Hello, hello, hey everybody. Welcome to the pod. Welcome to the cure for chronic pain with Nicole Sacks.

LCSW, that is me, still me, still here. And I am really excited to share what I have to share today.

My wonderful interview with Athena Allred, who is a modern day shaman, which some people might not even know what a shaman is.

I don't think I really knew what a shaman was before I met Athena. And she really helped me understand how I could relate to somebody's definition of a shaman.

So that's something we're going to talk about today, because my retreated omega, where Athena will be a co-instructor, one of the people coming to help bring a full, rich mind body spirit experience to everyone who joins us.

My retreat is something that I have been getting a lot of questions about. And one of the questions I've been getting is, you know Nicole, you keep saying something about mind body spirit and bringing people that are going to work with energy and work with, I don't even know exactly the language I've been using, but something I've been saying has been getting a couple questions saying stuff like, you know, I am a scientific mind.

I am not a god person. Is this going to be too weird? Is this going to be too hippy-dippy? And I, it's kind of funny to me almost because I grew up for the first at least 30 years of my life, a complete, avowed atheist, not because I hated religion by any means, just because I was brought up with none of it. And you only know what you know.

You only know what you're taught. And I was not taught to think religious people were wrong. I was taught that that wasn't for me. That wasn't available to me. I'm Jewish culturally, very culturally Jewish, very proud of my heritage. My grandfather was in a work camp in Germany.

I understand, you know, I, or Poland, I understand during the Holocaust, I am very aligned with my Jewish traditions, but I wasn't, we never went to temple. You know, I, I didn't have any affiliation with organized religions. So growing up, and my parents were both super mega intellectuals.

You know, their religion was the, the nightly news in the New York Times. You know, I mean, I was not raised with any spiritual belief at all. And so I really empathize with people that are concerned that, that there will be too much, woo-woo-wa-wa, spiritual, whatever.

And forget just my Omega retreat, because that's just one week of the life that we all live. But it's just in the world, in the world of healing, in the world of mind body medicine. Like, is this too much spirit for me? Is this too much? Whatever.

And I totally get that. And so bringing Athena along was a very mindful decision I made, because she is so amazing at bridging the gap between people who are skeptical about spiritual practice. And, and also people who are incredibly enthusiastic about spiritual practice, she really stands with one foot in both worlds.

And is so good at explaining to people how this mind body work that I do can complement a spiritual practice, however that makes sense to you. I mean, she's just brilliant at it. She's brought me so far in my own understanding of spirituality.

So, a little bit about my spiritual journey, I don't think I had any, and when I'm gonna just, I have to qualify this. When I say the word God, I don't want to trigger anyone on either end of the pond. When I say the word God, I am not referring to any organized religion. And if you are a member of an organized religion that brings you love, join peace, I am so happy for you. And I'm, and you are so welcome.

And if you are a person who has no religion and really feels that there is no God, maybe you're an existentialist, you were born from nothing we died into nothing, you are welcome too. I have been both, I am all, I am all.

But I do use the word God just because it's like an easy placeholder. Sometimes I substitute it with energy or the universe, but any case, I just feel the need to say that because in a million years, I never want anyone alienated.

Because I could have been so alienated from this in my previous life, in the first 30 years of my life, if I heard the word God, I was like, oh wait, this is like a religious thing. And I would have stepped out. And I also know on the flip side, some people feel like if we're not really talking about religion, the way they feel like we should, they'll step out.

So I just want, I'm hope, you know, you can't satisfy everyone, but I'm hoping to explain that the fact that the, the subject of this podcast is spirituality, I, I really hope that everyone can identify in instead of identify out.

So a little bit about my spiritual journey is that, like I said, I was raised in the suburbs of New York City, and I did not have any religion. My friends were pretty evenly divided between Christian slash Catholic and Jewish.

So I was raised in the area that I was raised, so I knew kids that went to CCD, and I knew kids that went to Hebrew school, and my parents just did nothing. And that was their choice. And, you know, I'm not choosing that. My children do go to Hebrew school, and that's my choice.

When I was growing up, I had no religion, and also my parents never discussed spiritual matters. It just, my mom is, I would imagine my mom identifies as an atheist, my father passed away when I was 27, and I'm an only child. So it's kind of on my own to figure this stuff out.

And so as I grew up, it pretty much never occurred to me, and I was wildly self-sufficient. I figured I'm the only one in the world that can solve my problems. I never felt that there was an energy out there supporting me or anything like that.

...