ZuluOne: Heal the Wounds You Didn't Know You Carried

11. Dance, Ancestry, and the Body’s Hidden Memory | Dr. Wendy Guess

• ZuluOne • Episode 11

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Dr. Wendy Guess is a dynamic individual, passionate about inspiring others through joyful expression, and harnessing the power of movement to overcome generational patterns. As a Marketing Professor and an emotional wellbeing facilitator, she advocates for transformation, using the art of dance and moving metaphors. Driven by her love for travel, exploration, dancing, and her role as a grandmother, she continually encourages others to break away from the chains of the past and embrace change.


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the podcast. Today, I'm joined by Dr Wendy Guess to explore healing through movement, sound and ancestral wisdom. We discuss breaking generational patterns, taking responsibility for healing and how constellations reveal hidden truths. We also touch on AI, core values and the universal forces that connect us all. If you're ready to embrace change, this episode is for you. Thank you, it's so good to see you. I haven't seen you in a long time, so it's good to see you.

Speaker 2:

It's been a few years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's been a couple of years, so I'm glad we were able to schedule this and get this on on on the schedule and and being able to connect. And you know you've I've seen you go through. You know we've been in in same constellations and in different workshops together over many years and I was very interested in what your origin story of how you got to this modality was. So can you tell me a little bit about how that happened?

Speaker 2:

The simple answer is when the student's ready, when the teacher appears.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think, and that's happened to me multiple times.

Speaker 2:

As early as college I was taking a movement for theater class of all things, and the instructor brought in Tai Chi and brought in all the Eastern philosophy about the meridians and chi and the elements. And we use those elements because you know, they all have like a voice and a sound and a color and a movement style and he brilliantly brought that in as an analyzing tool for developing a character for theater stage and I was introduced to stuff like the Tao Te Ching and I think that started, probably planted the seed for the journeys, and so everywhere I went I would connect with the healing arts, if you will, just quite by uncoincidence. And so when I first came to Miami I joined a local yoga studio and there just happened to be this workshop going on that was called Community Acupuncture and of course you know that had my little antennae going. That sounds really interesting. But then the incredible I don't know how deep to go into this, because the story of my getting there is a story in and of itself.

Speaker 1:

I love to hear it yeah.

Speaker 2:

I love to hear it right. But I find frequently that when we're supposed to be somewhere, we tend to find resistance in getting there, and true to form.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, ain't that the truth?

Speaker 2:

I read about that event and of course part of me is going oh, that sounds really cool, I should go. And the other part of me is know event and you know, of course part of me is going oh, that sounds really cool, I should, I should go. And the other part of me is going, you know, no. And all week long I'm like yes, no, yes, no. The morning of I'm like do I go, do I not? I got in the car, I go, do I not? I got in the car, I went, even into the studio. I'm like no, no, no, yes, I got to the counter and it just so happened that I had this I don't even remember why, but I had this credit for a free workshop, and so I'm like okay yeah, I'm supposed to go, Okay, I somehow in a way prepaid and so I walk in.

Speaker 2:

Finally, and this was two acupuncturists and in the process, you know, they kind of had a theme and then so they needled everyone in the same way because it was supporting this particular theme of the day. And while we were, you know, after we were all, I guess, needled, then we're all doing this sort of meditation and they brought out this instrument called the Mona Lina.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Which are you familiar with that at all.

Speaker 1:

No, I'm not.

Speaker 2:

I had such a visceral reaction to it when they started playing and it was like, you know, I'm like, and in a good way I'm like what is this instrument I? Afterwards, I went up, I, you know, like I got to play this, I got to say what, what is this I? So I have one.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Maybe we can play it some today. And you know, and that was like the next step, I needed to connect with that level of sound healing, healing. And then they also did private sessions. So I went to a private session and she has the big tabletop version which is like a full size chiropractor table size, so you lay on top, the strings are all underneath and the practitioner is playing these strings, so literally your whole entire body is vibrating, and that I also had a huge reaction to. There was this sort of energy that was sort of I guess for lack of a better word it was stuck and it needed to be able to be released, and so it was that instrument that released it. And then afterwards she said you really need to go to a family constellation. And I'm like a who and the what. Well, we're going to go on the star hunt, what? And so she's like no, here, call Michelle, schedule one. Okay, this was in 2015.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

And so you know I'm like okay. Well then I think it was a short, a very short while later there was I can't even remember what the trip was that I was planning to go on and for some reason I got this, like we used to call it, a spiritual pinch. It's kind of like a little boot and going you need to go see Michelle. So I'm like okay. So I took the you know the coward's way out and I emailed her. I'm like, oh, michelle, I saw, you know, so-and-so recommended you and I see that on your calendar because somehow I'd gotten hold of her timeline. Your calendar says XYZ, wednesday night is supposed to be a constellation and I'm leaving town the next day and it just feels like I should, you know, try to visit. And she writes back as only Michelle can. And you know it's like well, apparently you are supposed to have this constellation because the calendar was incorrect. It was actually supposed to be a meditation night.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow, okay, Okay.

Speaker 2:

And so she graciously had me come over. They did a constellation that night and, you know, in the process of it, you know setting up all the family and everything, and finding out maybe there was, you know, a miscarriage somewhere that was never talked about, or this or that. And then there was, you know, the grandmother, and all of a sudden it wasn't my grandmother anymore, it was my great-grandmother, and in that moment I recognized that same dense energy in her that I had just released, the one. Had you previously felt that in the guitar.

Speaker 1:

Not the guitar, but the music table. Wow.

Speaker 2:

And so I'm like there's something to this. And then, of course, you know, I go on my trip. It's a great trip, come back for more and more and and you know, then I'm in in constant, like, okay, my academic brain is trying to take over to to explain this, because my, I guess my passion or my thing is take difficult concepts and make them understandable, you know, for my students. And so, you know, I'm like trying to put logic to this. Like I go, you know I'd get there, and I'm like, okay, there's something woo-woo going on here. It doesn't make sense, how do you? But then you stand up in the field and it's like stuff happens and we, you know, you know, michelle, we had the joke you cannot make this stuff up.

Speaker 1:

You can't make this stuff up yeah.

Speaker 1:

And for the listeners, the person that we're, the Michelle that we're referencing. Her name is Michelle Blechner and she's, you know, for many years down here in South Florida has been doing family constellations and it started in her apartment over many years and a lot of us met through Michelle doing those workshops in her apartment and really kind of people from all different walks of life you know college professors, you know kind of like yourself and you know people from all different walks of life have come, come through and all over the world yeah, and all over the and from all over the world, yeah, really from all over the world.

Speaker 1:

so how, now that you know it's I probably a couple years removed from that how do you explain to somebody and, from very from an academic perspective, how do you explain to somebody the family constellation?

Speaker 2:

I'm always, I'm always curious about how that that is also went with Michelle and several other people over to Netherlands for training in the systemic or organizational side of things, because it was like I felt so deeply about that. I've brought it back. I've I've used some of the exercises and concepts with my students. You know little things that they can do either in an assignment or a class and stuff, and so it's been. You know I've gotten into it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, really.

Speaker 2:

A bit of it, and so you know, with the students I kind of just leave it at like this is this work that I do, that you know, to help businesses. It's just systemic, but in the last few years I was just telling sorry, ian.

Speaker 2:

Ian, our producer, yeah, that, or I was about to tell we had gone on a family history trip with my father and my siblings, just, you know, a few years before he passed, and for him, he had been working on his personal memoir or life story for probably the last 20 years of his life, and so there was something that sparked there, you know, with this idea of the family history, understanding you know more about our lineage and you know, and then, traveling, like from there I went to Romania and did you know the traditional dances there that I had learned in college? And so it was like so amazing to actually go to the country and experience the dances that people were dancing, with the people that were dancing them. And one thing that really struck me was that, you know, in spite of all of the different kinds of trauma, that this country and other countries have gone, through.

Speaker 1:

It's that aspect of dancing together.

Speaker 2:

That has, in a way, helped them survive Wow, and helped them feel some identity when all the other outside forces were literally trying to remove their identity. And through cultural just wiping out their culture any way possible, but they kept it alive through their dancing.

Speaker 2:

So back to your question that I'm sorry, I had a little journey to take before I could get to the question this idea of understanding that you know, in every country there's been some kind of trauma and so for now I just say I work with healing generational trauma because people connect with that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and the zeitgeist really seems like it's ready for that conversation, because people are starting to say like, you know, first it becomes pop culture, you know, and then it goes into like actual interaction. You know. They say like then it, and then it goes into like actual, into action. You know. They say like, oh well, I have generational trauma. I was like, well, now you can do something about it. Right that you can. Now that you've identified it, you can do something about it. And so I'm fascinated by that. You know that aspect of how it's starting into pop culture. And then you get almost like a like wielding it as a shield in a psychology talk, in your pop psychology talk, that people use it as an excuse, but then the reality is that using it as the way to heal is the appropriate application of it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because right now, kind of like the beginning of the Me Too movement, it was like finally people are able to speak out in some way about it, and then unfortunately, um, in some areas it kind of took on this sort of a badge of honor, like, yeah, me too, it's my badge, you? And then you know, in a way it lost. Well, victim, perpetrator, hood right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

The victim energy became so strong that it almost turned. It did in some instances turn into a perpetrator energy, and so then we lose the healing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's such a good point that you know it's almost like a new, like a new crack happens and there's like this big evolutionary force, right, like that we know from Jan Jakobsen, like this evolutionary force comes in, like the, like this movement, right, the Me Too movement is like, yes, so many people have been hurt by the perpetrator, energy, right, and that's that story's um very vast and wide. But then what do you do with that? Information is like, do you use it to heal or do you use it to craft your own axe, to grind and then further perpetuate that cycle of, of of pain, you know?

Speaker 2:

yes, yes, yes, yes. And that just reminds me of this beautiful quote, and I wish I had written that down before. I've shared it somewhere, but a couple years ago I went togo I think it was Ego and it was. The book was called the Choice. There's more to it. Are you familiar with it at all?

Speaker 1:

No oh my goodness.

Speaker 2:

So she was a gymnast, ballerina, da-da-da-da, and then also a Jew during that time time and was taken to auschwitz oh, wow and you know she says no, sorry. Back to the dance analogy it's a theme.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a theme, right it's a.

Speaker 2:

It has been a theme for my life. Yeah, because she had that skill. She feels, you know, like she mentioned in her book, that's probably what kept her alive, because she was basically commanded to perform for whoever and because she could they didn't kill her that day, but that was kind of like her lifeline, you know, is that she could distract the guards, I guess you could say, or distract something from. Because she had that skill, um, and you know, she survived. She went on to um and she was a student of oh gosh, he was another writer, and I just drew a blank, was it Victor? Another writer, psychologist, survivor of Auschwitz. But she tells her story too, you know, of not just surviving but then figuring out how to thrive. Afterwards she went on to become a psychotherapist, which was a fairly new field, I guess at the time in the 50s and 60s.

Speaker 1:

Can I ask you a bit about the shift between family constellations and systemic constellations, because I know you went to Slovenia, right? Is that correct? I didn't go to that one. No, I went to the systemic training. Jan Jakob Stam is a systemic constellations facilitator, and systemic constellations are a little bit different than family constellations, but of the same family.

Speaker 2:

Same umbrella it's the same umbrella.

Speaker 1:

At the end of the day, it's all constellations. But can you talk a little bit about what you learned during that process and some of the kind of highlights of that? Some of the kind of highlights of that?

Speaker 2:

Sure, sure. So a little bit of context. So when Michelle had gone to Slovenia and she came back and I was like telling her group she had the whole mosaic idea, and then she mentioned, you know this work that Jan Jakob does, and that he was having a training. So I'm like yes, and that he was having a training? So I'm like yes. Now, for me at the time and still I'm a associate teaching professor and my topic is marketing, so I'm in the College of Business so for me it was like oh, there's like constellation stuff for businesses.

Speaker 2:

How cool is that? So I was very drawn to that because I could see, you know, direct correlation for passing on tidbits to my students and impacting not just their lives but everybody. They ever touch right and so, yeah, so he was trained also with Bert Hellinger, who was the originator of this amazing work, and he went, you know, he worked with that. He was, I think, a biologist by trade, but then, as he was doing the constellation work, he kind of ended up developing this focus more on the business aspects. So all over the Netherlands it's quite widely practiced and a lot of businesses come in and resolve things, not unlike family stuff. You know, somebody's excluded, somebody's this, somebody's that Managers keep leaving. Why?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Some position keeps having turnover. What's going on with that? And you know it's all about uncovering that underneath layer, like what's there that's not being dealt with or acknowledged or spoken about or healed you know, because businesses are like an entity as well.

Speaker 1:

Hi guys, I'm John, host of the Zulu One podcast. At the Zulu One podcast we focus on having conversations about unresolved trauma and cultural and family systems. If you like what you're hearing, please consider becoming a monthly supporter. The link is below Thank you, I love how you can take in. You can take like concepts right. It's like the old pattern, the blockage. You know the team profit. You know you can take all these like super interesting. You know more esoteric than mom Right. It's like mom is, you know, on all the wounds and all the stuff that comes with mom Right and all the stories that come with mom that you can really take like the community or the product and focus it that way and and see it. I love that aspect of systemic work, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think, well, I mean there were so many exercises that came out of that training that I'm like, ah, I just love this stuff and so some that I've been able to actually apply to both students and groups that I've worked with is the one is recognizing what Jan Jakob calls leading principles, or sometimes guiding principles, which is, you know, a lot of students go, oh, isn't that just your mission statement? No, it's a little bit more. And you, you might see some companies actually using that language. I'm not sure if it's the same, but it's kind of. It's this exercise that has you go through you know, a series of reflective questions to kind of go why are you here?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know, like, get back to that and I call it that original spark of like when that company idea first happened, or when maybe somebody first started working for that company, or like. You know what was that original spark that said, oh, this is it. You know, I got to do this and and then taking that spark and going. Now you know what was the thought process, what was like you know your DNA of a company Like what is your purpose beyond just the products you sell?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so from there they kind of developed this. Two to three general keywords that kind of you could say are their theme or their principles that guide their decision making. One example of that that I felt was really profound there was this fitness company, and they had been primarily training fitness instructors, right, and then they had diversified, coming up with this app that they wanted to actually end up developing that would go straight to the customers. But you know, there was all this back and forth and back and forth, and so we did this exercise and it came out that, oh, we are an education company, so it really helped them kind of circle back around and re-identify their purpose for existence, in a sense, and their service to humanity is that we are education. And so the app is maybe not in our alignment, and so they went back to focusing on education related oh, that's powerful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and those guiding principles, like such a such a powerful concept, like we can find our guiding principles that are in our DNA, that we haven't identified yet, that that if we misplace those, if the CEO is not in alignment or the COO or the executive team or the whole company is not aware of that, you can, you know, it just resonates right. It'd be like we're an education company that just happens to do fitness or you know, whatever that is.

Speaker 1:

The people are like the light bulbs go, boom, boom, boom, everybody's like light bulbs go off and everybody comes into alignment. Do you see? Is that kind of the the effect that you would see?

Speaker 2:

yes, yes, because they're like it. You know it sounds, it speaks to the heart. Oh yeah, this is who we are, this is how we're serving humanity. And then, even though that app for them was a cool idea and had all the bells and whistles, it was like it's not actually the way we're aligned and so they were kept having trouble with it because they couldn't see how to get from them to the customer and yada, yada, yada. And I'm like, because that's not your direction and you can do that as a professional for yourself, as an individual for yourself. He's saying I do this exercise with my students every semester because here they are, in whatever degrees they're in, because not all of them are marketing students, they're coming from other departments, in the College of Business mostly, and they're all trying to. You know, they're just getting started in their life story right.

Speaker 2:

And so I actually just this semester I'm really excited about this too took it a step further. And so, you know, with all the AI stuff going on, I'm like you know what, the AI stuff going on, I'm like you know what, yeah, and this was right in the middle of a lecture, like we're talking about the assignment, and I'm like, oh, students, I just had a download and we're going to add this. So I added some AI languaging in there. So you know, I had okay. So first they do their spark. They do this like set of three or four questions that guides them to those two to three keywords. So then I created a, an AI prompt that added that all in there and with their keywords, and I said, okay, in this, you know, do this, this, this, this, this in this prompt, now create a really you know, I don't remember the words I use, but, like you know, create a really useful bio that students could use for their resume.

Speaker 2:

Wow, whenever they're asked for a bio.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then, of course, I did it on myself, just to make sure you know it was gonna work right, and I was like, wow, that came out that's odd it came out really good. So you know, here I'm. You know it's about a service that the students can then take with them and they have now some powerful language to describe themselves in their you know, upcoming gazillion interviews that they're going to go through.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And finding you know what your core guiding principles are. You can, when you find out your guiding principles, you can see if you're in alignment with those guiding principles right With the company that you're joining right. It's like like my guiding principles are peace and harmony and balance. It's like, probably Raytheon or General Dynamics is not the right company for you to work for. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2:

You might look at a nonprofit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, Exactly. It's like I'm going to go work for Halliburton, you know.

Speaker 2:

There's not always real harmony in the nonprofits either.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

And they're done that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, and they're done that. But you find that you know, depending on what your style is and what you're resonating with, you have the right fit with where you are in the company. It's such a powerful tool for a student, somebody that's just exploring who they are and through this marketing class, that they're learning how to market themselves, their true authentic self. You know they're marketing the true authentic self, not the. You know who they think they are Not.

Speaker 2:

the here's what you think I'm supposed to be.

Speaker 1:

Yeah exactly, or who mom and dad wanted me to be, or who all my friends think that I should be, or you know, whatever that looks like, that's a very powerful exercise and I bet you've found you know profound insights in your students.

Speaker 2:

Oh, goodness, I bet you found profound insights in your students going through that. Yeah, we did this and this was a live class, which a lot of mine are online, so this was kind of that fun experiment, even just going through the first part of the AI not the AI, because that happened after, but the spark, you know, guiding them down to their key words. You know, I actually played some you know meditative kind of music while they're writing Some of the stuff. These kids I'm just calling them kids, but you know, these young adults like some of the stuff that they were writing blew me away. I mean, it's like they actually allowed themselves to play.

Speaker 2:

And what was so cool is okay. So, granted, you know, the first couple of times one or two hands, you know. Okay, I'll share. By the time we got to the keywords, the two to three keywords, they were on board. I think it went from like two or three to now there was like at least 10 that were willing to share their keywords and I'm like oh, that's so cool I mean, I said this out loud I'm like you know our future's in good hands.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's beautiful. Our future's in good hands. Yeah, that's beautiful, and so have you. It sounds like you've almost integrated facilitating into teaching in some way, right.

Speaker 2:

That is actually my teaching style. After years and years of teaching and being a dancer mover, I'm like I don't want to sit and listen to me talk. I want to have discussions because, if anything, I learn more from my students. I mean because they all come with such amazing, rich experiences heartaches, tragedies, successes, you know. So it's like who am I to think I've got all access to the only knowledge they need?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and marketing is such a evolving thing as well. It's like constantly evolving and they're being marketed to right there, they're the, they're the current gen. It's like the best feedback loop that you would have, because you know, you get some of these textbooks and it's already three years old, Right, and they're like three years old. Three years old in current technology standards is like there might. They're not even talking about the like. There's this emerging technology.

Speaker 2:

It's like a whole nother decade.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, called social media, and you're like, they're just like they're decades behind and not TikTok or the new next thing, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And in fact in that class I dropped the textbook and I just wrote some stuff with AI. Yeah Well, AI consulted with me Makes sense. You know, and that's a big thing in the college campuses too, not to digress. But you know, just like with any new big tech, I remember I was going to college when the internet was first becoming a thing, right, and back then all the professors, oh my gosh, students are going to cheat, you know, and they're going to find all these workarounds, yeah, and yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

And so now same thing. Oh, ai, now the students are cheating and they're they're having ai write the answers for them, and you know. So it's like, okay, well, maybe you want to think about your teaching style maybe needs to change. Maybe stop asking them to write these mundane research papers and find out different ways to figure out what they know.

Speaker 1:

That's powerful.

Speaker 2:

I've boldly gone in and I'm like with every one of my classes, just about I'm integrating in each class now that I've added to the assignments suggested AI prompts to help guide them through the information.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's not like it's going away right, it's like it's not. It's here to stay. It's going to get more integrated into our lives. You might as well maximize the utilization of it. And you know, if it can, if it can kill the soul crushing repetitive tasks that kill your creativity right, why not? Right, If somebody's doing data analysis, it's like probably their best life isn't to go through and do data entry. Right, if you can have an AI to do that and you can have them connect to their creativity and their marketing and their great ideas problem solving you can really maximize the people's potential.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and so many of our students. Students, their first language is not English.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And you know English is not the easiest language for all the different kinds of writing that we're asked to do. So when they can add AI, it makes our life a little easier too. But yeah, it's not to be tacky, but it's kind of like the sex talk. You know they're going to learn it from somewhere. Where do you want them to learn it from?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you might as well like, give them the prompts that are going to maximize their creativity, especially in marketing. Right, it's like all right, I, you are now a you know, marketing producer. Now ask me 10 questions that are going to create the best commercial or the best pitch deck for this product. And we want to make it like earthy and like authentic and kind of hip, and we want it to be like a little with, with you know, rock and roll music in the background and do this stuff. And then you, it asks you all the questions and they'll create this awesome scene. And then you, you become an editor and a curator and then your brain like all the possibilities in the world rather than sitting there in front of a blank screen and like where do I start?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, exactly the hardest place for people to get started is oh, what do I do first? And so you know, you got this best buddy. Now that's AI going. Hey, here's some ideas to get you started.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And then you know I go okay, you're close, but I want more of this. Okay, that's closer, but more of this.

Speaker 1:

I bet it's revolutionized how you teach and how you can unlock potential in people, right, yeah, yeah. So what's kind of the things that you're seeing from students now? Are they more trauma informed? Are they more? Are they? Are they seeking more of their authenticity? Are they? Are they still blocked? Are they? What's, what's the? What are you seeing out there in the, in the wild?

Speaker 2:

I love it All of that. Okay, and now I've got you know two kind of really cool classes that actually invite. The one is international marketing, and so I'm going to say the first and most important piece of any of that is creating, you know, a safe space, making it, allowing it to be okay, Right, which you know, and you know we talk in the, in the constellation world, about the holding space.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Which, from from an educator perspective, you know that there's a lot of holding space that goes on in the classroom that we don't even acknowledge that we do Right, because we're trying to yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Especially with like initial, something like international marketing, right, that you'd be like there's so many cultural nuances that maybe you haven't traveled or you haven't been exposed to it. And you've other people's cultures and you know, like selling, selling, you know what do they call it like, uh, in in venezuela, they talk about this like you could sell a ketchup popsicle to a lady with white gloves. You know, it's like that ability to it, right, just the cultural nuances of what's happening with with somebody, right, it's like depending on their cultures. Like you know, kellogg's going into brazil. My dad worked for kellogg's, right. So how did they enter the brazil market.

Speaker 1:

It's like eating cereal wasn't a thing. That happened right. And how do you market that?

Speaker 2:

And you know you usually have how do you make it a thing?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, how do you make it a thing and it's just and that's a terrible example because we found that, you know, food has been a big issue, right, yeah, exactly so. But I would imagine that, like just having you know those nuanced conversations and creating a safe space, right, a location where they can play, like what you said, where they can play with these ideas and not feel like they're going to get shut down or, you know, voted off the island because they said something wrong that they're learning about, right, or whatever that is.

Speaker 2:

Right, that survivor island right, or whatever that is Right, that's Survivor.

Speaker 1:

Island. Right, yeah, exactly Exactly.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, and that's what I'm really enjoying actually about this course, because there are so many, you know, like examples, like you mentioned, of US companies or other companies going into new countries and we can laugh about them now, but the epic fails, like the things that didn't translate too well, such as Nova, the Chevy Nova.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it doesn't go. That's what's in Spanish it doesn't go, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then there was one. What was it? Braniff Airlines, I think. Think way back when they first introduced leather seats as a luxury class oh, okay and so the logo, or the, the tagline, was fly leather. Well, when you start trying to, you know, translate that to Spanish. It came out fly naked, because you know.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah. It's like, oh, that doesn't no, that culturally doesn't make sense. Yeah, no.

Speaker 2:

And then there was there's a whole bunch of examples of, of like taglines, especially that try to translate into other languages where you know like oh, finger licking good became, eat your fingers off.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so you know I start off with the humorous side of the themes and then we can kind of gently touch into even the nuances of the Spanish language across South America, which so many of them are from, and you know they bring up examples. Now they're feeling empowered to talk about that because it's like, oh yeah, there's this and this word means, you know, like girlfriend or nice girlfriend in this language, but the same word in this other country over here means like you know, not a nice girlfriend, yeah so you're kind of going wow, and just that's the same word, but it has a completely different you know, opposite context yeah, the cultural nuances of of each region and reach each.

Speaker 1:

You know each dialect, almost you know yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

and then you, like I'm, I'm sensitive towards the idea, or unaware, that there are still um, how would you say? You know they're, countries are taught not to get along or not to like each other around south amer, and you know I've got students coming from a whole bunch of countries and so, you know, this becomes almost that place to talk about some of the these like delicate nuances, to create awareness. You know it's like, oh well, you know, maybe instead of looking for all the differences that your parents told you you have and why you shouldn't like that country, maybe we could start seeing what's similar.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that brings me back to another dance story.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, I'd love to hear it, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So in college I did traditional dance as well as ballroom dance, and in the traditional dance we had the opportunity to represent American folk dances, which basically are borrowed European ones, but except square dance no, we still borrowed that, but we put our own spin on it, anyway. So we were taking American folk dances with our musicians and going to different stops in Europe where there was these huge dance festivals, and they would literally they were bringing dances in from multiple countries. We even had one, I think, from China, we had Turkey, we had well, back in the day it was Yugoslavia.

Speaker 2:

So we had Irish, German I think we had one that came from somewhere in South America, we had a couple from Africa, so it was like. So it was like you know, this wild group of people, and it was like you know, it was generally like five days long and there'd be parades, and then there'd be performances, and then they'd have activities for all the dancers to do, you know, to socialize. And so, you know, we're at this one little town in Germany called Schlitz.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

They claim they created the beer. I don't know, but you know we're all doing this Well, so we've done all our dances and parades and everything, and then at the social gathering for the performers you know, musicians do what they do, right? Oh, hey, you know this tune we basically poured out into the street and we started forming up our little circles and squares. And I can still remember like it was yesterday. I'm in this group and we're out in the street. We literally shut down the street. The cars were like what the heck? Down the street, the cars were like what the heck. And I remember there was. It was like a like a couples or partners, but you're in a square circle or something. So there was a guy from Yugoslavia, german couple, an Italian, a French, an Irish oh, it was the next week. There was the Turkish, but it was like you know, literally we had the whole world dancing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it just I mean, it was like just like it hit me oh, here's a little grandchild it just like hit me so strongly. We don't know the same languages, we don't practice the same religion, we don't have the same politics. Some people are like at that time it was still the early 80s, so Yugoslavia was not a free place.

Speaker 2:

Yugoslavia was not a free place, yeah, and yet, in that moment, because we all knew the same dance, we were like the best of friends doing something together, and it was like such a powerful even, however, many years later, such a powerful moment in my life, that it was like, wow, that suit, that dance, silly little dances supersede everything, or they, they go beyond everything the power of you know, because we could all hold hands and recognize that we were fellow humans who loved to move, who loved music, who loved joy, who wanted to be joyful, and that was so empowering.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I think that's a great place to land our plane. So, wendy, if people want to get a hold of you, how do they do that?

Speaker 2:

So I can be found on the handle at Dr Wendy Guess, like I'm on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or Facebook or Instagram, so just search me there. I'm also on YouTube. All the handles same DR Wendy Guess, like guess who?

Speaker 1:

Perfect, perfect. Wendy, thank you so much. This has been awesome. It's great catching up with you.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, John.

Speaker 1:

All right, bye. Thanks for tuning in to the Zulu One podcast. If you found value in today's podcast, please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Your support means everything to us and thank you for being part of this journey.

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John Acosta

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