Summary:

Marty and Professor Ted talk with special guest, Judith Trustone, a global activist, author, and leader of the Global Kindness Revolution and resident of Delaware County.  Learn about the power of kindness circles, her work in prison reform and how together we can heal violence, racism and meanness. 

Kindness Circles soon to be held at Burman’s Health Shop!

To learn more about Judith Trustone, check out her book The Global Kindness Revolution, available in-store, or email her at info@trustonekindness.com. Keep it kind!

Podcast (Audio Version)

Transcription

Marty Burman:
Welcome to Rising Core powered by Burman’s Health Shop.

Marty Burman:
Hi everybody. This is Marty Burman along with the professor Ted Matthews here at Burman’s Health Shop. How you doing, Ted, whats going on. All right, we’re ready to go tonight. Another edition of Rising Core powered by Burman’s Health Shop right here in the heart of Delaware County. You gotta love it. Delco. Absolutely go Delco all the way. There’s, you can, you can take the woman out of Delco, but you can’t take the Delco out of the woman is truer words have ever been spoken. Same thing with the men. Tonight we got a great guest. As you know, we do a lot of you know, get a lot of experts in here on the show to talk about mind, body, spirit, nutritional expertise, how to feel better at many different stages of your life. And today we have a great customer of ours that we go way back, right Judith?

Judith Trueston:
We go back to the beginning, I think almost the beginning. Yep, absolutely. Bring stuff to my house. Can you imagine customer service like that nowadays?

Marty Burman:
Amazing. I mean, you know, my, my dad taught us a lot of lessons and just in our DNA to, to do things like that because you know, we, we wanted to serve the community of course, and we also wanted to succeed in business and you know, doing the little things is really what, what’s, what’s very important. But we, you know, we were always happy to do that. But I appreciate you being one of my first customers here to support us in, you know, in the beginning stages of our business. And you were such a thought leader for the time because nobody else was doing what you were doing, which is bringing in alternative. I won’t turn into voices on healing and nutrition and the power of the mind and all that stuff you were way before your time.

Judith Trueston:
Now I really know you’re getting ready to launch to a deeper level of accomplishment by making this a kindness center in Delaware County. Yes. And that’s something that we intend to do with you and we, we can’t wait to hear more about these community kindness centers that that you have experienced with. And what they can accomplish. So Ted, what’s, what’s happening today? How was your, how was your day here at the shop? Everything was good so far. Any, any miracle stories or like people, you know, feeling better about are some of the problems. People are always feeling better. And you know, that’s the nice, one of the nice things about it is, I was talking to Samantha earlier today and I was explaining to her like, there’s nothing better than someone coming back and telling you that you’ve made them, you’ve improved their life somehow.

Marty Burman:
You’ve, you’ve made them good, you know, and they really do render up relying on us for a lot of these services. And you know, we’re just an ear, you know, somebody to come in and talk to and explain, you know, what’s going on with them. Sometimes people don’t have that, you know, and it’s it’s nice when you, you know, it was, we were talking and I was trying to tell her, you know, just study everything you can and educate yourself as much as possible because that, that all that time and effort that you put into that, it’s all gonna come back to you. You know, it really does. It’s nice when I still get it, you know, it still feels good when somebody comes in and they tell me how, how much I helped them or you know, that that our products are, that we were even just here.

Marty Burman:
You know what I mean? So it’s been, it was a great day. Yeah. That’s cool. I always like to check in with Ted and let people know what’s going on here at the store, but I don’t want to wait any longer to introduce Judith and tell you a little bit about her. Like I said, we’re very excited to learn more about what she’s done. She’s a a local leader and a local community activists and national activists on certain, certain topics. Judith is an award winning author activist. As I said, filmmaker Judith is the founder and director with people in prison and others of Sage writers, which in addition to advocating for human rights, has published a dozen books of literary and social merit about America’s justice system. Sage writers grew out of her creative writing classes in prisons. Judith has in a creator of innovative programs for social change through art.

Marty Burman:
She sees the kindness circles that we mentioned earlier as a force for energizing compassion and healing for grassroots groups as well as elected officials and voters. She has been deemed an author who makes a difference by Infiniti publishing peacekeeper of the year by Delaware County, PA peace center, and was the recipient of the leeway foundations trans transformation award for women who use their art for social change. The grandmother of 12, soon to be, can I say it soon? Soon. Soon to be 80 years old on May 31st. And my son Alex, his birthday, 80 going on 18. Yeah, she looks great. She really does look great. And she’s, she and I won’t soon. You’re gonna, you’re, you’re, you’re looking great and you’ve, you’ve got a great you’ve got a great voice. You know, still my life is good. I’m doing what I love and it’s working. It’s wonderful. Yeah. But Judith is a grandmother of 12. The global revolution

Judith Trueston:
Is a book that you’re working on now. It’s here. It’s right here. Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. When it’s the blue book, that’s what they call it in prison. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Very good. It’s the global kindness revolution, how together we can heal violence, racism and meet us by a and meanness by Judith. True stone kindness at noon every day. Everywhere is a sold in stores or, Oh, it’s on Amazon. Oh, okay. Wonderful. So that’s, yeah, that’s the global kindness revolution. And then there is another book that we have here the ceiling selling, Oh, I’m sorry. The selling America’s soul torture and transformation in our prisons and why we should care. And this is, this was written, this was written with people from my creative writing class back in 2003. It was published at the second edition in 2008. It’s kind of an underground classic and it’s one of the first books that exposed prisoners as literary people.

Judith Trueston:
And so that was the foundation for incarceration, literary genre a new genre which gave voice to the voiceless and grew and grew and grew. And now it’s very powerful. Wow, that’s, that’s wonderful that you know, that you’re able to do this type of work. And you know, we we talked a little bit before the show started about kindness circles and can you tell us a little bit about that? It’s, you know, we talked a little bit before we got on me, you and Ted about our society right now and what humanity is becoming and it’s kind of scary, you know. What can you tell us about, you know, this work? Well, I started working with circles about really fit bout 50 years ago. I was one of the founders of women in transition and we actually started, re restarted the women’s movement in Delaware County.

Judith Trueston:
I happened to be in Atlantic city when women did not burn their bras. It never happened. But that’s another story for another show. And we started a women’s consciousness raising group here and we met at each other’s homes for two years every week. And out of that group, we started women in transition, women against rape and the domestic abuse project, all of which are still going 50 years later. That’s what the first thing we did is we stopped sitting in rows and we started sitting in circles. And gradually I was an apprentice to a native American medicine man for 14 years and did a lot of circle work. And the power of the circle is phenomenal. And we are all energy beings. And my approach to racism is if we can all sit in a circle holding hands, transferring energy from one to another, as we move around the circle.

Judith Trueston:
You can’t hate somebody after you’ve exchanged energies like that. We are all one energy all looking for kindness. You can’t argue against kindness. I mean, who’s going to say, Oh, we don’t want that. So I incorporated healing circles for many years. I was doing a women’s healing circle and then I was working with people with AIDS children. Everybody’s responsive because once you get what it’s about, like for instance, one of our main projects is kindness at noon. And this is what I’m advocating for everybody because it’s so simple and we only need about 3 billion people to do it. And I think 60 million people tuned into YouTube to look at Kim Kardashians. But so 3 billion shouldn’t be hard. Here’s the idea, whether you’re here in Burman’s health spot or you’re in Nepal plowing the fields, you set your smart phone to ding at noon. And it’s important that we all do it at the same time.

Judith Trueston:
There’ve been so many people wanting to do good things, but it gets fragmented and you know, dissolved into the ethers. But if we do it at the same time, the power of that mental alignment is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. And so if we reach a certain plateau, so what you do is you set your phone, it goes off, you pause, whether you’re at your desk or plowing a field and you take five clearing breaths into your jaw, your arm pits, your belly, your bottom and your knees. And then you exhale anything, negativity that you can out your feet. Well, you just think of kind thought that’s it. So we’re talking about five o’clock in just five breasts convinced that big of a difference. Yes, and pretty amazing. Think a kind thought. Okay. And so what happens is we create a cloud of kindness that eventually is bigger than the cloud of violence that has us in its grip.

Judith Trueston:
And it also reduces your blood pressure, elevates your happy hormones, makes you feel a connection to other people, which is what’s so missing in our technological disjointed age and everybody’s happier. Do you know that when you do an act of kindness, it raises all the good stuff in your body? It’s healthy and it’s healthy for you to do it, for person to receive it. And those watching or hear about it or even reading about it, it helps them to, they feel better. It’s an, it’s an amazing thing. Free and it requires no special training so it can’t be corrupted cause there’s no money involved. There was no dogma involved. Some people said, Oh, it sounds like a cult. Well, if that’s how you feel instead of doing kindness at noon, do add a prayer at noon. If you’re already praying, just do it at noon.

Judith Trueston:
Or Muslims pray at 12:30 Hey, that’s close enough. You can start a half hour early. That’s fine. I’m sure they won’t mind. So yeah. Did you have any other questions? Yeah, sure. And look on, on, on the kindness circle. Oh no. The only other thing that is the change to a, are you hoping to affect those that don’t even know about the call? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So with the energy that you’re putting out, well, here’s how it works. I did a kindness circle up at sci Benner up near state college back in October and we had a hundred staff and prisoners, first time ever in the world. They stood in a circle, a hundred people in an auditorium holding hands and we created a cone of healing energy and we directed it to the victims of those people who had committed those crimes and then to whoever needed, needed healing.

Judith Trueston:
And I’m one of the things I’m starting, we’re doing, we’re doing so much, I can’t believe it’s all happening. A, we’re doing a summit on masculinity cause they know that their idea of masculinity caught them in prison. Yeah. And I’m developing a kindness course that will be videotaped there and hopefully shown in not just in that prison but in other ones too. I’m sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Why, why the all the prison work, is that something that you’ve had a passion for for a long time, for some reason or, yeah. I ran about a man who was applying to the board of pardons. This was 25 years ago. His name is James Taylor and he was so transformed. He’d been in there 18 years already and he got a life without parole assignment or conviction and life without parole. Pennsylvania is one of four States that has life without parole.

Judith Trueston:
We have more lifers than any other state. 5,500 lifers, and when you consider it the cost over a hundred thousand dollars to keep an older prisoner in, we’re spending over $500 million a year to keep people in prison who have like a less than 1% rate of recidivism and where they in New York, New Jersey or Delaware, they would’ve been paroled years ago. So it’s insane system and the board of pardons unfortunately never pardons anybody. It’s a political thing. So this man recently applied to the board of pardons again. They told him in 25 years ago, you’re doing good, but come back in two years, two years, it’s been 25 years and he’s still in there and they won’t even give him another hearing. So there’s so much corruption. It seems like to be a politician nowadays. So many have to be either corrupt and incompetent or just plain corrupt. I think we don’t have somebody like that.

Judith Trueston:
We don’t want to, I don’t know if we could talk about that a year, Erica or director. What do you think, Erica? Yeah, we’ll talk about, yeah, well, everything’s edible here, so I don’t know if that’s editable, editable. It’s editable. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the what got you started? Judith, did you go to college for this or did you went to college? I was trained actually in mental health. I went to college to be a counselor and I worked in drug clinics and somebody tried to stab me when I worked in North Philly. And you know, I was the director of women’s programs. I was the first person to start programs for addicted women at Eagleville. So I’ve always been sort of at the forefront of social change issues or identifying something that need. And so when I, I wrote a letter of support of James Taylor 25 years ago, and he invited me to come up to Graterford and I’m a writer.

Judith Trueston:
I’d never been in a prison. So I went and I created a workshop and they loved what I did and they wanted me to come back. And I did. And eventually they hired me to teach creative writing, which I did. But once I got the stories and four of the 15 students in my class came to me and said, you know, I’m innocent. And I said, yeah, right, sure you are. Show me. They brought me their cases. I had them reviewed by sympathetic lawyers and all four cases had either prosecutorial misconduct or inadequate representation or time-barred testimony according to the law. If you are arrested and convicted of murder and a year and a day later somebody comes forth and says, no, I did it. It doesn’t matter. You can’t get back in court. Wow. I have one student now who’s in here. These are the ones that I’m kind of promoting now.

Judith Trueston:
I have a new role now as a regular correspondent for the quarterly journal in search of fatherhood, which goes to 38 countries. And it’s looking at the way we raise boys and how we have to do it differently. We’re not doing the boys a good service and they are destroying, you know, this concept, this toxic masculinity is killing the planet.

Marty Burman:
Tell me a little bit about that. I mean, I have four sons. And Ted just had a baby couple of years ago now it’s hard to believe max max salary. That’s a perfect day. Another June one, June 9th, amazing. Another Gemini chairman are taking over a lot of Geminis.

Judith Trueston:
but toxic masculinity is how we raise our boys to repress their emotions and to feel shame if they’re not on top. It’s a competitive rather than a cooperative way. And we are, in my opinion, raising boys just to be cannon fodder to glorify guns and violence and look how, you know, look at the culture we live in.

Judith Trueston:
Yeah. So they don’t have a sense of I read recently that in, in the primates, the alpha, which I thought meant like big guy, the top guy, they have alpha females too, but one of their jobs is to comfort the losers when there’s fights between two primates. Wow. Can you imagine? So what is, what is a man we need to really re define what is a man in this day and age, you know a man is the protector of the family of the community. He teaches gentleness, conflict, resolution, not go back there and beat him up. Yes. So, you know, don’t be a sissy or the other detrimental comment. Don’t be a pussy. And that’s putting down women as well,

Marty Burman:
You know, and it’s, and it’s abusive, it’s abusive. I, you know, all my boys play baseball. I have to plan college baseball. I’ve got to in high school and I, you know, I’ve really smoothed out and softened over the years because I realized probably in the last five years. I think that how, how general people are, you know I think by nature a lot of, a lot of people are just very sensitive and, and I, I was guilty of I think, you know, pushing my kids a little bit too far when, when I didn’t need to do that, I couldn’t, but I was a young father and I wasn’t, you know, I had, I had a tough example. My dad was very tough on me. His dad was a product of the depression, you know, it was survival, it was survival. So you know, it’s just the way, but I, you know, I agree with you.

Judith Trueston:
Well, for me, if I had four boys too, and I taught them a little boys don’t cry. And then one day I got awakened and I said, hold on boys. Yes. Cry. And I taught them as soon as they were old enough not to burn down the house, how to make dinner how to work the washer and dryer. So they did their own laundry and they’re shocked. They said, when one of my sons came to me as a kid and he said, you know, mom, Anthony’s mom cleaned his room. I said, well, I’m wondering why she did that. So, and they all became primary caretakers of their children at a certain point. But this culture still got them. It really did. It breaks my heart. I think about my youngest son who doesn’t remember this, but when he was going off to kindergarten, we had been friends with a family from Trinidad who also had four kids who ranged in color from very dark to very light.

Judith Trueston:
And so my son and the family’s youngest son, they were best friends, slept over, you know, first day of kindergarten they go off kindergartens over, I’m waiting at their house because they live to the school and we’re waiting for our kids, our little babies to come from kindergarten and they come in and the little boy is in tears. He has very dark skin. What happened? The kids called him, the N word gets us kindergarten and I looked at my son and I said, what did you do? And he looked, he had never heard the word. He looked at me and he said, I said it too. And I just think that we have to be careful because we are living in a white supremacist culture right now. Yeah. And we have to call it, we have to not accept it as normal and we have to explain to our children that we cannot think this way, that this is wrong. And I don’t know. It’s hard to do because the culture gets them.

Ted Matthews:
Yeah. The social media and everything. I know, Ted, you, you’ve alluded to that to that before about how social media is a, you know, turning us turning us into, into something different. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think people are definitely everybody’s putting up their highlight reels online and nobody’s, you know, seeing what’s really going on. So you’re comparing everything in your life to somebody else’s highlights. And I just think it messes with people’s heads. I think they just kind of get confused and they everyone thinks the grass is always greener and it’s not always that way. And you know, people don’t, there’s a lot of fake online and not that it’s all bad by any means. I there were in a time where there’s a lot of information at our fingertips as well. It’s just a matter of how we use it, you know?

Judith Trueston:
Well, we’re bombarded with information and unfortunately a lot of people are getting wrong information from a particular channel, which is a propaganda right wing tool. That’s all it is. They just had a read that recent experience. I went at Boston market I stopped to have lunch and I Boston market. Yeah, that’s real food. And yes. And I was gimping a little bit, I’ve got a knee problem and this very nice woman held the door for me and walked in and were standing in line and I said, Oh, isn’t it nice they have Brussels sprouts? Well, this woman went off. If Cory Booker gets elected, we’re all going to have to be vegan and we co we won’t have cows and we won’t be able to fly. I said, what? And she repeated it getting more and more angry. I thought, Oh my God, this is a crazy lady.

Judith Trueston:
And I couldn’t get away from here and I, that night I was watching another channel and they were showing the highlights from this Fox news and they were all six, five. They were all saying the same thing, that we’re going to have to be Baggins. We’re not going to be able to fly. I mean insanity. And they’re putting it out and people are listening to it. And that’s a lot of what’s wrong with today’s politics. People are listening to lies, propaganda and hatefulness. How do we know what to believe though? Well, we have just do our research and we have to be, we have to be very careful and question everything and not just spend so much time looking at our hands

Marty Burman:
And explain that too to our listeners. What do you, what do you mean by

Judith Trueston:
Well, we’re tuning into an alternative reality that isn’t a real world. And we’re listening to people who should be living under rocks and not come out viewing hatefulness viewing lies. Just viewing white supremacy and then couch it and nationalism. It’s, it’s, we are approaching fascism. If this man is not stopped, he won’t turn over his tax records. Now we can’t see the mural report. How much do we have the tank before people do something?

Marty Burman:
Yeah, I mean, I, I, you know, I’m not a very political guy. I think there’s issues with every single candidate and every single politician that I run into. But I know you’re never gonna make anyone everyone happy, that’s for sure. So, but this guy, I mean this, this guy’s the ultimate con artist. He really is. I mean, it’s a, you know, Trump, Hey listen, God bless him. He, he, he made a big success. He also had a lot of failures, but he made a big success out of himself in the business world because it’s fine. They loaned him $40 million. That’ll help. I thought it was a million now. 40 million. Well, there we go. There we go again. But you know, we’re not here to talk about Donald Trump, but I, I want to know something because ma, a few of my sons, they deal with, they deal with a lot of different emotions.

Marty Burman:
You really do likely all do. But where does the anger come from? Because the opposite of kindness is anger and, and that’s what I struggle with. Are we inherently, inherently born that way? Are we, is it the, is it that you’re a part of your upbringing is a part of genetics and you know, how do you F how do you feel about that? Because there’s so much anger in the world today. I think anger is, is proven as a secondary emotion. You don’t just become angry, right? You become scared or upset. It comes back to fear. Right. Okay. And

Judith Trueston:
We are programmed to be fearful. I was just reading a, the publication of the Southern poverty law center, which publishes information on hate groups, hate crimes have risen exponentially since Trump has president. And in the paper, this really scared me. A couple of weeks ago, the white supremacist meeting in nationally met in Pennsylvania. Guess where this Brown Lane’s right up here in Springfield. That’s where they have heard about. You heard about? Oh wow. That’s really scary. And they bold. It’s like they rented shoes and they bowled and had their meeting in white supremacy. Yeah, that’s, that’s all have Salaam was actually there. Oh, where they were. Oh, to protest? Well, no, they were just that they happened to be there, but you’re kidding. Yeah. Oh, that’s terrible. And I was raised Jewish. I’m more of a, a secular Jew. I will call myself. But boy, that’s terrible. Like I think you’re wrong.

Judith Trueston:
I think it brings a little bit more when you’re, when you’re, when you’re, when you’re a Jew or you’re African American and you know, obviously they hate everybody other than, yeah. Than what they’re, what they are. But I think we all have the capacity within us for darkness. And it’s the environment, like what happens in the womb? What are our mothers experiencing in the womb? I’m dodging bullets in the street on your way to work. If you’re a black woman living in a poor section, right? What, what does that baby in there? How does it affect that baby? And it does. And we have so much of this stuff in our DNA. It’s like white people’s DNA says I know what happened with slavery and I know who did it. And I deep down realize we’re still doing it, but I don’t want to admit that.

Judith Trueston:
So they were afraid of black people. Black people have in their DNA a memory of slavery and who did what to whom and they know it’s still going on. So there’s, there’s no way for blacks and whites to come together and talk about this stuff. But if we sit in a kindness circle and acknowledge that we want to overcome the white supremacy we’ve all been born into, and I just read a book called white fragility, why white people are afraid to talk about racism. I can’t remember the author’s name, but she says from the moment we’re born, we’re in a white supremacist society and that on a continuum, we all have to work on our own internalized racism, recognize it and resistant and you know, it goes from the people that take picnics to lynchings, to the ascended masters who you know are beyond all of this.

Judith Trueston:
But in between, each of us must struggle to not just think, well, I had nothing to do with slavery. No, but it’s in your DNA. It’s in our collective consciousness. It affects everything. Yeah. And it’s bad energy. It’s bad energy. And we’re trying to create good energy through these kindness services. Through your work with meditation, right. And things of that nature. I do have, I do have a question. I just want to say one. Sure. What I’m calling this is vibrational social change. You can join this revolution without getting out of bed, being locked into cell, being in a refugee camp, it doesn’t matter. You can be part of a global positive effort of kindness and you will feel better. And those around you will feel better. So I’m sorry, you might’ve asked a quick question. Yeah, no, sure.

Speaker 5: Thinking local and you know, it’s funny you mentioned Delaware County and I’m thinking, you know, my different capacities are working in Delaware County and see there’s a lot of tribalism. There’s a lot of groups pitted against each other. And I worked with the Delaware County historical society and even getting people to come down to Chester and, and I’m just wondering like what your thoughts are on how you break down those barriers even locally.

Judith Trueston:
Well, I think the first thing is you’ve got to recognize the problem. And I think that, for instance, having a kindness circle here in the store, we’re not going to be talking about racism. We’re going to be talking about kindness and the ways you can be kind to each other, the ways you can support like joining kindness at noon. Yeah, I send all, I am composing a letter to all of the candidates on the democratic side. But I do send kindness at noon every day to the president. I keep trying, he’s not getting it, but he is, I don’t know. Yeah. You never know. And so by coming together on an a common passion for a kinder, gentler world, kindness is the antidote to violence, as you said earlier. So people can come here each week for a kindness circle and we’ll talk about, and you know, we’ll announce this later when we get all the details settled.

Marty Burman:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you were excited about it and we, I think every, I think everybody needs it to Judith are so many people that come into our store that Ted talks to every day that I talked to every day that are so stressed out. It’s really, you can actually feel shows stress on people when they come in. And we’re like almost stress absorbers here, you know, because we, we, we listened to them, we got them products that can help them, but so many people could benefit right.

Judith Trueston:
My co director is a former Afghany refugee. He fled when the Russians took over and spent two years in a German concentration camp and came here with $10 in his pocket and a cousin’s phone number and he answered an ad for a teller and he went and applied for this job and it was for a bank teller.

Judith Trueston:
He thought it was for a storyteller, but the guy saw something in him and him and he had a 28 career in banking. He was vice president and supervised over a thousand people. So through him I, we went global. And so the way that’s working now is that the instructions in our little blue car in which we’ll have here for people when they come in, instructs you and how to do kindness at noon. We’re having that translated into Nepalese cause we have a kindness ambassador in Nepal. And so they have little electric cars called tuck ducks that take the books into the rural parts of Nepal and now Afghanistan. So, along with the books, these people will get these flyers about how to join in kindness and noon cause they all have, they all have iPhones too. They don’t have plumbing, electricity, but they have iPhones.

Judith Trueston:
So they’re in the fields doing their thing. We’re here doing our thing and we’re all connected. And we have to see that we are all one. We’re all energy beings and we can uplift each other. And the other thing is writing. I love inspiring people to write. And they did a study in England where people who wrote about their surgery healed twice as fast as people who didn’t write about it. Wow. And the other thing I want to mention, the power of all this Todd’s mother who was Muslim gets her phone too dang five times a day when it’s a cold prayer. And there was a study done back in the 70s where a group of meditators, I think they were I’m not sure what they were. Some form. And they went into a high crime area and meditated every day for eight weeks. And the crime rate plummeted just because of the energy. And they were putting out right and they left and the crime rate went back up. So there’s power in our align minds and I’d like to see people come here and become empowered, not just their bodies but their minds as well. And maybe we’ll, you know, with some time we’ll have an after after work mindfulness course that cheaper can come to.

Marty Burman:
Sure. We have, we have a really nice space here at the store. So I think this is this is a prime area to, to do something like this. And then, you know, there is good energy here at the store and Judith, you’re going to do something tonight to the store. Purification of the energy. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We can always use that. So it was from my native American training. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. I got a lot to learn, but you know, we’ll learn a lot together once we start doing this and we’ll let all of our customers know on social media by the email and through the podcast when we are going to be able to get this started. I would think probably in about three or four weeks just to promote it and get people interested. And it just sounds very tranquil. I do it.

Judith Trueston:
The question I have for you now is, and I know Ted has question, but this is, kindness is something you have to work on. Isn’t it again, for people that, that typically or just hardened and kind of disgruntled or just very unhappy and with kids with what they’re going through. Do you think that this is something that needs to be worked on? Like is there, what do you, how do you feel about that? Well, it’s so simple. It really isn’t hard to do. Okay. Everybody breeds, my thing is you can be in a kindness circle as long as you’re breathing. And I’ve had people that have been barely breathing in the past shown up, but okay. They participate. They’re invited to, yes. All breathers. By making a commitment to kindness, you’re automatically in that moment raising your energy level and your vibration.

Judith Trueston:
So, and we will be drawn to people who have a higher vibration. Okay. And those who don’t are they energy vampires. You know them, they come in here all the time. Yeah. And they need help too. So what I do is send them, and I have some techniques that I’ll have to show you. Yeah. But how you can use your, your mind to calm down another person or elevate their energy to help support their environment. We need to change our environment. They have a cha, I don’t know the name of it. It’s in my book. It’s called forest healing and it has to do with walk in the woods is so good for your health and you know, they took away recess in the schools and all that. We don’t go into nature. We look at nature on our hands, but you can’t smell.

Judith Trueston:
Don’t have recess. And I don’t know. Oh, that’s, do they have recess? Not at middle school. I knew that. I don’t know about elementary though. I mean you went to a private school, but you know, that’s, yeah. I mean, I had recess, but all we did was beat on each other. Most of, most of the time we were just beating each other, throw stones as a way to get that energy. Yeah, we did that. Well, we didn’t know what, I had two very abusive brothers. Right. That was the norm. They were tough for me. I don’t call it abuse, but they were tough on the end was abusive. Yeah. But you know, if you go down the road just a couple miles to Chester, I went there to a school, I’m not sure the name of it now, so talk about a career day being a writer. Okay.

Judith Trueston:
This school had no cafeteria, no gymnasium, no yard. The kids just hated their desks and you go up the road to Swarthmore, you know? Yeah, sure. You know, they’ve at $250,000 covering on the fields that the kids could play lacrosse. Yeah. It’s just the difference is shocking because ever since the civil war, all of our laws and policies have been geared toward diminishing black people, keeping them in their place and keeping them from succeeding. It’s been written into everything. You know, when we first started the women’s movement in Delaware County, there were two w two laws that we got rid of immediately. The first one was a man could not meet his, this was in 1978 a man could not beat his wife with a stick any thicker than his little finger. That was the law. Wow. And the other one was a man could rape his wife.

Judith Trueston:
We can’t rid of that one too. But women are still making 80% of what men are making. And that’s why is that, who decides these things? I don’t know these words. You’re studying again to question everything. Everything. Yeah. And if we’re not, we’re not paying attention. And it, it gets me that some people saying, Oh, I don’t watch the news. It’s too negative. I said, do you vote when you shouldn’t be voting? If you don’t watch the news, if you don’t know what’s going on, please don’t vote. Right. But they do. And Thomas Friedman in his article last week in the New York times said a, how did he put it? There’s no healing stupidity.

Judith Trueston:
So we need to educate ourselves and we need to learn about energy medicine. We need to learn about energy, social change, because the power to change all of this is in our minds. Yeah. And for many of us, we are imprinted with negative reactions and that’s why we have addictions and repeated destructive behaviors. Yeah. When you, and I’m, I’m subjected to this, I, I react a lot and make decisions based on fear. [inaudible] So that’s something that I need to work on. The quizzes. Did you always, or is that new when we’re all afraid of being sued for every little thing? I don’t know. I, I, you know, I think that a lot of it came from my childhood. But I, I think there was a, there was a time when I was more free, more free and easy, and I guess more, more responsibility put on me as I, as I got older and realizing the hardships that can happen in life, fear kind of took over, but I allowed it to.

Judith Trueston:
And I continue to work on that. And I don’t mind talking about this you know, on a rise in core because I think it’s P it’s you know, it’s human. People need [inaudible] or something that, you know, everybody’s suffering. Becoming aware of it, I think is the, is it’s the first step. Absolutely. I know it sounds so cliche, but it’s so true. You know what’s another cliche that I got kind of pissed off at? God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. What, what is that all I know? Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t

Marty Burman:
Know. It’s like the old Catholic offering out. You’ll get a better seat in heaven. Yeah, I yeah. I, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t usually live by that, but it’s yeah,

Judith Trueston:
We live in fearful times. I wrote an article recently that was not complimentary to the white house and a friend of mine who’s going to be 99, she said to me, please don’t publish that. I said, well, why Trump could come for you. And that’s what we’re living in nowadays. Anybody who criticizes him is under assault. So I’m hoping he’s not going to come for an eight year old,

Marty Burman:
The little white lady. But yeah, I don’t know. I can’t live that way. Well, I hope we, I hope between what you’re trying to accomplish and, and you are accomplishing it and the in, in the space that we provide here that we can, that we can make some more changes in how people feel about each other. Cause we have a, we have a large African American clientele here. And I, I w I would love the opportunity to try to get along better with these people as far as like just, just in general and, and, and have more, have better energy between us since they have been through so much. Oh my God. No, I understand that. I get that.

Judith Trueston:
But also what I say is how many white people have a black friend. Right. And until we get to that point, when we can open our hearts to each other, we’re still too afraid of each other to do that. But if we could, maybe we’ll do it here sometime. Yeah. Have a, have a conversation, you know, just what makes you afraid of white people? What makes you afraid of black people? Let’s look at what the fear is. Because once you’ve exposed fear to the light, it’s, it shrinks away. Yeah. And once we see the humanity in the other person that our skin is just a rapping for our soul. And what I say is what if instead of skin we had saran wrap, how would we know who to hate?

Marty Burman:
Not, not, not bad. I like that one. I do, I liked that one. Ted, do you have any questions at all for Judith?

Ted Matthews:
Not really. I’m, I’m definitely interested in the kindness thing. I think it’s something I work on myself and you know, I, me and my girl talked multiple times about trying to keep away from negativity and, and you know, I don’t care what form it comes in, white, black, you know, yellow, red, whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. It’s just negativity. So that’s something that we’ve been working on. And even just saying stuff and negative comments about even about things that don’t matter about. If you hear us song that you don’t like, or if you see a show that you don’t like and just, you know people are so quick to point out or say something bad about it. Sure. And that snowballs. You think negative things all the time and it’s gonna snowball and that’s your brain is a muscle and it’s gonna start to get stronger. But in the, in the wrong sense, you know, so and more positives that, but to acknowledge it and release it well, sure, yeah. That’s a, you know, and that’s thing if you can, I, I truly believe that, you know, when we’re put under certain stimulus that our brains do become stronger and you know, put it under the,

Judith Trueston:
I’m sponsoring a seminar and we might talk about this more on grief and your brain and the impact that grief has and how we can overcome that. I have lost my husband and my son within six months of each other. I could cry any moment. It just never goes away. It’s imprinted on my brain. So I’m trying to find other ways to deal with that. I also just the other day introduced kindness at noon as a concept to a woman who has recently joined AA and acknowledged that she was an alcoholic. She’s got it immediately and she’s using it now when she gets cravings for alcohol, she takes five breaths and thinks a kind thought and she gets out of it. That’s what a wonderful tool.

Ted Matthews:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean it’s very exciting and there’s a lot of support groups out there, but this is,

Judith Trueston:
It’s all negativity though. It’s like my, my ailment group, I have a, a lady at the pool who says my chronic fatigue group and my addiction group and my whatever group. So we’re identifying ourselves by our disease, which is negative, negative, negative, and so much we could just let go of. But like you said, it’s the little things that people are, well, they’re bitching

Ted Matthews:
About. Yeah. What do you think is, how do you feel about the serenity prayer? God grant? It’s the, I think it’s great. Yeah. Yeah. Because we do have to let go, don’t we? To a higher power. We hold on to stuff. There’s no way we can hold on to all this stuff in the world. I think addicts are some of the most grateful, appreciative people that you’ll ever come across. I truly do. I think they, they can see the after they’ve been through what they’ve been through, a lot of them when they can appreciate just having, you know, dinner and peace and quiet and, you know, having it dead, they have examined themselves through. Sure. And that, and that’s, you know, and whether it’s, you know, through these groups or, you know, just take a look at your own personal what do they call it? Personal inventory of your own life, you know? Yeah, yeah. Just like you said, they, they’ve, they’ve identified themselves, they’ve worked on themselves, becoming aware, you know, and that’s the hardest thing because we have so much going on because like you said, Judy, you know, our, our, our phones and, you know, we’re, everything is so chaotic now. You know, everybody’s checking emails, paying bills, shouting. Yeah. You know, everything’s crazy that people don’t take a second to really reflect and become self aware and you know, we’d just act on instinct.

Judith Trueston:
That’s right. Or tribalism. And that’s, I think a lot of the problem we get to beat tribalism. Police told me, well, it’s not identifying with yourself, with, well the, for instance, Delaware County Republicans, you know, you had to be a Republican to get a teaching job in Delaware County up until recently. Wow. So the identification as a Republican is tribal. Now it’s tribal. It’s not another party people who identify with their religion, people who identify with white supremacy the religion thing. I mean, poor Jesus, Jesus would be turning over in his grave if he had won by what people are saying in his name. You know, it’s just hypocritical. And I mean, I love Jesus. If we all live by Jesus’ teachings, the world would be a lovely place. Yeah.

Ted Matthews:
So is there any place other than our store with the kindness circles that we’re going to be providing for people’s there anywhere, anywhere they can go look online to, to chat with you or talk to you about you know, how to become part of a movement.

Judith Trueston:
Well, they can go online and look at the website. They’re not going to be able to chat with me at this point. As I say, I’m a, I’m busy, but I’m also an analog brain and digital world. Yeah. And I don’t like being on the internet too much, but I, you know, but they can certainly look at the website, see what’s going on, look at the different projects, the kindness beyond bars project or in your own community or in your business. I have a two hour thing that I can do for businesses about how to improve the health and productivity with just some of these simple kind of skills that I’ve developed working with people in prison. And we’re also gonna be starting based on the work of Oh God, I certain name memory. I used to have a memory, the power of eight and it’s intent having a T intention.

Judith Trueston:
So what I’m envisioning is in the prison, the guys can set up their own small groups and say, okay, every Wednesday at 12 o’clock we’re going to have our intention. And they’ll have just decided ahead of time with their intention will be. And so they’ll meditate for just a few minutes on the intention of that week. They have used this successfully to quiet more sense, well, it can be done. We know it can be done. Look what they did with the meditation group, you know, in the inner city. Yeah. So if we can get enough people to join in, we will truly elevate the vibration of our environment, which is what it’s all about. And enabled children to be welcomed, wanted and to flourish and to give kids what they need once they’re born. Yeah. Yeah. And and that’s our future. That’s our future there. We can make a change in, in the way that kids are being raised today, I would think.

Judith Trueston:
But the, again, the social media part of it just, I mean you had mentioned that there are suicides happening now. I mean, I’m hearing more and more about that side and it’s related to what somebody said. Well in this case, how they, how they, yeah, the traits are all who had breasts and that’s what they bullied her about having pressed. Wow. And she took pills because it was so hateful. Yeah. So standing, her mother did everything to keep her off the internet. She monitor her, her use of the phone and you know, did all the things that you’re supposed to do, but it didn’t protect her. Well, listen, everybody, we, we we got something going on here at the store. It’s going to be a kindness circle led by Judith true stone. It’s coming soon and there’s a lot of information on her website.

Judith Trueston:
The www.trustonekindness.com. Okay. All right. Sounds good. One spelled out that the number one when the number one or spelled out trust one. Yes, yes. Or they can email me at info@trustonekindness.com. Okay. I love getting emails and I do respond to them. Okay. That’s great. Sarah, your information with the, at the upload of the podcasts? Yeah. Yeah. Great. Professor. Anything, any last last words? Just everybody be kind to one another and, and try to take in what we’ve learned tonight and hopefully try to implement it in your lives. Cause being negative is no good. It’s not going to get you anywhere. And I’m going to leave it a few of my books here at this store if people are interested as well. So the instructions on how to do kindness at noon or in our little blue thing, I brought some of those terms cause health goes a lot more piss than just the physical. It’s, you know, our mental and emotional wellbeing as well. So yeah, we all got to work at it and there’s not a person that couldn’t benefit from this. The kindness circles with Judith Truestone at Burman Health Shop. It’s coming soon. Wilkes are here at the store, great website that she has at Burman’s. If you haven’t tried it, you gotta try it. That’s my motto. You got to try

Marty Burman:
The kindness circles, but thanks everybody. Thank you, Judy. Thank you. Thank you, professor. Remember, keep it kind.