0: Swan Dao on Inspiring Transformation Through Creative Expression and Human Connection (Part One)

The Institute of Devotional Arts

University of Cambridge
Philosophy
Theology
Psychology
Caodaism
Bahá’i
Vipassana
Nonviolent Communication
Contact Improvisation Dance
Nonverbal Communication
René Descartes
Socrates
Ego death
Jorge Ferrer
Family Constellations
Systemic Constellations
Dream Therapy
Applied Theatre
Theatre of the Oppressed
Damanhur
Tamera
Auroville

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello. Hi. Welcome to this new episode of the Mango TV podcast. Today I’m very excited to have my friend Wan Dr. Wan. Dr. Wan is an educator and experienced designer, psycho studied philosophy in Oxford, Melbourne, Chicago, and from Cambridge self. I, social sciences, MINDBODY practices, and the performing arts [00:01:00] foster deeper engagement with the human experience, the founder of Devotional, the power of creativity and imagination for healing and transformation.

Welcome

Swan: I’m very pleased to be here.

Giancarlo: So as for people that know about Mango TV podcast a little bit, you can tell already how excited I am to have an expert that makes all this important passion of mine, like personal development and art, and mind, body, spirit, et cetera. Um, and so as I usually say, um, you know, even if we’re gonna explore quite esoteric and outer topic for the podcast, I keep a quite conservative approach of, of, um, biographical, uh, structure.

Let’s start from the beginning. So, where were you born? What was your up, up upbringing? What kind of family did you grow up with? You know, where were you? A little bit [00:02:00] about your childhood, if you don’t mind.

Swan: Mm-hmm. Certainly. I was born in northern France, um, between Belgium and Paris. And my parents are doctors and I come from a mixed raised family.

Um, my father’s family’s from Vietnam and also had relatives in Cambodia. And my mother’s family is mainly from France. And it was, um, rather boring childhood in many ways. I never really felt like I belonged. I, I actually look a bit like my parents, but if it weren’t for that at the time, if I’d been told that I’d been adopted, I would not have been surprised.

Uh, it’s not like that anymore. Um, but I was a bit of a black sheep at home and at school. It wasn’t an easy childhood. Um, I experienced violence. Both at home and at school as a child growing up, um, bullying, a lot of, shouting, some, you know, verbal and physical violence. And, um, I always felt marginal because I was [00:03:00] different from the other kids at school.

So that forces you to look at things from a different perspective because you don’t really have a choice. So early on, um, I thought surely there’s a, there’s a better way, uh, of living. It’s, it things are not quite as they should be, at least for me. Um, and I, the way people lived seemed really odd to me. I couldn’t relate the way people interacted with, with each other and with the world.

Um, and, uh, so for, for a long time I had no friends. I, um, most of my friends were books and more than the human world animals. Um, and like any child, I went through lots of different phases, but maybe more than than the norm. So that, yeah, that was, um, that was the childhood growing in France, and then I moved to Australia as a teenager.

Sorry,

Giancarlo: before, before we go into the teenager years, but so how big was the town? What was the town where you were going to school?

Swan: Um, so, um, a little bit of different places, but li is, um, the city in northern France. [00:04:00] Li Lil LIL Lilly, Dr.

Giancarlo: Yeah, that’s right. When I, when I, when I was a bad student in school in Rome, my father booked me to go to a boarding school in Lila.

Oh, which one was it? Could it have been the same one I went to? I dunno, but I was like, I research it and I was in tears. It was, it looked like dark, dark and gray. It’s indeed. Yeah. And I begged my mother to, not to, to protect, to keep me. And it was like days of negotiation. I was in tears. And then my mother prevailed.

Swan: Well, you, so it’s good that you did that. So I think, I think we might, we might have almost gone to the same school, because there’s a boarding school, which is an international school in northern France. And I, I briefly went to that school. That’s probably the one that we’re gonna send you to.

Giancarlo: Wow. But, so, so Lilly’s what, like 50,000 people?

Swan: Uh, no, actually, um, so the city says, well, is small, but if you include a surrounding area, it’s this fifth bigger city in France.

Giancarlo: Oh, wow. Wow, wow. And But you were the only child? No, no [00:05:00] siblings?

Swan: No. My, my parents wanted to have a daughter for some reason. They were convinced they were gonna have a daughter.

They, they named her and everything. There was a, even a room for her ready, ready for her home. Oh wow. But she never came. My mother was too old and to stop trying. So I’m an new child.

Giancarlo: I see, I see, I see. That’s so interesting, eh, knowing you a little bit from what you say. Um, but so, so, so, and in, in school you couldn’t relate, uh, books were your friends and your, your parents were just emotionally unavailable because of their own story.

Swan: Um, not quite. So I realized that I very much felt loved and cared for Uhhuh and cherished. Um, but I didn’t feel safe.

Giancarlo: I see.

Swan: And that’s an important distinction,

Giancarlo: but how can you, it’s, it is not a contradiction that I was loved and cherished yet not feeling safe.

Swan: Not quite. I think, you know, I really experienced both at the same time.

Um, I realized that much later on. I never doubted the love.

Giancarlo: I see. But so what the lack of safe, can you have lack of safety with [00:06:00] love?

Swan: I think you can. I think that’s what experienced Mm, interesting. Yeah. The, um, I felt safe and I felt like I could be a little freer at summer camp. I went to lots of summer camps and day camps, and there I had friends.

Sometimes I was even a popular kid. Um, and I could experiments with different personalities as well. Uh, so that’s where I felt I could be safe in a way.

Giancarlo: Mm-hmm. I see. And, and, and then you guys moved to Australia as a family?

Swan: No, I moved there by myself. Basically, it’s my way of moving as far away to France as I could.

Um, I was also spending a lot of time in the uk, uh, growing up. Um, and I have a nun called in Perth, but I didn’t live with him and I ended up staying, I started university in, in Melbourne,

Giancarlo: but So how long, how, how old were you when you left Lil 16? 16 straight to Perth?

Swan: No, I went to Melbourne.

Giancarlo: To Melbourne.

And so you finished school. [00:07:00] You finished school at 16? Yes. So you were very bright already then. And so, okay, you arrived in and, and then you went to university in, uh, in Perth,

Swan: in Melbourne? In Melbourne, in, um, well, I spent a, i I took a year off. Um, I spent a year in South America, a gap year. Um, I worked in schools, um, and orphanages.

Giancarlo: And when and when and how did you develop this interest for spirituality and mysticism and,

Swan: yes. I’m often asked that and. I can’t really pinpoint a specific time. I think it was always part of me, and I think it makes sense perhaps because of my background. Um, there were quite a few Catholic missionaries, my mother’s side and my great-grandfather was the pioneer of Cism, which is a syncretic tradition from Southern Vietnam.

It’s similar to the Bahai faith, which is one God, it’s been atheistic. But Jesus, the PDA Mohammed are different prophets interpreting the [00:08:00] divine message in different ways at different times. It’s mainly bringing together eastern traditions and Catholicism because of the French influence and spiritism, which was the trend in the early 20th century that, that said, I didn’t grow up in a religious family.

Um, but I went to Catholic school and I was traumatic enough to get me to think about spirituality and questions of God. And basically I thought

Giancarlo: that that Bodyboarding school in lil was Catholic.

Swan: No, before I went to a French Catholic school.

Giancarlo: Before

Swan: standard sort of, um, um, you know, provincial, uh, all white, uh, middle, upper class, uh, private school.

Giancarlo: I see.

Swan: And I was clearly the black sheep there. I was the Asian kid. And I also experienced quite a bit of racism there. Um, and I also did not understand, because to me, people were addressing some of the fundamental questions about life and existence, you know, God and demeaning of life and heaven. And I think I was the only one taking these questions seriously at the time.

People were just going with the flow, following tradition, custom, you know, you know, baptism and then communion. [00:09:00] It was a normal thing to do. And, uh, for me it wasn’t. It also coming from a mixed family. And they didn’t like my questions. I was a little too inquisitive, and so that got me kicked out. I got, I was expelled from, from my Catholic school, and that’s what led me to the international school that you almost went to.

Wow. Um, I did a few things for,

Giancarlo: from bad discipline on the previous school like me,

Swan: pretty much. Yeah. I did a few things and obviously proud of. And from then on I was very much anti-religious, um, and totally and interested in spirituality. I thought he was nonsense. Um, I was a Richard Daw Kings type of atheist.

Um, and, um, but I’m the only one obviously who ended up studying theology and considering becoming a monk and then a priest. Uh, funnily enough, I, I went back to the school and I, I wanted to speak with a chaplain, uh, years later and he refused to see me. Well,

Giancarlo: okay, so now we are in, uh, in Melbourne and what, what did you take at the university?

What did you study?

Swan: So, I was brought up being told that I [00:10:00] was gonna be going to become a surgeon or some type of doctor. Um, coming from a poly Asian family and also both of my parents and doctors. Uh, and so it’s, it’s, it’s a little sad because I, I really try to think what were my dreams as a child? Did I want to become a, it’s clear that I don’t never wanted to become a football player, but an astronaut or, you know, something extravagant like that.

But then I

Giancarlo: fire Yeah. Who knows?

Swan: Who knows? You know? And I really can’t recall anything. And I’ve asked my parents, you know, when I was eight, did I ever tell you I love to be that when I grow up? And no, because from the, from the earliest age, they’ve always told me, this is what I’ve become. And I was conditioned to, to follow in their footsteps and to become the good doctor, which obviously did not become, but that was very hard, as you can imagine, for them to, to accept that.

So I was going to study international relations, which was, you know, relatively serious, uh, politics. Um, but then I ended up dropping out of that. Um, and I studied philosophy and I minored in comparative religion and theology. And, um, I was, um, really passionate about what I was studying. Philosophy was, was my first love.

It was hugely [00:11:00] liberating. It was at last, there were people who were taking the questions I’ve been asking all along seriously, and who’d been thinking about those questions their whole lives. And, um, so I, you know, as I said, books were my friends and those were the books I found and the people I found as interlocutors.

And, um, so it was hugely liberating, but, and I, and that’s what made me question my atheism at the time. I say atheism because I was brought up in a Christian tradition, mainly Catholicism and exposed to Eastern traditions. Um, but really I would, I would you could say hatred of all spiritual and religious traditions.

At the time, I had a lot of anger within me. I, all I knew was organized religion. I was not exposed to non organized types of spirituality. Um. But studying philosophy of science and philosophy of religion was eyeopening because I realized actually a lot of our worldview, obviously a lot of things we take for granted has a genealogy, has a history, it comes from somewhere.

Giancarlo: So how, how, how the love affair with philosophy started

Swan: as a [00:12:00] teenager. Reading books. Quite simply.

Giancarlo: It was one

Swan: author, one, um, no, quite a few authors. I think first it was, was history, uh, book under history of philosophy, and then looking at different theories. But I can’t really pinpoint one particular author that I’d fallen in love with to speak.

Yeah. Yes. So as I was saying, philosophy of science was eyeopening and philosophy of religion, and I just could not understand why there were people I considered, you know, highly educated, very clever, um, and they identified as religious and came to believe in some of these things. You know, it did not make sense.

I just could not connect the dots. Uh, and so I, I tried to dig a little deeper and I ended, I ended up actually studying theology and comparative religion. Realizing that I was a little naive, obviously. Um, and it’s a lot more complex than, than we think. And um, at some point I thought, okay, now my ideas are a little clearer and I understand how one can believe these things.

But I still didn’t feel it. It was disembodied, [00:13:00] it was abstract conceptual knowledge. Again, brought up into West, this is how we talk to think. This is what university teaches you. Mainly this is what education teaches you how to think IQ. That’s what matters most. Um, and I was asking the spiritual people I was spending time with.

I don’t get it. You know, what should I do? Um, uh, I understand on some level, but I’m not moved by it. And they urged me to pray. They urged me to practice. And at the start, I refused to do so. ’cause I thought, you know, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know who I’m praying for, what I’m praying for. I need to get my ideas right and clear, and then I’ll do something with them.

But then at some point, I, I, I yielded and I thought, okay, I’ll give it a, I’ll give it a go. I’ll give it a shot.

Giancarlo: Where, where, how old were you and where now when you’re trying to pray for the first time? So, so I’m

Swan: 18. I’m 18 or so, I think, um, can’t quite recall, but, um, about that age, I’m even 28 and I’m at university.

I’m in, I’m in Melbourne and I go to trouble. Um, you know, before I’d spent time in South America and I explored spiritual traditions there in a way, but I thought, you know, ’cause they’re hybrid forms of [00:14:00] religion sometimes, you know, mixing indigenous, uh, traditions with Christianity. And I thought they have no idea what they believe.

It doesn’t make sense. It’s illogical. So in a way, uh, unfortunately I did not, you know, really see the depth at the time. Uh, I thought ideological, uh, and, uh, so then I went to chapel, you know, my college chapel quite simply, um, you know, Methodist Chapel and Anglican chapels, and I was just very still, and I observed and I listened and I listened to the music and just the choir.

And I started having visions, feeling and seeing things I’d never felt or seen, or in a way that I’d felt and seen early on in my childhood in different ways, uh, ways of relating to the world that I had kind of been neglecting. And that’s, in a way, that’s, if I’m to identify a moment where you could say a, a, a, a lower case awakening of.

There’s a lot more than I haven’t experienced on that level. Maybe it was then in that chapel, uh, in Melbourne. And so I kept going and I ended up going every day. And people [00:15:00] didn’t want, you had to go once a week. And I remember all my friends complaining because it, overall, it was very secular and they didn’t care.

And they thought, oh, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a bit of a, um, pain in the ass. Forgive my French, to, to have to go every, every week. And then I just did not understand how they could not feel what I was feeling and see what I was seeing. But I also was too shy to share with people, so I kept it to myself and I thought to feel, so how do you remember,

Giancarlo: do you remember a specific moment where you felt this divine presence?

Swan: Well, I think I cultivated, um, single ported meditation early on. Basically I was super still focusing on each note, uh, watching my breath and I would lose track of time and I would, you know, travel. Um, and there were amazing experiences that I remember, remember to do day. Wow.

Giancarlo: So that was, uh, I was seeing

Swan: things, you know, visualize, you know, visually it was very clear, very, you know, vivid images came to me, vivid scenes

Giancarlo: in this, in this Methodist chapel in Melbourne,

Swan: and in all of the chapels I was going to.

’cause then I, I got [00:16:00] hooked, so to speak, and I wanted to explore more, and that led me to go to various temples and monasteries all over the world.

Giancarlo: But, so what would you, would you, would you be able to explain why you had this download? Or it’s just a mystery? Do you think you were predisposed, do you think you can prepare your neurocircuitry by studying it?

By the, um, why, why it happened to you or not to other friends of yours that were instead didn’t get the download?

Swan: Hmm. Thing I would call it a download. Obviously it makes it a better story if I’m to say it just hit me all of a sudden in that chapel on the 4th of January, 1990, but it wasn’t quite the case.

I mean, I think, uh, not sure explanations are all that interesting or valuable, but if I’m to identify a couple, one, I said, you know, when you go through, when you face hardships turmoil in your life, you’re forced to look at things from a different perspective. You’ve experienced life differently. [00:17:00] And when I was four, um, I thought of killing myself, which is, you know, something that was, was four year olds.

And think about just to tell you the amount of violence that I experienced. Wow. Uh, now it wasn’t, you know, sexual abuse and anything like that. And I, things are much worse, but at least that’s how I experienced it and that’s how I thought of reacting. Um, I’m in Vietnam now and in Vietnam, and ancestor worship is important.

And respecting elders, which we don’t do as much in western society anymore, but respecting elders is taking to an extreme here. You can’t question your parents. And that’s, I suppose, how my father was brought up. So when I was trying to express myself a little more freely, he just could not understand.

And now being here and connecting with the culture have greater empathy for how he was raised. And later on he told me he was forced to play the violin for 15 years because you know, Asian family. And my grandfather wanted him to be a great violin player and he threatened my grandfather to cut his fingers off.

Because [00:18:00] that’s how awful it was for him. And I never heard him play the violin ever. Anyway, so, you know, traumatic stories, we’ve all, we all have those. Uh, I don’t mean, I don’t mean to make it to traumatize it too much, but what I mean to say is that I just experienced, um, hardships early on that made me relate to things differently.

And then I also mentioned my ancestors perhaps, you know, it’s, it’s close in the family and I, and I have that within me and it’s, you know, only one or two generations ago. And then I’m sure you can come up with other, other reasons, but I’m not all that interested in the reasons. I do remember similar experiences to the one I just described in that chapel in Melbourne, you know, simply with the natural world looking at a piece of broken glass.

And there was always a, a deep connection for me between what some people now call a, an a spiritual or mystical experience and an aesthetic experience. Um, and that’s not very surprising. But, so it was, there was something about. What I found beautiful, what really moved me. And they weren’t the things that most people found beautiful at the time [00:19:00] that are now real.

And, you know, music and that chapel was one of them. People weren’t moved by it, you know, choral music, who cares these days? And yet that brought me to feel things, experience things, uh, in ways that I can’t describe.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I know you’re not interested to explore that, but just indulge me for one, just one question.

Do you think there is a statistically robust correlation between childhood hardship and spiritual awakening?

Swan: So sometimes. What did they say? It’s an emergency, it’s a spiritual emergency. It could also be a form of escapism and I don’t want to, you know, there, there is such a thing as spiritual bypassing, um, and saying, I need to escape.

I need to go elsewhere. And one can get lost and one can, so it’s not, it’s not, I’m not saying anyone who faces hardship will have a fish, spiritual awakening. Not at all. Um, but it is true that people that tend to be [00:20:00] interested, I think, I’ve not looked at the statistics and the sociological studies, but I’m pretty sure they’re out there.

But there are a lot of people interested in what we tend to cla satisfy as spirituality, which could be simply, you call into question a way of relating to reality. To me, I don’t want to make spirituality something esoteric, inaccessible with a very complicated practices and a complex jargon. To me, spirituality is simply seeing reality as it is embracing it for what it is and being at peace with what is.

Giancarlo: Nice. Yes.

Swan: No, I’m not saying reality is one thing and then you, you get things right once and then everything is clear. I’m not saying that either. But I would also question the question. I was trained mainly as a philosopher. Um, and I, I hope we get to speak about more than, uh, this future journey and, and the rest of my life, which also is of some interests.

I, I hope, uh, um, but you know, this urge to want [00:21:00] to understand from this analytical, scientific perspective has value and we’re very good at that. That’s my, that’s why I

Giancarlo: understand. Yeah.

Swan: But see, I don’t think that’s yours, Karro. That’s you. You know, we are reflections of our culture. Uh, we are a little more than statistics in a way.

Um, and so how can we break that, break outta that, which is not to say we should throw the baby out with the bath water. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to explain them this way at all, but what other ways, what are the other ways for us to understand, uh, to remember, um, to make sense of these experiences in non-analytical ways, in nonverbal ways, in non-intellectual ways perhaps.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I, I, I hear you. Okay. Just to continue, um, you graduate in Melbourne, in theology, and then you came back to Europe, and, and then also I want to know where, if you’re comfortable discussing if and when you discovered psychedelics.

Swan: Sure. Um. So, funnily enough, because of a lot of [00:22:00] experiences I had before I tried psychedelics, my first psychedelic experience with LSD, um, was familiar in some ways.

It’s like, oh, yes, I’ve been there. I recognize that, and I’m very pleased that the first, my first experiences with those dimensions of existence, so to speak, were not with psychedelics. Uh, and that I was aware that it could be accessed without psychedelics. Um, so yeah, so, um, whilst theology wasn’t quite in Melbourne, I, my college at Melbourne had a partnership with, uh, college at Oxford.

So I basically did half my undergrad at Melbourne, half my undergrad at Oxford. Um, and there I mainly focused on theology and, um. Also went to, also went to travel quite often, as you can imagine, which is a big tradition there. And my studies were quite monastic, you know, um, I was spending all of my time in the library reading books.

I thought at the time I was so obsessed with what I was studying, that if, if the world Wari end, the best thing I could do was to keep reading Can’t in the library. I thought Kant had all the answers. I don’t think so anymore. Um, yeah, well, a big turning point. Um, so, you know, [00:23:00] I I, I took part in a vipa, a retreat, as a lot of people do, and I could tell you about my spiritual experiences there, but I don’t wanna share that.

I wanna share a simpler human experience. And it’s just the first time I cried as an adult, I cannot remember the last time I cried. And I think it’s true for a lot of men. And I wept for a whole afternoon. I think, uh, it was, it was, as you can imagine, and all the listeners who’ve gone through a 10 day silent retreat, very tough.

Um, and so at, at some point I felt I had done. You know, quite a lot of, uh, cleaning up and, and waking up, so to speak, as to use the wilbury terms, uh, that is exploring different dimensions, uh, of consciousness and also doing the shadow work and exploring my wounds psychologically and internally. But I still felt quite lonely, basically.

I was still reading philosophy by myself. I’m exaggerating a bit, but it makes this story a little more dramatic. Uh, [00:24:00] and um, and I still couldn’t quite relate to others really deeply. I could relate to intellectually, you know, through ideas and that was interesting, but it was also limited. And I took part in my first non-violent communication course around age, I think 19.

At the same time I did Ana and that was really eyeopening for me. ’cause for the first time I felt I could re, I could relate to others on a deep, not to say spiritual level, meaning in a verbal way. And share things that I had never shared with anyone, just like the experiences I share with you now. But I was 19 at the time and I was just too shy and afraid to share those.

’cause in a way it got kicked me out. It got me kicked outta school. And in my mind, I think that’s what got me bullied. So, yeah. Um, and, um, it’s nonviolent communication knowledge known not only is an extremely powerful tool, uh, to commun communicate with others in, in other ways, but I, I met a man there at one of the [00:25:00] instructors, a conflict mediator who cried every single day.

And at the start I was shocked and surprised of what’s wrong with that guy. And then I realized he just cried as he laughed. And it was a natural thing for him to do. But he’d unlocked that emotional capacity to certain extent that, you know, emotions last, I think 90 seconds on average. And he knew that.

And he could just let the emotion out. Okay. It makes me sad, you know? And then I cry for 90 seconds and I get on with things just like you laugh for a little bit and then you get on with life. And it was extremely beautiful. And, um, I discovered two other practices on that course, which complimented this more verbal way of interacting with others.

One of them is contact improvisation, which is a form of improvised dance, improvised movement. And there I discovered rediscovered, um, nonverbal ways of communicating through human contact and touch. As you know, as society, it’s also something we [00:26:00] neglect. Um, actually wrote something today, online. I think we, we need a lot more touch, uh, than we need.

Um, what was it? I think the money and all the other things we chase

Giancarlo: intellectual understanding.

Swan: Exactly. Exactly. Um, and. To this day. It’s a very meaningful practice to me. So non-verbal ways of communicating, more embodied ways of communicating, and also the beauty of improvisation.

Giancarlo: Yeah. But sowan, sorry, forgive me before we go and explore the non-verbal and the embodiment, because that’s, I know, is a big part of your life now.

I just would like to dig just a little bit deeper about, um, your passion for theology and philosophy. So, but what was the integration of this two discipline? I mean, Kant was religious, Chopan hour was, uh, religious. Tell me the, tell me the integration of, because you had this two, when I hear you talking it, it seems that though, that’s where your two passions for a long time, philosophy and theology.

How [00:27:00] do they integrate?

Swan: What do you mean by integrate?

Giancarlo: How would a philosopher be different than, um, the, you know, than a priest?

Swan: Depends on the philosophy and depends on the priests. Some priests are great philosophers, um, and some philosophers are great priests. Then they’re non mutual exclusive. No, not at all.

The main difference I’d say is that philosophy, the main tool of philosophy is reason rationality.

So in a way it has an objectivity that other disciplines don’t have. It’s able to step back and to ask the fundamental questions about any discipline, which is why some people call philosophy the queen or the king of all the sciences. And originally the people that we now identify as biologists, chemists, but even psychologists, they’re all philosophers.

And it wasn’t a profession. It was, you know, people that had [00:28:00] time and luxury to ask questions just like the early scientists were. And a great theologian is a great philosopher too, because also they also use that tool called reason. Intellect. Now, I don’t want to reduce philosophy to do intellect either, because historically philosophy comes from ancient Greece and philosophy was a way of life.

It wasn’t just a way of thinking. Mm-hmm. As you know, the stoics, the Epi Koreans, the skeptics, they were living together in community. And it looks a lot more like what we, we now see as, as a sect or religious community, spiritual community than what we now see as philosophy as this intellectual exercise.

And that actually has, you know, there’s a historical reason for that. Um, Christianity took philosophy and used it as an intellectual tool to justify Christian dogma basically, and the philosophical exercises. So stoics for example, would, you know that that’s being rediscovered today. They would think about the day and all the bad things that can happen.

You could say, you know, psycho psychological [00:29:00] exercises that people practice today. Um, and you, you imagine in negative visualization what all the, what you prepare yourself for the bad things that can happen. That’s one simple stoke exercise, for example. And there are many others. And all of that was lost in the Christian era.

’cause Christianity just took philosophy as a handmaiden, as a way to justify, explain their beliefs, and then all the practices became Christian practices and then skip ahead about a thousand years. Um, you have Descartes modern era, uh, cookie Tur, Kasu and so on and so forth. And Descartes wanted to bring philosophy away from theology, but he didn’t retrieve, he didn’t reconnect with the more embodied, so to speak, or practical experiential aspects of philosophy.

He was very intellectual. And then Ks was the first professional philosopher who was teaching at university. And then it became a profession, and then I in theology today, um, so philosophy is a history and it’s also Western. Uh, Deida once went to China and said, there is no philosophy in China. And people were shocked.[00:30:00]

Uh, and he, you know, deida, he likes to shock people. Uh, but what he meant by that is that philosophy has a history and it’s a western tradition. And you can do non-Western philosophy, like you can do non-Western theology, but similarly, theology usually means Christian theology. But if you think, you know, I want to move towards wisdom and, and, and understand reality as it is, then it, this is obviously not just the domain of philosophy, you know, any culture can do that.

But the, but in the West, we’ve done it in a specific way, and we usually talk about Socrates and Plato and all the others. Similarly, when it comes to theology, Christian theology, we talk about Saints, Augusta, and Aquinas and all the others. And it has a history. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s, um, it’s, there’s a story.

There’s a, there’s a, there are people that you read, people that are in dialogue with each other. Um, and so in, in short, not to, um, not to digress too much about this, the only difference I suppose. If I’m to really [00:31:00] simplify pursuing philosophy and theology, there they are. The differences could be that theologians do take a number of things for granted, or there are a number of pre suppositions about the world, such as the existence of God, such as if you’re Christian, the Trinity, and so and so on and so forth, that you would accept.

But then again, you can, you can justify explain, um, those dogmas, those ideas, those concepts in so many ways that in a way, um, a good theologian is just as free as a good philosopher.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Swan: It’s just a slightly different way of putting it. It’s a different language. It’s a different vocabulary. The philosopher will say the, or the, you know, the sociologist, the anthropologist.

What is an ultimate concern? The, the, the theologian, the Christian theologian would say, God, obviously the Muslim theologian, Allah, and so on and so forth. Yeah. It’s not so much the words, it’s the what are you trying to do? And I would say both theologians, philosophers are trying to get the truth in their own way.

We study different tools sometimes.

Giancarlo: Yeah. One, one. One more with reason and the other one maybe with faith. [00:32:00] Well, theology is faith

Swan: seeking, understanding,

Giancarlo: faith, seeking understanding.

Swan: Yes. So there is very much reason to, even though some theologians would also under, you know, don’t play the role of reason.

Um, but again, you could within philosophy and within theology, what I can’t talk about philosophy with a capital P or theology with a capital T, it doesn’t make sense. Just like one cannot speak about Christianity with a capital C. Yeah. There are so many different strands, uh, um, yeah. And ways of approaching these i, these, these, these disciplines, um, and, and traditions.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Amazing. That’s, that’s why I think you’re such a good, um, um, you know, coach and psychotherapist because you have this deep understanding of these two science and then you integrate them with the nonverbal and the embodiment, which, um, if I may add, yes. The one thing

Swan: that I treasure and I think we should take more seriously in both of those disciplines.

Nuance and complexity, and we lack, I think, a, a lot of that. And that’s what philosophy [00:33:00] is really good at. And there’s a difference between something being complex and complicated. We make things overly complicated. Um, it, you know, it’s like, um, uh, strings that tangled up whilst complexity is respecting the different layers, different levels, the nuance.

So things are often simpler than we think in terms of, in insofar as they’re not as complicated. There’s less complication, but there’s oftentimes greater complexity. So you may think I’m just playing with language here. Uh, but, but again, I’m trying to bring your answer here to lots of debates where, uh, uh, also philosophy itself, if you can admit a philosophy.

Philosophy is thing about philosophy is to say, okay, um, if we are to step back, reflect upon philosophy’s history, theology, all of all of this comes from somewhere. And there are also presuppositions about are there ways of thinking about the role of reason, about the power of reason and what reason can achieve, and maybe sometimes, uh, we, [00:34:00] we are using the wrong tool to get to a certain end.

And I think that’s why we get lost and we get trapped in this loop in the west because we, we have a, we think we are moving in certain direction and we have certain aims that we are moving towards a certain end, but we are using the wrong strategy or wrong tactic to get there, so to speak. So we’ll never get there.

Yeah. You know, it’s like the ego thing with spirituality. I want ego death. You cannot want it because the ego, it’s illogical. So the more you want it, the less you’ll get it. Yeah. And I think we do a lot of that. We get, we are, we are, um, we don’t see our contradictions.

Giancarlo: Now this is, this is a fascinating conversation.

Um, what comes to mind is what our common friend that introduced each other, Jorge Ferrer talks about is the spiritual pragmatism, which ultimately means that a spiritual prac, a successful spiritual practice, a spiritual practice that bring you, you know, peace of mind and empathy and compassion and good relationship with [00:35:00] others.

You know, like, you know, rather than debating on this different type of spiritual approach or philosophical approach, the, the ultimate successful one is the one you know that you can judge by the impact and the result on the behavior of the user.

Swan: Precisely, precisely. I say, you know, if someone is. Kind and funny.

Yeah. Then, you know, that’s, I, I’m much rather connected with this person than someone who came to be a, you know, enlightened or extremely clever and so on and so forth.

Giancarlo: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, there’s

Swan: a lot of people there, a lot of people who had reached, um, high levels of understanding when it comes to different levels of consciousness or when it comes to reason, cognitive faculties and capacities.

Very clever people, very well read, but who’ve completely neglected other dimensions of life. And one is the simple relational, you know, developing [00:36:00] human qualities. And when you look at those that, I mean, people that I think are more spiritually advanced so to speak, or more in contract with reality.

They’re much lighter individuals in all senses of the term. Um, and they have, they have this lightness about them in the way they interact with others, in the way they relate to the world. Um, and that’s why I think the greater gurus, people attracted to them for those reasons. It’s not because they can convince them.

It’s not just because they can also make them cry. They, you know, everyone talks about the aura, but it’s because it oozes out of them. You know, you can, you can, you can feel it, you can sense it, and that’s another way of understanding.

Giancarlo: Absolutely. Okay, so let’s go back to the, to the biographical, um, um, structure We left where you were just discovering non-verbal and embodied, uh, communication.

So that was a, a ana and then a non-verbal communication. And then you discover, um, contact dance

Swan: [00:37:00] improvisation. And then funnily enough, in that non-violent communication course, um, I also took part in my first family consideration. And in a way, all of a sudden I had this verbal way of communicating in much more nuanced, honest, transparent ways.

NVCI had this nonverbal way of communicating and a way of relating through touch, which is non-central, not sexual touch. And then later on through, you know, tantra and other practices realized there can be sensuall touch that is not sexual. There can be sexual touch that is not genal based. That’s another story.

Um, and then I discover this amazing practice called family constellations or systemic constellations. And I was blown away because I was still very much with this. You’re,

Giancarlo: you’re such a good, uh, uh, you explain things very clearly. Tell us a little bit, what is family constellation?

Swan: So

Giancarlo: I’ll illustrate with my own

Swan: example.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Swan: Uh, rather than explaining it theoretically. So I was blown away because at the time I still had a very, you know, [00:38:00] Cartesian mi mindset, for lack of a better term, quite scientific. I wanted, you know, rational explanations for everything. And there we have this practice where I’m just told to tell a story in this case about my family.

And funny enough, I’m in Vietnam now. It was about the Vietnamese side of the family. And I’m told to just show a few things about my father, my uncle, the different characters in the family, and to choose different individuals to embody those characters and also different elements of the story. So one was Vietnam was one, one was France, and one could be an emotion.

I can’t remember what it was. So there was maybe, maybe half a dozen people that were embodying these that have different elements of my story. Um, they weren’t asked to act them out. They, you know, and they had very little information. I placed them somewhere in space. It was all in silence. I think the facilitator may have asked them to say three words, maximum.

It lasted three hours. And I was blown away because [00:39:00] a lot of the things that took place were accurate. Historically. So it is my own story that no one knew. So for example, my grandfather had died. No one knew that I hadn’t mentioned it, and the person who was my grandfather laid down at almost at the beginning and just stayed there for three hours without moving.

And I could give, you, could give you lots of examples like that. Um, uh, and then I, and then if, if, again, if this to be a moment, uh, revelation, to think, okay, there’s a, there’s a lot more to it. Uh, there’s a more, more to life than, than I, I thought there was, I need, I also need to explore this. Um, and also I was trying to, I asked the facilitator just like to ask me certain things.

How does it work? Explain it to me rationally. Um, and she did not. And I was very frustrated and upset. Um, and really, I, I urge people in a lot of my work today. I just had a kind this morning we practice a practice you’re familiar with, uh, breathwork and guided imagery, uh, where dream [00:40:00] therapy. Also dimensions of existence that he hadn’t connected with because they’re not common in the west.

And he stopped because he freaked out because it was new to him. And when he is new and unfamiliar and unknown, we can be afraid of it can be unsettling, it can be like, what’s going on? You know, I am, uh, you know, 60 years old. I’ve never experienced this, what’s happening. Um, and so really the, the main thing he wanted was to understand and for me to provide an explanation.

And I even did, I provided the biological explanation. Obviously that’s not satisfactory because that’s not what we need. So we need to, at some point, sometimes really set the rational mind aside and really try to understand different ways and to reconnect with these different, different kinds of intelligence, for lack of a better term.

Again, the word intelligence is misleading because it implies intellect, but it’s not up here. I mean, we know there are neurons or something in the heart and in the gut, for example. That’s one way to view it more scientifically, but we know, so. Okay. So, um, very briefly, uh, it’s a systemic considerations which you’ve experienced, I presume.

Giancarlo: No. [00:41:00] Okay. You haven’t I did, I did. Um, I did, uh, a little bit of, um, you know, in rehab they call it psychodrama. Yes. Where they, they asked me to reenact traumatic events with other people playing my father, me as a young person,

Swan: a change in, in drama therapy in psychodrama. So I, I, I use that quite often.

Giancarlo: Ah, okay.

They’re inter

Swan: interchangeable. Uh, no, no. The drama, drama therapy is broader and it came later. Yeah. Drama, uh, psychodrama is a specific practice with a clear structure, and you could say psychodrama could be seen as one element or one practice within drama therapy. Drama therapy is the, the broader category

Giancarlo: and family constellation, how does it fit in this?

Swan: So there are overlaps, but it, it’s separate. It, it, it evolved completely separately.

Giancarlo: I see.

Swan: But there are overlaps for sure.

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Swan: And I’m happy to continue the story. Uh, I see. We, you know, but, but I, I do wanna say in a way the store does do my story, the genealogy, and could be summed up in. [00:42:00] Moving from disillusion to disillusionment.

And that’s the cycle that kept repeating itself.

Giancarlo: Disillusion to disillusionment.

Swan: Yeah. So disillusion, because I thought clearly I am, or people are deluded, we are living in this illusion.

Giancarlo: I see.

Swan: And it could be on different levels, and I, and levels is important. It could be the social illusion, you know, money, fame, glory, whatever would make me happy.

Um, or, uh, I’m, I’m living, uh, what my parents want me to do. So that’s a simple social conditioning. And you realize actually that’s not mean. That’s not true, that’s one. Um, and there are lots of different, you know, types of illusions. Um, so, uh, and then at some point you’ve discover something or I discover something rather.

And I think that’s the answer. And early on, I was still looking for the grand, the grand answer. You know, the, the, the theory of everything, the, the, the key to the equation. And I think, oh, and then, and even with phe, with Theology I, and reading Hands, I, that’s, you know, in a way [00:43:00] also can’t also thought that I was looking.

And I, and again, realizing later on that this is partly because of the Christian story that I’ve been told. The, you could say Platonic and Christian. ’cause those are the two pillars of our civilization. Plato and Thomas Aquinas, perhaps, you know, the ancient Greeks and the Christians. And I really, uh, I, we cannot underestimate how all pervasive this, these ways of understanding reality are.

And still today, Nietzche said, we live in the shadow of God and it’s worse than in the Middle Ages in some way, according to Nietzsche, because we think we don’t believe in God anymore. And in a way we don’t, we think, you know, in, in, in, we don’t believe in God. We don’t go to church. We don’t talk about theology.

But all the things that are. Um, implied in the Christian worldview, we still carry within us without knowing it. Mm-hmm.

Giancarlo: And a subconscious,

Swan: let alone [00:44:00] Yes. Or, or in our, in our social structures. For example, in science, in so many of, of the ways in which we live, so many of our disciplines, um, I mean, not fully, I mean, some things, you know, but, but you know, it, it’s still very much present and we’re still very much a Christian culture and, and indebted to, to ancient, to the ancient Greek and Roman way of understanding the world and of relating to the world.

So I was deluded and because even the idea that I could figure it out, basically, I, I’m going to figure it out like, like a scientist, I’m gonna have an answer and, and like, you know, what’s the meaning of life 42? That kind of answer one, one clear answer that would, that I would find satisfying and that would solve things, you know, obviously a little, it’s a little more, uh, complex than that.

Um, and then finding, oh yes, finding, finally save through, connecting with. New social circles, uh, new domains, new disciplines, uh, be it philosophy, being anthropology, um, the always, [00:45:00] always feeling like, oh yes, that’s, that’s what I needed. That’s, that’s how, um, I’ll come full circle. That’s what we’ll complete the picture.

I want to, I wanted a complete picture, which I don’t really want anymore, and disillusionment when I became disillusioned, because realizing actually this new thing also has limitations, also has shortcomings, is also only partially true and partially false for. And so that’s been really the movement being like, okay, I see how, uh, at least academic philosophers today, very clever, completely disembodied, not, not all of them, but oftentimes to ture.

Um, I see how, for example, great spiritual depth and exploring different levels of consciousness, but in terms of the addressing your wounds, the, the inner work, so to speak, the shadow work, addressing your wounds. A lot of spiritual people don’t go there. Spiritual bypassing, um, not to mention, you know, touch and sexuality.

Um, and so you see how every time I always felt, ah, there’s always something missing. Uh, or rather, there’s [00:46:00] always something that didn’t get quite right and I was moving on. Um, other, other ways of relating to the world, other ways of understanding the world and other ways of being that I felt were complimenting what I was lacking.

Does that make sense?

Giancarlo: Yes. I

Swan: think you’re doing the

Giancarlo: same thing in a different way. Yeah. I’m, I, I don’t fully get the transition. I, because I guess I did fully understand maybe the two terms. Okay. So let me, let me, let me add one, one thing. Yeah.

Swan: Um, when I say I’m deluded, living in, in an illusion is basically, I think I have an answer.

Ah, I see. I think I figured it out. Yeah. Yeah. And then I realized actually I don’t, this, it’s not quite right. It’s only partially true. And so then I’m like, ah, no, I, I didn’t get it yet. Hence the disillusionment.

Giancarlo: I see.

Swan: Or I’m disappointed by the people. I think, oh yes, this is the role model. This is the spiritual master.

They figured it all out. I need to follow in their footsteps. And then I realized actually, ah, there’s actually all of these things that, [00:47:00] you know, I, that’s what I thought about philosophers and I was very naive, perhaps. And then also when I spent time in monasteries, I thought, monks, they’re enlightened, they’re perfect.

They figured it all out. And then I realized they’re just human beings.

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So with this new state of mind, you get in touch with these embodiment practices.

Swan: Yes. We’ll skip ahead a few years and, um, I drop outta my, my first PhD, which was in theology. And at the time I was still contemplating joining a monastery.

Um, but the, the paradox or the discomfort, the dissatisfaction was that although I was very much moved, convinced in a way by the lifestyle and the practices, um, socially and politically, I was never aligned because as you can imagine, a lot of those traditions are quite conservative. Yeah. I was always liberal, basically.

Uh, and I had never found a sense of community. So in a way I still felt, you know, lonely and I couldn’t connect on other levels. And that I, I found in, in, in the non-VA communication and in [00:48:00] these more embodied, uh, ways of, of relating. And I grew disillusioned with, with, uh, with the monastery. And so I dropped out of the first PhD.

Uh, also to, the research wasn’t satisfying. I. Um, I spent quite a lot of time in a Vatican, believe it or not, uh, where I conducted research and I was, uh, you know, let’s just say that, uh, uh, priests that were twice my age were a little too friendly. Uh, so, so nothing, nothing bad happened. Uh, but that really convinced me.

Okay, well, I’ve, I’ve had enough of this, this, this is not what I signed up for. Um, and then I went to drama school in Paris. No, yes, that’s right. In Paris. And I also become, became a little more politically active. And you could say the, all the, the devotional urge I had within spirituality at some point turn into political activism.

Giancarlo: You have such interesting life arc, but so. What, what was the name of the, uh, uh, drama school in [00:49:00] Paris? That

Swan: was, uh, lacock. It was physical theater, which is a specific type of theater. Uh, and, um, Marianne that, you know, the Tarot Master went to that same drama school. So the, the, and I think it made a lot of sense.

And, and now I, I, if I’m to, um, narrate, to transition in, in a way that is Intel intelligible, it’s because I was always very much socially aware and politically aware. I joined Greenpeace when I was 15. Um, I was always close to the modern human world, uh, so is my mother. We always had lots of animals growing up.

I became vegan earlier, also when I was 15. Uh, pretty radical vegan, you know, I was the type that was trying to convert everyone. I, a lot of the research I conducted was in environmental and animal ethics. I’m still a fellow of the Oxford Center Ferman Ethics and, um, I wrote on the place of animals in different spiritual traditions and so on, and I was seeing a lot of spiritual bypassing.

As you can imagine being in a monastery, it’s being dead to the world. So in a way, it’s also not being involved in world affairs, and I still wanted to make a difference [00:50:00] basically. I still wanted things to change, and I think it’s partly because of the violence I experienced as a child. I, I I, I saw things that I, you know, in the world obviously needed to change, and I wanted to have an impact.

I, I was in the, in the chapel in Melbourne. No, no, no. I’m talking, I’m, I’m talking about my disillusionment with spiritual practices and tradi, not practices, but traditions that I felt were spending a lot of time doing the inner work and the spiritual work, but not enough time doing the outer change work, basically.

You know? Um, and so it’s nice to talk about being one with the divine and to have these amazing experiences and to explore different states of consciousness. But then what, there are still pe people being tortured, murdered, and so on. There’s still oppression, there’s still discrimination. And I was always acutely aware of that because I experienced it as a child, basically.

Giancarlo: I see

Swan: those experience.

Giancarlo: I

Swan: see. Yes. And I specialize in moral philosophy. Ethics. So practical philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of arts, ethics, more philosophy and political philosophy. So it was always the more practical side of philosophy I was [00:51:00] interested in. I did some epistemology. What’s knowledge, what can we know and everything.

But it was always of secondary concern to me. It was the practical stuff. What does that change in life? What do you do with it? Um, and I actually, I even though even sometimes ask my, my professors that, and they couldn’t really answer. They gave me a very sophisticated nuance, philosophical answer. But I’m like, okay, so you just, you all you.

Anyway, so, so yeah. So I moved to, I, I, I basically was very deeply immersed in, in the arch scene, basically, uh, radical politics, uh, as, as radical as it gets. And I lived in, I lived in squats and in occupied zones.

Giancarlo: No, but, but what, what second? I’m, I’m a little, I’m a little bit lost. We spoke, we spoke 53 minutes.

You never mention any interest for theater or drama or performance. I mean, you, you did mention family conation. There was a little bit, and then all of a sudden you went to firies to dramas.

Swan: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I’ll tell you how it makes a lot of sense. So to me, drama wasn’t, oh, yes. Shakespeare, molia, uh, interpreting life.

It wasn’t that. And I think a lot of people that get to Lacock, which is [00:52:00] physical theater, it’s not what it’s about. It’s about deepening the human experience. ’cause in order to be a good actor, you need to study life intimately. And it’s a way, it’s, it was a way of embodying the social deconstruction that I had engaged in on an intellectual level.

So I had done, you know, the, the queer theory, the gender theory, the whatever, you know, but knowing that if I speak like this, if I speak like this or if I speak like this, well, if I speak like that, you know, it’s very different. And that’s just speech. And I, I think you’re just recording this and not the video, but it was physical theater.

So same kind of thing with the body. Everything we do, we do for a reason. And most of of us ignore that reason. We’re not aware of any of that. And I would say what we are now aware of socially, we are not aware of on other levels metaphysically. So just like we’re not aware of, we just do things, we take things for granted.

The way we, which we speak, we talk what we believe. All of that few of us really question, but the deeper level is to question our entire relationship. [00:53:00] To reality and to how we view the world. And you know that anyone who’s taken say psychedelics or had a deep spiritual experience, that’s what they get.

All of a sudden it’s like, poof. There is another way of seeing things, experiencing things complete, you know? And so theater is also a way to get to those states, um, and to when you act things out, you think you’re playing pretend, but it’s much more than that. Theater origin was ritual. And if you are acting as if you are a tiger, if you’re thinking, okay, I am trying to explore the energy of the tiger, you can actually turn to trans state and, and really connect with the tiger.

I’m not saying just like to temic or animus cultures do, but in a way that’s much more similar to that. So when people say, oh, that’s nice, you talk about different levels of consciousness, but so what, what would you do apart from taking tics? And one of the things could actually be. Theater, what we call theater.

Yeah. Which is not just acting so like, so, so similar to family consideration. I wasn’t interested in how well can you look like or act like my grandfather. That’s not the point. [00:54:00] Once you’ve connected with the energy of my grandfather, whatever that means. Yeah. And that moves you, what comes out of that.

Giancarlo: Yeah. That’s what

Swan: what I was interested in.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. But do you think you can say that the reason why theater and acting and you know, playing the Tiger might be a transcendental practice is because it takes you out of your mind?

Swan: I mean, that’s one way in which you transcend something that is the mind.

You go beyond the mind. Uh, but I think it’s much more, it’s much deeper than that. It’s not simply, oh yes, finally I’m just with the body and I’m not thinking anymore. Uh, because there is an intention. You’re actually, you know, exploring, just like in the family constellation, you add the service of.

Person’s story and you, you know, that you’re supposed to somehow embody an element of the story. In this case, if you’re working on, say, the Tiger, then there is an intention. It’s not simply, I’m feeling just freer because I’m out of my mind.

Giancarlo: There is an intention, but then, [00:55:00] I mean, I, I, I, I produce a documentary based on being in the Word book by Heger.

And, and this, I didn’t know that all I, and this whole idea that, um, athletes, for example, they do their best, you know, record breaking. And they don’t know. They don’t know why they, they just say like, you know, they go in the state of extreme flaw. Where the mind disappears. And you know, even Michael Jordan, oh, I can’t remember this basketball player who did this.

Like, you know, I don’t know how many consecutive three, you know, goals and when asked, but how did you do that? He goes like, I don’t know. So I feel that that’s a little bit of a constant that I find in spiritual practices, in, in, in, in, in cathartic experience, in peak experience, in ecstatic experience.

That I think the common denominator is that the mind is on out of the way.

Swan: Yes. I think I see what you mean. Would have to define what you mean by the mind, but actually the critical, [00:56:00] um, you know, mind that analyzes that reasons that judges, I, I agree.

Giancarlo: What outta presence, I mean,

Swan: but I think what we call a state of flow or deep presence and what isn’t a norm, what we aspire to, what we work on.

I think we’re meant to be in that state much more often than the other state. I think we should You flip it, flip, turn it upside down, flip it around. And the analytical is a tool that we should use in certain situations, but whilst in our society that’s always on and all we think is, oh, okay, sometimes we turn it off and we’re going to instead a flow.

No, I think we should be a lot more in different states of flow. And sometimes we turn on the rational, critical, judgmental faculties. And one example I wanna share with you is extremely simple. And that’s connecting with what we call nature.

Giancarlo: Nature.

Swan: Yeah. Nature. Uh, because obviously this whole journey also took me to reconnecting, not just with my body, with, but with the earth.

Body. With nature. And I told you I was vegan when I was 15. I went, I went vegan. I became vegan when I was 15. And I, I was an animal ethicist and [00:57:00] an environmental ethicist. I was spending a lot of time around ecologist, environmentalists who are constantly talking about saving the planet and improving, um, you know, our relationship to the earth.

And yet just like spirituality. I was thinking about complex theological ideas. I felt disconnected. I’m like, okay, I’m doing the right things. I know a lot about animals, the history and yet can’t really relate. And then I, I discovered what some called human rewilding. Um, and I met someone called Kim Pash who basically moved to the Yukon in Canada, uh, when he was young with little but you know, and nothing but a knife and survived there for months.

Super, super extreme. Uh, forage his food, you know, built canoe and he hunted and so on and so forth. And I learned wilderness skills. Really basic things I learned about medicinal plants, edible plants. And it’s extremely shocking to me to know, to realize that it wasn’t shocking to me at the time that kids today and not just kids, know thousands of brands and they have an emotional relationship to those brands.

If I say [00:58:00] yellow m, if I say a black comma, if I say, you know what I mean? And you have a feeling, you know, and kids have that when they’re five, but they can’t recognize and identify the plants that are growing in the backyard, let’s alone have a relationship to them. It’s absurd. It’s preposterous. And that’s the same with bird songs.

And that’s the same with so many things that we are so disconnected. It’s really, it’s scary. And so at the time I thought, okay, I know a lot about animals theoretically and everything. I need to reconnect with that. And I won’t tell you the whole story, but I, I spent more time in, in the wilderness, in nature, and then one and one day I was just lying by stream doing nothing and nothing to do.

There was no, uh, mobile phones with no technology, nothing. And you could say, I entered into a state of flow. But there was nothing special. I was just there with the stream. And I’m thinking, I’m imagining that a lot of, um, cultures without all this technology, without this constant rational mind are a lot more like that in day-to-day life.

Not to romanticize and exoticize them and think they’re always at [00:59:00] peace with in one with nature, not the case. Nature can also be tragic and red and tooth and claw. Uh, but those moments of just being with what is, I think obviously we don’t have a lot of those and many other cultures asked and fortunate enough, still present, still know how to reconnect in these ways.

Giancarlo: Okay, so, so you are Jack Lacock theater, uh, master in Psychology. And then what happened?

Swan: So I founded a theater company, mainly based on applied theater. We did a lot of mass work and psychodrama drama therapy. So you could say it was psychosocial theater. So, um, and Applied Theater is a, it’s not so much theater as representation, as performance.

Its participatory theater that addresses personal and social political themes, practices like [01:00:00] Theater of the Oppressed, playback, theater, uh, various forms of drama therapy. And that was what I was most interested in. So looking how, for example, people experience ecological collapse, uh, in the bodies acting that out, getting people from the audience to join, uh, Ogus to Boal, the founder of Theater of the Oppressed said that Forum Theater, the Key practice, um, isn’t revolution, but it’s rehearsal for revolution because it empowers oppressed people to see how

Giancarlo: that, again, say that again.

The quote. So

Swan: it’s not revolution, but it’s rehearsing or revolution. It’s a rehearsal because it empowers oppress people, uh, to see and experience different ways of facing unjustified authority, of finding freedom, um, of facing oppression, and of overcoming that. So those are the practices I was most interested in

Giancarlo: overcoming that by acting that out.

Swan: Yes. By, so, so to describe, um, [01:01:00] forum theater very briefly, you have a short scene of oppression, just a few minutes. For example, uh, a an older brother beating up his younger brother, the younger brother sh shares that story because he doesn’t know what to do, what he does, doesn’t work. And suppose in the scene, in reality, he shouts back and he says, you know, stop, stop it.

The older brother keeps beating him up. And so he shares that. And then the scene is enacted as it was shared for a few minutes, then it’s enacted again, and then a member of the audience can stop the scene at any stage, replace someone in the scene, ideally the younger brother, and then act in a different way.

So maybe he or she pushes the older brother back. Maybe they stay silent or they try something else, you know? Yeah, yeah. And then the other people stay in character and see how they, so, you know, you can see how there are also, um, yeah. Overlaps or connections with systemic constellations because s psychodrama, S psychodrama.

S psychodrama for sure. So it’s a lot of those practices that I was engaged in and the, the, the, the, uh, uh, company I had established was focusing on. [01:02:00] And what I was most interested in at the time was art activism, because to me, the, the, the right art activist work, so to speak, was the one that had, that has, uh, artistic or aesthetic value.

You know, it’s beautiful and it, it evokes those feelings and experiences within you, but also sociopolitical impact. And it’s rare to have both at the same time. And so that’s what, you know, you know, modestly we, we were

Giancarlo: trying to create. Amazing. It’s fascinating because as you know, I’m, I’m a, I’m fascinated by the history of, um, of Elen and how this started, this movement of the human potential and that’s, they were the first one to start exploring with, with, with, um, improv Theater Psychodrama.

Right.

Swan: I’m not too sure they were the first ones. I would say probably, you know, collective and conscious. It obviously pops up in different places around the same time.

Giancarlo: You’re such a volcano of idea. I’m struggling to keep up. Okay. So am I sorry to call it. No, but that’s why I like the biography because that’s, [01:03:00] it’s a, it’s a way to anchor back on some sort of, um, of, uh, of, um, of blueprint.

Okay. So what happened in your life after Paris?

After Jacque Lacock. Yeah. Yeah.

Swan: So at the time I was, um, spending most of my time doing street theater basically with, with my company, um, and also in activist spaces. And there I found, um, mind boggling creativity and people that explored quote unquote alternative lifestyles. Um, you know, I met people who had been living without money or shoes for 10 years, people who didn’t have a passport and yet still managed to travel around the world.

Um, and also they, you know, tried to reinvent everything about life, uh,

Giancarlo: in the, in the, in the theater crowd.

Swan: Uh, no, no. Uh, it’s not so much in the theater crowd, actually. Mostly in the [01:04:00] activist crowd. In the political, in the political, yeah. Yeah. So for example, in, in this occupy zone that I lived in for some time, all the street signs had been turned into puppets.

Uh, and I remember stumbling into fond this library in the middle of the forest,

Giancarlo: where was the occupy zone?

Swan: Uh, so it’s a rather well-known, uh, airport project in Brittany in the northwest of France where um, basically it would’ve been an ecological disaster and it was already an airport. Uh, and so people were protesting against a project, um, and they occupied, I dunno how many hectares, but rather lot.

And they turned it into, um, an activist village. And there are various spaces like that in France and in Europe. And there’s a famous forest in Germany, for example, and I think it’s still being occupied. Um, how long,

Giancarlo: how long that occupation went on for

Swan: a few years. Can’t quite remember. Yeah. A few years.

Yes. Um, and it, it empowered me and it showed me that yes, there are, you know, radical, radically different ways of living. [01:05:00] Uh, and you know, there’s the, the famous May 68 saying power to do imagination. And I felt in, in many ways it was the case.

Giancarlo: You find your tribe finally.

Swan: Um, so I thought for some time.

Yeah. And then the diss never, and then, then the disillusionment phase kicked in. As you can imagine. I, um, okay. I, I don’t want to go too deep into it, but I would simply say that as you can imagine, uh, a lot of these, a lot of people are heavily traumatized. We all are. But we’re talking about people who are acutely aware of social injustices, of oppression, so much so that they may see it everywhere because in a way it is everywhere.

And oftentimes there were the central subject of oppression. Uh, and they still are. And they’ve been completely marginalized from society. And sometimes they haven’t really chosen that they had no choice. And so it can be very dark. And in [01:06:00] most activist spaces, people burn outs and people lose it because they lack the heart.

Not always, but often. Um, and you know, sometimes, so some of those personal wounds weren’t really being addressed and there was external blame, um, on things that they thought they could change. But there was little time spent on changing themselves. I don’t want to generalize. There are people that do all the work and more, and to, and some people also favor whatever they can do out there helping others.

Uh, I spent time with refugees, for example, and met people who were really completely devoted to, to helping refugees have a more decent human life. And so they neglected taking care of themselves. And, you know, some, some psychotherapists do that. Anyone who is caring for others and those people so-called activists, [01:07:00] they have, they have a great heart that oftentimes is wounded.

They wanna do the best they can to help others. Sometimes at a detriment of themselves

Giancarlo: and others.

Swan: And some others. Sometimes, yes. Yeah.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Okay. So you, how long did you stay in the occupied airport or, or the, yeah,

Swan: so several weeks on and off. Yeah. Um, so there was one, but there were several others. So,

Giancarlo: so you’re back in Cambridge for the PhD?

Swan: Uh, also on and off. Basically on, off. I was moving a lots between Paris, um, you know, those more activist centers and, and Cambridge, although I wasn’t spending all them at Sloan in Cambridge anymore. And then I moved to Canada, um, and I was already spending a lot of time in communities, but not really living full time, uh, with them in the Eco Villages.

And in Canada, I joined an intentional community. And I would say if there’s one thing that we can do as a society [01:08:00] that I think will not solve all of our problems, nothing will solve all, all of our problems. There’s no one, there’s no single ground answer, but one thing that will at least really help us clean up, show up, grow up, and even wake up the wilburn categories, um, it is community.

You say finding your tribe, and I know you are trying hard to build out in IBI and people often talk about, you know, tribes and so on, but I, I can’t, um, overemphasize how impactful it was for me. It was basically putting it into practice. Everything I had learned in those different spaces, but instead of taking a non v communication course yet, another workshop going to yet another space, it was daily life.

Giancarlo: You practice it?

Swan: Yeah. On, on a daily basis and. Having people that can witness your highs and lows and really see, fully see you as you are. You know, people have a lot of friends that never see them when they’re down [01:09:00] and they don’t, they don’t go see them. Say, I don’t feel too good, I’m not gonna see them.

So they only see this happy, jolly side of, of their character, and there’s so much they don’t see. Well, since someone, when you live in close quarters with people, you can’t hide. You have to show up fully. Yeah. And you have, you, you also see people full as they are if they’re also willing to open up and if there’s an in shed intention, hence the word intentional here, to fully show up as you are.

And as you know, community can human connection. You know, we need interpersonal relationship. We need to take care of ourselves. We need transpersonal relationship, relationship to the more than a human world. But the, perhaps the simplest thing we can all start with is interpersonal relationships, and that’ll also impact the intra and the trance personal.

So if I’m to give a piece of advice, it’s really starting with the interpersonal and having people that can witness you, that can see you and they can welcome you as you are.

Giancarlo: Okay. [01:10:00] There is a lot there. But let me ask you this before we, I, I’d love to dig a little bit, um, more on this, um, on how community works, but just to, just to clarify which, uh, cost, uh, I mean, which part of Canada was your, um, community?

Swan: East Coast. It was Montreal.

Giancarlo: Montreal. And, and it was like, um, urban community or, or, or urban community?

Yes. Seven to nine

Swan: people. Yes.

Giancarlo: How many?

Swan: Seven to nine people.

Giancarlo: Seven to nine people in one, one single

Swan: house. Um, yes, actually noticed a house. It was a, it was a large loft and we were sharing all the communal spaces and we had just little cabins, so to speak, um, that we slept in

Giancarlo: little cabins and one kitchen.

Swan: Yeah. One note of everything.

Giancarlo: Yeah, one of everything. So, okay. Let’s, let’s spend few minutes here because, um, I thi my modest opinion is that the main, um, obstacle for the [01:11:00] interpersonal work to, you know, to, to see and be seen is this fear of vulnerability.

Swan: Yes.

Giancarlo: We have, you know, I can, I see in this weekly circle, um, we are organizing that, you know, it takes time for people to just relax and trust and open up.

So it’s almost like a chicken and egg. So I think that it all trust, it all starts with trust. How, how would you describe the process of a successful, successful community for people that are listening? That’s a big topic nowadays, right? Yeah. For people, I think. Sorry.

Swan: Yeah, thank you for asking that question.

Yeah,

Giancarlo: yeah.

Swan: Um, because not sure the word success is the one I would use, but there can definitely be communities that function better than others, that are healthier than others, and people to get on better than others. Um, now, you know, Dunbar’s [01:12:00] numbers, right? So, so a different 1 75, 1

Giancarlo: 35? No,

Swan: uh, no more. 5, 15, 50, a hundred, 150.

So, you know, your, your close circle friends. Yeah, really intimate friends. Um, then, then friends are not as close, then acquaintances or people you know. And then the size of a village, which is about 150,

Giancarlo: I thought the number, number was just one was one

Swan: 50. Um, as far as I know, it’s, there’s different numbers, but I could be mistaken.

But in any case, that doesn’t matter. What I mean is that you have those different, um, you know, numbers and you can relate to a certain number of people in different ways. Yeah. And the, the, the, the hardest thing I suppose in our society is the, um, biological and psychological mismatch. We have it between the ways in which we are expected to live and our aspirations and the things we think will make us happy, and how we evolved.

So in a way, how we meant to live, because you know, we still operate mainly with our reptilian brains and our bodies are still, we’re still apes and so on and so forth. Um, and there’s [01:13:00] this, and, and so that’s one, the mismatch between how we evolved and what we think we’re supposed to be now. Hyper predictive machines,

Giancarlo: individualistic.

Um,

Swan: so exactly. And then the second, um, chasm is that we’ve never known so much in a way about the external world, but we’ve never had so little inner understanding and inner wisdom. And I think it’s those two. Then the third level, you could say right brain, left brain, and you could, you know, there are many ways in which you could identify the me, the root of the mixture crisis and the problems that we’re facing today.

But I really want to stress that the way many of the ways in which we live, what we call disconnected, um, is in direct opposition to how we evolved. And we spend so much time and energy trying to understand what’s [01:14:00] out there and so little, little time looking within. And so we don’t understand the connection, which what’s out there and what’s within.

And we don’t understand by, we’re looking within. Somehow we can better understand what’s out there. And so obviously the communal work to then conduct to living in community also takes self work. And it always works better if it’s people that are also working on themselves. Why does sitting in silence for 10 hours a day, for 10 days make you more compassionate?

Um, so what helps as well is having structures, having frameworks, because one of the errors, if I may call it that mistakes, is you think, oh, I’m good. We, we want total freedom. Especially those who are anti-authoritarian, who’ve suffered from oppression, um, and from rules, um, that were, uh, detrimental to their wellbeing.

They just want to destroy everything, to get rid of all the rules and to be totally free. [01:15:00] Usually, it doesn’t quite work first, because we don’t know what to do with freedom. It can be overwhelming. And because as humans we need categories. We need frameworks, we need structures to orient ourselves. I need to know that if I shake your hand in our society, it means hello if every time we meet, we try to reinvent how we greet each other.

Very complicated. We, you know, we, um, and we, but we need other structures. So just like we have structures that are implicit, just like we know shaking hands, but that’s when you travel, you think, oh, actually you can bow, you can place your hands together in prayer. You can even rub your noses together.

Those are different ways to greet each other. And it feels weird at first because, and one is not necessarily better than the other, but sometimes one is better than the other. Say for example, shouting at someone and saying, you’re stupid, you idiot. You are egoistic or using non V communication, you know, different ways, maybe indices better.

Yeah. So having those tools, instruments and frameworks to navigate life in community, which we do, [01:16:00] um, without really realizing it because we just do what our culture taught us to do. Um, and I, and there’s something that feminist always say that the personal is political. What you do personally in, in intimate context, even within sexuality, you think this is just me.

This is just my animal nature expressing itself. No, it may be a little bit of that, but it’s society expressing itself through you. And the first step is to become aware of that. The first step is to be self-aware and to work on yourself. The culture

Giancarlo: of the cultural conditioning.

Swan: That’s right. Um, and then, so having, having this shared language as said, vocabulary, say non-violent communication, and then many others, um, having the things that

Giancarlo: we, sorry, sorry to interrupt because already now you see how, you know the bar is so high because Yeah.

You know, cultural conditioning, awa awareness. Yeah. It takes a lifetime. And some people, and some people never even get there. And so how do you, you know, [01:17:00] if, if, if you want to build a community and that’s already is a huge barrier of entry, you’re gonna, you’re not gonna find many cast,

Swan: sorry, I I didn’t mean to say you need to be, uh, hugely self-aware and have deconditioned everything.

Uh, in order to live in community, at least I’m, I’m, I’ll make it more simp. I’ll make it a lot simpler. One practice that anyone can do, not just in community. With your partner, with your friend. Active listening and,

Giancarlo: yeah. Yeah. So Socratic dialogue. Yeah.

Swan: The person speaks. You just listen to what they have to say.

You don’t interrupt, you don’t ask questions. What you can do, the extra step is that you rephrase what they just said so that they can hear back what they just said. And it forces you to really pay attention. Yeah. It forces you to then translate it in your own words or use their words. Yeah, and this’s an easy way to develop empathy.

So you just shut up for five minutes, you time it, you listen to what the other person has to say, anything. And also if they’re silent for four minutes, and if they say a few [01:18:00] words, maybe two words, that fourth minutes, those may be crucial words that had, they would never have been able to express had they not had that time and space.

So it’s taking five minutes, even start with five minutes, once a week with your partner. They speak for five minutes. You just listen. You spend two minutes rephrasing, you do, and then they, and then you reciprocate. Just that, see? So it’s not that you don’t need to be trained in NVC and media, you know, starts more, they

Giancarlo: call it, they call it imago technique.

No,

Swan: there are lots of names.

Giancarlo: Yeah, lots of names. Okay. So, so, so that’s to develop empathy. But you know, people don’t realize that, you know, so many of the behavior and belief and values, they’re really operated by the subconscious, you know, so, so, so, you know, how do you deal. Because that’s why, that’s why so many, um, that’s why all this community of the sixties pretty much failed, right?

Because ultimately you can’t create a new form of [01:19:00] living with the mentality of the old form of living, which is based on, you know, this an awareness on, on to what extent your subconscious, including the ego and the needs and the wounds inform your behavior. So you end up having this group of people, you know, like, like someone I like, I like this, this quote that, you know, emotions are the language of your body, right?

Fear has a contraction and shame has a blushing and love and an expansion. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s an, emotions are pretty much the language of, of sensation, right? So when you communicate, when you communicate emotion with language, already, you’re doing a disservice because it’s an emotional language that you try to translate in words to a person who then receive these words that already are not accurate through the filter of their own emotional meab.

And that’s a [01:20:00] huge bubble tower. And we see that in the world. That’s why we are this planet in a state. It is, it’s mostly due to really miscommunication because there is no awareness. But, so I see here in Ibiza there are more or less, more or less successful community. And I spent time, I went to Damman hu I went to Tamara, I went to Oroville.

And, and you know, I, I, I think that’s. I agree with you that it’s one of the most important human experiment because a new way to live together, you know, in a post capitalistic, neoliberal, individualistic society, these new ideas will come from experiment on the ground. Enough from some, some academics, from from universities.

That’s

Swan: right.

Giancarlo: I’m just saying, I’m just asking to you. Um, what would you recommend for, to people that want to create a community, let’s say people listening, there is seven, eight friends out there, or a hundred friends out there Yes. That want to, that [01:21:00] want to live together. How do they develop this? You know, young says that until you make the subconscious conscious, it’s gonna rule your life.

And, and, and, and how, how would you recommend people to start looking into understanding what the, what, what, what the subconscious is and what their subconscious look like?

Swan: Hmm. I thought you were going to ask me how are they to start, um, living in community? Yes. But, but, but that, but you think, you, you think bringing the some conscious to the conscious is the first step.

I,

Giancarlo: I think you said you need some, some awareness about your cultural conditioning.

Swan: Not necessarily. So I don’t really, I really don’t want to make this an, an elitist thing, even though I know in many ways it is a privileged choice that some people can actually ask the question, oh, do I want to live in community?

And, and so on and so forth. I know that, um, I don’t think you necessarily, um, the, the more self work you do, the more understanding the better. But there is really no, um, there are [01:22:00] lots of different types.

Giancarlo: Self work. Self work. What, what would you and, and, and so on. Honestly, I think we should call this part one.

Sure. Can you gimme, because, because there is so much to explore. So let’s just finish this concept of community and then we continue your life story. I think we need another 10 hours, but I would do another hour. Another hour is fine. Okay. So. Yeah. If wrapping it up on the community, you said, um, the more self-help, the better, but also self-help is such a misused term and, and, and for so many people that people, I, I didn’t say

Swan: did, I didn’t say self-help.

Sorry, I said self-work or in, in, in work.

Giancarlo: In in self-work. Self work. Self-work. Self work, yeah.

Swan: So, uh, you know, you, you had, um, a business side to your life. What would you advise someone who wants to start a business? What, what, what should it do?

Giancarlo: I think, I think it start with passion. I think it start with, um, really believing in, [01:23:00] believe it or not, it’s gonna sound a little bit trite, but in wanting to help others in want to, in wanting to solve someone’s problem.

Swan: Yeah.

Giancarlo: And, and be really passionate about that. And just never give up, you know, that would be, that would be the starting point. Passion and resilience. And would you have

Swan: them. Have some experience with the industry, um, and with and working for a business as small startup first, or would you want them to start straight away their own thing?

Giancarlo: I think, I think there should be a little bit of, of, of, of training with a mentor. It doesn’t have to be a big company or small company or a university, but you need to have a mentor that a role model. A role model. A role model. I was telling Swan that we need to stop here because I have a meeting and um, and we’re gonna call this part one.

Um, so. And then, and then, and then, and then he went offline. He is calling from Vietnam. Maybe had a [01:24:00] problem with the internet line, but you know, it was quite synchronistically because we were just saying that we had to stop. So we’ll be continuing very, very soon for part two. Thank you.