We’ve been getting one question a LOT lately; How is Level 0 different from Primal?  

Having signed up for Level 0, I had this question myself.

If you’re not familiar with these workshops, let’s get you up to speed; Level 0 – Childhood Reawakening is a TNT workshop created and facilitated by Cheshire Cat to help participants gain awareness of how their childhood is still affecting them today, from self-sabotaging patterns to unconscious triggers. Primal is another workshop (not held by TNT) which also addresses childhood and childhood patterns.  

As such, it’s only natural that many would ask; Is Level 0 just another Primal? 

Luckily, I recently had the chance to ask Cheshire Cat directly (along with a few other burning questions)… 

So, Chesh, I’m just going to ask; Is Level 0 another version of Primal? 

Well, not quite. In creating Level 0, I took inspiration from a lot of places, including my experiences in Primal, but my intention is to add something new to what’s already out there.  

The truth is, doing the Primal workshop with Puja Lepp was a pivotal point in my life, as it has been for many people. It changed the direction I was headed in, gave me a lot of major insights, and started my fascination with this kind of work. I will always be grateful to Puja for that life changing experience. Dealing with your childhood is, in my opinion, an essential step in any personal growth journey. 

That’s why I spent quite a few years assisting Puja with these kinds of workshops, studying Dr. Janov, the originator of primal therapy, and following how the theory has evolved over time. This work is incredibly important, not just for me, but for everyone, and I’m very glad that I did that workshop. 

That said, when the TNT team encouraged me to create Level 0, I felt the need to add value, to add something new to what’s already out there.  

So I went back to the source, Dr. Janov, as well as all the other sources I’ve studied, and my own experiences, and I came up with a more TNT-style approach to this work. 

I have so many questions! Let’s start with the one I’m most curious about. What elements of your approach are new, compared to what’s already out there? 

Firstly, in my opinion, the complicated part of childhood work is that to feel what you need to feel, you do need to regress into your child way of thinking, but you can’t stay there forever. At some point, you need to come back to your adult mind in order to zoom out and observe how your child mind is operating. 

That’s really hard to do in your child mode. Children don’t have the right tools to see the bigger picture, but from your adult self, this is possible. 

I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met, in my sessions, in workshops, and in daily life, who’ve spent years working on their childhood issues but still fall back into anger or sadness whenever these issues come up. They’re stuck feeling sad or angry at their caregivers. That’s not really fixing the problem, in my opinion. 

That’s what I wanted to address in Level 0. Rather than just regressing into childhood states, I’m going to repeatedly help participants both regress and come back to their adult mind. Child-adult-child-adult… That way, they can feel what they need to, then zoom out and observe it, gain awareness of it, and start doing the real work. 

Secondly, I also wanted to touch on sexuality. Level 0 is not a sexual workshop, but TNT is a tantra organization. We recognize the importance of sexuality as a part of the whole person, and the effect that repressing or shaming sexuality in childhood can have on someone’s life.  

I can’t speak about every Primal workshop out there, I’ve only done it with one person myself. That said, in the workshops I attended, and in many workshops I’ve heard about from others, this wasn’t a topic the facilitators were comfortable touching on. I think that’s a shame.  

Say what you want about Freud, but he was right about one thing. Development of sexuality in childhood is a major foundational pillar of every adult’s psychology. I believe it has a big impact, not just on sexuality, but in many areas of adult life, and should be addressed. 

Finally, I also wanted to bring in the TNT philosophy of honesty and adult responsibility, similar to how we view it in the Level 5 ego workshop.  

What do honesty and adult responsibility mean in this context? 

I see a lot of people out there trying to do the work, but getting kind of stuck on blaming their childhood. 

To be blunt, there’s an expiration date on how long you can blame your caregivers for your own bad behaviors. At some point, you have to take ownership of who you are and your effect on the people around you.  

To quote J.K. Rowling: “There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.” 

The truth is, many of us were victims of our circumstances when we were children. Children are dependent on their parents for survival, they don’t have the tools or the mental maturity to question their parents.  

That’s why in Level 0, we’re not going to sugarcoat things. We’re going to be honest about what we’re seeing, and encourage participants to take responsibility for the ways they’re continuing to follow old childhood programming in their adult life. That’s the only real way to get out of these patterns. 

Like all TNT workshops, this is a workshop for people who are tired of feeling like victim to their circumstances, and ready to take back the reigns of their life and break the cycle. 

That’s especially important for anyone with kids. If you don’t break the cycle, they’re going to inherit the work you should have done yourself. 

That sounds pretty confronting for parents. 

That’s TNT. We’re not going to put sugar on shit. 

Yes, the work is hard, but twenty years from now, your kids won’t care if you had a hard time at a workshop. They will care if you fucked them up because you took the easy way out. 

Wow, you’re definitely not letting anyone off the hook easy!  

Let’s get to my next question; you mentioned taking inspiration from multiple sources. What sources did you reference? 

Well, I started with Dr. Janov’s writings, since he’s the originator of the primal theory. Janov’s work helped me refine my understanding of how early emotional imprints are formed, and how they affect the person in later life.  

I also drew some inspiration from Robert Augustus Masters’ work on the shadow, emotional repression, and spiritual bypassing, because those themes tend to show up when revisiting childhood experiences in a spiritual, rather than therapeutic, environment. 

I also have a lot of personal experience dealing with these things. I had a rough childhood, and I spent five years in clinical therapy dealing with the results of that. After therapy, I took a look at all those childhood patterns again, through the lens of my spiritual practice. Working through these patterns myself is what lead to my coming up with the tools I’ve been refining ever since.  

Additionally, I’ve learned a lot from both facilitating TNT workshops since 2017, and as a private session giver on ego work and childhood patterns for seven years. I’ve had the opportunity to see the way my clients deal with their emotions, what’s going on underneath them, and how they can actually lead themselves out of the patterns. They just need a little encouragement and the right set of tools for their situation. 

I want to bring the tools I’ve developed working on myself, with my clients, and with participants in workshops, into Level 0, so that at the end, everyone has the tools to help themselves as they carry on with their lives. 

We’ve mentioned therapy a few times now, so I just want to clarify; Level 0, like all TNT workshops, is definitively not therapy, right? 

I understand why it might be confusing, so let’s make sure this point is very clear. I took inspiration from lots of well-respected sources, but the Level 0 workshop is not therapy.  

I mentioned earlier that I had gone through therapy before looking again at my childhood through the spiritual lens. Level 0 is the result of that spiritual work. If you need to do therapy on your childhood traumas, please do that before coming to this workshop. 

Of course, we take safety very seriously, and as such will have a psychologist on standby during the workshop in case she is needed, but again, this workshop is not therapy. It’s a blunt, honest, spiritual look at the way your old patterns are still running your life, and how to gain awareness of it.  

In many ways, the way the Level 5 ego workshop addresses the patterns we fall into in our adult lives, Level 0 will help participants gain awareness on the foundational issues that lead to those self-destructive patterns (but more on that in another blog). 

Got it! Thank you so much, Chesh! This is going to make a lot of people very excited! 

I hope so!  

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So there you have it. Level 0 – Childhood Reawakening is a workshop inspired by primal theory, as well as Chesh’s own experience in the field, both as a coach, and as a client. It aims to give participants a look at their childhood and resulting patterns in the honest, unflinching way for which TNT is known. 

If you’ve been wondering if Level 0 is for you, I hope this made your decision a bit easier, and if you’re planning on signing up (as I have) for a long, hard look at yourself, your childhood, and your patterns, I look forward to crying with you there!  

• Check our calendar for the next edition of Level 0 – Childhood Reawakening! 
• And if you want to learn more about Cheshire Cat, click here! 

Until next time! 

Ru, 

Soon to be Level 0 participant