Evolving Humans

How to Cultivate Presence in the Age of Digital Distraction Ep 122 | Guest: Ben Oofana

May 15, 2024 • Julia Marie | Guest: Ben Oofana • Episode 122

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Embark on a spiritual odyssey with Julia Marie as we traverse the transformative landscape of healing with Ben Ufana, a man who walks in the realm of Kiowa Indian wisdom and Taoist martial arts. 

Learn how Ben's path unfolded from the roots of evangelical Christianity to the branches of ancient Native American traditions, guiding us through the sacred rites of becoming a healer. As you tune in, hear an exchange of esoteric knowledge, learn about the role of vision quests, and the intimate dance of energy between healer and the healed. 

Feel the weight of your emotions through the lens of our digital age; we explore the delicate dance with our inner selves, often disrupted by the ubiquitous glow of screens. Ben walks you through a three-step practice to help you tune back into your body's emotional cues, offering tools to navigate the often-ignored signals our bodies send us. 

As we dissect the phenomenon of digital dissociation, he shares strategies to recalibrate our relationship with technology, ensuring it remains a servant to our well-being, not the master of our attention. 

Closing our journey, we reflect on the essence of spiritual evolution and the invaluable lessons life bestows upon us. 

Discover how embracing a higher power can anchor us to a deeper sense of purpose and presence. We invite you to make each day a stepping stone in your personal growth, remembering the wise words of Rachel Naomi Remen on the true nature of healing. 

Join us as we foster a space for awareness and transformation—one breath, one moment at a time.

Music Bed is (c)2024 Julia Marie All Rights Reserved
RESOURCES:
Website and Social Media:

https://benoofana.com/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@benoofana



Thank you for listening to Evolving Humans!

For consultations or classes, please visit my website: www.JuliaMarie.us

Evolving Humans with Julia Marie is now on YouTube, and will offer more than the podcast episodes there, so give us a "SUBSCRIBE"!

https://www.youtube.com/@EvolvingHumans731

You can find my book, Signals from My Soul: A Spiritual Memoir of Awakening here:

https://tinyurl.com/Book-Signals-from-My-Soul

Julia Marie:

Welcome to Evolving Humans, the podcast for awakening souls. I'm your host, julia Marie. Settle in and get ready for another spirited conversation. Ben Ufana is a gifted healer who began his training at the age of 20 with Horace Dakai, one of the last surviving medicine men of the Kiowa Indian tribe. He later trained with Shifu Li Tai Liang, learning two internal martial arts, both rooted in Taoism. Ben facilitates the healing of bodies, minds, broken hearts and other deep emotional wounds, while helping people to expand their capacity to love and be loved, realize their true potential and fulfill their life's purpose. Welcome to Evolving Humans, ben.

Ben Oofana:

Thank you for bringing me on, Julia Marie.

Julia Marie:

What was it like growing up in Ben's home?

Ben Oofana:

It was difficult because, coming from an evangelical Christian background which I could not relate to at all, and yet from even early childhood just being drawn to Native Americans, and the fascination continued to grow into my adolescence and even at the age of 14, as I began to hear about the traditional doctors and the visionary experiences they had, I knew from that age that, if ever given the opportunity, this is what I wanted to do with my life. And that's started saving money and bought a car, and then car got me as far as Oklahoma where it broke down, so I didn't make it to the Navajo reservation. But it's a good thing that I ended up in Oklahoma because I had a stronger resonance with Kiowa people and their traditions and their practices, their kind of medicine that they possessed, their practices their kind of medicine that they possessed.

Julia Marie:

Even as a young person, you're drawn to something that, logically, you shouldn't have any frame of reference for. I find that interesting the apprenticeship.

Ben Oofana:

You know the traditional doctors. They usually only take on one or just a few apprentices.

Julia Marie:

In their entire life.

Ben Oofana:

Correct and they will pass on all or maybe a portion of what they refer to as medicine. They'll transmit that to you. A lot of the traditional doctors possess paranormal abilities. Doctors possess paranormal abilities. So my mentor, for instance, would do things like he would take the end of a feather and physically project it into my body and I would go into something akin to a seizure. Now I know some people that want to think of themselves as skeptics, which I think people confuse the definition of skepticism because healthy skepticism is. I'm going to reserve judgment until I step in and observe this for myself and I'm going to see if it holds water.

Ben Oofana:

But you can just go on Google and you could look up Hopi snake dance and you can see these individuals, these men, dancing in the plaza with the rattlesnakes hanging out of their mouth or wrapped around their face and their neck, and so you have these individuals that possess these extraordinary capacities and this connection with the forces of nature that most people in our modern day world could never fathom. But yeah, horse would transmit portions of his own healing gifts and then, in order to earn the right to work with these gifts of healing one doesn't just take the ball and run with it. You actually have to earn the right. So it involves going through the vision quest, which is usually about four days and nights, no food, no water. You're alone in the mountains, so it's a very arduous process that one goes through in order to develop.

Julia Marie:

Within this context, Well, you shared a little bit about what it was like training with him, like training with him being his apprentice. What are some of the most important lessons that you feel he transmitted to you?

Ben Oofana:

There wasn't so much, you know what you would think of as teachings. Horace wasn't all that verbose. I think part of it too was, you know, he's working with people with all kinds of serious medical conditions and some, you know, just life or death at times. So there's a way in which Horace, sometimes, to lighten things up, would just crack jokes and it was you know just say something very short and funny, but it would you'd find yourself laughing. You know he had a way of making light of the situations, but again, there wasn't the long discourses, it was more than anything. Just he would transmit those portions of his own healing gifts.

Julia Marie:

That's why I use the word transmit, because it didn't feel like it was teaching. It felt like it was a transmission. That's why I use that word. It's given to you energetically.

Ben Oofana:

Right. And then a big part of it, too, was assisting him. So there's the practical aspect where I would be assisting him, as he was working with his patients and doing all kinds of other things, like building sweat lodges, which he often liked to work in, and and he expected me to just jump in and begin to work with people on my own. He said I cannot explain everything you need to do. This power is going to work differently for you than it does for me. Just get in, start working with people, it's going to reveal itself to you.

Ben Oofana:

So I was fearful, hesitant initially, because I didn't think I knew enough. But I would be spending time with friends and I would have shared what I'd gone through over the past few years and say, well, can you help me with this, can you help me with that? And I'd say, well, I can try. And then they would relate back to me like how they were experiencing this extraordinarily powerful presence, descend into the room, they could feel the repair, the reconstruction taking place within the organs, the tissues of the body and in some instances, they would feel the sensation of hands working within the body, doing reconstructive work, things like that.

Julia Marie:

It sounds familiar. Some of the work I do has a similar kind of a response to it, but as far as my understanding is, I'm the conduit and that's my job is to just be the best conduit for the intelligence, or the energy which is intelligent, to flow through me to the recipient, and that's my part of the job. I'm not the one who even does the healing work.

Ben Oofana:

Right, yeah, and that's how it works. I know the indigenous healers myself and, having trained from one and all these indigenous healers being conduits, there are other forces or actual beings or entities that work through us to facilitate healing that would not otherwise be possible to facilitate healing that would not otherwise be possible.

Julia Marie:

Yeah, I just call them the team. They're a group of beings.

Ben Oofana:

Yeah.

Julia Marie:

Yeah, but it's definitely not me. How does the training that you received from him influence the healing work that you do now?

Ben Oofana:

The way I work with people might look like what a lot of other people are doing in that.

Ben Oofana:

I lay my hands on the body, but as I work, that same force or presence, that medicine, works through me. Now, since training with horse, I've gone through the vision quests that four days and nights, no food, no water, dozens of times. For me it's always like how far can I go? And then, on my own, I developed a whole series of intensive meditation practices that awaken the body and mind's innate healing intelligence, which I teach to every person I work with. Yeah, I teach those practices because, especially in our modern day world, we're working so many hours, we're commuting, many of us spending so much time just gorging on digital technology, whether Netflix or social media, news scrolling on our smartphones and tablets and computers, and so the vast majority of people are just saturated with all this digital input. With all this digital input and the brain, mind, the body has to process or digest one's lived experience. But when you have all this other input flooding through your sensory channels, the unfortunate thing is it overwhelms your body and mind's processing capacity and so it greatly impedes one's ability to process.

Julia Marie:

Well, you said you share some valuable practices with your clients. Is there something, maybe, that you could share with the listeners that they might be able to implement? That would be something that they could use to help themselves keep from piling that stuff on.

Ben Oofana:

Sure, there are many different versions of these practices that I've developed over the years, and we'd be here for a couple of days, for me to go through all of them.

Julia Marie:

I just want one Just one, that's fine.

Ben Oofana:

So the most basic that I guide people through is, initially, you start out by and I encourage you to do this sitting up. You're laying down and more likely to drift off to sleep, but sitting in a comfortable chair unless you just have that right pelvic tilt and can comfortably sit on the ground in lotus position or something. But sitting in a chair, for most, you close your eyes and just bring to your awareness whatever it is that's going on in your life that is impacting you. What are your greatest concerns? You know, is it pertaining to a person or situation? Is it some? You know what issue is it. Bring it to the forefront of your awareness, see it, feel it to the best of your ability. If it's a person, you can imagine the best of your ability. If it's a person, you can imagine them directly in front of you. If it's a situation, some dynamic, that you're caught up in, you can imagine yourself in the midst of that situation. So again, one, start by acknowledging what that concern or issue is. Two, what do you feel in response to it? What physical sensations are you cognizant of in your body? What emotions are you experiencing? What emotions arise, or or feelings in response to this person or issue or situation. And as you become aware of what you're feeling, notice where are these feelings residing within your body. Are they in your chest cavity, up in your throat, down in your abdomen or solar plexus, or towards your back? Where are these feelings situated? Most people access the feelings somewhere in their torso. Occasionally, I find some people who have so numbed or disconnected from their emotions they have trouble accessing, they're not feeling emotions because they so numb themselves out. In that case, maybe they're more likely to experience either physical sensations or maybe, if they do feel something emotional, it's up in their face, but generally it's going to be in the torso. But when you get that sense of what it is you're feeling, step three is you bring as much awareness as you can to where the feelings are situated in your body. Again, are they in your heart or towards your back, or down your abdomen, up in your throat? Where are these feelings?

Ben Oofana:

Now, go into these feelings, be as present as you can. You fully immerse your awareness in these feelings. You're not trying to send them away, you're not breathing them out, you're not sending white light, you're not sprinkling fairy dust. Just let them be what they are, and, as you do so, breathe very softly, very deeply, fully immersed in the feelings. And it depends on what's going on. If it's something catastrophic like the death of a loved one, or maybe your relationship is just blown apart and you find out the person you have been in relationship with is hooking up with someone else. They've been having an affair or something, the loss of a job it's like how am I going to survive something of this magnitude?

Ben Oofana:

The intensity of emotion that you experience in these instances is not going to just go away in you know, just 10 deep breaths. I mean, there are instances where I would stay present with whatever I was feeling, the overwhelming emotions. I would stay with it for hours at a time in some instances. Now other events someone was rude, or someone cut you off in traffic, or someone didn't return your call or whatever and those may be 15 or maybe even five minutes. So it's going to depend on the circumstance or the situation.

Ben Oofana:

As you continue to do this practice, even more stressful or upsetting events you find that you could cycle through them more quickly. But the important thing is just give it the time that it needs and just allow the feelings whatever they are. You're not trying to change them. You're not trying to make them go away. Just breathe very softly, very deeply. Keep following those feelings and sensations. They will change. Follow them as they go through their progression. Sometimes anger can transition to sadness. Maybe, behind that, fears may arise. What is it that you're actually afraid of happening? You continue to breathe with those feelings. You gain insights. Sometimes, as you gain these insights, you come up with these workable solutions to the many challenges that you're facing.

Julia Marie:

Thank you so much for taking the time to share.

Ben Oofana:

That's just one.

Julia Marie:

Well, I was going to ask you a question later on, but I think this is the place to ask it.

Ben Oofana:

Sure.

Julia Marie:

A lot of times. Some people heal and other people don't.

Ben Oofana:

People don't.

Julia Marie:

Am I making an assumption that it might be? The stuck feelings is what's keeping the person from experiencing a healing?

Ben Oofana:

Not always. And these days we're exposed to so many environmental toxins and that accounts for the increased frequency of cancers. There's an explosion of that. It's just so much more prevalent now. We use plastics and those petrochemicals leach out of the plastics. There's all kinds of toxic waste.

Ben Oofana:

Not all conditions are based on suppressed emotion. It is a big factor. It does factor into many conditions and I do find that there's a huge correlation with the like. For instance, the more people shut down emotionally, the more they numb out their emotions, suppress their emotions, the more they're disconnected, desensitized, and even more so. Now some people may need the medications. There are individuals who are a danger to themselves and others if they're not on the psychotropic medications.

Ben Oofana:

But there are a lot of people who suffer anxiety and depression because they haven't learned to work constructively with their emotions. It was never taught to them, it wasn't modeled for them, or maybe it's just. I don't want to look at that, I don't want to go there, I don't want to feel. But when we don't process our emotions and it could be, like you know, through pharmaceuticals, through self-medicating with alcohol and other recreational drugs alcohol too is a drug refined sugar, other processed garbage foods or just eating too much, you know, just stuffing our feelings down with food or just avoiding distracting ourselves.

Ben Oofana:

Whatever we do, the more that people don't experience their emotions. What I find that happens is people's bodies become more congealed, there's more of that armoring. There's more density in the body. The body is less responsive, and so the practice that I just walked everyone through. This is why this practice is so crucial, because this engages your body and mind's innate healing intelligence Same healing intelligence when you get a cut or bruise and so this healing intelligence is working with you to help you process or digest your lived experiences and your subsequent emotional responses.

Julia Marie:

I read an article on your website and you've kind of mentioned the digital influence, but you wrote an article about your website and you've kind of mentioned the digital influence, but you wrote an article about digital dissociation yeah and that's a topic that's deeply concerning to me that our our addiction to our technology. So can you please define what digital dissociation is and why it might be so dangerous?

Ben Oofana:

the more more we use, I mean, these are distractive technologies and what happens is that it pulls us out of ourselves. And it's sad because it's like people. What happens is they're less aware of their bodies, they become more and more disconnected from their inner state of being. There's such a profound disconnect within people and again, as that happens, it's like we're not able to heal those deep emotional wounds because, you know, your attention gets sucked into your devices and all the digital input flooding into your sensory channels. Yeah, so it's hurting us in many ways. It's you know it's getting worse too. Just within the past few years. We have shorts, youtube shorts and reels and TikToks. You're not going to get these life transforming revelations in a TikTok or a 60 second or less YouTube short, and it's just rewiring our brains in ways that is just seriously impeding our ability to heal and to grow as individuals yeah it's just I kind

Julia Marie:

of I mean, you're preaching to the choir here. I had a feeling that's what you were going to say and that's my main concern. We're here on a planet that is in the process of attempting to evolve the collective or support the evolution of the collective consciousness, and yet there's this pervasive technological I don't want to say well, it is an addiction that's pulling us away from literally out of our physical bodies, out of the now, into this little device.

Julia Marie:

I never thought I'd be bothered by watching people walking down the street. They're not even looking up at their surroundings anymore, they're looking at the device in their hand. It concerns me and, you know, sometimes, frankly, I wonder if we are going to be able to get to the other side of this. But I'm not in charge of the big plan, so I just try and do my part.

Ben Oofana:

I don't think it's going to go away.

Julia Marie:

Yeah.

Ben Oofana:

And one of the things I noticed, too going to go away, yeah, and one of the things I noticed too, is that there's just this deluge of content out there, just inordinate amounts of content, and it just leaves people saturated. It's hard for people to sit still and be with their feelings and be with their physical bodies and their own internal processes, because there's all this distractive technology that's just rewiring their brain and is continually triggering the brain's dopamine reward cycle. So they're looking for the next reward and the next and the next and the next cycle. So they're looking for the next reward and the next and the next and the next. You know just keep moving, keep getting. You know, keep consuming, and so it's just not helping us in that respect. So there are advantages and we have more access to information. Access to information it's a trade-off, let's say, but we need to learn to work, you know we need to learn to be mindful with the technology so that it doesn't take over us.

Julia Marie:

That would have been my point too. I had a smartphone. I never used it to connect to the internet, but it was handy because it had the on-screen keyboard for texting and I found myself very quickly getting annoyed.

Julia Marie:

I can't, to this day, explain to you why text communication was annoying for me, but it was to the point where I told all my friends I'm getting the old flip phone out of the drawer, so don't expect any more text messages from me. You can call me and we'll have a five-minute conversation. And the amount of time that I got back in my day because I'm not spending time having a text conversation with people, I couldn't believe it. But it's again. It was my choice. I chose not to be a part of that anymore.

Ben Oofana:

I'm sure you'll love the article I wrote. Please don't text me, call me. I totally relate to your sentiments on that. It's like I'm not a fan of texting. I mean it's like if it's like I'll be there in five minutes or something like that. You know just a little. You know like I'm on the way, don't worry, I'm coming. I appreciate that. But if it's something we need to discuss, pick up the phone and call me.

Julia Marie:

Yeah, I feel like it doesn't matter the words you put on the screen. There is something about being able to have a human voice. There's a lot of energy in there that is transmitted in a conversation that you don't get looking at words on a screen.

Ben Oofana:

There is so much that's lost. You think about it when we are face-to-face and we have eye contact and there's all kinds of nonverbal cues that if you're conversing by phone that is missed. Now sometimes we compensate a bit, especially if we're very empathic and we feel that other individual at a distance over the phone, but when we're texting we don't have, not only do we not have the nonverbal visual cues, but we don't have all the auditory cues, and so it's so easy to misinterpret, even within an email, misinterpret even within an email, and there are a lot of times where I misunderstand what the intended communication of an email or text was. Yeah, but best of all in person. One of the mottos I live by is show up, pay attention participate, show up pay attention, participate, the end.

Julia Marie:

Let's say I'm kind of addicted to my tech.

Ben Oofana:

What are some strategies that I could use to employ to break that addiction? Well, the practice that I shared earlier. You can use that specifically for this purpose. Where the practice comes in is that when you catch yourself being addictive is to sit down and close your eyes and feel that compulsion that's operating. You know beneath the, that driving compulsion, beneath the surface, that you know where you just compulsively want to reach for your phone or you know, like, turn on that, open up that app and start scrolling away. Or when you find yourself scrolling addictively and you know time's passing, it's like I know I need to get off of this damn phone and this app. You know, just sit down, close your eyes and just feel that discomfort in your body. There's a lot of discomfort that many of us feel just being still. It's become incredibly hard for us to be still and silent.

Julia Marie:

I think it was Dean Ornish who said healing begins with awareness. That's where it starts. So, before we tell the people how to connect with you, I have five final questions I like to ask all my guests. So are you ready for this?

Ben Oofana:

Yes.

Julia Marie:

Okay, first one, three words to describe yourself Commitment, consistency.

Ben Oofana:

I don't know if it's a word, but just this. There's this desire to just experience just that, more of that connectedness. So I guess you could say well, that is a sentence.

Julia Marie:

Consistency and connectedness.

Ben Oofana:

Yeah.

Julia Marie:

Three words to describe your spiritual journey.

Ben Oofana:

It would go back to the three words that I just said. Sometimes it's arduous, but it's just there's desire for more. You know, just in all these ancient traditions they just continually deepen the connection. So it's like let's keep going.

Julia Marie:

Well, anybody with a desire in their heart to deepen their connection can have that experience. They just need to be willing to make whatever the sacrifice is that they're being asked to.

Ben Oofana:

Yeah.

Julia Marie:

So what's your greatest spiritual lesson?

Ben Oofana:

I don't think of it as not like, again, the discourses of the guru, but for me it's on the daily basis, doing the practice of being with whatever arises, the feelings, the sensations that arise from within my body, the insights that I gain on a daily basis.

Julia Marie:

What's your concept of God or the Creator?

Ben Oofana:

So my conception of the higher power is that everyone has within them this authentic core being, and I feel it's imperative for each of us to strive on a daily basis and we're each, through that inner core. We're connected to this infinite being of the higher power that I feel it's, this infinite intelligence that animates all creation. So that's my perception thereof.

Julia Marie:

So what's your final message for the listeners?

Ben Oofana:

What I shared earlier. Every day, take what's happening in your life and use it as fuel for growth. The practice, like I said, just bring and there are pleasant, enjoyable feelings as well that you'll experience. There are times where you can be with an intimate partner and you feel that warmth, you feel that connection. There are all kinds of experiences where you're just enjoying the beauty of nature and just whatever you feel. Be connected to what you feel. Immerse in those feelings, breathe into them softly and deeply and deepen your awareness of your feelings. Breathe into them softly and deeply and deepen your awareness of your feelings, your physical sensations, your surroundings, your connections with other individuals. Just deepen into that experience and again, as I said before, show up, pay attention, participate.

Julia Marie:

Well, I want to thank you so much, ben, for sharing your wisdom and your experience, and now please tell the people how to connect with you.

Ben Oofana:

Best way is to go to my website, benufanacom, and if you go to my website again, benufanacom, there's a contact form. You could email me a message through that. I have a YouTube channel. I'm putting out videos on my blog, on my website that I mentioned just a minute ago.

Julia Marie:

So I appreciate you taking the time with us today and I'm sure these insights, especially that simple practice that you shared, has the potential to profoundly change a person's life if they simply choose to implement it.

Ben Oofana:

Definitely. It makes a profound difference, mm-hmm.

Julia Marie:

Well, that's our time for today, and my deepest gratitude to every single one of you who continue to show up every week to support this podcast. If you found value in this episode, please share it with two other people so that together we can bring more light to the world. And now here's a quote for you to ponder as you go about your day. Healing may not be so much about getting better as it is about letting go of everything that isn't you. Rachel Naomi Remen.