Julie Hilsen (00:01)
Hello dear friends and welcome to another episode of life of love where we gather every week to discuss and plan and create the life of love that we dream to have and share our lives of love to promote happiness and Peace and loving unconditional love acceptance Today is a very special day.

Ben Ufana is here he’s a world traveler and he doesn’t really stay in one place very long as you’ll get to learn. And I would just welcome you to listen to his messages with an open heart and just really excited for him to share his journeys

I want to get right into it because there’s so much to cover. And you’ve had such a great life of figuring out how to connect with yourself, how to be happy, how to be healthy. And now you’re always helping people heal. And you’ve woven in several wisdom traditions. Well, everything’s a wisdom tradition, but you’re

Life of Love Through Healing

primary experiences were ignited through American Indians and Native Americans. you left home as a 17 year old, I understand. And then you just, you sort of went on a vision quest

you offer something very unique and special. So I’d love for people to get a snapshot of that.

Ben Oofana (01:25)
Well, initially I was drawn to Native Americans and other indigenous peoples from a very early age, even early childhood. And the fascination continued to grow in adolescence when I was learning about the traditional Native American doctors and thinking to myself, I heard about these profound missionary experiences and the gifts and powers they possessed. And I was like, wow, ever given the opportunity, this is what I’ll do with my life.

Julie hilsen (01:51)
Oh. Spirit’s like, this is where you need to be, Ben. We’re going to dump you here.

Ben Oofana (01:54)
So by the time I was 17, having saved up enough money to buy a car, still in high school, took off on my own, landed in a community of predominantly car -worn Indians in southwestern Oklahoma, that’s where my car died.

So I ended up with the peyote meetings with native elders and they made an exception for me, partly because I had this younger friend about my age and he introduced me to his father who was at that time acting president in the Native American church, a local chapter of the Kairwa tribe. And some of the other native elders were like,

Julie Hilsen (02:21)
Okay.

Ben Oofana (02:44)
not initially comfortable, but this elderly man Jack, he held a lot of clout and he just said, this one is different, let him come in. And so they deferred his authority. And it was during the peyote meetings, I met my mentor Horace Delcai, who is one of the last surviving traditional doctors among the Kayawe tribe. And during the apprenticeship,

I was initially very afraid that he would say, well, this only works for native people. was physically shaking. I was so afraid that he would brush me off.

Julie hilsen (03:26)
like, what were you gonna do if he denied you like, this is your dream? It’s very scary to reach that yes or no, right?

Ben Oofana (03:34)
Yeah, he asked me, he said, can you start fasting this weekend? And I was physically, I was trembling and yeah, sure. And so he had me drive down into the Wichita mountains, not eating or drinking the next two days and nights. And I don’t know that anything much really happened on that occasion other than it was his way of determining if I was serious. My commitment and then two days later,

Julie Hilsen (04:00)
Yeah.

Ben Oofana (04:04)
later when I showed up at a peyote meeting he was had conducted and he just says when you finish your semester college come on out to new mexico where he lived on the navajo reservation

And a lot of these native doctors possess paranormal abilities. And so he would do things like take the end of a feather and physically project it into my body. It felt like this extraordinarily powerful force impacting me. And I’d go into something akin to a mini seizure as he would do that. And I would feel this extraordinary power begin to awaken within me.

the vision quest is typically four days and nights with no food and no water, alone in the mountains or some other remote wilderness area. So he’d have me fasting in order to earn the right to work with these gifts of healing. And then gradually assisting him as he worked with his patients. One of the first instances, a Navajo man who was injured when a piece of heavy equipment

and I don’t know if it’s a bulldozer, front -end loader, and he was pinned underneath, left him paralyzed from the waist down. they would take like the end of a buffalo horn or sometimes just mouth directly to the part of the body and use that suction. And when I saw the blood clots come out the back of this man’s leg,

Julie hilsen (05:33)
he didn’t even apply a syringe or anything. It was just like the breath or a buffalo horn extracted the blood clots.

Ben Oofana (05:34)
But I’ve seen my mentor where someone was suffering from pneumonia or some other condition, he would do that suction and he would literally, and a lot of the native doctors for years, maybe centuries, had done that, that suction.

Now that practice kind of fell out of use with HIV AIDS, which that was when I was during the height of the AIDS pandemic, you know, or maybe at the beginning when AIDS was spreading rapidly and it’s like, wow, you know, if you’re doing that extraction, that blood, that bodily fluid, and if you get that into your mouth,

Julie hilsen (06:09)
Into your mouth, yeah.

Ben Oofana (06:32)
yourself at risk. And also the fact that these medications people were taking were so highly concentrated, you could get that into your body as well. So there was considerable risk. So now as I work with people, I don’t utilize that specific technique or whatever it is. Occasionally, maybe like one out of 30 people or something might physically throw up, you know, their bodies

leasing all that toxin. Again, it’s a small minority, one out of 30. It’s more common, there will be people that will be in the toilet, they’ll say, wasn’t there normal bowel movement, purging.

Julie hilsen (07:14)
Body’s just getting rid of it.

Ben Oofana (07:18)
getting rid of a lot of toxin, their body starts flushing out. And I have people at times where they’re holding so many people, the abdominal region, it becomes a toxic waste dump because it’s one of the largest repositories of all the stress and emotion, the traumas that people carry. One of the largest concentrations of it is in the abdominal region.

Julie hilsen (07:31)
Thank you.

Ben Oofana (07:47)
And many people just inhabit their body, say from the diaphragm up, and some it’s from the throat up. And so as I work with people, what happens is like it’s taking more of their soul or presence, grounding them into their bodies. And what I see initially is like that abdominal area, there could be all kinds of bloating and distension and there are major digestive issues.

many instances such as colitis and IBS or even the bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, all that. So as I’m working with these individuals, and even severe instances where they’re in pain  passing blood in their stools, all that will work. They’re digested tractiles and they become way more embodied, present in their bodies, present in the world. So.

Julie hilsen (08:36)
Okay.

Ben Oofana (08:43)
it’s cleaning all this toxic waste dump, it’s cleaning it out. And that’s important because we see a lot of the… If you look at the destruction of the planet and the wars and a lot of the abuse that’s perpetrated towards children and animals, just humanity in general, and so much of that is because we have this huge disconnect and a lot of people who are supposedly spiritual,

Julie Hilsen (08:55)
Yeah.

Ben Oofana (09:14)
in this culture, again, when we don’t fully inhabit our bodies and when we avoid, deny, suppress,

Julie hilsen (09:14)
you.

Ben Oofana (09:24)
disconnect from our emotions. We don’t want to face issues. We don’t want to go there. We create this profound disconnect in ourselves. And it’s, that’s our shadow. This can become this manifestation. For many people, it manifests eventually as illness or disruption in their relationships. But it manifests collectively in the destructive forces that are

destruction of the planet and again, the wars and other violence. And so the more we go there, we face the issues, we feel the feelings, we address the issues head on, the more present we become, the more we heal and transform these parts of ourselves, we offset that destructive force, our destructive forces that are at work on the planet. So we’re doing our part to facilitate the healing, not just of ourselves, but those around us.

Julie Hilsen (09:56)
you

you

This is so special. This is such a you say it in a in a such a loving and all encompassing way and and I agree 200 million thousand percent with everything you’re saying. I give if you’re thinking about the love one and being connected and honoring your sacred being and everything that’s happening in and around it.

That transforms the world because you’re not going to eat things that make you feel bad. And all of a sudden, we’re not producing, nobody’s buying food that’s bad for them anymore. So that industry goes away. And we don’t have to have a lawmaker say, oh, you know, don’t let them put these chemicals in our food. Well, nobody’s eaten that crap anymore because it doesn’t feel good. We don’t have to have our government tell us how to live. We don’t have to have these toxic waste

dumps because nobody or doesn’t resonate with your body to do that kind of factory production. It just makes everything, it boils things down to like this very manageable thing, which is yourself. And like you said, the illness, it’s because you’re not paying attention to what’s happening in your body. So your body’s crying out and you get these blocks in your energies because you’ve ignored it.

And it’s just beautiful. It’s just beautiful. I’m so happy that you’re sharing this in this way because it’s very pertinent to everything that’s happening in our world.

Ben Oofana (12:01)
We do want to be a little careful because there are illnesses that result from exposure to environmental toxins. Cancer, for instance, is just rocketed because we’re exposed to chemicals, toxicity of one form or another. And also there are a lot of diseases that are hereditary that are passed down through generations that don’t necessarily have to do with any kind of emotional wounding.

Julie Hilsen (12:08)
Oh yes.

Mm -hmm.

Ben Oofana (12:31)
But touching back on what you said earlier too, it’s important to understand that our attraction to like, you know, you go into supermarkets and it’s just aisle after aisle of just garbage, artificial food substitutes that consume. And the fact that the greater extent of our emotional wounding are the…

Julie hilsen (12:45)
Mm -hmm.

Ben Oofana (13:00)
When we’re numbing, denying, disconnecting, we’re not wanting to go there, we’re not healing it, we’re doing the deep level processing of our lived experiences and emotions. Then we’re more drawn to smoke cigarettes or to eat garbage foods, refined sugars that contribute to our numbing, our dissociation, our disconnect. And the further you go in your healing, then…

you start losing your taste for alcohol and there’s no need to, I have many people as I work with them, it’s like, I don’t need to be on these psychotropic meds. Now, some people it may be the best known solution if they’re delusional and they’re a danger to themselves and others, but you have many people that rely on antidepressants or anti -anxiety meds because they do have a history of trauma.

They’ve never learned to work constructively with their emotions and they have not yet found the specific interventions that are helping them to work to heal and transform those traumas. But the more we do so is we go through the steps to heal and we cleanse our bodies. We go through this evolution so there’s less need to self -medicate by eating too much or eating foods that further numb and

in disconnectus.

Julie hilsen (14:29)
Yeah, this I wanted to ask you. This whole idea that, you know, experiencing your emotions, letting them run through is really a powerful thing. And so many times our superpowers are things that are right in front of us that we take for granted, but nobody else can do it. And like nobody else can feel our emotions for us. We can’t talk to somebody and say, oh, you’re feeling this. You know, you have to feel your own emotions. So I wanted to ask you,

Ben Oofana (14:40)
Yeah.

Julie hilsen (15:00)
If someone’s starting on this journey and they’re like, I really want to start doing some of this contemplative work and maybe it’ll lead to some energetic work, but I don’t even know what’s going on because I’m so disconnected from my body. What would be a sign that you’re in denial of your emotions? Are there physiological signs you see in people? This person is just saying, I just want to be aware of my emotions. I don’t even know how to connect. What are some signs that they’re not connected? So someone can say, oh, that’s what I’m doing.

right now.

Ben Oofana (15:31)
There are so many ways in which we act out, you know, this, you see it manifest in a lot of the dramas that play out.

Julie hilsen (15:34)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Ben Oofana (15:42)
When we avoid the pain, we don’t want to look at or feel our authentic emotional responses, then we hold on to individuals who are not good for us that cause us more, evoke more painful emotion, more distress. And the more that I could fully acknowledge what was happening and feel my authentic emotional responses, those attachments began to dissolve.

put these people that the frequency of which percentage of society that self medicates with alcohol and other recreational drugs, our excessive consumption of material goods, our planet cannot sustain our level of consumption because there’s the extraction of material resources, there’s the waste that’s created or the

pollution in manufacturing these items. There’s the waste as we throw these products away.

You know, in these traditions too, there’s not just this floaty love and light. You have warriors in these traditions among the Native Americans in China. The reason that martial arts were developed is because they were overrun by the the Manko hordes. And they they developed this profound fighting arts to such a level.

But at the same time, there was a tremendous spiritual practice incorporated in that too, where they were developing their bodies and minds and developing their connection to the higher power.

Exploring Emotional Awareness and Self-Medication

Julie hilsen (17:28)
So it’s not just violence, it’s about awareness and spirituality and connection and being connected to your values. So you’re fighting for something that is part of your mission. Not a mission to conquer, but a mission that you’re going to protect things that are dear to you, the people and the values and the ideals. Not going to let someone bully you.

Ben Oofana (17:38)
and stand.

Yeah.

Julie hilsen (17:56)
Wow. So, okay, so I want to get back to like how a person knows their, you mentioned there’s things in our society that show that we’re not connecting to our emotions, but how would a person know that they’re disconnected? Like what are some signs that a person, I just want to get down to like that individual.

Ben Oofana (18:17)
Again, our inclination, the extent to which we need to self -medicate, either eating too much food, or eating foods that are toxic, that do not nourish our bodies, garbage foods that cause our bodies to break down. Our need, is that the right word, our inclination to smoke.

Julie hilsen (18:21)
Yes.

Okay.

Okay, so a person who who finds themselves having deep cravings like I’ve got to get a glass of wine or I need to get out there and smoke and vape, you know, I you know, it’s like this It’s more than oh, I’d like to really relax, you know, or maybe you need that to relax You can’t just relax because you’re deciding to relax. You’re dependent on a substance

How about like if you notice your breathing is really shallow? Would that be a sign that you’re not connecting to your body and your emotions?

Ben Oofana (19:15)
Definitely, because the more discomfort we hold in our bodies, then what happens is we inhabit less of our bodies. And one way that manifests is the shallow breathing. And as we purposefully, and I guide people to do this,

breathing all the way down to your abdomen while expanding your rib cage, then it brings more awareness or presence into your body. And the more you do that, it can bring up emotions and memories and bodily sensations that you might not initially be comfortable with. But what I do is I teach people this practice. Not only do you breathe deeply,

as I instructed, but at the same time, you’re being as present as you possibly can. A lot of people are self -medicating in one form or another because they feel such a profound sense of discomfort within their own

bodies, they don’t like what they feel and they don’t know what to do with it. And so what I teach people to do is, and this is one of the most basic practices, I can teach these practices either in person or at a distance over the phone is that start by acknowledging what’s happening, what’s going on.

life that’s triggering you emotionally. That’s one. Two, what do you feel in response to it? What are the physical sensations? What are the emotions? Three, where do these feelings land in your body? Where are they situated? In your chest cavity, down in your abdomen, solar plexus, maybe up in your face or towards the back of your neck. They can be in a number of locations.

Julie hilsen (20:50)
Thank you.

Ben Oofana (21:07)
Bring as much awareness as you can to where the feelings are situated. Fully immerse your awareness in the feelings and sensations. You’re not trying to change them. You’re not sprinkling fairy dust on them. You’re not trying to bring them out. You’re not sending light to them. Let them be exactly as they are. We be fully immersed. Follow them as they go through their progression. You’re not trying to make them go away.

Julie hilsen (21:27)
Mm -hmm.

Ben Oofana (21:36)
You’re not, make them be something else. Just let them be what they are. Anger, resentment, fear, sadness. Those, what people label as negative, and that’s a label, emotions, when you can just be with them, allow them to be what they are and you keep breathing. Even if you want to chuck the living, you know, out of somebody, if it’s your honest feeling, feel it as you continue to breathe into it.

It will in vast majority, it will go through transformation.

Julie hilsen (22:10)
I hear what you’re saying. You can’t just live in the clouds. We have to be in our reality. I hear you. And I understand how how it happens because we’re so dependent on control. We want to have control because that makes us feel safe and then we don’t have to fear. So I understand why people do it like I get it. And I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I’ve controlled. So I didn’t have to fear.

Ben Oofana (22:38)
Yeah, so what’s real important here is what I’m getting to is just feel your authentic feeling, emotional responses, whatever you feel, feel it, breathe into it. Under conditions, these extreme examples I gave, you may continue to feel anger or resentment.

mean, I experienced a lot of trauma growing up in my childhood and adolescence. I don’t,

at this point feel the anger. I don’t feel the pain, the devastation that I used to. I feel the traumas I experienced are much less in comparison to people’s in some of these other parts of the world. So many of us, if we’ve gone through wars, breakups, and I feel for the most part, our parents do the best they can. Some of our parents maybe didn’t, and some were quite abusive, but…

depending on what happened in our circumstance, if there is physical or sexual abuse, and maybe some instances we do feel maybe cutting off that connection might be the thing we need to do for our own self -preservation for survival. But as I said, for the most part, I do feel our parents did the best they could with the resources. Sometimes they were overwhelmed with their own stresses and just…

doing the best they could, but as we process these emotions, as we digest them, do the deep level processing, we come to that place of acceptance and forgiveness for our parents, for ourselves. And it does increase our capacity to love and it helps to keep the connections with our own self or integration, acceptance, compassion for ourselves, but it deepening connection with

family members, our friends, our loved ones, members of the community.

Julie hilsen (24:39)
Hmm. And I found, and I’m not perfect at this by any means, but I found if I can share my reality, my emotion that I’m going through, not blaming, just say this is how I’m feeling right now. And it opens the other person up to say, yeah, I’m feeling this way. That’s not really how I meant.

for this to come across. But if you can open up and be genuine from your heart, accepting that everything you’re feeling is valid and that you’re not trying to blame, you’re just sharing your reality, that opens that other person up to say, oh yeah, this is where I am. And it’s very freeing. And even if you’re doing it with somebody who’s not used to doing it, they sometimes feel like you’re blaming them. And then you can just come back and say, no, this isn’t to blame you. This is all me.

and just keep reminding, because they will, if they had a paradigm or a trauma or some kind of bonding experience where they were made to feel shame and guilt. I mean, you’re helping them get through it, but just owning where you are and not letting them take on the responsibility of your emotion is a very powerful way to build a relationship or to heal. And like you said, some things you just need to let go. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t mean something at one time.

Like you don’t just be we’re not a whitewash. I think that’s a problem with a lot of the mass consciousness right now is like, well, either everything’s really bad or everything’s really good. And we can’t have like, well, it served me once. And in my time has passed, like it’s like we’re not allowed to have seasons. We’re not allowed to have like layers of of emotions and relationships that that are perfect just because they happened. And then.

then we move on. Like we have all these attachments and maybe it’s part of our control paradigm that, you know, if something was good, we just want to covet it and hold on to it. And that just makes scarcity and it makes it hard for you to create new memories with that person or with another person who, you know, there’s an endlessness of possibilities is what I’m trying to say. And if you put all your focus on

one thing or one situation that was once good, you could cloud yourself from living your full life of love, which is full of possibilities and full of adventure and self -awareness and self -forgiveness. Because if you can’t be okay and accept your own emotions, how are you going to be there for somebody else? When you’re dulling your emotions, when you’re escaping, and if you find yourself doing this, then it’s a big sign that…

It’s not the other person, it’s not the failed relationship, it’s something you’re not being real to yourself about. So I hear that message coming through.

Healing Through Forgiveness and Connection

Ben Oofana (27:37)
There’s also the fact that we have these lived experiences beginning from, probably from the time we’re in the womb and then infancy, childhood, adolescence into our adulthood. And so we lived through these experiences and then we have our subsequent emotional responses. And there’s a way in which that crystallizes, gels, forms holding patterns.

And when we’re not processing these emotions or lived experiences, and they freeze up inside of us, but underneath that, there’s this inner core being that gets covered over. And what I find is like for me, doing the deep level processing, working with my emotions, doing the various interventions, doing deep tissue body work.

working with gifted healers, going through the vision quest, the four days and nights alone in the mountains without food and water. As I go through all these experiences and it’s like stripping down these layers of…

that we build up and we all do. We build up these layers and what happens is more of that core being emerges and we become more the embodiment of that, but there’s also much more of a fluidity. So there’s a greater ability to let go and to, and sometimes there are things that were very meaningful to us and people we love, experiences that we want to.

continue to have and yet everything’s in the state of motion. So sometimes there’s the sadness to see people and things go, you know, we’re part of our lives, they move off and get married and they’re no longer available to us because they’re so involved in their spouse. They die and they leave the planet and the world is just changing so rapidly.

Julie hilsen (29:31)
Okay.

Mm -hmm.

I do like how you brought up that place in yourself where everything’s calm and everything’s good and you’re connected.

And it’s a myth, the disconnection is a myth. It’s a myth that we create to hold on to something that we think we need to hold on to. But like you said, when you get quiet and connect to that part of yourself that knows that everything’s okay, that even though something is scary, you’re gonna make it, you’re gonna be okay. But the static and the chaos can make you forget, to forget that divinity inside of you. So.

just to remember. When you’re working with someone, is it energetic through what you’ve learned through the ancient wisdom practices? Or is it more contemplative? Or do you do both? I’m curious,

Ben Oofana (30:41)
the times I’m working with elderly people and it’s fascinates me because a lot of times I will see them having gone through so many years of their lives and they’re holding the residual of all those lived experiences, whatever they’ve gone through, raising their children, they have them marriages.

even the wounding that extends from their childhood. And so I’ll see them, their bodies become much more like the internal organs and systems start functioning better, they’re alive and vital and their lights are coming back on, they’re more lucid. And I’ll see them sometimes going through developmental stages that go back to their childhood and teens. But with adolescents and

people in their 20s, what I enjoy so much about working with them is that there’s this newness and innocence and they haven’t yet accumulated so much baggage. I can see the emotional wounding, the traumas that many of them carry, things that they’ve gone through, things they’ve experienced in their childhood, other traumatic experiences that have occurred.

not as much stagnation. And so going quickly right to these deeply wounding experiences, it’s being transformed, it’s being digested, and it’s building this foundation and it’s giving them this early start. And so like a lot of people, what happens is where the traumas begin in childhood and adolescence, and they start enacting that in their adult relationships.

And it’s all the messy drama of just like relationships that haven’t worked and there are kids that are in the midst of it. And so if I start working with them, they’re thirties and forties and on, there’s all this mess to clean up. Whereas I can, if I start them early on in adolescence or in their twenties, then there’s not as much and we can really get in deep quick and build this foundation that’s going to carry forward.

Julie hilsen (32:55)
Hmm.

Ben Oofana (32:56)
through their 20s, 30s on into their adult lives. It’s given them an early head start. I work initially, I’m teaching them the series of meditation practices because that is so essential. We need to learn to work constructively with our emotions to digest.

both our lived experiences and our subsequent emotional responses. This is a central practice no matter what therapy or modality or whatever you’re doing, you need this practice because if you’re not digesting your subsequent, your lived experiences and your subsequent emotional responses, then it’s any therapy or modality will only go so far. So you need this practice, it’s crucial. The main part of the work, which is what was,

based on what was passed on to me through this Native American doctor and medicine man, I act as a conduit. Now, there’s a lot of what you call energy work, which is actually a very superficial level of work. And here in our Wonder Bread Society, Wonder Bread is like a bread devoid of nutrients. This…

Julie hilsen (33:50)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Ben Oofana (34:11)
deeper connection that a lot of Indigenous peoples possessed. But Indigenous peoples would go through these intensive practices. They didn’t go through weekend workshops, three weekend workshops, and become master healer. A few apprentice and these traditional Native doctors, other Indigenous healers from other traditions, typically took on maybe one or at most just a few apprentices, usually towards the end of their life.

Julie hilsen (34:26)
Alright, alright.

Ben Oofana (34:41)
They would transmit all or maybe a portion of the healing gift or power. And like I said, my mentor transmitted portions of his healing powers. And then he would have me go on the vision quest at four days and nights to earn the right to work with these gifts or healing powers. So as I work with people like these indigenous healers of different traditions, I work as a conduit. There are other forces or means that work.

Julie hilsen (34:57)
Hmm.

Ben Oofana (35:10)
goes way beyond what people think of as energy work. As I work with people, and my intention’s not to criticize or put anyone down. I feel people are for the most part doing the best they can, but I’ve seen that people have histories of childhood physical, sexual trauma. I look in the subtle bodies and the chakras, layers of the ores, sometimes are grossly damaged or disfigured and all those energy work sessions didn’t really do much, if anything.

And that damage or disfigurement is reflected of the emotional wounding, the trauma that’s still held in the body, the imbalances as far as like the biochemical imbalances in the brain, the fact that the neural structure had impacted the development or the trauma had impacted the development of the neural structure and all those deeply wounding emotions held in the body. So…

Julie hilsen (36:08)
Hmm.

Ben Oofana (36:09)
When I work with an individual, when you have an individual who worked as a conduit on this level, so what happens is these beings, these forces work through me and they go in, they actually take these lived experiences, these deeply wounding traumatic experiences, and the person goes into like a very deep, altered, like dreamlike state, and the lived experiences, these highly charged emotions, they’re being transformed, they’re being transmuted, and as it happens, it’s…

Julie hilsen (36:37)
Hmm.

Ben Oofana (36:38)
brought into a form so that it could actually be digested. When it sits there in the body for years or decades, it breaks down, it putrefies. It’s like the food left in the back of your fridge for weeks and months and it’s no longer edible. So we transform these lived experiences, the emotions, the highly charged emotions, the fear, the grief, the anger, all these traumatic experiences so that…

They’re being digested, they’re assimilated. Sometimes there’s an intensity of emotion that surface afterwards, but you come out the other side as you digest it, you feel lighter. It’s building this infrastructure, this foundation that never got to develop before.

They’re calmer, grounded, they’re more present in their bodies, they’re able to function, even become highly functional, able to assume roles of leadership to

work in whatever professional context of whatever business or field or profession they’re in. And so to me, it’s very gratifying to see this transformation.

If you go through the conventional medical route studying allopathic medicine, it’s many years of training through medical school, you know, your premed, medical school.

so if you’re going to become a healer, in these ancient traditions, it involves a similar commitment. It may involve traveling to other parts of the world and apprenticing, a long apprenticeship, and it can be very arduous, apprenticing with these native indigenous doctor healers.

Julie hilsen (38:30)
Well, I appreciate all the travels you’ve taken to supplement your resume and your toolbox. And it’s very exciting. I can tell you’re committed and it’s just a beautiful calling. And thank you for saying yes. And thank you for going through everything you had to go through to clear out and to find your answers. So it’s been a beautiful conversation. I’m so happy. I’m so happy to share it.

Ben Oofana (39:00)
Thank you for bringing me on, for giving me the opportunity to share.

Julie hilsen (39:04)
Yeah, and I can encourage anyone. Ben has a YouTube channel and a website, and I’ll put links to it in the show description so you can check it out. Or is there anything else that you want to share of how people can reach you?

Ben Oofana (39:18)
Yeah, especially go to my website, BenUfana .com. If someone is going through a breakup or divorce, there’s a free ebook you can download, gettingoveryourbreakup .com. Or you can book a free call to refiningrelationships .com. But especially if you go to my website, BenUfana .com.

There’s a contact form and even a phone number there you can find and reach out, leave a message on my Google Voice. I will call you back. So.

Listen to Your Inner Voice

Julie Hilsen (39:56)
Nice. Well, I know that so many times it’s easy to try to escape or take a medicine to avoid. And I honor, I know that some people, like you said, that it’s a medical condition and that, you know, they’re self -injurious or, you know, there’s some things you really need to take. But if you and your heart know that you’re trying to avoid and not face it, then there’s other options besides clouding your awareness.

And I believe this. I’ll die saying it. You are eternal and you’re divine.

We have this short time and this experience and this Earth suit that we have. So I’m just trying to help everyone get through it a little easier and show myself grace. And hopefully through my self grace, I can help someone else find theirs. So I just delight in these conversations because it fuels my soul to continue sharing the message.