stern: 18:58

And slightly sort of like, sort of jocularly, I sort of thought well, you could always still become a professional boxer if you want.

Caroline Born: 19:04

You're not the person to say really okay, yes yeah yeah, it's interesting because you know there are some people as I come from their names now, but I quote them a couple of german people who write about the healing, the healing something of illness, and they say anything when the hands are turning in. It means anger and I don't agree.

Malcolm Stern: 19:28

It's that straightforward no, it's not yes it's too too simplistic. It is too simple. I think we often go for simplifying things when actually there's a, there's a process to be gone through. You can't go. That equals that. Therefore it's it's living it, feeling it, growing with it. And I think what you've said about the hands, not the, the condition not progressing further in the last few years is it's relevant as well yeah, yeah, yeah, it feels extraordinary in a way.

Caroline Born: 19:56

That's happened and the funny thing is I didn't even notice it was happening because I was sort of attached to change and it's like, oh, no change, that's what's changed, you know. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Stern: 20:12

So so where do you? You're writing your book on this and, and uh, this has been a process of your own journey and own exploration and your understanding of the possibility of creativity affecting disability or difficulty. Where do you go from here? What's your trajectory forwards?

Caroline Born: 20:35

Well, I guess I want to see the book in the world. You know, out in the world. That's one thing, yeah, and, as I said, I'm not sure if I will teach, but I have a kind of inkling that what may come to me is wanting to offer work for people that does look at how to work creatively with a symptom.

Malcolm Stern: 20:59

Yes, yeah, that's good. I mean, I know that after my daughter died, my you know, I wouldn't have said oh, that's good, I'll trade that for that. It's nothing like that, but I know that something deepened in me and it affected and impacted how I was with other people and it's almost like it's much more subtle than that happens. Therefore, you get this and you go there, but subtly we're being moulded, I believe, by our struggle, our challenge and our work with adversity.

Caroline Born: 21:33

And I actually do think that ageing is part of supports that. You know that the ageing process brings just more time of experience and learning. Just very simple.

Malcolm Stern: 21:47

And let's drive towards the distractions of our youth. You know, sort of. For me, obviously, sexuality is a, is something when, when I'm, when I was young and when we are young, we're driven by a very different drivers that take us to different places. And actually I notice now, as I'm aging I'm in my mid-70s now and I noticed that actually I'm, I don't want drama anymore. I used to have. My relationships used to be full of drama and wildness.

Caroline Born: 22:16

Actually I love peace and that sounds very, um, sort of soft, but it actually feels quite deep as well sure, yeah, no, I completely, completely go along with that and I think you know when I first had this little finger and I described in the book I'm teaching, and I talk about a very simple movement process where you lift your shoulders and you raise your elbows towards the ceiling and the backs of your wrists and then all ten, all fingers, and someone in the class was trying to just raise nine of hers, as mine were only nine then and I felt so ashamed and, yeah, inadequate that my body, which had been pretty perfect you know all the bits of it pretty perfect to that point, no longer was, to that point, no longer was, and, and so that was a kind of real hit that you know, my ego as a young facilitator liked to know my body was perfect and it wasn't anymore.

Malcolm Stern: 23:17

Yeah, that's right, it's quite a journey yes, so, um, your body is now doing what your body does, but you're you're practicing consciousness around your process, and you probably have done forever, but it deepens as we age as well.

Caroline Born: 23:35

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I think, like we're talking about, you mentioned cosmic influence and certainly spirituality is really connected with this and I said I feel, feel like there's been an unseen, um kind of so protection, but it's more um support around this whole project, you know and and I realize that I'm a little bit embarrassed about naming that whole area, because sometimes the guidance I receive is very specific, you know, and my rational mind can easily go, oh for god's sake, you know.

Malcolm Stern: 24:21

But actually I'm learning now to to put that aside and trust more and more the guidance you know well, I think we walk quite a fine line between, especially in the world that you and I both inhabit, for the consciousness raising and human development. We walk a fine line between what John Wellwood called spiritual bypassing and a deep connection to our spirituality. Now, a deep connection to our spirituality often doesn't talk about the process of that deep connection. I remember talking to Dina Glaubman once about Skiros and saying well, none of your blurbs, you know, mention spirituality. And she said I like it to be between the lines and I thought that was very good, that actually we are truly functioning from an inspired place. We don't need to go. Oh, you know, the forces of the cosmos are with me and blah, blah, blah. We accept that that's part of the nature of life.

Caroline Born: 25:18

Well, I would say a little bit more than that, because I think sometimes the guidance is very specific and wants to be named and I've been writing for guidance most days recently. You know, asking questions and the answers are just and anyone can do this. It's just about opening your mind to that and the answers are extraordinary, you know, like helping me in my life. So I think you know I feel like people can name this now, not just keep it subtle, because I think why?

Malcolm Stern: 25:54

not, but I still think that the danger is that we sort of like, we think we're special, we want to put a cosmic fix on everything and not accept that we are human beings and having to sort of go through this human journey. I was just thinking, as you were speaking, about the I Ching or the e ching, which I've used for guidance for 40 years and on the face of it, I'm throwing three coins six times and drawing up hexagrams and what the hell has that got to do with anything? But actually the source of it in the west was that jung brought it across, um, that, uh, that actually confucius, apparently at the age of it in the West, was that Jung brought it across. That actually Confucius, apparently at the age of 70, said he was starting to grasp the rudimentaries of it.

Malcolm Stern: 26:37

And I think there is guidance in many, many ways. Again, we have to watch between the sort of newspaper astrology and the sort of deep astrological understanding, for example, yeah, newspaper astrology and the sort of deep astrological understanding, for example, yeah, um, so yeah, I think, yeah, I think it's an interesting subject and actually what I'm hearing is that you do get guidance, you're not ashamed of getting guidance and sometimes you'll name that guidance, because that's what yeah, that's right, and I think the bypassing thing is very strong in our culture.

Caroline Born: 27:08

But because working somatically with my body means staying with all the feelings as well, it can't not and therefore I don't bypass, it's just I might have in the past, but no longer no, no, I get it I get it.

Malcolm Stern: 27:25

I certainly did in the past. I hope I don't now. It's there all right. Well, we're coming towards the end of our podcast and um, the question I always ask at the end is what is the particular dragon you've had to slay? What's the hurdle you've had to overcome in order to be who you are and to do what you do?

Caroline Born: 27:44

yeah, I think, um, when I was a facilitator there definitely was, you know, I was successful and that fed my ego and I realized over the years that that was covering feelings of insecurity, feeling feelings, and wasn't really that good. And I guess doing this whole practice, this whole project more of a project it's brought me into a relationship with myself that has kind of had to meet those places. Yes, you know, because I'm not. You know that thing of having an identity where you may not know this because you still have a professional identity. I don't have much of a professional identity. So I've had to kind of look, who am I without a role?

Malcolm Stern: 28:32

Yes, I've often thought about that. Actually, I thought who would I be without one? Yeah, and it's not easy.

Caroline Born: 28:38

And I see my friends. You know retiring and you know struggling at times with that.

Malcolm Stern: 28:45

Totally get it yes.

Caroline Born: 28:46

Yeah, and people who don't retire, so you know I. And people who don't retire, so you know I. Just I don't know why I stopped doing so much teaching. It just kind of faded away and maybe my psyche needed to just face me with the feeling of inadequacy without you know that's lovely.

Malcolm Stern: 29:02

Thank you for a very authentic and honest uh interview as well, and it's really good to see you, caroline.

Caroline Born: 29:09

So yeah, thank you, thank you.