Oprah on The Hoffman Process, How to Forgive Your Parents – And Yourself

0:00Labor Day savings are happening now at the Home Depot with select appliances starting at$399. Plus, save up to an extra$1 ,000 and get free delivery on appliance purchases of$998 or more. Get a Whirlpool laundry tower featuring industry-first UV clean technology designed to reduce bacteria in the wash without fading fabrics. Plus, with great prices at the Home Depot, you can save on select appliances designed to make laundry day easier. Shop Labor Day savings at the Home Depot today. Offer valid August 27th through September 16th. U.S. only C-Store online for details. 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.

0:52And 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, 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?

1:51Well, I have heard it described as 10 years of therapy in one week, like a psychological detox, some people call it. And other people have said it's a therapy retreat only for the wealthy or the famous. Others may think it's a hippy-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 let you make up your own minds about it.

2:32Founded in 1967 by Bob Hoffman, the Hoffman Process is a week-long personal growth retreat designed to help people identify, address, and release negative thoughts and behavior patterns. When you get to the core of a human being, it's love. It's just light and love. And so our secret is that the motive force, the change agent, the beauty, the radiance is all inside of a person. 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.

3:15You 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. 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. 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.

4:13Hoffman 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.

4:28I welcome you, Raz Ingrassi. Thank you, Oprah. 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. Well, you've said, actually, without maybe knowing what the core of it is, and that is that when you get to the core of a human being, it's love.

5:11It's just light and love. And so our secret is that the motive force, the change agent, the beauty, the radiance is all inside of a person. 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. 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.

5:53It is a collective divinity of love. Love is the only thing that you take with you when you die. 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. We don't want to have to physically die. We don't have to physically die to experience it. We don't want to go through what Jeremy went through. 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.

6:37Because when you get rid of the obstacles, then what's there is revealed. And so we all want love. And everything, the society we live in now is so designed to... Block you from that. Well, just to give us substitutes. You know, we're all seeking symbols of success. And in our culture, success equals belonging and love and everything like that. We think it does. We think it does. We think it does. But it doesn't deliver. 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.

7:24Yes. 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 I say what's really unique about Hoffman is it has an ability to help you identify what those barriers are for you and a proprietary method for removing them. Okay. So the Hoffman process is, you all, 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 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 know you don't want to no and you know three three meals served on time, nutritious, great food, time for eight, even nine hours sleep a night.

8:47Most importantly, you have to give up your cell phone is what I hear. Yes, we call that a digital detox. Okay. Most people, they don't like it at first, but at the end of a week, you really notice how little you want it. Yeah, I know. My friend Maria did it, and I can say that because she said it on here. Sure. 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. God bless her. She goes, you can't even imagine how freeing it is to not to be attached to your phone. We all remember. We're of an age we can remember pre-cell phones.

9:23That's right. And it was pretty cool. 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? Bob was best known as a, he was kind of renowned as a psychic back in the 70s in the Bay Area. And he was friends with lots of people from, let's say, the Esalen Institute. 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 childhood, really. he could psychically read a person and tell them what happened in their childhood, that they turned out the way they did.

10:12And 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 Naranjo, a Chilean psychiatrist, the same Claudio Naranjo who introduced the Enneagram to the United States, 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. Is it 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 childhoods?

10:52Correct. Yes. Exactly right, Oprah. and moreover, people could get on a path of self-discovery. They didn't need someone else to tell them what happened. It was all right there inside if they only could learn how to tap into it. Right. So that's the way it began. In 1972, they held their first process, but for many years, about a dozen, 15 years, they were working four hours a night, four hours twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursday nights for 13 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. You had to be in the San Francisco Bay Area and you had to go for weeks.

11:3713 weeks. Yeah, who has that time? Exactly. 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? Well, I have to tell you, I was one of the woo-woo, hoo-hoo. Hoo-hoo, 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. But he had something pretty powerful. But in 1985 is when he switched over to a seven-and-a-half-day program. So suddenly it was, okay, people could go into a residential environment, stay there for a week, and go through all the changes.

12:17Okay, 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? Well, first off, I want to say that since I was 17 years old in Racine, Wisconsin, I have been a seeker. I don't know why, but at age 17, I became fascinated with Zen Buddhism. them. 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 41. 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 35 years.

13:06And the last time I heard them i didn't like them and i said to myself at that tender age boy when i have kids i'm not going to 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 yeah and so i was suppressed from crying and uh and so i when my son was not happy when he was crying it it was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I couldn't stand it. You heard yourself saying the same thing that your father had said to you. And have the impulse of saying and trying to suppress it. And every one of us has said, when you've been in that situation, I will never do this like my mother did.

13:51I will never do this. And then you end up doing it. Exactly. Yes. Why? Because we're taught how to parent by being parented. So I went and did the Hoffman process. I cleared that out. And honestly, our kids destiny was changed because i did hoffman and that later than liza did hoffman and our kids are super emotionally intelligent but 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 and spend the time with her and with my dad, who was, you know, keeping a vigil.

14:43So on the end of the third visit, I'm out in the—we're sitting next to him. It's in September, late in the month. And I was in the passenger seat in his car, and the sun was going down. I was going to 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 was a long silence, and then he said to me, I don't know how to cry. Can you teach me how to cry? Well, that was quite a moment. I did teach him how to cry. And she passed a couple days later. And we would talk every couple days. How did you teach him how to cry for a man who's never cried and raise you to not cry?

15:38Right. 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. You're out of control. Go out of control. I said, it's only going to last 10 minutes.

16:20you know 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 my guidance 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. Yeah. Both down and up. Yeah. And he became a happier, really happy person. 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.

17:22And 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. Oh, it would have been very, very different, yeah. 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. Labor Day savings are happening now at the Home Depot with select appliances starting at$399.

17:55Plus, save up to an extra$1 ,000 and get free delivery on appliance purchases of$998 or more. Get a Whirlpool laundry tower featuring industry-first UV clean technology designed to reduce bacteria in the wash without fading fabrics. Plus, with great prices at The Home Depot, you can save on select appliances designed to make laundry day easier. Shop Labor Day savings at The Home Depot today. Offer valid August 27th through September 16th. U.S. only see store online for details. Welcome back to The Oprah Podcast. I am so glad y 'all are here. We're talking to Raz Ingrassi, who is one of the leaders at the Hoffman Institute.

18:29And 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. Yes. Can you walk us through what they are? 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. Then our emotions and our intellect.

19:09Our emotions, what are you feeling? What is your mood? 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. emotions. So the intellect and the emotions are working together. Emotions will trigger thoughts. Thoughts will trigger emotions. And then there's a spiritual dimension of self. And this is what we call a spiritual dimension. You might think of it as the essential self or your most authentic part of you. You know, when I say, we call it spiritual self, but there's nothing to believe in.

19:55There's no religiosity implied here. And 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 really like myself, most like myself, like coming home. Oh, it's not like it's a new discovery. It's like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, this is me. It's that feeling, not a new discovery. And I heard that the second major component is something called negative love syndrome. What is that? 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.

20:46And we call it the parent-child bond. And what is a continuous flow of unconditional love, the child is comfortable. The child is happy. Everything is taken care of. But, of course, no parents are perfect. I was going to say, even the best of parents. No, best of parents can't give you everything you need. They probably are only 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 to know that I'll be taken care of.

21:41So 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 connect through negativity. Even though we say we don't want to connect through negativity, even though we don't want to, we do it. This is pre-intellect. We say that later. Yeah. Before we have an intellect.

22:25Before you've even, you're doing it even when you don't even know you're doing it. You have to do it to survive. And the thing is, it works. We survive. 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 what they're offering to you. 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. What Bob Hoffman uncovered is the motivation of the child to do that.

23:05They're doing that to survive. To survive, but they're also motivated to be loved. To be loved. Okay. Yeah, and so the motivation of the child 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 what's wrong, but we are, it's there. 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.

23:58And that's what Hoffman is about, is about how do you break free of that. Right. And it's how you break free of it in the areas that you really can't control and that are very important to us. The areas of love, how I feel about myself, my love relationship, parenting, you know, my career, my self-image, and all these things. You know, we learned how to parent from our parents. We learned relationships from the way they related to each other. 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.

24:46How are you, Orlando? Hi. Hi, Oprah. Hey, Raz. Hey, Orlando. Yeah, well, Orlando, I thought 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?

25:15You 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 app for the Hoffman when I'm in need of a little centering. So I would say I went to the Hoffman process about 10 years ago and I'd been triggered in a dynamic with my partner that had led me into a pattern of behavior that was very similar to the way in which I would say I had been grown up with my mother. the way that my mother had loved me and had interact with me. And I had gotten very confused about how to navigate the dynamics and the feelings that I was having.

26:09And I had recalled that this wonderful actor and a friend had mentioned a Hoffman Prosmas to me, like maybe a year previously. and I thought you know what I've never done anything like this yes I've done therapy yes I've explored the world and my mind in numerous ways but this was the right time for me I felt and so 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. I was just about to turn 40 and it was really the greatest gift I could give myself and the greatest reveal in my life up until that point.

27:04I felt like I'd almost been born again, if that doesn't sound too hippy-dippy. Was it like 10 years of therapy in a week? honestly yeah 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 group conversation and more intimate conversation in a smaller group, you get to sort of, and through watching the other people who may have parallels to your life, you get to sort of unpack the sort of trauma or the challenges of your upbringing and come to terms with them and really sort of release them and realize that those patterns of behavior aren't yours.

28:25And 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, but to use my, keep my body and mind in a space 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. And it was, It was really just the greatest gift 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.

29:14How are you now, Orlando, living your life differently today than before you went through the process? It's honestly like, it's like I can't unsee that. that. I think the work is ongoing. It was for me, it was the first step into self-care, self-love and an understanding about how I move through the world, some empathy for myself and others and the ability to not be conflicted or not be overwhelmed by some of the trauma that would come up in relationships or situations and have a deeper understanding, I suppose. You know, Raz started out saying that he did Hoffman himself because he heard himself saying the same things that his father had said to him when he was parenting Mike.

30:16And I know you have a 14-year-old son from a previous relationship and a four-year-old daughter with Katie. Has the Hoffman process changed how you see yourself as a dad and how you parent? Absolutely. 100%. I think 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 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 his emotions and at a young age and at that age, he's going through a multitude of them, to just allow those things to unfold.

31:26It'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 triggered. And now, even if I am, and if we come across a situation that we're in conflict about, I can take a step back, I can let some time pass, and then we can re-engage in a conversation where I'm looking at everything from his perspective whilst trying to lay in my thinking without it overwhelming or getting in the way of the process. So it sounds like the Hoffman process actually made you a better man, a better person.