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Your angels led you here for a reason. In this soul-stirring episode, I sit down with Dr. Dixon Chibanda, founder of The Friendship Bench, to explore how trained grandmothers are revolutionizing mental health with love, empathy, and divine connection. Discover how one tragic loss inspired a global movement, why grandmas outperform psychiatrists in healing depression, and how you can become an Earth Angel in your community. Dr. Chibanda shares heart-opening stories of hope, the science behind ‘talk therapy with hugs,’ and practical steps to start your own bench. If you’ve ever felt called to serve, this is your sign! Join my Angel Reiki School to unlock your gifts (in-person or online), manifest miracles with the 21-Day Money Challenge, or book a personal reading. Links below! Leave a 5-star review for a FREE reading—your angels are waiting. #SpiritualHealing #DivinePurpose

TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW

00:00 Introduction & Angelic Guidance Invitation
00:49 Julie Introduces Dr. Dixon Chibanda and The Friendship Bench
02:19 What is The Friendship Bench? Grandmas as Therapists
03:26 Clinical Trials: Grandmas vs. Psychiatrists 36
08:28 Erica’s Story: The Suicide That Sparked a Movement
10:29 Poverty, Mental Health, and Community Solutions
15:46 Nonverbal Healing: Hugs, Eye Contact, and Empathy
19:04 Success Stories: From Loneliness to Hope
24:32 Global Expansion: Bringing Benches to the U.S.
27:55 Grandmas’ Secret: Anchoring in the Present Moment
31:20 How to Start a Friendship Bench in Your Community
34:02 Donations, Training, and Joining the Movement
36:19 Closing: Julie’s Angel Reiki School & Resources

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Julie: Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome to Angels and Awakening. I’m Julie Janis, and I wanna start by reminding you that your angels are with you right now. Whether you’ve been asking for their guidance, healing, or hope they’ve brought you here for a reason, this is a sacred space where you tune into their messages, reconnect with your own intuition, and awaken the next chapter of your soul’s purpose.

[00:00:28] And if you’re feeling called to go deeper right now, whether that’s through our [00:00:32] upcoming in-person Angel Reiki school in June, the 21 Day Money Miracles Challenge in May, or a personal reading with me, just know your angels are already preparing the way. I’ll show you more about these beautiful opportunities later and in the show notes.

[00:00:49] But for now, open your heart. Ask your angels to be with you and let’s begin. Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome back to the Angels and Awakening Podcast. I’m your host and author, Julie Janis. And friends, if you have ever [00:01:04] wondered, how can I be an earth angel on this planet? Today’s episode is gonna show you how one idea, one moment can really change.

[00:01:15] So much and show you a way forward to help and touch the lives of other people. Today we have on author Dixon nda. He’s in Zimbabwe right now. He was just in London last week about his new book, the Friendship Bench. And wait until you hear this story. Friends. It is [00:01:36] amazing. They’re bringing it over here it is in the US as well.

[00:01:40] The friendship bench, and you’re not gonna wait. You’re not gonna wanna miss this story. Dixon, thank you so much for being here and spending some time with us today.

[00:01:49] Dixon: It’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure, Julie. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:53] Julie: So you have to tell everybody what the Friendship brunch is. You have grandmas who are trained to provide mental health support, and I think you are just inspiring [00:02:08] Earth Angels all over the world to be there for one another.

[00:02:12] Tell us what the Friendship Bench is and how you came up with the idea.

[00:02:19] Dixon: Thanks, Julie. So the friendship bench is essentially a brief psychological therapy, which is delivered by trained community grandmothers, so what we do is we train grandmas in the basics of cognitive behavioral therapy.

[00:02:36] After they are trained, they are [00:02:40] allocated a wooden park bench in their community. We then facilitate referrals. People going to the bench to sit and talk to their grandma. And we use social media for that. We use existing services within the community. And after four to six sessions of spending time with their grandma, these clients are then referred to join a support group in the community, which.

[00:03:10] Carries on [00:03:12] providing collective support of all of those who have seen a grandma. So in a nutshell, this is what we do but what is really important about our work is that it is rooted in rigorous research.

[00:03:26] Julie: Amazing. And tell us a little bit about that research.

[00:03:31] Dixon: So our research so we have over a hundred peer reviewed scientific publications, which include clinical trials.

[00:03:40] One of our most seminal [00:03:44] publication is a cluster randomized controlled trial where we compared grandmas against psychiatrists and mental health nurses in Wow. The effectiveness of alleviating symptoms of depression anxiety and suicidal ideation. And six months after sitting down on a bench with a grandma, people were more likely to be clinically free of all of [00:04:16] those symptoms linked to depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.

[00:04:20] So these grandmas were effectively in this clinical trial. Much better than psychiatrist at alleviating symptoms of depression and anxiety, not to mention loneliness, which is one of the other big things that we address on the friendship bench.

[00:04:38] Julie: Yeah, it’s interesting here in the States, my husband is a teacher, he’s a middle school teacher, and it, and I was trained to be an elementary [00:04:48] school teacher.

[00:04:49] And you just don’t like hug or touch other people. Even if a kid’s kind of having a bad day you’re really trained against. Hugging or comforting another person. I wondered if there’s an element, not just of talk, but do the grandmothers hug or put their arm around another person, and does that have, are we missing something without that peace?

[00:05:19] Dixon: So [00:05:20] that is it’s very interesting you bring that up. It’s a very important component of the work that we do. So, as I say, Julie, our work is really anchored in rigorous research. Yeah. And what we’ve been doing over the years is really observe these grandmas, what is it about these grandmas that make them so attractive for people, why do people wanna go and sit down and talk to a grandma?

[00:05:43] Why not talk to a peer? Why not talk to a proper therapist? And we are finding that these grandmas. Have this amazing [00:05:52] ability to use expressed empathy, which is the ability to make people feel respected and understood, but also they have amazing nonverbal communication skills. Eye contact, touch, hug, all of those things.

[00:06:07] And in fact, what we’ve done in recent years is. We’ve put everything that we’ve learned around non-verbal communication and what it is that makes a grandma so such an appealing person to talk to. And we’ve actually compiled that in our [00:06:24] first level training. So the level one training to do Friendship Bench is all about.

[00:06:29] Eye contact, how do you engage with another human being? How do you use empathy as a tool? How do you use silence as a tool? How do you use all the sort of nonverbal cues that we don’t normally talk about? They are so important when it comes to connecting with other human beings.

[00:06:46] And so that’s our first level training at the friendship bench.

[00:06:50] Julie: Wow. And so how does it work? Do, because I would, I would assume [00:06:56] that if you’ve got a bench that the grandmas show up maybe from a certain time, and that people, anybody can come up as they want to come up, they don’t need an appointment, or do I have this wrong?

[00:07:11] Dixon: So depending on where you are. Because the friendship bench is now in many different parts of the world. We use different approaches depending on the community and the setting where we have the bench. So here in Zimbabwe, [00:07:28] people walk up to a bench. You can walk up to a bench. The grandmas usually have specific times that they are sitting on a bench, so you can either be referred, through the primary healthcare nurse, through your doctor, through the police station, through your school teacher, and they all know when the grandmas are available and. You will then sit on the bench and engage with a grandma. In some parts, like for instance in Washington DC where they have friendship benches in places like libraries [00:08:00] and community health centers, people will directly make an appointment to sit down with with one of the the Washington DC grandmas.

[00:08:08] Julie: So I wanted to ask you next I, I think I read that one patient loss really changed everything for you and might have even sparked this idea. And I was just so touched when I read that. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

[00:08:28] Dixon: Yes, Julie? Yes, I can definitely, [00:08:32] during my formative years working as a psychiatrist.

[00:08:36] In a very big hospital here in Zimbabwe. I lost a patient of mine to suicide. Erica was her name, and I write about Erica in the book, in my, in the book about the friendship bench. Erica had been under my care for just over two years and, at a time when I thought she was doing well, at a time when I thought she was thriving.

[00:08:58] I get this phone call from Erica’s mother telling me that Erica had just taken [00:09:04] her own life. She hang herself from a mango tree. So it was pretty traumatic for everyone, including myself. But I think what actually drove me to the idea of friendship Bench was the fact that Erica’s mom.

[00:09:19] Told me over the phone that they knew that Erica needed help. Erica’s mom, Erica’s father, they all knew that Erica needed help and needed C to come to the hospital. Erica herself knew she’d had a relapse and she needed to come to the hospital, [00:09:36] but Julie won’t believe this. They didn’t have the equivalent of 10 US dollars to get onto a bus.

[00:09:44] To come to the hospital where I worked. In fact, they were trying to raise 10 US dollars to get onto a bus so they could bring Erica, who was evidently suicidal. And while they were trying to raise that money, she killed herself. And that made me realize, apart from the trauma of having to deal with that, in the imposter syndrome that, that kind of [00:10:08] all happened at the same time as a result of her loss at a time when I thought she was doing well, but it also made me realize that I needed to find a way of taking mental health care. Out of the hospital and into the cl, into the community, and that was really the beginning of the idea of Friendship Bench.

[00:10:29] Having these benches in communities where grandmas provide therapy or grandmas are the first port of call in any community for people [00:10:40] who are struggling psychologically and emotionally.

[00:10:43] Julie: Yeah. Well, and here on the show, I really believe that there is a God on the other side, there is heaven.

[00:10:53] And that our loved ones, our angels speak to us. And I really believe that Erica led you inspired you to start this movement around the world. And I feel there’s so much. Purpose in her coming through [00:11:12] in that way.

[00:11:13] Dixon: Yeah. The other thing that is definitely true, Julie, but the other thing as well that gave me the con, that conviction that I needed to do this was Erica’s mother.

[00:11:26] Because I think it was like five months after Erica had taken her own life, Erica’s mother paid me a visit. And that was the beginning of a relationship with her mother, who, she helped me to. To deal with the loss of [00:11:44] Erica. I think we helped each other to deal with that traumatic loss and because every time she would come and visit me, we would talk.

[00:11:53] I would cry. It was the first time in my life that I cried as a therapist, as a psychiatrist in front of a, a client or the mother of a client. It, it had never happened to me before, but that bond between the two of us was just. So strong. She helped me to heal from that loss.

[00:12:13] Julie: Yeah. Well, and the [00:12:16] work that you’re doing now of people around the world can come to one of these benches anytime and just talk. What do you think it is about just sitting and talking that is so life changing because it really is.

[00:12:36] Dixon: I believe that human beings, wherever you are in the world, human beings connect through stories.

[00:12:43] Yeah. And that’s the bottom line. And when we create that [00:12:48] space for people to feel comfortable with being vulnerable and then sharing their own stories, I believe that’s when healing actually begins. Healing does not begin when you walk into a psychiatrist’s office or a therapist’s office.

[00:13:07] I believe that healing begins when there’s space to connect through stories.

[00:13:15] Julie: Is it because we see ourselves in one another? We can [00:13:20] relate. We can. There’s really a truth in stories and with grandma’s, I think, in my relationship with my grandma, I didn’t have to hide anything, right? Like when I was talking to my mom, maybe I had to hide a little bit to make it how she wanted.

[00:13:39] Things to really be, even if things weren’t that way. I felt that early on in my marriage too. Like I had to say things in a way that maybe weren’t truthful, but was what the other person wanted to [00:13:52] hear, or how they wanted to hear it. And then being a mother too, you can’t tell your child about everything that’s happening.

[00:13:59] They’re not an adult yet. And so there are these different dynamics and relationships that we have within life where, we don’t always have the ability to be. Really truthful. Is it the truth in, okay, well I could go to my grandma and I can tell her how it really is. I can tell her what’s really going on and she’s not gonna judge me for [00:14:24] it.

[00:14:24] She probably has seen something in her life that she can relate it to, which is gonna bring a level of peace.

[00:14:32] Dixon: Yeah, that is exactly what it is. These grandmas they have this amazing ability to create that space that makes us feel comfortable to share our vulnerabilities. And I think that is one of the key sort of attraction to this program.

[00:14:51] But also when you look at grandmas and elderly people in our [00:14:56] communities, they have all these, I like to call them the battle scars of life. They have the battle scars of life, which they carry with grace and dignity, and there’s so much we can learn from them. They just have this amazing ability.

[00:15:13] To occupy space in a positive therapeutic way, and we all desperately need people like that in our communities.

[00:15:22] Julie: Friend, if you’ve been asking for a sign, this is it. Your angels [00:15:28] are ready to guide you into your next chapter of service healing and spiritual expansion. First, I wanna personally invite you to our next in-person Angel Reiki school.

[00:15:39] It’s June 6th through eighth, 2025 in Oakbrook, Illinois. This sacred three day training will certify you in mediumship. Energy healing and becoming an angel. Messenger yourself while giving you the roadmap I used to build a six figure spiritual business or keep your day job and learn [00:16:00] skills to serve and earn thousands each month on the side.

[00:16:04] If your soul has felt this calling to. Serve. This is your moment. Space is limited, and the Angel Reiki school always sells out. To sign up, go to the angel medium.com/gi-certified. The link is in the show notes. And if you can’t travel, our online version of the Angel Reiki School begins on the first of each month, so you can start from wherever you [00:16:32] are right now.

[00:16:33] Next we begin a brand new course on May 11th that your angels created just for you. It’s the 21 Day Money Miracles Challenge. This transformational experience is available only inside the Angel membership, and we’ll completely reset how you relate to receiving divine prosperity and the soul of money.

[00:16:56] Over 21 days, your angels will show you how you’ve been playing small and how to align with [00:17:04] soul sourced wealth and sacred overflow. These are tools and teachings that you’ll use for the rest of your life. The 21 Day Money Miracles Challenge is only available in the Angel membership now for $111 a month, join for a single month or become an annual member.

[00:17:24] Start today and receive a beautiful bonus activation to supercharge your receiving energy. Go to the Angel medium.com angel membership to [00:17:36] begin, and if you’re seeking deep clarity, healing, and confirmation. You can also book a personal reading with me where I connect you with your angels and loved ones in heaven to bring through loving guidance and support.

[00:17:49] Book your session now@theangelmedium.com slash readings. Again, it’s in the show notes. Friends, I’m expecting that we’re gonna need over 50 volunteers to receive a free angel reading from my students during the in-person Angel Reiki school. Some will be [00:18:08] live in the Chicagoland area, some will be online.

[00:18:12] This is June 6th through eighth to be considered, all you have to do is leave a five star positive review of this podcast. Submit a screenshot using the contact form at. The Angel medium.com/content. Leave your five star review today and you might be hearing from me really soon. Friends, your angels are already preparing the path ahead.

[00:18:35] All that’s left is for you to say yes. Yes. [00:18:40] Say yes to life. Now, back to the show. I’m sure in the work that you do, you’ve had people that have had success stories going to visit the Friendship Bench, and I can’t imagine just how rewarding and fulfilling it is to read some of these stories. Tell us some of the outcomes that you’ve seen because of the friendship bench.

[00:19:04] Dixon: Yeah. I think one of the most important outcomes I’ve observed over the past decade or so is [00:19:12] this realization that. Yes. Folks out here are poor. There’s a lot of poverty in in the places that we work and the places that we bring friendship bench whether it’s in Washington DC or in New Orleans or here in Zimbabwe.

[00:19:29] But, I’ve learned and realize that there are two types of poverty. There’s material poverty, where you. You don’t have things and then you have mental poverty. And what we increasingly see at Friendship Bench [00:19:44] is when people come to the bench, they have this mental poverty as well.

[00:19:48] They’re just struggling psychologically, emotionally, how do I deal with these problems? And often they have numerous issues that they’re trying to deal with all at once, and what happens, at the Friendship bench is the grandmas. Equip you with the skills to realize that mental poverty that you have actually is something that you can remove and start focusing on issues [00:20:16] about yourself and your community that actually help you to become a better person.

[00:20:20] So through the Friendship Bench, we have been able. To get people to get jobs, to engage in income, community income generating projects, whether it’s gardening, whether it’s bread making. There’s so many things. And I tell you one of the quotes which I share in the book is from one of the clients who is part of a.

[00:20:42] A group that has been running for more than 10 years after spending time with her grandma. [00:20:48] And she says, in and I’ll just read that quickly to you if you don’t mind. ’cause I actually have the book here with me. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And so, and her name is Lin Dwe.

[00:20:58] And she says, and Lin UE says how ironic that we have been brought up to believe that we are poor. When actually everything we need is right here in our community. And these are the kind of stories that we see consistently everywhere. When people [00:21:20] feel they have the capacity to move on despite the challenges that they’re facing when people have hope.

[00:21:31] Magic happens. Yeah. And so in, in other words, the other thing that I like to say about the friendship bench is it’s not really a mental health program. It’s a program that instills hope in people. Because when you have hope, you can carry on another day.

[00:21:50] Julie: Yeah. And that’s [00:21:52] so true.

[00:21:52] That human spirit is a thread that connects all of us. That makes us all one. And it doesn’t matter how much you have or what you’ve gone through in life. All of us are dealing with something. I was thinking about that this morning, that I had a lot of challenges moving every couple of years growing up and, going through my parents’ divorce and I was thinking how grateful I am for my daughter who hasn’t had to go through that. We’ve stayed in one place. She’s had just [00:22:24] one community that she’s grown up in. And my husband and I are still together, and yet my daughter has. Face things in her first 14 years that I will never face.

[00:22:35] Just a lot of medical issues, very medically fragile infant and coming into some health issues again this year. And we all are going to go through things in our lives and there are so many people who think I think. Sometimes people feel as though they’re bad or wrong [00:22:56] to experience challenges, but we’re all going to have them come up and having this resource, the friendship bench, I just think it’s like one of the best ideas that I have ever.

[00:23:12] Heard of. It brings so much love and hope and peace and connection and community. How are you getting different friendship benches set up and if somebody in Illinois or [00:23:28] the United States wants to help set up a friendship bench here, are they able to reach out to you? How does that work?

[00:23:36] Dixon: Yeah. You can reach out to us or you can go to, you can go to our website, www.friendshipbench.org or if you’ve got a copy of the book, it’s at the end of the book. It actually. Says, join the movement, and if you want to join the movement, it describes how you can join the movement if you [00:24:00] want to set up a friendship bench in your community in your school, so, yes. And Julie just two days ago, we were actually training predominantly. People from the USA who are starting friendship benches in different parts of the United States of of America. So we’ve just completed our first level one training with them. And so that’s another way if you really want to do this, we can train you.

[00:24:27] And if you are 60 years old and above, [00:24:32] the training is free.

[00:24:34] Julie: Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Do you have to be a grandma or do you just don’t have to be of a certain age.

[00:24:40] Dixon: You don’t have to be a grandma. You don’t have to be a grandma. You just have to be 60 and above. But we do train young people as well.

[00:24:48] We have a. A peer friendship bench program in universities in the country as well. And I’ll tell you when we first brought Friendship Bench to the United States, it was in New York City through the New York City Health Department [00:25:04] and in New York City. We introduced Friendship Eng in Harlem and in the Bronx, and we worked with folks from.

[00:25:12] A diverse group, the LGBTQ plus community. It was very broad. So I emphasize the Grands because that’s the gold standard. The Grands are the most effective friendship ventures that I have. Witnessed, and I’ve been doing this for a long time, and the grandmas, they just get it, I don’t know what it is about grandmas, but [00:25:36] they just get it.

[00:25:37] Julie: They do. It’s interesting. It brings me back to a time my grandfather passed away 10 to 13 years before my grandmother left. Yeah. And, when he passed, I remembered her being so angry at him for leaving and it wasn’t that he wanted to go.

[00:25:59] He had struggled with cancer for a number of years went into remission and then it came back with a vengeance and it just struck me [00:26:08] that in, in the months and years after his passing, she was just so. Upset that he left. And I felt like what she was really struggling with is who and what her new identity was.

[00:26:24] Dixon: Yeah. Yeah. And when

[00:26:25] Julie: I talked to her about that, she said, Julie, I think I wanna go back to school. And she wanted to go back and she wanted to learn more about theology. She wanted to study some theology and philosophy, [00:26:40] and I thought. Wow. And I’ve seen that in so many women who lose their husbands, that they’re looking for another identity.

[00:26:50] And when I see this vision of the friendship bench I just am so grateful that you’re here because this world is so divided right now. It’s

[00:27:02] Dixon: extremely divided. Yeah.

[00:27:04] Julie: And this is a way to bring people together. Hearing one another’s stories, just being love and giving [00:27:12] love and being hope for one another and feeling that hope.

[00:27:16] I just have this mental image of earth, angel, grandmas, and young people participating in your program around the world holding these benches. And I think that you’re going to. I, you probably see so many people who are recipients of information sitting on the benches who end up transitioning into being earth angels to others and being part of leading on the [00:27:44] bench eventually too.

[00:27:45] Dixon: Yeah. And the other thing I would like to just add, Julie, I don’t know how much time we have, but we have a global epidemic of loneliness.

[00:27:55] Right now. And we’ve realized at Friendship Bench that the grandmas or elderly people who do friendship bench work don’t struggle with loneliness, but they also have much lower rates of depression, common mental disorders.

[00:28:14] And [00:28:16] non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and hypertension, and again, this is all part of our research that we have carried out, and so we interviewed, we carried out this big qualitative study to really. F try and find out what it was that was making these grandmas feel so good when they were actually spending most of the time listening to what we perceived to be depressing stories.

[00:28:43] People struggling with all sorts of things. Living with HIV, intimate partner [00:28:48] violence and the grandma said doing this work. Gives them a sense of purpose and belonging, and that’s why they thrive. So it actually works both ways. It’s not just for the person who’s coming to sit on the bench, who’s struggling, but it’s also good for the grandmas.

[00:29:06] Julie: Oh, you’re making me cry. It’s just so beautiful. And I think that there are so many people who I’ve talked to and I’ve, the audience knows I’ve struggled with suicidal thoughts myself, on and off throughout [00:29:20] life, and so I just. Get this on such a deep level. And I think that there are so many times at different points when we go through life, I remember being a college student, thinking, what can I do to help?

[00:29:33] And you’re just going through different parts of your life thinking, how can I help another person? And this is it. And it’s simple and it’s magnificent and it’s so deep and it’s so profound. And what you’re doing, Dixon just is changing the world. And I hope that there’s a [00:29:52] friendship bench in every single city around the world because I really, truly believe that this place would be completely different with more people like you and just a friendship bench everywhere.

[00:30:07] Dixon: Thank you, Julie. Thank you. Yeah.

[00:30:09] Julie: Oh can people donate if they feel called to donate to the program? Is there a way to do that?

[00:30:16] Dixon: Oh yeah, please. We would love that. It, it costs us 25 US dollars to support a single grandmother each [00:30:24] month, so, that’s how little it costs us, but I just wanna, before, before we start concluding, I guess I’m looking at the time I wanna share.

[00:30:35] A, a response that the grandmas have. I love that and shared with me about. What, you know when I asked the grandmas, what is it that you actually do on the bench? ‘Cause there are so many things when you look at it from a research point of view, we are collecting data, we are screening patients or clients try to [00:30:56] establish who’s suicidal, who’s not suicidal, who’s depressed, who’s anxious.

[00:30:59] All of those things happen at the brain. So there are quite a lot of protocols. But when you ask the grandmas what it is that they really think. They do, in a single sentence they say, we bring people into the present moment so they can be anchored into the now moment because that’s all we ever really have.

[00:31:24] And I find that so beautiful. And and when I [00:31:28] reflect on that, it is true. The more time we spend rooted in the present moment, the more we appreciate ourselves. Life and everything that’s around us, and according to the grandma, problems come from our focus on the future and the past.

[00:31:48] That’s a very simplistic way of putting it, but that’s how the grandmas look at it, yeah. And so they think, if you bring someone into the present moment, you improve their life. You make them [00:32:00] see things differently.

[00:32:02] Julie: Yeah. Of course there’s a

[00:32:03] Dixon: lot more that is required, when you think of some of the other support systems that might be required depending on what a person is struggling with.

[00:32:11] And I also just wanna say, at Friendship Bench, sometimes we do refer people to see a psychiatrist when someone actually presents with what we think requires not just talk therapy, but will benefit from medication as well. So there is room for that too, but I just want to.

[00:32:28] Emphasize that the vast majority of people [00:32:32] out there will benefit from talk therapy, from engaging with a grandma who is rooted in the present moment.

[00:32:41] Julie: I think there’s the level of care you feel from grandmas too. Like they actually care. They’re invested in you. Yes. And I also believe from studying spirituality and interviewing so many wonderful people, that you feel a connection to all things a oneness with all things.

[00:33:01] When you’re in the present moment.

[00:33:03] Dixon: It [00:33:04] is you’ve hit it right on the head there. It’s connection, Julie. That’s what it is. Connection, and I think there’s a big science on the subject of all, a WE and like, what is it? What happens when we are in a state of awe?

[00:33:20] When we are in a state of awe, we’re in the present moment, and I think this is what really happens to a lot of people when they sit down with an empathic elderly grandma who has this lived experience, has seen and done it all, and they say to [00:33:36] you, share your story with me. It’s just that present moment.

[00:33:40] Having someone focusing on you.

[00:33:43] Julie: Yeah. Without

[00:33:43] Dixon: looking at their phone.

[00:33:45] Julie: It is amazing. Oh my gosh. Dixon, you are an earth angel here. I know people can buy your book on Amazon. We’re gonna put that link in the show notes. Tell everybody once again where they can find you, your work. Donate and read the book.

[00:34:02] Dixon: Sure. I think the easiest way of getting me [00:34:08] www.friendshipbench.org. Or just Google, Dixon Chi Banda. And a lot will come up.

[00:34:15] Julie: Yes. And are you on Instagram as well?

[00:34:18] Dixon: I am on Instagram. I am on everything.

[00:34:22] Julie: Perfect. We’re gonna put all of that in the show notes. Thank you for being you. Thank you for the work that you are doing in this world.

[00:34:30] I just can’t thank you enough.

[00:34:32] Dixon: Thank you, Julie, for having me. Thank you and everybody out there, remember, be rooted in the present [00:34:40] moment because that’s all we ever have.

[00:34:43] Julie: Thank you.

[00:34:44] Dixon: All right then. Bye.

[00:34:46] Julie: Thank you for being here, beautiful soul. I know in my heart that you’re not listening to this by accident.

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