In this episode of the Get Loved Up Podcast, Koya Webb talks to Koshin Paley Ellison, President & Co-Guiding Teacher for the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. Koshin talks about the continuous process of working on yourself emotionally and spiritually and how to help others do the same. Koshin also shared how his own painful experiences, as well as that of his own family have affected him emotionally and spiritually. Being the child of second generation of Jewish refugees that survived Eastern Europe, Koshin remembers how intergenerational trauma shaped his childhood and thus led him to the path of healing that he still treads on today.
Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, MFA, LMSW, DMIN, is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and Certified Chaplaincy Educator. After many years as a chaplain and psychotherapist, Koshin co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, which offers contemplative approaches to care through education, personal caregiving, and Zen practice.
Today, New York Zen Center’s methodologies are internationally recognized—and have touched the lives of tens of thousands of individuals. Koshin is a world renowned thought leader in contemplative care. He is the author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up (Wisdom Publications, 2019) and the co-editor of Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End of Life Care (Wisdom Publications, 2016). His work has been featured in the New York Times, PBS, CBS Sunday Morning, Tricycle among other publications.
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HIGHLIGHTS
03:02 - From poetry to social worker
09:30 - Helping people through Zen Care
12:43 - Surviving childhood in a family with epigenetic trauma
18: 30 - Finding inspiration from Karate Kid and Star Wars
21:43 - Learn to be still in your pain
28:32 - Expect discomfort while undergoing therapy
37:51 - Coping with trauma by remaining open to working on it
46:45 - The importance of having spiritual friends
50:11 - Work on yourself so that you can help others
57:09 - Get in touch with Koshin
QUOTES
14:06 - Koshin: Where immense suffering, and where people are forced to leave or forcibly removed from their country or place, there's a lot of epigenetic trauma. Nobody knew how to talk about it.
21:57 - Koshin: Until you learn to be still in your pain, you will never be free.
33:49 - Koya: We feel spirit, God, the divine, through other people and even if we don't remember their name or how they look, you remember how they made you feel and I think that is the oneness, that is the spirit.
36:20 - Koshin: "Even when things feel excruciating, or that moments of heartbreak, you can really feel the excruciating feeling or the heartbreak, and just feel the wrench of life. To me that's also what allows you to feel the amazing quality of life."
48: 37 - Koshin: "Once we do all of that work, we can go out and be, as we call it, awake at the bedside. So then you can actually show up for people. If we're not doing our work, it's really hard 'cause then we go out and want to be a savior for other people because we want to be saved."
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