The Art of Vibrant Living Show with Daniel Aaron - Jonathan Bender: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

The Art of Vibrant Living Show with Daniel Aaron - Jonathan Bender: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
Should be on high definition camera to. Okay. All right, let's see. Uh, we got to hide that. Hey, y'all. Welcome. I hope you can hear me. Hopefully soon you'll be able to see me, too, as I figure out how we do this my first time using this particular platform. Oh, there it is. All right. Exciting. We got it. And I teased you already with our special guest. But first, before I bring Jonathan on, y'all, Daniel Aaron here, your host. And I'm so excited for this, actually, the first broadcast of The Art of Vibrant Living show. And we got a really super special guest for this show. So I'm just going to tell you a little bit about him before I bring him on. Jonathan Bender, who is a MFA, has trained thousands of healers, coaches, entrepreneurs and executives on five continents. By the way, I am one of those people that he trained to grow their voice and presence, both for their personal life and as a confident, authentic and dynamic speaker. He teaches integrative, holistic approach that consistently transforms nerves into confidence and helps anyone become a dynamic, inspiring presence in their lives. He holds two graduate degrees, a master of science in performance studies and speech communication. How cool is that as a degree, as well as a master of fine arts in theater, He is a theater professional as well as a poet. A little foreshadowing for our joy today, which you may have already seen in your your roar is required. More on that to come soon. Jonathan has also been on a dedicated spiritual path since the age of 14. I'm excited to learn more about that too. So y'all, thank you for tuning in. Jonathan, welcome to the show and thank you for being here with us.

Jonathan Bender:
Thank you. Daniel I'm excited to be here and especially to really talk about for everyone who is on a spiritual path and how you really can be able to step into that fully step into your voice and your presence, whether that's professionally, personally, and embodying that more in your life.

Daniel Aaron:
Absolutely. And as you say, that it brings to mind for me, are there people who are not on a spiritual path?

Jonathan Bender:
Yeah, there are.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, yes, consciously or unconsciously, for sure. I don't know. Well, that's a whole nother question, but we'll leave that for later on. So will you tell us a little bit about I mean, since the age of 14 on a spiritual path you have been and how does that relate to this performance and communication and presence stuff that you're up to now?

Jonathan Bender:
Gosh. Well, let's see. When I was 14 is when I first started meditating and then one day in English class, I was seeing someone's aura and just happened needed a kind of a classic rubbing of the eyes. And I knew what it was. I was lucky to be in a fairly open spiritual household and then started being an intuitive channel when I was 15. And I also when I was 14 is when I first started doing public speaking, competitive public speaking as well, and then soon after acting and theater, not because I had an aptitude, but because I was very, very shy, very introverted. I did not have really a sense of personal power or self, had actually been bullied for many, many years. And it was not an aptitude, but really just something that was a deep compulsion that I needed to do in order to find a level of self-expression and find myself. And so because these two things came in at the same time, my spiritual practice as well as public speaking and theater is they kind of wove together for me, not only is my path, but as one thing that I really teach and bring people through this process of what it means to awaken yourself, not just learn outer techniques of voice and presence, but presence. Obviously has a big spiritual connotation. So when we are stepping into more of ourselves, into that fuller self expression, then we actually become a bigger vehicle for embodying our purpose and even incarnate fully more. In a certain sense, we bring our aliveness into this plane to be able to fulfill more of who we are and to impact others more.

Daniel Aaron:
Wow. Okay, That's beautiful. So I got to I got to hone in on part of what you said. There's about 40 questions that came to me from what you just said. First, though, you emphasized that it didn't feel like you had a particular aptitude toward performance. And the way you described it, it sounded to me, tell me if this is true. It sounded to me like you might not have even wanted to in some way, like there was some resistance to it. Is that is that accurate? And if so, how did you you know, you used the word compulsion. How did you overcome that? If that's accurate?

Jonathan Bender:
I would say, you know, for those who are an Enneagram fan, although am a nine, is that a six is in particular that needs a lot of safety, have a can be afraid of something or counterphobic, meaning you go towards what you're afraid of. And I would say I don't know if it can be a counterphobic nine in a way, but meaning that even though it was something that I was scared of, I also had this deep desire for as well. And I would also probably state that at different points of my life, and I find this for most people, we go through cycles where it's easy to be seen or we can we can be seen doing one thing, but it's hard to be seen with another. And and so I have a love that I've cultivated over time for self-expression, for sharing my my gifts that I have, like we all have. And a lot of people, though, are afraid to be seen and to bring that out. And that's something that is really important to learn how to have a level of comfort, to truly share yourself, to share your essence publicly.

Daniel Aaron:
Nice. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, cool. Thank you. Um, you know, part of. Part of what I brought to what you were sharing there is, I know for myself as a really strong introvert and having been shy a lot of my life, the idea of getting on stage literally or metaphorically was just torturous for me. And I remember as a yoga teacher when I first decided like that, that that giving the value of chanting was important, yet being so, uh, I don't know what I want to say embarrassed about or defensive about the quality of my voice, literally and metaphorically. It really took seeing the value and the importance of that to overcome my difficulties with it. And eventually, eventually some comfort did come. Um, so and since we're already talking about the relationship between spirituality and voice and presence to some degree, what what would you say in terms of for people that are on a spiritual path when when they enter into this realm, considering thinking about wanting to use their voice more, what comes up for them? What do you see?

Jonathan Bender:
I want to just preface that by saying I'm responding to something you just said, is that there is so there's introversion, there's social anxiety, and then there are nerves and those have overlap, but they're a little bit different. And I think it's good to differentiate them because people may be experiencing one or the other. And this actually got really conflated and confused, unfortunately, by a popular book that came out some years ago. Quiet by Susan Cain is. And a lot of people read this book. And and what she said is, well, this is how introversion is defined, but I'm going to basically define it as social anxiety. It's like, well, they're different things. And and so introversion, first of all, in its essence is where do you source your energy? Do you source it through other people or do you source it by yourself? Now, an interesting note on that is it's not an essence of who you are. It's a habit of how you work with your energy and you can change it. Not that you have to, but what I have found over the years is that people who have gone through my work since I'm also looking at things energetically, having been an energy practitioner since I was young, is they started to say, you know, I'm not just a better speaker. I actually enjoy going to parties because they're not long no longer losing energy around others the way that they used to. So so social anxiety, the fear that of judgment of we're going to mess up all of these projections based upon wounds from the past, however long ago, this life, another life, whether they come from, is something also that we can start to begin to shift as well. And the nerves as far as fear now that might show up socially or with public speaking in terms of interesting symptoms such as like withholding tension, dry mouth, heart beating through the chest shaking, turning red or not thinking clearly because the blood is flowing away from the prefrontal cortex to other parts of the brain. So all of those things obviously overlap as well. But if we can differentiate them a little bit, we can start to also look at what is the right way to work with them. So that being said, if you want to hone in on the question again, because I since I did my little diatribe there.

Daniel Aaron:
That's great. No, that was a that was a worthy aside. And, you know, for me personally, I loved when Susan Cain's book came out because I always saw my introversion as basically something wrong with me. So it was very liberating in that way and very liberating for me to see that I could be an introvert and step out on the stage and do that in a way. And these things don't have to conflict with each other. So I love that you pulled those pieces apart and distinguished them and Yeah all the symptomology around social anxiety or stage anxiety. That's fascinating. We could talk for an hour about that, but I'll go back to the to the question. So for those on a spiritual path, what you know, what comes up with the idea of using their voice, not just the idea of actually using their voice, what how is it related and what comes up for them.

Jonathan Bender:
So one thing is that those in the spiritual path are often empathic and empath. To be empathic basically means that you have let go of certain boundaries and that you're more open to feeling energies around us, which I think we all do anyway. But you're more conscious of that. And so we can feel everything. Then there can be being overwhelmed if we are in front of a group. If you're doing that more in a professional setting or even being in a large social setting or going to Coachella or or concert is that you can feel so much of that. And I was going to say one thing as well in response to what you just said about Susan Cain. I'm trying to remember. Oh, yeah. So it's like where we source our energy. It doesn't have to correlate with how we feel when we show up. A lot of the best speakers and performers would classify themselves as introverts. And I know this from being in the theater field for a long time. Is there a some who are certainly very, very extroverted and a lot of others who clearly are not, but they love expressing themselves and would certainly categorize myself in that setting as well. And and by the way, there's another short a side of an aside. Is Jung Carl Jung, who coined the terms introvert introversion Extroversion said These are adaptive tendencies. It's not who you are. And that also means that you can shift them as well. So in terms of those in the spiritual path, because we have a sensitivity which is we have to first see that as a good thing. And that is a liability that we want to be sensitive when we are speaking with others, when we are using the voice is it is actually a liability to just be there saying I'm going to share myself. Like like that is not something that that people want long term. We want it short term. Meaning people want want to be inspired or hear something. But if you're friends with this person or say if you're going to a talk for a long time, eventually you're like, I'd like to speak to, um, I'd like to be heard.

Jonathan Bender:
And I think that's also those who are sensitive may identify with more a feeling kind of run over in that way. So using your voice, it's important to know is that it is something that should happen as part of the act of connection. It's about giving and receiving energy and being in flow. Now, if you are someone who tends to hold back and not fully share yourself. And you are what I would call under impacting. It is important to learn how to fully share your voice, how to discover like the physiological aspects of the voice, to find your vocal resonance, to like bring out all of the different flavors that your voice can and to explore that and to express that, and also to truly say how you feel, what you mean. What is your truth? What's your aliveness and message that you want to share? Whether that's something big or just in that moment and having that courage and that support to bring that out. Standing in your full authentic presence, meaning not trying to be normal, not trying to look like people do Well, not also not trying to just go crazy and let your freak flag fly. There's a time for that. But we don't always have to be too kooky either. We can just be simple and be very still. So we also need to learn how to do that and and also to be brave. Because luckily over the decades, society has slowly gotten more and more open to bringing out our spiritual selves. And also, it's not something that we may completely feel comfortable with. So learning to be able to do that and find the right circumstances for how and where we want to show. And to do that more and more freely is also an important part of expressing ourselves on the spiritual path. And the voice is being a spiritual act as well. Mm.

Daniel Aaron:
Nice. Beautiful. Okay, cool. Well, so that brings one comment. And then another question for me. Actually, the question is from one of our viewers, so I'll bring that out on a second in a second. Um, the the as you were speaking, that part of what I thought, you know, is spirituality is such a hard thing to define. When we look at like physical health, we can say, you know, measure somebody's heart rate or step on a scale when it comes to somebody's wealth. We can look at their bank account, spirituality. How how do we measure that? And one of the the metrics that I love for it is one's own comfort, like comfort in their own skin, which I think is related to what you said. It's like the ability to be real, to be authentic. And perhaps as we grow spiritually, it's to be authentic in various situations. And perhaps extending and getting more challenging is, well, when I'm on the spot, so to speak, or on the stage. So to me, I can see developing the skills of being authentic, finding one's voice, being able to speak with confidence as part of a process of spiritual growth. Um, so yeah, so.

Jonathan Bender:
We can jump in there. So what you just talked about is part of how I define presence and presence. We are I'm specifically using this in two different ways. So we talk about presence on the spiritual path, especially within awareness based practices, Buddhism and and others as well. And then we also look at that in terms of speaking. In terms of being on the stage in front of others, but also just tangibly. When you walk in a room and you feel someone's presence. So define this a couple of ways. One of them is being completely relaxed. You just talked about and deeply connected. And when I define connected, I'm talking about this in a couple of ways. I have a body of work I call the Path of connection, which brings together two things. Interconnection and interconnection. So first we're looking at interconnection. Am I connected with myself? Am I embodied? Am I connected with the earth and the ground and the this Mother Earth which supports us and all of the energies there? Am I connected with something greater than myself? Spirit, whatever you would like to call it, something greater above and around and within. Am I connected also with my right intention? What is truly a line that I want? Because a lot of times we block and we push things away subconsciously, which is the misaligned intention. And when I have this vertical connection above, below within, and I bring that into interconnection. Meaning. How am tuning in to you? I'm receiving. I'm giving I'm both fully bringing you in and I'm impacting you. Then we have aligned and complete connection. So what happens for a lot on the spiritual path is we might feel that vertical alignment, that greater spiritual sense, that presence when we're alone. Or when we've in a situation we feel really safe or perhaps in a yoga class as you're a master yoga teacher. Daniel And or and so. However, it's harder to bring that into like being around other people and inhabiting that full presence in our lives. So the other lens I'll mention that I use for presence is. Bringing ourselves fully present in every level. So physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically. And we can grow all of these presents is not something you have or you don't. It is something that can be learned, can be augmented, that can be grown and inhabiting that own skin. We actually bring out our true authenticity. And the true authenticity in my book is not the ego identity. It's not who we think we are. A true authenticity is authenticity of of spirit and of our greater selves working through and as part of us.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful. Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you. That all makes perfect sense and completely fits with my experience. Really Well said. Um, so as time is flying along and since Brian asked a great question here. Um, my question to and I think a lot of people tuning in want to know, so the symptoms that you spoke about earlier on in the obstacles to that authenticity, what do we do about it? Is there any hope? Help us?

Jonathan Bender:
Yeah, of course. And this is part of my work that I've been teaching for decades and I've coaching for a long, long time now. And and so first of all, I'll say is I have an upcoming workshop called Sacred Speaking. So we can share the link for that in the chat. And, and this is a workshop that is free, that introduces other things that I have coming up. I'll also mention that for those who this is really speaking to, this will preview a course I have that is starting later in January called The Voice of Presence. And the voice of presence is a deep dive into this. And there's also a public speaking option for those who want that as well.

Daniel Aaron:
Right. So this is this gives a little bit of a preview of what Jonathan's talking about, the the event that's coming up. But as as as I pull this over here, what occurs to me, Jonathan, is I've heard about a specific poem that's related here and on this page, would you be up for giving us a little bit of that? I'd love.

Jonathan Bender:
To. Yeah, sure. Okay. Right. Here we go. It's called Your roar is required. Dear, sensitive souls. Dear introverts and empaths. Dear secret bearers of burden, dear wearers of brave faces, dear you, who force yourselves to smile and speak. Dear you who hide and peek past curtains. Dear social media, lurkers, dear ambitious aspirants and starry eyed seekers. Your roar is required. Your vociferous voice is valued. Your potent presence is petitioned. You do not have to be certain. You do not need to be loud. You need not bellow over the blatherings of bosses and bullies. We simply ask for your heart and your courage, your vulnerability and your strength, your love and your fire to open further toward their fullness. To be with us. To share your roar. Not deafening. Speak to us from your soul. Voluminous in resonance and presence. Change me. Let me feel your voice. Bear witness to your light. Be illuminated by your brilliance and as you progress on your path. Vibrantly speaking your way into radiance. You inspire me into wholeness. Thank you for your sacred lion thunder.

Daniel Aaron:
Woo hoo! That's awesome. How beautiful is that? A man who appreciates some alliteration as well. Thank you. And it felt like almost related to what we were speaking about, in a way, a manifesto for, um, for those of us who might have some fears about, you know, bringing our voice forward. Right. You know, there's a lot of, um, not just encouragement, a lot of the big why, of why that's important for us and the world. That's, that's awesome. So as as we're winding down on our time, sadly, because I have 38 more questions that I would love to ask you right now, we'll have to schedule a round two at some point, but um, so you mentioned the workshop coming up. Will you say more about that and how people can reach you?

Jonathan Bender:
Yeah. So it's called practical, sacred speaking practical tools for introverts and paths and spiritual seekers to awaken their voice and presence. And this goes for hour to an hour and a half. I have two different times that are coming up and they're both indicated on the page. I tried sharing the link, but I don't know if that shared or not. So you can make sure. I don't know if I have the right chat thing, so make sure that that is up. If you would, do you have the link for that?

Daniel Aaron:
I think it's going across the bottom of our screen. It is.

Jonathan Bender:
There. It's a little bit of a long URL, so sorry about that. Um, and, and so here we really kind of do a little bit of an initiation of diving into and honoring. What is up for you now and the difficulties there to realize there is nothing wrong with you. These are very common things that tend to arise, whether that's like fear or hesitancy or sometimes I'm on and sometimes I'm not. And to start to explore how to bring out your voice and presence and your sacred self and the courage and ability to do that in public, in any capacity in your life.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. Yeah, well, I can certainly say from my experience and I didn't really get a chance to speak about it, you know, when, when Jonathan, when we first met, it was in Bali, gosh, probably more than ten years ago. And, and I told this story recently to some folks I thought I thought I was quite, quite the man as far as my yoga teaching went. And Jonathan very humbly came along and said, hey, you know, I could, I think maybe said something like, I could help you be even more effective. Very tactfully done. I was like, Oh, great. And, you know, just in a little workshop, I got so many things that I like. I still am unpacking today when I'm on stage and teaching. So I certainly can testify to the practical and inspiring value of working with Jonathan. So with that said, I think it's probably about time for us to wrap up. Jonathan, once again, thank you so much for being with us. Uh, it was great. The poem was awesome. I love what you shared. I'm sure the audience is very inspired to to step up more into their potential. And that's a beautiful thing. That's part of the art of vibrant living, as we say around here. And I would.

Jonathan Bender:
Share, too, is this the last word is really to remember that your voice matters. And when we don't say something, when we hold back, that also makes an impact, not the one that we necessarily want to have. So I encourage you not to force it out, but to be able to find whatever tools you need to step more into your sacred self, not in a pretend spiritual way, but truly into that core and have the skills to be able to share who you really are, because that is how we make the difference in the world that we are yearning for.

Daniel Aaron:
Well said. That's. That's a beautiful place for us to leave it for now. So, again, Jonathan, thank you, all of you all tuning in live and those who see us on rebroadcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for your dedication to the art of vibrant living. See you soon. Aloha.

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