Pod Insights The Oprah Podcast Oprah on The Hoffman Process, How to Forgive Your Parents – And Yourself About this episode For over 50 years, The Hoffman Process has helped over 100,000 people transform their lives, helping participants identify negative behaviors, moods, and ways of thinking that developed unconsciously and were conditioned in childhood. Charles “Raz” Ingrasci, co-founder, executive, consultant, and facilitator within the “Human Potential Movement” joins The Oprah Podcast to speak about the popular Hoffman Institute and how their personal growth retreat helps those searching for transformation, spiritual growth, and leadership skills. Actor Orlando Bloom joins the conversation to share his experience with the Hoffman Institute and how it transformed his own life and his parenting style. Raz offers insight into the Hoffman Process by explaining the two core principles; the first being the quadrinity, which is based on four dimensions of self that occur interactively at once, physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. The second principle Raz explains is how our survival mechanism is dependent on the parent-child bond, and how that impulse for unconditional love follows us from childhood into adulthood.
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Transcript 8,970 words · 13 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:30 Oprah Winfrey? So a warm welcome to you and thanks for joining us on the Oprah Podcast, where I'm always so delighted to be able to share conversations with you about the human experience, about the bigger questions that we all have in life when we get still enough to ponder them and things I believe that matter most to all of us. And on this episode, we're asking the question, is it possible to confront your worst demons, unwind all the negative patterns you have learned from your parents, have compassion for your parents and forgive them,
1:15 Oprah Winfrey? then heal and begin to discover who you really are without all the baggage from your childhood? Now, that sounds like a very tall order, but the reason why I wanted to do this podcast today is because I've been running into many people who say they have done just that, really accepted that tall order and been able to move on with their lives and release the past. Maybe you have, or maybe you haven't, heard of the Hoffman Process. Well, I have heard it described as 10 years of therapy in one week, like psychological detox, some people call it.
2:00 Oprah Winfrey? And other people have said it's a therapy retreat only for the wealthy or the famous. Others may think it's a hippie dippy kind of way to spend a week on your personal growth. But lately, the thing I keep hearing about the Hoffman Process, and I try to pay attention to the signs when it keeps coming up. So. I thought it was worthwhile to learn more about it and to share it with you because it seems to be a thing that lots of people are talking about. All of you who are watching and listening and letting you make up your own minds about it. Founded in 1967 by Bob Hoffman, the Hoffman Process is a week-long personal growth retreat designed to help people identify, address,
2:44 Oprah Winfrey? and release negative thoughts and behavior patterns.
2:48 Speaker 02 When you get to the core of a human being,
2:50 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
2:50 Speaker 02 it's love. It's just light and love.
2:53 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
2:53 Speaker 02 And so our secret is that the motive force, the change agent, the beauty, the radiance is all inside of a person.
3:00 Oprah Winfrey? The Hoffman Process also helps people uncover and remove the obstacles blocking them from connecting with their authentic selves. The goal is to allow people to make decisions aligned with who they really are instead of what others expect of them. You've said that many people spend their lives climbing a ladder only to get to the top and realize that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall. Maria Shriver, Katy Perry, Sienna Miller, and Orlando Bloom are among the more than 135,000 people who credit the Hoffman Process for transforming their lives, changing how they see the world, and their role in it.
3:43 Speaker 03 I signed up and had, I would say, probably one of the most revealing experiences in my life. And I can only say I wish I'd done it 10 years or 20 years earlier.
3:56 Oprah Winfrey? A three-year research study by the University of California, Davis, found that those who went through the Hoffman Process experienced lasting reductions in depression and anxiety, along with significant increases in life satisfaction, compassion, and physical energy.
4:13 Speaker 04 Hoffman really allowed me the space that I needed to reconnect to myself and then also put myself back together, but in a way that focused on love and on light.
4:28 Oprah Winfrey? I welcome you Raz Ingrasci.
4:31 Speaker 02 Thank you Oprah.
4:33 Oprah Winfrey? Raz is one of the founders of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. Okay, can you explain to me the core philosophy? Because everybody that I talk to about it has something different to say about what it does. I'm just so full of love. I have so much love to offer. I see you, I love you. And other people are like, it's cleared me. It's really cleared me to be able to move forward. I was able to let go so many things in my past. Other people say different things about it.
5:02 Speaker 02 Well, you've said, actually, without maybe knowing it, what the core of it is. And that is that at, when you get to the core of a human being,
5:10 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
5:11 Speaker 02 It's love. It's just light and love.
5:13 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
5:13 Speaker 02 And so, our secret is that the motive force, the change agent, the beauty, the radiance is all inside of a person. However...
5:21 Oprah Winfrey? Can I stop you right there? Because it's so interesting. I just recently interviewed Jeremy Renner for a show we were doing on near-death experiences. And he said that in that experience, the thing that he realized is that the only thing that mattered and the only thing we take with us when we leave this level of consciousness and move to another is love.
5:43 Speaker 05 I was on the ice. It took every effort, physical effort, to squeeze out air, to suck air back in. And that's when I was gone. It is a collective divinity of love. It's love is the only thing that you take with you when you die.
5:59 Oprah Winfrey? And that coming back after that near-death experience changed him so that he realizes that everything else is just immaterial if it does not involve love. So, I just wanted to reiterate that. We don't want to have to die to do it. I'd rather, to experience that Jeremy.
6:15 Speaker 02 We don't want to have to physically die.
6:17 Oprah Winfrey? We don't have to physically die to experience it.
6:19 Speaker 02 We don't want to go through what Jeremy went through.
6:20 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
6:21 Speaker 02 I was thinking, there's a quote of the great Rumi. And he said, "Your task is not to seek love, but to know the obstacles that you've created to love and to get rid of all those obstacles." Because when you get rid of the obstacles, then what's there is revealed. And so...
6:45 Speaker 02 We all want love and everything, the society we live in now is so designed to
6:52 Oprah Winfrey? Block you from that?
6:53 Speaker 02 Well, just to give us substitutes.
6:56 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
6:56 Speaker 02 You know, we're all seeking symbols of success.
6:59 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
6:59 Speaker 02 And in our culture, success equals belonging and love and everything like that.
7:06 Oprah Winfrey? We think it does.
7:07 Speaker 02 We think it does.
7:08 Oprah Winfrey? We think it does.
7:08 Speaker 02 But it doesn't deliver.
7:10 Oprah Winfrey? So the core of it is to be able to reach a level of love for yourself and appreciation for your past for bringing you to this level of yourself so that you can love more fully.
7:24 Speaker 02 Yes, and so the secret, our secret in teaching and working with this Hoffman methodology is that we know where we're going and we're going to your true self. And it's to reveal by removing the obstacles to that experience. And so the, I say what's really unique about Hoffman is the, it has an ability to help you identify what those barriers are for you.
7:52 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
7:53 Speaker 02 And a proprietary method for removing them.
7:55 Oprah Winfrey? Okay, so the Hoffman process is your, it's a seven day on-location retreat that people say you have to experience firsthand to understand. But what can you tell me about that week? Because everybody that comes back says, "I can't even explain it to you and I'm not allowed to explain it to you," so.
8:17 Speaker 02 We don't prohibit people from talking about it. The, well, first off, it's safe. It's safe for you to be there and in the program itself, you're safe. You're taken care of. There's no confrontation, humiliation, embarrassment. You're not going to reveal any secrets about yourself in front of other people that could you'd later regret.
8:39 Oprah Winfrey? That you don't want to.
8:39 Speaker 02 No, and you know, three meals served on time, nutritious, great food, time for eight, even nine hours sleep a night.
8:47 Oprah Winfrey? Most importantly, you have to give up your cellphone, is what I hear.
8:50 Speaker 02 Yes, we call that a digital detox.
8:52 Oprah Winfrey? Okay.
8:53 Speaker 02 Most people, they don't like it at first, but at the end of a week, you really notice uh how little you want it.
9:00 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, I know. My friend Maria did it, and I can say that because she said it on here.
9:05 Speaker 02 Sure.
9:05 Oprah Winfrey? She said she did it and then came out of it wanting to detox even more. So a couple of days a week, she doesn't use her phone at all. Yes.
9:14 Speaker 02 God bless her.
9:15 Oprah Winfrey? She goes, you can't even imagine how freeing it is to not to be attached to your phone.
9:19 Speaker 02 We all remember, we're of an age, we can remember pre-cell phones.
9:23 Oprah Winfrey? That's right.
9:24 Speaker 02 And it was pretty cool.
9:25 Oprah Winfrey? It was pretty cool. Okay. So the Hoffman Process started with a man named Bob Hoffman. That's why it's called the Hoffman Process. And how did he develop this? And how did you know him?
9:35 Speaker 02 Bob was best known as a, he had a kind of, he was kind of renowned as a psychic back in the seventies in the Bay Area. And he was friends with lots of people from, let's say, the Esalen Institute.
9:49 Oprah Winfrey? Mm-hmm.
9:49 Speaker 02 He hung out in all those circles of people developing new ideas. It was a very rich time. But Bob developed a way of working with people that was reading their uh their childhood. Really, he could psychically read a person and tell them what happened in their childhood that they turned out the way they did. And so many people improved from doing that. He was doing it one-on-one for a number of years. And then around 1971 or so, his close friend, Claudio Norano, a Chilean psychiatrist, the same Claudio Norano who introduced the Enneagram to the United States,
10:32 Speaker 02 said, hey, Bob, I think we could turn this into a course. I think we could teach people how to do their own psychic readings. I think we could really do this in a group.
10:43 Oprah Winfrey? Is this because he had seen a pattern in those psychic readings? That a lot of things were coming. The reason people were the way they were is because of what had happened in their childhood?
10:52 Speaker 02 Correct.
10:52 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
10:53 Speaker 02 Exactly right, Oprah. And uh and moreover, people could get on a path of self-discovery. They didn't need someone else to tell them
11:03 Oprah Winfrey? Right.
11:03 Speaker 02 what happened. It was all right there inside if they only could learn how to tap into it.
11:08 Oprah Winfrey? Right.
11:08 Speaker 02 So that's the way it began. In 1972, they held their first process. But for many years, about a dozen, 15 years.
11:19 Speaker 02 They were working four hours a night, four hours twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursday nights, for thirteen weeks. So if you wanted to do the Hoffman process, although it was quite powerful, you had to be in the San Francisco Bay area.
11:34 Oprah Winfrey? You had to be in the San Francisco Bay area and you had to go for weeks?
11:37 Speaker 02 Thirteen weeks.
11:38 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, who has that time?
11:39 Speaker 02 Exactly.
11:40 Oprah Winfrey? Okay, and at the time, did people think, you know, I mentioned earlier, did people think it was woo-woo, hippy-dippy, out there, what is going on?
11:47 Speaker 02 Well, I have to tell you, I was one of the woo-woo, who-who. Who-who, what's going on? So I was tuned into all of that and part of it. So for me, it was just another really interesting, he's another interesting guy on the scene.
12:00 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
12:00 Speaker 02 But he had something pretty powerful, but in 1985 is when he switched over to a seven-and-a-half-day program.
12:09 Oprah Winfrey? Mm-hmm.
12:09 Speaker 02 So suddenly, it was, okay, people could go into a residential environment, stay there for a week, and go through all the changes.
12:17 Oprah Winfrey? Okay, so you, your wife, your daughter, and your son all did it, right? Liza and Marissa and Mike all went through the process, and you all worked there. Why does it resonate so deeply with you and now your family?
12:33 Speaker 02 Well, first off, I want to say that since I was seventeen years old in Racine, Wisconsin, I have been a seeker. I don't know why, but at age seventeen, I became fascinated with Zen Buddhism.
12:44 Oprah Winfrey? Mm-hmm.
12:44 Speaker 02 And I started in Satori, and Enlightenment and Awakening. So it's been a lifelong quest for me. But why I did Hoffman, I was forty-one, our kids were four and seven, and I heard things coming out of my mouth toward my four-year-old son that I hadn't heard in thirty-five years. And the last time I heard them, I didn't like them. And I said to myself at that tender age,
13:14 Speaker 02 Boy, when I have kids, I'm not gonna talk to them this way. And in particular, it was my dad. My dad was telling me, "Don't cry." You know, little boys didn't cry in his world.
13:26 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
13:26 Speaker 02 And so I was suppressed from crying. And, uh, and so I, when my son was not happy, when he was crying, it was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I couldn't stand it.
13:39 Oprah Winfrey? You heard yourself saying the same thing that your father had said to you.
13:42 Speaker 02 And have the impulse of saying and trying to suppress it.
13:45 Oprah Winfrey? And every one of us has said, when you've been in that situation, "I will never do this like my mother did. I will never do this." And then you end up doing it.
13:53 Speaker 02 Exactly.
13:54 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
13:55 Speaker 02 Why? Because we're taught how to parent by being parented. So I went and did the Hoffman process. I cleared that out. And, uh, I, I honestly, our kids' destiny was changed because I did Hoffman and that later that Liza did Hoffman. And our kids are super emotionally intelligent. But I, I was a little extra piece to this. Three years later, after doing Hoffman, my mother had a massive heart attack. But she lingered on with only 14% of her heart working for about three weeks. And, uh, she was in Wisconsin. I was out here in California. So I would work during the week and then on Friday afternoon, I would leave and go back to Wisconsin for a long weekend
14:38 Speaker 02 and, uh, spend the time with her and with my dad, who was, you know, keeping a vigil. So on the third, end of the third visit, I'm out in the, we're sitting next to him. It's in September, late, late in the month. And I was in the passenger seat in his car. And the sun was going down. I was gonna leave the next day. And I was sobbing. And my dad said, "I guess you know you'll never see your mother alive again." And I said, "Yeah, yes, Dad, I do." And there's a long silence. And then he said to me, "I don't know how to cry. Can you teach me how to cry?"
15:20 Speaker 02 Well, that was quite a moment. I did teach him how to cry. And she passed a couple of days later. And we would talk every couple of days.
15:32 Oprah Winfrey? How did you teach him how to cry for a man who's never cried? And raise you to not cry?
15:37 Speaker 02 Right. I just want to add this one last thing. And we would talk after she died and he would say, very proudly, "I cried yesterday, twice. I cried this morning." He was reporting on me. And he actually, because he was able to open his heart and grieve, he went through the grief process, I would say brilliantly. He lived another 22 years and those were the happiest years I remember for him. What I taught him, I said, "You need to recognize when the impulse is coming up and then not resist it and let go. Don't control. You're out of control. Go out of control." I said, "It's only going to last 10 minutes.
16:20 Speaker 02 You're not going to lose your mind here, but you have to be willing to let go for 10 minutes, 15 minutes." And he was able to follow my guidance.
16:33 Oprah Winfrey? Wow.
16:33 Speaker 02 And he did that and he got better and better at it. And he became... What was fascinating is that as he opened up that grief end of his spectrum, emotional spectrum, the joyous end opened too. So, you know, his emotional bandwidth expanded.
16:53 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
16:53 Speaker 02 Both down and up.
16:54 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
16:55 Speaker 02 And he became a happier, really happy person.
16:57 Oprah Winfrey? You're just saying that I just, it makes me want to cry. Thinking about all the men I know who can't cry, who have suppressed their tears and what that does when you suppress your tears. That your inability to express multiple things and inability to feel joy on the other side of that is also suppressed. And so, you just sharing that story so beautifully, by the way, allows us all to see it would have been a very different journey for your father. The grieving process, had he not been able to release and cry.
17:34 Speaker 02 Very, very different, yeah.
17:36 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah. Thank you so much for spending your time here with us. When we come back, acclaimed actor Orlando Bloom shares what the Hoffman process revealed to him about his authentic self and why it inspired him to move through the world differently. Stay with us.
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18:20 Oprah Winfrey? Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I am so glad you all are here. We're talking to Raz Ingrosso, who is one of the leaders at the Hoffman Institute, and he's sharing how the Hoffman process helps people uncover and release negative thought patterns in order to reconnect with their authentic selves. One of the two core principles, as I understand it, of the Hoffman process is a concept called quadrinity, based on the idea that each person embodies four different components. This is what I read about it.
18:51 Speaker 02 Yes.
18:52 Oprah Winfrey? Can you walk us through what they are?
18:54 Speaker 02 Gladly. So what we're saying is that there are four dimensions of self that are occurring simultaneously and interactively. So first, obviously, is our physical body.
19:06 Oprah Winfrey? Mm-hmm.
19:07 Speaker 02 Then our emotions and our intellect. Our emotions, what are you feeling? What is your mood?
19:14 Speaker 02 You know, do you belong? Am I connected here? Am I happy? Am I sad? Am I curious? What's going on? You just feel it. Then there's the intellect. What are your thoughts? Your judgments, your perceptions? So the intellect and the emotions are working together. Emotions will trigger thoughts. Thoughts will trigger emotions. And then there's the spiritual dimension of self. And this, what we call the spiritual dimension, you might think of it as your essential self or your most authentic part of you. You know, what I say, we call it spiritual self, but it's not, there's nothing to believe in this. There's no religiosity implied here. And...
20:00 Speaker 02 So those four dimensions of self are working interactively and the spiritual or essential self is where you are, your primary identity is love. And it feels like, really like myself, most like myself, like coming home. Oh, it's not like coming, it's a new discovery. It's like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, this is me. It's that feeling, not a new discovery.
20:27 Oprah Winfrey? And I heard that the second major component is something called negative love syndrome. What is that?
20:32 Speaker 02 A child is born with no ability to survive at all. And our entire survival mechanism, impulse, is our dependency on our parents and that they will take care of us. And we call it the parent-child bond. And what is a continuous flow of unconditional love, child is comfortable, child is happy, everything is taken care of. But of course, no parents are perfect.
21:00 Oprah Winfrey? I was gonna say, even the best of parents.
21:01 Speaker 02 Best of parents can't.
21:02 Oprah Winfrey? Can't give you everything you need.
21:04 Speaker 02 They probably are only, you know, there 40% of the time, even the best ones. But some are actually checked out or worse. And some people experience, unfortunately, abuse in their childhood, physical or emotional. So basically, what happens for a child is as long as there's that continuous flow of unconditional love, everything's cool. But when the child perceives that that has been interrupted, there's a moment of desperation because they have to reestablish that in order to know it's their lifeline.
21:39 Oprah Winfrey? Right.
21:40 Speaker 02 To know that I'll be taken care of. So whatever emotion the parent is in at that time, the child will emulate in an attempt to simulate the bond. So instead of the parent recognizing where the child is at, the child has to see where the parent is at and, oh, okay, you're angry at me, Daddy. I'm angry too. I'm not good enough. Now do you love me again? So they're always trying to connect to their parents. And when it's negative... They'll, they'll connect through negativity.
22:15 Oprah Winfrey? Even though we say we don't want to connect through negativity, even though we don't want to, we do it.
22:20 Speaker 02 This is pre-intellect. We say that later.
22:23 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
22:24 Speaker 02 Before we have an intellect.
22:25 Oprah Winfrey? Before you've even, you're doing it even when you don't even know you're doing it.
22:28 Speaker 02 You have to do it to survive. And the thing is, it works. We survive.
22:32 Oprah Winfrey? So you're saying we have to mimic what our parents are offering in order to survive? Because you're trying to figure out where they are in, in, in, in what they're offering to you.
22:43 Speaker 02 Right. So, you know, it's forever, been forever, thousands of years, millions of years. We've observed that children emulate and imitate their parents. They walk like their parents. They talk and their gestures and... What Bob Hoffman uncovered is the motivation of the child to do that.
23:05 Oprah Winfrey? They're doing that to survive.
23:07 Speaker 02 To survive, but they're also, they're motivated to be loved.
23:11 Oprah Winfrey? To be loved. Okay.
23:12 Speaker 02 Yeah. And so the motivation of the child is to, is to be loved. And so we never, we hold on tenaciously to whatever is love. Just think of whatever is love in your life and how important that is to you. And so that's why we hold on to this negativity so tenaciously. Why it's so hard to be rid of it. We know it's wrong, but we are, it's there.
23:36 Oprah Winfrey? Okay, so here's the other thing, Raz. So if you didn't get, as I know so many of you and us didn't, if you didn't get the love you needed as a child, those harmful childhood patterns where you're mimicking your parents or those who were acting as your parents, continue to show up in our adult lives. And that's what Hoffman is about, is about how do you break free of that?
24:02 Speaker 02 Right. And it's how you break free of it in the areas where you can't, that you really can't control and that are very important to us. The areas of love, how I feel about myself, my, my love relationship, parenting.
24:18 Speaker 02 You know, my career, my self-image. And all these things, you know, we learned how to parent from our parents. We learned how, we learned relationships from the way they related to each other.
24:30 Oprah Winfrey? Well, as I said, I wanted to hear from a few people who've been through the Hoffman process. And one of them is actor Orlando Bloom. You all know Orlando Bloom from his many roles and from blockbusters like The Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings movies. How are you, Orlando?
24:49 Speaker 03 Hi, hi Oprah, hi Raz.
24:52 Oprah Winfrey? Hey. Yeah, Orlando, I thought you were, you were one of the, thank you for agreeing to talk to me because I thought you were one of the best people to speak about this because every time I have talked to you about it, you've been so enthusiastic about what it's been able to do for you and how it's opened up an aperture for you. What was the catalyst for you to go through the program?
25:16 Speaker 03 You know, I think, first of all, thank you so much. It's lovely to see you both. And Raz, I love listening to your voice right now because I've listened to it so many times on the, on the app, The Hoffman, when I'm, when I'm like in need of, of a little centering. So I was, I would say I had, I went to the Hoffman process about 10 years ago and I'd been triggered in, in a dynamic with my partner that had led me into a pattern of behavior that was, was, was very similar to the way in which I, I would say I had been grown up with my mother, the way that my mother had loved me and had, had interacted with me.
25:57 Speaker 03 And, and I had gotten very confused about how to, how to navigate the, the dynamics and the feelings that I was having. And I, and I had recalled that this wonderful actor and a friend had mentioned a Hoffman process to me, like maybe a year previously. And I thought, you know what? I've never done anything like this. Um, yes, I've done therapy. Yes, I've um explored the world in my mind in numerous ways. But this was the right time for me, I felt.
26:38 Speaker 03 And so I um uh I signed up and and and had, I would say probably one of the most revealing experiences in my life, and I can only say I wish I'd done it ten years or twenty years earlier. Um, I was just about to turn forty and it was, it was really um the greatest gift I could give myself and the greatest reveal in my life up until that point. I felt like I'd almost been born again, if that if that doesn't sound too uh hippy dippy.
27:11 Oprah Winfrey? What what was it was it was it like ten years of therapy in a week?
27:16 Speaker 03 Honestly, yeah, I I I I refer to it like that. I feel like what what what it feels like is, you know, I think people say that between the age of zero to seven, we're imprinted um on by our parents. And unless we understand what that impact has on our lives, what the Hoffman process helps you to do is unpack almost that period, which feels almost impossible, but through visualization work and through a lot of um like uh sort of group conversation and their and more intimate conversation in a smaller group,
27:59 Speaker 03 you get to sort of and through watching the other people who may have parallels to your life, you get to sort of um unpack the the sort of trauma or the challenges of your your your upbringing and and come to terms with them and and really sort of release them and realize that those patterns of behavior aren't yours. And um as as Raz was saying, when I felt like what I learned to do was sort of leash in my inner child and my intellect, which both have really great aspects to them.
28:38 Speaker 03 But to use my, keep my body and, and mind in this place to let my higher, the best version of myself, run the show as opposed to, perhaps it was my intellect that was like being too hard on a situation, or perhaps it was my inner child that was going, I just need a hug right now, and I couldn't express that. Mm-hmm. Uh, and it was, it was really just the greatest gift of, of sort of learning, I think, to love myself in a way that I hadn't really understood or had a great example of, I would say. Uh-huh.
29:14 Oprah Winfrey? How are you now, Orlando, living your life differently today than before you went through the process?
29:23 Speaker 03 It's, it's honestly like,
29:27 Speaker 03 it's like I can't unsee that. I think the work is ongoing. Mm-hmm. It was, for me, it was the first step into, into self-care, self-love, and, and an understanding about how I move through the world, some empathy for myself and others, and, and the ability to, to not be conflicted or not be overwhelmed by some of the trauma that would come up in relationships or situations, and have, have a deeper understanding, I suppose.
30:06 Oprah Winfrey? You know, Raz started out saying that he, uh, did Hoffman himself because he heard himself saying the same things that his father had said to him when he was parenting, uh, Mike. And I know you have a fourteen-year-old son from a previous relationship and a four-year-old daughter, uh, with Katie. Has the Hoffman process changed how you see yourself as a dad and how you parent?
30:31 Speaker 03 Absolutely. Um, one hundred percent. I think.
30:36 Speaker 03 My job as a parent now is to allow my children to grow without getting in their way. Like, it's sort of like, don't get in the way of anyone else's journey. Don't let anyone get in the way of your journey and just be grateful for the opportunities that are presented to you and see the challenges of the dynamic that are in front of you as an opportunity for you to grow. And, and, and whether that's with my son, who is the most beautiful opportunity at times and also just the sweetest soul, to not take it personally when he is processing
31:17 Speaker 03 his emotions and at a young, at a young age and at that age, he's going through a multitude of them, to just allow those things to unfold. It's, it's not, I'm not saying I'm perfect. It's not easy at all, but it is something that without the Hoffman process, I don't think I could say I would have understood. I think I could have been easily, um, triggered. And now, even if I am, and if we come across a situation that we're in conflict about, I can, I can take a step back, I can let some time pass and then we can reengage in a conversation where I'm looking at everything from his perspective whilst trying to, um,
32:02 Speaker 03 lay in my thinking without it overwhelming or getting in the way of his process.
32:08 Oprah Winfrey? So it sounds like the Hoffman process actually made you a better man, a better person. It allowed you to step into that role in a way that enhanced your, your, your, your living process.
32:22 Speaker 03 It certainly, it certainly did. Um, I wouldn't say it's, um.
32:29 Speaker 03 I would say that it's ongoing, so, you know, and I did.
32:34 Oprah Winfrey? And is it what you take from it? Because you say it enhanced you, but it may not do the same thing for another person.
32:41 Speaker 03 I think it's, I think the way that it's curated is set up to help anybody who decides to go. And it just depends on the individual as to how much work they're willing to do and continue to do and how, how open they are and, and what their capacity for this kind of experience is. But it is certainly an incredible opportunity to, even just not having your phone for a week, being offline and just being present to yourself and your emotions and your feelings and, and, and, you know, there's a remarkable amount of some of the most detailed questions.
33:21 Speaker 03 I think it took about ten to twelve hours for me to, to go through this, this, this questionnaire, which ultimately becomes your workbook through the week of work and you refer to it. So it's something to do with, with sort of a lot of diligence and care when you go into it because it does become an important tool in the process. But yeah, it is a, it is a, it is a, a tool that I think for life, for skills for life in a way, and that's, you know, it's, it's, it's something that I'm, I'm super grateful for. Yeah, absolutely.
33:58 Oprah Winfrey? Well, I.
33:58 Speaker 03 But I do, it's ongoing, you know, it's something that.
34:01 Oprah Winfrey? Of course.
34:02 Speaker 03 And I went back, um, I did a Q two for a weekend and I actually went with Katie. We did a couples. Um, and actually Katie had gone a year after.
34:11 Oprah Winfrey? Q two is when you go back again, right? For three days. For three days, yeah, yeah.
34:15 Speaker 03 Three day sort of refresher, which was, was remarkable actually. And I kind of, after I did the Q two, I think I did it just a couple of years ago. I was like, I'm gonna do this more often, just whenever I feel like there's a new chapter embarking, I wanna kind of do a Q two to remind myself, to take myself back to that initial feeling, you know, when I send people or recommend people to go and I've sent, sent and recommended so many people because it's like. The just the feeling of that first uh the feeling of that first week is something that you'll you'll never have again. It's like and it's uh and it is a really beautiful process. I mean, Raz talked about the food, but it's almost it's so curated.
34:58 Speaker 03 It's like you get like a a a Christmas meal. You get a a gifting process. You get a birthday. It's like all the things that maybe you didn't get or have in the way that you could appreciate or feel in your youth as a child, you get to receive in that moment, in that week rather. And and it's um it's a it's a really beautiful, beautiful process. Yeah, for sure.
35:23 Oprah Winfrey? Well, thank you for joining us and thank you for sharing with us. Thank you so much. Orlando Bloom.
35:29 Speaker 02 Great to see you, Orlando.
35:30 Oprah Winfrey? Appreciate it. When we return, we will hear from a former Marine and presidential security guard who was suffering from intense post-traumatic stress disorder before the Hoffman process helped her turn her life around. That's next.
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35:54 Speaker 09 It's easier to accept a story than believe that the people around you are monsters.
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36:00 Speaker 10 There comes a time when you have to take action, when you have to choose your own destiny.
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36:14 Oprah Winfrey? I am so glad you've joined me here on the Oprah Podcast. I'm in the tea house with Raz Adgraci. He's with the Hoffman Institute. You may have heard about it. He's talking about how so many of us strive to fulfill expectations that others have set for us, and he explains how the Hoffman process can help us identify our true needs and desires. Raz, you said that many people spend their lives climbing a ladder only to get to the top and realize that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall. I read that and I went, whoa, I love that analogy. How do we know if we're climbing the wrong ladder? And how do you get to the right one?
36:56 Speaker 02 The right ladder, you'll have a heart connection to it. You'll meet people along the way.
37:01 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
37:01 Speaker 02 That you love, that are amazing.
37:05 Speaker 02 It won't always be easy.
37:08 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
37:08 Speaker 02 But somehow you'll stay connected to it. You'll feel it's really yours.
37:12 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
37:13 Speaker 02 You're not trying to put on someone else's guise to get through your life. I'll never forget about 50 years ago, I was reading the Bhagavad Gita. And something came, just this line popped out for me, like it was in neon lights. And it said, "It's better to live your own life and fail than to live someone else's life and succeed." I was talking to a man, I was coaching a man last week. He's in excess of a billionaire. And so he said to me, "You know, I'm a billionaire. And my mother made me become a billionaire. And I did it.
37:58 Speaker 02 And I thought, finally, I've done it. I've made her happy. And I'm a billionaire now."
38:05 Speaker 02 And he said, "You know what?" I said, "No." He said, "I still hated her."
38:10 Oprah Winfrey? Wow.
38:12 Speaker 02 He thought becoming a billionaire was gonna make his relationship with his mother great. But, you know, she was someone who relentlessly drove him. And she, he had internalized her. She didn't need to be there anymore. He had internalized.
38:29 Oprah Winfrey? Because he was doing it himself.
38:30 Speaker 02 Oh, he was relentlessly driving himself.
38:33 Oprah Winfrey? Okay. I hear when people come to the Hoffman Process, they often have reached material success or checked all the boxes, college, marriage, home, kids, cars, the things. And then they start to wonder, is that all there is?
38:50 Speaker 02 Yes.
38:51 Oprah Winfrey? And you know that that happened almost every single day that we were taping The Oprah Show. That became my major connection to the audience, because every day I would sit and talk to the audience. And around the 90s, women started to stand up and say that to me. They said, "I did all the things. I got the degree. I had the kids. I did all the thing. But is this it? Is there more? Is that all there is?"
39:16 Speaker 02 Well, obviously, that's not all there is.
39:18 Oprah Winfrey? Obviously.
39:19 Speaker 02 And there's self-satisfaction. And there's really the feeling of belonging and loving yourself. When we say self-love, this is not some narcissistic thing. This is discovering your essence.
39:34 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
39:35 Speaker 02 And your essence is love, as I said.
39:37 Oprah Winfrey? I understand you believe that most people are seeking two experiences. The feeling of, of course, we all love this feeling of vibrancy, of being alive.
39:46 Speaker 02 Right.
39:47 Oprah Winfrey? And this feeling also of, I love this word, wholeness. Because I think in all of my, you know, interviews and research and reading and seeking, I've seen that so many people are looking for perfection when they should be seeking to be whole. And I remember this interview that I did with Jane Fonda, and she said to me, "I've stopped looking for being perfect. I'm no longer in search of being perfect. I just want to be whole." And I remembered that. I went, "Whoa, Jane, you're so wise." And, but that's what Hoffman is about, is about bringing wholeness to people.
40:25 Speaker 11 I realized later in life that it's, the challenge is not to be perfect, it's to be whole. And I think it takes a little work to become whole.
40:36 Speaker 02 You've said it exactly. Wholeness is the main result of the Hoffman process, a sense of wholeness. And when one has that wholeness, you connect to the wholeness in life. I'm trying to remember, the educator Parker Palmer said, "There's a hidden wholeness in all things."
40:57 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
40:58 Speaker 02 There's a hidden wholeness in all things. And when you discover that wholeness within yourself, and that is when your quadrinity is integrated and in harmony, then you, the hidden wholeness in all things is revealed to you, and you are at home in the universe.
41:16 Oprah Winfrey? Oh, I love that. Well, you know, when you first start hearing about the Hoffman Institute, for me, it's usually from people who have wealth, or who have fame, or who have received a lot of attention in their lives. But not everybody who goes there is famous. Most people who go there are not famous. Megan is joining us from Oklahoma, and she's a former Marine who also served as a security guard for President George W. Bush. Hi, Megan. And I understand that despite your high-profile career, you were really struggling on the inside. What was going on, and how did Hoffman help you change that?
41:59 Speaker 04 Yes ma'am. First off, I just want to say thank you for this opportunity and hello to both of you. When I joined the military, it was an escape. I was trying to figure out what I could do with my life. But I unfortunately went through the experience of military sexual trauma. I was also physically injured when I was in the Marine Corps. So I came out with pretty significant post-traumatic stress disorder. And so you layer that on top of my childhood traumas. And then I'm also a tribal citizen. I'm a Skogee Creek. And so you layer in the historical and generational traumas and all of that. And I was stuck. I was very stuck.
42:43 Oprah Winfrey? And what happened when you went to Hoffman?
42:46 Speaker 04 So I had, just prior to Hoffman, I had learned about meditation, about sensory awareness. So I was familiar with using that as a coping tool. But then I lost my dad to suicide. And that's, I mean, it opened up all of the wounds all over again. I was very much right back in the midst of all the PTSD, flashbacks, nightmares, everything. I was even struggling just to get out to go to the grocery store. I mean, my whole life was just derailed. And so my mentor at the time, she told me about Hoffman. She told me that it would help. And I said, you know what? At the end of the day, what I've been doing, it kind of works, but I need something more. I need to do something to get unstuck.
43:30 Speaker 04 And so Hoffman really allowed me the space that I needed to reconnect to myself and then also put myself back together. But in a way that, as you've already mentioned before, focused on love and on light. Because before that, I had three emotions and I lived mostly in anger.
43:51 Oprah Winfrey? Anger, anger, angrier, and most angry. Yes, yes.
43:56 Speaker 04 Pretty much.
43:57 Oprah Winfrey? Wow. When you hear this, Raz, it makes you feel what? It makes you understand how the, well, you know the process works.
44:04 Speaker 02 It makes me happy. Because that's why we're doing this. We're doing this so that people can be free. They can be more free, open, loving, and spontaneous. That's, that's the rich life. And, um, everyone, you know, it's not by my standard, it's by your standard.
44:21 Oprah Winfrey? Mm-hmm.
44:22 Speaker 02 And you can see, uh, I can see by the smile on your face and I can feel the gratitude in your heart. Um, that you are, you're living, doesn't mean your life is perfect, but you're living the life, you're living your life, not someone else's life.
44:39 Oprah Winfrey? And you've said, one of the things I love that you've said is that the goal is, your goal is to help people to become more of who they are.
44:48 Speaker 02 Right.
44:48 Oprah Winfrey? Who they are instead of who they aren't.
44:51 Speaker 02 Right. And, you know, taking off on what, uh, what we've just heard here is that, you know, in, in her desperation, she tried putting on the uniform of a marine.
45:03 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
45:04 Speaker 02 To be all right.
45:05 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
45:05 Speaker 02 To be tough, to be strong enough to withstand all the things that were hurting her, but it only got worse. It only got worse.
45:13 Oprah Winfrey? And that's, that is what happens when people put on someone else's identity or put on the identity that they think they're supposed to have instead of being able to be fully whole in themselves.
45:23 Speaker 02 And it's the false promise, perhaps of, often, I would say, of our military is that it takes young people who are trying to figure out, I'm eighteen, how, how, what does it mean to be an adult? And it, there's the idea that if I become a marine.
45:39 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
45:40 Speaker 02 I'll be an adult, or if I become a banker, or if I become an entrepreneur, or if I become this or whatever. And so, so much of what passes for adult life and accomplishment, in her case, it was a negative experience, but a lot of it is people's success. So many people are successful and not happy.
46:07 Oprah Winfrey? Absolutely.
46:08 Speaker 02 Having the symbols of success is not enough.
46:10 Oprah Winfrey? Have you become more whole, Megan, as a part of this process?
46:14 Speaker 04 I definitely believe so. I have had some pretty major career changes as a result. I went and I got my masters in social work. I'm now working on my PhD in psychology and my focus is to create a wellness model for marginalized communities like tribal nations.
46:32 Oprah Winfrey? Wonderful.
46:32 Speaker 04 Especially for our veterans.
46:34 Oprah Winfrey? Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us today. I appreciate you all taking the time out of your busy day to be here with me. When we come back, Raz Ngasi with the Hoffman Institute explains how the Hoffman Process helps people find a sense of meaning and wholeness in a society that often seems to care only about the outward signs of success.
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47:24 Oprah Winfrey? Thank you for staying with us. I'm talking with Raz Ngasi with the Hoffman Institute about how we're often so focused on the symbols of success, we lose sight of what we really need to live a meaningful life. You know Raz says, Raz, the Hoffman Process is over $6,000 a week and many people, as we know, cannot afford that. $6,000 is a lot of money when you're just trying to make it and even though you might want to be whole. So what do you have there for people who can't?
47:55 Speaker 02 We have a very robust scholarship program. I believe Megan was a recipient of one of our scholarships. We like to have people who are receiving scholarships to have some skin in the game. So we want them to pay what they can. But we offer this for, in fact, Megan, I think, came in through our veterans program. And
48:20 Speaker 02 But also, there's just these people who are holding the fabric of society together. Our first responders, teachers, firemen, they don't earn the kind of money that can allow them to, or people who are in nonprofit organizations. They're doing great things for the culture, for the society, but they're not earning the kind of money. It's not only the money, it's the time to take a week away.
48:43 Oprah Winfrey? I hear many people have said to you, especially businessmen, I don't, you know, wealthy guys, I don't have time to do this, I don't have time to do that. And you say what to them?
48:55 Speaker 02 Well, actually, I say, you're one of the people who has control of your life. I say, you're not a single mother of two kids waiting on tables in Omaha, Nebraska.
49:04 Oprah Winfrey? Right.
49:05 Speaker 02 You are in charge, and you have control of your life. And what you need to do is prioritize yourself. Instead of squeezing you out of your life, put yourself in the middle of your life. And organize yourself so that you can be the person you really want to be, who you really are.
49:23 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah. And I just want to say, I love that phrase, that you're there helping people to become really who they are instead of who they aren't. Because I think one of the greatest compliments I ever received was a reporter who had interviewed me back in the 90s, and then in 2010, we did another interview. And she said, you know, I remember you from this interview we did in Washington. And she said, you're the same, but you've just become more of yourself.
49:51 Speaker 02 Beautiful.
49:52 Oprah Winfrey? And I said to her, I'm gonna put that on my tombstone, if I had a tombstone. I'm gonna be cremated, so therefore. But that you've become more of yourself, I think that's what we're all here to do, is to become more alive, more vibrant, more fully who we were meant to be. And I read that globally, 135,000 people have gone through this Hoffman process, and they're currently, what, 13 centers worldwide?
50:20 Speaker 02 Yes.
50:21 Oprah Winfrey? What would you say is the secret behind the program's success?
50:25 Speaker 02 Well, we don't do any marketing, so it's all word of mouth. And the secret behind the success is that the program works. I think as adults, we get to that point, many of us, where we say, I need to do some, I need to do some serious work on myself. I need, there's something going on here.
50:42 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
50:43 Speaker 02 I need to work on myself. And when people reach that point... What we want is when they start asking around and looking around, that often will come up as a really credible alternative.
50:56 Oprah Winfrey? Well, you've spent 30 years guiding people through a process that where they experience. And as I said at the beginning of this, you confront your demons. You're trying to heal from some of the most difficult challenges in life. All the challenges that keep coming your way in crises. I often ask this question on the podcast. What do you, I heard a Stanford professor say this, that he was planning on doing a course at Stanford on this, and that is, what is your definition of a well-lived life? What is a well-lived life?
51:28 Speaker 02 Wow. A well-lived life, I'm in the middle of living my life. Trying to do a good job. Well-lived life, I think, is one in which your heart is open and you have compassion for yourself, inner compassion for others, that you're, you know, everyone's hurting. Everyone's got something.
51:51 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
51:51 Speaker 02 And where you are able to navigate the mysteries of life rather than trying to get the answer. There are these mysteries in life. Parenting, love, sex, relationships, my career, expressing myself into the world. And we want to be competent at navigating those mysteries rather than finding the answer, because there is no answer. There is no the answer. And when you navigate the mystery in life, I like to say that your spiritual self, this essential and authentic deepest part of you, is resonating in harmony with the universe.
52:32 Speaker 02 I mentioned earlier that when you just come into your own wholeness, you're connected to the wholeness of life. And so you have that.
52:42 Speaker 02 Feeling that the force is with you.
52:45 Oprah Winfrey? Hmm.
52:46 Speaker 02 Right?
52:46 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
52:47 Speaker 02 This is my day. Wow, things are falling into place. And often we see it. I like to watch, you know, San Francisco Bay Area has got all these athletic teams. And I like to watch that. I like to watch golf. I like to play golf. And sometimes you just see them. They're in the zone. The whole team is in the zone. Or I've been in the zone in different things. Well, I just want to say it's possible to live in the zone a lot more. And that's a very rewarding place to live and to help others find their zone and to live it, to be joyful and contribute to, contribute to the world, contribute to the other.
53:31 Oprah Winfrey? Well, that's why you were here. That's why you were here because as a seeker, you started out by saying that you've been a seeker your whole life. And I know that's what seekers do. I am a seeker too. Seekers want other people to have the same kind of fulfillment that they have in life. And I haven't been to the Hoffman Institute. As I said to you all at the beginning of this, I know so many people who have been and other people who now are going. I've even sponsored other people to go. But I was just curious to see who is behind this thing that I keep hearing about. I thank you. I thank you. I thank you for raising the consciousness in the world. Thank you, Raz, for being here, giving us a glimpse into the Hoffman Process.
54:14 Oprah Winfrey? And thank you to my guests Orlando Bloom and Megan for joining us. For more information on the Hoffman Process, you go to HoffmanInstitute.org. It's all there. And I want to thank you all for joining me for this interesting conversation. I don't think there's anything more important, actually, than realizing the fullest potential of your own life. And I often say this, that I know that we're all here seeking the same thing, that we all want the same thing. And that is to be able to live out the truest, highest expression of ourselves as human being. And that's the kind of thing that we like to talk about on this podcast. So I'll see you next week. Go well, everybody. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
54:59 Oprah Winfrey? I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.
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