Latest / Being Different Together / #38 - Why You Can’t Control Getting Sick

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#38 - Why You Can’t Control Getting Sick · Being Different Together

0:08
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Being Different Together, the podcast for people who want to make the world a better place, but no they can't do it alone.
0:17
SPEAKER_03: I'm Dr.
0:18
SPEAKER_03: Kelly Brady, acupuncturist, psychotherapist, and certified dialogue therapist.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Nissa Hanger, massage therapist, aromatherapist, coach, and real dialogue specialist.
0:29
SPEAKER_03: Together we'll explore how conversations can improve relationships, make work more joyful, and spark healing for ourselves and our communities.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: And listen, we don't shy away from the hard conversations.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: In fact, we welcome them.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: This isn't about being right.
0:45
SPEAKER_03: It's about being different together.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: Hello, hello.
0:59
SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to episode number 38 of being different.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: Together.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: What's up with your sock, babe?
1:09
SPEAKER_04: Dude, it has so much dirt and hair on it.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: Unless you're your vacation socks.
1:14
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I bought these great, really poofy like um socks from the Celtic store.
1:19
SPEAKER_04: Is it Celtic or Celtic?
1:20
SPEAKER_02: I always say Celtic unless we're talking about the basketball team.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so we go to the beach um last week.
1:30
SPEAKER_02: We had our our Coca Beach time share.
1:32
SPEAKER_02: We recorded last week's episode there.
1:35
SPEAKER_02: And uh while we were there, Kelly, you know, Kelly wanted to get all her beachware, so she probably went to the Celtic store and got super thick, fuzzy wool socks.
1:47
SPEAKER_02: I I don't know if they're are they wool?
1:50
SPEAKER_02: They look like landing skin or something like that.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: They kind of look like you know how like the inside of Uggs.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: They look like the inside of Uggs, yeah.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: So and she wore them the whole time.
1:59
SPEAKER_04: Oh my god, they're so good.
2:00
SPEAKER_04: And they have these little sticky things on the bottom because the floor, it's a tile floor in there and it gets really cold.
2:05
SPEAKER_04: We spent the majority of the time inside.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: Guess why?
2:08
SPEAKER_02: Well, by about Friday, I realized that I was getting sick.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: And I spent all of Saturday in the bed with uh hypothetically a nice view, but you know, I don't even think I looked out that window.
2:22
SPEAKER_02: I slept till 3 p.m.
2:23
SPEAKER_02: on Saturday.
2:24
SPEAKER_04: Was that Saturday?
2:25
SPEAKER_04: I thought I was frightened.
2:26
SPEAKER_04: Oh, it doesn't matter.
2:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:27
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, how am I gonna get up and back in the morning?
2:30
SPEAKER_02: Oh god, it was awful.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you were sick.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: It was awful.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: You were sick.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: Um so got sick, had been, you know, took the week off from work, which great vacation, but then came back and had to cancel three days of work to continue to not be sick, nor wanting to spread this sickness.
2:48
SPEAKER_02: Sillness, sick illness to um my clients, but unfortunately I did not spare my wife because by about Tuesday she was going, oh man, I don't feel so good.
3:01
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we got back from the beach and I I was really like in that wonderful place that is you know, arrogant denial.
3:10
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you were like, I'm not getting sick.
3:12
SPEAKER_04: I'm not getting sick.
3:13
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, I'm not getting sick, I'm not getting sick.
3:16
SPEAKER_04: I mean, we were sleeping separately.
3:17
SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna sleep in separate beds.
3:19
SPEAKER_04: When we drove home, I kept the fucking window.
3:21
SPEAKER_04: No, every time I had a window, I opened the window.
3:24
SPEAKER_04: I mean, ridiculous.
3:25
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I really, you know.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:28
SPEAKER_04: Wow.
3:29
SPEAKER_04: But it hit you.
3:31
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think I got it a little less worse than you did, though, actually.
3:35
SPEAKER_04: I think you got a worse kid.
3:36
SPEAKER_04: I think your viable load was higher.
3:38
SPEAKER_04: Mine was like fried.
3:40
SPEAKER_04: When it's some kid that was like, you know, when you hear that cough, little kids do that thing where they stick their tongue out.
3:47
SPEAKER_04: Why do they do that?
3:48
SPEAKER_02: Why do kids do they haven't been socialized tonight?
3:51
SPEAKER_02: This is this kid cough.
3:57
SPEAKER_04: Their little tongues are sticking out, and you're like, dude, put your tongue in your mouth.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: What are you doing right now?
4:02
SPEAKER_02: I mean, who knows?
4:03
SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
4:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: No one got that great massage, but it was in a public building with a shared bathroom.
4:08
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if it was the massage therapist that I used to expect.
4:14
SPEAKER_04: Well, now let's this gets into part of what we were talking about, you know?
4:17
SPEAKER_04: Like Oh wow, okay.
4:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we thought we would come in.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, it's always like, what do we want to talk about this week?
4:23
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, what's going on?
4:24
SPEAKER_02: Well, we're sick.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: And we're both um solopreneurs, we run our own business and we are in healthcare.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: And you know, there is a certain type of shame that I feel when I, as a healthcare worker, have to call in sick.
4:39
SPEAKER_02: And also, by the way, when you work for yourself and you have multiple appointments for that day, however many appointments you have for that day, that's how many times you have to call in sick.
4:49
SPEAKER_04: That's right.
4:50
SPEAKER_04: You have to call all the people.
4:51
SPEAKER_04: Well, we do because we choose not to have assistance, the two of us.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I do text, um, which does make it a little bit easier.
4:59
SPEAKER_02: Um, I've really got to get over myself because it's like I have to admit that I am that I am sick, that I am not well to take care of you.
5:09
SPEAKER_02: And um, I don't think my clients I mean, they seem to all be pretty compassionate, but man, every time I'm like, uh this is me admitting that I'm human.
5:19
SPEAKER_04: Well, also like it's just like I don't know, for me, it's like my ego's involved, right?
5:23
SPEAKER_04: Because it's like this is what I want to do, you know, Kelly.
5:26
SPEAKER_04: Big the Kelly with a gap.
5:28
SPEAKER_02: I want to make the monies.
5:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I want to make the money.
5:30
SPEAKER_02: I want to sit there.
5:31
SPEAKER_02: We made the appointment.
5:32
SPEAKER_04: I want to show up for the appointment.
5:34
SPEAKER_04: Right.
5:34
SPEAKER_04: So there's all kinds of things that happen when I don't get to see a patient.
5:37
SPEAKER_04: One is I don't get paid.
5:39
SPEAKER_04: The other is the patient doesn't get seen.
5:40
SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
5:40
SPEAKER_04: It's definitely a lose-lose.
5:42
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
5:43
SPEAKER_04: Then there's extra work attached because I have to be the best.
5:45
SPEAKER_04: Now you gotta find time because I choose not to have an assistant that does my scheduling.
5:49
SPEAKER_04: And as I'm saying this right now, I'm like, uh, do I want an assistant?
5:53
SPEAKER_04: You know, I go back and forth with this sometimes.
5:57
SPEAKER_04: Because there is something really nice about having like a front desk person that will do the phone calling for you.
6:02
SPEAKER_04: I I've made a decision in my practice not to do that for kind of for simplicity's sake, to be honest.
6:08
SPEAKER_04: Because then you have to deal with the fact that the assistant calls in sick.
6:12
SPEAKER_04: Totally.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: Hey, listen, I've had assistants.
6:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:15
SPEAKER_02: And and it and it and and there are total pluses, but I get you.
6:19
SPEAKER_02: I get you on that.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
6:21
SPEAKER_04: You know, it's like, do I want to deal with my do I want to have a relationship with myself as my own assistant?
6:27
SPEAKER_04: Or do I want to have a whole other relationship with another person as my assistant?
6:30
SPEAKER_04: And there are definitely trade-offs to both.
6:33
SPEAKER_04: And at this point I'm realizing I would rather have a relationship with myself.
6:35
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
6:36
SPEAKER_04: I'm a pretty decent boss to myself.
6:38
SPEAKER_04: But in some ways I'm not.
6:39
SPEAKER_04: In some ways, when I want to call in sick, I can really give myself a lot of crap about it.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know.
6:44
SPEAKER_04: It's really hard.
6:45
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
6:45
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
6:46
SPEAKER_04: It's really hard.
6:46
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
6:47
SPEAKER_04: And to make the call, like when do you decide to do it?
6:49
SPEAKER_04: How much temperature do you do?
6:50
SPEAKER_04: How bad do you have to be?
6:51
SPEAKER_04: Do you do it the night before or do you wait and see if you're just feeling better in the morning?
6:54
SPEAKER_04: You know, is it allergies?
6:56
SPEAKER_04: This is this is also Am I still contagious?
6:59
SPEAKER_04: Am I still contagious?
7:01
SPEAKER_04: I know.
7:02
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's kind of rough.
7:05
SPEAKER_04: I think also, in my case, I'm not working with folks who are really acutely ill.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: Right.
7:11
SPEAKER_04: Like if I was a hospitalist, if I was working in a hospital.
7:14
SPEAKER_04: People who were really, really, really sick, and they had to be seen no matter what.
7:18
SPEAKER_04: I would probably go in sicker than I go in now.
7:20
SPEAKER_04: I'm sure I would put a mask in.
7:22
SPEAKER_04: Oh, doctors go in sick.
7:24
SPEAKER_04: I can tell you right now.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
7:26
SPEAKER_04: I did a I had to do a talk on the case.
7:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, when was the last time your surgery was cancelled because the doctor has a cold?
7:32
SPEAKER_04: Oh no.
7:33
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
7:33
SPEAKER_04: I had to do a talk one time.
7:35
SPEAKER_04: This was like, I don't know, maybe ten years or something ago or something.
7:38
SPEAKER_04: And it was a talk in front of a group of medical professionals, by the way.
7:42
SPEAKER_04: And I caught a cold, and it was one of those colds that is like so bad that like you know when you feel like there's like ground glass every time you swallow.
7:51
SPEAKER_02: Oh, have you ever had a cold cloth like that kind of cold?
7:56
SPEAKER_02: Like it was that you just can't like swallowing is a long-term project.
8:00
SPEAKER_04: It was so bad.
8:01
SPEAKER_04: I go to the urgent care, and dear listeners, I have to tell you, I really don't like to go to the doctor.
8:07
SPEAKER_04: And most doctors don't.
8:09
SPEAKER_03: For exactly this reason.
8:11
SPEAKER_04: So you went to urgent care?
8:13
SPEAKER_04: Miss Janet, if you're nasty.
8:14
SPEAKER_03: Control.
8:17
SPEAKER_04: I want to be the helper.
8:18
SPEAKER_04: I don't want to be helped.
8:21
SPEAKER_04: You know?
8:22
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I go to this doctor and I I sit down and I'm like, dude, I am sick, and I've got this talk.
8:28
SPEAKER_04: And he's like, oh, well, we'll get you set.
8:30
SPEAKER_04: Here's what we're gonna do.
8:32
SPEAKER_04: He totally gave me a steroid shot, gave me a steroid inhaler, gave me affrin, and put me on a Z-Pak.
8:41
SPEAKER_04: Jesus.
8:42
SPEAKER_04: And I gave that talk, and I sounded like nothing was wrong with me.
8:45
SPEAKER_04: But I was sick as a dog.
8:48
SPEAKER_04: Whoa.
8:50
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
8:50
SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
8:53
SPEAKER_02: You know, one time there were there were man, I was sick.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: We had these um women in the aromatherapy world that um were doing this documentary.
9:02
SPEAKER_02: And um for a couple years they came to our annual conferences and would interview us.
9:07
SPEAKER_02: And I was interviewed, and right before I got interviewed, I had gotten a really bad cough.
9:13
SPEAKER_02: And um, I mean, I just kept conferencing, you know.
9:17
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're just making it work.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: And um, a year later I saw them, and I think they actually showed part of the the trailer for the video or whatever.
9:26
SPEAKER_02: And I'm watching myself up there, and I'm like, oh my god, I sounded so bad.
9:30
SPEAKER_02: And one of the people that had only met me that first time thought, oh, I just thought that was your voice.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: Like you sounded like a sexy smoker.
9:38
SPEAKER_04: Oh that's what I'm talking about.
9:41
SPEAKER_04: I know, I can still hear it in my voice today.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's it's in my it's in mine a little bit too, for sure.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: So we we are recording this episode um on the weekend.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: Sunday afternoon.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: Well we were too sick to record.
9:54
SPEAKER_02: We were very sick to record on Thursday.
9:56
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
9:56
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you were very sick on Thursday.
9:58
SPEAKER_04: And so we were not recording.
9:59
SPEAKER_04: We took the morning off.
10:00
SPEAKER_04: We were very sick on Thursday.
10:01
SPEAKER_04: I went to the house.
10:02
SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, that's right.
10:03
SPEAKER_04: We recorded at the beach, but this Thursday I was too sick because I can't.
10:06
SPEAKER_04: I got sick the day after we recorded last week.
10:08
SPEAKER_04: You're right.
10:09
SPEAKER_04: I was way too sick on Thursday.
10:10
SPEAKER_02: So, anyways, just uh I always like to disclose when we're not on our normal day and time.
10:14
SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, so the thing about being sick, there's so much to say about being sick.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we figured this would be a pretty relatable topic for y'all.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: Nobody likes to get sick.
10:25
SPEAKER_02: And nobody likes to call in sick unless you hate your job.
10:28
SPEAKER_04: You know, illness is like this gigantic theme in life.
10:32
SPEAKER_04: I mean, there is there an archetype.
10:33
SPEAKER_04: You cannot.
10:35
SPEAKER_04: You can't escape it.
10:36
SPEAKER_04: You can't you can't escape it.
10:39
SPEAKER_04: And it takes me to Buddhism first, the first place it takes me.
10:42
SPEAKER_04: So to look at it through our lens, right?
10:44
SPEAKER_04: The first lens is this is what it's like for us as solopreneurs.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
10:49
SPEAKER_04: There it is.
10:54
SPEAKER_04: Then I like to look at things through Buddhism.
10:56
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
10:57
SPEAKER_04: I know you have a sort of an animistic, yogic, um, more globally spiritual way of looking at things that I think is useful.
11:04
SPEAKER_04: Uh we have the Jungian lens.
11:06
SPEAKER_04: Um we have kind of like some of the other philosophical ideas that that we resonate with.
11:12
SPEAKER_04: You know, like how do we deal with this?
11:14
SPEAKER_02: How do we frickin' deal with it?
11:15
SPEAKER_04: So here's one of the ways I deal with being sick.
11:18
SPEAKER_04: And I'm just gonna disclose in the beginning, this episode is not about this, but that I for the for those listeners who don't know, I uh survived cancer when I was in my mid-20s, and it was a really serious hematologic malignancy called Hodgkin's disease.
11:31
SPEAKER_04: And I almost died.
11:35
SPEAKER_04: Uh I don't recommend it.
11:36
SPEAKER_04: I'll start with that.
11:37
SPEAKER_04: Uh I learned a lot, uh, but I do not recommend it.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: Yes, you have a very in unique perspective.
11:45
SPEAKER_02: Both personally, professionally.
11:46
SPEAKER_02: Well you also took care of a sick spouse.
11:50
SPEAKER_04: Well, and I also had a mom who had um early a very significant early childhood sickness or illness that caused her to have a disability.
11:57
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
11:58
SPEAKER_04: And I spent a fair amount of time as a child and adolescent and even now involved in caregiving with her.
12:03
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
12:04
SPEAKER_04: And um and she's had various health struggles pretty much through her life.
12:07
SPEAKER_04: My father was not a particularly healthy man, although he was extraordinarily vital.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
12:13
SPEAKER_04: Uh he had a great deal of vital energy.
12:15
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
12:16
SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, I I don't think I ever once saw him squat, for example.
12:21
SPEAKER_04: Now he was 42.
12:22
SPEAKER_04: I'm serious.
12:22
SPEAKER_04: Like I never saw him squat do a deep knee bend, you know.
12:25
SPEAKER_04: I never saw it in my whole life.
12:26
SPEAKER_04: In fact, after he died, I saw a picture of him when he was 20.
12:32
SPEAKER_04: And he was like squatting, and I was like, what the fuck?
12:36
SPEAKER_04: Like I had never I had never seen him anywhere besides sitting in a recliner, sitting behind a desk chair, sitting behind the the seat, the driver's seat of the car.
12:44
SPEAKER_04: Kitchen table.
12:45
SPEAKER_04: Sitting at the kitchen table, uh sitting on the patio, uh, or standing smoking.
12:51
SPEAKER_04: Smoking or fishing.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: Fishing.
12:54
unknown: Yeah.
12:55
SPEAKER_04: That was about it.
12:56
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
12:56
SPEAKER_04: I mean, maybe he would walk from the car to the movie theater.
13:00
SPEAKER_04: But there was no I there, you know, he would take the dog for a drag occasionally, which was like with a cigarette.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: And you gotta tell them why he called it a drag.
13:08
SPEAKER_04: Because he would drag the shih suit down the the dog just would refuse to walk and and the dad was just pull her down the while he was smoking.
13:17
SPEAKER_04: You know, probably with a scotch on the other hand.
13:18
SPEAKER_04: It was hilarious.
13:19
SPEAKER_04: He had a lot of energy.
13:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
13:20
SPEAKER_04: But he he well, he wasn't healthy.
13:22
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
13:22
SPEAKER_04: He was in and out of the hospital ever since I could remember as a kid with various digestive problems and the chronic pain issues.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: Um you've been around a lot of illnesses.
13:30
SPEAKER_04: He had psychiatric illness.
13:32
SPEAKER_04: Um, and then he had a heart attack, you know, when I wasn't very old, and he died when I was relatively young.
13:37
SPEAKER_04: In fact, he died the year after I had Hodgkins.
13:41
SPEAKER_04: If you can imagine, in 1995 I had Hodgkins.
13:43
SPEAKER_04: My dad died in January of 96.
13:45
SPEAKER_04: Jesus Christ.
13:46
SPEAKER_04: That was a hell of a year for my mom.
13:48
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
13:51
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
13:52
SPEAKER_04: That was a hell of a year for my mom.
13:53
SPEAKER_04: And I took a pretty deep dive into exploring illness.
13:58
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
13:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:59
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
13:59
SPEAKER_04: Uh, because this is one of the ways that I cope.
14:01
SPEAKER_04: I try and learn everything I can about what I'm going through.
14:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I really I really do try to.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I have not had that level of experience with sickness and illness.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I have definitely experienced the just regular getting a freaking cold or whatever, and have we had that experience two years ago where we had been out of town for a week for it's always a bummer too when you've been out of town and then you get sick.
14:38
SPEAKER_02: Like we we had been out of town for a week um when we were going to Vermont for the real dialogue, dialogue therapy training.
14:45
SPEAKER_02: And um, and while we were there, we got COVID.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: And then we came home, and that was I remember that was two weeks.
14:52
SPEAKER_04: Oh, we were down for the count.
14:54
SPEAKER_04: We were really down for the count.
14:56
SPEAKER_04: Um and that was such an interesting psychological time.
15:01
SPEAKER_04: Because we go through our whole relational history.
15:03
SPEAKER_04: We're the demo couple.
15:04
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
15:05
SPEAKER_04: So you know, through that we were also doing a lot of our own interpersonal and intrapersonal kind of thing.
15:11
SPEAKER_02: And it really does um, I mean, even just this past time that I was sick, I mean, I was definitely sick and spent a lot of time um getting my HBO subscription money's worth.
15:22
SPEAKER_02: Um But then by the end of it, I'm like, oh, should I go and try to should I go back to a master's program?
15:29
SPEAKER_02: Or, you know, like I'm like, I'm like ready to make some sort of like major life change after sitting in bed for three days, just thinking about what am I doing with my life.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: And I think that I think in some ways the gift of illness is that is that we get to sit down and think, oh, wait, what I what am I doing here?
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:52
SPEAKER_02: And my life, I think maybe when we're well, um, I hadn't really thought about it quite like this, but it's like being well.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm getting up, I'm going to work, I'm doing my thing, I'm going through the motions, I'm meeting my obligations, everything's kind of like all set, we're copacetic.
16:10
SPEAKER_02: And then when the shit hits the fan, it's like, oh wait, all of this structure and guardrails and whatever that I've set up in my life might go, can go.
16:22
SPEAKER_02: If it did go, what do I really want?
16:25
SPEAKER_02: You know, it kind of like cle it's like it's like clears the decks, and I get to go, oh wait, what do I want?
16:33
SPEAKER_00: I know.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: And then I have a lot of time to think about it.
16:35
SPEAKER_02: And so every time I get sick, I think about opening a food truck.
16:41
SPEAKER_04: One time I thought about becoming a deep sea fisherman.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and actually I'm I'm coming out of this.
16:54
SPEAKER_02: Um, I did a lot of um reflecting this weekend, journaling on uh just a lot of that.
17:01
SPEAKER_02: Um I took myself through an exercise, or I'm in the middle of taking myself through an exercise that I like to do twice a year to just kind of reset myself on what it are my goals.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: And it's just interesting that coming out of this, I actually found the time to do that when I've been trying to find the time to do that for about the past two months.
17:19
SPEAKER_04: Well, and this is where I kind of the Jungian thing, we just I just want to go ahead and I know I talked about originally I wanted to start with Buddhism, and I had said this is where Buddhism comes in, but now we're going we're now we're looking at it really more from this other lens.
17:30
SPEAKER_04: So let's do it.
17:31
SPEAKER_04: I want to put a pin in Buddhism and I want to go over to the Buddhism will always be there.
17:34
SPEAKER_04: Well, I wanna I want to return to it, but I want to talk about this what you're talking about from the Jungian annual because you know our ego like well this is Jungian theory, but I'm just gonna talk about it as if I'm as if I know what I'm talking about.
17:46
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
17:47
SPEAKER_04: So just know that what I'm saying It's Kelly's it's Kelly's interpretation.
17:51
SPEAKER_04: Uh uh of Jung.
17:52
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, really.
17:52
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
17:53
SPEAKER_04: And that's that, okay, we have this ego.
17:55
SPEAKER_04: The ego sits it's conscious and it it tells us what we're doing and it makes sense of the world.
18:00
SPEAKER_04: It's it's like it's like our assistant.
18:03
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
18:03
SPEAKER_04: You know, it's sitting in the mind you know, and it's aware and it's awake and it has agendas and it it has things it wants and and etc.
18:10
SPEAKER_04: But then it's like the smallest part really of who we are, actually, is our ego.
18:14
SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
18:15
SPEAKER_04: And if you think about the tip of the iceberg.
18:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
18:21
SPEAKER_04: It's really not even the tip of the iceberg.
18:24
SPEAKER_04: It it it's like Is it like the snow cap on the top?
18:28
SPEAKER_04: It it's like the eyelash of a passing bird.
18:32
SPEAKER_04: A seal.
18:33
SPEAKER_04: It's a seal whisker on the far north side of the iceberg tip.
18:41
SPEAKER_04: That's your ego.
18:41
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
18:42
SPEAKER_04: That's how much of you I mean, really.
18:44
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
18:44
SPEAKER_04: It's so little of who and what you actually are as a being in terms of your mind, the depth of your mind, the unconscious, and etc.
18:53
SPEAKER_04: So Jung was like, um, there's more going on here than meets the eye with you.
18:59
SPEAKER_04: You know?
19:00
SPEAKER_04: And your body will often tell you through somatic states that there's more going on than what meets the eye.
19:07
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
19:07
SPEAKER_04: I mean, Jung and other psychoanalysts have said that occasionally um the body will say what the mouth cannot.
19:16
SPEAKER_04: And so the body will develop back pain.
19:19
SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
19:20
SPEAKER_04: Because mm maybe because of the way you're sitting in your chair, but maybe also because you you have to.
19:25
SPEAKER_04: What you're doing while you're sitting.
19:27
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know.
19:29
SPEAKER_04: And you need to.
19:30
SPEAKER_04: Or you need to learn how to stand up to your boss.
19:32
SPEAKER_04: Except that's exactly right.
19:34
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
19:34
SPEAKER_04: You know, like maybe you can't stand up because you need to learn how to stand up.
19:38
SPEAKER_04: There are all of those.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: We gotta do an episode on the metaphors of the body, the language of the body.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we gotta do next.
19:46
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, there's a we could we should follow this episode up with that.
19:49
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
19:50
SPEAKER_04: But m more to what you were talking about, I think that this I read this really powerful book when I was going through the Hodgkins in New Mexico.
19:58
SPEAKER_04: It just so happened that I met the author of this book.
20:01
SPEAKER_04: Her name is Kat Duff.
20:02
SPEAKER_04: She's a Jungian astrologer and a therapist.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: Did you say the name of the book?
20:07
SPEAKER_04: It's called The Alchemy of Illness.
20:08
SPEAKER_04: The Alchemy of Illness.
20:09
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
20:12
SPEAKER_04: It's a small book, but it is a I was so impacted by this book.
20:17
SPEAKER_04: She talks about illness as an archetype for the con and that what it does is that it brings the transformation of consciousness.
20:24
SPEAKER_04: And um that it's like without it you know, that in other words, but without our illness, we can't have health.
20:31
SPEAKER_04: That it's not uh you know, one or the other.
20:35
SPEAKER_04: In other words, it we couldn't be healthy if we didn't get sick.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: You know what?
20:40
SPEAKER_02: I just gotta say that I really appreciate that right now.
20:45
SPEAKER_02: Um because I've also been thinking about this in terms of mental health.
20:50
SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
20:51
SPEAKER_02: And um just you know, some struggles that I've had recently with all the stuff that we've had going on and you know, having some breakdowns.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: And and then and then kind of wanting to judging judge myself for that, like, oh, you should be past this.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't you shouldn't do this pattern anymore or regression or whatever it is.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: And I know that there's a part of me that knows that that's not true.
21:22
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that this perspective gives me a doorway to see it a little bit differently.
21:27
SPEAKER_02: That it's not like I either have mental health or I don't.
21:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm either I'm either mentally healthy or I'm mentally unwell.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: Right.
21:36
SPEAKER_02: But it's that these two forces are going to play out that you can only have mental health when there's also the illness to bring you the messages to show you what you need to do to get more mental health, or something like that.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: Oh, totally.
21:54
SPEAKER_04: You know, not to let us is like this confrontation between what the ego wants and something the ego can't.
22:00
SPEAKER_04: Command, which might be something that's in more service to your soul, actually.
22:06
SPEAKER_02: Can you um can you give me an example?
22:08
SPEAKER_04: I mean, sometimes sickness is the best thing that can happen to a person.
22:11
SPEAKER_04: I've known a lot of people who uh heal a great deal.
22:15
SPEAKER_04: In fact, Stephen Levine wrote a book called Healing into Wholeness, which is excellent.
22:20
SPEAKER_04: And it's really about how being sick can provide us with healing around other things in our psyche that we need to heal.
22:28
SPEAKER_04: And that sometimes people heal, but their physical bodies move on anyway.
22:33
SPEAKER_04: And interestingly, you know, like I th one of the grass best examples I can give just comes straight from my own life, with was was, you know, when my former wife Heather was going through cancer, watching the changes in her personality as she was so intimately confronted with her own mortality and suffering.
22:49
SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
22:50
SPEAKER_04: How much more compassionate, patient, loving, and open she became.
22:54
SPEAKER_04: And she was those things anyway.
22:56
SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
22:57
SPEAKER_04: But maybe they became more present.
22:58
SPEAKER_04: Wow.
22:59
SPEAKER_04: I mean, wow.
23:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:03
SPEAKER_04: You know, they really showed up for her in that way.
23:06
SPEAKER_04: Totally.
23:07
SPEAKER_04: Um and again, it it it it's kind of like if I look back to you know, what happened for me, um, I think one of the one of the major awarenesses that I took from being so young and healthy when I got sick is that being young and healthy doesn't mean you can't get sick.
23:25
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
23:26
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, this pervasive kind of you know, by the way, at that point I had been a vegetarian for years.
23:32
SPEAKER_04: I didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't use drugs, I was a very straight-edged hippie.
23:36
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
23:37
SPEAKER_04: For years in my young life.
23:38
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I really, really was.
23:39
SPEAKER_04: I was I was on this path.
23:40
SPEAKER_04: It's what I was doing.
23:41
SPEAKER_04: And then boom, I have this hematologic malignancy.
23:44
SPEAKER_04: It made no sense.
23:46
SPEAKER_04: I looked like this healthy Amazonian warrior woman at that age.
23:52
SPEAKER_04: You know, all this thick blonde curly hair, in really good shape.
23:57
SPEAKER_04: No one could believe I was sick.
24:01
SPEAKER_04: It was so humbling.
24:05
SPEAKER_04: It was like, wow.
24:07
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I I, and what I mean by I, I mean like this ego that wants to think it knows what's gonna happen.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: No.
24:17
SPEAKER_04: It doesn't know.
24:19
SPEAKER_02: And that's both like comforting and frightening.
24:22
SPEAKER_04: It's definitely luminous.
24:24
SPEAKER_04: It's uh it's awe-inspiring for me.
24:28
SPEAKER_04: It's awe-inspiring for me.
24:30
SPEAKER_04: Um and then looking to, you know, kind of stories around going into the underworld, dismemberment, disfigurement, um, dissolution, the Negreto in alchemy.
24:41
SPEAKER_02: Like you took an an alchemical um, yeah, the length of the link the language, um the the languaging of the the phases is a little bit different, but uh essentially it it was the the way that I was taught about alchemy, it relates to um the process of distillation because a lot of it was related to essential oils and aromatics.
25:01
SPEAKER_02: But basically, you know, you take a thing, you add fire, you add water.
25:08
SPEAKER_02: Right.
25:08
SPEAKER_02: So you have these different phases.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: Calcinacio, I think, is the fire phase, so it's like everything just starts burning.
25:14
SPEAKER_02: When you burn something, you're adding that heat, it's starting to break up.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: And then you add water.
25:22
SPEAKER_02: Water, universal solvent.
25:24
SPEAKER_02: Solucio is the name of that that phase.
25:27
SPEAKER_02: So it starts to burning, it starts to breaking up, and then it starts dissolving.
25:31
SPEAKER_02: It starts, it starts sort of as it breaks up, it it becomes sort of it unifies in a different way.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: And then let's see if I can remember what the the next phase, at least with this distillation, is that that heat and that water are creating steam, and so it's coming up.
25:49
SPEAKER_02: So what was uh solid material is now liquid material, is now vapor material.
25:58
SPEAKER_02: You know, the steam starts to rise up, and um I don't know if I can remember quite.
26:04
SPEAKER_02: This is in a distilling an essential oil.
26:07
SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, this is the process of distillation in in general.
26:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm most familiar with the process of steam distillation, which is how you would get your you know, most essential oils are created through steam distillation.
26:19
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
26:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: Or you can get these products called hydrosols, which I definitely have more firsthand experience with creating, um, but the process is the same.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: So it um uh what was that third phase?
26:31
SPEAKER_02: I can't quite remember the name of it, but become it becomes a vapor.
26:36
SPEAKER_02: And then you you get to umcio.
26:46
SPEAKER_02: Eventually you get to a phase called mortifaccio.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: The fourth phase.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: The third phase I can't quite remember, but the fourth rate phase is mortificatio, the death phase.
26:54
SPEAKER_02: Right.
26:55
SPEAKER_02: That that is I I would call it when I would teach this, I would call that the point of no return.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: That is where you started out with one thing, and that one thing is gone.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: So in terms of distillation, you have your plant material, your raw print material, your lavender, let's say.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: And now with now that it's been steam distilled and it's created a steam, we haven't we haven't condensed that steam, we haven't ended up with the the product that we'll end up with later.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: Um but but it is no there's no going back to that lavender being the way that it was.
27:31
SPEAKER_02: That's four.
27:32
SPEAKER_02: And and there's that dissolving into the the the death, there is a there is a period.
27:40
SPEAKER_02: Like it's like mortificatio, death phase, period.
27:43
SPEAKER_02: Like we are done with this phase.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: It's not the end of the story because there's another sentence to to just continue the grammatical metaphor, but um we're we are done there.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: And then what comes after that, which I think is really kind of interesting, is um sublimatio, I think is the name of the next phase, which is um being able to see everything from above as you get this this broader perspective.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: So thinking about life and death, I mean, just in some interpretations, let's just say when my dad died, um he had we when he was taken to the hospital, it was a very sudden um, it was a sudden death.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, but we didn't know that he was he had not been pronounced dead when he was taken to the hospital.
28:33
SPEAKER_02: And then we had a period of time when we were in the hospital.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: It was I never thought about it like this.
28:37
SPEAKER_02: We're sitting in this little hospital room, it's during COVID.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: It's it's sort of like we were in Schrdinger's box because so sorry to laugh about this.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: My my my dad was was alive and dead at the same time, you know.
28:50
SPEAKER_02: Was he dead?
28:51
SPEAKER_02: Was he alive?
28:52
SPEAKER_02: We don't know, we're still in the box.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: Um, and then eventually a doctor comes in and says, you know, I'm so sorry.
28:58
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's so weird.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: I had watched so many Grey's Anatomies where like somebody comes in and says, Oh, I'm so sorry, but then to live that is an entirely different experience.
29:07
SPEAKER_02: But I'm sharing all that to say that of course um was bombarded by immense grief at that time.
29:17
SPEAKER_02: But as I breathed through it, and I still felt all of that, it was all very intense, but there was also this sense of my dad.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: I could almost like see his spirit flying, and I could hear him saying, Oh my god, this is amazing.
29:37
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: And a couple, I don't know if I told, I don't think that I had told my mom that, but a couple days later, she was sitting on the porch and she had turned on the radio and they had spent a lot of time on the porch together, and she heard she just heard his voice go.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: He called her buddy, and he just said, Oh, buddy, it's great.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: Oh, buddy, it's great.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like after you die, that sense of getting to just see everything all at once.
30:04
SPEAKER_02: And I think too, you know, going back to being sick and and maybe maybe being able to like look at my life from a different perspective.
30:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm not when I'm sick and I'm home and it's just like nothing is happening, I do not have that day-to-day distraction.
30:18
SPEAKER_02: I can just really sit and look at my life from that bird's eye view and think, oh, okay, you know, what what am I seeing?
30:27
SPEAKER_02: What am I perceiving?
30:28
SPEAKER_02: What can I see in my life that I can't see normally?
30:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's the difference between being in the valley and being a eagle flying, getting to see all of the landscape.
30:43
SPEAKER_02: And so that's what happens after in in the form of alchemy that I studied, that's what happens after the death phase.
30:49
SPEAKER_02: Is you get that.
30:50
SPEAKER_02: And then there are two other phases where where there's kind of a little bit more integration that happens.
31:01
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, sickness can uh bring you enlightenment, I guess, basically.
31:07
SPEAKER_04: Well, I think this is basically it is like there's a Zen saying that says the obstacle is the path.
31:16
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the obstacle is the way.
31:18
SPEAKER_04: You know?
31:18
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right?
31:19
SPEAKER_04: The obstacle is the path.
31:20
SPEAKER_04: I'm just like, yeah, okay.
31:24
SPEAKER_04: So then when I'm sick, one way to approach it is I hate being sick.
31:27
SPEAKER_04: This is terrible.
31:28
SPEAKER_04: It's the worst thing that ever happened to me.
31:29
SPEAKER_04: This sucks, blah, blah, blah.
31:31
SPEAKER_04: Which which which really it's okay.
31:33
SPEAKER_04: I mean, go ahead and complain about it.
31:34
SPEAKER_04: But it does suck.
31:36
SPEAKER_04: It was very uncomfortable being sick.
31:37
SPEAKER_04: It does suck.
31:38
SPEAKER_04: Oh my god.
31:38
SPEAKER_04: It does suck.
31:39
SPEAKER_04: So it's okay.
31:40
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm not saying don't complain or have some kind of Pollyanna attitude that boy, this is great that I feel like shit.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: It's not.
31:46
SPEAKER_02: And there were plenty of times that I did not feel conscious at all.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: In fact, I felt very unconscious while I was sick.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: But I do feel like there's something under the surface that's happening.
31:56
SPEAKER_04: I know.
31:56
SPEAKER_04: It brings you down into the underworld.
31:58
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
31:58
SPEAKER_04: It brings you down, man.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: But then on the other side of it, I kind of feel like I'm going into next week feeling like I I got a little bit of a clean slate.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm I'm dusting off some of my goals.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: I'm like re-resetting some of my routines.
32:13
SPEAKER_02: It's a bit cathartic.
32:15
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
32:17
SPEAKER_04: I mean, in the new age, in the new age days, back in the 80s and 90s, I really loved Louise Hay.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: I still I've I got her book of more.
32:29
SPEAKER_04: I still recover her.
32:30
SPEAKER_02: You know.
32:31
SPEAKER_04: Oh, totally.
32:31
SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna say, I do have a really deep, deep criticism of New Age thought around health, and I do think it has gotten turned in a way into something that is very toxic in the current wellness community.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
32:44
SPEAKER_04: Because I think there's a toxic side to it, which I've talked about a lot on the podcast.
32:47
SPEAKER_04: And the toxic side is, you know, if I just take my supplements, optimize my sleep, think all the right pure, clean thoughts, um, never have any kind of blah, blah, blah, then I will just be well all the time.
32:57
SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
32:58
SPEAKER_04: And my health is under my complete control.
33:00
SPEAKER_04: Right.
33:01
SPEAKER_04: And so if I'm not well, this is the myth that is sold to people that your health is under your complete control.
33:07
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
33:08
SPEAKER_04: And that there's something in that if you just add another supplement, you just add another metric, you just put on the thing that tells you exactly how many hours of sleep you got last night.
33:16
SPEAKER_04: But by the way, I'm just gonna say, listeners, if you have an anxiety disorder, do not monitor your sleep.
33:22
SPEAKER_02: Or your blood pressure.
33:24
SPEAKER_04: This is coming directly from Dr.
33:25
SPEAKER_04: Brady.
33:26
SPEAKER_04: Please do yourself a favor.
33:29
SPEAKER_04: So many people I know who suffer with grave anxiety are of just obsessed with their health metrics.
33:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:35
SPEAKER_04: And it's it's dangerous.
33:36
SPEAKER_04: It's not, it's just not even helpful at that point.
33:39
SPEAKER_04: It's like, what's it do you feel rested when you woke up?
33:41
SPEAKER_04: I mean, totally.
33:42
SPEAKER_04: Then you slept well.
33:43
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
33:43
SPEAKER_04: It's like this whole thing, what is the weather?
33:45
unknown: Look out the window.
33:48
SPEAKER_04: You know what I mean?
33:49
SPEAKER_04: But this like, I'm gonna give myself 3.5 more years of life if I can sleep 7.5 hours in this zone instead of six hours.
33:58
SPEAKER_04: And this it is a lie.
34:01
SPEAKER_04: You do not have that kind of control over your life.
34:03
SPEAKER_02: Well, here's the other thing is you know, if you can't get you can get the 90 or above sleep score for the next early day.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: You still might have a guess what?
34:13
SPEAKER_04: You might get hit by a bus.
34:15
SPEAKER_04: You're gonna die.
34:16
SPEAKER_04: Nissa and I were joking the other day when we were this sick, and we you know that book, Everybody Farts.
34:22
SPEAKER_04: We were gonna we were talking, Nissa, I don't know if you remember.
34:24
SPEAKER_02: Everybody poops.
34:25
SPEAKER_04: Everybody poops.
34:26
SPEAKER_04: Everybody poops.
34:30
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
34:31
SPEAKER_02: Children's book.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: New children.
34:34
SPEAKER_02: You know what?
34:34
SPEAKER_02: I want to make a whole series of children's books.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: Everybody for adults, yeah.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: Everybody's a great idea.
34:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because I got that whole um that poem that I wrote about being at the emergency vet.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: I want to turn that into a children's book for adults about mortality.
34:50
SPEAKER_02: I'll be in the series of everybody dies.
34:52
SPEAKER_04: And it's not that we have to be happy about it.
34:54
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm still not happy about the fact that I have to die.
34:57
SPEAKER_04: I haven't I haven't really gotten to the point where I'm like, okay, I have to do that.
35:02
SPEAKER_04: I still think it sucks that I have to die.
35:04
SPEAKER_04: And if I could become a vampire, I might.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: This is one of those places where we really are different together.
35:11
SPEAKER_02: Because like I just kind of you know don't really care.
35:14
SPEAKER_02: It's funny when I hear you talk about it because I'm like, oh wow, I really just don't care about it all that much.
35:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, I I don't wanna die, but I just kind of feel like, well, that's that's what can I do?
35:26
SPEAKER_02: Well, I just feel really like in acceptance of it.
35:28
SPEAKER_02: But I know, I know.
35:29
SPEAKER_02: I think I have such FOMO.
35:32
SPEAKER_02: Oh, see, I'm like, I'm gonna see what happens on the other side.
35:35
SPEAKER_02: Apparently it's great.
35:39
SPEAKER_04: And no.
35:40
SPEAKER_04: I just don't remember the last time I was there exactly.
35:43
SPEAKER_04: I don't remember either.
35:44
SPEAKER_02: Maybe I've never been there.
35:48
SPEAKER_04: She says with a smile.
35:51
SPEAKER_04: So you wanna wanna wanna go back to Buddhism for a second?
35:54
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, let's do it.
35:55
SPEAKER_04: So Buddhism has this really I like this a lot.
35:58
SPEAKER_04: When I learned about this, I liked it.
36:00
SPEAKER_04: Um traditional practice that's based on the the recitation of a certain sutra that I can't pronounce it, but you know what the fuck.
36:09
SPEAKER_04: I have Hodgkin's cred, okay, so you gotta give me a little give me a pass.
36:13
SPEAKER_04: You gotta pass.
36:14
SPEAKER_04: I can't pronounce handsome.
36:15
SPEAKER_04: I can't pronounce Polly, but I have been through some really good shit.
36:20
SPEAKER_04: So the five remembrances, it's like a traditional um it's a traditional recollection and we do it every day.
36:29
SPEAKER_04: And basically you you look in the mirror or you just say to yourself in the morning as you're sitting down to meditate these five things.
36:35
SPEAKER_04: Ready?
36:35
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
36:36
SPEAKER_04: I'm of the nature to grow old.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm of the nature to grow old.
36:43
SPEAKER_04: I'm of the nature to become ill.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: I'm of the nature to become ill.
36:48
SPEAKER_04: I am of the nature to die.
36:50
SPEAKER_02: I am of the nature to die.
36:53
SPEAKER_04: Everything and everyone dear to me will change and become separated from me.
36:58
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I I just gotta say, that's the that's I don't care about the dying, the get ill, the uh the all that.
37:03
SPEAKER_02: That's the one that you're the everybody else that I know and love.
37:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh I'm I I I would not sign up, sign off on that.
37:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, um, but apparently I did.
37:14
SPEAKER_02: So what is it again?
37:15
SPEAKER_04: I mean, basically it's also written in other places like this.
37:18
SPEAKER_04: Everything I love and hold dear, I will lose.
37:21
SPEAKER_04: Oh god.
37:22
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
37:23
SPEAKER_04: That's it's that's actually over that.
37:25
SPEAKER_04: So everything and everyone dear to me will change.
37:28
SPEAKER_04: Everything and everyone dear to me will change.
37:31
SPEAKER_04: And become separated from me.
37:33
SPEAKER_02: And become separated from me.
37:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:36
SPEAKER_02: Oh, Barnes.
37:38
SPEAKER_02: What's the fifth one?
37:40
SPEAKER_04: My actions are what I truly own.
37:43
SPEAKER_02: My actions are what I truly own.
37:45
SPEAKER_02: That feels as a as a coach, like that feels so powerful to me.
37:51
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
37:51
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
37:52
SPEAKER_04: And so the the one of the traditional ways that that's written is that my karma is my only belonging.
37:58
SPEAKER_04: Karma meaning action.
37:59
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
37:59
SPEAKER_04: And and that everything that I do creates an imprint in this part of my mind that if you buy into this concept that that's the part of you that is reborn, then that's what continues on with you is your karma.
38:10
SPEAKER_04: That's a Buddhist belief that what continues on with you is your karma.
38:13
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
38:13
SPEAKER_04: The results of your actions.
38:14
SPEAKER_04: But you can't take your bank account and you can't take your wife as much as you love her, and you can't, you know, or your beautiful little dog stretching his neck so cute.
38:24
SPEAKER_04: You know, that there is this it all dissolves.
38:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:30
SPEAKER_04: It all dissolves.
38:31
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
38:32
SPEAKER_04: But then it comes back as something else.
38:35
SPEAKER_04: You know what?
38:36
SPEAKER_04: The garden has taught me that, boy.
38:39
SPEAKER_04: You know, that's and then it comes back as something else.
38:42
SPEAKER_04: So every time I get sick, I come back on the other side a bit different.
38:46
SPEAKER_04: And one of the ways I deal with being sick is I try to take some time and go inside.
38:51
SPEAKER_04: Like this this last time when you were not feeling well you were watching.
38:55
SPEAKER_02: So much Dharma Talks.
38:57
SPEAKER_04: I watched a lot of Dharma Talks and I l I I listened to some really beautiful um stories.
39:02
SPEAKER_04: Some uh I heard this one Inuit story that I'm gonna bring to the pod at some point about about the skeleton woman that was so wonderful.
39:09
SPEAKER_04: And I did some really deep art, you know.
39:11
SPEAKER_04: I sat around and did some art with myself, and um, you know, I just kind of leaned into um reflecting and being with myself.
39:21
SPEAKER_04: And the thing about being sick, and I learned this, is that no one can do it for you.
39:26
SPEAKER_04: Nope.
39:28
SPEAKER_04: Nobody can do it for you.
39:29
SPEAKER_04: No, I mean, no one can do it for you.
39:31
SPEAKER_04: And there are just those moments where, you know, you're clinging onto the toilet bowl, praying for death because you have a stomach virus.
39:40
SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
39:40
SPEAKER_04: You know, or maybe you just really feel fatigued and you're looking out the window at the in the sun and you can see the dust particles coming through.
39:47
SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
39:47
SPEAKER_04: And you're just laying there, being in that kind of dream time, that underworld, that time when stuff is just getting cooked.
39:54
SPEAKER_04: And um this this to me, this great mystery of being a human that I that I think I know what's going on, and at a level I do, but that there's so much more going through me that that doesn't have anything to do with that seal's whisker on that iceberg, you know what I'm saying?
40:12
SPEAKER_04: It's like somehow Kelly thinks she knows.
40:17
SPEAKER_04: And I do know some things but most of it I don't.
40:21
SPEAKER_04: It's very humbling.
40:23
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
40:24
SPEAKER_04: And it can be very beautiful and also kind of horrifying, you know.
40:28
SPEAKER_04: I mean, there is an element for me of um it's a real difficulty.
40:34
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I th there's some practices in the Tibetan tradition where monks will go to the charnel ground where they do sky burials.
40:41
SPEAKER_04: So they take a dead body and they bring it up and they let the vultures eat the b eat the bones off the body.
40:45
SPEAKER_04: And the monks are specially trained to cut the body into big pieces and then they'll hold in their hand somebody's head or jawbone while a vulture is underneath picking the picking the flesh off of it.
40:56
SPEAKER_04: The idea is that they're they're they're training their mind and this kind of non-dual awareness that nothing is more beautiful than anything else.
41:04
SPEAKER_04: That that that disillusion, that pain, that difficulty it is as beautiful as a rainbow.
41:11
SPEAKER_04: But man, I'm not there.
41:15
SPEAKER_04: But I've spent some time in some charnel grounds, boy.
41:18
SPEAKER_04: Go to a cancer center.
41:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, totally.
41:22
SPEAKER_04: And sit there for a couple of hours or a couple of days and watch what people are going through.
41:28
SPEAKER_04: Go sit in a hospital.
41:29
SPEAKER_04: A hospital is a modern-day charnal ground.
41:31
SPEAKER_04: Go sit in a hospital, go to a nursing home.
41:33
SPEAKER_02: Well, I had years where I went to the VA.
41:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure I've uh maybe mentioned that on the podcast.
41:38
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I would work once or twice a month, I'd go into the polytrauma um spinal cord, um, brain injury.
41:46
SPEAKER_02: It was like spinal cord and brain injury, and um Yeah, getting to witness having having those experiences there, and then later getting to work with several patients that had a traumatic brain injury that were in various forms of consciousness and and working for with them for years, which means really getting to see their life.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean sometimes I'd go to their home and yeah, just really witness what what what their lives were like.
42:12
SPEAKER_02: And there were parts of it that were really beautiful.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: Even though like it kind of smells like poop and you know, sometimes it's like, oh, she peed, you gotta come change your diaper, or you know, but then learn how to make jokes with them or seeing how sweet their caregivers would be for them, or you know, that that that hour that I was there meant the caregiver had time to themselves, and I don't know.
42:38
SPEAKER_02: I I do feel really um uh blessed for those experiences and um Yeah.
42:50
SPEAKER_04: It's such a question, right?
42:51
SPEAKER_04: It's like how do we live well in a body that it's like we can take care for, we can influence, we can listen to it, and we can love it, but we cannot control it.
43:02
SPEAKER_04: No, it's still gonna age and get sick.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: And die.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: And you don't know what that's gonna look like.
43:08
SPEAKER_04: Right.
43:09
SPEAKER_04: So I you know, I I I don't think for me, in terms of how do I cope with illness, if that's sort of like the what we're circling around here, it's not like I'm not really okay with it.
43:20
SPEAKER_02: Oh no, I was not into getting sick.
43:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's miserable.
43:24
SPEAKER_02: It's like a bummer.
43:25
SPEAKER_02: This is a total bummer.
43:26
SPEAKER_04: It can be so miserable, and we just had a cold.
43:28
SPEAKER_04: I mean, there are so there are many more illnesses, there are so much more.
43:32
SPEAKER_04: So, you know, some of it's really terrifying.
43:35
SPEAKER_04: Definitely, you know, like you and I have both been through procedures that were just abjectly terrifying.
43:40
SPEAKER_04: Yep.
43:40
SPEAKER_04: Um, yep.
43:41
SPEAKER_04: Some of it is unfair.
43:42
SPEAKER_04: Yep.
43:43
SPEAKER_04: Like sometimes I just don't understand why there are just people in the world that have horrible characters and they live to be at ripe old age of 99.
43:51
SPEAKER_02: Oh no.
43:52
SPEAKER_04: And then there are the sweetest people.
43:54
SPEAKER_02: I know.
43:55
SPEAKER_04: And they just get thing after thing after they just get thing after thing after thing, and it just seems uh so unfair.
44:00
SPEAKER_04: To me, I just don't get it.
44:01
SPEAKER_04: And some illness kills us.
44:06
SPEAKER_04: So it's not that I'm it's not that I'm okay with it.
44:09
SPEAKER_04: I think I'm I think what I'm working with kind of now is like I don't know.
44:16
SPEAKER_04: Maybe having some kind of maturity about it.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: Um the word that comes to mind for me is acceptance.
44:26
SPEAKER_02: You know acceptance and and acceptance in a way where it's not um blind acceptance, it's not um resolving to just, alright, well I guess that's just how it is, because there are things that we are in control of with our bodies, you know.
44:46
SPEAKER_02: Um and and just with how we live our lives.
44:50
SPEAKER_02: And so I don't want to be a slave to trying to optimize.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, but I do want to be proactive, and that I that I find that to be to require a certain level of maturity and balance because it actually, when I was doing my reflecting this weekend, one of the things that I do is I look back over the past.
45:19
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was looking back through this year and like what lessons have I learned, and one that I think that I have written down many times when I've done this exercise.
45:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, but the way I phrased it this time is I really do need routines and structure, but I cannot be rigid with them.
45:37
SPEAKER_02: And that that is that that is a very that is a razor's edge for me.
45:45
SPEAKER_04: Is it?
45:45
SPEAKER_04: It is.
45:46
SPEAKER_04: It's easier for you.
45:48
SPEAKER_04: Like it's in other words, it's e what I'm hearing you say is easy to just be rigid.
45:51
SPEAKER_04: It's easy to fall into like letting the structure be like this is the way it is with no To dictate uh-huh.
45:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
45:59
SPEAKER_02: No flexibility.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: No flexibility, that's the word I'm looking for.
46:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:04
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I'm not sure.
46:05
SPEAKER_04: And yet without some kind of structure, like if your body didn't have a skeleton, it would just be a boneless.
46:10
SPEAKER_04: Remember that Gary Larson boneless chicken farm far side.
46:14
SPEAKER_04: Have you ever seen that one?
46:16
SPEAKER_04: No.
46:17
SPEAKER_04: All the chickens are just like spluted out on the ground.
46:20
SPEAKER_04: Like it's like boneless chickens farming.
46:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's hilarious.
46:23
SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine?
46:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a great that's a great analogy, actually.
46:26
SPEAKER_02: No, that we do need some structure, but I cannot um the structure cannot be the sole dictator for my actions.
46:35
SPEAKER_02: That there needs to be some other factors factored into my actions.
46:41
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and that it's just delusional to assume that the structure this is my opinion, that the structure or the optimization ritual or whatever will actually prevent bad things from happening or difficult things from happening to you.
46:55
SPEAKER_04: Like it's like the trade-off is you get to be human, and for that, you're gonna die and get sick and lose everyone you love.
47:02
SPEAKER_04: You're welcome.
47:03
SPEAKER_04: I was talking to Not that that's great, but that is just kind of what it is.
47:07
SPEAKER_04: And so what if we lean into that?
47:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because also if I'm remembering that everybody that I here's another lesson that I got from my my reflecting is how much connecting with my friends, yeah, phone calls, text messages, hanging out in person, yeah, how much I get from that, mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, all of that.
47:35
SPEAKER_02: And so allowing the space for that.
47:41
SPEAKER_02: And I guess I was like, where was I going with that?
47:43
SPEAKER_02: Remembering that everybody's going to, that I'm gonna lose everybody, remembering that I'm going to die, remembering that all of this is limited time only.
47:51
SPEAKER_02: Then it's like, well shit, I better fucking prioritize that.
47:54
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: And if I don't get all my steps today because I'm gonna go see my friend and hang out, it's okay.
48:01
SPEAKER_04: It's okay.
48:03
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's okay.
48:05
SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
48:07
SPEAKER_04: I'm so glad you decided to to to bring this up today as a topic.
48:11
SPEAKER_04: It's such a rich, rich place for us to explore.
48:13
SPEAKER_04: And I definitely think next week.
48:15
SPEAKER_04: Let's talk about the language of the body.
48:17
SPEAKER_04: Let's talk about some more about the language of the body.
48:19
SPEAKER_04: I love that.
48:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, me too.
48:20
SPEAKER_04: We can get into it.
48:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Low and I got a couple other resources.
48:27
SPEAKER_02: Maybe Louise Hay will come back.
48:29
SPEAKER_04: Oh, Louise.
48:31
SPEAKER_04: She used to say, by the way, yeah, when you got a cold, it was because you had tears that you needed to shed.
48:37
SPEAKER_02: Well, just um I'm not gonna tell everybody what happened when I got sick and you said, babe, let me give you some needles.
48:45
SPEAKER_02: You know, got a resident acupuncturist.
48:48
SPEAKER_02: Poor baby.
48:49
SPEAKER_02: She put these needles in these points in my neck, and I saw Yeah, you had a big cry.
48:56
SPEAKER_02: You had a big cry.
48:57
SPEAKER_04: You had a big cry.
48:59
SPEAKER_04: You needed it.
49:00
SPEAKER_04: Apparently.
49:01
SPEAKER_04: I don't need it.
49:03
SPEAKER_04: Well, I mean, I mean, we need to cry.
49:04
SPEAKER_04: When I mean when we're sad and we don't cry, we get sick.
49:07
SPEAKER_04: You know, it was a rainy day with my face.
49:09
SPEAKER_04: I mean, that was the weather.
49:11
SPEAKER_04: Chinese medicine, we say if you don't cry when you're sad, you get sick.
49:14
SPEAKER_04: If you don't laugh when you're happy, you'll get sick.
49:16
SPEAKER_04: Wow.
49:16
SPEAKER_04: So, like that ability to just let the emotions flow through, it's it's it's critical.
49:21
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and I had a big cry too.
49:23
SPEAKER_04: I was talking to Vieira about something.
49:25
SPEAKER_04: We were getting involved in a conversation about money and blah, blah, blah, whatever.
49:28
SPEAKER_04: And I I just kind of fell off the rails and I just started crying.
49:32
SPEAKER_04: And she was like, Mom, you're sick, mom.
49:35
SPEAKER_04: You're just sick.
49:36
SPEAKER_04: You're too sick for us to be having these conversations.
49:38
SPEAKER_04: She was so great about it.
49:40
SPEAKER_04: And I was just like, You're right.
49:45
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're not.
49:48
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
49:49
SPEAKER_03: And she's like, it's okay.
49:50
SPEAKER_03: I love you.
49:51
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, she was really there for it.
49:52
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
49:53
SPEAKER_04: But um, yeah, yeah.
49:56
SPEAKER_04: So we'll come back.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: We'll talk more about it next week.
49:58
SPEAKER_02: That sounds great.
50:00
SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah.
50:03
unknown: There we go.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: If you're not feeling super well, you know what?
50:06
SPEAKER_02: It's okay.
50:07
SPEAKER_02: You know what?
50:08
SPEAKER_02: It's okay.
50:08
SPEAKER_02: Just put on a podcast, lay in bed, watch your favorite show, pet your pets, eat some food.
50:15
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be it's gonna be okay.
50:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's gonna be okay.
50:19
SPEAKER_02: Yep, you can go out there and uh be different.
50:22
SPEAKER_01: Together.
50:25
SPEAKER_02: See you all next week, everybody.