In life we can hope to listen as deeply as we can to our inner guide as it helps us make the necessary choices in our lives for our inner growth. At times the reason for being on a particular path may not appear as evident at the time, but later on, reveal it's reason as a service to ourselves and others journeys in unexpected ways. In this
Awakin call, moderated by Vinya Sankaran Vasu, and Kanchan Gokhale, guest speaker Janis Daddona shows that when we tune in to our hearts, we are freed from the control of our minds and the journey lends itself to serve in far greater ways than we ever imagined.

Dancing to the beat of your own drum. At your own pace and time.

Vinya: Janis has danced through many of interesting journeys and experiences, and reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Rumi:
“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”

She is a known fellow Service Space volunteer and all rounder on Awaking calls. What struck me about Janis is her dedication, excellence and and joy to any task that she takes on. What strikes me even more was the vast breath of her experiences, experiences that we're possible due to her tenacity and agility. Which in turn has enabled her to fly gracefully from one experience to another. To name a few, Janis has played guitar and written her own music for twenty years, worked in a library, in a film and media department and has been an academic director and adviser. She has also worked for human resources, has dabbled with a business start up, provides voice over services for self help books and is an actor at a community theater. Last but not least, she has worked as professional a therapist and been a Reiki practitioner. And the list could go on and on. These labels aside, Jan is a wonderful human being, who strives to fill our cup of life with acts of kindness, goodness and service.

Vinya: You've had so many different experiences. What has guided you, as you made decisions and moved through your journey? What are some of the things that come to mind as you've flown through some of these experiences?

Janis: I'm deeply deeply intellectual but I am also deeply spiritual. I say, my mind is my playground, my ideas are my toys, and for as long as I am fascinated by something, I will engage with it.
But what will typically happen is that I reach a point in a certain position, be it a volunteer position or a job position or whatever, and it no longer fits. You know like how snakes have to shed their skin, so it is with me. Intellectually and spiritually I have to think what more do I have to do to stay here, am I somehow resisting something. Do I need to approach something differently? I will keep working and working it, until finally I say, nope, I'm done. It's time to go. Generally speaking I take a long step out into space and trust.

Vinya: It takes a certain level of being tuned in. For some of us, we are sometimes mechanically doing the same thing over and over and are not as tuned in At what point, do you know when you're done, that is time for you to move on to something else?

Janis: when I find that I can no longer nudge a process, a project or a policy that is more ethical or more compassionate. It is like getting this feeling of being spent and there is nothing more to be done. When I got divorced, and this goes back fifteen years ago, I stayed in (the marriage) longer than I needed to because I was afraid to leave, I didn't know how I would take care of myself, but when the decision finally came to leave I said something to myself and that has lived with me ever since, and that was “Never be in a position in which you cannot walk away.” For some people that may sound like not trying hard enough, but I think, and I really do think, I put a lot of effort into trying hard enough.

Vinya: I do want to touch on that part of the journey, when you decided to end your marriage. It takes a lot of courage, sometimes we don't even realize when something is not working for us and we go on doing it because that is what we are used to, or that is what gives us safety and courage. Sometimes it is hard to know what is right for you in the moment right? It takes a while sometimes before you actually know. Did you go through phases of doubt? Could you maybe tell a little of how that was for you?

Janis: My then husband is a good man... I think he had some very deep wounds, and they surfaced within the marriage and I was not in a position to heal them for him.
We can get really comfortable being in a role, and if I am a 'victim', then my husband must be cast in a role of ' victimizer'. In which case he is always wrong and I am always, you know, 'poor me'. I could no longer grow as a human being in that role. When I finally got to that point where I said I no longer what to be a victim anymore, I could look at him and say to myself, he cannot be the bad guy anymore. With that realization, I said to myself, how can I improve this marriage, how can I make it better? This absolute clarity that came through and said: You cannot make it better, intrinsically it just doesn't work.

Vinya: I think the most important lesson for me from that whole experience was that you went away from blame to acceptance of who you are and acceptance of him. To seeing the goodness in both of you and moving on. That is what is beautiful.

Meeting them where they are at. Not where you wish them to be.

Vinya: I've been excited to ask you about what got you inspired to get into counseling work?

Janis: It kept occurring to me that people kept asking me for advise and even at the library in which I worked at, I would just be sitting there and people would be tell me their life stories. I thought there has to be something to this and I looked out around for counseling programs. I began my studies and I am so glad that I took my masters, and while I am not a practicing therapist anymore it just opened my eyes to how I am in the world and how all of us are there in the world. it was on one hand very intense, but on the other hand allowed me to see how we connect in ways we cannot even begin to imagine when we can drop the sense of control.
In the sense like I need to fix person. It was not always easy for me to do. At times I couldn't do it. But when I could sit there and simply bare witness to what another human being was sharing with me, it was invariably a privilege to have someone trust you with their pain or their confusion or their fear. You connect in ways that defies imagining. Although I suspect many of us at Service Space do have that depth of empathy and compassion.

There were often times I would tell students I supervised, that it is even more important to understand what the client is not saying. So you begin to pay attention to silence. What is this person still keeping hidden because they are not ready to go there? What is this person's body language saying that their words are belying?

I can remember a young woman I counseled, it was heart breaking, she was almost angelic, exquisitely beautiful and fragile and she was a victim of incest at an early age and was now working at a gentleman’s club, but had some hidden aspirations to do something far more worthy of her intelligence and she would speak in the most controlled elegant voice and I remember she would say to me “You know it really is just a means to an end and I can stand it and they protect us. They never touch us and it is really OK” And then I asked her:”then why is your fist clenched?” and she looked down and realized. And that became the doorway by which we were able to talk about something else. It is only in the really special friendship or in the therapeutic relationship, that you dare to go certain places and you got to as a therapist keep your work as scrupulously clean as possible so that your issues don't interfere with the clients issues. It became a sacred trust to work with whomever came through the door. It wasn't always easy. I wasn't always successful. I wasn't always the best counselor I could have been, but I was just graced with some moments of deep intimacy and I just have to hope that somewhere along the way it helped people move a little further along the way to the next part of their lives.

Vinya: So what inspired you to do counseling, you've touched on this a little bit, that it was amazing to serve people in this way, but how did that help you in your own personal journey?

Janis: For me it compelled me to take a look at my own agenda. Not just with clients, but with friends or with family members and indeed with myself. To ask, is this the truth that I am telling myself. So I take whatever it is in my own life that I learned in becoming a counselor and I apply it to myself and I see where am I not being truthful. Further asking if there is there some more depth that I still need to plum in order to get to a truer sense of who I am? And those tools that I learned and those questions that I learned live with me as I continue to make myself as authentic as I can.

Vinya: With counseling it is important to keep our boundaries and also to be completely present. On one side you have to be completely present and on the other side it comes with a level of detachment. Can you tell us some practical things that you learned in that experience and how they informed you in whatever way they did in your life?


Janis: ..In terms of other therapeutic issues there are certain phrases that we learn as students, that stick with us. Sometimes though I’m really good at over thinking. For example is this what the client really meant or is the client talking about this? ...It helps me realize that something just have to be taken at face value. ...Other things I recall is that it doesn't matter what your particular psycho-therapeutic practice is, what matters is your clients preferred psycho-therapeutic practice. So that helps me in terms of how I want to get to how someone feels, but they are not worried about how they feel, they are worried about how they are acting. So I ask how can I meet that person where they are rather than where I wish they would be for my comfort.

Vinya: Mmm so true. Absolutely. Meeting your clients where they are at, as in “it's not about you it's about what they need.”

Janis: I’m reading Parker Palmers book; Hidden Wholeness, in which he talks about this very thing and he talks about a Quaker practice, in which you really have to be trained in witnessing when someone needs help with a problem and how it is not about you but about the person seeking help and how you can hold space for them to tap into their own inner wisdom. It is an amazing book, and yes it is so important for us to remember when someone is in pain, we can't be too desirous of a quick fix because what we're really saying is that I can't bare the anxiety of your pain so change, so that I don't have to bare your anxiety anymore. But sometimes we just have to be there in the pain and to hold them in that space so they can be as they need to be. Very hard to do, but if it is in our consciousness then at least we can say let me stop this and trying doing that.

Vinya: How would you know if a meeting with a client was successful or not? How would you know if your clients are making changes in their lives?

Janis: I remember a new client calling me up on the phone. She asked me what is your success rate and how can you tell if a meeting is successful or not? I said very honestly, I can' know entirely if a session is successful. However I will tell you a story of someone else's client, a man who was an alcoholic. This client called his counselor and said: “ you have to see me, I need to come back in you got to help me.” and the counselor refused to see him and said: “ there is nothing more I can do, you have to go to AA.” Ten years later the man called up the counselor and thanked her for refusing to see him. because she refused to see him, he realized he was in worse shape than he thought and he took himself to AA. It was his wake up call. He has been sober ever since. We don’t know when we are successful, it is a life long process. The best I can hope for is that I move somebody who’s a little off center and on to a different trajectory. For example, have I given them any more resources? Have I given then any more insights? Have I given them any more ways to see themselves in a different way. And then as one very wise supervisor told me, “ once the ball starts rolling, your job as a counselor is to is to get the hell out of the way.”

We are the conduit with which whatever healing needs to take place between the individual and God.


Vinya: You've given so much insight into how counseling works. You're enabling the other person to sort through their own feelings, see through it and make a plan of action. I know your time in counseling led you to get into Reiki, so would love to hear more on this.

Janis: Sure, I got into Reiki because I was working with a client I was having a really difficult time working with and rather than put a label on it, I will simply describe what was going on. Whenever she would walk into the office I would get icy cold. And one night a colleague walked past my office after this client left and she said “ my god, are you alright? You are as white as as a ghost.” Every session I had to put a coat on when listening to my client. I started to ask what's going on, there is something here that they didn't teach me (in school) and so let me find out about it.

Another counselor was a Reiki master and led me to ask what is this energy healing all about.
I took a Reiki training with her, and that is when the nickel dropped. That there is more going on whether in a therapeutic relationship or any relationship. It's more than words, it's more than behavior. We exchange energy. We are moving into energy fields. What I realized was that this woman was so compromised in her own energy being that she had to hook into my energy and drain it off in order to sustain herself. That is why I became so cold and had always turned so pale...learned (Reiki training) everything made sense, and I started to approach energy as conceptualized in a therapeutic relationship and that really took me into some interesting places and that really helped me understand my clients as well as my self better.

Vinya: How does Reiki work? Can we can give good energy to people? Or is it possible to channel negative energy that comes from people?

Janis: Energetic healing has many traditions. Reiki is the Japanese version of the healing of laying on of the hands. With that we are instructed that we are not the healers. We are the conduit with which whatever healing needs to take place between the individual and God and we are just essentially just working there. We provide the hands but we are just the conduit. In terms of giving good energy and dealing with negative energy... I find that literally being on the earth, going on to the lawn or going to the ground placing your hands on the ground, and drinking water helps bring out the negative energy. In breathing as well. We do this in meditation. You know can do deep breathing. Its not always possible to flip a switch and suddenly feel fine, because our bodies are going to react physiologically as well as energetically.. when we talk about negative energy I think we talk about the lasting impact of that anxiety and sometimes it does take a while for the body to take its time to cleanse it out of our system, not pretend that if I touch someone's forehead suddenly it is blue skies.
But it remains yet another way to conceptualize our being and how can we truly monitor our thoughts in such we can ask the question, is this thought trying to control or is this thought trying to give me freedom? Do in need to protect or do I need to be right? When we ask those questions, as even thoughts are energy, can we change the thoughts and even the energy starts to change.

On a previous Awakin call we had Rahul Brown on our program. He had an abusive boss and all he kept saying and thinking was “ I love you, I love you, I love you” and the outcome was that he (the boss) stopped yelling at him. So thoughts are energy. It's not always possible to catch the thoughts, but thank god you always get a second chance. You always have the opportunity to go in a second time and try to do something different.

In the end it will always be fine.


Palavi, guest caller asks: I was curious about your journey on trust.

Janis: Let me leave no one with the assumption that this is easy, because terror is my constant companion. What I do is based on trust..so it is with our own story, you're led by some internal guidance or divine guidance. That doesn't necessarily guarantee that it's going to be a be of roses. There have been moments when I have spent the darkest nights, just railing against god, doubting my own sanity, and it is in those moments you realize, that you're called to walk a different path. Right now I got an fifteen hour a week job in a development office writing grants, you can't get much more normal than that. But I walk some scary landscapes myself, but I have to because I can't get to where I need to got by walking the conventional life. I learned to trust not because I think that things are always fine, I trust because I know that eventually things will be fine. That is a very important distinction.