Elisa Lodge “Wowza”
Month 2, Week 3
[Theme song playing]
ROBYN: Hello everyone. And welcome to the Self-Care Revolution. My name is Robyn Benson and for the past 21 years, I’ve helped people achieve optimal, radiant, and sustainable health as a Doctor of Oriental Medicine and I’m here with…
KEVIN: Kevin Snow, I am an Intuitive Counselor and a Self-Care Coach, happy to be here today.
ROBYN: Yeah, this is really an exciting day for the Self-Care Revolution. This is our third speaker session and we can’t wait to introduce Wowza to you. We’ve been talking about her for a long time now and here she is live with us. Welcome, Wowza!
WOWZA: Yes.
ROBYN: Also known as Elisa Lodge. We’re so happy to have you here. For all of you listening for the first time, the Self-Care Revolution is a 12-month Self-Care series, where we started our first month, Thoughts and Food as Medicine and we are deep into the second month of Breath and Heart Matters. We’ve heard from Cardiologists, we’ve learned about HeartMath, we interviewed Val Alarcon who is what we call a -- now, she’s educating herself to be a Healthcare Coach but she’s a Self-Care champion who radically changed her life with a thyroid cancer diagnosis which was in her early 30’s. Quite an amazing story.
And so today, we are so excited to have you while we’re speaking about be a ‘Champion of Life Force’ Breath Olympics. That’s a pretty curious title. So, you got me going with that. But anyway, just one minute here. I want to just tell our audience a little bit more about you.
Elisa Lodge affectionately called ‘Wowza’ because of her unstoppable energy, is a legend, with a tremendous legacy. At the age of 76, she is a living embodiment of ageless vitality. An internationally acclaimed wellness consultant with four decades of experience teaching expressive art therapies, movement education and sound healing. Wowza is the author of ‘Primal Energetics’ and ‘Wowzacise: Growing Young on the Ball’.
Welcome! Thank you for being here with us today and thank you for being such a big part in this Self-Care message that you are so aligned with and you teach every day of your career. And so, why don’t we just get to hear about your story? How did you get into this work?
WOWZA: With so many of the interviews that I’ve heard, many of us start from a place of wounding, of where I had major physical emotional abuse. I had an extreme skin disease over half my body and cross eyes, just really disfigured. And for many of us, either we go downhill or something inside of us burst loose. And it’s out of that very story that our life is transformed for the good. And so, I’m really blessing my story because if it wasn’t for that story, I believe I would’ve been very caught in the cultural conditioning. In this way, I couldn’t fit in. And so, who else you could say from with my own devices, my imaginal mind and my creativity? And there were several huge breakthroughs that opened me up into an extreme connection to the primal power within me, this little child. I have been on, literally, a journey of Self-Care that last I don’t know how many decades.
KEVIN: You mentioned the primal power. So, can we hear a little bit more? This is Kevin, by the way.
WOWZA: Hi Kevin. Yeah, well marriage reminds [inaudible] because this eczema all over my face. And so, one day, I guess I was about 12 years old, my mother brought up a big mirror, put it in my bedroom and I went, “Oh!” And I just took a peek in that mirror and I just absolutely just tightened my whole body into a pretzel. I just didn’t want to see it anymore. I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. And I held my breath forever as long as I could. I just held it and held it and held it. And all of a sudden, it’s “Whoa!” It just bursts through my body. And oh my gosh, I just couldn’t get enough of this holy air, this air that insists that I live. And of course, I got a little lightheaded and something woke up in me in that one breath that wouldn’t let me rest.
And the next day, nobody was around. There was an old Halloween mask on the wall and I just was intrigued again to have some kind of an experience. So, I put the mask on, I looked in the mirror and,whoa! It was a dragon! And in that moment, this dragon, it just took me on a ride supreme and whoa! And all of a sudden, this wind was blowing out of my mouth and I was breathing to high heavens. And again, I took off the mask and I just kept [breathing]. I was saving the breath like it was the most delicious food in existence. I couldn’t get enough of it. And I just suddenly, without the mask, just started breathing like the wind. I was the wind breathing life into all the creation. And I’ll never forget I glanced at the mirror again and I found myself creating movements and expressions that I’ve never seen before. And I said, “Well, if my father says I can’t be a beautiful dancer, I’m going to be the world’s greatest ugly dancer.” Now, that’s something I could really be good at. And it’s a radical story.
KEVIN: Yeah.
WOWZA: But what I really want to say about it is that I began to study this dance and began to slow it down. And out of it, I began to feel all the emotional energy start pouring through. But there was no story, there was no good or bad or right or wrong, it was just this phenomenal energy. And the long story short, about a year and a half later, well no, a month later, this skin disease that had plagued me all my life began to pale. But I began to straighten. Suddenly, curves came out of my body and then a year and a half later, I became a famous beauty queen.
ROBYN: Wow!
WOWZA: And that’s why I love to breathe.
KEVIN: Yeah.
ROBYN: So, how many years did you have your eczema?
WOWZA: Until I was about 12. It was that experience was around 12 years old.
ROBYN: When you first got it?
WOWZA: Oh no, I had it since I was two.
ROBYN: Okay, from two to 12.
WOWZA: Yeah. And again, there was no way I could make a peep in my home without physical brace or strap. And so, emotional, I was completely shall we say, lost. But nothing gets lost, is it? See, without this radical experience that we’d like a critical mass building and suddenly, all of this emotion and energy came pouring out. But what was so remarkable about this experience was that every time I began to explore it in deeper and deeper ways and slowing it down, I saw that it became one of the most beautiful, that out of the ugliness, was the most beautiful expressions of movement and feeling that I’d ever known. And I realized that there was such a connection between congruent fluidity of being in our body.
The breath that flows like a wave motion, that all emotions are waves. And it gave me permission to begin to. And this is quite a shocking thing. It’s very rare out there. But it gave me permission to play with my breath. That I realized in every breath was just billions of possibilities of created expression.
And then, of course, I got into the Human Potential Movement. I mean, I have been working with people all over the world for the last ten years. I’ve been in Mainland China teaching Expressive Arts Therapy and Women’s Empowerment. And this Breath Olympics started to really get refined there. In the sense that again, there was enormous repression in these people. I mean, talk about just unable to make a peep. And somehow, the Breath Olympics was the safeguard. It was really identifying with the life force as the prime mover of inspired movement. And we began to play with just infinite variations of the elemental energies, and emotional energies but with our story are locked in the minds, “Ah! Ah! Ah!” So, that people just had this extraordinary freedom to come alive via the life force. And it just radically changed lives.
ROBYN: Wow! I just have to say it on a personal note. I have my son, when he was just three weeks old. My first child had a very extreme case of eczema. So, it makes me really relate to your story. It’s a really tough battle. There are a lot of people out there in the world, now more than ever, with this truly an autoimmune issue. And it’s getting back to nature thing which is certainly a big theme of the Self-Care Revolution. So, could you share more about how you really -- you came to your breath as a part of this healing journey, but what really was the shift from this kind of abusive background to this. I just want to really understand that a little bit better.
WOWZA: Well, there really was a power within me that nobody could beat out of. That there was a force inside and I think the part that really was disconcerting was that here, I could express this enormous energy and as soon as my parents were in the room or friends whatever, my body reverted back to this very, very shy little girl that could barely -- she kind of whisper and she’ll be nice and rounded shoulders and oh, it drove me crazy. That here was this person and underneath was this incredible energy and how to bring this energy out in a way that made sense to me.
And so, I got into every conceivable body work you can imagine. And also as an actress, well, that was really the first piece. Just the idea, I remember playing Lauren Glass Menagerie and here again was this very, very shy, fragile woman. And it was in the midst of the rehearsal, I just had this light bulb go off and I go, “Ah! Oh my gosh! I’m acting like a shy victimized person.That’s not who I am.” And that was, again, really beginning to look at body language and how body language can define us.
Again, we’ve been taught to act nice and immediately, women will particularly go into a particular style of behavior and be cool, pipe down, what are you getting so excited about? Or act strong. And I, as an actress and then as a body worker, modeled especially at Esalen Institute, I had an opportunity to model thousands of people’s body language. How they sat, walked, talked, moved, breathed. And that was just a huge eye opener. It was like, again, seeing how much the muscular system -- we have a belief, we’re not worthy, we’re not good enough or we now having to live up to what our peers think we should be whatever.
The body just starts to conform in a certain way. And that limits breathing. Of course, it’s as you know, we’re a culture with all our smarts. A culture of shallow breathers. What is that about? And I’m saying a lot has to do with their self image and how our body shapes itself into holding patterns. And then I would use the breath particularly to begin to stretch open to the whole feeling of the body becoming more porous, more luminous, more light and then, spreading it beyond the body. I feel that we’ve been living way too enclosed and separate from the rest of the world, from nature itself. And this unified theory now which is so incredible that we’re really connected to a greater power that is so much larger than we’ll ever know.
KEVIN: Going back into this process, what are some of the modalities or healing modalities that have made the biggest difference for you?
WOWZA: Well, I’m losing you a little bit, I don’t know if it’s my phone or—
KEVIN: Oh, okay.
WOWZA: I’m having a little trouble hearing you.
KEVIN: That’s alright. That’s good so our listeners can you hear me better. What are some of the modalities or healing practices that you have done, practiced, that were the biggest difference?
WOWZA: Certainly, out of the breath and the fluid moving, developed a whole process of moving the body in more fluid wave motion especially the spinal column that’s very subtle. No one would even see you doing this if they were in the same room with you. But where there just this -- you use all this energy’s waves. And I feel we’ve been really caught in a paradigm, separation of defining the individual from the rest of the world. And this sense of fluidity now flexible, adaptable body language, I just feel is so crucial.And once the body starts to move into greater fluidity, the breath starts to flow so much more genuinely and freely. And it’s not just the breathing, it’s not just the perfect way to breathe but it’s beginning to move the breath through what I call a vowelling language. And that’s where we can bring so much more feelings and colorful qualities of being and can actually pour it into our language well. And that opened me up into sound healing. I feel that sound plays a huge part, as you know, has been used for centuries to really clear and cleanse and to vibrantly vibrate the cells of the body.
My particular process was that of something called the Hum of Love which combines with this more playful breathing. Ooh, and again when we talk to a child like with a little kitty cat. What do we do? We go, “Oh, hmm…” that hum of love that pours out of our hearts. And it’s not just light, it has more rhythmical feelings and it’s a language that’s been used all over the world as a language of love especially to the very young. And so, that language is combined with this breathing and this fluid movement. And the play of sound to the body, “Hmm…” We can lighten up! We can lighten up just by lifting the sound that works with a lot people with depression -- depression and again the voice, the voice is a huge indicator of where we get stuck. And just by lightening up the tone and then make the tone more fluid or the tone more deep and dark and more decisive. And also, using different rhythms, rhythms of, “I want to fire up a little bit.” “Oh, I want to slow down into the deepest peace.”
So, vocabulary of expression now that this instrument that we live in is the most exquisite musical instrument there is in the world. And I feel, why not play it like a musician and play with our emotions as music?
ROBYN: Well, you certainly do it beautifully.
KEVIN: Yeah.
ROBYN: I love listening to you and we met on the phone a couple of weeks ago. And wow, you have a very poetic, flowing nature of how you speak. So, I can just see how you work with, with your clients. And this unstoppable nature, that comes through very clearly. And it’s absolutely a world epidemicwhen it comes to the amount of people that are suffering from low energy.
So obviously, the breath is a big message in movement. So, which of this help us understand what you consider the top two or three things to do to have sustained, unstoppable energy? Of course, we need to rest. But how can we have that wake up every day not worried like so many people? I see it in my patients daily. The people are just so exhausted, our children are exhausted.
WOWZA: Well, one key that I play with a lot is, and it’s wonderful with children. You see children do this naturally. You say, “Ah! Be the life force and breathe as the wind.” Like what you see in kids with a little plane in their in their hand [making plane noises]. I mean, they’re often running, they have no trouble with this at all. This idea of stepping into a far greater power is then we’ve ever been introduced to. And for me, the power that made the greatest sense in the story I just told you with identifying was literally all great spirit. I wanted to identify with the spirit of life itself.
And as soon as, again, like a little child, “Whoa! The spirit of life itself.” And in the play of that of going to the grocery store, hmm, hmm, say it with a little hum and all of this can be done so silently. Nobody needs to hear this. And also, I know the value of nose breathing. I’ve been probably one of the first yoga teachers in this country. This was over 50 years ago. We taught it in universities so I know all the Pranayamas and bless it all, bless it all.
KEVIN: Yeah.
WOWZA: It’s all good. But it’s all controlled. It’s all been very stringent patterns that have been passed down and passed down. I’m saying you’re the original Yogi. You are a champion of life force. It’s you now that is the creative source of aliveness. Let us see your extraordinary power with your breath, with your sound, with your movements. Let us exercise true fitness now. That is a creative source that need and this wildly, chaotic world that is changing before our eyes, we can’t just follow the leader anymore. And try to do things in what we would call perfect which is basically an act. Because the more perfect or straight the spine, the less the feeling tones move through it. So, it’s adaptability now and to support every little child as they’re born brilliant. See there, that life force of that language, ooh, ahh, oh my goodness! It just pours out of them, right? See, that wasn’t necessarily valued.