About Psychic Matters Podcasts

Ann Théato, International Psychic Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

This Week’s Episode

Body Work Teacher, Healer and Energy Worker, Rudy Hunter, is on the show, to generously share his incredible knowledge, explaining how we can use certain tools to dismantle our traumatic history, and speed up our ability to heal.

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Thanks for listening.

Why not share it now?

Or ask a question over on Psychic Matters! Podcast Facebook page

TRANSCRIPT

Rudy

I work with people and animals, about 50/50, who have suffered trauma and have not been able to unlock themselves from those traumatic histories.  One of the things that happens when you have suffered trauma, we are more easily triggered by certain things and for folks who are also dealing with not just emotionally-based trauma, but if there is a physical aspect to it, we have already been over-handled, and we’ve been touched inappropriately or manipulated inappropriately, the respectfulness of my work and the gentleness of the work is critical.  And all of those people or animals are always in difficult situations.  It is not like they’re sitting out on the deck ,you know having a Mai Tai and going oh let’s do some healing now I’m in the mood.  It’s like they’re doubled over and crying and there are a lot of defences around so you have to know how to enter that relationship gently and respectfully with people so that you can help them unlock.

Ann

Hello, my name is Ann Théato and welcome to episode 24 of the Psychic Matters podcast. 

This week I am talking to Body Work Teacher, Healer and Energy Worker, Rudy Hunter, who is on the show, to generously share his incredible knowledge, explaining how we can use certain tools to dismantle our traumatic history, and speed up our ability to heal.

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I’m excited to be in the Psychic Matters studio today with Rudy Hunter.  Rudy, welcome to Psychic Matters.

Rudy

Hi Ann, thanks so much for having me, I’m so thrilled to be with you.

Ann

I know that you are an energy worker and you do many, many different types of work in the field of energy and healing and working with aromatherapy oils and working really with people on a whole range of different emotional issues.  So, I wonder if I can just ask you to explain to everyone listening, what you do, how you work, all the kind, I mean this is going to be some conversation, right?  It might take a while, so do begin, and let us know who you are and what you are about.

Rudy

I’m happy to. Well my practise evolved from a very level-headed sensible, straight ahead practise.  I used to be a body work teacher which meant I was working on bodies, animal bodies and people bodies, lifelong animal lover and ex-dancer and professional magician.  So, the story is that I started magic and dancing when I was a kid, and during a performance, a dance performance, I wrecked my back. I dropped from a piece of scenery and that was the immediate end of my dancing career, which I’m only now just getting over being angry about.  So I was led into very unusual rehab. I’m from England, grew up in Toronto, so I was living as a very broke dancer in Toronto, you know, being fabulous and eating beans and Raman and trying to scrape by, and I didn’t really have any money for proper, sensible level-headed rehab. I did a couple of weeks on a muscle relaxers, which was fun and then I was left to my own devices.  So I was crawling around on all fours in my apartment, crying a lot, and in a lot of pain, and a friend of mine said, well, I know this lady who takes groups of strangers, she rents abandoned office buildings, and she has them roll around on the floor in slow motion for three hours, and I thought to myself, great.  That’s after you drink the kool-aid and just before you’re kidnapped and killed, and then he said the magic words oh and the classes are $10.  I said I’ll go, ‘cos that was about the budget I had at the time. So that was my first entree to alternative body work, it was a Feldenkreis class and at the end of the very first class, I had such a substantial level of pain reduction, the magician in me said I need to learn everything in creation about whatever the hell I just went through, because it’s like magic, and that set the trajectory for me not only slowly rehabbing my back but becoming a body work fan.  I’m still a big fan, I take bodywork classes to this day. I went on to become a body work teacher and I managed to study with some of the best people out there in the world, I was very fortunate.  So I went on to teach bodyworks skills, hands-on healing skills to nurses, acupuncturists, laypeople, I worked on a lot of dancers, a lot of my friends.  And we live in the country so I worked on lots of goats and sheeps and dogs and horses and you name it, and I thought this is this is it, I’m good at these mechanical skills, much to my own surprise, and I still feel like a magician doing them, so I thought this is it until I’m dead and gone, this is what I’ll do.  Until my lovely partner George, helped me take a hard left turn.  He introduced me in Manhattan to some of the then current underground weirdos, I call them the members of the tin foil hat brigade. These were deeply crazy people with outfits and get ups and they could do what I could do with years of training and bodywork skills, but they could do it at a distance, on people and animals much faster than I could.  And my head nearly exploded, I thought I don’t know what that is, but being a magician I have to know everything about that and I gotta figure that out. So very slowly my practise carefully moved from sensible to now completely insensible, and I entered the woo-woo territory and now I’m firmly entrenched in it and I’m happy to tell you, I’m, I have a very bustling private practise. I work with people and animals about 50/50 who have suffered trauma and have not been able to unlock themselves from those traumatic histories.  My practise is busy and I’m racked with guilt about it, cause it’s hard for people to wait a long time to work with me.  So what I do aside from my private work, is I run an awful lot of smaller group events and classes or remotely, so that folks can get access to the work that they need, because I have a traumatic past myself, many times over, and I know that the waiting is awful, and up until a bunch of years ago, there were no kind and gentle and effective tools to help people get out of trauma, without them going back to relive it again and again and again, and in my books that’s re punishment, and I don’t do that with people. So many of the tools that are on my sites are free, they are available to everybody, but I also work with some subgroups. I work with a lot of military vets who suffered terrible PTSD, prisoners, I also work with sexual abuse survivors, that’s in my own history, so I know the territory well, and ironically I’ve just started to work with a few perpetrators as well. That’s a gnarly, surprising twist in my own practise, but I work with folks for whom they’ve either been on a regular trajectory of healing or an alternative trajectory or a mix of both and whatever they’re doing has either stopped working or has dropped off in its efficacy. They’ve hit a wall somewhere, that’s my perfect client, because I know what that wall is, we can talk about that if you want, and getting people unlocking that place, gets them right back on track, and it actually speeds up their ability to heal. So God, that’s a long-winded answer, isn’t it, that’s like speaking forever and a day.

Ann

No, that’s really, really interesting.  So would it be right to say then, that through Feldenkrais and then the people that George introduced you to, you have created your own methods of healing and energy work to use on people.

Rudy

Yeah, very much so, I was a prolific magician, I published about 40 books and DVD’s, and by the way, if you’re ever, or anybody who’s listening ever suffers from insomnia, if you Google Rudy Hunter and go several pages in, you’ll see me doing card tricks and those I guarantee will put you to sleep.

Ann

I must look those up that sounds fun.

Rudy

And it’s also the only time you’ll ever see me wearing a suit.  Yeah, I developed a lot of material because it was important for me to figure out, it wasn’t just enough for me that woo-woo worked, I needed to know the mechanics, and then when I discovered, by paying lots of attention, to what happens when people undergo this kind of work, because it’s not, it’s gentle, it’s invisible, it looks airy fairy, and you know there’s a bit of that, but there are mechanics as to how and why it works, and how you, for example, work with somebody, I do a lot of work with packs of dogs in Australia, and Italian race horses and folks, well folks all over the world, so there are mechanics to getting synced up and hooked up with people, and all of those people and animals are always in difficult situations. It’s not like they’re sitting out on the deck you know, having a Mai Tai going, oh let’s do some healing now, I’m in the mood, it’s like they’re doubled over and crying and there are a lot of defences around. So you have to know how to enter that relationship gently and respectfully with people, so that you can help them unlock.

Ann

Can we go back, coz I’m really fascinated about the packs of dogs, I mean let me go back first, if I may. You began by talking about the Feldenkrais method and I’ve seen it written, and I know it exists, but I don’t know what that is.  Would you, can we start there, and then expand from there?

Rudy

Yeah, absolutely, I’m a big fan.  It’s Feldenkreis.  I will spell it for everybody cause it’s a bit of a nightmare to Google. it’s FELDENKRAIS.  It was developed by an Israeli judo expert called Moshay?? Feldenkreis and it’s an amazing body work system that uses motion and the limbs to reteach the brain neuroplasticity.  Now, that sounds like the $100 explanation.  Honestly it’s rolling around in slow motion and paying spectacular attention to differences.  And it’s a way of working very directly with the nervous system.  So the reason I love it, is ‘cause it literally saved my back, and I discovered that every time I do this work, it’s done in two ways.  You can do it for yourself, which is thrilling, and then you can have somebody do it on you, as a body work system both are great, I’ve done it for years, I continued today, as we’re recording, I just booked a bunch of great Feldenkrais sessions with a new practitioner I found in Kuala Lumpur, so thank you Zoom.  

Ann

So you can do it online, that’s amazing.

Rudy

Indeed and it’s a way of getting access to the nervous system, which is one of the huge control panels of how we heal, that’s a big control panel, the other big control panel, and there are few of them, but another big control panel is the energetic system, and then the Meridian system. If you can access of those three things respectfully, and they all need to be talked to a little bit differently, you can usually unlock even long standing, what I call glitches in the system. That’s a very non-technical way to explain trauma and history of things going sideways.

Ann

And I see on your website somebody was talking about how gentle it is and how results are what counts and how great the results are.  Can you say little about that?

Rudy

Those are all my biases, so I’ve had lots of awful rough and tumble body work, and left different modalities crying or feeling beat up, so I’m not a fan of those.  One of the things that happens when you have suffered trauma, and then anybody who’s listening who’s suffered trauma knows this inside out backwards, we’re more easily triggered by certain things, and for folks in my category of stuff ,and who are also dealing with just emotionally based trauma, but if there’s a physical aspect to it, we’ve already been over-handled and we’ve been touched inappropriately or manipulated inappropriately, or you know, you can you can do all the other calculations of what that’s like, so the respectfulness of my work and the gentleness of the work is critical.  Even if we flashback to the 80s, ah the 80s, good times mostly, we were all back then, because psychotherapy said the only way to get through trauma is you relive it, relive it, relive it, and eventually it loses its power. Now that happens not to be what happens when you relive something over and over and over again. What actually happens, is that generalises and you substantially increase your resting tone of hyper vigilance which is a fancy way of saying it gets much worse, and it gets pervasive into other areas of your life.  So unless we come at this in a gentle way, and we can unlock it around the mind because the mind, even though I have a fairly strong mind, bias, anti mind bias, the mind wants to run all shows, it especially wants to run the show that we are locked against, which is where big trauma we’ve had or big 20 dramas we’ve had, so the line will interfere and be very much like the monkey mind it has the reputation of being.  So there are a lot of processes in my work that go beyond the reach of the mind, so the mind can’t throw a spanner in the works .

Ann

How does that work then, that goes beyond the reach of the mind?

Rudy

The mind, the mind’s mostly a liar lines good for a bunch of things don’t get me wrong, it’s good for driving, it’s good for balancing the chequebook, it’s good for making adult mind rational decision,s and a few other things but it’s not good anything else, but it will lie to us and say that it should have the final word on things like our intuition, our insight, are natural knowing us now that’s so ridiculous, but the mind has a really good as a really good set of convincing strategies for us, so we can take different parts, we can take our awareness to different parts inside us, and give them control where the mind can’t reach.  I should probably demo this, otherwise it’s just theory, and theory is nice, the cocktail party makes me sound very clever, but theory doesn’t get you anything but it sounds great. I mean it would be wonderful if you could demo it wants to do that now, or in a bit, let’s do that so we never prepped anything but I want to use you as the person we’re going to demo on for this but I’m going to make an

Ann

Excellent, let me tell you all my traumas…

Rudy

We’re going to do something called secret therapy, okay?  What I’d like you to do, we are going to stay completely 100% out of content, not only for your privacy, but as important for everybody else who’s listening, they’re going to do this for themselves while we do it for you, so we’re not going to talk about what the trauma is, or any of the specifics, because that’s the story and that’s the dominion of the mind. The mind just lit up and went, oh good, we’re going to we’re going to dive into the gooey crap, it’s like, no, we’re not, so here are the really simple same rules that keep this out of lines control.  So we’re going to pick one traumatic event.  Not every time my brother hit me for the last 30 years, that’s 500 events, you’re gonna pick, my brother hit me last Tuesday and it hurt, that’s a single event, you pick a single event ,you’re going to give it either you’re going to give it a title, that’s either a word or a number, or a colour, that hasn’t nothing to do with it whatsoever.  So it might be cold strawberry, or it might be called 742, so that all of us are forced to stay out of content, so we can’t hallucinate, alright.  So I want you to just give it a title for me first, and tell me what the title is.

Ann

The title is banana.

Rudy

So everyone playing our home game is going to come up with their own title and then the most important thing we’re going to do is we’re going to use a zero to 10 scale. 10 is I need to drink a bottle of Scotch and then I’m calling the ambulance to take me to the institution Cos I can no longer deal, zero is no big deal anymore.  So banana in your case, has to be over a 5, because if you pick a two or three trauma, it’ll drop it’ll be like at Hunter he’s alright I want you to pick something that’s juicy enough to be over 5, so all you’re going to do, is tell me what the numbers, 7 perfect, so those of us playing the home game, we’ve got a title and then we’ve got a rating.  Don’t skip the rating, because that’s part of where the magic is. So you may start an 8 or a nine and starting at a seven, you might start at a five or six wherever you’re starting is wherever your starting, and then the only agreement, is that in this process that’s only going to take a minute or two, you’re going to stay on that same event, because the mind still wants to help quote unquote mine is going to want you to move to a different trump, so stay on this one, so if you will, I’m going to, I’m going to close my eyes for 30 or 40 seconds, I’m going to make some insane mumbling noises, your entire job is to not try and fix your trauma in the next minute, you’re not trying to actively change it or manipulate it, you’re just lightly putting your attention on it, ready? yet

Chest just out of curiosity Interestingly yes it feels warm almost hot so you’re you’re not going to say out loud the answer to the question I’m going to ask you, but our listeners at home can do the same thing when you lean into that experience in your chest notice the first face that appears.  Somebody pop up? Right keep your attention on their face for me, easy breath, only what your sensations are or what changes

Ann

What changes for me is my understanding of that person

Rudy

Beautiful.  We have one important piece to do here. I want you to locate, by squeezing your shoulders together, shoulder blades together, locate the place between your shoulder blades, the place energetically that when we’re betrayed, or energetically stabbed in the back, or things go wrong, this is actually where we feel it, is a big cluster of energetic portals here, so you can relax and wiggle around, just so you know, where that place is, I want you to put your attention now to where that is between your shoulder blades,, so keep your attention there, and I’d like you with it you’re not puffing yourself up I want you to put your attention on your actual value and worth, you keep your attention back there.  Here we go .. a way to say that differently is your actual power or sense of self, so keep your attention between the shoulder blades….. Okay.  One more breath, that’s one of my favourite sounds. So what was your experience?

Ann

My experience, well this is all fascinating because, thank you everybody for indulging me in a, in listening to this process, but hopefully it’s very helpful for everybody listening, I felt very powerful in that moment, when I put my focus on that space between the shoulder blades and there’s a particular area that I go to and interestingly all my life, some of my friends know this, I have always had this huge fear of being stabbed between the shoulder blades in that exact same space.

Rudy

What a co-inkydink!

Ann

So it was really interesting, changing that feeling of fear, where that’s been held all these years, since I was a child, since before that trauma happened, I’ve had that that fear and then transferring that and transforming that into power and strength.  Yeah, that’s amazing.

Rudy

Good.

Ann

What are you doing when that’s happening? What, what’s, how does that work, are you able to explain it a bit for anybody or?

Rudy

A bit. The easy breezy answer is that when I was a young man, I became fascinated with the Meridian system, that was sort of my first entrée.  That’s the map that acupuncturists work from, that is at least 6000 years old from Asian medicine.  It’s the road map for where the needles go, and I have obsessed and obsessed and obsessed about learning everything that I can, I mean I’ve, I’ve actually taught a few acupuncturists some of, some of this work, because I have to talk to somebody about it. I do actually also train practitioners in some of my work, that info is on, it’s called Ash Work and that’s on a site for those folks, that’s the ashworkerstraining hub.com which is too long a website name.  So, if we can move congestion in specific parts of the energetic or Meridian system, we not only get access to the freedom in those areas, but we automatically, because it’s natural, become more integrated and more harmonious when that’s released.  And that’s true of most modalities.  You know, if you take a tight muscle knot that’s cranking up your entire system, and you’re walking with a limp and you feel miserable, when that gets released, and let’s go, there’s a very global kind of effect. What I’m most interested in, is how global can we get? So, most of the work I do with clients are these kinds of processes, very short processes that deliver the maximum amount of freedom that’s possible.  I used to give clients years ago, I’ve been working with people a very long time, I, I’m always a little afraid to do the math, but I think I’ve worked with folks for 35 or more years, so, I used to give folks back in the day, tonnes of homework, because I presumed that they were as excited as I was, once they had a taste of freedom, to go and do the 47 things I would give them, and that turned out to be a terrible mistake.  And the older I’ve gotten, the simpler this work gets.  It gets deeper and simpler, and most of the time that we work because there are some of the big blocks that people are never taught how to navigate in their life, or unlocking the chronic long held emotions, that create strong physical interruptions in their life.  One of my favourite things, coz it’s a little scandalous to talk about, is when folks hold onto remorse and resentment and guilt, they actually in my opinion only, although years from now medical science will go, yeah, it turns out Hunter was right, they create a shift in their blood stream that produces biological poisons, produces acid, which are, which is the exact building block for diseases and disorders that neither of us want and nobody wants to deal with, because as kids we weren’t taught how to and we weren’t practised, in how to have these emotions come up, dismantle them, and allow them to leave.  Instead we store them, so we create an acid environment.  It’s not just metaphorically, it literally erodes us. You show me an angry person who’s been angry for way too long, I will show you a diagnosis waiting to happen, and it ain’t pretty. And then there are subgroups of that, you know, you show me bitter people who complain about everything, they get a different kind of problem than the folks who are explosively angry or, or implosively angry that’s much more dangerous.

Ann

Yeah, I mean it’s true, we’re not taught how to deal with trauma, that’s very true, from and we should be, because it’s obviously something we, everybody experiences, you can’t live life without experiencing trauma, so why aren’t we given the tools as children?

Rudy

Yeah, I think it should be taught immediately after recess, when you’ve had the crap beat out of you, sorry that’s just me, yeah way back when, would have been a good, the entire trajectory of my internal experience would have been much friendlier if I’d had those tools.

Ann

Do you teach your methods to anybody? Are you a teacher, do you pass this knowledge on?

Rudy

I do.  I teach a lot of different courses.  I teach the formal healing course that I have, called Ash Work, those are folks who want to do that specific work, but I am I think I’m more teacher than healer, because it’s so important to me personally, that folks grab one or two or 12 or however many they want, skills, for this kind of internal navigation, because not having them … part of why I make so many free tools available…  I made a vow years ago.  I used to open and close my practice.  Back in the day, I would I would open my practice, make all the mistakes you can possibly make as a practitioner, get really, really angry and frustrated and close it down and then bury my head in the sand.  And then I‘d get the itch again and then I’d reopen it.  So that’s an exhausting pathway, I don’t recommend for anybody. I made a vow the last time I reopened my practice, and it has stayed open, that I would put into the world floating billboards, free tools, videos, articles, replays, audio tools, because we need those things.  We need it not only when we can’t get to our sister-in-law who we always talk about bad stuff with and she makes us feel better, because she’s on holiday.  Or we can’t get into the Massage Therapist cause they’re closed this week.  Or my favourite is, it’s 3:00 o’clock in the morning, we’re having a meltdown, who are we going to wake up?  Nobody.  Or you’re gonna wake up somebody once, and never again.  So we need these, even if we are highly functional folks, even if we seemingly have it all together, and if we don’t, because in my books part of my outliving for trauma was the compensation patterns I had.  I was, I was for a very long time a horrible sufferer of OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, bad, and it was escalating and I was scared.  So, I mean that’s just one of the things. There’s lots of other murky crap.  People look at me and go, oh you’re so together, I was like, ah, you should have seen me a few years ago, what a mess! But I honestly I love messes. I think if we’re not messy and sticky and if we don’t fall down, if we’re not… here is one of my favourite stories.  I work on a lot of animals and I used to make house calls.  I live in the country so house calls here is, you know, Uncle Jed’s goat’s sick, could you come over? That sort of thing.  So I did a house call and George and I drove just down our country road a few miles, to work on a puppy, who had a bizarre condition. This gorgeous little puppy, I’ll never forget him, and I have since gone on to work on much more severe cases.  This was a happy little puppy but he could not bend his rear left leg, it was straight as a board. And as I usually do for those things, I sit on the ground, I grab my bag of tools, my oils, my brushes, my leads, my chew toys, all the stuff to distract the puppy with, so that I could manipulate him and work with him, and he was wonderful and it became very apparent to me very quickly, that I couldn’t help this puppy.  And I tried everything I knew. And I found myself in the puppy owners’ house sitting on the floor, having a complete breakdown in front of them. And when I tell you, no one wants to see this big blubbering mess of a man hunched over a puppy crying uncontrollably. I’ll never forget it, because after I got over the embarrassment of that, I realised that I can’t help everybody I want to. And I understand very completely, the big-hearted types of folks that I teach, part of my agenda is to get more of those people stable, confident with skills so that we can have more of us in the world. That’s really my secret agenda, is to get more of us helping in the world. But I think it’s great if you’re a big hot mess occasionally and you don’t have it all together. It’s.. that thrills me and there’s a… the realness and the honesty is beautiful in my work.

Ann

There’s also something to learn, isn’t there Rudy, from an experience like that?  We can’t just go on being perfect and everything working perfectly around us, otherwise we don’t learn anything.

Rudy

That’s true.  Oh and by the way, update on the puppy story, the vet who finally had to do surgery, I got the message back that nothing anyone could have done would have corrected, without shortening the tendon in the leg. So I felt relieved, you know, on the mechanical side of things, but I’m so glad I turned into a big blubbering puddle because it’s a, it’s a good, you’re right, it’s a good memory of learning for me.

Ann

Yeah, it’s interesting, and talking about animals, so when you are working with me you were asking me to vocalise my new number of choice, so how do you work with an animal who can’t communicate in that way? How does that work?

Rudy

That’s easy and fun.  They’ll either bite your face or  lick it and you get really good at quickly moving your head out of the way in case they want to bite it.  And you always have to, all the animals I work on these days are not generally happy Fido sitting in the living room having a good day.  Most of them, most of the ones I work on, have come from an extraordinarily bad background, the details of which will spare you from ‘cos they make me cry. So we are already starting with this baseline of, you have got to be gentle and respectful or i’m gonna take your face off.  So that’s the, that’s the beginning part.  So we meet the animal exactly where they are, to use our eyes to see the changes, and the changes show up in animals, usually even faster than people, but it shows up in how their gait improves, the sense that they actually give off.  An animal in fear smells very different than a happy animal, and you can actually track those biological changes and their manner and willingness to be manipulated or touched or to move into you.  It’s funny, most people think it takes great discernment, it’s so easy, because the animal makes it so obvious, like, oh you’re not going to hurt me anymore, and you’re helping me, here let me get closer to you so you can rub this part.  It’s, it’s a very, it’s very 8 year old.

Ann

Yeah, it sounds absolutely lovely and did, I think I saw on your website that you had treated was it llamas and chickens?

Rudy

Yes llamas, chickens, dolphins, donkeys I don’t know what it is about, maybe it’s, maybe the Christopher Robin stories I was read as a young, young man, but I love the donkeys, all kinds of animals. I do a tremendous amount of work with dogs, I think they’re sort of my favourite go to, but horses, cows, goats, you name it.

Ann

Oh, that is just so beautiful, so just to recap for people, they going to your website, is an absolute joy, do make sure you’ve got some time people, because on Rudy’s website you will find so many different things.  You’ve got free audio tracks there, you’ve got videos you’ve got all kinds of resources to help and assist.  What is the name of your website?

Rudy

Well there’s three of them, there’s rudyhunter.com, then there is huntershealingcalls.com and then there’s the healing, the healer’s training website which is ashworkerstraininghub.com, and my joke is, oh and there’s also thearomaguys.com, that’s our essential oils website with my partner and myself.  Folks if that’s too much, just pull up a search engine, punch in my name and everything is designed to get you to one of those places, to start your treasure map tour around.

Ann

That’s great really thanks and I will have show notes for this episode on my website, so if anybody wants to find out, they can go to the website and pick up all the links there to lead them straight to your door.  Tell us about The Aroma Guys.

Rudy

22 years ago, my partner George and I, George had a client who was relentless, bless her and she came at us hard and kept saying you gotta try this essential oils, they’re fabulous, they do amazing things, and she would not give up, so honestly to make her leave us alone we said, look, we will get some oils, but here’s the deal.  We’re going to get these, we’re going to go away for a couple of months and we honestly, we will try them on the people and the animals that we work with and we will see.  And that’s how we buggered ourselves up, because we put them on people and animals we were working on, for whom we have done everything, we’re not making good progress and the only line that we endorse because we’ve had such miraculous stuff happen with it, is the Young Living essential oils line and to this day, I’m staggered by how effective they are across the species line.  They work on people & animals, they even work on your brother in law which is remarkable and 22 years in, this thing we were trying not to do because we thought it was too girly or too smelly or it just wasn’t us, turned out to be us completely, because it’s a very expedient way to get people what they need.

Ann

And what’s the website for the aroma guys again?

Rudy

That’s aromaguys.com.

Ann

Well that’s pretty easy to find.

Rudy

Yeah, that one was short and smart.

Ann

And from your website, people can order these oils? Do you ship across the world or?

Rudy

They are shipped from Utah mostly but they are available throughout the world. The website ordering is not the best way to do it, in order to get our backup and support and expertise with people and with animals, folks need to become part of our group, so the best way is to contact George, coz he handles the mechanics of getting folks started.  You email him, you may have a conversation about, you know, what a good way for them to get started is, what it is they need, so it’s very, we’re attentive dudes.  We think it’s important that if you’re going to explore a new modality you get what, you get the things that are going to help you the most, whether you’re doing it for your cat or your dog or your horse or your, yourself, we think that’s pretty important.

Ann

Yeah that’s great and so if somebody wants to come and see you Rudy to have a session with you, I don’t even want to call it a healing session it’s kind of so unique isn’t it, this, this

Rudy

The private sessions are in very short supply, but I run a lot of different group events and some of the group events are open for whatever folks are dealing with, and others are themed around certain important things, like some of the emotional work we talked about. Like I do a lot of work with, with grief and resentment, and you know all the cheery stuff, the stuff that we’re all holding onto, that we don’t know how to process or we’re awkward with processing.  So folks come and do that work, and those are usually on recording, so that it’s not a one and done, because we’re all living here on planet earth, and your car gets dinged, and people hall off and give you the finger, or say bad things or you have a bad day so those are tools that are always freshly available, so folks can lean into them.

Ann

That’s wonderful and so it just leads me to just think of another question, before we finish, you’re dealing with people or talking to people or treating people who have suffered trauma or that they’ve had various things going on in their life, and we at home might not be treating people as you are, but sometimes we talk to our friends who are going through a trauma and stuff… how do we stop ourselves and how do you stop yourself from becoming affected by the energy of the other person?

Rudy

Oh that’s such a great question.  The most important skill set that I teach the folks who I’m teaching my work to, it’s two-fold, one is confidence, cause we all think we’re somehow not good enough to help somebody, ha ha, nothing could be further from the truth, but the other part of that, is Rudy’s crash course in boundaries.  Which I wish was a 20 minute spiel but is not that short.  Boundaries are the most important thing, whether you are helping your sister in law over a glass of wine or whether you’re working with a survivor of something awful.  And I can tell you that learning boundaries, for me, has been a long process, that’s why I opened and closed my practise so many times.  Coz I would get slimed and slimed and slimed, and then I would go oh, I’m lying on the couch, I might as well just close my practise, because I’ve been done in.  I let in …  I was trying to carry other people’s stuff, instead of actually showing them the way out and through.  My analogy for this, for boundaries, is when you’re having a problem, when you fall into a hole, what you need if you’re in that hole, is someone with a rope or a ladder and a map.  And the map is even more important than what gets you out of the hole.  That person has to know where you’re going.  There are, there are, I don’t know if they’re still around, they probably are, there are old forms of psychotherapy, my apologies to psychotherapists listening, where one of the fundamental tenants was that the client knows what they need and can lead the way out, what they need on the way of support. And it sounds wonderful and it’s total rubbish.  Because, when we’re wounded by falling into the hole, when we are pulled out of it, we are still not, if you will pardon the pun, WHOLE, we’re still wounded, we’re still carrying the memory of that accident that pushed us in the hole  How can we be expected, to then navigate to a place we’ve never been before.  So one of the things about boundaries, is it’s our job to be gentle, well my bias is, I want I want tour guides like us, to be gentle and to lead people to a place that they can’t access on their own.  It’s not for forever, and in fact I’m very strongly against practitioners of any kind who create for forever relationships with their clients.  I want to get people on their own two feet stable, happy, functional, moving forward, and then you know, they can send me a postcard, or they can send me ten of their friends, that would be a good deal.  But it’s most important that they have the tools they need to get to places of stability first.  And in that process, as practitioners, cause I know I know practitioners are very quick to carry everybody else’s luggage, cause I used to do that a lot, that’s a recipe for magnified suffering.  And when we’re in a place of magnified suffering, what we can do to help a client, diminishes and diminishes and diminishes.  So the boundaries which always feel awkward, are critical.  You watch a good parent, you get a taste of ah, that’s love with edges, beautiful, and that love with edges, makes a functional, self-reliant, fabulous child. It actually helps the child become more of who they are, and it’s the same thing we do for dogs. I never wanted to train my dogs, I want dogs to live in my house and then you know, run the show, but when you see a well-trained dog, you see a dog, once they are trained, they relax, it’s remarkable, and we slowly figure that out as people-helpers, that the rules are good, as long as they’re kind.

Ann

That’s really beautiful, thank you so much Rudy, it’s been absolutely wonderful talking to you and listening and learning about the work that you’re doing out there.

Rudy

Thank you so much Ann.  I really appreciate you and what you make available for folks.

Ann

It’s a total pleasure and I hope one day I’ll get to meet you in person.

Rudy

Absolutely can’t wait.

Ann

Wonderful thank you for coming onto the show

Rudy

Thanks.

Well, that was Rudy Hunter, what a fascinating guy – whatever you do – make sure to go and visit his website where you will find lots of free goodies and incredible free content that Rudy has created especially for you.  All resources for this episode, including all of Rudy’s website URL’s and his social media links plus a full transcript of this episode, are over on my website, so do head over there and you can pick everything up  www.anntheato.com. 

Please can I ask a favour from you? If you are really enjoying these podcasts and feel you are getting a lot out of them, this is really important – please could I ask you to leave me an honest, written review on Apple podcasts? Many thanks to those listeners who have already done that, I’m so appreciative, but if you haven’t as yet and you are finding this podcast helpful, please do take the time to leave me a review, it really helps to move the podcasts up the charts, which in turn reaches more people, which in turn, hopefully helps more people too.

Thank you again to my wonderful guest, Rudy Hunter, and to all of you out there who are listening and learning and developing – I really appreciate you!

Have a fantastic couple of weeks everybody, stay well and happy and until next time… my name is Ann Théato and thank you for listening to PSYCHIC MATTERS!

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