[00:00] Valerie: Rise, renew, reconnect. Welcome to from the ashes, a podcast where every story ignites hope and healing.
[00:08] John: Shut the fire. In the darkest night of Phoenix Burns. It's ready for flight. Shadows may come try to tear you apart, but you're the famous.
[00:21] Valerie: All right, welcome back, everyone, to from the ashes. Today I have a special guest. His name is John Helmier, based in Seattle. And I. I actually met John 17 years ago. That's right, yeah. Such a long time ago now. We were just babies. And this was during an internship in San Francisco during the summer at a place called Glide, which is an intersection of a whole lot of different things. And so, since that time at Glide, San Francisco, we've gone on to do a lot with our lives. So this is very exciting. So thank you so much for being here, John.
[01:02] John: It's my pleasure to be here, Val. It's, yeah, great to see you again and reconnect after a little while.
[01:08] Valerie: Yeah, it's always cool to reconnect with people that you just, you never thought you would ever see or speak to again.
[01:15] John: Yes, I remember we'd sit in these circles in that room. We were all doing our, like, social justice oriented work, and then we'd come together and have these deep, vulnerable sharing circles, facilitated by brilliant staff member who I'm still in touch with, actually. He's kind of a mentor, and we would just really open up with each other as, you know, college students and so healing.
[01:38] Valerie: It's so funny that, thinking back, I probably started that side of me during that experience, just having that open share, it created open share as something that's very normal for me. I don't think it's ever not been. It's really cool to see how these different experiences have influenced who we are today day. So why don't we just start with glide, since that's kind of our starting point as well, and bring ourselves back to 2007. So what was your role at Glide?
[02:11] John: Yeah, I had an unusual role. So Glide did all these different social services, as you know, but for the audience, they did a feeding program and HIV kind of support groups and prevention and housing, and there's like a hundred different social justice things. They were also connected to, like, historically, to a church, a very, very, very progressive church. And I got brought into that side of it, which wasn't the norm, and they asked me to do a peer study. So I studied ten similar organizations around the country that were. That had some kind of like, spiritual orientation, but were really focused on serving the community and oppressed in the community, and got to kind of interview people, leaders from around the country and do like a deep dive. And then they asked me to produce a consultation report. It was my first time being a consultant on how to and any recommendations I had for revamping organization. So it was really interesting.
[03:12] Valerie: Yeah, that's awesome. And just to give the audience also a little bit of a background. So glide SF is in the tenderloin in San Francisco. And historically that area is. Has a lot of different issues, social problems. I actually ended up working in the soup kitchen a few times. I don't know if you did.
[03:30] John: I did, yes.
[03:32] Valerie: Yeah. And then I was assigned actually to take a bus once every few days to go to Treasure island to help with the charter school program.
[03:43] John: I remember that I went out there one time, they were doing like sex ed with these kids. And I remember sitting in the back and being like, wow, I'm learning so much right now. I don't know any of this stuff. I was like 25.
[03:56] Valerie: So the program that I was in. So I was brought on to do something called a mental toughness program, which is looking back at it because these were gang members, or former gang members really, who are trying to get their high school diploma or GED, and them also be trained to do the construction work. And it's so funny bringing in someone who is just a little asian girl, but doing this mental test toughness program, and it actually worked out really well. I learned a lot about myself during that time and, like, who I'm able to connect with, who I'm able to really to help, you know, by placing myself in a situation where no one looked like me and no one, everyone was like a lot bigger than me, too, you know?
[04:43] John: Well, that's interesting. That mental toughness that you would be teaching, you'd be bringing it into that space. And I can see the through line for what you're doing now.
[04:51] Valerie: Absolutely. Yes. From there, from Glide, then we went on 17 years to build our lives. So this podcast is about rising from the ashes, from recreating ourselves. And from what I know about you, you've done a lot. You are a minister, correct? And you started your own religious organization at some point?
[05:14] John: Yes, yes. Yeah. So when I came out, most of the people on our internship program were undergraduates, like yourself. I was a graduate student, and I was studying spirituality and theology and social justice. And it was kind of funny. Like, glide didn't really have a place for me, but I wrote like a bunch of letters, first emails, and then I actually wrote like handwritten letters. I was like, I want to work for you, please let me come. I will work for free, whatever. I just had this passion to go do it, and they seemed like the most interesting church I'd ever seen. Deeply in solidarity with poor folks. They supported sex workers and trans folks and all this stuff back in the eighties and the seventies and way before, there was much, they were cutting edge, basically. So, yeah, I studied black because I wanted to see what it looked like to be church on the margins. And I took the learnings from that and moved out to Seattle after I graduated and started, started a church out here, very alternative church. We had no core dogmatic kind of thing you had to sign onto. I said, there's no litmus test of belief to belong here. You can belong without needing to, to commit yourself to any set of ideas. But we are going to try to practice some things together, and that's what we have in common. We try to practice what we called creative liberation, which was a combination of personal creativity and liberating that divine spark impulse of being a creator inside ourselves. If we think of God as a generating force, a creative force in the universe, we all have that in ourselves. That was a concept of, but also creative liberation in terms of social and political liberation, acknowledging that there are structures that oppress people and how can we work to tear those down and to build up together healthier ones? So it was that, and then the other one was called deep listening. The other principle of the church and deep listening was about practicing kind of a radical humility around our spirituality and with one another, seeing each person as a potential teacher for yourself, including yourself, you have something to say too. It's not meant to be diminishing, but each person listening together will grow more. So we cultivated that practice of soulful listening and interpersonal listening, and deep listening, even to the trees and the rivers and the stones, the stars.
[08:02] Valerie: All right, I have so many questions because I do not come from a religious background at all, which is funny to say, because when I was younger, I was actually put into Bible school for a few summers and all that because my babysitter was Christian and all. But I've never really related with organized religion as something that is relevant to me. And so the choice to actually go ahead and create a religious organization, albeit not even like a denominational one, right? Like, you just. It was just something based off of things that you wanted to congregate around. Like, what was your process for making that choice? Because for me, spirituality has turned into something very individual even. Right? So to, like, start from group. Yeah. Yeah. Is very different.
[08:53] John: Yeah. Well, one little caveat is that I did get support from a denomination linked up with the Oneida Methodist Church out in Pacific Northwest, which is what Glides affiliation was to at the time, although they've since left the Methodist church, and they parted ways because it's just too fringe. But I told the folks up front, like, this is going to be a fringe community. And so are you okay with that? And they're like, yeah, everything's falling apart.
[09:20] Valerie: Sure.
[09:20] John: Go see what you can do. Well, like, mainstream mainline religion in America, in North America, is just collapsing. So that's that one little caveat. And I thought it would be helpful to get resources from them and to have some accountability, too, and not just be, like, a cult leader, which, you know, people would make fun of me all the time for that, but I actually have no interest in, like, controlling other people. My. My desire is to. Is to help them get free, not be under me. So. But to your point of, like, people who, I don't have a religious background, I didn't grow up religious myself, so I found my way in as a teenager because I had these kind of deep longings inside of me for something greater. And I had a sense that the universe was charged with an energy, an electricity, a magic that I could literally feel in my body. And I just wanted to know what the hell that was. So I grew up in Tampa, Florida, and I was like, well, I guess maybe churches have some insight into this. And I found my way into a church that was actually really pretty liberal and open minded and helped me develop my own theology. So I saw that it was possible to do that, and doing it in community felt really healthy and good, like building something to, rather than just, like, choose my own adventure. We have thousands of years of spiritual lineages, and I don't know, I mean, ayurveda, I feel like, has spiritual. Would you call that a spiritual lineage?
[11:03] Valerie: It is a spiritual lineage, which I have a lot of thoughts on. But, yeah, we can discuss that later.
[11:09] John: We can discuss that later. Okay. So, yeah, I wanted to create community, too. Like, the number one reason people actually came to the church. It's still around. It's doing great. I'm no longer the convener. He's what I called myself. Not the pastor, the convener, the one who brings people together. So the new things, memory was to find belonging in community. Some people were curious about theology and God and all that. Plenty of people weren't even that interested. They just wanted to find friends and the world is so isolating and so alienating at times for many people, especially in a city like Seattle or the Bay Area, these very individualistic places with a lot of turnover population, you often live far from your kinfolk, and how do you know that you're not alone? So people are yearning and looking for that, and I wanted to create a center for that as well.
[12:04] Valerie: All right. I is a great. It's a really great insight as to, like, how different people cause, like, you and I are wildly different people. Definitely wildly different people. So. And I'm really excited to have you on because it's just like, I don't get to bring a voice like yours into my scope every day. And so, yeah, we've touched on the spiritual. Let's. Let's touch a little bit on the erotic as well, since I know that you focus a lot on the intimacy coaching, sexuality and whatnot. So what. What brought you down that path?
[12:38] John: Yeah, yeah. So I do both spiritual direction, which is, yeah, kind of coaching people around their existential worldview and their values and intimacy coaching, which is, like you said, the erotic also involves, like, finding healthy relationships, romantic, but also communal. Just some people struggle find those friends in relationship with yourself. Intimacy. How I got into that was, it started with spirituality. So when I began my formal training as a minister, they asked me to define what is the theological enterprise? That was the question that this famous theologian asked me. What is the work that youre trying to do with theology? And I spent a long time thinking about it, and I told her, eventually, its developing intimacy, like cultivating the ability to be intimate, which is to be vulnerable, which is to open yourself up, which is to surrender, which is to intertwine yourself with the other. That is the work of spirituality to me. And so I tried to do that, and I tried to do that in many ways with social stuff and with spiritual stuff, and found that to be pretty successful. What I found in the church, even a very progressive church, to be a block, was the erotic. And that there were so many imposed obstacles to exploring sexuality and erotic energy in these religious communities. It was baked into repression, was baked into church culture and theology. So for many years, although I espoused, I talked about sex positive worldview, even within Christianity and religion, spirituality. I didn't necessarily feel it inside myself, and I found that many people around me didnt really feel it either. And they were closed. And so there was this long journey of me kind of pushing against that inside myself and feeling kind of divided. And although I would celebrate verbally and intellectually, my body felt very closed. And part of that is me. And the role of, I was a clergy person. I was ordained minister. Even though I tried to downplay that for power reasons, I still have that power, and I carry that authority, and I have the ability to. I needed to wield that responsibly. And there's been so much scandal and religious organizations of people wielding that badly. Obviously, the catholic church, but all these independent churches and cults and stuff, they're known for having sexual predators at the helm. And so I really, really wanted to avoid any appearance of that. But I was also like, and I'm like a lar. I'm like six foot seven. I'm a big white man. I just, you know, I have a deep voice. I'm, like, aware of how I'm embodied and how I present and care a lot about making people feel safe. So. And that's not to woe is me for my embodiment. It's just like naming the facts. And this is just a long way to tell you. I felt very closed in, ironically, and started to begin a journey of trying to unpack that.
[16:04] Valerie: All right, so when we are closed off to certain energies in life, sometimes we notice it, sometimes we don't. But you felt like this was an avenue where you needed to be open. Why do you feel like you felt that particular pull?
[16:24] John: Hmm, yeah, that's a great question. I feel like, okay, why did I feel that pull? To change. I guess I could start with, like, I felt so much resistance to it inside. I was friddled with shame around my erotic self from a pretty young age. I felt like my erotic desires were bad, immoral, and I guess I met more people who seemed liberated and their sexuality over time in Seattle. And I was like, that scares the **** out of me, and theres something I need to learn from that. So I started to meet people who were, like, polyamorous, and who were in sex positive spaces, and who were into kink, and who could talk openly about sexuality without it feeling like they were trying to do anything to anybody. Not trying to seduce you or try to, I don't know, like, scandalize you, but just being themselves and feeling so integrated. And I've always felt like when I'm around people who are free inside it, like, it frees me a little bit. You get that?
[17:52] Valerie: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[17:54] John: Yes. So, like, you know, just being around people who seemed freer and integrated, I had that attraction and that terror of what that looked like. If I tried to go on that journey and what would the dragons be that I would have to fight and what would have to die inside of me. Talk about rising from the ashes. And I realized I would have to confront and begin to accept some of my own erotic blueprint and desires, but that I had kind of put into a coffin and tried to shut away. So, yeah, I think it began by, like, meeting other people who seemed integrated and noticing the fear of myself and wanting to grow from that. Also, like, I have kids. I'm married. When you, for many people, when they have children, for a while, I have two kids two years apart. There's, like, a period of dormancy in your. It doesn't have to be this way, but life is so busy and there's so many physical needs around that it can be pretty difficult to tap into your erotic energy when you're maintaining, when you're caring for little, little beings. And then they started growing up a little older, and I was like, I think I have a little room inside of myself and yearning, and I need to start exploring.
[19:18] Valerie: I'm going to interject a little bit of ayurveda here just because I think it adds a little bit of a layer of interesting information. So, in ayurveda, we talk about the tissues of the body, and they're seen as, like, progressing from one to the other. So it's like your rasa or your essence. You're kind of like the interstitial fluids, the, and then it goes to blood, and then it goes to fat tissue. Okay, sorry. Not, I have to say this in Sanskrit first. Rasa rakta mamsa. Sorry. So it's, it's muscle before fat. So muscle, fat, bone tissue, your bone marrow and your nervous system. And then finally, it is your reproductive tissue. So in ayurveda, they do talk a lot about the management of sexual energy, whatever that means. Right. And how it's important to be able to continue to nourish yourself, because that gets nourished last, but it's also kind of like the closest to your vital essence.
[20:17] John: Wow. I love it. Interesting. And I loved hearing it in Sanskrit, too. I don't know. There's power in the original languages, in my opinion. So thats beautiful. Thats kind of helping me have insight into my own process with it all of like, yeah. That zone of my consciousness. My body was the most protected, the most guarded, and also has been most vital. As ive explored that, its changed my spirituality as ive been able to integrate sexually and, and get into that space. So, yeah, there was all these blocks. And I think another part was I had channeled so much of my creative energy as you were talking about that sequencing of, what do you call it? Tissues. Yeah, I had channeled my energy into social justice work, primarily, and I love that, and I still am involved and do that. And that's like, I have politics around that that haven't changed. But I definitely kind of adopted some martyr complex stuff and an idea of, like, it was sort of selfish to care about sex, selfish to try to be indulgent, you know, I was like, pretty ascetic, which, like, spiritual terms, if you're familiar, it means like, giving up material possessions and physical pleasures, trying to resist that for the most part, because theres bigger, more important things in the world. And I dont have that binary anymore. Dont believe that the way to justice is by everyone practicing tremendous self denial. I dont buy that. I do think some people need to practice more self control and discipline, but including myself at times, but, like, I don't see it as such a binary. Like, you can only do one or the other. And I think I did for a long time.
[22:23] Valerie: Yeah, yeah, I think that's, you know, that really resonates with me as well. Just like the, like, you want to help people and you want other people to live full, happy, vibrant lives, but then you deny that to yourself. That's what led me, I think, eventually, to major burnout, is that I was constantly making huge decisions, not even just small daily ones for sure, but huge life decisions based off of that worldview of I need to help other people, but I myself don't deserve any of the help.
[22:59] John: Yes.
[23:01] Valerie: So I want to ask you about if you can give us a from the ashes story, because I think I. When we do come to points in our lives where we realize we have taken so much away from us, that is when we start to really realize that that's really not the paradigm that we want to be living in. So, yeah. Can you tell us a bit of a story and then how you got out of that?
[23:29] John: Yeah, well, I can think about, I mentioned before this aim I had around eroticism, and I think that was very cultivated by just the religious waters I was swimming in. And now I am a phoenix that has risen from the ashes, and I have so much joy and self acceptance and liberation in my body and my sexuality. But I was in this place for a very long time, for many, many years of self reproach. And I thought that I was broken because I just had what I would consider pretty normal sexual desires but that seemed like a problem to me, and I really kept that in. And I didn't talk about sex to anybody. I didn't feel. I felt ashamed. I felt like I needed to just clamp it all down. And I was very resistant to my own. Yeah. Erotic impulses. I just restricted myself in all these different ways. And then, like, I showed before I had kids, I'm married. We were kind of struggling to talk about sex and to, like, reclaim a sex life. After, like, early babyhood stuff, my partner and I, and we started going to sex therapists. Like, all right, we don't really know how to do this. And things have changed and, like, how do we. How do we work on this? And I. My God, it was pulling teeth to be able to open up and have a conversation because it felt so loaded, it felt so wracked in self image and insecurity. And this is just share my side of the whole thing. Feeling like I wanted something, but I felt bad about wanting it. And so I would sort of seek it in immature ways and helped get my mind be read. And I just. I couldn't talk about sex, sexuality, sexual desire, even. Just, like, intimacy. Just physical intimacy felt too far away. And then the sex therapist was like, everything you're saying, you seem, like, really, really think that you're this freak and this broken person, and it's like, the most normal thing that comes into the door. This is, like, statistically incredibly common. You have all kids, like, kind of get over yourself a little bit. Let's begin this journey. She had no bedside manner, the therapist. Very harsh. I was, like, a sex researcher. I didn't love the vibe, but it also kind of smacked me around a little bit, which I think I needed of, like, get over yourself. This is normal stuff, and you're going to have to practice it, and it's not going to feel comfortable at first. It's going to be weird. It's going to be hard. Are you ready to do it? She assigned us this book called Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch or something like that. And he talked about the crucible. Do you know a crucible was a little ashtray type of thing, and then you put stuff in it and you crush it and you break it down, and then you can heat it up and reform something stronger on the other side. It's a perfect phoenix metaphor.
[26:48] Valerie: I know there was a book or something called the Crucible, but that was way too long ago for me to remember.
[26:55] John: Yeah, that's like, some early american literature thing. I don't know what it's about. But, yeah, this was just a metaphor for, like, this is what erotic love and compassion looks like in a long term relationship. It looks like things getting broken down and having to reform. Are you willing to go in and muck around and do hard things and have hard conversations and hurt each other a little bit in order to get through? And it was very scary because you feel so vulnerable to share what you want because you could be denied. But then again, you're not even asking for what you want. You're not getting what you want anyway. So when you do the math. But I feel like that applies to so much stuff in life. I don't know if you feel this, Valerie.
[27:37] Valerie: Yeah, this is like 100%, you know, I think every person has at least one major, that one thing that they can never get. For some people, that's wealth. For some people, that's success. For some people, that's relationship, being in an intimate relationship. And it is always the question of are you willing to be able to dismantle some of what you think that you are and do the hard things that you're very, very unfamiliar with in order to essentially fundamentally change your paradigm so that you can get what you want, the thing that you've always wanted and couldn't get? And it is really could be some of the hardest stuff to ever go through in life. So much so that I think a lot of people completely just avoid it because it's actually, it might just be easier to be unfulfilled in that area. And, yeah. So when we are called to go through the hard stuff, I think is what really builds that Phoenix character.
[28:47] John: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. You know, the hero's journey kind of stuff, which I love reading fantasy and Sci-Fi and adventure stories, and it always has to do with somebody who's at home and gets called out on a journey and they have to leave home. And there's a big decision point, like, should they leave? It's safer at home and they don't have to respond to the call, and yet the stories wouldn't, they wouldn't be written if they didn't go. So in all the stories, they go. But I think in real life, a lot of people don't go. They just choose not to go. I've had all these conversations in the last few months with people that have been doing some deep listening for the business that I'm doing with intimacy, coaching in particular, and asking people about what they want in their sex lives and that kind of stuff. And it's amazing how many people I've talked to are like, they're not fulfilled at all, but they're like, but I'm also. I'm fine, I'm fine. It's okay. I've come to terms with it and it's fine. And it's like an amazing percentage of people are unfulfilled but tell themselves and others that it's okay. And I'm not trying to say that I know better than for somebody else what they need, but I just notice how often the I'm fine statement also sounds like mired in pain, in yearning and longing, not actually peace.
[30:19] Valerie: Yeah. So the thing is, you know, because you've experienced the pain.
[30:25] John: Yes.
[30:25] Valerie: Right. And so my question to you is, like, what made it worth it for you to go through the pain and what's on the other side of that pain?
[30:36] John: Yeah.
[30:37] Valerie: Right. And then also, it's not superficial pain. Like, for some person to say, like, I need to really change everything. What I know is not the pain that comes with that is not superficial. So, you know, I want to know, like, what are the consequences of you keeping it in? Like, how did that affect your health? How did it affect your emotional health and all that?
[31:00] John: Yeah, yeah. I've been in that pain place and I think it was like my commitment to intimacy, as I talked about earlier, like from a spiritual level and even a social level. Like, God, it feels so good when you can open yourself up to the universe, to the divine, to a friend, to family. And I want that type of intimacy with a lover. I know it could be so good. And yet I'm so muddled inside and uncomfortable inside that I can't get. But I have a sense that it can be good because I have this analogous experience over here. So there was a sense that there was a promised land on either side. Theres also just the breaking point of like, yeah, what was it doing inside? Im not totally sure, but I know that since ive begun my sexual reawakening journey, ive gotten way healthier physically. Im in the best shape of my life. And I, like, for the first time in my life, started being able to exercise regularly. I always would try and I fop right away. I would just lose discipline and focus or I'd hurt myself and then I would quit or I'd get sick once and then quit. And as I began to get more in touch with the erotic in my body, I began feeling more at home in my body and more energy in my body. Exercise stopped being a drag and started being a joy, and it was kind of necessary, and lifting weights, which is most of the exercise that I do, but in a high intensity way. So lots of breathing, and my heart's racing the whole time. My cardiovascular system is being really activated. The grunting and making noise and being okay with your body making noise. I took a sex class online when I started doing this awakening thing. This is ridiculous, but I invented a new screen name and found a way to hide the money. I don't know who was going to. The government was going to. I was so ashamed to even do this, but I found somebody online who had a six session pre recorded course. I'm like, how to get in touch with your sex life, or whatever. And it was great. And one of the things I remember that I took away from this was learn how to make noise in sex. And one of the ways you can do that is by making noise if you work out, okay. And I thought about how for many people, the first time, they sort of get in touch with their sexuality is like masturbation when they're a teenager going through puberty, and it's like your parents are in the house, and so you're being really quiet, and so you try to have really quiet sexual experience or quietly orgasm. And so I don't know if this sounds too weird, but keep going.
[34:13] Valerie: Keep going.
[34:14] John: Yeah. Exercising and doing physical activity and making noise with it. And then I was doing some yoga stuff, and this teacher was like, do the ocean breath. Be loud as hell when you're breathing out and breathing in and, like, take up audible space and in your body. So, I don't know, I felt like I was allowed to be a little more animal, a little bit more embodied. And then I found that to be a spiritual experience as well. And in western religion, the soul and the body have been torn apart and said that they're completely different and they're really at odds with each other. And especially western Christianity is like, the soul and the spirit is good, the body is bad, the body is animal and has to be tamed and domesticated and controlled by the spirit. And I think that's so destructive. I think it's very patriarchal because also the spirit and the mind and stuff is associated with the masculine, and the body is associated with the feminine. And so it's this hierarchical thing, rather than putting them in balance and harmony together, integrating them, which I think the masculine feminine integrated, is so healthy, and the body and the mind integrated, or the body and the mind or the spirit integrated itself. So, yeah, I found myself way healthier as I've gone through this, more fulfilled, more confident in the way that I moved through the world. I felt like for a long time, I hunched over, and now I, like, I have a level of swagger, and I like it.
[35:55] Valerie: Yeah. Well, another ayurveda tidbit for you. The sanskrit word for health, for perfect health, is swaste, and it's actually translated literally as being established in the self. So, meaning self can be like the ego self, but it can also be your higher spiritual self, and being established in both of those aspects. And so when you are in perfect health, you know who you are and you know why you're here. And it makes total sense to me that when you were able to work through your own intimacy issues and embrace your sexuality, that that is a part of yourself that was out of alignment, out of balance that you brought back and you brought that, you know, establishment of who you are. So, yes.
[36:54] John: Oh, I love that. What's the word again?
[36:56] Valerie: Swasta.
[36:57] John: Swasta, yeah, establishment of the self. Yes. Yeah, that's perfect. You know, I felt really, like, on shaky ground, on no ground, just spinning in the chaos of insecurity and shame and minimization. And I don't want to overplay it. I wasn't pulling my hair out every day or whatever, but just in a very normal way, closed off. I say that normal thing because I think it's important. I realized so many people walk around thinking that we're broken, that we're uniquely ****** up, that we're uniquely damaged in some way because people don't talk about it very much. And when we begin to open up and talk like we did in those glide circles about, it wasn't really about sex so much, but it was about our fears and our worries and our insecurities and our addictions. Clyde was big on addiction, how like everybody has. Because I worked with so many people with addiction, we're all in recovery. We all have addictions, and that framing, I think, can be really helpful. So I was addicted to hiding my arrows, and I'm in recovery now.
[38:20] Valerie: It's been such a long time since I've thought about that experience. I remember being just very emotionally volatile. You know, when I first started doing these sharing circles, it would be very common for me to, like, cry a lot. And I know it probably happened a few times in that circle, and just, like, not being able to control or, like, really process thoroughly why I was feeling that way. And I think since that, since I've grown several decades later, I guess. And being more willing to look at the crying has made it easier for me to process why and just have a healthier relationship with my emotions, too.
[39:16] John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of remember you having. Being very passionate in the circles.
[39:28] Valerie: Yeah. I have such a terrible memory. So I have no, like, I really don't have much of a recollection of what I was, why, why I was crying or anything like that, or even what I was passionate about.
[39:39] John: Well, I mean, it's 17 years ago. I can't totally remember, but I remember you. You were full of pathos and energy and life and kind of fury and. And love. I think we were experiencing all this injustice in the world and the suffering of people. And that can be. That's a lot. Not that you hadn't been, you weren't aware of it before, but you care. You have an open. An open heart. This is what the work you're doing is. Open hearted work, in my opinion.
[40:09] Valerie: Yeah. And it's really interesting now because I think the world is like, right now is in more turmoil than it has been before. At least that's how it seems sometimes. But my relationship with that turmoil has changed so much and because I guess, and I know that I used to feel things very deeply and I used to make it very personal to my internal experience. And I've had to realize, like, I can't take on the weight of the world. And something that I noticed in my own body and that I asked an ayurvedic doctor about, actually, at some point it was like I was having, well, I had like a chronic shoulder injury and I was also having hip pain. And he was saying, like, you know, when you feel this pain all the time in the shoulders, you're taking the weight of the world.
[41:06] John: Yes.
[41:07] Valerie: When you feel the pain in your hips, you don't feel like you have any grounding of who you are. So just things to think about. I often think back to that time of like, yeah, it's just like I felt like I was trying to find myself by taking on the weight of the world. That was the way I could insert myself and be like, yes, I matter, but it's nothing, it's not sustainable. And I think it's also. You're not actually learning who you are by trying to take on everybody else's problems.
[41:40] John: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we internalize stuff and just hold back or hold it in, I relate to that. Yeah. I feel like part of the work of serving others. I did this as a pastor and now as a coach. And is learning how to have. What's the establishment word?
[42:04] Valerie: Swasta.
[42:05] John: Swasta is to be established in yourself enough that you can have healthy boundaries emotionally, be porous enough to welcome in, to care, to not be closed emotionally. If a client or somebody working with or community feels like you don't actually care, what are you doing? But to care without, like, losing yourself, you know, I don't know if that connects to the swast, the concept of establishment in oneself.
[42:33] Valerie: Yeah. I mean, because the true spiritual leaders, the true or any kind of anyone in helping position that in order to maintain your ability to help people, I think you do need to be able to maintain who you are and your core in order not to be shaken by it.
[42:52] John: Yeah.
[42:53] Valerie: And, like, I keep bringing up these ayurvedic concepts because they're just like, that's why I'm doing ayurveda, is because they have language for all of this. When you're. When you're very clear in who you are and you have that clarity around you, and there are just. There's, like, bombs going off this way and all this. It's called sattva, and it's called clarity. The ability to just, like, be very clearer, to see everything that's going on without internalizing it.
[43:24] John: Yes.
[43:24] Valerie: Right. Whereas someone who is very moved by the waves, that's Rajas. That's the energy of turbulence. And turbulence is like, you have turbulence because you see the injustices of the world, and you also see, like, a little bit of the glimmer of the peace that could be, but because you're here, you don't really have access to that piece, and you're trying to. By moving more, because that's the only way you know how you're trying to get to that piece, but that keeps you in the turmoil.
[43:55] John: Yes. Oh, I love it. Yeah. I'm thinking about also relationships. And one of the big parts of, in my experience and study, erotic intimacy requires some degree of groundedness in the self, rather than what I think a lot of people do is we have this romantic notion of total merging with the other person, and you're just like one, rather than two or more beings finding each other and connecting and interpenetrating, but still maintaining selfhood within it. And to bring this down a little less abstract, one of the big killers of good sexuality is both people trying to be constantly, like, is this, you know, like, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? What do you mean, do? Like, two people just asking each other. It's like trying to pick a movie on Netflix with your partner. What do you want to watch? What do you want to watch? I don't know. And you spend an hour not deciding and getting increasingly annoyed about what should you watch or what should you eat or whatever. How do you want to have sex? And do you like it? Rather than claiming who you are, what you want, and having good boundaries and consent and safety and attunement, but being attuned to another person without losing yourself or surrendering your agency and your own desire at the altar of the other person making them happy. Unless that's your dynamic or something in a very contained, kinky way. But I think a lot of couples, including me, for a while, it's just like, how do I figure out what she wants and give that again? Be thoughtful about your partner once, but own yourself. Learn yourself. Learn your desires. Share your desires. I feel like there's almost nothing sexier than somebody who knows what they want, whether that's an erotic, romantic context or a business context or somebody who's clear. It's like, now we can play.
[46:07] Valerie: Yeah. Yeah. When the. I guess the guideline or the expectations, all of that are out in the open where you can own what it is that you want, it makes everything so much easier. And you're absolutely right in that. I think a lot of people just aren't willing to admit what they want. And it's not just in an erotic context, like, all the time, they're unwilling to put themselves first because it's seen as selfish.
[46:35] John: Yes. Yeah. And, like, yeah, I wonder about that. Do you think it's selfish to know you want to ask for it?
[46:44] Valerie: No, but, like, I think that's just. I think that's just been the. When I talk to people, like, who. Especially people who have been in caretaker roles for a long time or, like, just are, like, you know, in my culture, taking care of your parents is a huge deal. Right. And it's like. It's not even a question. It's, like, baked in. It can be incredibly hard to voice that. Like, you want something different or you want it done a different way. And I've seen, especially my mom, suffer because of that. And it's when you know that your soul is kind of pulling you in a different direction or you want something different and you know that you're not being taken care of, and yet you can't say that. Or you think that you can't say that. That's where the suffering comes in hard.
[47:39] John: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, how do you. How do you. How have you worked through that for yourself?
[47:47] Valerie: I mean, I've spent so many years denying what I want and, like, actually, like, playing mind tricks on myself to be like, well, this is almost what you want, or, like, this is, like, closer to what you want, and this is good enough, et cetera, et cetera. Like, I've done so many versions of the compromise, and I know at my core I'm actually very stubborn, that I want to live the life that I want to live, that finally I was like, I am not gonna do all these back bend, twist, turn, et cetera, et cetera, to try to make myself to be normal, quote, unquote. It's just. It's too much, and I'm playing small, and I am no longer anywhere close to the person that I wanna be. When I was in my mid, early twenties, I felt actually very established in who I was. And it was that taste of that. Right. It was just a very unique set of circumstances. I think that I was given the opportunity to do that. And when that was essentially, I changed my setting, and all of a sudden that was taken away. It really made me think about, what is it in life that makes me happy, and what is the stuff that people say is going to make me happy that actually has contributed to a lot of years and years of misery.
[49:12] John: Mmm. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. That convincing yourself. I love that you named that. Convincing yourself that it's good or that you're happy or that it's what you want is what other people want. Or if I heard you right on.
[49:28] Valerie: That, but, yeah, well, I've learned to question everything.
[49:32] John: Yes.
[49:33] Valerie: So whether that be national identity, it could be social norms. Like, even I've learned questioning higher education, I've questioned nine to five jaw, questioned the not being able to support my, like, what does it look like to support myself? Questioned relationship with money, everything. Because a lot of it just hasn't worked out in the way that I want it to work out. And when it has worked out that in a conventional way, I found myself feeling very trapped.
[50:06] John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. These big questions that, yeah, people, once again, they fear to dread. They fear to tread them. They dread to dread to tread in those places because of what can happen, how it can shake your foundations. And yet that's what we're talking about here, right? Like, talking about transformation. And there's no shortcut, in my experience, just leaping through and getting totally free. You gotta shake the tree and be willing to go through the pain. Of losing something in order to find a better future. I've got this. I've been meaning to talk about this necklace that I'm wearing. I know the viewers can't see this, but you can.
[50:50] Valerie: Oh, yeah, I see it. Yeah.
[50:51] John: What do you see when you see this?
[50:53] Valerie: Angel wings.
[50:54] John: Angel wings. I bought this a couple months ago. I was in Guatemala climbing some volcanoes, and I found this artist, and I fell in love with it. And then I've been asking people. They see, a lot of people see a phoenix.
[51:05] Valerie: Ah.
[51:06] John: And it's kind of this. I saw it a bit more angelic or like Hermes, the messenger Zeus, who, like, foots between the divine and the human world, back and forth, which is what I feel like I do. But I've really been digging how the majority of people who I ask, I say it's a phoenix. I'm wearing it, like, almost every day to cultivate. I feel like it absorbs good energy and love and care and power, and that also serves as a little protective talisman. And when I'm stressed and kind of use it as a shield. Shield? Energy.
[51:44] Valerie: Grounding.
[51:45] John: Grounding. Yeah. But, yeah. The Phoenix symbol and metaphor for me has been really helpful in this journey, especially when I'm very lost, which I have been for a while, especially spiritually, as I've evolved spiritually and as I've questioned a lot of the same things you have around. Yeah. Relationship to the world, to religion, to money, to work, to establish schools of knowledge and academia. And they have a very privileged academic background. So it's like, oh, don't question that, because I won on that. Let's keep that one.
[52:30] Valerie: I mean, so did I, but here we are, right?
[52:34] John: Yeah. Yeah. And, like, what the hell? No, I think it's great to really question all that stuff if you have people to question with. I think that's. And that's what, I don't know exactly what you do in your work, but I feel like part of what I get to do is hold space for people to ask those questions and not feel like they will be cast into the void by themselves, but to be a lifeline to people who are really questioning their relationship to the erotic, to the spiritual, to the relationship structures that they have.
[53:11] Valerie: Well, that's the thing. I think a lot of people, when the fear comes in, it's actually fear of being cast out of their group or where they feel accepted. It's like, if you want to do it this way, you're not this religion anymore. If you want to do it this way, you're not this national identity. Whatever. Whatever.
[53:31] John: Right.
[53:32] Valerie: And it's people really at the core of it. They really want to feel like they belong.
[53:39] John: Yes.
[53:41] Valerie: And we have, as a society, I feel like we have made very rigid definitions of what groups are. And that makes it hard for people to question because that's when they'll feel like they'll be. There's no room for them if they are different.
[53:57] John: Totally. Yeah. I mean, I've been doing men's work recently. It's hosted last month retreat for men in masks who are working through their relationship to masculinity. And for a lot of guys, they're afraid to do inner work. I mean, when I've looked at the coaching world and just personal development world outside of fitness, men are definitely the minority of participants. I'm in a graduate school program right now, therapy, and there's 5% men in the program. People who are doing inner work stuff are, by and large, women and femmes and non binary people. And, like, anyway, this comes back to this thing we're talking about with being afraid of getting kicked out and, like, men who start doing inner work and who start getting vulnerable and sensitive. And you can be, like, a tough bro and also want to talk about real stuff with your heart. It can terrify other guys. They just like, I don't know how to do this. And, like, I don't know if we want to bring this guy around because he's gonna. He's gonna, like, push us to talk about our actual lives, and that's. That's, like, not acceptable in a lot of male spaces. Yeah. It's. It's too threatening. And you can lose friends and you can become a pariah, but then you need to find new. New people.
[55:29] Valerie: Yeah.
[55:29] John: Who accepts who want you.
[55:32] Valerie: Yeah, it is. You know, I keep thinking about. I listen to a lot of, actually, I listen to a lot of males who have done the inner work right. And who are in the public eye that's really, like, namely, like Tim Ferriss and people like that. And, you know, they're always talking about how, like, you are the combination of the five closest people around you and, like, if you want to change who you are and you have to change also who you spend your time with. And I think that is the scary thing for a lot of people, is being willing to let go of certain relationships as well, and that is incredibly difficult.
[56:18] John: Yeah.
[56:19] Valerie: So. Yeah.
[56:23] John: Yeah, yeah, I like that. I haven't heard that five people around you think I'm immediately thinking of my people because I'm quite intentional with my circles of connection, very deliberate around. I feel like I have three concentric circles of people in my life.
[56:42] Valerie: I mean, it is about being supported in the way that you want to be supported, inspired in the way that you want to be inspired and accepted as well. And all of that, you know, if you find yourself fearing retaliation, that is something just to look at, to be like, is that within me that I just. Or is it that I really am not supported as. By the people around me? So, anyway, those are huge questions, probably, and take a bit of time to really work through. So I'm just mentioning it as something that I have heard and that I continue to think about and work through.
[57:19] John: Yeah, I love that. And, yeah, I have noticed, you know, sometimes I'm afraid to be revealing with my life and who I am and to various people. And, like, sometimes it's warranted and sometimes it's, as you said, it's, like, within myself, right. Of something that's not actually real. It's a monster of my own making. And people surprise you all the time with what they can hold.
[57:44] Valerie: Yeah. All right, well, I think we're coming up on our time here. So as my last question, actually, I want to ask, since you are a coach and you're just starting out on your journey with this, who are you looking to work with and what kind of problems are you, like, what do you want to see when people come through your door?
[58:06] John: Yeah. So I say that I primarily work with people on these two tracks, spirituality and sexuality. And within that, there's kind of different folks. So with the sexuality stuff, one group is people who are experiencing what I call erotic malaise. So they feel asleep to their desires and afraid of their desires or just unaware. I've talked to people who are just like, I don't even know. People are like, what do you want? And I'm like, just be honest. And they're like, I don't ******* know. I don't know what I want. Maybe I don't want anything. And it's like, all right, well, let's explore that. So I love that. And then also, people working through purity culture, which is like a term in Christianity in particular, although it could apply to other stuff as well. Any kind of high demand religious community that teaches people to be afraid of their sexuality, helping people to reclaim and kind of work through the trauma of that and develop a liberated sexuality that can be deeply spiritual, too. So for buzzloads, folks, the kind of core work is befriending your desires is what I call it, like, coming to terms with desire and not being a bad thing, but a wonderful thing that has so much to teach us and then the spiritual side of things. I like working with people who are mainly. There's two types there, too. One is folks who have very little spiritual background and religious background. There's like. I don't know. I feel like there's more to life than work and money and status and stuff. There's something more, and I don't know how to get to it. I don't want to go to church, for Christ's sake. Why would I do that? That's obviously a dead end, and I'm not agreeing with that, but that's how a lot of people feel. So it's like, I will be your custom chaplain, help you navigate that for yourself and develop your own spiritual life. And then it's people who are really deep into their spiritual experience in life, working with religious professionals, sometimes spiritual leaders who need a place to open up and feel really safe. Because when you're in the public eye like that, you can feel pretty alone. And that you can't really bring questions because it could be too disruptive to people. So I like being available to have rich, ongoing spiritual discussions without any guardrails, with deep folks in their spirituality. So that's a lot of nerd stuff.
[01:00:39] Valerie: Great. So if people want to find you and work with you, where should they go?
[01:00:44] John: They can go to my website, johnhelmier.com. helmier is h e l m I e r e. I'm the only one. And there's only two helmiers in the world because it's a made up last name. My wife and I combined our last names when we got married. Our birth names mushed them together into a new combination. So it's a made up name, but, yeah, I could find me there.
[01:01:06] Valerie: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, John, for being here today. Really enjoyed hearing your story and look forward to connecting again in the future.
[01:01:15] John: Yes, it's so good to talk to you. I may thank you for reconnecting with me after 17 years. I know we've had little moments of back and forth, but, like, I love that you did that, and it's been really like a beautiful, full circle experience to come up with you.
[01:01:39] Valerie: Hey there. If you've been tuning in and find yourself wondering how you can also rise from the ashes and live your best life, then I've got something special for you. This podcast from the Ashes is a project of intrepid wellness, where we are dedicated to inspiring people like you to take that next step towards a more vibrant life. I'd love to invite you to schedule a free 30 minutes connection and clarity call with me. It's the perfect opportunity to say hello, share your goals for the future with someone who wants to see you thrive and get you one step closer to living your best life. The link to book is in the show notes. Looking forward to meeting you soon.
