Apprentice of Love: Reverence, Grief and Holding Space with Astrid Brinck
A single bow can hold a whole way of living: one that welcomes grief, honors endings, and leans fully into love.
In this episode of the Rose Woman podcast, Christine Marie Mason sits down with Astrid Brinck, a contemporary teacher and integrative therapist from Chile whose life’s work orbits reverence, grief, and the deep craft of holding space. Together, they explore how natural cycles, fully felt sorrow, and conscious endings can carve us into more joyful, present, and reverent human beings.
About Astrid Brinck
Astrid Brinck is an apprentice of love, a contemporary teacher, facilitator, and integrative therapist from Chile. For more than three decades, she has devoted herself to understanding the maturation of the human heart through the lens of nature’s cycles and life’s initiations. Drawing from her research and lived experience, she created The Circle, a process for self‑mastery, along with the Inner Freedom Process and Reverent Leadership Training. Astrid works with leaders, organizations, and communities worldwide, focusing on cultures of care, grief and completion work, and the subtle relational skills required to hold space with integrity. She also trains facilitators in the “temptations of the facilitator” and how to create containers where people remain fully sovereign while being deeply supported.
Listen now to journey with Astrid into a different way of relating to love, loss, leadership, and the sacred work of simply being human.
(00:00:00): Introduction of Astrid by Christine: background, work with nature’s cycles, “The Circle,” inner freedom, reverent leadership, and holding space.
(00:03:19): What is Reverence for Astrid?
(00:05:05): Astrid’s childhood in Chile
(00:07:00): Fire and loss
(00:08:41): Grief work
(00:11:40): Detailed description of Astrid’s Circle/Cycles process
(00:19:34): Signs that something is “too loud”
(00:21:38): Ongoing nature of self-mastery and humility
(00:27:23): Cultures of care & endings – how exits are handled creates or erodes trust and belonging.
(00:29:20): Concrete examples of conscious endings
(00:33:21): Overview of The Circle & reverent leadership
(00:37:11): Introduction to The Four Freedoms as the core framework
(00:37:34): First Freedom – freedom to be yourself: owning past, scars, mistakes, and rejecting shame and spiritual bypassing.
(00:40:41): Second Freedom – freedom to relate with what is; legitimate self and legitimate other, compassion, and the right to change one’s mind.
(00:43:31): Third Freedom – freedom to participate in the world; movement rather than perfection, many forms of participation, and critique of “excellence” as arrogance.
(00:45:59): Fourth Freedom – freedom to transcend via reverence and bowing; daily practice of returning “home,” beyond organized religion.
(00:49:06): What are the qualities of a wonderful facilitator?
(00:49:44): Temptations of the facilitator (part 1) – taking credit for participants’ achievements, over‑owning failures, and crossing boundaries with praise.
(00:53:12): Principle of only helping those who ask
(00:57:14): Temptations of the facilitator (part 2) – seeing intuition as “the truth” rather than a source of inquiry; attachment to outcomes; timing that isn’t the client’s.
(01:03:49): Hygiene in language and attitude
(01:07:56): Elements of a Clean Container
(01:12:20): Closing: Astrid’s current Offerings
(01:15:02): Christine’s Closing Reflections
Helpful links:
Astrid Brinck - Check out her Instagram at @astridbrinck and LinkedIn
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Transcript
Astrid Brinck 0:01
I am an apprentice of love, and I think that's how I'm going to die. Because every time that I thought I arrived somewhere, life came and said, "Really? Here, take this humble pie. I was humbled and brought back to my knees. So now a part of me-it's like on my knees at all times.
Christine Mason 0:23
Hello, everyone. It's Christine Marie Mason, and this is the Rose Woman podcast on love and liberation. My guest today is Astrid Brinck, a contemporary teacher and integrative therapist from Chile. She's a medicine woman and a songwriter, and frankly, one of the most careful students of the human heart that I've ever sat with. She supports leaders and organizations and communities all over the world, and has spent much of her practice studying the wisdom in nature cycles and how they mirror the maturing of the human heart. And from that research, she created something called the Circle, which is her process for self mastery, she teaches the inner freedom process and the reverent leadership training, and trains facilitators in the deep craft of holding space for others. So before we begin, I'll give you a little preview of some of the ideas that you'll hear, so you can listen for them. And the first is reverence. Reverence was actually the place where we connected first. I had just released the book Reverence on Creating Ritual in Modern Life, and this is one of her top themes. But for Astrid, as you'll hear, Reverence is our relationship with something bigger than us that we cannot name. So listen for that. Listen for grief because she describes how every new loss brings us to the same inner landscapes of return, where any new loss meets the uncried tears stored inside us from other losses, and then what fully felt grief might do in comparison. She works with endings, cultures of care. We'll talk a little bit about that. Listen for her talking about the four freedoms, and then a mini class, like almost a master class in the craft of facilitation. If you hold space for anybody in a circle or a classroom, or in a therapy room or a boardroom, her teaching on the temptations of the facilitator is truly remarkable. I took notes the whole way through, and one more thing: in the big fire in Southern California and the Palisades fire, Astrid lost everything she owned seven weeks after moving in. She calls it an initiation. It's a pretty rare attitude, but in a world right now where there's so much that is changing or dying off, so many of the ways we expected the world to be, the skills that she brought to bear to meet the fire, are ones that are relevant for almost all of us. I would venture to guess, and Astrid has also become my friend. When I first met with her, I felt that I had run into someone who was on the same frequency, walking a parallel road, and I think you'll hear that recognition alive between us in this conversation, where we are discovering together as we go. What what is reverence in your worldview? What does it mean to you?
Astrid Brinck 3:19
There's so many different layers, but I would say that the deepest one is our ability to relate with something that that's bigger than us that we cannot name, and still honor and know that something bigger made me. Something bigger shapes me, and something bigger will take me away. And it's this humbleness to know that I am-I don't want to say at the mercy, because there's a combination with a little free will that we have. But I am in relationship with that which created all of this?
Christine Mason 4:02
It's kind of a stance of wonder.
Astrid Brinck 4:04
Yes, all wonder and honoring. I really have a practice of bowing. I physically bow.
Christine Mason 4:12
It feels like that would lend itself to like walking through the world with greater care and a gentleman to other humans and also all of nature and creation.
Astrid Brinck 4:23
Absolutely, and this links to one of the main parts of my work, which is cultures of care. I love what Confucius spoke about so long ago. He said that any leader that did not have a practice of reverence, who did not see something bigger than him holding him, or holding them, holding her. Sometimes I translate from Spanish directly to English, holding them. The danger of that is that they could start acting like gods.
Christine Mason 4:58
You see that all over in leadership.
Astrid Brinck 5:00
Oh my God, I I feel that we are in in a crisis of leadership right now.
Christine Mason 5:05
Well, let's um let's go back a little bit and talk about your roots. People don't just get born out of the shell of Venus, even though you look kind of like you could have come out of the shell shell shell of Venus. You kind of do look like a buttachelli. People don't just pop out with this. Maybe you do pop out with this reverent, graceful, careful way of being. But you grew up in in Chile, immersed in the natural world. So maybe, what did your childhood in the wilderness teach you first?
Astrid Brinck 5:34
Oh well, so much. Um, I just don't want to lose sight of the threat of grief, and so I just I just want to name that as as the main teacher. I grew up in in a territory where there was a lot of catastrophe, earthquakes, tsunamis, you know, floods from the mountains were right next to the Andes mountains, Especially earthquakes, and one thing that was so wonderful to witness, and I took for granted, was the solidarity that happens and the humbleness that we all feel when we feel the force of nature. And it's not once in a blue moon, it's quite often, and so being a child who's witnessing adults in a kind of reverence because there's no other choice, there's not one human that can hold that force, that can stop that force. When that force comes, we are all on our knees, and all that we have left is holding each other's hands and saying, "Okay, we're going to bow to this, and we're going to accept what it is, and we're going to support each other to stand up again. And soon after, another movement of nature comes and reminds us to be in humbleness. I would say that this
Christine Mason 7:00
this has been huge for me. It reminds me of being in Hawaii, where when the volcano erupts, the indigenous people have a relationship to the volcano of cleaning their house and putting flowers on the bed and treating it as if she decides to take my house, it's an offering-and then the rest of those people whose homes remained come and help you rebuild. That is beautiful. It's a very different response to a volcanic flow than the people who are freaking out that Lloyd's of London wasn't paying their claim. This-what you're saying is like a theology and a cultural collaboration that evolves in face of big nature.
Astrid Brinck 7:46
Yeah. Well, not far ago, last year I lost all of my physical treasures in a fire in LA. I had just moved there seven weeks before, and the flames took so many memories, and the way that I experienced that was as an initiation, as an initiation.
Christine Mason 8:09
Many people who I know went through the the Palisades fire, they responded in so many different ways. You know, one young family used it as an opportunity to tour, to go on the road and tour, and another couple broke up because the only thing keeping them together was their house. It was it was initiation for people in in many different ways,
Astrid Brinck 8:33
in different directions,
Christine Mason 8:35
different directions, and and also some with great excitement and some with great and yet unresolved grief.
Astrid Brinck 8:41
I mean, I do believe in my work with grief, and what I have observed is that every time we experience a new loss, we go back to the same internal landscape. So every time I grieve, I go to that same room or landscape, and I get to meet all the uncried tears that have been storing themselves inside me, and so with every grief, there is a dam that opens, and other uncried tears can move as a river back to the ocean. Only through fully experiencing grief is that I can carve the depth of my joy, my ability to feel deep, real joy comes. It's given. It's yeah, carved is the best word I find. It's that carving inside of ourselves that grief, fully felt grief, and the beauty of it, like when we fully feel it, the most beautiful faces that I have seen in my life, the deepest eyes, the deepest joy and ecstasy are after a deep cry or a period where I've been. My knees.
Christine Mason 10:01
When you're explaining that, it feels like that's a large principle that goes beyond grief. Like any current experience is layering itself or tapping into the original architecture of that in the self. And if you avoid feeling it, then you sort of pile up layers of uncried tears or unmet experience, but if you allow yourself to feel it in the moment, let it go all the way through you, then there is a chance to come out to the light on the other side. And if you don't, man, you can have these incredible overwrought responses to everything because it's it's sitting on the avoidance of the feeling. So very artful to take people or to take yourself even all the way into that. Now I have a carved out cave river vision of of the of the grief
Astrid Brinck 10:57
and to go inside and the beauty of that because when I can feel it, I can own it, and when I own it, it does not own me. And only then the golden river, like the river, becomes golden, and my scar becomes. I I like to think of the idea of golden scars, and a golden scar is what appears when I go on my knees and my forehead is on the ground, and a friend's poem. I'd love it. It says, "The dust on your forehead is the crown you have been looking for your whole life. Gives me the chills.
Christine Mason 11:40
Me too. It's just writing about bhakti and devotion, and the posture of bowing genuinely can only come when you're sovereign. Like you can't really bow down to anything if you aren't sure that you can come back to yourself, or if you've abandoned yourself. But if you go into the deepest part of your heart, and from that place, put your head on the ground. What emotion! So you've spent 30 years teaching completion and cycles and death and renewal. I I feel like I want to dance into the idea of putting a framework around your direct experience and how how did that emerge? How did that grief work emerge?
Astrid Brinck 12:26
I feel that it's always personal what we do. We become good at that which we have to go through, and and I'm no exception. So I've gone through so much grief and so much Unexpected experiences that were painful that have been one initiation after the other, and so my curiosity around the maturation of the heart: how do you get there? Like I've met some people that seem to be in a place of presence. Like I've I've witnessed humans that are present, and my question was like, "How do you get there? So I have studied with so many teachers and so many modalities since I was so young, and the relationship with nature and the stillness in nature inevitably brought me to the observation of how life moves in circles and in cycles. Being a woman, I was always very curious of the bleeding and the ovulation, and so I went really deep into studying that throughout my years of fertility, understanding the mirror of the tree, my fertility cycles and the cycles of love and relationships and how everything moves in those circles. I started wondering, okay, so how is the process of leaving those circles? Like every relationship, like you and I, are starting this meeting of woman to woman friendship, sisterhood, and it has a beginning and it has a cycle, and maybe different stages, and each stage has a full circle, each feeling or being a mother, all the different stages of motherhood, or being a grandmother, and all the different stages of that, and so I started seeing that there was an order, that there were all these different realms or places where I needed to go through, and so I mapped those stadiums, those stages, and the work that I do is bringing people through those stages. It's first acknowledging being able to see something and say, "I see you, and I I I don't know it yet. Yet I know that you are mine. I I. Don't embody that yet, but I know that you are mine. That this feeling, that this grief, that this pattern, that this suffering belongs to me, and I haven't owned it. It's too loud because it still haven't found its place in my heart. And once I start that curiosity, I move to the second stage, which is acknowledgement, from acknowledgement to allowance, I allow myself to feel with you and allow you to be in my presence or to be in me. So I stop fighting with it. I stop what I'm doing, and it's like I feel you like really, truly, fully feeling it, and that is that allowance is what might open the door of grief and deeper layers and creating rooms where people can grieve. For me, has been a deep journey. You never know. Whenever you invite people to feel, they might run into their uncried tears. And so, once we can feel in the feeling, it's only then when the doors, the possibilities of a breakthrough, might come through. You know, might appear. It's not an exercise of the mind is an embodied experience of like really jumping in there, and there are different layers. Some people feel the first layer, and that's all they can do. Some people like me, I'm like, okay, let's go feel. I jump in, but as I age, I also see that for certain things now I need more time and I need more gentleness, so that I can go to the next stage, which is the stage of letting in all the fights, all the ways that I was thinking that all of this belongs to somebody else, somebody's fault, or the story, or all you know, all the ways that we are explaining things, and come home, my love. Your home is inside me. So the entire journey of letting you this grief, this feeling, this joy, whatever it is, into my heart, and it's this process of letting in just it requires the surrender of the previous grief, and only on my knees is when I can say, "Okay, I'm gonna stop fighting, come home. You're mine. And when it's inside of me, and I can sit with that for a while, then comes what I call the letting go inside me, which is not letting go outside me. I'm not throwing you into the volcano of somebody else. I'm not throwing you somewhere else.
You're home, and now inside of me, I let you go, and so that you become the rain that makes my inner soil more fertile, and then I am the poem, and the freedom that comes from that, and then I just let it be, and I really truly let it go, and depending on the caliber of the theme or the thread that I have been working with, then what appears in this next stage is witnessing the new ways of responding, the new wisdom that is embodied in me, not as a thought form, but as a new response, observing how I can drop the pendulum of arrogance or insignificance, and I realize that I'm not in the game between arrogance and insignificance. I can start seeing that I am simply being, and the beauty of that, the gift of that, and that creates a muscle, a practice that next time it happens, I start being curious. It's like, okay, what haven't I own? Where is it? Where are you? And my conversation with my relationships becomes about this. How can I find the parts of me that I haven't embraced or that haven't come home, so that I can do that whole process again and again until it's just the way that I live, and allowing so much more joy.
Christine Mason 19:34
This line that you said-it's too loud; it hasn't found a place in my heart yet. How do you feel that like too loudness? I'm thinking about food noise, like you know. Oh, it's always occupying. If you have a lot of food noise, you're always thinking about food, like what am I eat next or whatever, or like you're obsessing about a person who's you're in a conflict with, and they're in your mind too much. Is that what you mean by it's too loud? It hasn't found a place in my heart yet.
Astrid Brinck 20:04
I think that's a that's one way to recognize it.
Christine Mason 20:08
Yeah.
Astrid Brinck 20:08
Another way for me that really works for me and for others is to witness the reactions that we have that are out of context.
Christine Mason 20:16
Ah, yeah. And
Astrid Brinck 20:17
it's like I'm having this reaction, and and like it's really out of context, both in the volume, in the depth, and the content.
Christine Mason 20:28
Whoa, that was a big reaction to a small trigger. Yes,
Astrid Brinck 20:31
it's like in Spanish. I have in Spanish. It sounds so perfect. Estar al acecho, like the cat is stalking its prey. Do not lose sight of yourself. Like to have a part of us that is really witnessing the witness in us, and have relationships where we can witness. I'm like, I think that's a little bit out of proportion.
Christine Mason 20:57
Like your witness consciousness is stalking your ego or something going to get. I'm tracking you with
Astrid Brinck 21:05
with compassion, huh? Yeah,
Christine Mason 21:06
beautiful. That's beautiful. So that's another indication, sort of a disproportionate or intense reaction to something,
Astrid Brinck 21:15
and that is really good information because whenever you see yourself having a reaction that's out of context, more often than not, that comes from very early years, and and then that becomes a door. And the last nine months, I've been really observing a part of me that I had not owned.
Christine Mason 21:38
I I just want to put a pause there because this is a very important noticing. Like when we talk about self mastery, it's not like a place you arrive and you're done. And and then I think some people feel like I become a master's golfer. It's like I become a master's whatever. Um, you know, master's swimmer. It's not like self mastery in that sense, you're going forever, right? So I love that you have at this stage of your life with a global following and this big body of work that you still can pull away and be like, "I'm really diving into this new layer.
Astrid Brinck 22:14
The more I work with myself and with people, the more humbled I am Christine. This is just, and for years now, when people like, how would you describe yourself? And I, I am an apprentice of love.
Christine Mason 22:28
Oh, I love that. That's a beautiful phrase.
Astrid Brinck 22:31
Yeah, I am an apprentice of love, and I think that's how I'm going to die. Because every time that I thought I arrived somewhere, life came and said, "Really, here, take this humble pie. I was humbled and brought back to my knees one more time. So now, a part of me-it's like on my knees at all times. Like, and that doesn't mean that I cannot feel the greatness and awe of life and the expansion and joy, even more so because I'm not taking it personal. Like this moment is so precious, like the moments you and I have shared, they're so precious, and then they're gone.
Christine Mason 23:14
You said something about the pendulum between arrogance and insignificance, and that's not what I'm hearing here. It's not the like you're on the floor with your head on the ground is unworthy, like many people think of bowing. It's more like it's more like I am part of this great thing. I'm part of this great creation, and that it's also self cherishing and self honoring, so I don't want people to get confused with the idea that I'm an unworthy speck of dust. Is I mean, I think a lot of people who grow up in a religious background kind of equate those things.
Astrid Brinck 23:53
Yeah, I'm so glad you're bringing this because it's we are worthy just because we breathe, and we get so identified with the personalities and the things we think we achieve, and with the idea of of success as getting somewhere and the trap of all of that, we are here to be explorers, and one part of this for me, it's like sometimes I wake up in the day and I'm like, "What are the mistakes I'm going to make today? and learn from, and then sit with my mistakes and be able to hold them again and go through that whole process. And maybe I'm doing that with a mistake and just bringing it back home and say, "Come home, my love. I love scars. Like the more golden the scars, and the more mistakes that we make, the more human and the more whole that we can feel ourselves, because we are whole." From beginning to end,
Christine Mason 25:01
I'm just gonna. My mind is being blown at the moment because how many people spend their lives trying to avoid making mistakes or to appear perfect? Like I never did anything wrong. Someone wrote to me once, and their signature line included, you know, I don't want to end this life perfect and well preserved. I want to have it scarred and muddied, sliding into home base with strawberry jam all over my face, or something like that. It's not exactly the wording, but you know this process of like to live fully is to be scarred. If you grow up with a sort of perfectionist overlay that mistakes are not allowed, there then not only do you push out away the learning, you coat the learning in kind of a shame.
Astrid Brinck 25:46
Oh, your your name is shame. I and I want to park that. Yes.
Christine Mason 25:51
So if you love your scar and fill it with gold, or your golden scar, your kunsukuri scar, kintsugi scar, if you love that, that means you are able to make more mistakes and take greater risks in the future, it's beautiful.
Astrid Brinck 26:05
And together with that, we live in a society that has a hygienized death and endings. We're really good at starting a career, starting a relationship. We're really bad at divorcing, ending, leaving a job, ending you know, a venture that was not quote unquote successful. We don't know how to end with grace. Therefore, we avoid the ending, and the again quote unquote suffering, like feeling the feelings of ending and conclusion and closure and endings. That is something that I'm a big advocate of. How do we relate with the ending as well, as well as we relate with the beginning?
Christine Mason 26:50
You know, when you're like, how should how should the income of a company go? It should always go from the bottom up to the top and to the right. Like your life should improve linearly over the course of your luck, and anything else is unacceptable. You just don't have that in that. You don't think your marriage is going to last through you know 14 year cycles, and then it's going to die a natural death. It's not in the consciousness, and so because everything's expected to be smooth sailing from here on out, and there's no preparation for those other possibilities, and they get hidden, like people ghost their endings.
Astrid Brinck 27:23
Yes, so people don't talk about death. Everything is hidden, and you know, in my research with cultures of care, one of the practices that create more trust and healthy belonging in any system is the way people exit. How are people honored, supported in their way out? Everybody's looking. Everybody's watching when people are leaving. And so, if there's no honoring, then everybody thinks, "Oh well, that could happen to me. I am indisposable. This relationship is transactional. So, in cultures of care, is we take care of the end at the beginning. I will tell you in the beginning of the relationship that I'm going to take care of you at the end, and you're going to take care of me at the end, and we're going to take care of each other at any end, and we're going to harvest the wisdom of our time together. This is pure feminine power in action, in a company, in a family, in a relationship. The
Christine Mason 28:36
biggest grief of my life has come from relationship with a person who grew up in a family where the ending was exile. Over and over, anytime someone left the family fold, anytime there was a separation, that person was exiled and never spoken of again. And then that repeating, not just with this person, but also with their children. The minute someone disappoints, they're exiled. And what you're saying is such a revolutionary idea of preparing and committing to the full life cycle from the very outset. What does that look like? Is it articulated, or is it just baked into the way you are?
Astrid Brinck 29:20
Oh, for me, it's you included in in policies in an organization. You included in agreements. I can give you some examples, like my last loving relationship with the men, wonderful men. In the beginning, I was like, okay, this time I'm going to make it right. So when we started, I said, my beloved, I'm going to ask one thing from you. Is that no matter how we end, this is going to end. The fact that we know that this is going to end makes it more alive. I'm going to die. You're going to die. Or I'm going to choose to go and change my mind. Or you're going to choose to go and change your mind. I want you to know that you have the right to. Change your mind in this relationship, and I want to have that right to change my mind as well. No matter how it ends, I want us to make a commitment to make the most beautiful, compassionate, and reverent ending. And in the beginning, he was like, "What do you mean? We're just starting? Like, why are you talking about the end? And I said, "It's very important for me. If I die, I I want you to celebrate my life, and continue yours. If you die, I I'm going to do the same. Or if you choose to go, if you choose to go around the world in a boat, I'm going to come to the port and fill your boat with flowers and prayers and baskets of goodness, and I'm going to say, have a great journey. After my mom passed, the grief of that loss-it was our loss because he also loved her very much. It took us apart. It brought us to sisterhood and brotherhood, and so we decided to separate. And we went through the pain, and we honored each other. I don't know how many rituals of ending we had, and we were able to achieve that. And it was thanks to the commitment we did in the beginning, and we had the most beautiful ending. It was like falling in love all over again, but with my new friend. And then we needed to figure out this new relationship, which is now a beautiful friendship, and so we were able to achieve that. And also, because he, you know, he's a beautiful human, and together we were able to co-create that ending in an organization, onboarding, offboarding. How do you create a ritual? Like rituals are everywhere. The retool of onboarding. How do I introduce you to everybody? How do I tell you what your role is? How do I inform your good place, and how that evolves? And in case this doesn't work, you're going to have six months or seven months. If this is not working for me, I'm going to have a conversation with you a year before, then six months, then three months, and I'm going to be telling you that maybe this is not going to work. And in the moment that we end, we're going to do a meeting with everybody, and we're going to give you gratitude. We're going to have a gratitude meeting with everyone. It's not only your coworkers. As an organization, we're going to do that, and that it's a secret sauce for any culture.
Christine Mason 32:27
Well, it talks being valued and belonging beyond just the transactional moment,
Astrid Brinck 32:33
because even if even if you leave, you still belong.
Christine Mason 32:37
Yeah,
Astrid Brinck 32:38
your good place is different.
Christine Mason 32:40
Yeah,
Astrid Brinck 32:40
but your belonging remains. There's this, I mean, mind blowing for me proverb from Africa that says, "The young boy that is excluded from his village, when he grows up, he will return, burn it, only to feel its warmth.
Christine Mason 33:02
That's dark and beautiful, and pointing to the architecture of of exactly what happens. So, when as we're talking about this, I am seeing the circle piece. Is is this the architecture of the circle work you're doing, or is that different?
Astrid Brinck 33:21
It's all involved, yes. So there's deep work with grief. There's deep work with rituals. There's deep work with coming back to being human. At the end of the day, I can be working with the most successful leader in a region, and what I'm relating with is the human there, and I think our mistake is to remove the the human from our projects and ventures, and remove the human from the titles and roles. Everything that we're doing, like all projects, are made from humans for humans, and we kind of forget that part, right? And then we create all these hygienized places. And even when I've spoken in Davos, in in a place that it's full of humans, that you would think you know they're so rigid, and you bring the conversation about being human, people cry, people are touched. People go back to their humanity, and then you make different kinds of decisions in the way that you lead. And to me, that goes back to the training I do, which is the reverend leader, or working with leaders. I mentor leaders one on one in a really deep weekly conversation. I work with a handful of people at a time, and supporting them in all of their relationships, from their innermost vulnerable spaces to the way they lead and the way they make new decisions. Heirs, entrepreneurs that have created their own wealth, and they're no. Longer in their first mountain of creating wealth for themselves, but creating opportunities for the world around them. Like the the search for meaning becomes evident when you go to the depths of your human heart, no matter who you are. And I've worked with archetypes, many men that you would see on TV or that are known that have a suit and a tie, and you would say, "Oh no! And then I can tell you, some of them and more of them are longing to go home inside themselves, because that's the only place where we find peace-a
Christine Mason 35:42
very deep conversation with a man who's a big deal in Silicon Valley, and he's beginning a spiritual practice. He's beginning to uncover his the degree of domination and abuse by his father that he is all credited with driving him to be excellent, he said, "I would have been good if I wasn't abused, but I was beaten for every time I made an error, so I became excellent. And then he said, "He said I'm much happier now, but I feel that happiness came because I already made it. The opportunity to have my humanity came because I already made it, and he said, if everybody felt the way that I feel now, they wouldn't work. Capitalism would collapse, or something like that. He had he had a belief that the only thing that drives excellence is is the kind of abuse his father gave him was all collapsed. But I feel that's a very common understanding in certain kinds of capitalism that you have to really drive people through punitive efforts, and and in order for them to show up and bring their best, and that there's a almost a loyalty to the abuse they suffered, and the idea that you would come forward with a human-centric way of of inviting a person's creativity and joy to lead is almost like something they can't believe is possible.
Astrid Brinck 37:11
Yeah, and it's so easy and so powerful and so beautiful that we cannot believe it. This links to what I call the four freedoms, and the third freedom, and so all of the work of the cycles they go to the four freedoms, and the third freedom is the freedom to participate in the world with your joy.
Christine Mason 37:31
Let's go back a little and just tell us about the four freedoms.
Astrid Brinck 37:34
Okay, so so I'll go one by one. The first freedom is the freedom to be yourself. Of course, I mean that's the first one. Who are you? And it's all of these layers as we start completing all these circles, and we start, you know, peeling off all the facade, all of the pretending, all of the pretending that I'm not pretending,
Christine Mason 37:56
inauthentically authentic,
Astrid Brinck 37:59
all of the cushions that we have, you know, created around us, and we start really starting to see that actually being naked as a metaphor, of course, with life, being with life, and allowing myself to be who I am-that's the greatest possibility for me. Like that's the greatest version, and it's not even a version; it's just being you. And there, there are many layers for this, but at the core is not fighting who you are with all of your scars. And I just want to link for it to the conversation that we've been having. Like this is the life that I've lived. I have found peace with the card game that was given to me, with the family that I was born into, with the reality that I lived. There's and linking it to the shame. I have no shame about who I was or the mistakes that I made because I am owning them. And no matter what it is that you name from my past, there's nothing that I am afraid to be discovered because yes, I see it and I learn from that. But you did that, yes. I was 20, and I learned this and I learned that, and I'm so glad I made that mistake. Otherwise, I wouldn't have learned. And and so, the more that I own, the more that I can relax and be in the exploration ship of who I am, because who I am is a movement. It's not something that I arrive. What you said in the beginning, it's not like okay, I'm home and this is me. It's a constant evolution, like what I'm experiencing today after menopause, after all this 50-something years walking on Earth as a woman, is so different, and I would have never expected to be experiencing this, right? So when we find a certain peace with our lives lived, there's a lot of you know. Some people call it spiritual bypassing of like, I'm just going to erase my past and I'm just going to be present. How can I be present if I am carrying all this not own parts of me? How can I be present if there are all these internal runes that I haven't brought my love and my life, into inside of me, so I need to inhabit all of me, all of those rooms. Go, go in there, bring your light, bring your presence, and then I can be in that exploration of being who I am.
Christine Mason 40:35
You're pointing to integration or like some some kind of wholeness is important?
Astrid Brinck 40:41
Yes, and for me, this is key because I believe that wholeness is not something you create; is something you remember. You never stop being whole. Wholeness is our nature, so it's not something you achieve. You remember it, and you feel it again when all these layers, all this noise, calms down, and there you are, and who you are as presence. I saw this song today of two women singing, and they were singing about their bodies and their roles, and the whole song was about like when all of that, when I'm not relating with any of that, then it's just me, just this presence that is so beautiful and liberating. So the freedom to be yourself-it's an ongoing process of discovery. The second freedom is the freedom to relate with what is all of my relationships, all the relational threads, all the relational orbits, and not fighting what is, and being able to feel what is, feel what it does in me, and be able to, in that relationship with the first freedom, be able to respond with compassion for myself and compassion for the other, and here I I bring a lot. I've been very inspired by the work of Umberto Maturana, who's a cultural biologist from from Chile, and he has a concept of the legitimate other. And so, in this second freedom, there's a lot of that the legitimate me, the legitimacy of who I am, and the legitimate other, and giving myself and yourself the freedom to explore, to change your mind. He also says that changing our minds should be one more human right, and relating with what is in relationships with life, with everything. Right, the freedom to relate what with what is. I can go on and on. We can do a full call with just this freedom, which is so deep and so beautiful, all the layers of that. But that is at the core. The third freedom is the freedom to participate and enter the world, and this is a more masculine freedom that can be done with grace. How do I penetrate the world? How do I participate? And this freedom needs the first two. When I am free to be myself, when I am free to relate, then there is a certain freedom of the movement of life. I think of us as a current more than as a definite definition, and so the more I have freedom to be myself, to relate with what is this meaning, this gift, this ultimate reciprocity of just allowing life to come through me and just give it all, and there are all these devotional songs that I love. There's one in particular that says, "If I open up my hands, will you fill them again? If I give it all to you, will you make it all new? And it's this trust that the more I give my creativity, the more I participate in my own unique way, I will be filled again, and that participation for some people, it's making tomato seeds and looking at their garden and being in relationship, being in movement, being in participation. For some others, for me, it's I love to witness the world. I love to witness different cultures. I love to discover different people. I love to participate with global awareness and move through the planet. For some other people, is writing. It's very silent in their place, but it's their way of participating. So what you were saying about excellence before this has nothing to do with excellence. Excellence is also the search of perfection that comes with arrogance. To believe that I am that which I achieve, and in the freedom of participation, there's no arrogance and no insignificance. There's just movement. And we are all designed with that movement, and that movement is also an exploration. I I do research, but I also sing. I used to gallop and guide and ride horses through the mountains at maximum speed when I was younger. I don't do that anymore. My exploration is different now. My body changes and my psyche changes, and what I'm interested today is different from before. So it's an exploration that is constant, and it's like one wave, and another, and another, and there is a coherence in that. And there's a work that I do is the work of singularity of your own life.
How do we create all of the explorations that you've done, bring them to a unity, so that you can experience all of what you've done as a oneness, as one river, and stop the fight between all the pieces. And the last but not least is the fourth freedom to transcend, and this is the freedom, the ultimate freedom of reverence, which is my ability to bow. In order to bow, I need to be at peace with who I am, with what I relate, with my participation, with all of my history, with all of my scars, with my heart feet, with my hands, and and just be human, and bow to something bigger. So even if I don't know what I'm bowing to, I try to bow every day, not at all from a religious perspective, but to give myself the gift to return to that place which I call home. And we all experience that in a unique way. There's no right or wrong. Some people need the security of a religion or an organized group that can offer that. Some people are really creative and they create their own way, like I do. But some other people don't, and we've all experienced different things. So our way of worship, our way of reverence is unique to each one of us.
Christine Mason 47:05
One time, maybe a decade ago, 15 years ago, I went every Sunday to a different church or synagogue or temple to see what my neighbors were hearing in their most vulnerable moments, and it was going to be this whole thing on how you can't separate religion from politics, but instead, what I found was that across every religion, they were doing the same behaviors. It was called something sacred. 52 churches, and that they were all doing a lot of the same organizational things. And the creed became was almost a secondary thing. They were eating together. They were entering into transcendent states. Together, they were singing together. They were doing acts of service. They were creating ritual belonging, and the idea and the creed was like irrelevant. It it became the thing that was the identifier, but the actual functions weren't important. So this is really supports what you're what you're saying that you can find your own way to touch the effulgent immanence
Astrid Brinck 48:05
because when I lived in Washington D.C. I lived there when I was younger, and 16th Street is the street with the most churches in the world.
Christine Mason 48:12
What?
Astrid Brinck 48:13
And with a friend from Iran, we decided to do a one-year exploration, and we went to all the celebrations. We went to the synagogues and we went to the Hari Krishna and the Church of Christ of the second day and the seventh day and this one and that and we did this whole research and interviewed people and it was such a wonderful experience.
Christine Mason 48:33
You and I, I don't know. Sometimes I think we're like soul twins in some way when we talk about the things that we've done. It's so overlapping. Wow, I love this. This your all of all this whole like core capacities. They require no being saved or being good or being perfect or doing obligatory things in the culture. Nothing believing anything is just very genuine and arising, and I feel that
Astrid Brinck 49:02
that that we need to just go come back home to being human. One
Christine Mason 49:06
of the conversations we heard this year was on facilitation, like really quality facilitation, and that even well-intentioned facilitators could harm a room. And you're now offering that you're like training people on how to hold the space and and when we spoke, I was very moved by the fact that so much of what you say is about creating a safe container or listening container. But I'd love to hear that from you directly. Like, what do you notice is missing in most facilitation? What are the qualities of a wonderful facilitator. What's the outcome? You know, maybe we can speak about that a little.
Astrid Brinck 49:44
Talking about mistakes, I've been facilitating for more than 30 years now, and I've made a lot of mistakes. And I remember in my 20s calling my teachers and saying, "What do I do in this situation? And many of them, most of the time, didn't. Have an answer for me, so I had to go and find an answer and make the mistake and connect with the implication of my behavior from my ignorance and or my lack of experience of being newbie. I started paying attention to the things and the behaviors of all the experiences that I went to, where I felt safe, and the experiences and behaviors that I had, both as a facilitator, one-on-one and of groups, and as a leader of projects that were creating lack of trust or trust. So I've learned from both, from making the mistakes, and then from proving that if I went in a certain direction, that was what worked, and then I started little by little embodying more and more of that, and I am also an apprentice of that still today. And I don't think we we're ever in a place of mastery fully. Like every group, every person that we work with is going to show us and teach us that we need to, you know, come home to ourselves. So one of the conversations that you and I had that was fun, that I was telling you about, was like, what are the temptations of a facilitator? And I would say that these temptations are human. But in a room, when you're facilitating a process for somebody, one on one, or in a or in a group, especially in a group. One of them, one of the temptations is believing that somebody's achievements are yours. That's such a big one, and not granting the achievement. And the people that go through their experience, they give you all the credit, and when they give you all the credit, it's a it's a very unhealthy kind of praise, because it's not praising or giving gratitude for you, holding a safe space for you, but it's a praise that crosses the boundary, and they give you the credit for their achievement, and instead of giving it back to them, you stay quiet, and you take it, and then you go home believing that it was your achievement, their achievement, and the same with their failure. When there is a failure of what you facilitate, or as a leader, if your venture didn't succeed, you take it personal, right? So, taking personal the failures or the achievements of that which I serve, and how important it is to stay home. This is me, and I'm serving something else. That it's finding its way back to coherence, and I'm only here holding the space with the tools that I have. This is not even about the tools; it's about the way of no matter what the tool is. How do I hold space so that when people can own their achievement, they can be empowered.
Christine Mason 53:04
Like someone said, if you ever think that you're healing anybody, try to heal somebody who doesn't want to be healed.
Astrid Brinck 53:12
Oh well, that's rule number number one in the arts of help. We only help those that are asking for help. Like if somebody tells somebody else to come and work with me, I say tell that person to call me and to choose this work. If they're not choosing the work, I cannot help them. They need to give consent. They need to also have a yes and a willingness to look at themselves, and they're not searching to be saved, so I don't. I cannot work with someone that is not longing or willing to take responsibility of their own lives, because we're not here to save anyone, and that is also another trap when we believe we can save somebody, or when we take our truth as the truth of the other, and we want to convince them that our truth is the truth, and they need to follow that way. Or one that is huge, when we are attached to what we believe is the best outcome for them. Who am I to know what the best outcome is for you, because perhaps in this facilitation that I'm offering, or in this space, all that is going to be revealed to you is a path in front of you that you need to jump in and feel more grief. And so maybe what I'm offering is not going to be a space for integration, but more of revelation, and you will need more time, and your timing is different from what I consider would be the right timing.
Christine Mason 54:51
Okay, so there's a couple of the traps.
Astrid Brinck 54:53
Yeah, there's so many, and I brought some to our conversation because I mean we could talk for hours about this.
Christine Mason 55:00
If you are interested, I will say the things that you were pointing to have come over time. Some of them have come, and some of them were brand new ways of understanding it, and that is remarkable to have made such a close study of what happens in containers, what power and service look like together. It was really stunning. So, if anyone gets a chance to join Estrid in one of her programs on this topic, if you are at all interested in holding groups, holding space, even even treating people one on one or coaching or anything like that, definitely do it.
Astrid Brinck 55:35
Thank you, Christine. For me, this is I take this as an honor the possibility to work with other facilitators, and it's been something that I've been asked to share. So it wasn't my the main part of my dharma because I've been facilitating the processes for people, and this has come as a request. And this request has also been such a beautiful journey of exploration, and all of those trainings before the pandemic, they were all in person, so it was really having a lab and working with a lot of people that had a lot of years of experience and they had a lot of material of all their beautiful mistakes, and to be able to case study like where did you go, what did you believe? How did that happen? And and what's at the core of that? And what can we do instead? Or what can we see about ourselves as a facilitator, so that we can come back to our own freedom, our own sovereignty, in such a way that I create safety and trust enough so that the people that I'm serving remain sovereign, and they trust that the field that we create is a field where they will be able to come home to themselves, and they don't need to worry about being loyal to someone else or somebody else's beliefs. They not. They don't need to worry about how to behave in order to belong. They are there to do their work and to strengthen what they believe in.
Christine Mason 57:14
Yeah, I mean, you, you, you as the facilitator are helping build those four competencies. You know those four capacities that you mentioned, and so those are all about freedom. I do. I do have a question about it, though. One one question: How do you do feedback? Like, how do you take in when people are praising you, or do you disconnect yourself from the feedback loop? You you did mention like giving it back to them, like you've brought yourself to this, you doing the work. How do you internalize praise, appreciation, a validation?
Astrid Brinck 57:49
The answer for this, I would say, it's a bit more complex because there are many layers to it. One is to understand the understanding of the quality of a field or a system or a group that we're holding space for, there is like when there's so much praise for the facilitator in a way that the praise is bigger than the sharing of their own process. That's a red flag for you as a facilitator. That is telling you that there's some behavior or something in the field that's making you more important than the work itself. So, and the reason I'm mentioning that because there are many ways to to recognize that and to see what is coming back to you, especially at the end of a process, we can receive praise where it's the gratitude for what you are doing and the quality of your presence or the quality of your work, and you can say thank you. This is my this this is my dharma. This is what I'm here to do, and I'm happy you can see it. When the gratitude is about their achievement, without you, I couldn't have done that. When it involves the only way for them to do it again is with you, or the only way for them to go there was in your work, and you take that in. That is dangerous, because what we want to tell them is that you were ready to go there. Your work did not start in the beginning of this process or this retreat, your work started with your life, and I need to see a person as as a whole, not as a participant. Like the whole idea, as a facilitator, like with groups. Now I'm going to refer. I'm going to refer to the work with groups. We need to stop seeing people as part. Participants of my work, and we need to start relating with people as a person that has a full life, and this is only one little chapter in the life with their own achievements and failures and life. Yes, I take the praise that belongs to me, and I give back what does not belong to me. Also, the feedback when usually the people that are the easiest to jump into praise before even knowing you.
Christine Mason 1:00:30
So, a good facilitator returns the honor to the person over the preparation that comes over the course of their life, and and this is a new phase, and I'm so glad that I could be here to facilitate it for you. But you did the work, and in that way, you're unhooking them. That's what I'm hearing.
Astrid Brinck 1:00:48
Yes, and what I see, okay, so I can facilitate the work. But where I put the accent is that I get to be a witness. There you go. So yeah, it's been an honor to witness your work, and in my feedback, I'm giving their power back to them, even if they're giving it to me, because the temptation is so strong. Because a lot of people are going to give you their power in a solar platter, as you say here, right? They're like, "Oh wow, wow, and I'm like, "No, you. This is you. It's your life.
Christine Mason 1:01:22
My experience is many people don't want to take ownership over their life. That a dependent position feels somehow safer. You're a knower, and I'm not the knower. I can mean I can maintain like a quality of childishness, child not childlike, but like childish, where I'm not agentic in my life, and so teachers naturally attract that. And so you, you being able to say, "I'm going to call this one for you, when you want more trainings, and you want more programs, and you want more certifications, and you just keep needing teachers and coaches to guide you, like you're ready, you can you can come to yourself. It's always good to have someone guiding you, and but but recognize and take ownership over your life. It's such a beautiful freedom,
Astrid Brinck 1:02:11
and to be able to celebrate their achievements as well as depending on the tool that you work with, when you see that somebody is trapped in the victim or in the pendulum of arrogance or in its significance, and and what are the benefits of the victim? This is something that I work with in Inner Freedom as well. So some of the tools are to confront people with the benefits that they're choosing versus the freedom that they could touch if they go out of that loop. Instead of relating it to me, that I will give them an answer. I don't give answers, and that that links to one of the temptations temptations that is believing that your intuition as a facilitator, seeing it more as truth rather than information for accurate inquiry, so you can turn around when people are coming and wanting to have answers from you. You can turn it around by making an inquiry, especially around the implications of a pattern or a behavior or a choice. Like, have you noticed that you keep on choosing to give your power to somebody else, or have you noticed that what are the benefits of that behavior without calling it the victim, right? It's what? What are the? What are the implications of that behavior? Is that supporting you?
Christine Mason 1:03:49
Can I think in my mind you are having a victim behavior, and out of my mouth say, "Have a look at that pattern you've chosen, or will the frequency of that transmission always be the unspoken labeling of the victim. You know what I mean. Like if there's a hygiene in the facilitator that refuses to label, like it might recognize patterns, but it won't. It won't label people like that. It'll be. We will be in the inquiry with your friend, your client.
Astrid Brinck 1:04:25
I love this because you just caught me saying something that is going against what I teach as an apprentice, right? And so secretly or inside of me, I am in my commitment, trying to see the pattern, and not people as a victim. And here comes one of the fundamentals of the principles of good help: is to see the other as capable with their destiny. I know that you're capable with your destiny, so every time I look into. Eyes, and every time I'm relating with you, what you see as a feedback is that I know that you're capable with your life and your destiny and everything that is coming your way. And if internally I'm losing sight of that, I stop, and I come back to that. If I am not capable of having those eyes for you, I am not good help for you.
Christine Mason 1:05:26
That's incredible. It's incredible discipline is to recognize when you can be good help for someone and when you're not the right person. One thing that when I'm when I'm in groups, sometimes I have a little challenge with is people who I think are not dealing in consensus reality, like they're delusional about certain things, and then I get really nervous, and I realized early on that that's an echo of my own unresolved patterns with like unreliable and chaotic adults, like people who who are making stuff up in their mind, so that's an example of somewhere I would send that person to someone else,
Astrid Brinck 1:06:06
and that is another principle. When and and it's two things that are crucial. There are more, but one is there are two things that are crucial. One is when I don't have the ability or I don't have the tools, and perhaps it's deep trauma, and then I have the tools for deep trauma, and then I can, you know, tell you to go see someone for that particular work, and the other one is what I just mentioned when I have judgment, and I cannot get out of my own loop of the way that I'm seeing looking at you, and if you work with a group, and I work with groups for a long period of time, and sometimes one or two people in the group are the ones that are making me work the most. So when I do a retreat, I have my notebook and I have I have a space or a page for every participant, and what I'm checking is not what I see as truth, but what I'm checking is how much powerful, or beautiful, or capable I'm seeing you. And if there's anyone that I'm not seeing that's capable, then that's who I meditate with, so sometimes I can take myself from not believing in you to believing in you, and if that is not possible, then I cannot work with you, or if there's lack of respect in either direction, that I don't respect who you are, or what you believe in, or have judgment for whatever it is, and am secretly judging you, or you to have respect for me, or consent for me to hold the space for you.
Christine Mason 1:07:54
These are all very subtle
Astrid Brinck 1:07:56
and powerful.
Christine Mason 1:07:57
So clean container, internal hygiene, holding people in the highest light in your mind's eye-all of these things are part of the attributes that you're illuminating for people in the training, and obviously for your friends. I know how we can like go like I'm. I feel like we're discovering stuff in real time.
Astrid Brinck 1:08:18
We are, and
Christine Mason 1:08:19
you told me. Okay, I'm gonna tell you one of the moments of deep humbling for me. I'm very attached to my notes. Okay, very attached. Even now, like I have my notes are like this. It's like they're, you know, colorful notes. You know, identity is the veil. I'm just showing you. Like these are just from this week, right? Very attached to my notes, the idea that everything, your whole physical body of work, got burned down, and you saw it as an initiation and a way to distill and start over, blew my mind.
Astrid Brinck 1:08:53
The first time we met, we were on an event where you had a notebook, and you were taking notes, and you had this thick notebook, and I was sitting next to you, witnessing you doing that. It brought me to tears. When I left that place, one of the most impactful things for me in that moment, because it was just a a couple of months after the fires, was to witness you with so much love, writing in your notebook, and I am an analog person. I didn't have anything in the cloud, all in memories and all these written notebooks and pieces like that. And when I moved to the states, I moved what I brought in my hand luggage was only notes and memories, and I. It was not only that I lost all the pictures from when I was 20 to 5152, like 32 years of pictures, and the. Memories of my mom, my mother's phone, the recorder with all the melodies. I'm also always recording melodies, 1000s of melodies, all these things, and I can name so many things. Like every day, I think of different things. So, I've been on my knees because it it was some details. Like I would go back to those notes, and I would say, "I wrote that. Oh my God, this is amazing! And I would like that would take me on a whole loop, and 50 something chapters of different themes, and research, and service, and interviews, and recordings, and just name it-it was so much. And every time I think of that, there's nothing I can do to bring it back. And and staying in the pain of the loss is not going to bring them back. So my commitment is to be alive, participating in such a way that all of that that is meant to remain alive through me can come back online, renewed, empowered, more humble, more colorful, and more real.
Christine Mason 1:11:13
When my my sister wife, the mother of my stepdaughters, when her house burned down, she lost all the photographs also, and she went on Facebook and said, "I've lost everything. I have no pictures of my children. I have no pictures of my own growing up. So if you've known me in my life, send me any pictures you've taken where we happen to be in the background, or we happen to be in the picture. Rube was just flooded in, and and photos that she'd never seen, you know, like that the way others saw her, or saw or captured the children in the context of the lives they'd touch with their kids, you know, such a expository moment. You you as a parent had one pic one set of images of how your children were, and everyone else who'd ever taken a picture of them saw it from a different angle, you know. So maybe just I love that you're in your emergence, and what's meant to stay alive will stay alive. But also cool, like maybe we can get a picture of you at 25.
Astrid Brinck 1:12:15
I will. I will keep this invitation, and I think I will do that.
Christine Mason 1:12:20
Thank you so much for spending so much time with your beautiful insights and the subtlety of your work. I feel soft as we close. That there's no urgency, that there's no agenda, that the communication what needed to come out came out. It's a very different energy than like 10 talking points on a press tour, you know, and so I would like people, however, to know how to find you and whether it's appropriate to find you. So maybe you could provide some insight on what you've got coming up.
Astrid Brinck 1:12:53
Well, first and foremost, thank you for having me here. Thank you for your heart, and you can go to my website. It's Astridbrinck.com. and currently I'm in a transition, and I work with a handful of leaders for mentoring, so five or six, and I have only maybe two spots left, a couple of them, and I do the Reverent Leadership training online. I do the inner freedom process. I'm doing some retreats. I don't announce everything all the time, so bear with me. You can ask me because sometimes things fill up before I can announce them. So it's a beautiful thing. My work has always been from word of mouth, so I don't really experience marketing. I don't know what that is, and I'm so glad I didn't have to relate to that in my life for so many years. I love being the witness of those moments where people have an aha moment, where people that have been in a stiffness in their soul are on their knees, and people that have not allowed joy are laughing out loud, and I get to be in the room when that happens. I wouldn't change that for anything. I I love I love what I do every day.
Christine Mason 1:14:19
Another thing we do is he sing beautifully medicine songs, spirit songs. We didn't even touch on that, but that feels like part of the whole dharma and facilitation is to use music.
Astrid Brinck 1:14:34
Yeah, music is a big part of my life, and I write songs. I've written I don't know how many songs? 500, 600 songs, or I've I've chosen to allow music to continue moving through me, so my work and holding myself in the world is not through music, so that it can remain in its own rhythm, and it's one of my favorite things to do, and one of my favorite ways.
Christine Mason 1:15:02
That was Astrid Brinck. What stays with me is the bow, a whole cosmology, and a gesture of "I am at peace with my life" has lived, and I can place my forehead on the ground before something bigger. The dust on the forehead is the crown. You can find Astrid at astridbrinck.com, and you can look in the show notes for all the amazing stuff that she does. If this episode touched you in any way, please share it with a friend. Please visit me at rosewoman.com or at christinemariemason.com to find out more about what's going on in her world. You find the truth and sweetness of your own liberation today and always. All love.
