# Embody Your Power Podcast - Episode 22 Dr Richard Schwartz Interview on the Spiritual Nature of IFS
# https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb4tkMufQWs  uploaded 20240811  2285s  views 625

[00:00:02] hi I'm Danielle Karen and in this podcast I'm going to share with you knowledge and tools that I believe should be accessible to everyone they're fundamental and essential to Being Human embody your power is an integrative model that Bridges science spirituality and ancient wisdom to give you the resources needed to live your fullest potential as a psychotherapist for over 16 years and now as a coach I help people know reclaim and embody their power on all levels it's my mission to help you connect to your unshakable resilience to know true power and freedom to be Sovereign and to remember your divine nature if you're wanting to learn tools to release layers of conditioning heal from trauma feel at home in your body have inner peace expand your capacity for Joy connect spiritually and take a

[00:01:06] journey with me to embody your power then this podcast is for you thank you for joining me together let's raise our Consciousness to help evolve [Music] Humanity I'm sitting here with dick Schwarz the developer and genius behind the internal family systems model which is just exploding right now in the Psychotherapy World dick what an incredible week it's been here on the magical island of Malachi where everything just seems to slow down before we dive in I want to express my deep gratitude for you and the work and the wisdom that you've brought to the world it's truly changed my life I would say out of all the things that I've been trained in it's been the most influential and impactful personally and professionally it's been the most

[00:02:11] impactful because it's really been a big part of me embodying my power and it's done that by giving me the tools to access myself as you call it and separating out from all the different parts of me in doing so I've been able to to access my true Essence and what a gift I really want to thank you for that so let's start with a definition of self dick how would you describe self with a capital S uh so it is something that is in everybody and you know when I first encountered it I I thought it was really challenging to find words and but but when I saw it an action in terms of uh helping people access this sort of essence and then spontaneously they would start to relate to their what I call Parts in a Healing

[00:03:14] Way um certain qualities would be manifest that were pretty evident so we have what we call the eight C's of self- leadership which include calm and then curiosity and confidence so related to power and uh compassion and then Clarity creativity connectedness and courage uh oddly enough they all began with the letter c there are others that didn't begin with letter C so I didn't include them that reason do you want to name some of them sure there's um joy and uh equinity and um Vision uh some people are lobbying to have a ninth sea of choice and uh but all these wonderful qualities seem to be the essence of all

[00:04:17] of us that's a big deal and and the and the fact that you can access that so quickly but many people can right and that it knows how to heal you and heal relationships yeah and so where else does self- exist would you say well um you know I came into this not a spiritual person at all and uh but to reconcile this discovery of this is in everybody can't be damaged and knows how to heal with my training which was an attachment theory that said to have any of that you had to have gotten it from a relationship it's not inherent in US you have to get it from a good parenting initially or from a therapist or someplace outside of yourself and I just couldn't at some point I had to say that doesn't work that there is this and people

[00:05:23] started pointing me toward different spiritual Traditions to say well maybe it's like Buddha nature maybe it's like at man maybe it's like you as I look into that it turned out to be true yeah I love that quote that you have about right beneath the surface of all of our parts is this presence that many religions have different names for yeah but and you call self and I call self and so it did seem that I had stumbled onto something pretty Universal that's in people that as you say most all the spiritual Traditions know about have ways to access and I stumbled on to a way to access it very quickly and then in contrast to some of the other the Traditions that see it as a state to try and Achieve and to try and kind of passively witness from I was finding it became an active inner leader and outer leader that's such a gift to be able to access it so quickly and not to feel like you have to

[00:06:26] spend years meditating to get there yeah so at some point I kind of got the big deal of that and the vision of it and if we could all do that what a different world it would be and then I also started to to well I actually learned from what I call guides that this self isn't individual to each of us that um the metaphor I like the best is the from quantum physics that photons are both a particle and a wave and that maybe this is a partical ised state of self that actually is part of a big wave of self that I call the big self or nonu or all the words you use for that like what people might call God or it Source or Divine Universe yeah you call Big self big self capital s

[00:07:30] and that uh that this is a drop of that big ocean and uh so that really started making sense to me and made sense that at that that larger level we're all very connected and we have a kind of knowledge of that in that seaword connectedness so so I've become very very spiritual not adhering to any particular tradition necessarily yeah yeah so if we look at the macrocosm we have big self and then we have self which we can access within our body and then we have parts and so on the microcosmic level we have parts that have cell yeah that blew my mind too I stumbled on that when I was working with what used to be called multiple personality disorder clients now it's did and as a result because there was no self to be found

[00:08:35] initially um I'd work with one part for maybe 10 sessions in a row where I was just talking to the part and it was talking to me and the part started talking about its parts and I could access itself to work with its parts wow and I actually went down one level lower and turns out it's you know uh turtles all the way down from that expression that it's like fractals they're all just the same isomorphic form different levels so as you say that I'm thinking like how self is indestructible if it's like fractally always there right yeah it is can't be damaged indestructible yeah also what what a what an Incredible Gift to be able to access that and know that yeah um and so what's it like for you to connect to Big self how is that for you uh you know I

[00:09:39] don't I don't do it I I meditate and I get a hit of it but not like when I for example take ketamine and actually leave here and totally enter that big self State and it was after a few of those experiences that I really kind of know before I I believed in it but now I know it yeah can you describe the experience at all for you yeah so um I have no contact with my body and I'm in this kind of bliss filled sense of connection to everything so you kind of lose your individuality but it's very very enjoyable yeah and uh and there is some more access to guides people watching me would hear me say okay I won't forget I won't forget and

[00:10:43] uh yeah and then coming back from that state I just remember thinking oh no here's that time thing again and uhuh and uh because there isn't any sense of time there yeah and oh I'm coming back into this body keeps me so separate from everybody and has all these burdens and so it was kind of disappointing but I did feel like I needed to come back so yeah well so that's exactly what I experienced in a near-death experience where it was Timeless there was no body there were no there was no form a sense of interconnectedness a sense of Love yeah the longing there's no fear really beautiful yeah space to enter and and experience yeah and similarly I um before that personal experience I kind of thought that after you die it would be just a transition to

[00:11:47] another statement again now I kind of know that and that actually helps in life to know that death isn't to be feared that same way right and and that's what I also feel like is uh when we really know our true nature how powerful that is right that death is not the end yeah yeah yeah yeah in terms of of your podcast in terms of power it really helps to know who you really are and that's very powerful yes yeah and so would you like to share a little bit about how you got to got the information from Guides or were they an important part in bringing this modality and this information to the world you know initially I didn't know from Guides and I I thought God I'm so smart I'm created this thing that everybody loves and

[00:12:50] uh and I came out of my family of origin with a lot of burdens a lot of sense of worthlessness and uh not being valuable and that's part of what drove me to to deal with the slings and arrows that came with trying to bring this and just keep pursuing it and uh and again I I needed the accolades to counter the worthlessness so I uh I would be defensive if anybody challenged it and I would uh sort of be more narc much more narcissistic about it than I am now and so I needed all that to bring it but then I found myself the leader of a community and a lot of those qualities weren't working very well I could imagine I was fortunate enough to have people that could tell me and call me on

[00:13:53] it and so I began to to believe that I really need do more work on myself and I did get a message at that point one of the few messages that has ever come to me directly from my guides that some version of we gave this to you don't [ __ ] it up and I was [ __ ] it up and so with all that I really set out to to work on the parts that felt so worthless and needed the accolades and uh what does that look like when Dick Schwarz does the work on him s does it look any different than you doing the work with other people well it looks different mainly because in contrast to most people I don't see my parts at all I have a condition I've learned very late in the game called a Fantasia which I don't know the percentage but it's under 10% of us have just don't see much

[00:14:56] inside and so when I'm working with my parts it's not so much images it's much more Sensations and sort of voices and I can tell how close I am to them but it's like I'm doing it in the dark basically and there was a point early on again where I thought how how ironic that I'm the one who's bringing this and yet I'm the only one who can't do it right but then it turned out I just do a different version of it and uh how often you know we were psycho dramatizing the work this week I'll often do that I'll I'll try to use empty chairs and I'll have my parts talk to me and like that okay yeah yeah and and I often need somebody to help me with it all so it's not all that much I can do on my own

[00:15:59] and so you mentioned your guides in this direct uh information that you got do you sense your guides around you do they have names or I can sense them they don't have names Le I have a name though but I I'm gotten quite familiar with their energy I can tell when they're nearby and I can also tell when they're kind of in my body and I'm speaking from them oh okay yeah so there are many times when I'm doing a lecture or even doing sessions where think where did that come from you know I'll say something that uh seems really smart but I didn't come out of my brain so so again that took a while to be aware of but people who can see them would tell me they could see a bunch of these guys hovering around coming through me yeah and so would you say you sense them often yeah now I do yeah yeah what would you say the difference would

[00:17:02] be between big self and guides or how how would you make sense of that uh you know there is a difference the guides are also drops of the ocean they're just not embodied and so that more of the wave versus the particle or yeah you know they have sometimes they have I mean I I don't see them still but so many people can see them in different forms um and you know there was a point where and my story is this woman Carrie came up to me at a workshop and said I've been getting message for you for messages for you are you interested and she has a different story and I probably hers is more accurate I can't remember what it is exactly but I said yes and so she and I have been meeting uh trading sessions for about uh

[00:18:08] think we figured out like 16 years now wow okay and she is and was uh a channel for her guides and then she was able to channel my guides too so that's where I've gotten most of my information about kides and it took me a while to I had very skeptical Parts which I I think is probably why the guides picked me because I I really um wasn't one of these people that just went with it and that was going to be a question like do you feel like they chose you yeah and it's still unclear why I mean I I think the only things I can figure out are that there was a point after college where I did TM for a long time and I I could get a hit of the big self and I I think they so well you know maybe he's open to that

[00:19:10] and uh and then I I assed traditional Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis those beliefs and went in the other direction toward family therapy and became steeped in systems thinking and I think they like that a lot they like that I came to the phenomena with kind of um you know openminded and that I could put together all this stuff through systems thinking so that's about as far as I've gotten in terms of figuring out why yeah how do you feel about that that you have been chosen or that this information is coming through you you know most of the time I feel very very lucky and privileged and because I love the work I just you know my wife Jean would say I'm too I love it too much and takes up too much space but um and I also though particularly lately feel a lot of the

[00:20:18] responsibility of continuing to bring it and bring it in a clear pure way and that was very evident to me this time with you this week is seeing how pure it comes through you yeah yeah and and I was actually wanting to ask you if that feels really important that that's uh how the model is taught in this very pure essence of it it is important um and I do encourage people to use my words for example because they've been over 4 years they're coming from the Guides of them and and there are a lot of people that don't like that they they think I I'm trying to impose some kind of authoritarian thing and uh but the messages I'm getting is that this is important to convey in a pure way as much as we can yeah I really

[00:21:24] appreciated and there are you know there are people who go their own way and actually add and I can kind of tell when it's additive and and also when it's kind of distract distracting yeah how do you feel about people adding or integrating no very welcome when it's coming from their self and I think that characterizes ifs in me the openness and how many different people are combining it with different things and right because at the conference right I imagine there's um many different people speaking at about ifs in various aspects and how it works with this and that and yeah anding it with different modalities it became clear also that I'm limited where I can bring it and how far I can take it and that it needs to be there needs to be other people who embody the vision of it who can take it places I can't so I you know continued

[00:22:26] to uh when I meet new people that have that potential I'm very open Jean again would say sometimes way too open and uh we just kind of check it out and see if this is one of those people or not and so I've come down a lot of dead ends and then also been blessed to have now some um many collaborators who can take it places I can that's incredible yeah I really appreciate that about you thank you yeah and so when the guides uh were coming through this woman Carrie is her name um was there something that she shared that you thought well okay this is valid with the skeptical parts and stuff was there's something that eventually came through that you were able to then trust yeah can't think of the first one of those things one that stands out to me though is after

[00:23:29] working together for about a year at the time I was single I uh divorced I think it was 2003 and then was single for 5 years and was dating and couldn't find somebody and was really getting frustrated and so one my sessions with her I just said could you ask what the deal is you know am I ever going to find somebody and they said you know she's there and it's about 6 months away if you do these pieces of work wow it's not going to happen if you don't do it did you have to do some homework yeah so I had to there were certain parts I had to work with and then six months later Jean showed up at esselin and the rest's history so then I said wow that's impressive that is impressive I love hearing that the other thing I'd love to touch on with you is how burdens impact our connection with self big self yeah so definition of burdens are

[00:24:34] extreme beliefs and emotions and energies that enter our system in various ways a lot through trauma but they can be what we call Legacy burdens and come in through the generations or the culture um and attach to our parts and then drive the way they operate uh in Extreme Ways and most all of us have a lot of those burden parts so the parts in their extreme roles are driven by these burdens and it took me a long time to figure all that out because like most other systems I was assuming the parts were what they seem to be so uh yeah it took a while to figure out that they're all really valuable but they get forced into these roles partly by the burdens and partly by just being frozen in the past and partly by how they polarize with each other and get extreme from that so you a lot of the systems

[00:25:37] thinking took a lot from family therapy and brought it on to this uh and just actually put out a paper in a journal called family process where we went over all the theories of family therapy and how they all apply to the center world it's really fun to do I bet and uh so it also became clear that burdens obscure access to the client self because the parts tend to blend with self and take over when they have the burdens and and then it became clear that when that's the case clients don't have access to that higher spiritual wisdom because they're covered in these burden parts M so some of the power of helping clients unburdened is to give them more access to their guides and and that also is bringing

[00:26:41] more of the guidance to the planet so there's a like a bigger purpose to the whole thing yeah why would you say we have burdens why do we have them yeah well when I've asked the guides that they said that uh this is a kind of school this planet and it's a really hard one and they're really proud of us for choosing to come here to learn and the lesson plan part of the lesson plan is in the set of burdens we get so as we unburden we're doing what we're here to do and we're learning the lessons and we're learning we're bringing self to Planet too which is part of the the lesson plan as well yeah and so as you're talking about I'm thinking about humanity and what would you say your greatest wish is for Humanity

[00:27:45] um you know if everyone knew this about themselves and also knew that the parts they hate and inside of them and the people they hate outside of them were who what they seem to be and that attacking them or exiling them only makes them stronger if everybody got that it would be a different world and so that we would come to each other from self with love and all the other seword even when somebody's out of line uh you're just going to help them back into self because self is contagious so if I can bring myself it'll pull for whoever my enemy is their so and uh and if they're open to it I can help them with their troubled Parts beautiful I love that thank you yeah one of my

[00:28:51] favorite quotes comes from you dick which is nothing has power over you unless you fear I've used this so much in my own life and so I'd love if you would like to elaborate on that where that came from and just all that can apply to so if I can help a client like you know maybe they're tormented by what seems to be a massive critic for example that drives them crazy and that that uh they feel like they're powerless against if I can get their parts that feel that way into say an inner waiting room and just get them all to separate so they really are in and this I just stumbled into this because I would just ask these parts you're curious and keep asking now how do you feel toward this critic at some point they'll say oh I feel calm I don't feel afraid of it at all and I can see that it's just hurting

[00:29:57] too and their conversation with it will be very different and they'll be a instead of being cowed by it they'll be able to not control it or but help it uh unburden itself and it'll transform and then that's so powerful that's really us accessing and embodying our power would we do that yeah so that and you know just the idea that there aren't any bad ones and that they're all in these extreme states and I didn't really get that I I sort of thought well maybe that's true but then I deliberately started Consulting uh for a treatment center for sex offenders and started working with the parts that had done such horrible things to women and they would all show their secret histories of how when they were being abused it wasn't always sexually abused his children but views in

[00:31:00] different ways they would look around the room and say who has power in this room it's the guy doing this to me I'm going to take on his energy to protect my system from him and then they get stuck with the burden of the desire to hurt vulnerability or desire to yeah like the illusion of power in a way right yeah I mean I mean it's power but it's a true essence of power yeah I mean it's a a perverted power it's a power it's the power over you know it's power designed to hurt and inflict pain or to dominate and control and when we could unburden those energies those parts would transform into their valuable states too so that really convinced me that there aren't any bad ones and so if you translate that into the outside world

[00:32:01] there's there's no bad people there's just B burden people yeah so do you apply this nothing has power over me unless if you're in the outside world as well yeah I mean there are people that can kill you but um if you can stay in s relative to others like I said earlier it's contagious so uh you know I haven't face down people with a gun my face but I've I've dealt with people who were very interested in hurting me and if I could stay in self um it didn't totally melt those parts but once they got the clear that they couldn't hurt me then it took all their their energy away that's incredible yeah yeah how would you say that you embody your power uh

[00:33:04] um what does that mean to you yeah you know I I think I have some power to bring this to the world and so as I do that I'm embodying some level of power uh I I'm not a good administrator I'm not you know that interested in having a lot of status and money after I worked with all those parts that needed all the accolades um I I want to bring this as far as it as I can in this lifetime yeah and do you have a vision you would share for where you would like to bring this well we're maybe a decade ago I got the guidance that I'm supposed to bring this Beyond psychotherapy and try to bring it to higher levels of system and so for this last decade I've made a lot of alliances with people that can do

[00:34:08] that awesome various social activist leaders and we're starting a training in the spring for social activists and not I mean not um for executive coaches because corporate leaders yeah they have huge influence excellent and uh I'm quite involved in the psychedelics movement and trying to have ifs be at least one of the maps for that territory and beautiful um so there's because I also see a lot of potential in that movement of bringing a lot more guidance because when you get into psychedelic territory I said with me kemy the guides have a lot more access to you so all those Realms are uh yeah and working with institutions there's a guy Bill Isaacs who's been using ifs with the World Bank and with the IMF and

[00:35:12] depolarizing the board and the staff and so yeah so that's big it it can have that kind of global influence and that's what I mean I'm I'm now connected to people who can bring it to those places I I never could but yeah yeah I imagine that you continue to see it expand yeah no it's especially the last decade it's expanded enormously yeah not just in psychotherapy but in the culture and in these different Arenas uh at our conference with one of the plenaries was where people are taking it so there were couple social activists um we're now much more diverse community so there was uh a woman talking about all of that and uh there was a woman talking about how she's been bringing it to education oh

[00:36:15] amazing and and so on there's a couple more but yeah yeah it's such an honor to be here with you today thank you so much for all that you do and your contribution to humanity how can people find out about your work well our website is ifs institute.com and that's probably the first place to look and uh then there's an intro book and uh no bad parts and um a lot of books a lot of podcasts a lot of videos on what's it called uh YouTube uh yeah yeah beautiful anything else you'd like to share no I mean I'm I'm glad to have you on the on the team and spreading the word in this way and other ways and what an honor it's my pleasure it's been a great week to be with you it

[00:37:18] really has thank you yeah thank you Danielle [Music] thanks for listening to this podcast if you found this episode helpful please consider assisting me in reaching more people by sharing it with others or writing a review together let's raise our Consciousness to help evolve Humanity for more information please visit my website danielc caron.com that's d i e l l e c a r r o n.com um
