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The Healing Space – How Dr. Lia Naor Moved Mountains to Care for Thousands After October 7

In the aftermath of October 7, when so much was shattered, Dr. Lia Naor helped build something extraordinary.

Within days, she and a small group of colleagues created what became known as the Healing Space in Rishpon, a volunteer-run trauma center that has since cared for more than 20,000 people, offering over 60,000 hours of therapy in dozens of healing modalities.


It became a living sanctuary for survivors, evacuees, and therapists — a place where people could gather, breathe, and slowly return to themselves.

Lia Naor is a clinical psychologist, researcher, and national representative of the International Ecopsychology Society. Her work stands at the intersection of psychology, nature, ritual, and community, exploring how the land itself can become a partner in recovery and how belonging and connection to place can help restore what trauma has torn apart.

This conversation is about the deep ecology of healing:
how we root ourselves again in life after devastation,
how beauty and grief can coexist,
and how acts of care, both human and ecological, become quiet forms of resistance.

  • 0:19 Welcome to RAW: Dr. Lia Naor on Healing After October 7th We're not the same people that we were before the 7th. And there's like this push to try to get people back to normal, but there is no normal. There is no. So who is that you're trying to get back? So I think what's important now is to be together is to opening appealing spaces like this, but to also offer people programs where they can kind of rediscover who I am, who I am in the aftermath of what I've been through. 0:44 And maybe even in light of what I've I've been through that I've I even under I understand things differently or I or I see my strengths or my qualities that I didn't know before. 1:08 Speaker 2 Welcome to RAW, where we explore what it means to stay human in the heart of conflict. I'm a New Glory. Today I'm speaking with Doctor Lia NAO, a clinical psychologist, researcher and one of Israel's leading voices in eco psychology, the study of how our relationship with nature and place shapes our capacity to heal. 1:34 In the days immediately following October 7th, Lia helped create what became known as the Healing Space In response, a volunteer run trauma center that has since treated more than 20,000 people, offering over 60,000 hours of therapy in multiple healing modalities. 1:55 Together with a group of colleagues, she built spaces where survivors, evacuees, and therapists could gather, breathe, and slowly re anchor in the body and community and in the living world around them. 2:11 Leah's work bridges psychology, ecology, and ritual, asking how the land itself can participate in our recovery, how it can help us remember our belonging even when everything familiar has been torn away. 2:28 This conversation is about the deep ecology of healing, how presence, connection, and the simple act of being held by nature can restore what trauma has fractured, and how beauty even now, remains a form of resistance. 2:49 Dr. Lia Naor's Personal Path to Nature-Based Healing Leah, welcome. 2:50 Speaker 1 Thank you. 2:51 Speaker 2 Thank you for being here. Before we kind of dive into the nitty gritty of your work, tell us a little bit about yourself and and how you got to to doing what you're doing and incorporating nature. Because you're an academic, you have a PhD, you don't hear it so often. 3:07 It sounds like a mix between spiritual and kind of intellectual. How did your story kind of lead you to this? 3:14 Speaker 1 It kind of started with a Basic Instinct. I think that's how I healed myself was being in nature. After I finished my army duty, I moved to Mitzperamon and I had just amazing, very, very healing experiences and got to know myself deeply. 3:33 But it was something natural and I and I do think that that connection to nature is natural and it helps us to connect to ourselves, but also to the bigger story or a bigger perspective. And it's not all personal. 3:48 So I think that's wonderful. And I, and I also, I'm holding the notion that healing needs to happen in a healthy environment because environments affect us in every way possible. And so for me, healing under light bulbs in somebody's clinic is, is very different than the way I feel that I need to go through the process. 4:12 But it's also innate. Like, you know, if you've had a hard day and you need to go out and take a breath or take a walk. So it's something that is innate in us in in the way we heal and what people need and we are part of nature and science and imperial evidence tells us the beneficial effects of of being in nature and what that does. 4:35 So it's kind of like a merge of my personal understandings, but also then as a researcher and academic and trying to understand what I called the magic that I was seeing with people out there that were that were going through personal transformations in very little time. 4:52 And I remember looking up at Google like one time transformational experience and all that came up was PTSD. And I said, no, no, no, no. They're, they're like really, really positive experiences that people go through that change them and that are very important and meaningful for them. 5:09 And there was nothing and every, every person I talked to just said, you know, you need to research it. And I'm like, no, I just want to be out in the wild. But I really wanted to understand. I really wanted to know and my my life work is called Ways of knowing. 5:29 It's a Center for nature based therapies and processes of personal initiation. So it was unknowing that I wanted to know. And I think that it's very different than a cognitive knowing, but it also has that aspect. But it's like really trying to understand transformation and healing and what works and how it works. 5:50 And so it's like a never ending love story with trying to figure that out. 5:56 Speaker 2 You were born in California. Your parents became religious Orthodox, I think when you were seven and moved to Israel. I believe they sent you to a school in Meyershalim kind of like. 6:08 Speaker 1 Hardcore, I would say. 6:10 Speaker 2 You said you had a hard time kind of finding yourself and finding a sense of belonging right in that community. I certainly know that that for myself, nature is definitely something that makes me feel like I belong to something larger, larger than myself, like you mentioned. Do you think that nature is kind of like your version of religion, of kind of spirituality, of looking for that bigger something that maybe your family was looking for? 6:35 Finding Spirituality and Belonging in Nature's Non-Judgmental Embrace Yeah, but it happened naturally and I think that's what is very unique about nature. So it's not like looking for God or looking for a religion. It kind of happened to me and to many others in a way that's very natural because that spiritual faculty that is innate in every one of us, in our DNA, it's an option, right? 6:58 We kind of believe that if you're not part of any religion or belief, then you don't have it. But it happens naturally in nature when you just see those vast landscapes or those whales jumping up from the ocean or the sunset. That feeling of awe, that perspective, that there's something that goes beyond my personal drama, takes it into a broader perspective of myself and life, and also something about the interconnectedness of all of it. 7:26 So it's really something that's actually concrete when you're out there. That expansiveness and that beauty and that wonder and that magic, whether you believe or know. So personally, I felt that out in nature and for most of my life felt I didn't belong in America. 7:45 Having Israeli, an Israeli father and being Jewish and then being in in Jerusalem and going to a religious school and I'm like, no. And then going to the army and still having the words that I wasn't saying right in Hebrew. 8:01 And just like really wanting to belong and to fit in. And I think that's the basis of being whole and healthy is to know that you belong first of all to yourself. You have to figure that out what that is because it's a lot more than where I live, what I do for a profession and how many kids I have and, and what is my place of belonging in the world like where can my gifts be accepted? 8:31 So basically that is what initiation is in human history. Throughout all times, youngsters went out for a process of initiation to to figure out who they were and what their strengths and unique gifts. And then they could live a meaningful life because they felt that they had a place and that they belonged in that way and that their gifts were needed for the village. 8:55 So now I meet so many people that kind of don't know who they are and need to go through that. So that's one of the main things we do in nature so that it's not a cognitive knowing only, but it's like, let's figure this out from a wider perspective and a place where maybe my external identities of like who I am and how I'm dressed and how much money I have and where I come from is, is less important when we're all sitting around the fire and watching the stars at night. 9:25 Something something bigger. Is I really? 9:29 Speaker 2 Connect to what you're saying. When I think of kind of like wild nature for me, when I travel in Israel, I sometimes have a very hard time not really being affected by the trash that I see when I look up at the beautiful trees. And then I see all this trash and it brings me back to certain behaviors and lack of reverence that people might have for nature. 9:50 Speaker 1 One of the ideas of being out in nature is that nature is non judgmental. And there's a place for trash and there's a place for what's dying and there's a place for what's ugly and there's a place for what's broken and that's life. And to make everything pretty all the time and try to show only our best sides like Instagram or TikTok or whatever, but not to show the other sides is is very dangerous because we can think that that's life. 10:18 So I think we need to be human and I think it's something we need to understand. What does that mean to be human? And it has different parts. We can be ugly and we can be beautiful, but that idea where we don't want to see or feel what isn't nice is very, very, very sick. 10:37 And to put our elders away, even if it's beautiful buildings, and to put the sick away, even if they're nice buildings and the mentally ill away. And to just kind of leave everything that looks OK is, is very sick. 10:52 Because we have death and we have sickness and we have ugliness and we have meanness and we have violence. And it's part of life, and nature kind of knows how to hold that wholeness. So I would hope that we also can hold that wholeness. 11:10 And that's part of the reason that we work in nature. 11:14 Speaker 2 So what are the places that you go to? What are your? 11:17 Speaker 1 Anywhere. 11:18 Speaker 2 Refuges in nature. 11:19 Speaker 1 Anywhere it couldn't be nearby nature, as in a park, it can be sitting on a porch. There's so many ways to connect with nature in that way that it is everywhere to kind of remember you don't have to so far away. I personally like the desert, but I also like other areas much. 11:39 Speaker 2 Yeah. 11:40 The Spontaneous Birth of a Community Healing Space Post-October 7th So you have all this experience working with nature and nature based therapy and then October 7th happens. Can you tell me about kind of what transpired for you that day and what you decided to do the next day and tell us a little bit about about those projects that you have been working on? 12:00 Speaker 1 Shock was a total surprise and shock and disbelief and it like was hours of trying to get information and to understand what was going on. So the next day I I planned on going with a colleague to the hotels on the Dead Sea with Berry and Kwaza and to help them. 12:21 And then that morning, my friend came to pick me up. And then that morning, I was like, Oh my gosh. But like, those are communities. Like they have people that could take care of them. But what about the survivors from the music festival? And I was, I just couldn't think of anything else. 12:38 I was like I have to help them. 12:40 Speaker 2 First time I'm thinking about it as you're talking about communities, but basically the festivals is a group of people from all over Israel, exactly a community at that point except for that festival. 12:50 Speaker 1 Exactly. And so I knew there was nobody that was offering them help in a way that was organized. I told my my friend, I'm not getting into the car. I need to help the Nova. And he's like, get in the car. They're waiting for us. And I said, no, no, no, I have to help the Nova. 13:07 And so we kind of like he said, OK, I'll drive. You do what you need to do on the way. And I called Ranana, Arizona, who has a beautiful place in Betty Chakanay. It was it was that day where you don't know who's who's buried somebody who isn't. 13:22 So it was like, you know, calling, how are you? Where are you? I'm with my grandchildren. And I said, can we use your space for the Nova? And he right away said, yes, of course. And we spent the next hours putting out ads for therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists and people to make food. 13:42 And I got back at, I think it was like, 3 in the morning. And at 9:00, we opened. We sat there with 40 therapists waiting for them to come. And it was very slow. And when the survivors came, they couldn't speak. 13:57 And it was very obvious to me that what they needed was different. And it's a beautiful place in nature. So we, I asked musicians to come with guitars. And then we had people that would do bodywork and people that came with arts and crafts and, and we, we put chairs under the trees. 14:15 So if they did want to sit with somebody one-on-one, but that took time. And then they just started flooding in, flooding in. It was just we had, within those few weeks, over 6000 survivors and their families that we treated Wow and we were a group of 900 volunteers. 14:37 Speaker 2 So obviously not all nature based, it's all kinds of therapies. What was the system? 14:44 Speaker 1 What I called it was healing space, and the idea was to offer an integrative space for healing where they could kind of figure out what they needed and that those needs could also change. It changed all the time and we became more and more professional. 15:00 I did a lot of work with the therapist. That was what I among the other things took care of is that they were held also as a community and that they were taken care of and that they were getting the professional guidelines that we had to make as we walked. 15:19 We weren't offering treatment, but we were just offering a healing space. And in my understanding it was a space that was healing. It wasn't only the professionals that were there and that's what it became. So it's a nature based community centered healing space, the first in the world. 15:37 I'm now writing an academic paper exactly to understand what the guidelines and what the basic foundations are of healing space, hoping that we can open healing spaces all over Israel and maybe into Gaza and maybe into other places that that need. 15:54 But basically, instead of having only Kupatolim, we can have healing spaces in every community. And that the people that hold these spaces are the community. It's the strengths in the community and the people of the community. So grandmas can make cakes and sports, people can do sports and people can come and give and people can come and take. 16:15 And basically there's a place where you can right now belong to and what you're trying to deal with. Because what we know is that one of the main problems with dealing with trauma and chaos is, is, is that it usually isolates people and that they have to go through it alone and it doesn't work. 16:37 So if we look at how communities like earth based communities, you never go through a trauma alone. You always have people around you that are reminding you who you are and reminding you where you belong and reminding you of your strengths and that help you through it. 16:53 So basically that's what I am really trying to to create and support by consulting, by creating models of intervention. And also most of what I'm doing is research based. So it's kind of like bringing all those different angles together and seeing if we can build something new. 17:12 We know that when there is a breakdown, there can also be a breakthrough. So I think there are amazing, amazing things that are turning up after the 7th of October and we're not getting that on the news. 17:26 Speaker 2 Definitely the first time I've heard that in a long time, yeah. 17:29 Speaker 1 So there are amazing, amazing things that have been created and most of them are volunteer base and they're amazing people that are supporting and contributing. We're kind of like building up this healthy state while things are crumbling and also showing the survivors and people that are really struggling right now that we as a society are taking responsibility and care for each other and are doing what we can. 17:59 So it's also helping people to believe in good again and to believe in people again, which is really hard with with what we all went through. 18:10 From Life Supporters to Soldiers: New Approaches to Trauma Recovery Are there individual stories or, or talking about these breakthroughs that kind of stayed with you from from that period? 18:17 Speaker 1 Yeah, there are many. After a few weeks, everybody was telling me you have to do group therapy, you have to do group therapy. So we opened a few circles for group therapy and nobody came. And I was like this. We have never been in a place like this before. Everything that we create has to be bottom up is the way I see it. 18:36 We can't like try to push our ideas and how this needs to be. We need to figure it out. And that's what was so special about healing space. And I remember saying, you know, they're not coming. Then it's that it's we're not offering the right thing. 18:52 And everybody was like, you need to force them to come. It has to be part of they're coming here. And I'm no, no, no, no, that's not the way I do things. And then I had an idea that I would open up a course for them to be supporters of life. That's what we called it, life supporters. 19:09 And it was full and it was like group therapy, but we also gave them the tools and the understandings and the knowledge they needed to help others. And that's what I felt that was so supportive. So it's just like creating like what what's what's needed, what's what's really needed now and what's going on. 19:30 I think what's really needed now is also a belonging, but also a shift in in ability to change and to shift in things we believed in or we thought were a given and that not are now different and a way for people to reorganize themselves to who they are because we were not the same people that we were before the 7th. 19:52 And there's like this push to try to get people back to normal, but there is no normal. So who is that you're trying to get back? So I think what's important now is to be together is to opening up healing spaces like this, but to also. 20:09 Offer people programs where they can kind of rediscover who I am, who I am in the aftermath of what I've been through, and maybe even in light of what I've I've been through that I even understand things differently or I or I see my strengths or my qualities that I didn't know before. 20:26 And one of the ways I tried to do that was another project that I opened last year the 1st of January. I started a journey from a lot to metula and I called it Bishvil hachibul. 20:42 So bishvil is the same word for path, but it's also for and hibur is connection. So what I wanted to the. 20:50 Speaker 2 Path for the connection. 20:51 Speaker 1 So the idea was that anybody who wanted could come and you can come for a day, but you can come for a month and figure out by very simple lifestyle, no money, everybody just brought like the food and we shared and we cooked and we walked all day and we talked and people from all ways of life and Jews and Arabs are just connecting and being together. 21:15 We had it go through communities also and keep it seem and places so that people would come with us. And I just kind of like vision this exodus where instead of us trying to get back to life, we would leave our daily lives, at least for a while and try to figure this out, but figure it out together in a way that was, was enabling people to really bring themselves. 21:38 And then after three weeks, there were awful, awful storms and we had to stop and we didn't have any funding. So it was like a an idea, but but some way, what I'm doing now with soldiers is also offering going out for three days into nature and, and being with others that are in and, and figured, OK, so you were what you were and things are, are very, very different. 22:05 And, and how can you envision your life or who are you becoming or what's unfolding in your life? So it's also taking full responsibility for who you are, but also for your gifts and your qualities. OK, You know, we've been very, very, very deeply broken and, and you can't put yourself back together again. 22:26 It's not Humpty Dumpty, it's not, it doesn't work. But you can like Kinsubi, right? You can. You can put the pieces back together with like golden strips between the broken pieces and become something beautiful that has cracks. But it's also where the light comes through. 22:45 So basically that's what I've been doing a lot. Chabad House in Playa Vanowel, Panama had me come over and together we built a beautiful model for soldiers that are all over Central America and are not in a good space and need need a healing space. 23:11 Speaker 2 If you're enjoying this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to RAW on your favorite podcast platform. Leave a review and share it with someone who might find it meaningful. You can also explore more about the show and subscribe to my newsletter at with a nuke.com. 23:34 What do you mean by that? Soldiers like soldiers who have finished their service and are. 23:39 Speaker 1 Or people that are not married or don't have kids or or businesses have no way to get back to life because they keep on getting called in again to reserve duty. So what they do sometimes between the rounds is they go off to kind of breathe, right? 23:56 So they're all over the world, but they're not. Well, some of them need help. A lot of them need support and need help. So one of the places that opens a beautiful healing space is is there in Panama. And we do retreats for the soldiers, also the men and also the women. 24:12 And there is also in Thailand they opened David's Circle and in India they opened. So a lot of the young people are just all over the world looking for themselves. And we don't want that looking to bring them Into Darkness. 24:29 Darkness, right? So we we want to offer healing spaces also catch them where they are. 24:35 Redefining Heroism: Embracing Grief and Humanity in Trauma Healing Yeah. So I assume prior to October 7th, you had a private practice, you were working with regular people, and then October 7th happened and you turned instinctively to towards the Nova survivors and now you're working with soldiers as well. How did the kind of these different groups differ in the trauma and the kind of level of PTSD and maybe in how you work with them? 24:57 Or is there a kind of like a common thread through all the groups of people that you've been working with? 25:04 Speaker 1 I can't say anything scientifically because, you know, I didn't have them take all the questionnaires of PTSD, but I can say that they all need to be held and they all need to know they did the best they could. 25:19 And they all need the people of Israel telling them that, that they appreciate them because right now that's not what's happening. And so these people have been deeply broken and they need us to appreciate them and they need us to say thank you and they need to know that they belong. 25:42 And, and the other thing is, is another project that I brought is I brought Francis Weller, who is a phenomenal psychotherapist and one of the top notches on grief and grieving in the world. 25:59 I brought his course to Israel. I connected with him six months before the 7th of October and the course started on the 23rd of October. So we were ready for all, all these things. And one of the main reasons I brought Francis's work here is because I called him and I said my people don't know how to grieve. 26:19 My people know how to be heroes. They know how to tough it up. They know how to stick up, but they don't know how to be human or how to feel it through. And it's very scary because we know that when people push down their grief and their pain, it usually turns into very hard hearts and also into violence and into indifference and into amnesia and anesthesia. 26:50 And just like you can go through life without feeling life. So when I asked Francis to to bring his work here, the idea was how do I help my people understand that to be a hero is to be human, is to be feeling, is to be broken, is to be sensitive, is to be lost. 27:09 We have this idea like right David and Goliath and Hercules and like those heroes and, and, and even on the media, I I see again and again they, they, they, they buried their their comrade and they didn't even cry and they what, what nonsense is that? 27:29 We're still pushing that. No, that's not heroic heroic. It can also just be accepting that you did the best you did and, and really be there to hug your friend. And that's a lot of what what I'm doing with the soldiers. I just have out this week a paper that I wrote on the hero's journey on the way I work with soldiers. 27:51 So it's a hero's journey of not pushing it out, but of actually feeling it out and, and what that means to be a hero. And they're amazing and the way they're there for one another and the way they know how to see each other and to echo each other's strengths. 28:07 And so I'm very optimistic and I see amazing things that that these like if we, if we look at what happened in the Lebanese war on the Yom Kippur war where nobody spoke, now all the young soldiers, all these young tough guys are talking about their feelings and are wanting to go through a process and are wanting to be healthy and, and just the way they're there for one each other. 28:34 So I think it's amazing and maybe all this is not happening under municipal or based by Ministry of Health, but there's so much being done and that's that's our light and that's our strength and there is a lot of caring. 28:53 So although it's like very sexy to show how much diversion there is, I see a lot of caring and a lot of beautiful things that are that are happening. And, and that's where I'm putting my head and my, you know, effort and my focus and my energy and the knowledge that's there that we're now gaining that can help the whole world in what we've been through and how we've done this and to see what is being created and what are the aftermaths of this dark, dark time and night. 29:35 There's a lot of strength and a lot of light there. 29:37 Navigating Moral Injury and Protecting Therapists in Traumatic Times Yeah, you mentioned something in the beginning of our conversation about, you know, this, this aspiration dream or just this kind of like magical code word perhaps of this idea of maybe having a healing space in Gaza, which of course, you know, realistically today would be far fetched. 29:56 But I'm wondering how much the kind of, you know, your, your whole life revolves around helping people with their trauma. And, and such a big part of the Israeli reality now is kind of like averting our eyes away from the unfolding drama and trauma happening on the other side, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank for so many reasons, you know, and we can talk about them. 30:22 But is that something that you address, for example, with the soldiers? 30:27 Speaker 1 There is a lot of moral injury. Almost all the soldiers have moral injury, which one hand shows that they're moral, but on the other hand it's hell. So it's what they saw or what they were part of or what they did or what they didn't do or what they stopped or what they didn't stop. 30:46 It's it's horrifying. It's horrifying. And we also have to remember like the state that they were in and that we were all in and how scary it is to be there. It's really hard to to know what's right and how's right in, in the minute. 31:04 But the fact that they have to carry this throughout their life is, is treacherous. It's really difficult. So on one hand, I think we need to have our eyes open and we need to be able to feel what we're doing and, and how it's being done. And on the other hand, we need to survive and to, you know, go between those lines. 31:25 It's it's a very fine line. It's a very, very fine line. I don't know how to do war humane style. I don't, I don't know how that can happen. So these are questions that they're all asking themselves and they're all, most of them wake up with nightmares of this. 31:47 And yeah, we we need a lot of healing. And we needed a healing before and we'll need a healing after. And I think what's important is right now is to help people feel. But I don't know if we can at this time. 32:04 We're like just the what's ups of these soldiers are all the names of all their friends that they buried. Like, I don't think people grasp what these young people have seen and are going through. And I don't know if they can hold. 32:20 Also, what's happening with the people in Gaza? It's they need some basis of something to hold on to 1st or to heal first, some kind of ground, basic groundwork to be able to 1st grieve that we haven't even gotten there. 32:37 I I think you have to start like just when you get on the plane and they tell you, you know, you have to put the oxygen mask on and then put it on for your kids. I think each person has to first do what they can to, to connect to those healing aspects, but to stay human and stay sensitive to, to others. 32:56 Yeah. 32:57 Speaker 2 As you're talking it, it's clear to me that part of the discourse and the majority of the discourse is happening in the space of, of judgement on all sides. You know, the right blaming the left, the framing the, the right, the, you know, the pacifist blaming the soldiers, the soldiers blaming the. 33:17 It comes from a place of kind of intellectualizing, but. 33:24 Speaker 1 But also not taking responsibility because, because if you're always saying, you know, it's the government's fault, I don't know. I think we're past that story. Come on, let's get out of it. Let's just do what we need to do here. That's right. There's there's a very, very problematic government who's not, has not taken responsibility, which is a big part of healing. 33:42 But there's still a lot we can do. And it's where we choose to put our focus. Is our focus going to be on who's not doing their work? Or is our focus going to be on getting up every day and asking who and what can I serve? 33:57 Speaker 2 What's interesting is you're saying that still in the kind of like individual soldiers that you're meeting, you know, despite this kind of messianic government telling us that we've done nothing wrong and we are only doing right. And, you know, these black or white narratives that that would be more best suited in kindergartens. 34:15 You're saying that the kind of moral injury is, is still there, which means that these these soldiers and you're saying it's it's very difficult for them because in a way they are not ultimately responsible. They've not sent themselves there, and yet they they have this kind of moral woundedness about what it is they did there or didn't do there, or thought, or didn't think or felt or didn't feel. 34:39 Speaker 1 I would say 80%. It's very big, yeah. They really deserve our attention and our support and they're amazing and they're the next generation and they're going to bring the change that we need. 34:57 But they need to heal because if they don't heal, they can bring in violence and they can bring in more separation. So I think that that's our duty. That's our duty. 35:09 Speaker 2 How do you protect yourself? How do therapists protect themselves? I mean, when they work with so much trauma? And then the atmosphere around us in Israel globally is so divisive, like we just said, and so black and white and so blaming and judging and but mainly working with such, such violence. 35:29 How do you stay sane? Do you ever feel like you're fraying? Like you're cracking? 35:36 Speaker 1 I think that that was one of the most beautiful parts of Healing space. Is that OK? We had the body work and then we had the music, and then there's the arts and crafts and then there's the beautiful nature in this. And it wasn't only for the survivors. 35:52 I told all the therapist, every time it's a little too much, you go get a reflexology or you or you go and lie on the ground or you go sit with a colleague and have a meal. So that's the whole idea of not being alone. And that's what I started with. 36:08 So also the survivors, but also the therapist and all. We all need support. We all need that togetherness. It would be wonderful if they could go to a spa or if they could be supported and having a weekend in a hotel somewhere, more things like that. 36:25 But I've done that for myself. And when I need, I go out into nature. But also just being on the side of doing is very strengthening. Yeah. But every person has to know, like, how much they can take and what they can do. 36:42 And. But also feeling broken. And also reminding myself to look at the flowers in the garden every day. And, you know, the simplicity of what it means to be alive and feeling. We all need a lot of forgiveness and softness in these times. 37:00 Practical Advice for Daily Life: Breathing, Connection, and Mindful Living For the kind of average person, not Nova survivor or soldiers with PTSD, what do you advise kind of regular everyday people to do? Is there something from nature therapy or from the various therapies that you've experienced that you think, wow, you know, you don't need to go for a month long hike? 37:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, I think, I think the hopelessness or the despair comes from the feeling that there's nothing I can do. But every person can bring a flower to the neighbor or make a cake for their child or or say something nice to the kindergarten teacher. 37:37 There's so many ways, just like small acts of kindness. So the first thing I would say is to breathe. Really, we we're not breathing enough. Second, I would say to make space for for just being soft and quiet, like nice music, not to listen to the news, not to listen to the news. 38:04 Speaker 2 That's a hard 1, Leah, not to listen to the news. 38:08 Speaker 1 For two days, try it, see, see if it changes in the atmosphere or if you're used to hearing the news every hour like most Israelis. Then do it once a day. And and being with family and friends, connecting, connecting and really having your eyes open to who's isolated or who's alone. 38:30 I think that's really a big part of it. More potlucks, more dinners together, just as much as possible to be together and going out to the beach and lying on the ground and looking at beauty and planting seeds, planting seeds. 38:47 Like that idea that we have a future. Just planting flowers, planting seeds, planting trees, taking care of things that can grow in our beautiful being soft with ourselves. Meditation. But just the basic of like drinking water and not rushing all the time and breathing and listening to beautiful music and looking at the beauty around us and looking with soft and, and good eyes at people and not getting into the rut of, you know, who's demonized, but more of just who's doing good and, and what I can do. 39:25 Wake me up in the morning and ask what good deed can I do today? Or who can I support? Who can I say a good word to? Who can I write a nice letter to? There's always the woman sitting at the supermarket that whatever. And it's contagious. It's contagious. 39:40 Let's just go around and say good morning, good morning. It took a long time. I don't remember. If you remember at the beginning you couldn't ask how are you? And you also couldn't say good morning because it's not a good morning. 39:52 Speaker 2 Ask me, how are you the producer? Yvonne just asked me how are you? And I just sighed and she was like, Yep. Still, it's such a charge question. You can't not say. You can't say like hi, say hi. 40:04 Speaker 1 Yeah. 40:05 Speaker 2 How are you? 40:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, we couldn't say good morning for so long, but let's say good morning even if it's not such a good morning, but let's bring that goodness in because it's contagious. And where our focus is, that's where our energy is. 40:21 So if our focus is on the Prime Minister, that's where our energy is going to be. But if our focus is on looking at you struggling through this and bringing beauty, then that's that's the energy that's going to be here. 40:35 Speaker 2 For me, it always comes back to that the serenity prayer of saying God, God or universe or nature or inner wisdom grant me the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the wisdom to always know the difference. 40:53 And I think when you say don't read the news, it doesn't mean don't care or you shouldn't go protest or you shouldn't be political. It just means the news is very rarely something you can do about. It's very rarely something we can actually change. 41:10 Generally, it just changes us. We read it and we feel shitty and then we're behaving in a shitty way with people around us. It really. 41:17 Speaker 1 Shows one side. It just shows what is very, very, very not right. So you can be informed. Like I read, I read the news like once a day. I'll just go through like what? But not over and over and over. And what he said when she said, because there's a lot of other news that I'm very into. 41:36 That's amazing. That's what's going on. So it's not don't be informed, but don't be informed just of that way of seeing things that is very, very, very negative. 41:47 Finding Joy and Transformation Through Non-Prescriptive Healing Approaches Yeah, I saw a beautiful video yesterday of a woman, I think it was in Australia, and her daughter kind of coming across an octopus on the beach and and they kind of splashed water on it. After a while, the octopus woke up and then slowly they helped the octopus get back into the sea. 42:05 And then the octopus turns around and kind of touches the finger of the woman, like it looks like a thank you gestures before kind of swimming off. Anyway, very, very small piece of news, but definitely, yeah. Felt better than reading about. 42:22 Yeah. About what this politician or that politician thinks of one another, for sure. What do you love doing most? What's your favorite? 42:29 Speaker 1 Thing being with my children, being in nature, teaching, taking people on deep transformational journeys where they discover themselves and go through the most beautiful, beautiful processes of of change and development. 42:51 I love to teach, I like to lecture, I love to, I love to create, I like to do art, I love to laugh and I love to be in awe and I love serendipity and mystery and that's all I'm hanging on to in these days. 43:07 Speaker 2 Yeah. Can you share maybe like a story of one person you know without giving names or specifics that that you worked with where that kind of transformation happened, maybe something very broken and then something else flowered people that. 43:26 Speaker 1 Came and couldn't speak and just kept on asking why didn't I die? Why didn't I die? Why didn't I die? And, and now I see them going all over the world and standing on big stages and just doing things like that. 43:43 They never ever thought that they could do. And so I'm in touch with many of them and it's just amazing that resilience and also the free choice we always have of what to do with what we go through. 43:58 Isn't it amazing that we we can choose? One of the things we did in healing space is that there wasn't a regime. So you came and you were offered all the different things that were going on that day. And we asked people, you need to discover what works for you and just try things that are new. 44:17 So it's it's trying herbs that maybe help you sleep at night or going to do body work or ice baths or just just try things that are new and see what helps you breathe better, see what helps you sleep better, see what helps you get in touch again. 44:34 Yeah. With life, with your body. Yeah. Joy. 44:37 Speaker 2 It sounds like by nature of the fact that it wasn't prescriptive, it's not someone else telling you what you need to do in order to deal. You're discovering it yourself. You're kind of giving them back their agency and feeling of empowerment that they they were part of the of the healing process. 44:55 Speaker 1 And we did wet that with the soldiers and we did that with the police squads and we did that with, they kept, they kept telling me now it's only for the Nova people. But then the policeman came and they loved it and it was amazing. And so healing for that. So I just think like we all need to figure out what spaces are healing for us and to be there. 45:15 Speaker 2 Yeah. Thank you so much and if people want to find out more again, can you just share your website or any kind of resource? 45:25 Speaker 1 Ways of knowing Liana or LIA NAOR and Francis's book is out in Hebrew and and also just, you know, connecting with what is alive and brings you joy and it can be small and bring that joy to others and then that's it. 45:44 Amen. 45:45 Speaker 2 To Dalaba.

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