When Meditation Isn't Enough and Catharsis Isn't the Answer: Depth Hypnosis, Trance, and Healing Stuck Trauma with Juliana Sloane

The biggest clue that something might be too much for our system to just sit with is dysregulation. If we find ourselves feeling too overwhelmed, too upset, those are really good clues that more than meditation is needed. Hey there, I'm Naeli, and this is The Garden of Becoming. Let me ask you something. Have you ever been in meditation, breathing, witnessing, doing everything right, and still found yourself stuck in a thought loop that just when it released? Or maybe you've gone from one cathartic experience to the next, but quietly wondered if you were actually healing? Here's what most people don't tell you. Not every wound response to stillness. And sometimes, intensity isn't the answer either. Some experiences require titrated co-regulation and tools that work beyond the conscious mind. Today I'm speaking to Juliana Sloan, a Buddhist chaplain and meditation teacher, certified depth hypnosis practitioner, and applied shamanic counselor. Juliana works with people navigating relational trauma, grief, spiritual emergencies, and crises of faith. Here's what you're going to learn. First, how to tell when meditation isn't enough, and the nervous system signs that something needs more support than solominefulness can provide. Second, how depth hypnosis and shamanic journey work help you access inner guidance, repair attachment wounds, and bring protection and resources to moments in your past that didn't have them. And third, how to discern when catharsis is genuinely healing versus just recreating the overwhelm you grew up with. Juliana also shares practical ways to safely work with altered states and how to integrate insights from psychedelic therapy into daily life. So if you've gone from stillness to catharsis and still feel like something isn't shifting, this conversation's for you. Let's begin. Juliana, welcome to the garden. Thank you so much Naili. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. So you work with three modalities. Meditation, shamanic journey, and depth hypnosis. What becomes possible when we bring these three modalities together that would not arise if we took each one in isolation? Each of us has different things that we respond to well and different entry points for finding our way into deeper knowing and deeper healing. And so I would say one of the common throughlines through all three of these modalities is we're finding ways to work with natural trans-like states that bring us into a different way of accessing consciousness of knowing our body, of knowing our mind, of understanding our heart. I have been a Buddhist meditation teacher for about 10 years now. Part of my own story with this is at the time that I began to delve into hypnosis, into shamanic journey work, into coaching. I already had this big meditative background, and I was having very powerful experiences on meditation retreats. I could go into silence for days or weeks or sometimes months. And there was a sense of, oh wow, the deeper I go here, the more there is to discover, and it made me very curious of what else is out there. One or the other way is that I can explore the same kind of experiences and wisdom and knowing that happen when we've gotten that chance to get still, get quiet and tune into what's alive in the mind and heart. And it's interesting that you begin to speak of stillness. And I feel that there's different avenues to get to truth, right? So one is stillness and deep consciousness, and the other might be through movement or expression. And I'm curious, what can only stillness give us? I think there's two sides of this coin, especially when we're talking about meditation, about mindfulness practice. One side of that coin, if we have the right meditation instruction and the right support, is that we can access a state of calm openness, focus, relaxation, ease, where, with that as the foundation, we begin to gain deeper and deeper insight into what else is arising. So we might be in a place where we're still, we're focused, we're collected, and we're able to witness, oh wow, okay, the mind thinking is happening and it's going to my grocery list or it's going to my anxieties and I can witness it and be with it. And so I think that's one of the beautiful things that can happen when we get still is that we can take enough of a step back to gain real insight into what is true for us. Sometimes people will begin exploring meditation and they will start to hit a little bit of a wall where there is some grief or some anxiety or some old pain that feels too big to just be with a note and that actually allows us to highlight where the place is, where we most need support and healing. And part of the reason that I moved into a lot of this shamanic counseling, hypnosis, coaching for the unconscious mind is to support people in finding ways to work with and heal and meet those places where actually stillness isn't enough. How can you tell when something is too big for stillness? And then what do you do? When we are trying to sit with something and instead of being able to kindly compassionately witness and hold the experience, if we find ourselves spinning in a particular emotion or thought loop and it doesn't seem to release, if we find ourselves feeling too overwhelmed, too upset that it feels like it's actually not safe to sit with this. Those are good clues that more than meditation is just needed. There are places where sitting alone in our pain isn't helping and oftentimes I would say it's when there's a relational wound where what we need is some kind of co-regulation. We need some feeling of being really deeply held and supported and often we're just sitting with it by ourself and those are the places where it's really important that some additional support be added so that the system can actually feel safer with whatever that pain is and then we can bring it back to the cushion if we want to meditate, if we want to bring mindfulness to it. But oftentimes it's a circumstance where there does need to be a little bit less charge, a little bit more sense of agency. So then how does the shamanic journey and depth of notice play a role once it's established that meditation is not enough? The way that it usually unfold, someone will come to me and we start out by talking about what are the issues that they'd like to work on and how the particular issue is presenting in their life. I can give you one example. I was working with someone who has very deep early trauma, a lot of rupture in the family and the way that this was playing out was interfering with her closest relationships. There was a lot of feeling of insecurity and partnership, there was anger that would emerge, there was fear that would emerge and this was somebody who had a deep meditation background and knew okay I need some other tools because all of those tools that I have they're not working. So we work together in these modalities using altered state work, usually when I'm working with someone we start with hypnosis, you essentially will be guided through a practice of relaxation, visualization and we'll connect with what I refer to as a guide which is a part of the person's wisest self, the guide is there to be a companion on the journey, a source of wisdom, a source of support, a source of power as they move through their own healing work and part of the reason that this can be so important especially with somebody who is healing attachment trauma or working with relational wounding or a sense of abandonment is that part of what we're doing is we're building a strong, unconditionally loving, unconditionally supportive relationship with the embodiment of their own wisdom and power and truth and over time working with this in many different ways we do get to embody and experience what it's like to be truly supported and to have access to the resources that we need that maybe we didn't get when we were younger. So that's through hypnosis, the connection with this wise other. That's right, yes and with shamanic journey work the process is different but the first step is the same. The interesting thing with shamanic journey work is that instead of a guided hypnosis or a guided meditation, what we're actually doing is listening to the rhythmic beat of a drum and the interesting thing about the drum beat is that it naturally entrains the mind to drop into a translate state where we are able to access deeper wisdom and deeper sense of knowing there's been studies through University of Michigan that found that the sense of insight, of unity, of visionary experience simply through that mechanism of using the drum and working with somebody who is trained to help them drop in that it can have the same types of impact if not actually more than psychedelics. So for a lot of people who are interested in psychedelic assisted therapy but maybe don't have the capacity or the resources or the time to do that in their life. These types of altered state modalities can actually be really, really helpful because it's a way to access those same types of states that can be very healing but through the power of our own mind. Can you tell us a bit more about discernment within these non-ordinary altered states and how to tell a difference when an image or a download happens when it's a deeper knowing or when it's something still based out of fear, fantasy or unresolved material? Part of what we're doing is we're actually learning to decode the language of our own unconscious mind and so each one of us is going to be different. The imagery, the archetypes, whatever arises for you is going to be different than me even the next person. The beauty of working in trance is that even if it does feel at first like we're using the imagination as a doorway into deeper knowing that we are accessing material that is within us that often is just under the rug a little bit. So we do learn through the process of talking through okay this experience came up or this image came up what does that mean to you? What significance does that have in your life? How do you relate to it? Almost like we're making a translation of okay when your mind sees this or brings this to light this is the significance that that has similar to trying to understand a dream. Fortunately what comes through is quite useful quite accurate because we are getting out of our own way. And then there's the question of integration. So you have this journey whether through shamanic journey or perhaps hypnosis, psychedelics, how to then integrate these insights into daily living. One of the beautiful things about working in trance is in addition to uncovering the language of the subconscious in addition to bringing more insight and awareness to things that might have been a little bit hidden what we're also doing is we're working with our innate neuroplasticity. I work with a lot of people with chronic illness and often what they're looking for is a way to navigate and manage the day to day of what does it mean to have to live in and care for a body that doesn't do the things we necessarily want to do or that feels more pain than the average person. And part of what we're really doing is changing some of the habitual triggers and reactions. So for example if I'm working with somebody who has IBS or Crohn's and there's a lot of stomach pain, one of the big things that we'll be working with is how do we go from feeling that first piece of cramping or pain or discomfort and move from that immediately spiking a sense of oh god here it comes again this is going to be terrible I hate this why is it like this to okay there's a sensation and this might be something that I have to tend to and it's important for me to care for it but also how can I just stay centered and not allow myself to layer on these extra layers of suffering and pain which often make the experience so much more brutal when somebody's going through any kind of a difficult time so the great thing that can happen over time with trans-based work is that it actually does influence some of the neurotrophic factors in the brain that are related to memory, learning, creativity, cortisol, stress, neuroplasticity and we open up some of the capacity of the mind to rewrite the script so instead of always having that reaction be I hate this so much why is this happening to me we can over time repattern that reaction to be oh this is uncomfortable but I'm going to be okay and I'm curious if there might be specific tools or techniques that you could offer us for the interpretation of things the integration what specifically can people do to work through these if you want I would actually be happy to guide a little quick hypnotic exercise the caveat being if you are listening to this while you're driving a car please don't follow this don't get in an accident but I'd be very happy too let's do it yeah let me offer one of my favorite simple little tools something that I often will work with people on I'll guide you in will get a little bit of relaxation going first and I'll invite you to think of something that is a minor not super upsetting thing that you would like to change in some way could be a little bit of a stress or an anxiety or discomfort something that's not too overwhelming to differ feet into first okay all right so just letting yourself drop in feeling the surface of the chair that you're sitting on making contact with your body you might feel your feet on the floor and just beginning by allowing yourself to sense into the space right behind your forehead and imagining that you could just breathe into that space and you could invite all that space behind the forehead just to soften a little bit to relax noticing or imagining the space behind your eyes and again just allowing yourself to imagine that the space behind those closed eyes you could just breathe a little softening or ease or relaxation noticing the space now between your ears imagining that you could sense into all that space in the head and inviting it naturally just to relax breathing a little bit of peace or calm into that space between the ears noticing now the space inside your mouth the roof of the mouth the cheeks the volume and surface of the tongue and just letting the back of your tongue relax as it relaxes it might just move down from the roof of your mouth or it might just loosen or settle as you relax the back of that tongue your muscles in your jaw might also relax a little along with it and you might just let that relaxation ripple down your neck your shoulders letting your arms get a little heavier as they soften and when you're ready just allowing yourself to bring to mind and something that you'd like to change or transform something that maybe isn't too big but just something that's feeling a little stuck for you right now and when you have that in mind just allowing yourself to sense into where that stuckness or that difficulty feels like it's coming from inside your body and as you do there's noticing as you get closer to the sensation of whatever it is you want to change just getting a little bit curious about that sensation it could be tight or hot or vibrating or heavy and then just allowing yourself to imagine if this sensation in your body that's associated with whatever feels stuck if it was a color what color would that be and then just sensing into what color would feel better and just allowing yourself knowing we're just using that creative imaginative mind letting yourself bring that better more supportive more comfortable more hopeful color into that place where the stuckness is so that it could change color of that whole space in the body and so if the initial color was red and it wants to turn to blue letting it just have that blue flow in or whatever color it is for you and then you might even imagine that that new more supportive color could expand even farther throughout your body almost like you could breathe it in from the top of your head down to your feet so that this new more comfortable more supportive color could just saturate your body and then just noticing what feels different and when you're ready you can shake it off and come back in that's a quickie but it can be really helpful in working with things moment by moment how is that real? I was lovely I felt that it was fine to stay the color it was it just wanted to be warmer and hugged beautiful right I mean and this is actually what you're showing right there is the way the discernment happens when we're dropping into something like this it's often becomes very clear oh it doesn't need to change it just needs to be supported or a little smaller or a little softer and what we're doing is we're working on this very subtle level with the way that our mind and our body actually kind of houses our experience and it's on this archetypal symbolic or colorful level but it all ties back to the real thing that we're dealing with the mind doesn't know the difference it knows that those two things are associated and so working over in that realm we're very gently very subtly unraveling the knot that's over in our day to day life and that was a meditation or hypnosis so what did you guys say? That is a little bit of hypnosis very gentle often used for some of the coaching work where we're not going deep into trance we're going into a lightly altered state but we're making some of those neuroplastic shifts so it's something that people can also do on their own really easily which is part of why I wanted to share it here because it's something that you can take the basic idea of it and bring into life on the regular. So Julianne what is the difference because I have to tell you that they feel so much like meditation so maybe my definition of meditation is too narrow will you help me understand? The thing with meditation is that we are going into a hypnotic translate state especially when we're doing guided meditation where there is instruction to ring a certain intention or do a certain practice the real difference with hypnosis and meditation is when we're doing hypnosis we're very intentionally going into that altered state of mind and we are doing it for a very specific reason to create some kind of change when we're meditating a lot of the time yeah there may be an intention for a greater calm or more kindness but we're not going in with quite as targeted a focus so at least in the traditions that I teach in we don't go meditate because we want to speak up more at work or feel more confident in meetings but with hypnosis we're taking the same mind states that are possible in meditation we're letting them deepen over time and we're using them very intentionally to target specific areas where change needs to be made so in some ways meditation can feel almost like yeah we're resting in the field of that wisdom and awareness and with hypnosis we're actually taking that field of wisdom and awareness and we're almost using it like a scalpel to perform whenever care is needed. Okay I see thank you and so from what I understand you completed your Buddhist chaplaincy training and I'm curious how you use these modalities to help with death, grief and existential crisis. A lot of the time when there is a big loss, when especially we're confronted with the mystery of death and especially the death of a loved one we need more than ordinary reality to help us feel a sense of okay what's going on here and so a lot of the time these different pieces do come up where we're investigating what is beyond what meets the eye, what is outside of the realm of ordinary reality and often when people are in grief and existential crisis and really questioning why did this happen to me or why am I here or why did this person pass as soon as they did that often is the support that we need something that's bigger than ourselves and in these situations of grief or existential crisis is there one of the modalities that you lean towards more than others or how do they work together? It depends on the person it's part of why I work in a number of different modalities because each person's a little bit different there are some people who are going to be drawn to the journey work and drop in in ways that are profound and really powerful and very visionary for them and then there are going to be some people who prefer the support and the guidance that hypnosis offers because it is a more contained thing with hypnosis we're interacting and engaging throughout the entire time if I had led that little mini hypnosis with you and you were my client you would also be from that deeper state sharing what you're experiencing what you see your feel smell taste and we would be collaborating together to see like now what needs to happen with the shamanic journey work it is a little bit less structured because the form is such that there's a little more space so that can be really exciting to some people and it can feel a little bit too spacious to others it really depends on who I'm working with and what we're working on and from what I understand you also help people with plant medicine integration I do yeah I do not offer medicine journeys myself but one of the things that these modalities are really great for are helping people either prepare for or integrate plant medicine therapist assistance psychedelics different things like that when they want a little bit of extra support part of what that looks like is first we focus in preparation around building a connection with the spirit of the plant so that it's something that feels familiar when they're going into a ceremony or whatever space they find themselves in and we're focusing on understanding what's the intention here so that if somebody is embarking on an adventure they have a good center of okay why am I doing this what's most important here what's guiding me and then when it comes to integration oftentimes when people go on an ayahuasca retreat or a ketamine assisted therapy or something like that it's a lot of information and a lot of experience in a pretty condensed amount of time and that can be intense and it can also be hard to integrate so a lot of the time when I'm working with people after an experience like that we really spend time taking different aspects of what came up during the ceremony or during the retreat and find ways to integrate whatever the healing or teaching or learning is there even more fully so that it doesn't feel like okay I just had this one mind-blowing experience and I'm just right back in my day-to-day life could you give us a tool that people could do on their own at home to both prepare for a journey and also to integrate once they're home what's coming to mind right now is if we are on our own and we may not know how to journey on our own or we don't have facility with that yet one of the things that someone can do is journaling what would it be like to write out a dialogue between you and the medicine what questions do you have what intentions do you have and that's something that if somebody gets quiet and drops into their own knowing they can do on their own without someone else guiding the way this is one of the places where it does really help for a lot of people to either write or draw or process out loud in some way some of the most important feeling points from those experiences and part of all of this is this question of how do we make meaning out of a really powerful visionary experience how do we allow it to work us beyond the time of that experience and so oftentimes writing, making art, making music even dance or movement can help integrate solidify support finding ways to understand and embody the experience and if someone isn't used to making art but they're open to it is there a guide or prompt and you could help open that doorway collage is something that you don't have to have any artistic skill one of the things with collage work which I do love I find it to be incredibly supportive to processing is if you're looking through images and colors and different pieces that you're choosing all you have to do is sense into what's resonating with this experience right now so say you're trying to integrate a plant medicine ceremony and there was a particular type of experience that came up for you I would say just start letting yourself be led by the images and the colors and the things that you're drawn to and play one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal is play play is healing play is fundamentally healing so you work with these three modalities is there something about one of them or each of them that you think is misunderstood and you would like people to understand better what might that be oh yeah absolutely I think the biggest thing that I end up working with people on when they come in and they're curious about working together is dispelling the myths about hypnosis one of the things with hypnosis is that it is super misunderstood because part of what we see on TV in movies in pop culture is more oriented towards stage hypnosis and so stage hypnosis is the place where yeah somebody's up there and they're like I'm gonna make you cluck like a chicken and they're in a very deep state and don't have control and I think even people who do stage hypnosis would argue that those people on stage do indeed have control and could say hey no I don't actually want to do x y or z but with hypnotherapy what we're doing is we're inviting in these lighter altered states where we're more open the mind is more malleable we're able to see and sense and feel things that maybe we wouldn't let ourselves on a day-to-day basis when we're too busy and really it's all about the client gaining the agency the power the tools to be able to work with their own mind and influence their reactions and play with different options and try things on and see how does this perspective fit a little bit better oh do I feel more relief when I'm standing in this type of feeling what we're doing is this very gentle trans-like state where the client isn't total control the entire time and so I think that would be the thing that is the most common myth because people really tend to think I'm gonna drop in super deep and I'm not going to have control and the reality is oftentimes it's more like being in two places at once you're in this dream-like space if somebody knocked on the door you'd also hear them and you'd be able to stop and get up and get that UPS package or whatever it is so that I would say would be the thing that I would share it sounds like this very beautiful gentle path towards healing and it's so interesting to me because I've watched the more cathartic path and I'm curious what your thoughts are on when is that all the way to go and when do we need more cathartic and how do they work together I tend to use both of those because I think that they complement each other there are some moments where that catharsis and that depth and that intensity is actually exactly what's called for I think that depending on the person there are some of us who are in enough trauma that catharsis is actually not trauma-informed it can dysregulate the nervous system and so part of it is really partnering together and seeing okay what does the mind and the nervous system and the body really need and oftentimes there can be a pendulation between those things where maybe you have one session where there's a big catharsis and the next is gentle and a little bit more magical and there's a lot of support and you're feeling really held and maybe we stay in that place for a while so that those inner resources can build back up think when it comes to catharsis one of the places where we need to be careful is are we mistaking intense experiences for transformative healing is it wild and intense and we're used to intensity because that's how our life has been for that meditation stillness comfort joy might actually feel a little bit strange might also feel a little bit boring but if we have a tendency towards being for lack of a better word and intensity junky sometimes the medicine that we meet is that slowing down and that gentleness and that calm so that the nervous system can shift into a different type of state I think our culture is really dependent on intensity and so I'm very curious about the places where the intensity is helpful and transformative and onward leading and where is that intensity just replicating the same patterns of overwhelm and activation that we're having in our day-to-day life and for someone that might not really know how it would you help them discern when intensity is the way to go when they're just recreating what they grew up with the thing with the work that I do is we're never recreating intensity for intensity sake if the intensity arises it arises because we are going in to bring in resources and support that we're not there in the first place so one example from hypnosis would be like a regression to a time in childhood when something really scary or difficult was happening we noticed that the intensity is there and then we bring in the protection the power the resources whatever it was that that young child needed at the time and didn't get and so what it really is doing is it's taking that moment of intensity it's helping us come back into a place of regulation and then it's bringing further resources where those resources weren't available and that tends to be something that will help people of all types of experience heal and this changes the way that our mind and our nervous system relates to those past experiences beautiful yes and as we're starting to wrap up the call is there anything you want our listeners to walk away with what might that be the piece that I would send folks away with is just anything that feels like it is stuck like you can't make forward movement like you've done the therapy and you've tried to do a bunch of inner work around it and it still won't budge there are ways to loosen that tangle and to get things to move and to heal truly pretty much anything can be transformed when we bring the right tools for it and sometimes those tools involve working beyond the conscious mind thank you Julianna if people want to get a hold of you anything you want to say about how to find you we have people are curious about what would it be like to explore shamanic journey work what would it be like to try depth hypnosis I would invite them to reach out I offer free consultations for folks who are curious and interested in doing some healing work and similarly I lead meditation groups of people are interested in practicing with me they're so welcome to all of that's on my website which is juliana slone.com thank you juliana I really appreciate your time thanks so much it's so great to be with you thanks for having me that's a wrap on another episode of the garden of becoming whatever sees we're planted in your awareness today trust that they will sprout in their own time if this conversation stirred something in you share it with someone who's walking their own path of transformation and if you want to keep cultivating this garden of becoming together hit subscribe remember you don't have to bloom all at once sometimes the most important growth happens in the quiet spaces underground until next time keep tending you're becoming I'm nailie and this has been the garden of becoming