My guest this week is my brother, Malachi Gillihan. He’s currently doing graduate work in east-west psychology, studying the intersection of trauma and spirituality. So we talked a lot about that connection (which builds on my conversation with Jonah Paquette in last week’s episode). We also got into issues like Steve Porges’s polyvagal theory, the harsh self-judgments we often make after trauma, and what it means to say yes to all of life. I hope you find our discussion to be helpful.

Other topics we explored included:

• My guest’s experience of trauma as “an express elevator to God”
• Harnessing our experience toward growth
• Posttraumatic growth
• Trusting one’s process of healing and other internal unfolding
• Empowerment as the capacity to take action
• The loss of control that often accompanies posttraumatic stress
• Comparing our recovery from trauma to others’
• Saying “yes” to all of our experience, which means acknowledging the presence of what is
• How trauma exposes our fundamental beliefs about life
• The self-judgment we often make following trauma
• Seeing post-traumatic reactions as normal responses of the nervous system to overwhelming events
• Shame as an experience of separation, according to Brené Brown
  • See her book I Thought It Was Just Me (affiliate link)
• The paradoxically unifying sense of loneliness and separation that often follows trauma
• Bliss as expanding one’s capacity to experience everything
• The ego as a “border agent” that welcomes certain experiences and tries to exclude others
• Inviting all of our experience in and asking what it has to tell us
• What my guest thinks happens when we die
• Surrendering and letting life “do” us

Here are Malachi’s recommendations for further reading (affiliate links):

• Embracing Anxiety by Karla McLaren
• The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges
• Aware (Dan Seigel)
• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Malachi Gillihan has spent most of his career as an entrepreneur and documentary filmmaker, where he worked primarily in storytelling, campaigns, and activism to promote social change.

After his second company failed in 2016, he started studying and teaching yoga. Inspired by his extensive experience as a documentary filmmaker working with intensely traumatized populations, he began research and trainings specifically for working with trauma, which led him to his current course of study.

Malachi lives with his wife and son in Oakland, California.