Marla Miller: 0:35

Welcome back to Open Minded Healing. This episode will help you understand if you're making choices and living a life driven by survival instinct and a need to feel safe rather than making decisions from a place of authenticity. When we're children, we begin creating stories in our minds around the best way to be loved and stay safe. If we never examine these stories as we get older, we may realize one day that the life we have unconsciously created does not resemble the life we truly want. My guest today, Howard Steinberg, was raised by Holocaust survivors. He will be openly sharing the dark period in his life that opened him up to the realization that ancestral trauma had continuously influenced his life in profound ways. He will also be sharing how he was able to reclaim a life he loves, which is now fully aligned with who he truly is, by using holistic treatments, including psychedelics. Welcome, Howard.

Howard Steinberg: 1:37

Thank you. Thank you. It's nice to be with you today, Marla.

Marla Miller: 1:41

You too. So let's go back to your childhood and what that upbringing looked like when you have parents that are Holocaust survivors. Did you get a sense of their fears or traumas that you recall, or what was your childhood like?

Howard Steinberg: 2:00

No, most of that was clearly unconscious, but clearly present as well. And all I through the more recent work I've done, I recognize that the Holocaust was something I didn't want to feel. I shut it off. And it was also what my parents didn't want to feel it either. So while there were symptoms, sort of uh a dark atmosphere, a distrust for joy, a need to achieve and perform in order to feel safe in the world, um, I didn't have any palpable connection to it. But many years later, upon examination, I realized just it completely wrote the script. And their traumas, for example, being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, even back then when there were fewer cases and poorer treatment, did not have to be trauma, but because of how they processed it and thus how I processed it, set me up for my nervous system reacting and managing life forever on.

Marla Miller: 3:08

So do you mean when you were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes? Yeah, how they reacted to it?

Howard Steinberg: 3:16

The way they reacted was not reacting, was not showing up because it was too painful for them. It's difficult to talk about your parents who were so heroic, so brave, did their best, but also acknowledge the harm that they unconsciously contributed. So growing up, but we didn't get hugs, and I love you is what I heard a lot was that I wasn't measuring up, particularly next to my older brother, who was a you know a great student and a performer and highly compliant, and I didn't know I had ADD. I was motivated, but I couldn't get there. So then when this diagnosis occurred, first thing they did was not tell me because they didn't know how to break the news. They were fearful of doing damage. So in that effort, they did some damage because the first night I was in the hospital, not knowing why I was there, and the staff pumping me full of insulin to bring down the alarmingly high blood sugars that I arrived with, I had symptoms. I experienced my first low blood sugar or hypoglycemic episode in the middle of the night. And I started shaking and feeling foggy and nervous and not knowing what was happening to me. And I tried to manage it. And because I was an insecure little kid, I didn't press the call button, didn't want to bother anyone. I just gridded it through and eventually managed to get past it by the morning. And the scrum of nurses and interns and doctors at the foot of my bed in the morning, when I told them about this, they wagged their fingers sternly at me. You have to tell us when this happens. And I couldn't connect why they were so alarmed by it. And as the story goes, two days later, a nurse came walking into my room with an orange and syringes saying, Today I'm going to teach you how to give yourself injections for your diabetes. And I said, Oh, I have diabetes. And at that time, my only knowledge of diabetes was seeing commercials on television that were raising money for the American Diabetes Association that warned of all these catastrophic consequences, the leading cause of death and heart disease and kidney disease and blindness and amputation, all these horrible things. And so subconsciously, I started processing this fear. Um, and then, you know, my mother awkwardly explained to me, and she was more trying to assure herself as much as reassure me that I'll be fine. And then there was one other scene where my parents told me, you know, you don't need to share this with anyone. In their own way, they thought they were protecting me, that I would be damaged goods, where I where I would be thought of as less than. And I was all too happy to keep it a secret. And off I went, off I went into life in survival mode, just seeking safety and keeping busy keeping a secret, which went well into adulthood, where I felt this enormous shame around it that was very outsized for what it really was. But there were moments of intense fear that I could be found out. And that put me in more danger, and I had more episodes of risky situations because I couldn't um address my medical needs publicly, I suffered for that.

Marla Miller: 6:33

It's so interesting, the idea of being found out about diabetes, and you think of the Holocaust, and that was a big fear being found out, and it's just interesting that correlation. So if your parents had, on the other hand, been like, this is what you have, we're going to address it in this way, and you'll be okay, eh?

Howard Steinberg: 6:58

Yeah.

Marla Miller: 6:58

Yeah. But giving you steps as to how you're going to be okay, and not hiding it as a shameful thing or as something to be afraid of, but empowering you instead with steps you can take and giving you the education behind it could have gone a long way, I guess.

Howard Steinberg: 7:18

Yeah. I found a way forward. And the other thing they imbued me with was resilience and a survival ethic, you know, one foot in front of the other. And that's how I got through and built a life that I thought was authentic and true. And as you said in your opening, I think most people don't know their authentic selves. I think most of us are walking around in some form of coping in default mode. And it's scary. It's scary to look beneath. It's scary, but it became, I had no option as I got well into middle age.

Marla Miller: 7:54

Well, so you were living this life that you felt was pretty successful, right? You had your family, you had three companies. How were you feeling about that?

Howard Steinberg: 8:04

It it all felt like my destiny because that's what I was pursuing. You know, the suburban life, white picket fences that I saw on television in the 60s and 70s. That was my model. And I went about securing it. And the first kind woman who crossed my path in college, I moved in with very young. And eventually we partnered and got married. And there was even consciousness at that time that this is early. We moved in together before my 18th birthday. But I knew that making this commitment so young was not necessarily the right thing to do. But I reasoned she's a really good person, and I feel safe with her by my side, and off we went. Finished my education, got an MBA, became an entrepreneur. Children gave me enormous purpose and virtue. And I liked my life, but there was always a quiet whisper and a discomfort. It was always a discomfort, like just being calm in the present and feeling joy and not being so distracted. And you know, these whispers I think come up and they got louder and louder over the years. And I was always a seeker. I'd go on retreats and started talk therapy, always trying to calm it, but nothing provided the deep insight and interconnection that I finally found much later in life.

Marla Miller: 9:37

What was the catalyst to diving deeper or really turning a corner?

Howard Steinberg: 9:43

Yeah, it just stopped working in so many ways that I couldn't ignore it. And it's so interesting what we do to hold on to the stories, right? Like we're we're just the composite of the stories we've told ourselves over and over and over again since childhood. And the story wasn't working anymore. So I got played out of my second company. It was an awful experience to feel that. And it was my own fault ultimately. And our marriage was teetering for a long time, and we kind of both knew it, but we wanted to hang on. We weren't the kind of people who get divorced. And I'm in the middle of a third business, which was smaller and going well. And the kids had grown up, so the nest was emptied. So who am I? You know, if I'm not an entrepreneur with an employer anymore, if I'm no longer a husband and my kids don't need me like they did, who am I? And I couldn't turn away from this internal noise. And there came a moment where this smaller company was going fine on its own, and I was planning to launch something bigger. And I was really digging in and meeting with people, or you know, starting to think about raising money. And I just couldn't do it. I didn't understand why I couldn't do it, because everything I've done in life was through effort and force and determination, never waiting for anything organic to rise. So that's when, and I turned to a friend, I don't know what I should be doing. He said, What does your intuition tell you? And I said, I have no idea. It's so freaking noisy up there. Like I can't even hear it. And he turned me on to transcendental meditation. Um, because meditation was always hard for someone like me. Maybe some of your audience can relate to that thinky brain. And that started to give me a little space. And then one thing led to another as divorce happened, and I moved from the Connecticut suburbs to New York. And I said, My job now is to find me. And I had the luxury of time, and I didn't have to work, and that's that's what I did, and it's a story unto itself.

Marla Miller: 12:02

What was the first thing you tried? How did you get direction?

Howard Steinberg: 12:06

Yeah, good question. I think it started with a deeper awareness that I was fortunate enough to meet a spiritual therapist, and and Anne at that time was 86, and we only worked on Zoom, even though she was also in the city, was during the early days of COVID. And Ann gently nudged me to this spiritual opening. I would come to our sessions as I typically would to talk therapy with an agenda and what I'm stressed by and who I'm angry at. And she would help me drop out of that busy brain, that resentful space, and also turned me on to uh two authors that were very meaningful at the time, Ron Das and Eckert Toly, and both speak to that space in between the importance to just be here now. Um and it blew my mind to think that there is actually a different place within us that is not about the mind, and that there's something bigger within us and something bigger outside of us. And I suppose that's what they mean by non-duality. I always struggle with what that exactly means, that it's not this or that, it's not your mind or your heart, it's just oneness. And I started to gradually move in that direction, try different modalities like breath work, but with great intention, pursued psychedelics. I had read How to Change Your Mind, Michael Poland's book that helped usher in sort of a renaissance for psychedelics. Never did psychedelics when I was young, when most people experience it, because I have a very rigid controller part, protector part. And I have to be in control of my body, of my biology, because if I'm not, something bad could happen to me. And it's a legitimate role for that ego, you know, because when people say, Well, there are no tigers now, but I had a tiger, it's always in my myth because something something bad could happen. That was so embedded in my nervous system, I needed to get to it, and I thought psychedelics, I won't have a choice to relax the ego resistance. And so I went on, and it's somewhat a lot of humor in the journey of finding a shaman in New York and first engaging with psilocybin and MDMA and the same therapeutic approach that's being done in many above-ground studies and being validated as incredibly effective. And then I worked my way up the food chain of psychedelics, trying different medicines with great teachers, great facilitators. And eventually I was afraid of ayahuasca, but it called.

Marla Miller: 15:09

Well, so let's go back to the psilocybin first. What was your main feeling or experience with that?

Howard Steinberg: 15:20

It was grueling, frankly. Like it was so hard for me to drop down. I stayed in really tough, anxious thoughts, really fighting it, fighting it, fighting it. And I saw it with such detail. I said, hmm, like it must mean something. It must mean something. I said, could I have programmed that because I came in in here with an intention to understand my childhood better? I don't know. I don't know. What I have learned though, however, and it's from great teachers as well as just my own experience don't analyze when you're in a medicine ceremony in a psychedelic experience. Trust the feeling, trust the feeling. That's the information. And for someone who's always used his mind to manage everything, that took time to trust. It's a lot about just the post-ceremony experiences of just the softening that happened in my psyche, the openness that I felt in my heart as I moved forward in my healing journey, just feeling, wow, that's interesting. I'm looking, you know, I remember one incident I talked about in the book where I was on the subway coming home actually from a breathwork class, and this young immigrant family got on the train, and I just felt this kinship, this love for them and their little boy. It was about 10, and watching how the mother was treating him and shining up an apple that she'd handed to him, and him taking these delicious, delightful bites of it. And I started like playing kind of peekaboo through the um the strap hangers, and I was overcome by emotion saying, Whoa, Howard, you're changing, man. You're changing. Your heart is awakening.

Marla Miller: 17:30

That's amazing. It is amazing to see what you were drawn to, you know, that child at that age with the parent.

Howard Steinberg: 17:39

With the immigrants and saying they look so beautiful. My poor parents came here, and it was like able to see them for the first time as an immigrant couple, just struggling, not knowing the language, making a life, and loving and protecting their two little boys, it overwhelmed me. That they have a story too.

Marla Miller: 18:02

So you were seeing your parents in this couple with the little boy, and having this newfound empathy for your parents that you hadn't really seen before or felt in the same way.

Howard Steinberg: 18:14

Yeah, and empathy for myself. And ultimately the answer was the kindness and love I could bring to myself and that level of intimacy with self, I think, is the answer for all of us.

Marla Miller: 18:29

Well, that sounds like a pretty profound experience with the psilocybin.

Howard Steinberg: 18:33

Yeah, at that point, I'm not sure which medicines were I could go on about different ones I've experienced, but there were others too.

Marla Miller: 18:42

So, what are some of those others? You said MDMA.

Howard Steinberg: 18:46

Yeah, that's often done in concert with psilocybin because MDMA is kind of referred to as a heart opener. So you get more open, and then the mushroom psilocybin can do its work more easily as the ego relaxes. And mind you, Marla, if I heard myself talking this way 15 years ago about spiritual healthy, I would be laughing at this self because I was so of the physical world and the intense entrepreneur. It would have been very foreign. I would make fun of Hare Krishna's in Washington Square, and now I come up to them and ask them questions because they may know more than me. They may be feeling things that I have yet to feel. But anyway, one medicine that isn't so well known, it's commonly referred to as bufa or toad, five Me O, this molecule that's excreted from the venom of bullfrogs in the Sonora Desert that's referred to as the God molecule because your ego disappears during a session. And they're very short. It's like 40 minutes where you just take off. I had some visions one time that were representative of that kind of ego disillusion of light and infant self. Um, but mostly there were no memories of any kind, but I would just awaken from these experiences feeling so relieved and just happy. And it worked as a really great reset. And I was able to carry those feelings forward into life.

Marla Miller: 20:21

Yeah, I guess sometimes. Oh, okay. Yeah, sometimes you don't have to know everything that you learn during an experience like that, right? You live it, you start embodying it, even if it's subconsciously.

Howard Steinberg: 20:41

The neural pathway is open, and if you're doing other work, it just accelerates your own growth. It's neuroscience, it's it's not necessarily so mysterious. And as I was learning, like from these teachers, like Ram Dasekartoli, my therapist, as I'm reading more, as I'm participating more in life, I could recognize that everything was slowing down, that I was responding to the world differently.

Marla Miller: 21:07

I'm curious, after you started having these experiences and evolving in a sense, were you able to open up more with your parents? Did they ever open up about the Holocaust at all? Or that's always been a Yeah, no, sadly.

Howard Steinberg: 21:23

Sadly, I lost my dad, young, I was 18, and my mother had already passed. This is now some 13 years ago. I wish they were around um to ask these questions and and just to give them the love, the recognition that I wasn't capable of before. Because my mother was such a complicated character that her loving intensity repelled me. Initially, I felt I was there to ease her pain. Like in childhood, I wasn't aware of it then, but I have these memories where it was so obvious that I was there to serve her. And then she became so smothering and overprotective when I got diabetes that I just needed to get away from her. But now I can really feel her journey. And what's really so special, so special, and I wrote this in the book. I thought that I succeeded in spite of them, when I really succeeded because of them. They imbued me with a lot, a lot. And I couldn't see it. My mother was a very dynamic, creative, smart person. My father also, and he would always, you know, in his broken English, say, if he Had opportunity, if he had opportunity, he would because he had second grade education and he was a brave partisan fighter in the Polish forest trying to resist Nazis. And my mother escaped her town and was the only survivor from her family. So clearly she was dealing with trauma, but she still found a way to paint, to write, to sing, to do these things in her later life that were undeniable. And I see some of her in me, which I would never have talked to before. I would have related to my father to strength, his determination, but not the complex complexity of my mother.

Marla Miller: 23:18

Wow. That's really something. Yeah, people's actions, if you only could see a video of them as a young child or when they've gone through trauma, if we could understand people at that level, it would change everything.

Howard Steinberg: 23:34

Yeah. Yeah. But at least I know it now, and it can inform my own parenting, even though you can't parent adult children. I have three daughters. But I can just show up with just love and patience and not need to teach them anymore, which was what I was doing, you know, for their whole lives. And I'm sure they could feel me as a heavy presence in that regard. So and it works. It works. I can feel just being present with love.

Marla Miller: 24:12

Yeah, that's a stronger energy than any words convey.

Howard Steinberg: 24:17

And you know, patience, yeah.

Marla Miller: 24:19

Yeah. Well, after you tried the acilocybin and you said bufa, right?

Howard Steinberg: 24:26

Bufa, yeah.

Marla Miller: 24:27

When did you start the ayahuasca journey? And where did you go for that? Was it in a different country? And how did you find the person?

Howard Steinberg: 24:37

Yeah, that's a whole odyssey. I found a temple upstate that it was highly reputable, and it would be bigger ceremonies with like 30 people, and they sat in the Shipibo tradition, which is like the original tribe in Peru that have been using ayahuasca for thousands of years as their medicine. So it was all domestic, mostly upstate New York. Um, eventually found this wondrous young couple who I sat with several times, and once in Puerto Rico, there were feast ceremonies where I had real revelatory insights that aren't game-changing per se, but were so important to comprehend and hold on to. But people have to be careful because it's unregulated, it's underground, and you have to be careful in who you sit with. I was intimidated by ayahuasca as many people are because of stories they hear, but it's not that bad. I didn't vomit, you know, I've done it many times, only on like two occasions, and I welcomed it. I welcomed it. It's so therapeutic. I welcomed it after it was maybe a little rough.

Marla Miller: 25:52

So, what were some of those experiences during the ayahuasca ceremony? Was it all visual? Was it showing you hard moments? What was that experience?

Howard Steinberg: 26:05

Different things are I I guess there were two that were really remarkable and I've held on to. One, I sat in Puerto Rico, I was struggling, struggling with these anxious thoughts again, couldn't get away. And then I was kind of overcome by I heard something that said, you know, just stop, just stop, just surrender, just surrender. And I dropped into this place of just serenity. I stopped the analyzing, I stopped the worrying, I stopped looking back and looking forward, and I was able to be just present for a moment. And it was so remarkable. I said, Oh wow, oh wow. And I remember this thing, this is what it feels like, this is what normal people feel like just being, just for a moment. And I said, Wow, I wonder if this will last. And ultimately it didn't, but I touched that place of the void of stories and problems and issues where I could just be and said, Well, I'd like to go there again. And ever since I've been trying to find those spaces. And then a couple of years later, in this ceremony, as we refer to these ayahuasca journeys, I had a vision in the hospital room again, but it was a different vision. And it was a memory that I had. I had this as a conscious memory, but it went further. You know, I'm laying in bed, there's no one else in the ward, it was raining outside, and I started crying. And my mother came back to the room as visiting hours were ending and asked me why I was crying. And I said, I cry when I think about how much I love you and dad. And mind you, we never exchanged those kind of vibes, ever. It wasn't safe to go there. And her reaction was she muttered, I love you too, we love you too, and she left. And during this experience, the way I remembered feeling was I was worried about her now. That I hurt her by sharing that loving message, and she ran out there, ran out in tears, not knowing she touched a place that was probably so frightening for her. Her boy sitting there needing what she can't give. And bring it back to the ceremony. I got extremely angry. Like, how could they do this to me? And I needed to scream, and I didn't want to scream and disturb my other voyagers there, and left the room unsteady on my feet, and went to another room and yelled into a pillow. Like I screamed into this pillow. And then I had the realization again, oh wow, oh wow. And I realized that was the moment the switch flipped. That's when I flipped to survival mode because there's no one there for me. She can't be there in the way I needed her. And I marched on on my own, self-parenting that wound because there really was no one. There was no one. And I'm not saying that as complaints, and I'm not saying uh feeling sorry for myself. We all deal with wounds and realities of childhood and could have been worse, right?

Marla Miller: 29:36

Yeah, and also, especially when we're young, like we interpret things through a certain lens. You know, you were looking for that love, and then on her end, if she lost her whole family in the Holocaust and that pain of such tremendous loss of ones you love, I can see how that would really complicate things for her expressing love again.

Howard Steinberg: 30:03

And trust it, because what happens if she feels it and loses it again? Yeah, and lose and loses a loved one. It was safer to keep a distance.

Marla Miller: 30:12

Yeah. Well, that's so yeah, so tragic and interesting how that develops when both of you clearly loved each other.

Howard Steinberg: 30:22

Yeah.

Marla Miller: 30:23

But just the interpretation of the behaviors and communication kind of screwed that up a little bit.

Howard Steinberg: 30:31

Yeah. Later in life, I would think about, but they seemed to function, right? Like they didn't have therapists and psychiatrists and psychiatric drugs or retreats or anything or meditation. They just marched on. I never heard them talking about it, although I'm not sure we would. It didn't seem that that was how they bonded with their friends from the old country. Um, I think they were all trying to move on.

Marla Miller: 31:00

Or just stuck in that state of trauma forever. It's almost like you don't want to break open the dam because then you're afraid what will happen. I might die. I mean, that's what it feels like it could be.

Howard Steinberg: 31:13

The good stuff, though, you know, and particularly amongst Jews, and you see it generation after generation, is humor. My dad was a real kibbitzer, he was always joking, and I am too. I've always took refuge in humor, and it provides some relief and it provides some social currency, but it's another way of coping, too.

Marla Miller: 31:36

Yeah. Wow. So I'm curious, how did you find out their stories, the basic story that your mom had lost her family?

Howard Steinberg: 31:44

That I always knew. Yeah, the basic stories we knew. Um because they had told you, yeah, yeah, they had told us, as I recollect, but never much more. Never about how you felt.

Marla Miller: 31:58

Yeah.

Howard Steinberg: 31:59

Never.

Marla Miller: 32:00

Well, so you had that experience with the ayahuasca, and you've you've done it other times as well, you said, right?

Howard Steinberg: 32:07

Yeah, um, just to want to amend that one. You know, we didn't have grandparents, aunts, uncles visiting us. We didn't even have first or even second cousins. But my closest relatives in the world were my first cousins were in Russia because my father's sister married a Russian soldier during the war. And I went there, and through an interpreter, I learned more about my dad and his heroism. And I learned, you know, really interesting story, which I tell in the book, I won't uh go into now. But basically, he helped save a baby's life, and we went on a trip to that baby's wedding some 25 later. And I had no idea that he my father's honored at the wedding.

Marla Miller: 32:49

Oh my gosh. I'm glad you wrote a book about it to get all of that.

Howard Steinberg: 32:54

God, I am too. I am too. They say it can be cathartic and therapeutic, and it was and is, and I think the hardest part of it is what I'm living now, where I was extremely open and honest and you know, radically transparent throughout and vulnerable. And, you know, I had moments of trepidation after publishing that, you know, should I be sharing this with anyone and everyone? And what I recognize, what this represents for me, is ultimate self-acceptance. Because by telling my story, as was revealed in my diabetes later in life, is acceptance of who I am and the essential goodness in me. And I have heard from many men just since publication, men I know who shut down, never sharing, never open. And in fact, I always had a hard time really connecting with some of them for that reason and pouring out their stories. I'm getting emails telling me about their parents. So I think there's a service mission in all of this. And that felt like the calling when I started writing it, that I can help people with it, not on any kind of grand level or through any kind of vanity, but truly because of lived experience that I could share.

Marla Miller: 34:16

That's amazing that you've created that avenue for people to then express themselves, like you said, especially men that were very closed off beforehand. You're doing a great service to people with that book. So, what are some other lessons or growth experiences you gained from the ayahuasca ceremonies? Was there any other big thing that was shown to you?

Howard Steinberg: 34:46

Well, I guess the biggest thing is just as mentioned, it's these cliche terms like love. You know, as I traverse life now, I am very cognizant of not reacting and rather responding, slowing it down, recognizing what triggers me. And I still have all my issues. I'm just friends with them. Like I'm kind to the issues. I can meet them in meditation and the unification with my inner child, with the little boy, the wounded boy, that occurred dramatically in that ayahuasca ceremony where I remembered my mother interaction. Because after that, I I went to the hospital room as my now adult self, my sturdy higher self, and met him and held him and felt what that felt like. And then I was him hugging me in my sturdy, adult, resourced self. And I embodied, you know, soul retrieval, they referred to that as. So now to answer your question, I check in on him all the time. I do now somatic therapy, and I think that's the next frontier because it's so subtle what we're holding in our nervous system. And even as I speak, I can feel my belly tightening. Um, and oh, what's that? And you know, so if we weren't on a podcast, I would close my eyes and investigate, and I would contact my inner version, my younger self, and see how he's feeling. And often it's really interesting. It's like almost a tell what his expression is, what his body language is, and how I'm really feeling. Because those inner children, they're in all of us, they are in all of us. But we're typically not listening. We've typically never met them.

Marla Miller: 36:50

Let's talk a little bit about the somatic therapy. So when you say you're feeling something in your gut, what would you do specifically? You would ask yourself first, where am I feeling this? And you say in your gut, and then you label it, or uh where do you go from here?

Howard Steinberg: 37:09

Well, um, yeah, you get into a peaceful place and go and just see what's showing up, what's here. Okay. There's some superficial stuff, might be some pain, my knee hurts, and then feeling a tension in my belly, and then naming the quality of that. Oh, it's um crampy, it's sharp. So you're basically just getting as much texture as you can, and then just be with it without thinking, just be present. And so for me, I just try to like I'm just visualizing another place in my body where I am existing, and then asking myself, what emotion is it provoking? Sadness, joy, fear, anger, and that's it. No analysis, just recognition, and then maybe move someplace else. And sometimes you want to release something. So I'm feeling like a buzziness in my body. Then I might want to shake it off or yell. I might emit sounds, I scare the dog sometimes. He starts barking at me, knowing what I'm doing, but he's intuitive, and then he backs off and says, Okay, I'll let you, I'll let you have your meditation. They're incredible creatures for sensing emotional stuff. And then when you just open your eyes, have recognition through all your senses. Look around the room, notice shapes, listen to every sound that you hear. What are you feeling? What are textures that you're touching now? What do you smell? What can you taste? And it's all part of letting the nervous system give some sunlight, get some air. And you do that more routinely. And it takes time, but I notice its impact. Like I find my perspective instantly changes. If I was caught up in a thought cycle or something, it shifted because we're triggered by what's buried in our body, by the nervous system. That's what's triggering us. With my daughters, like a year or so ago, I said something to one of their boyfriends that she didn't like, and it probably was inappropriate. And she's very angry with me. And later I said, you know, that it wasn't necessarily about what I said, even though I apologize. It's what I said when you were three and five and seven, that this feels like. Because you didn't like when I was saying it to you then when you weren't powerful enough to tell me that. You or you weren't able to identify that then. So respect. I get it. I hope, and and I hope they do too.

Marla Miller: 39:43

Yeah, that's great when you can go back to your children and say things like that from a deeper understanding.

Howard Steinberg: 39:50

Yeah.

Marla Miller: 39:52

Wow.

Howard Steinberg: 39:52

It's it's it's it's so wonderful.

Marla Miller: 39:55

So I want to talk about like who you thought you were originally, right? Was this entrepreneur and I'm a husband and a father, and this is my life and who I'm supposed to be to now, after all of this work and these experiences in the ayahuasca. How are you feeling now? How are you showing up now? And when you're in a calm state and your nervous system isn't running the show.

Howard Steinberg: 40:25

It's tricky because I'm still evolving. It's the forever unfolding. That is the one constant. There's no doubt. I'm still working on stuff for sure. But if you asked me 12 years ago, 10 years ago, even, I would use words like the roles I was playing. Yeah, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a father, I'm a husband, and I'm a survivor, I'm resilient, all these kind of masculine labels, attributes. And now I'm just a kind, loving man on a journey. That's who I am. I am love, I'm loving awareness. And it doesn't mean, you know, it I look like everyone else. I still act like I did, but I just show up differently. I still can be very impatient. I still have a hard time being present, but I know why. And I don't get angry at myself. I don't beat myself up for not being able to participate how I want to participate in life and enjoy life. So, you know, they say all growth occurs on the edge of the comfort zone. So I try to get out of mine more, but also accepting that I have a comfort zone for reasons that are hard to change, which is, you know, fear. And so I'm working on it. I'm working on.

Marla Miller: 41:47

Well, it really struck me what you said about your book and putting it out there, and then realizing that's part of your journey as well. Like putting yourself fully out there, even with the fear or judgment that you think may come your way.

Howard Steinberg: 42:03

Yeah. I'm feeling I have to lean into courage now with that. Like, don't retreat, don't worry that someone's not liking it, like a family member. It's your truth. It's your truth. It may not be theirs, and they may be upset. And it's hard, but that's where I am now. I truly believe I won't go as far as say everything happens for a reason, but I believe only good will come from it, will come from the discomfort and the fear if we confront it, if we communicate, good things will happen.

Marla Miller: 42:39

Well, I wrote a book as well about my own personal experience healing from autoimmune, but I held on to that book for a very long time and I kept nitpicking at it and editing like the tiniest little aspects of it. And I finally just put it out there and just released it. And I'm in a place where that feels good now, but there was a lot of anxiety around. So yeah, I completely get that.

Howard Steinberg: 43:11

They say you don't finish a book, you abandon it. Because I know that emotion, and like I just wanted to keep editing. Like I couldn't let go of it. And I certainly relate to the angst around when you put it out there. And now I worked so hard to detach from the doer achiever that was addicted to productivity. I was addicted to thinking, I was addicted to these things that society louds, you know. And I got good with like doing very little and just being kind to myself. But now I've got this book that needs to be marketed because I want people to read it. So now I'm feeling pressure and you know, to be productive and be out there, but it's it's a hard game. It's a hard business. Yeah.

Marla Miller: 43:58

Yeah.

Howard Steinberg: 43:59

But appreciate people like you giving me some light.

Marla Miller: 44:02

Well, yeah, I hope your book does make it out there to a lot of people because it definitely sounds like it can reach people who are in that. I want to say not even a dark space. It doesn't seem like you were consciously in a dark space, but it was, like you said, off track of your true inner soul, inner path. And you can help release others from living a life that doesn't fully resonate with who they are.

Howard Steinberg: 44:32

The first paragraph in the book quotes us. Studying palliative care, asking patients what their greatest regret is as they face death. And it wasn't, I wish I didn't work so hard. It wasn't, I wish I spent more time with my family and friends. It was, I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself. And when you're faced with mortality, you grow a lot. I think that facing mortality is similar to the work that I'm doing because when the ego relaxes, you can see yourself, you can see things for how they are, and you can stop running on that hamster wheel.

Marla Miller: 45:16

Yeah, that's a good lesson for every single person to really tune into who they are. So your practices now, do you meditate all the time?

Howard Steinberg: 45:26

I'm tough. I'm still a person who has trouble adhering to practices, and I think the ADD brain is what it is, but I'm just very tuned into mindfulness and just watching and witnessing and not reacting, not getting triggered. And the somatic breaks I take, I try to take several during the day. I'm not always good at it. And I worked with an amazing therapist, usually on a weekly basis. And those were amazing sessions, like just energetically, how we both show up and the connection. It's just who knew, you know, who knew? And that's the magic of this. I can't say it enough times. Like I was so rigid that my mind worked so hard to find success, to find comfort, to find joy. And it didn't work. It didn't work, no matter how hard I tried for how long.

Marla Miller: 46:23

Yeah. You used that word surrender earlier. And I hear that a lot. That seems to be the key. When people are able to surrender, it doesn't mean giving up, it means maybe surrendering the ego or surrendering to possibilities, to other stories, or surrendering the stories, I should say.

Howard Steinberg: 46:45

Yeah. There's stories that should be surrendered and stories that can embolden and nourish us, but I think it's surrendering from the parts that are holding us from ourselves. So surrendering control. It's a big one for most of us. I can't manifest everything I want. And you know, one book got Michael, his last name, the surrender experiment.

Marla Miller: 47:14

Michael Singer.

Howard Steinberg: 47:15

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. It's a follow-up to Entethered Soul. And but here's a business guy who practiced that. Sure enough, good things happened. Or, you know, good things in a capitalistic sense, right? In our society, in our culture. What would have been different if I had changed when I was 25, not 60? Who knows? But no regrets, because it's it's all has a divine purpose. It all had its reasons for being.

Marla Miller: 47:42

Well, I will say it's those moments of surrendering, like when you try so hard to fix something or help someone, when you're in that mindset of like, I have to work hard at this, I have to push this. And then when you surrender and you just remember that there is this much greater power out there that has always looked out for you. If you look back through life and you see how things worked out in perfect timing or the synchronicities, and you just surrender to that knowing that you will be fine, and other people will be fine, they have their lessons to learn and whatever it is. You're not in control of everything in this world, you're not in control of anything, really.

Howard Steinberg: 48:22

Yeah.

Marla Miller: 48:23

But that's when magical things happen, right? When you get to that point, yeah.

Howard Steinberg: 48:28

Yeah, yeah. Keep working at it. I think the emotion for me is the I just don't give a shit. Just stopping to give so many shits, you know. I don't care. Um, if people don't like me, I don't care. Sometimes that's harder, but I care too much.

Marla Miller: 48:46

And ultimately, it's your life when people are concerned about what people are thinking. Like they say, they're not even thinking about you. You know, they're they got their own things going on most of the time. And if they are coming at you, that's their own thing to deal with. And you gotta make your life what you want it to be. You came into this life alone, you're leaving alone. You got to make sure you did what you wanted while you were here.

Howard Steinberg: 49:14

Yeah, well said, well said. That's why the book feels good because there's some uh there's a legacy aspect of it too. Like I had these stories to tell, I gotta tell them before I die. I want my kids to know these stories, I want everyone to know because they can help people.

Marla Miller: 49:30

Well, I have a question about your diabetes. Has anything shifted there?

Howard Steinberg: 49:34

No, type one diabetes is right now, it's yours for life, and it comes on in a bang, and you have to start doing for your body what the body can't do for itself, like measure blood sugar, administer insulin, manage nutrition and activity, and it can be quite burdensome. And I get angry at the diabetes because it is a chapter called the joy robber, because it just keeps interfering with joy. But technology has grown so much from those young days where you know, testing urine in the test tube to get an idea of what blood sugar is, which was a horrible proxy to begin with, to continuous glucose monitoring and automated insulin delivery. And fortunately, you know, 56 years with this condition, I'm healthy, I don't have any real complications from it. I didn't expect even to live this long. And that influenced so much of my life where I was in a hurry. I had to get it over with because I don't, like in the back of my mind and in my body was a sense that I was going to have health complications or live a shorter life. So I should have started our talk with that reality because that's why I was navigating in survival mode for so long.

Marla Miller: 50:47

Well, I have three questions I like to ask guests. So when you were going through the discovery process of trying to tune in who you really are and you hit that crisis point in your life, what was the biggest obstacle to finding and living a life that was genuine?

Howard Steinberg: 51:09

I think it was just not reacting to the world with so much anxiety and fear, starting to be able to label it and calming that need to control every moment and just slowing things down.

Marla Miller: 51:26

And what was the biggest lesson you learned?

Howard Steinberg: 51:30

Love myself because if I don't, no one else will. You carry that. You know, that self-loathing manifests in unhealthy ways and makes you ultimately less attractive, a unit.

Marla Miller: 51:45

And what was the biggest kindness someone showed you throughout that process?

Howard Steinberg: 51:51

Wow, that's a good question. You know, I can say so many things. There were some amazing teachers that opened my eyes to things. The biggest kindness was a hug from my granddaughter. Being able to feel and receive that love in the purest form. And I think that's why we gravitate to babies and children because the love is so authentic and feels so good. That's a gift. That is a gift.

Marla Miller: 52:21

Well, do you want to share the name of your book and where people could find out more about you?

Howard Steinberg: 52:29

The book is called Confessions of a Problem Seeker: My Lifetime Journey from Dusy Brain to Loving Heart. And it could be found where you find most things at Amazon. And there's more information there. There's also information at Howard Steinberg.com.

Marla Miller: 52:47

Great. And I'm sure it's in other bookstores as well, right? Barnes and Noble.

Howard Steinberg: 52:51

It's online. Yeah, it's at Barnes and Noble online.

Marla Miller: 52:54

Yeah, we'll give people a second option if they want.

Howard Steinberg: 52:57

Yeah, true.

Marla Miller: 52:58

So well, I really love this conversation and hearing your story and just everything you've learned and how you've evolved is really amazing and a gift, I think, to everyone listening. And how they can apply it to their own lives and really think about how you want to live in this world and be the most genuine you can.

Howard Steinberg: 53:23

We're all capable of it.

Marla Miller: 53:26

Well, thank you for sharing the message and being here.

Howard Steinberg: 53:29

Thank you. It's my pleasure.