In This Episode

Episode Highlights

• Transcendence in Performance: Clementine describes moments when the music “plays her” and she becomes fully embodied in the present.
• Blending Spirituality and Drumming: She shares how meditation and drumming, once separate, became intertwined and mutually supportive.
• Self-Compassion and Connection: Insights on how contemplative practice leads to compassion for self and others, and how this shows up both on the mat and on stage.
• Depth Hypnosis & Healing Modalities: Clementine explains depth hypnosis, applied shamanism, and empowering clients to find their own wisdom.
• Slow Enlightenment: A candid discussion about the value of gradual, integrative spiritual growth versus seeking dramatic, instant experiences.
• Creativity and Ritual: Clementine describes her creative process, daily grounding practices, and how time opens up for spiritual devotion even in a busy life.
• Overcoming Inner Critic: Stories of overcoming negative self-talk and finding healing through spiritual practice and music.
• Resources for Listeners: Where to find Clementine’s music, memoir, and healing work.

Unedited Transcript

[00:00:02 – 00:01:38] Hello and welcome to another edition of the Enlightened Light Podcast. I’m your host, Scott Allen. My guest today says that the spiritual journey doesn’t have to take you out of the world. It can take you deeper into it. Clementine Moss is a force. She’s the founding drummer of the electrifying all female rock band Zeparella, a gifted singer, songwriter, and deeply compassionate spiritual counselor. In her powerful memoir, From Bonham to Buddha and the Slow Enlightenment of the Hard Rock Drummer, she takes us on a journey from the raw energy of rock and roll to the quiet wisdom of spiritual guidance and shows us they’re not separate paths, but one and the same. Clementine has spent decades exploring what it means to be fully present, both on stage and in life. She reminds us that transcendence can happen on the most unexpected places. A crowded concert hall, a long van ride, or a heartbreak. Her latest solo music project, Nothing Will Keep Us Apart, continues that exploration with songs full of love, longing, and divine connection. This conversation is about healing, awakening, and the courage to be exactly who you are. Loud, soulful, and full of light. You’re gonna love this one. Let’s get started. Hello. How are you, Clementine? Thanks so much for joining me.

[00:01:38 – 00:01:41]Thank you, Scott. That was such a kind introduction. Yeah. Thank you.

[00:01:41 – 00:01:48]Oh, thank you so much. Well, I think. I think it’s great. I think it’s great you are in this band. You founded the band by yourself?

[00:01:49 – 00:02:02]Well, I founded it. It was my idea. But from the very beginning, I was with my guitarist, Gretchen Men. So she gives me a lot of credit because it was my idea. But she was there from the beginning. Yes.

[00:02:02 – 00:02:22]That’s awesome. Is it just. Just going by the name? Is it a Zeppelin like cover band? It is. That’s so great. And to have all of the women. That’s fantastic. You’ve described live performance really as a form of meditation. What does it feel like in your body and mind when you hit that transcendent space while drumming?

[00:02:22 – 00:03:25]Yes, I’m. That’s a wonderful question, because that’s the place that I’ve, you know, I look for when I’m on the meditation mat, which is that place where I feel as though the song is playing me. Right. That my thoughts. I’m no longer reacting to thought. I’m completely embodied in the moment of the song. That doesn’t happen all the time, certainly. And it’s funny because the more I Seem to, like, try for it, it goes away. And so it really is about both letting go and also having a background of practice behind me of focused intention. And it really is a great metaphor for learning an instrument. You know, we’re. We’re learning, you know, we’re very focused on the craft. But then when we’re in the moment, letting go of that, all of that study, and just being free to express.

[00:03:25 – 00:03:53]Ourselves, you know, it’s. Somebody told me once that it’s a lot like learning a language, right? So once you stop thinking about the language and you just realized you’re thinking in the language instead of about it, you got it. It must be the same way with. With the instrument as well, you know, similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did. How did this journey with music evolve into a spiritual practice? Was there some moment where you realized that the two are connected or was it always there?

[00:03:54 – 00:05:29]Well, my. My spiritual life and my drumming life started in my late 20s, and. And I thought that it was two separate things for a really long time. You know, I didn’t really talk about the spiritual aspect, the meditation and stuff. It was just something I did for myself. And then I would, you know, get off the meditation mat and run out into the world and, you know, be a rock and roll drummer. I started to really understand the connection, like, how much I was gaining from my meditation practice behind the drum set, especially when I was in times of difficulty. For instance, if I was playing at altitude, right, like when we were playing in Breckenridge, Colorado, it’s what, 10,000ft? And it’s really challenging in my body. And I realized I was using some of those same. Like recognizing that it was my mind telling me that it was difficult more than it was actually difficult. Like, so some of these. These lessons I figured out that I was learning on the meditation mat. I realized I was using them, you know, so much every day. And. And then I really realized, you know, my spiritual life is my life. There is no difference. You know, it doesn’t matter if I’m in traffic. I still see the reaction, you know, process of my mind and my emotions, and I’m. I’m able to bring in some of those tools and meditation into my daily life.

[00:05:30 – 00:05:40]It’s funny because I, you know, that’s sort of where I was going next. And, and, and I was going to ask you how you manage the tension between being a performer and being a seeker, and are they all the same person? But they’re intertwined.

[00:05:40 – 00:07:14]They’re really intertwined. And, you know, ultimately I think the, the, the point of contemplative practice, the point of meditation and all of this is for us to get to the point where we reach that place of real compassion for ourselves. When we’re sitting and we’re, we’re in the struggle with mind. There comes a point in a meditator’s journey where we become very kind with ourselves and we see the patterns, we see the cycles we’ve been spinning around in for a long time. And we, great we, Our heart opens to ourselves, and that compassion for the self begins to spread out into the world. You know, I remember having a big opening on the meditation mat and going out and going to work and seeing people walk down the street and looking into their faces and thinking, oh, if I’m struggling with these things, how much other people must be struggling? And my heart kind of cracked open. And, you know, when I’m playing drums on stage, it’s that, that expression is not just for me. It’s a communication with everybody in the audience and that, that movement back and forth of their attention and my attention and the music, you know, it just, it’s so, it feels so powerful to join us in, in that. So they’re even. That is connected.

[00:07:14 – 00:07:39]Yeah, but it’s not the beauty music, anyway. I think it was, you know, totally different genre, but I think it was Engelbert Humperdink or one of them people big back when said, you know, you could just sit back and take it all in and let it take over, let the moment take over. And I feel when you are there, it isn’t just you in the moment, although it is, but it’s everyone else coming together. And I just think that’s great.

[00:07:39 – 00:08:15]Yeah, it’s really beautiful. I had an experience recently where I do a drum solo in the show, and I stood up and heard the applause, and I realized that what I was feeling was that they weren’t really applauding for me. They were applauding for the moment, like for the thing that was present, you know, it’s, it’s not, it’s not me. It’s not Clem, you know, and I, I, I really love feeling, you know, feeling that I’m like an instrument for our celebration.

[00:08:16 – 00:08:30]Yeah, that’s wonderful. Can we talk about your, your writing and your book a little bit? You, you began as a writer before you became a drummer, Is that right? And, and you managed somehow to keep writing a part of your creative and spiritual life.

[00:08:32 – 00:09:25]Yeah, I actually, when I started playing drums, you know, I was in New York City. I was looking for, you know, something to write about, really. I felt like I hadn’t really lived and music happened upon me and this kind of strange series of circumstances and. And so I did stop writing. I mean, I was always. You know, I was always like, once you’re a writer, you’re always just kind of writing. But. But it was. In a way, I just. I kind of stopped the. The devoted practice of it, and I knew that I would come back to it. And sure enough, it started to happen, actually through songwriting first, and then. And then from there started to write essays and blog posts and more serious things. Yeah. But for a number of years, I really devoted myself just to the music.

[00:09:27 – 00:09:41]Yeah. And you. You did write your memoir, and that’s the one that we were just talking about a moment ago. I’m assume. Did it. Did it deepen your understanding of your own path, you know, to help put some of this into words?

[00:09:42 – 00:10:19]You know, it really did. And, you know, the big thing that I saw was that drumming was. It’s like a beacon in my life. It was like a light on the path, even, you know, when I started to study the spiritual. The. The spiritual counseling model that I do, when, you know, I went to my first class and the drum came out, it was like all of these light bulbs went off. The drum has been carrying me down the path that I guess I was meant for, or the one that I chose, probably.

[00:10:20 – 00:10:39]Yeah. Yeah. So you. You also have a new album, which you talked about, Nothing Will Keep Us Apart, and it explores the theme of love in its many forms. And did you write. Did you write the music for that, or is that still part of the Zeppelin?

[00:10:41 – 00:11:34]No, no, I write. Yeah, I write. This is my solo project. So basically I wrote an album called Clem and Clearlight that comes out this week. And I wrote. Yeah, I wrote that with a guitarist named Danielle, a guitardo, an amazing, prolific musician. And after that album was done, it was done maybe two years ago. Suddenly all these other songs started to come out, which was this, the record Nothing Will Keep Us Apart. And those are just piano, bass and drums and vocal. And with no guitar. So I thought, well, I’ll put that. Those songs out first. And now this album, Clement Clearlight, is coming out this week. Yeah. So I have a lot of fantastic.

[00:11:35 – 00:11:36]Yeah, that’s so great.

[00:11:38 – 00:11:39]A big creative spurt, definitely.

[00:11:40 – 00:11:56]That’s wonderful. And you’re also trained in modalities like depth of gnosis and applied shamanism. How do these practices support people in finding their own inner Wisdom. And do you do them regularly or. I have time for all of this kind of thing, to be honest.

[00:11:57 – 00:13:04]Yeah, I do have time for it. I don’t have a ton of clients, but I do have many clients who, you know, the great thing about this work is that, you know, usually it’s intense at the beginning, you know, many sessions at the beginning, and then it’s more maintenance over time because the modalities are so wonderful, wonderfully healing and. Yeah, they’re, you know, the way that. The reason that I. I work in the modality of depth of gnosis and applied shamanism as taught by a teacher in Berkeley, California, named Issa Guicciardi, the reason that I chose to work in those modalities is because it really is about empowering the client to find their own healing, their own wisdom. And it’s not Clem, the shaman, who is doing it. It’s the. I’m being a guide for the client to find their own inner power, their own inner wisdom. And that’s. That’s very meaningful for me.

[00:13:04 – 00:13:16]Yeah, yeah. Do you think. And it’s just a little, slightly off topic, but not totally. As a shaman, is that something you’re born with or is it something you can learn?

[00:13:18 – 00:14:27]I think that people who are called people are called to the path. I think anybody can be called. But, you know, it really is. You know, I look back at my life and I realize what a connection I had to the bigger questions from a very young age. And most of it was through literature, where I was always seeking. And then when I found contemplative practice in my early 20s, it just felt so natural, like I knew, you know, that this was going to be a part of my life, and I was just very open to those kind of things. So, you know, I think that it really is about intention. You know, I think anybody who has the intention to want to dive deep into the uncomfortable places, anyone who has an intention to want to help others to heal in this way, I think that would be the way that you’re called. And there are many people are called that way.

[00:14:27 – 00:14:43]Yeah, yeah. You’ve also talked about slow enlightenment. I know, I know for me and for many others, they have an experience. It happens fast. It’s dramatic. What is. What does spiritual growth look like when it’s not sudden, when it. When it’s quiet and steady, so to speak?

[00:14:44 – 00:16:30]Yeah. I think that you. I think one problem today, one difficulty today in the world is people are really looking for the big experience, and so they’re doing a Lot of plant medicine or different practices that are very extreme, and those can be wonderful, and they can also be extremely disruptive, and you can get a whole lot of information, and that could take a long time to integrate and understand. And unfortunately, because we kind of have a consumer mindset, I think people jump from experience to experience to experience without really doing that integration. We say in the depth hypnosis world that depth hypnosis is like ayahuasca in slow motion, reaching those same places that you might reach with the plant. But we’re doing it in such a slow, integrative way that the healing happens. Happens that way over time. So, yeah, I think that spiritual growth is something that we don’t really know what it is that we’re looking for. And I think we get sidetracked by thinking it’s. It is the big experience, rather than realizing one day that you have infinite compassion, infinite empathy for the. The world around you and for yourself.

[00:16:30 – 00:16:38]Yeah, yeah. Can you explain depth hypnosis as opposed to, you know, how different is that from what we think of when we think of regular hypnosis?

[00:16:38 – 00:18:04]Yeah. Depth hypnosis is a modality developed by Issa Guicciardi that combines Western psychology, especially transpersonal psychology, which understands that spirit is an aspect of healing, and Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, because Tibetan Buddhism took on the shamanic tradition, the bun tradition of Tibetan. So in Tibetan Buddhism, there’s a lot of energy healing, light healing, sound healing, and then traditional shamanism. And it’s combined into a really beautiful healing modality where we’re using things like power retrieval, soul retrieval, past life regression, those kind of ideas in a clinical setting. And the beautiful thing, like I said, is that, you know, the. The practitioner is really the guide for the person as they’re going on their own shamanic journeys in order to reach those healing spaces in an empowered way. And it’s really. It’s been proven to be very wonderful for people with things like ptsd, anxiety disorders, a lot of trauma release. Yeah, yeah, it’s. It’s a wonderful modality.

[00:18:05 – 00:18:19]Were there ever any specific turning points? You know, heartbreaks, losses, that sort of thing that maybe became a little bit of a more. More of a turning point, so to speak, in your. In your transformation, or was it always just a kind of slow and steady experience?

[00:18:20 – 00:19:37]Oh, no, many. Many big ones. I mean, I’ve had. I’ve had large, you know, those big experiences of opening. But really the thing that I think I was struggling with the most and the thing that I can point to as to why? All the seeking was a feeling within myself of a very negative voice, very negative thoughts about myself. And they, it was this cycle that I would get into in my mind and I didn’t understand where that came from. There were layers of shame, there was layers of abuse that I was getting from myself, from my internal life for most of my life. And I couldn’t figure out how to get out from under that and how to not believe it. And then when I started to practice depth hypnosis, you know, after maybe four, three or four sessions, that voice was so quiet I didn’t really hear it anymore. And I started to think, this is something I want to do with other people. It was really.

[00:19:38 – 00:19:54]It’s not something you do yourself like just meditation. This is something you have a practitioner that works with you. That’s right, yeah. And if somebody wanted to experience that, where would they look? Would they look at a metaphysical place or is this a hypnotist, a regular hypnotist or where would they go?

[00:19:54 – 00:20:33]It’s so the foundation of the sacred stream. Sacred. Sacred stream.org you can find all the practitioners there and learn more about depth of gnosis. Yeah, that’s wonderful. When they say hypnosis, it really is. You know, we’re working in an altered state. And the altered state is created by either deep meditative practice or by the sound of a frame drum. You know, the repetitive sound of a drum creates that deep meditative state within the mind and then we can work kind of outside the structure that the, the brain, the mind wants to impose.

[00:20:34 – 00:20:34]Great.

[00:20:35 – 00:20:35]Yeah.

[00:20:36 – 00:20:43]You have been a. I’m going to pronounce wrong. Vipassana. Medic, meditator. What is that? What is it? What is that?

[00:20:46 – 00:20:47]So vipassana.

[00:20:48 – 00:20:49]Thank you.

[00:20:49 – 00:22:07]Yeah, Vipassana, it’s a form of meditation. It’s called insight meditation. And vipassana meditation, you’re focused the front attention of your brain on something. So for many people it could be the breath, like you’re just watching. And there is a, there’s a wonderful organization around the world where you can go to a ten day silent meditation retreat. It’s all donation only and you’re there for 10 days, you take a vow of silence and you meditate, you know, 12 hours a day. And they teach you the practice of insight meditation. And this is you’re observing sensations on the body. So you’re bringing your attention to the top of your head and you’re moving inch by inch all the way down the body with the brain. So it’s giving the Mind, the front attention of the mind, something to focus on while the awareness behind you, behind that front attention begins to open up. That’s the best way I can describe it. And it’s a wonderful organization. You can find it at DAMA D H A M M a dot org.

[00:22:08 – 00:22:16]That sounds great. I mean, and people, I’m sure there are people sit there and say, oh my God, I could never sit there 12 hours a day and do that.

[00:22:17 – 00:22:27]Yeah, there are three, like, you know, sits where you’re really required to be there for one hour. And the rest of the time you can meditate in the hall or in your room.

[00:22:27 – 00:22:35]Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have any daily rituals or grounding practices to support the creativity, the spiritual connection?

[00:22:36 – 00:22:44]I do, I do, yeah. I do quite a bit of shamanic journeying. I do meditation. I have prayers that I do. Yeah.

[00:22:45 – 00:22:55]What would you say to someone who’s listening today and they say they, or they feel like they’re just too busy or too much going on in their life to walk this path?

[00:22:55 – 00:23:08]Yeah, it’s amazing how time opens up when you devote yourself to that. And even to say that, you know, for five minutes in the morning while the coffee is brewing, I’m going to sit in the same place every day.

[00:23:08 – 00:23:09]Yeah.

[00:23:09 – 00:23:30]I’m just going to watch my breath. I’m just going to check in with myself. I’m just going to give myself that. Those moments. It’s amazing how effortless other things start to become. And you start to find all of the time in your day where you, where you can, you can lose that time.

[00:23:31 – 00:23:31]Yeah.

[00:23:32 – 00:23:32]Do it.

[00:23:33 – 00:23:43]Is there anything you’d like to share and leave with our listeners about what you do, your book where they can find it, your music where they can see you?

[00:23:44 – 00:24:04]Yeah. Well, separatis playing plays all over the US and so we’re always somewhere and. And then all of my stuff is atclem the great dot com. That’s where you find the book, the spiritual counseling, the. The music. Everything is there. Clem the Great. Yeah.

[00:24:04 – 00:25:02]Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being here with us. This has been wonderful. I want to thank you all for listening today and joining us for this beautiful soulful connection with Clementine. I hope her journey from rock and roll stages to spiritual stillness reminds you that this not one way to walk a sacred path. There’s certainly more. And whether it’s through music, meditation, or the simple act of being fully present, transformation is always available to each of us. To learn more about Clementine’s music, her memoir, From Bottom to Buddha and Back and her healing work again. Her website is clementhegreat.com and if you’d like to stay connected with me, find out about my upcoming events and explore more episodes of the Enlightened Life podcast, head over to Medium. Scott Allen until next time, stay open, stay curious, and stay connected to your own enlightened life. Thanks for joining us.