What if the feelings you've been most afraid to feel are the exact ones keeping you from the pleasure, the magic, and the life you most desire?
In this episode of Why Isn't Everyone Doing This?, Emily Fletcher sits down with Dr. Laura Berman, PhD scientist, sex and relationship therapist of 30 years, and author of 10 books including Sex Magic and her newest, Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief into Life Reimagined.
Dr. Berman's story is one of the most remarkable Emily has ever shared on this show. After losing her mother to breast cancer and developing the same cancer in the same breast within a year, Laura recognized the connection between unexpressed grief and physical illness. Then, five years ago, her 16-year-old son Sammy was killed by an accidental fentanyl poisoning sent to him through Snapchat. What happened next, a week alone in the Redwoods, a voice at the beach, and a complete surrender into the pain, led to the discovery that changed everything: there is a bottom. It takes about three minutes. And going all the way into grief does not take you under. It sets you free.
This conversation directly illuminates what Emily teaches inside Ziva Magic: all feelings come through the same channel. When you suppress grief and rage, you suppress pleasure and ecstasy. The willingness to stretch your emotional capacity is the same thing as stretching your capacity for magic.
In this episode, they explore:
– Why all feelings come through the same channel, and what you lose when you block the ones that hurt
– The science of emotional inflammation and its direct connection to physical illness
– Quantum entanglement and why the people closest to you energetically match your state in real time
– The "home frequency" of coherence, how to recognize it, lose it, and return to it
– Why going all the way into grief does not break you, and what waits on the other side
– How Dr. Berman continued a relationship with her son across the frequency divide after his death
– What spiritually bypassing grief actually costs us, and what embodied alchemy looks like instead
– The grief retreat model she built for other parents and the Grief Healing Collective she runs today
– Why one person holding a higher frequency counteracts 70,000 people in darkness
Key Moments:
00:00 – All feelings through the same channel: the conversation begins
01:53 – Introducing Dr. Laura Berman
04:10 – From 3D relationship work to quantum and metaphysical
07:37 – Her mother's death, breast cancer, and the reawakening
09:13 – Quantum entanglement and real-time energetic matching
12:51 – Home frequency: what it is and how to return
19:13 – Reality expands and collapses based on state of consciousness
24:25 – Why we resist grief
29:06 – The science of emotional capacity and the single channel
31:07 – Sammy's death and what came next
33:23 – The voice: "Do you want to live or die?"
35:29 – Into the Redwoods: discovering there is a bottom
39:28 – Raising her frequency to meet her son in the middle
43:16 – Writing the book and building the retreat model
48:37 – The fear of opening a bottomless pit
51:15 – There is a bottom. Three minutes. You will not lose yourself.
54:45 – Why we apologize for crying and what Crying Out Loud reclaims
01:01:40 – One person holding higher frequency counteracts 70,000
01:04:30 – Where to find Laura and how to get the book
About Dr. Laura Berman
Dr. Laura Berman is a PhD scientist, sex and relationship therapist, researcher, and author of 10 books. Her newest, Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief into Life Reimagined, is available for pre-order now and releases October 20. She runs the Grief Healing Collective and grief retreats for parents, and her free resources are available at healwithlaurea.com.
Social Media: @drlauraberman and @griefhealingcollective for grief healing related content
Pre-Order Dr. Laura’s book: Crying Out Loud
If this conversation moved you, the work of feeling it to heal it, of alchemizing emotion into fuel rather than suppressing it into static, is what's opening this summer at Ziva. Get on the list to be first to know.
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