118. A Candid Peek Into a Dao Meditation with BAM Community Member Camden Lenore Torres

I circle around the concept of the Dao a lot on social media, but I’ve never pinned down exactly what my relationship to Dao is and how significantly this connection has impacted my life and the lives of my clients. 

So I’m going to do my best here. I’m going to try to explain the unexplainable. 

On this episode, we delve into the intricacies of the spiritual practice of aligning with Dao, a subtractive journey that peels back layers of conditioning to reveal our true selves. We take a strong stance against the manipulation of spirituality often seen in modern times, as we navigate towards authenticity and self-awareness.

This episode features the voice of BAM Community Member, Camden Torres. Camden's Dao is 'sensual', a word that encapsulates a plethora of emotions and experiences - the wild, the exploration, the creation, the mystery, and the awakening. Together, we explore the power of the Dao as a guide to make everyday decisions that align us closer to our authentic selves. We demonstrate the transformative power of being in touch with our senses, embracing discomfort, and unraveling the mysteries of life.

Being a spiritual business mentor is not just about guiding others; it's about embodying the words that resonate with our souls. Today, we explore the transformative potential of embodying the Dao and how this practice radiates out into our lives, relationships, businesses, and communities.

As we reach the end of our discussion, I invite you to explore Business Alchemist Mentorship, a 9-month journey towards cultivating a business that is driven by your Dao .

Resources:

• My favorite translation of the Dao De Jing by C.C. Tsai (it's a comic book!)

To learn more about the Dao, check out the archives:

• Ep. 94. DAO: Naming the Un-nameable

Camden Lenore Torres is mama, a wife, an artist, a mystic and a seer. Her medicine is ancestral and earth based. She supports mothers and women (cis & trans) as they journey through the many initiations of Motherhood, Loss, and Rebirth. She facilitates her work through rites of passage journeys, ceremonies, platicas (heart to heart conversations), movement, and mentorship. 

Connect with Camden: 

• Instagram

Kat HoSoo Lee is a trauma-informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Rooted Business Podcast. She uses the tools of somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.

Connect with Kat:

• Book a Free Connection Call
• Business Alchemist Mentorship
• Instagram
• Youtube

This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:37

I can sum up my business mission and strategy in a single word surrender. My business strategy is to surrender, but what does that mean exactly? To me, surrender is somatic and existential all at once. It is a deepening and slowing of my breath. It's the quiet, low thunder of quails in flight opening my heart. It is the warmth that floods my veins when I turn my face to the sun. It is my spine rooted on the back of my favorite horse. It's in finding the rhythm with other creatures as we walk, as we talk, as we explore. It's in the deep listening of liminal spaces. It is in the freefall of allowing myself to be known, even when being seen has been painful before. It's in finding a unique co-creative flow with each client. It is curiosity, clarity, growth, connection, empowerment, nourishment, creativity and allowing authenticity, trust, rumbling intentional and permission.

Speaker 1: 3:42

Yes, I am a business coach, but the primary purpose of my own business is not about making money. The purpose of my business is to give myself opportunities to walk through portals that allow me to deepen into surrender within myself, which then allows me to inspire and ripple that energy of surrender into my community. Any payments and abundance I receive is a natural byproduct of flowing with the river of surrender, and this is why business is a love letter from my heart to the collective, why my business is a spiritual practice. To me, surrender is the mission statement of my business because it's my dow, and I circle around this concept of the dow a lot on social media, but I've never fully been able to pin down exactly what my relationship to dow is and how significantly this connection has impacted my life and the lives of my clients. So I am going to do my best here on this episode. I'm going to try to explain the unexplainable, because I believe that we are each perfectly on purpose. Our souls come into this life knowing exactly what it is that we are uniquely moving towards, and along the way we meet challenges that require us to find survival strategies. We are subject to narratives, projections and conditions from family, culture, community and society. So, understandably, we forget that pure, clear purpose that we were so connected to at birth. The path of the dow is a return. It is a reclamation of what was always there. It is the spiritual path of shedding the layers of conditions and narratives that no longer serve. It's an alignment of what always was who you always were. Spirituality, when practiced this way is a subtractive process, not an additive one.

Speaker 1: 5:44

I am personally repulsed by the modern manipulation of spirituality. This, more than any other tarnishment, is something that turns my stomach, because spirituality at its core is so simple. It does not need to convince you that you are broken not enough or too much so that you'll join, buy or add another layer to your already thickened armor survival. It does not ask you to prove or convince others.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Subtractive spirituality asks you how you can peel layer after layer of conditioning off so that you can show up as your most authentic and true self. And this feels important to name, because most of the business owners who find themselves in my space have spirituality threading their way through their work. They tell me that their work is so much bigger than themselves that it is their calling. So I ask you, how, then, does it feel to take this sacred, this precious thing that you have lovingly tended to through study, through observation, through cultivation across this lifetime, perhaps even across several lifetimes? And if you are spiritual entrepreneurs, you have medicine within you that is aching to be shared. But the ways that marketing experts and business coaches tell you to do things is to take this subtractive quality of spirituality of something that means so much to you and make it an additive one.

Speaker 1: 7:22

What I mean by that is additive it means that you poke into someone's pain until they need to add your signature method to find relief. Additive means that suffering is seen as a soft thing to exploit. Additive means that someone's insecurity is an opportunity to exert your authority, and I have been there. I've been trained in and even exercised the things that have felt really icky because I, like many of you, didn't know any better and I spent a long time feeling stuck or frozen or broken because I couldn't just do the thing that they were teaching me so that I could get more people in my door to pay me. So my birthday in 2021 was a big turning point. It was a big shifting point because I decided to spend the evening with my plant medicine friends.

Speaker 1: 8:18

That evening, I walked through memories of some of the most blissful moments of my life, and they ranged from the seemingly mundane to the significant. I remember a moment as a child looking up into the old oak tree in the backyard, feeling the vibrations of the orchestra that I was in as they are coming into tune together, sitting and watching the bees floating by in a garden that Andre and I attended. A full moon over the ocean Feet submerged in a river. And as I was moving through these memories, I was looking for the common thread that ran its way through all of these stories, and what I came to was this one word surrender. Since that evening, surrender has been my compass, not just for my business but for my entire life and as a recovering perfectionist, people-pleaser and, honestly like dictator of all the decisions. Surrender is not the path that I went down willingly, but life spirit, god, universe, guide keeps showing me that when I surrender, I am opening myself to co-creation, and when I co-create with sources within and outside of myself, that is when magic happens. You might be wondering at this point how does this concept of surrender apply to our relationship, me and you? So yes, I am a business coach, but I will not be teaching you how to create a six-figure business in 12 weeks. I will not hand you a million-dollar sales script to address objections and get more signups. I will not pressure you to hit a 10k month so that I can then take the credit as your business coach, and I will not give you a template for how you should run your business. My role as a spiritual business mentor is to guide you back to yourself so that you feel aligned with every single decision that you make in your business. I will ask questions to see if a particular layer of armor is ready to be peeled off. I will honor the wisdom of your body, your intuition and your soul before I take your sovereignty away by telling you to do things my way.

Speaker 1: 10:46

A recent graduate of business alchemist mentorship shared that BAM helps you get closer to who you are so that you can birth and nurture a business that is uniquely you. And as soon as he said that shout out to Christopher Miller here it said shivers down my spine because he captured with such clarity which coincidentally is his del what, what it is that we exactly do in BAM. That clarity came through in that statement. Bam helps you get closer to who you are so that you can birth and nurture a business that is uniquely you. Now I've taken that personal walk down my own sort of memory lane and I created a meditation that I lead all of my clients. It's one of the foundational pieces of our work together and I do this for both my one-on-one and my BAM clients. I call it the down meditation, which I know is not very creative, but that's just what it is and at the end of this meditation which we there's some structure to it, but we end up co-creating a lot of it together You're left with a singular word, that is, the compass, the North Star and the guiding principle of your life.

Speaker 1: 11:58

So in today's episode, I asked one of my BAM students, camden Torres, if it would be okay to share an excerpt of her down meditation call At the point that you get to listen in. We've already completed the meditation portion and we are discussing her down, what it means to her, what role it's already played in her life and how she can use it to move forward. Camden is a mama, a wife, an artist, a mystic and a seer. Her medicine is ancestral and earth-based and she supports mothers and women, both cis and trans, as they journey through the many initiations of motherhood, loss and rebirth. She facilitates her work through rites of passage, journeys, ceremonies, platicas, which are heart-to-heart conversations, movement and mentorship. Her dow is sensual and I hope that you enjoy listening in on this candid conversation.

Speaker 2: 12:53

It's interesting because there was this part of me that was like so excited by creation and I felt I really like I was like I think creation, I think creation. And then when you said them side by side, I just like felt totally lit up by sensual.

Speaker 1: 13:11

So what essential mean to you?

Speaker 2: 13:16

I feel like it is all of the words that we were down to.

Speaker 2: 13:22

It holds the wild, the exploration, the creation, the mystery, the awareness, the awakening.

Speaker 2: 13:34

It feels like it is being so in touch with your senses, from sexual to just even the ones that are uncomfortable. It's just like you're navigating life fully in your body, like fully connected to your senses, and that, as you do that, as I do that, as one does that, it's almost like you like again, like there's the mystery and the creation, like you learn to kind of dial them in and spend time with them. You know, like I feel like we don't spend enough time being sensual, and it's so wild because I feel like there's been something. Yeah, I just think this is my word, I'm not gonna put too much on it, but there has just been something that like has been calling me to sit with and I've done so much work and I was like what is it? What is it when? As soon as you said that, like it just feels really, my womb feels warm, like my heart feels like really wide open, and I think it's just part of me too that I don't show a lot.

Speaker 1: 15:18

I like that in this word you're encompassing the discomfort as well, that you're recognizing that part of the Dow is to actually sit with the discomfort of sensuality, because I think that a lot of times our Dow is going to bring up discomfort and you've sort of named it in the description of the word.

Speaker 2: 15:45

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:49

Another piece that feels really important to name here is the very first line of the Dow-Diching, which is like our seminal text in Dowism is the Dow that can be named is not the Dow, and so the fact that this word means so many of the other words to you, and yet there is going to be this lifelong exploration of what this word means and how this gets folded into your day-to-day life and how it gets folded into decisions that you make, both big and small.

Speaker 1: 16:31

You know there's an invitation of it not being a rigid thing that we then create all this structure to, but it's something that you are going to be exploring and will never fully be able to describe it. Yeah, it's like the same feeling that I get when somebody asks me to describe the love that I have for my husband. It's like how do you put that into a sentence structure? That doesn't make sense, and I feel that way about the Dow as well.

Speaker 2: 17:11

Yeah, wow, that's really powerful, yeah, and it's really weird. Like when you said like lifelong journey, I instantly got that. What happened when my son returned? And I guess it was to introduce me to the sea, but it was to introduce me to my senses again because, they had been really really almost dead because of some stuff that had happened and I'm like, wow, it took me what?

Speaker 2: 17:57

14 years to get that. Yeah, like that, like in your explanation of that powerful, of the Dow and how it exists is just like oh, yeah, and again that's. I feel like that's just back to that curiosity, you know, and not like, yep, there's a lifelong curiosity, there's a sea of curiosity. That's my life, you know.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Yeah, let me ask you what the opposite of sensuality is for you.

Speaker 2: 18:44

The opposite of sensuality for me. It's like a feeling, and so I don't know what a word for it is, but it's like sludge. I was like this time in my life where that's how I would, I remember telling my mom I'm just like there's just like this sludge, like it's sludge. It's just like thick and heavy and weighted, but there's like, it's like even like there was like no nerve endings on that sludge.

Speaker 1: 19:24

You know what I mean. There was no beautiful way to describe that.

Speaker 2: 19:29

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Yeah, yeah. So my theory and this is a working theory that you know, each and every person who goes to the Dow meditation gets to be like another data point on this, on this theory, is that each of our souls comes into this life, this life form, this body, this experience of a 3D human existence with, like, almost like a thesis we're trying to like figure out, and to me that's what the Dow is. Is it something that you already came into your body? Knowing, like? Think about a baby, like, yeah, sensuality, obviously not from the sexual point of view, but from the like, from the senses point of view, it's something that was your birthright.

Speaker 1: 20:31

It's something that you've always known and have always carried with you, and because of social conditioning, family stories, trauma survival strategies, we swing to the other side of the pendulum and we have to explore that side just as much as we explore the Dow side.

Speaker 1: 20:57

So, you're not down with the sludge, you have like an intimate experience of that, of like knowing what that feels like, and and the thing with the not doubt too, is that it's it's compelling sometimes, right, sometimes there is this like a lure to just wallow in the sludge, to just let yourself be in the sludge, because it sometimes feels safer, I imagine.

Speaker 2: 21:29

Well, that's what I was just about to say. Like it feels comfortable, because I know what it feels like.

Speaker 1: 21:35

Yeah, yeah, and so the call to live in your Dow is often a very uncomfortable call.

Speaker 2: 21:47

Yes, yes, and like in my culture, like there's there's that kind of there's the you know, the Hendoa Lube, right, like she is this he wants to show his pizza to me, or whatever it is. There's this like you're either the virgin or you're the opposite.

Speaker 2: 22:22

His jewels is here, and all the women that I grew up with really like embodied that right Like, and if somebody showed any sort like, except when they were like dancing or cooking, like when they would let themselves go, it was like such like a, like a. It was so confusing because they were such sensual people. They're so loving, they're so embracing, they're so physical, but they attach sensuality with sex. And so when you said that in the beginning, like I even had like a little bit of a reaction because I was conditioned to think that sensuality is sex and so like numb your senses and but luckily, like I didn't, but I did, and so to explore it in this way, you know, is really exciting for me. Yeah, I love, I love this word.

Speaker 1: 23:40

I'm also thinking about just like the discomfort that happens, like when your foot falls asleep, and like the nerve endings like as you're like bringing it back up to life and getting the blood flow going like the prickly sensation, the hurting itchy sensation right and so, like it sort of sparked this like contrast of no nerve endings in this ledge.

Speaker 1: 24:10

And then the sensuality of like being fully embodied in every nerve in your body but in a balanced and healthy sort of way, and the journey along to that place is sometimes going to be like a little bit prickly and a little bit sort of staticky. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2: 24:35

Yeah, it really is. And.

Speaker 1: 24:40

I get really excited thinking about how you carry this word sensuality, through your work. You know, thank you for the reflections on my work and you know everyone's going to have their own flavor and their unique style but, like this concept that you've shared in group about you know the different archetypes of a woman, you know, and how do we embody sensuality in each of those different archetypes in a different way and in a different flavor, and being able to lead a woman through those different kinds of expressions and through that evolutionary process, I think, is such a fascinating concept to explore.

Speaker 2: 25:29

I would love that, and you know what's really interesting about that is I was talking to somebody who does this work and she's she's almost out of you know, she sees it as Empress, she's one of my mentors and she's almost into crown and she tells, like she was telling me like whatever you're holding in during menopause, you're not going to be able to hold in. It's impossible. So that's half of the like shock value with our bodies. And because I told her, I was like I feel like my libido is insane right now, but I also like don't understand it and she's like, oh, it's not, it's not, you don't even know. Like you know, but it's not.

Speaker 2: 26:17

It's like like you were saying like everything is sensual, right, so I'm just my hormones are just really asking me to really be aware of my body and I was like I think they're asking me that because they need me to really get to know my symptoms of paramedopause so that I can be this brace, you know, I can be this brace, you know. And sometimes they come without warning, like the hot flashes, and but yeah, I love that concept and you know this word to really it just feels like I don't know, like I just feel so at ease with it and I didn't think I was going to.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Yeah. And so when I, when I think about the doll, I think our first responsibility to this word is to embody it for ourselves. And then in that embodiment, you can't help but ripple and reflect that out into your relationships, into how you blur, into how you show up in your business, like to me, it's like in your communities, and so that ripple extends beyond. But it always comes back to how embodied are you in your own doubt. And everyone's got their own flavor, their own word. You know, I just did a DOM annotation this morning and she landed on receiving feels like a very close cousin to my word, which is surrender.

Speaker 2: 28:26

But with both of us like, like, like.

Speaker 1: 28:31

Receiving doesn't feel quite right to me, but it feels so perfect for her. Surrender doesn't feel quite right to her, but it feels so perfect for me, and, and in the same sort of quality. You know, sensual feels like just the right, perfect word for Gil. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1: 28:51

And so we each have our own sort of like soul thesis that we've come into this life being asked to participate in, being asked to like, explore, and a big component of the exploration is how do you embody it for yourself? And from that place of embodiment you are not going to be able to help, but to like, ripple that out into your community.

Speaker 2: 29:27

I have that feeling. It's just so funny that you asked me. I have that feeling now, like when I'm about to go on vacation or a journey. It's like it's happening right now, like we're about to travel, and I feel just like, yeah, so in a giddy, it's weird, yeah, yeah, like something, what's waiting there, like what's on this journey. I feel really, yeah, yeah, it's going to be a really interesting week now. This is a beautiful way to start my week.

Speaker 1: 30:05

I want to offer this just as like a practical way of working with it is. Let's say, you're going to make a decision and you see the fork in the road, and one fork is going to send you down the path of sludge.

Speaker 1: 30:25

And the other fork is going to send you back down the path of sensuality.

Speaker 1: 30:32

And again, sometimes the harder fork to choose is the path of sensuality Because, as you said earlier, I know this, it's so familiar, I know what sludge feels like.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Yeah, it's a form of safety that comes with sludge, yeah, and so choosing the path of sensuality over and over and over again Not in a way that you're overriding, because we have tools with inner child's work and we have tools of like addressing our protector parts and all these different tools in our toolbox to help us navigate the path of sensuality now, but just seeing how your life unfolds as you continue to choose. Okay, so here's the sensuality path. Again. Here it is, again, here it is again. And sometimes you might have to sort of like do some trail maintenance on that. Sometimes you might actually have to like pull out your machete and like hack away and like make a trail, but like, I just find it so fascinating as and this is now, I think, my third year of doing down meditations with people and just seeing how people's lives change as we continue to choose this path of the Dow instead of the path of the not down.

Speaker 2: 32:09

Yeah, it's so funny because after I listened to Lisa's reflection and then, you know, I was like, oh, what's it going to be? Like we were sitting like when I had all these ideas come out before our call, I was like maybe this call will help me be consistent. And I wrote the word consistent down and I was like, because all I need to do is be consistent and just be consistent. And now I was like so hyper focused on that word and this could like not be like further from that word.

Speaker 1: 33:01

Like I mean you can take it into the practicality of like that's such a call Common Instagram sort of you know, advice is like post consistently, and I don't know about you, but I get really annoyed and tired when I see people who are just posting consistently, just to post yes, thank you. This is something I do like posting because something feels alive for them.

Speaker 2: 33:29

Yeah, and that's so funny, because I was like yeah, you got to start posting like not just if it feels good, that's what I like, you got to like write those emails and you know, again, I was trying to like override what I was feeling, and I love that this is such a lesson, like it was such a lesson that I was like hoping that this down meditation would get me closer to overriding what I was feeling. And then I was like no, you're going to feel it, you're not going to override it yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:04

I'm just going to cross consistent off now it's like it's right there. So I'm just going to cross it off. You're out of here.

Speaker 1: 34:14

I love it I love it yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:16

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:18

I mean, I think it's just ultimately like what makes you feel connected to yourself, which then is going to make you feel more connected to your people, you know, and like what's alive for you in that moment. Right, like I think I posted yesterday, I posted about I found out that there's like a microplastic in my brand of laundry detergent and I was fucking pissed about it. And you know, that's the thing I posted about yesterday and like I kind of tied it back to marketing because I was like that's really sleazy and shitty marketing, yeah, but like the thing that made me feel alive is talking about it.

Speaker 1: 35:01

Yeah. So, like if I had my eyes sights on just consistently posting. Like I wouldn't have the energy to like post things that light me up. Like it takes energy to do this stuff Right and you only have a finite amount of energy, so save it for the things that, like, bring up an actual sensation and a feeling of like a motion within you.

Speaker 2: 35:30

Yeah, yeah, and thank you for that invitation and wise reminder Cause, yeah, sometimes, navigating this world again, this is like one of the reasons why I felt like so aligned with this community and your teachings is because this world, like the coaching world and the social media world, and it's just like constantly trying to drag you out of embodiment by selling things that are supposed to embody you. I just know like deep in my soul and in my bones, and in order for this to actually be sustainable in Life-giving and nourishing to me and my family and by this I mean my business and my work and my heart I have to shift differently, because I really wasn't even doing the things that I was supposed to be doing. Yeah, so, thank you so much. I I feel so happy right now.

Speaker 1: 36:41

Yeah yeah, thank you I hope you enjoyed this conversation that I got to have with Camden, and these are some of my favorite moments of my coaching. Practice is, when we get to land on someone's dial, there's this opening, sometimes a closing. There's this portal that that just appears for us to be able to walk through together. Some people, like Camden, hear their word and they're able to just like sink into their word, and other people Hear their word and there's some resistance that comes up and Both are perfect and okay.

Speaker 1: 37:25

Sometimes the portal isn't quite open, and that word brings up some scary feelings, because oftentimes Choosing our dial is the scarier choice. If you enjoyed hearing about Camden's story and you want to learn more about what it is that she does, you can find her on Instagram. Her handle is co-madre postpartum. That's c o m a d r e, p o s t p a r? T? U? M.

Speaker 1: 37:58

If hearing this conversation with Camden sparked your curiosity, I want to encourage you to check out the curriculum for BAM. What all is being offered within BAM? You can learn all that information at business alchemist mentorshipcom. And If you are listening to this, before the end of October 2023, we are going to be gathering as a cohort in BAM for the very last time. I Am feeling this shift moving through BAM, and I have a feeling that BAM is going to change in structure, and so if you are somebody who Thrives in a small group setting so by small group setting I mean that there's less than eight people on your team that you move through this program with Then I want to encourage you to go ahead and check it out business alchemist mentorshipcom and If there's a resonance there, then let's just book a connection call.

Speaker 1: 38:56

See what it feels like to Be any chillers energy, and if there's a yes there, then I would love to invite you into this last small group cohort version of BAM, as Always. Thank you so much for listening. If you're listening on Apple podcast, I would love it if you could leave us a rating or an overview. If you're listening on Spotify, I think all they do there is ratings, and If you want to stay connected, you can always find me on Instagram. Cat oh Sue Lee. Talk to you soon.