Moving The Body Through Loss With Avni Trivedi

Osteopath, doula, and zero-balancer Avni Trivedi marries Eastern and Western practices to treat grief in the body. After a myriad of losses including being present during her grandmother’s stroke, she studied the body, which—intuitively—became a doorway to studying grief. Today, we’ll talk bout how the body responds to grief, even years after a loss, how to cope in a world of six feet apart during COVID-19, and how to deal with feeling stuck by moving the body.

Transcript

Grief Growers,

I'm really delighted to introduce you to Abney Trivedi,

Who knows a lot about grief and where it lives and how it lives in our bodies.

Abney,

Welcome to Coming Back,

And if you could please share your lost story or your relationship to grief with us.

Oh,

That's a big question.

It is.

We'll go right out of the gate.

I know that from a really young age I was exploring grief and what it meant to die and was asking those kind of big questions that parents probably don't really want to have to answer.

And I've had multiple bereavements over the years.

So I come from an Indian background and we had an extended family and both of my grandmas at different times shared a room with me and both died,

One when I was 14 and one when I was 17.

The one who died when I was 17 probably hit me kind of hardest in terms of bereavements over the years,

Because she had a stroke and I woke up in the night to her having a stroke and with blood coming down her face.

And then she ended up in hospital for a few days.

And it was just at that time of life in the UK doing A-level,

So it's our kind of high school certificate and not wanting to be at school while she was lying in a coma.

And also not having much understanding,

Especially losing a grandparent in some cultures wouldn't be such a big deal because you're not expected to be that close to your grandparents.

But from my perspective,

It was so devastating.

And then over the years,

There have been some consecutive ones of a really close friend who was killed in a car accident.

A close auntie who had a very rare brain disease and died within a year,

Which was a huge shock.

And most recently,

A very close cousin who died again in a car accident.

So it's been lots of cumulative ones over the years,

Rather than one big significant one.

Yeah,

And I think that almost,

Well,

If I can phrase it in like a twisted way,

It almost grounds us to have more loss than less loss because it's not one giant disaster.

It's like,

Oh,

This is happening quite a lot.

It's not like we took one leg off a one legged stool.

It's like we're taking off multiple supports from something that has a lot underneath it.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to get at here,

But when we lose a lot of people,

It kind of reinforces that idea of like,

Okay,

Loss is universal.

It continues to be life changing.

And it continues to happen and it's enormously frustrating and cumulative.

Yeah.

So I wonder,

With this first loss,

The loss of your grandmothers,

Can you speak more on like the importance and the significance of extended family and perhaps why those losses are still valid?

Because I think you touched on something significant in like American culture.

We're like,

Oh yeah,

Grandparents,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

But especially in other parts of the world or in other cultures,

Like grandparents are such cornerstones of the family and it's heartbreaking to lose them.

Yeah,

And especially the proximity of having shared a bedroom.

It's like there's a closeness of,

Especially with the one who died when I was 17,

There was a lot of tending to her and combing her hair and giving her asthma pump and things like that.

So that kind of loss is a real physical loss as well.

And I felt split in two cultures because in my culture,

Your kind of friends and family will come over and they're there to support you in grief.

But I actually found it such an imposition because all these people would be in our house and we had sheets on the floor,

So people are sitting on the floor and they're just kind of not really saying anything.

And I just couldn't quite understand like,

How is this supposed to be helpful and why am I making tea for these people when I'm the one who's going through loss?

So it actually brought up more anger and irritation than I found it helpful.

Yeah,

There's kind of a resentment of like,

If you're going to show up,

Do something.

Make yourself useful.

You get me my tea.

I don't make you your tea.

Oh my gosh,

That's really funny.

I don't know that I've ever heard that before.

I have heard.

I'm familiar with this idea of like people came over,

They just sat on the couch and stared at me and it wasn't helpful at all.

But then this idea too of,

You know,

I wish they just go away.

I don't know how this is supposed to be helpful.

Yeah,

This questioning of what's the point?

And I think that comes up a lot in grief too,

So thank you for sharing that.

I want to dive into this area of kind of what happens to our identity and role in the household when someone in our immediate family dies,

Because it sounds like there was a lot in your identity or who you were about caretaking for your grandmothers.

And so when they died,

It's like those physical movements in your asthma medication,

Helping with your hair,

Things like that.

It's like those movements cease and it's almost like where does that energy go or how else does it manifest?

Yeah,

I never thought of it in that way.

Yeah.

Yeah,

That takes me so far back.

It's kind of bizarre to think in that way.

But yeah,

There's the kind of unspoken just everyday,

Almost monotony that just suddenly isn't there.

So yeah,

Where does that go?

It reminds me a lot of when I used to do grief workshops in person,

Back when we can do things in person,

At least here in the United States.

I had a widow stand up and tell me,

She said one of the hardest things for me was switching my identity as one of a caregiver for my husband to no longer a caregiver.

She's like,

I don't know what the next thing is going to be.

But to grieve that identity,

In addition to grieving him was enormously hard,

Because there's something that happens when we are the physical caretakers for the people in our lives.

Yeah,

And that just really resonated with me because for me personally,

I don't have very close relationships with my grandparents,

A few of them died before I was born,

One died when I was in fifth grade,

And the other one that's far away.

So it's not something where I'm very actively in their lives.

And even with my other family members,

My dad,

My sister,

I'm not physically proximity close to them.

And so there's not a lot of that grief that would appear.

So it's just interesting to think about,

But I want to pivot to your work and talk about how you got into studying the body.

And then how you decided to incorporate grief in it,

If that was a decision at all,

Or if you just came in knowing that grief belongs here.

I got interested in studying the body by studying originally physiotherapy or physical therapy as you'd say in the States,

And then getting into more kind of healing techniques like hands on healing and Shiatsu and Reiki and the more kind of spiritual aspects of healing techniques.

And then trained as an osteopath because I wasn't happy doing physiotherapy anymore.

And after doing a pediatric training in osteopathy,

I decided to become a birth doula,

And my aim was to support women in birth,

And then also be able to treat them in their in their kind of pregnancy and postpartum.

And for many doulas,

Because you're,

You're kind of helping life to come into the world.

There's also that thinking of death as well so I think it's,

It's almost like the birth keepers are also the honourees of the rituals and the rights and death.

And I think that philosophically and spiritually always felt a really relevant part of what I do,

Even though actually working with loss and grief has only really been in the last three years in my kind of professional capacity.

Oh,

But that's a really familiar sentiment of,

I work in birth,

Therefore I also work in death.

And even if it's never said out loud when people tell me here in the US that they're like OBGYN nurses or or doctors or things like that I'm like,

Oh,

So you're working in death care,

And not necessarily all the time.

But there's this.

Yeah,

Kind of lingering like in the back of your head is that always sits there too.

Even if you're not seeing death in the moment but something else is dying is something else is arriving.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And it's one of the bits of working in kind of pregnancy and women's health that doesn't get talked about enough that if you're supporting life.

Unfortunately you're also working with loss a lot of the time,

And the amount of women who've had that type of grief,

It's,

It's really,

It's there and it's in the body and it doesn't get talked about enough,

And the things that are available.

You know,

A questionable of how effective they are.

So there's just,

You know,

I think if you're working in that field you can't help but be be touched or affected or impacted.

The last thing that scares me of one of the very first episodes of coming back we did was with Corin Holmes,

Who's a writes about miscarriage in Australia,

I believe.

And on the show we talked about,

And I had never heard it phrased this way before but but miscarriage or the loss of a baby is one of the few or only losses that happens within the body.

And the fact that the loss occurred but I am the location where the loss happened.

And that,

I mean talk about identity shifting is a whole.

You know,

If you'll pardon the expression like a mind fuck that'll really mess with your,

Your head and your perspective on your story and and who you think you are.

But then,

What the world around you is also.

If I am a place where death takes place,

Or has taken place,

Maybe not continuing to take place but if I'm a place where death is actively happening what happens then.

Yeah.

I wonder,

You teach this workshop is it called moving through loss.

Yeah,

That's right.

Yeah.

Tell me more about kind of what you've seen with people you've worked with in terms of where grief lives in the body because I think a lot of people perceive physical grief as heartbreak,

Or maybe even brain fog,

But so rarely attribute loss to an experience that physically happens and I know people listening can't see me but I would really just draw a whole,

A whole circle around my whole body.

And,

And people ask me this question all the time of like his grief and physical things I feel like garbage,

Or my hands and legs are number I've been having heart palpitations or I can't get rid of this pain in my spine like there's,

There's all these physical symptoms people have and yet so often people rarely speak about how and where grief shows up physically.

I mean that work came about from my experiences working hands on with people and just the body says so many things if you're really sitting and listening,

And there's been many times where I felt something in somebody's body that's felt like it's older than the symptoms they're coming in with,

Or grief sometimes feels like a kind of emptiness in certain parts of the body so typically like around the back of the heart the rib area,

Grief energy just has like a slight dullness.

And it doesn't present in the same way in anybody so you know it's really individual,

But it can be things like around the heart area just kind of collapsing inwards like a heartbreak that you're talking about,

It can be that dullness I was saying in the ribcage.

And if it's been an unexpected death or loss,

Then it can be in the diaphragm,

Because shock can often get held in that part of the body.

So it's from me kind of feeling things in treatment,

And then having dialogue about what could be the link and often it would be a big kind of impact or trauma,

To then just wondering like okay how can I work with this because it's not efficient to work one to one,

And especially with the bigger aspects of our life they often need ongoing work.

And so I started to pull together different tools that I'd used myself over the years,

Particularly for my own processes when I didn't find that counselling on its own was really enough,

Like it's just always felt like it's skimmed the surface for me.

And I guess as a body worker because I so firmly believe that the mind and body is connected and it's part of a kind of Western approach where we keep on separating it,

That it doesn't make sense.

But yeah,

That's how the approach came about.

Thank you.

And I love that you landed on there's places or energies that feel older in the body grief energy has a dullness.

And it's such a strange thing when,

When you know,

And maybe the person that you're working on or working with.

They,

They know but maybe there aren't words for it yet.

So I'm wondering if you've ever had to break the news to somebody or how you start having that conversation of like there's something deeper here and I think it's grief in the body.

I,

I,

In the past I've struggled with this because I felt,

Is it my place to be introducing that conversation because that person's coming in with something else.

But then there's the other part of me that thinks if I can feel something in someone's body,

And my,

My palpation or my sense of touch is pretty accurate,

I think,

Or then that's the feedback I get given by clients,

That I think it's important if I can feel something about someone I want them to also know it,

Too.

It feels an imposition otherwise that I know something about them that they don't know for themselves.

I tried to say it in quite a kind of open way,

Without being you know they've not come in for therapy so that's not an agreement between us but I'll often just say,

You know,

This is what I'm feeling and these are the kind of things that can typically be related to it.

And then if that opens the conversation enough for them to want to respond great and if they don't,

Great.

Have you ever had an experience where somebody receives that and they're like,

I don't,

I don't want that news I don't want that message.

I've had a couple of times where people have kind of been a bit British about it.

I don't know what that means.

But then it's come up in later sessions that actually that did point to something,

And it's not always such a clear loss either,

You know,

There can be things like say from there was one lady who comes to mind who last year she came in for treatment and her loss was related to redundancy,

That she wasn't expecting,

And it was a company that she really felt part of so it really stripped her how you were saying about identity it really stripped that away for her.

So it wasn't something in her consciousness she would consider a bereavement,

But it was.

Yeah,

Well and I think so much of loss and trauma in our bodies to is related to these things that aren't death.

Yeah,

Because they are so I mean we talked about identity is like the core of who we are,

And then there's these places like the heart and solar plexus and the sternum that are also deeply connected to each other,

Or we speak about,

I've lost my support system and all of a sudden I have back and shoulder pain.

And I'm like,

I don't,

I don't think that's a coincidence what's happening there.

I kind of want to get into I'm not sure how much literature you've read on like the mind body spirit soul connection but I'm immediately thinking of like Louise Hayes,

You can heal your life,

And Carolyn this is Anatomy of the Spirit.

Anatomy of the Spirit is one of my all time favorites but I wonder,

Has there ever been a point in time where you've been working with kind of the spiritual mind body connection and thought,

This needs more than kind of like the fluff side of it.

It can be tempting to think that one resource is the answer for everything,

As in,

If I'm feeling pain in my shoulder I must have a long standing issue of feeling the weight of the world and I need to do mindfulness things to work that out,

As opposed to I need to see a doctor or I need to see a physical therapist or an osteopath or something like that.

I wonder how you talk people off the ledge into getting some kind of treatment instead of subscribing every single pain to some kind of mental or spiritual connection.

Oh,

That's a good question.

I think that even if it has a,

Even if their symptoms have an emotional root.

In some ways it doesn't even matter what people do to access things or to try to make things better.

It's the fact that they're doing something,

So it could come from just some self care practices,

Or it could be doing something like I'm a big believer in creative pursuits as part of kind of self care and feeling better,

Because it's the expression,

You know,

Just something somewhere for the feelings to go.

Or just being in nature,

So it doesn't have to be prescriptive,

But it's just giving someone a sense of okay these are tools that could work for you or,

And I particularly find that things that don't take very much time,

Because when someone's really in the thick of it,

It takes a lot of energy to do something that's kind for yourself.

So it could be something as simple as sitting and having a cup of tea undisturbed or having a few moments in the morning just watching the sky,

Or things like that,

But just,

You know,

I think like the little accessible aspects make far more sense.

Yeah,

I love that because then it,

I get this image of like being able to prop yourself up with something more than like the one resource,

Which is really helpful and that kind of contributes to that picture of holistic mind,

Body,

Soul,

Spirit,

Like all these kind of ingredients coming together to contribute to wellness instead of,

I have this so it must only ever be connected to this.

Yeah,

Thank you for sticking with me as I got around to that question I was like what are we really trying to say here.

Yes,

And I think I've seen this trend of some people having like one book on body and spirit and using it as their Bible and I'm like,

I'm worried about you.

In a way,

Yeah,

Because it,

In some ways it means that it's no longer work through the whole thing comes crashing down,

And also other options are off the table for consideration and there's so many ways to as we talk about on the show like come back so many ways to come back from loss.

I wonder,

You spoke earlier about the body says so much if we only sit and listen to it.

And if I think grief is such a disconnecting experience that so often we have such a hard time plugging into our bodies again,

After loss.

And I wonder if you have like some simple exercises or mantras or practices that you use to get into the body again after loss occurs.

One really simple thing is just grounding.

So,

Either massage your feet,

Or if you have someone that can massage your feet for you,

Or standing on the ground,

You know,

On the grass or the beach if you're lucky enough to be by the beach,

Or have like a kind of a heavier blanket on your feet and legs,

So you're physically feeling plugged into your body and trying to really tune into the skin as well because I think with loss.

It's almost like a layer is taken off so things are much more sensitive and people can have much more impact or stimulus can have much more impact like being in a noisy space can have far more irritation in your system than it would otherwise.

So even just like how you tend to your skin how you put something on you know using like a body butter or something,

Or just even having that visualization your skin is a barrier that keeps out the stuff that you don't want to let in,

And it's it's your kind of protection.

So you're not having to close in more than you would naturally when you're grieving.

Some of it I think is just it just washes over us we can't control it,

And there's other things that you can do to connect again.

Right,

Yeah,

And I think that sometimes especially for me when I was grieving I wanted to plug into my body and stay plugged in.

When in reality it was like,

Oh no I need to practice plugging in over and over and over again it was like I plugged the cord into the outlet and then it would get yanked out again and be like oh crap I gotta come back and put this thing in and then it would get pulled out and you'll plug back in.

And it seems a little relentless or unending of a process,

But it kind of,

It kind of is to ground and reground and reground and recount and constantly be putting some kind of earth underneath our feet.

I love the weighted blanket idea to this day the best gift that anyone ever gave me in grief was a weighted blanket and it came two years after my mom's death,

But I no longer struggled really with sleep.

After that,

Yeah,

There's something safe about being that heavy.

The other question I kind of wanted to ask was if a greever is in their body,

But they're feeling absolutely just depleted exhausted stuck end of my rope,

I have,

I have awareness of my body,

But I'm laying on the couch and not going anywhere or I'm sitting in the chair and I haven't moved for three hours so often I hear stories of one of my clients referred to this being in frozen mode,

And just in this place of I'm in my body,

But it's not doing anything.

I wonder if you can speak to that or maybe ways to,

To move through that experience because it feels from what it sounds like it feels so much like a stagnation that's just not got any movement to it at all.

Yeah,

Stagnation,

Often there's tiredness because things haven't been moving.

So,

A minute or two of physically moving the body,

Like doing something like,

I was going to say star jumps but not as vigorous as that just where the arms can really be moving you can shake your arms you can move your spine,

Just to let some energy go,

And often there's a tiredness that's built up from things that haven't moved but then once you let the movement happen.

Some real exhaustion can come through that needs the deep rest.

So,

I think balancing the activity and rest.

That's fascinating to me because it's reframing the stuckness as like well maybe I'm not tired enough,

Like maybe I need to really wear myself out and then I can sleep,

Sleep,

Or work,

Have a nap or go sunbathe with my eyes closed kind of thing.

But I got to really wear myself out first yeah because I feel like it feels like being stuck in between this place of like,

I have some kind of energy because I'm aware that I'm here,

I'm very much in my body,

But then,

But I'm just not moving.

And so,

To even set a timer for 60 seconds or 90 seconds and some people have this gift I can run in a loop around my house.

Kitchen living room hallway,

Kitchen living room hallway.

And run around or do a dance or something and then get to a real kind of tired that allows for rest it's like climb the hill the roller coaster so you can actually get to the descent,

As opposed to just coast coast coast coast coast.

The whole time.

That's fascinating I've never heard that before.

Thank you.

Yeah.

What has been some of your most interesting experiences with grief or trauma in the body and how it's shown up.

Yeah,

For myself,

Personally,

And I had a,

I had a cough.

This is when I was training to be an osteopath,

And I'd had a bereavement,

And I had a cough that just kept on going,

And I,

It was a quite a violent cough and it would make me throw up on a daily basis and I'd have to run.

I worked in an office where they had stairs and I'd have to walk,

Run to the loo and go and throw up and it had just happened,

Day in day out,

And being interested in alternative medicine I was trying lots of different things and I ended up seeing a homeopath.

When she asked me what had been going on in the previous months.

She said,

Oh,

This is a shock because of this bereavement that you've had.

And she just gave me a big dose of armica for shock.

And it changed that cough.

And what's interesting is that I still get a seasonal what I call my grief cough every March which is when this death happened.

So the kind of the history the story of the body is something that I find really interesting and I've had so many experiences like that when I've been working with clients of what gets picked up or what comes up in conversation.

And I think that's how powerful that just in that situation what was such an express an express grief,

Because it was a bereavement where it was really close friend,

But he wasn't my partner,

Or he was my brother's best friend he wasn't my best friend so it was almost like the displacement because it wasn't my significant somebody.

And I just didn't get my systems are so effective.

Yeah.

And I think that really speaks to this.

This notion or idea to,

I'm thinking vessel vendor Cox body keeps the score but it's almost like we have this clock that resets on January 1 of like what grief events are we anticipating this year and I've learned through the years that I have to take her to mid March.

Pretty easy because that's when my mother died and then the months that followed up to her birthday.

But,

Uh,

I have a graver say gosh I'm always so run down around the end of the month and I was like when did your person die again.

And they're like,

Oh,

On the 27th and I'm like,

Ah,

Something's happening here with that,

And I think they're so attached to that.

I'm speaking to Megan divine and another episode of coming back and we,

We spoke about how there's kind of two different ways that grief shows up in the body sometimes we have like phantom griefs or phantom pains just like the person who died.

And it's almost as if we're so close to them we mirror exactly what's happening.

And then sometimes the total opposite happens where they die a certain way and then we just have pain or or disease or something else somewhere else in the body,

But it's always really interesting to see how and where it shows up as a result of that.

I know we've mentioned a couple books on healing in the body so I wonder if you have any other favorites that we haven't shared here.

I would say Anatomy of the Spirit highly enough I just love that book.

Eastern Body Western Mind by Anadéa Judith is a good one as well.

Body Wise by Hela Ann Henkin.

Let me just scan the rest of my bookshelf.

Sure I know I see your eyes gone.

I can't remember the title of his book,

But I practice an approach called zero balancing,

And the founder is a man called Fritz Smith,

And he,

His approach is on the energy and the structure of the body but he's written in a way that's really easy to understand about stored energy and stored kind of pain and tension in the body.

I know we're in a place right now with COVID-19 where we're not able to see friends,

Family,

Co-workers,

People that we'd normally touch.

So I wonder how we can get back in touch with ourselves when skin hunger,

Or like a lack of touches very very present in the world.

This can happen when we lose a partner or a very dear friend or sibling of course but also right now in the age of COVID-19 I think I went to the grocery store the other day and somebody brushed up against my elbow and I was like,

Oh my gosh that hasn't happened in like four months.

Somebody just touched me it was amazing.

There almost wasn't that recognition until that moment of like holy cow it's been so long since I've been able to hug somebody.

Yeah.

So what do we do when,

When skin hunger or a very deep desire for touch,

But an inability to have it is present.

I mean,

It is skin hunger is such a real phenomenon.

And we also have our own hands that we can use touch for ourselves so wearing things on our skin that feel lovely wearing fabrics like cotton and bamboo or silk or things that feel really pleasing to the touch.

And even treating yourself to body products that actually feel nice to put on so I'm really fussy about like the feel of a serum or an oil or to me that's therapeutic in itself.

And I'm giving space to really focus on touch so you know brushing your hair with attention,

So that can be a mindfulness exercise in itself.

So,

Yeah,

Unfortunately we're not getting that type of input from one another,

But there's definitely practices we can do to help ourselves.

And through this time I've been doing a little series on Instagram called touch notes and I share little kind of just ideas of very quick ways that people connect with that sense of touch because I think it's something was,

I mean I'm a body worker and I recommend people go for body work,

But it's not something to outsource to other people either.

It's capacity of putting our hands on our own bodies and having an effect.

So it erases this story of I'm only able to access this from someone outside myself.

And I think that's really beautiful because there's this perception that if I want to do this nice thing for myself I have to book a massage,

Once a month,

Or I have to go get a pedicure or I have to get a haircut or or something like that where I know that I'm going to be touched by somebody else's it's almost like a guarantee but we forget our own capability like our own power in that too.

The power of just putting hands on,

Like I was treating a little one week old baby this afternoon,

And it just always strikes me that there's a simplicity you know I've learned all these different techniques over the years but it doesn't come down to technique and presence and attention of hands on,

And that's enough.

I think that speaks to grief work too because at some point no matter how much school you do,

How many books you read or how much training you do it's like how are you showing up for for people around you.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh I love this idea of a reclamation of that,

That power.

As you were saying about booking massages and things,

With grief,

You don't always get the schedule of when you're going to feel certain things.

That's right.

So to be able to do something for yourself when you need it in that moment,

Or at least that same day is far more doable.

And then if you get the bonus massage wonderful but you've also got things you can access yourself.

Well,

And I think part of it too for people who are grieving and I know this is true for me is,

Is,

As I'm brushing my hair as I'm putting on lotion or something else.

I also have to give myself permission to be mad that it's not the kind of touch that I want.

But like,

I know this is second best I know it's not the thing that I'm really craving I know it's not this.

And my best is good enough for right now so it's like I have permission to be mad that I can't go hug my friends,

And I'm brushing my hair.

It's like almost like letting those two things be true at the same time,

Especially when somebody we love dies and like I can't share a bed with them anymore.

But I can buy a really awesome body pillow off of Amazon stuff it under the covers or get an electric blanket or get a weighted blanket or something like that and it's almost like it's okay to be mad at the substitute for touch as you're continuing to practice touch.

Yeah.

Yeah,

A good friend of mine created a brand that when her father had cancer and was dying and then passed away.

And she created a brand of restorative yoga props,

Because she got so into restorative yoga that all she could do was like collapse onto her yoga pillows and things and then that became a business for her in the end,

Because it was just,

That's all she could do all she could do was just really flop.

And so,

You know,

There is something of the letting go and giving yourself space to let go and just be with whatever we're feeling.

And I love that word too.

I just had the energy to flop.

That's so true and grief too.

Yeah,

And so to create something together with hard isn't it I mean,

Especially if you're only getting two weeks of compassionately where you're allowed to crumble and then you're expected to just carry on as normal.

It's takes a lot of energy just to keep going.

So to have the permission to flop on a regular basis I think is really important to flop.

Well,

I wrote that down for you too as you were sharing your story,

The beginning is that you were at school,

While your grandmother was in a coma and almost something like that reinforces this idea that keep calm carry on.

Even when somebody that you love is in the process of dying.

And so it's hard to go against something that starts when we're so little.

Yeah,

I mean I remember with that situation,

I was so angry at my school and it affected my motivation and it just made me just like,

I don't care about these exams so you know the school we're putting all this importance of don't miss school because these exams mean so much.

And actually they don't mean so much to me when this is going on in my life so yeah the expectation that we should just carry on this just,

You know,

Sometimes there are more important things in life.

I agree with you and that brings me to this cliche that people toss around of like the best thing you can have in your health or above all be grateful for your health,

Or kind of these ideas that if you don't have health you don't have anything.

And yet,

Myself included,

So many people especially when they're grieving just kind of like,

I don't need to worry about my health there's other bigger things to pay attention to.

So I wonder if you found a different way or a different angle to look at this idea of like health as the ultimate foundation,

Because the old tired cliche of if you don't have your health,

You don't have anything it seems to just sail over people's heads anymore.

I like the idea of getting some of the basics right like if you're not drinking water,

Drink water.

If you're finding it hard to sleep,

At least get some rest in other forms obviously lots of people suffer from insomnia when they're grieving,

But there are ways of trying to get rest in your system.

And it's a good idea to not be having foods or beverages that are too much for your nervous system so you know this is the time for not trying to live on coffee or sugar and things which you know often that's what the body wants when it's had those kind of experiences but it does make the emotions harder to deal with.

So,

I think without trying too hard,

There's still,

So I think if with healthcare just have a certain amount of gentleness or softness,

So it's not standards that are hard to keep up with,

But just some basic things like say with nutrition.

Often it's just really simple,

Digestible comforting food that people need,

They might not feel that they need even to eat,

But that's the easiest kind of thing to break down so.

So yeah with with gentleness just to do the basics.

Yeah,

And I think that way it doesn't seem.

I'm grieving and I've given myself another mountain to climb,

Like that kind of perspectives like oh great another everything to carry,

Which happens so often in grief,

And I know before we got on the call today,

You had asked in terms of people who listen to coming back,

How many are grieving people themselves and how many are practitioners and of course there's no way for me to know that number definitively,

But I do know there's a lot of grief practitioners who listen to the show so I wonder if you have some wisdom on how people who work with grief all the time can take care of their bodies,

As they're caretaking people who hold grief in their bodies to.

I'm so glad you asked that because it bothers me that often people who are in caring jobs are dealing with other people's trauma and stories,

And then not having ways to really unwind that and release it so it's so important to have ways so I practice a movement method called nonlinear movement,

And it's,

It's like a moving meditation,

Which all you do is you are on your hands and knees with your eyes closed and your head dropped,

And you just follow sensations in your body.

So,

Maybe you're moving a kind of achy area in your lower back or your shoulder,

Or maybe you're just feeling really sluggish,

And you just move whatever you're feeling at that time.

So that's a really nice way of unwinding stuff.

So I do that as a regular practice when I've been working or just,

Just to kind of go through the day.

Having some aspect of space as well because often it's the kind of backing up of clients or rushing from one thing to the other,

Or in these kind of COVID times where people are working on zoom and then going from one meeting to the other,

Like there's not enough buffer.

And it doesn't really matter what happens in that space it's just creating some form of space or margin or pause.

And grief growers,

I don't think I've ever shared this on the show before but my,

My go to is like,

Just go lay on the floor.

Just go lay on the floor,

And I have to like get you know get on the rug and like starfish starfish out but something happens when I'm on the ground.

And I'm looking up at the ceiling and all of a sudden I'm like four or five years old again and I feel like I have no problems,

Even though there's so many to worry about of course,

But just go lay on the ground.

And I love this too nonlinear.

Did you say nonlinear meditation.

Nonlinear movement is what you said.

Thank you,

Because I think so often.

There's this pressure of like my life is structured so my movement must be structured also.

I exercise at this time or I get in the bath at this time or kind of whatever it is and so this permission to just like have a body and move it how it wants to be moved.

Instead of cramming everything into a schedule or if it's not in the schedule it's not happening at all.

And I think that's really lovely because then again it calls on what you're talking about earlier this this need to listen.

If the practice is nonlinear then I'm required to tune in a little bit more,

Because there is no structure there is no schedule to it.

And so it requires a little bit more like attention or presence.

Yeah,

And with an approach like that,

The fact that there's only really two rules because all you have to do is close your eyes and keep moving something in your body.

It gives a container,

But it gives a lot of space for whatever there is there without judgment so I think that's really important,

Whereas if you're trying to keep up like a fitness regime,

But you just haven't got the capacity,

There's enough to then feel rubbish about yourself.

There's a lot less shame involved.

Yeah,

And that's powerful and grief too.

It's like how can we take guilt and shame out of the equation.

And that's really good stuff.