A Little Alignment
In "A Little Alignment," we pour our hearts into conscious conversations about the things we love to geek out about -- psychology, philosophy, optimal health, art, science, mysticism, spirituality, success, relationships and more.
We live for those priceless "aha" moments that have the potential to awaken creativity and curiosity, and remind you of your beauty, power, and presence.
Our intention is to help you realign with your most whole and exceptional self.
Tune in as we navigate the beautiful path to self-discovery together. 🎙️🥂
A Little Alignment
Living with an Open Heart | Guest: Natalie Spaeth
When life tossed her into the depths of grief and the heights of love, Natalie Spath didn't just endure; she transformed. Our conversation with this remarkable coach and speaker peels back the layers of emotional vulnerability, illustrating how confronting our inner pain can lead to staggering personal growth and an empowered way of living. Natalie's raw recounting of her 2023 journey through loss and discovery is a testament to the strength found in honest self-reflection and the embrace of life's dualities.
When you think about suppression, really what you're doing is you're creating these almost like cellular egregores with inside of your body that you can numb yourself to. But once you start to expose yourself to that actual depth of feeling and frequency living inside of the body, you start to realize, holy buckets, I've never not lived this way. You realize that ball in that weight has been living you most of your life. To experience such a traumatic aspect with my mom, but for it to have a full circle moment from like the first rooted traumatic experience as a child, it was, yeah, it was mind blowing.
Speaker 2:Welcome to A Little Alignment. If you enjoy what you hear today, if you gain some value from our episode, please leave us a good rating and review at the end. Every single review counts. It really does make a difference. We would appreciate it with all our hearts. We're so glad y'all are here with us, helping us create a little more alignment in the world.
Speaker 3:Hello everybody, today is particularly exciting because today marks the first official interview that we ever do on this podcast and it's with a really good friend of ours who you're going to love her. She is incredible. She is going to help us dive into living with an open heart and it's from a really interesting perspective, which is a very raw and real perspective, that she is currently navigating right now. She had like a world win of a 2023 experience A lot not easy stuff and so she's coming from like a very like open place, but that's kind of the beauty of what we're talking about today is that, while she's experiencing some deep grief and pain, there's a lot of love that she is finding through the process and to get her perspective and knowledge around all of this because she is also an incredible coach and I've had the pleasure of working with her and, yeah, she's just she's amazing and so, yeah, to get your perspective right now is going to be so amazing. So her name is Natalie Spath and I'm so happy you're here. Welcome, natalie.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you guys. Thank you, that was a really nice intro. I'm like sitting over here about to get emotional, as we're about to dive into it.
Speaker 3:We love emotion around here. Yes, because that means you have an open heart.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, the other thing that I think is noteworthy is that when you look at Natalie's astrology chart, there is so much in there associated with this experience of really pain and love, death and rebirth. She has in every single one of her karmic contracts. It's with Pluto, which is the planet of death and rebirth Right. So a lot like her purpose, part of her purpose, here in this embodiment, in this lifetime, is around a lot of pain, a lot of death and rebirth. But you know, just as we see in the human experience of coming into this world and leaving it, which is like the ultimate, what we know is the ultimate death and rebirth.
Speaker 2:You know and also bringing life into the world. There's so much pain and there's so much joy in both right, both in childbirth and bringing child into the world, and also in losing somebody that you love deeply and I mean Natalie is so. You're so great to speak to this because you do actively work to live with an open heart and, I think, because you are so such a great coach and such a such an such an inspiration, and you speak well and the way that you just move through life is very inspiring and attractive. So I think that the experiences that you had in 2023 are just working, can't? I mean, you're allowing them to work within you so that you can share this message in a really powerful way. So we're really honored to have you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for being open to talking about all of this, because it's hard, some of this hard stuff.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you guys. It's it's really hard stuff. So I definitely want to honor you for like allowing us to even talk to you about this right now, because I can't honestly say, given what you have recently experienced and I'll let you share that I would be ready or able to discuss it. So, if you don't mind, I think what would be really helpful to help people understand who you are is what kind of coaching do you provide and what's been going on for you and how of those like worlds kind of like come together Like what are you learning? Like? Help us tell us your ways.
Speaker 1:Oh my God. Yes. So to give a little back story, the coaching world. I entered in the coaching world in 2020 when COVID hit. I am a gym owner. I had to figure out how to bring my company online and in 2020, I went through a really big weight loss transformation. That kind of started the trajectory on diving super deep into the mindset because I started to ask the question how was I really able to do what I did? Because I didn't follow any deep regimen or strict plan or anything like that. And so really going into personal development which is where I was very blessed to meet Ms Lauren, who was a part of the beginning of my personal development journey, and signing up for different courses and different classes, and just really diving deep, which kind of ended me into this conundrum of who are we, why am I the way that I am and how can we truly take responsibility for our own transformation journeys. And so that led me down a path to start studying maturation, with an emphasis on ontology, which are just two fancy words for the evolution of consciousness and the study of the being of human beings, and that's the type of coaching that I do. So with that, so it's been about well, 2024,. We're coming into four years now with just the whole journey and many trials along the way in 23.
Speaker 1:So 2023 started off with a bang. Everything felt like it was flowing really well in my life. I worked at a really beautiful company. I just felt like I was in this space of like oh my God, I feel like I've kind of like clicked into loving what I do, loving the people I'm surrounded by, loving where my life is going in multiple, multiple directions. And I ended up in April of this of 2023.
Speaker 1:I had a really wild experience, which scientifically, isn't fully yet proven as to how it came about. But one day, the day after Easter, I was dropping my kid off at daycare and all of a sudden, it felt like the stars aligned and the lights came on and I was in this almost euphoria, nirvana like state for a couple of days and ended up going to what I consider confession with my mother. So, immediately when the lights came on, I got super emotional and I ended up just driving right to her house and basically sat outside with her for five to six hours and went through every memory, every painful experience, any trauma that her and I endured together, and just cried and really had this extremely beautiful moment of deep, deep, deep healing through many different layers. And so that was the first part of the journey. Well then, what happened is, after kind of that, nirvana and euphoria dissipated, then all of a sudden it got really dark, where I was kind of experiencing my unconscious mind but in my conscious reality, and then, on top of that, having kind of a super conscious experience where I was a little bit exploded into what I would consider the cosmos is the only way I can explain that.
Speaker 1:So, that being said, it got dark and I ended up going to the hospital because we didn't quite know what was happening. I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating and I was losing a lot of weight really rapidly, and the hospital then ended up saying we think you should go into a facility. Now, mind you guys, I come from the fitness industry, which has a lot of emphasis on trying to be more natural, and so I do not take medication, I don't take ibuprofen, so I was really against wanting to take any medication that the hospital was requiring, and so, basically, we ended up having to to. I had to fight my way out, so I voluntarily was admitted and then they put me on a 72 hour hold and then they basically weren't going to let me go and I had to end up going to like a whole court situation.
Speaker 3:My husband terrifying at all.
Speaker 1:Right. My husband had to come and like fight to get me out, like to the point where we had to just kind of call a lot of people that we knew in the town that we lived in to fight to get me out of this place. And finally, when I came out of it, I was in this wild state that would be considered psychosis. So it felt like I couldn't watch TV, I couldn't be around my phone, I couldn't talk to people because I wasn't experiencing people like in a normal quote unquote way. I was experiencing them in multiple different kind of realities that I was experiencing. So, that being said, there was a good few week period for me to actually come fully back to my what I consider normal. And with all of that came lots of darkness, lots of pain, lots of integration, because I knew I wanted to do everything. Naturally I wasn't going to take a medication to heal from this experience. I really wanted to step in and I knew I had the strength and I knew I had the power to do this. So I did.
Speaker 1:And with all of that, I wanted to stay so open to what it was that I experienced and I didn't want to suppress any of the pain because of the work that I do as a coach. I knew that what I experienced was super traumatizing yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, and in that trauma it was, I knew I need to not suppress this, I need to release this, I need to allow myself to feel this, this terror that was coming up inside of my body and my mind, kind of both simultaneously. And so, throughout you know the kind of the end you know summertime, fall time I finally felt like, okay, I'm back, I'm ready to get back to work, I'm ready to get back to life, and just took a lot of baby steps to get into that place and hired another coach, continued to work really deeply on myself.
Speaker 2:We talked at the beginning of this about, like the death and rebirth, and that's seriously. I mean, listening to you talk about it now feels like that's what that was. It was like a, it was like a tear in the timeline. You know where you literally I mean psychosis. What that is like clinically speaking is like the mind breaks for a moment. Right, and I think that there was a break in your whole experience of self, of others, and I know you're gonna get into this in a moment, but I'd never really put it two and two together about how you the first thing you did was go talk to your mom and then what came?
Speaker 2:You know what followed that later in your story, which I'll let you get to eventually when you're going to. But I mean, I appreciate your perspective too on like wanting to feel it, because we talk in the world of healing you know it's so much focuses on like inner wounds and child wounds and we still continue to experience life Like we'll have new things come in, you know, and that's what living open hearted, white is so important, because it allows you to feel and experience all of this without again creating a new like wound, a new unconscious split or block or whatever, however you wanna say it. So I just appreciate you putting it that way and I watched we both watched you go through this and you really did put in, it was effort.
Speaker 2:It was mind, body, soul effort to keep yourself open. What were some things that were supportive to you Like? How did you stay open in this experience, and then how did that support you moving into the other things that came down the pipeline soon after?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no great question and it's. I wanna say that I do give like a big testament to the work I had done previously, because it would have been a totally different experience had I not, you know started working on my body, working on, you know, fitness and then going into the mindset and then just kind of going through those deeper layers. So I definitely already had kind of preparation for it. But I would say there's some spiritual mental muscles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you're kind of like okay, wow, I'm experiencing this right now, in real time, this, you know, experiential of the pain, of what's going on inside of the body.
Speaker 1:So I knew that viscerally when I would have, you know, a break in the mind which is a beautiful way to put psychosis, because that's almost exactly what it is when that would start to show up, I would then feel like immense amounts of panic and like fear and anger and sadness, and so for me, it was being super open to allow that emotion, when it became so potent, to be expressed completely freely in a safe container.
Speaker 1:And what I mean by that is whether it's having a conversation with somebody that you trust and being super open like find one person If you're not somebody that goes to therapy, or you don't have a coach, or you're not, you know, really open into that kind of line of work, having just a really close friend that you can be super honest with. That can be literally like your safe call, whether that's, you know, voice-noting you. I know, like you and I, kendra, like you, helped me so immensely to just be able to talk through what I was experiencing. So I would just voice-note Kendra, I'd be like I don't know what's going on, but like I'm experiencing this and it's beautiful and it's that, and so having people having a community around you of just really great connections will help. The other thing, too, is to understand that nothing is gonna last forever.
Speaker 2:Like I feel like that's a huge one that we can all we can all draw on that. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. You have to remind yourself that because in the moment it probably doesn't feel. I mean, especially given what you experienced, you're obviously wondering like is this forever?
Speaker 1:Right, you know yes.
Speaker 3:This is just the way it's gonna be. And so to be able I think like to what you said, like thankfully you'd put in enough work before to be able to support yourself through this in a way where that question actually or not question, but that sort of self reassurance of like this isn't forever, this is for a time, mm-hmm, it's huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the biggest thing you know that we freak out about is that we attach ourselves to the experience at hand and that can create a lot more suffering in the moment. That is unnecessary, when you can really understand what an emotional rise in the body is and then it's gonna come in these different aspects of waves. But to do that also in the experience of losing my mind, because that was a really terrifying aspect of am I gonna come back normal? Am I gonna see the world the way I used to? Am I gonna even be able to experience people the way that I used to? Because what was happening is I was experiencing like people's ego and also like their heart in one. So I could like be having a conversation with somebody and I could immediately sense when they were in their ego and when they were actually speaking from the heart.
Speaker 1:And that was really terrifying because I could feel it in my own body and like that was like my gauge of what is truth and what's not truth. And I could feel other people's contractions and I could feel when other people were getting uncomfortable and that was really terrifying because I was like time out. Why am I feeling all of these ways, because this isn't me, like this isn't mine, so why do I feel this way? So there's a lot of self questioning, but the tool aspect was really leaning into trust and surrendering to the what is in the moment, and I know that that sounds so much easier said than done, but the For sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it is like the truth is that, like part of the suffering is that you want what is to be different. Yes, so as soon as you can finally just relax into it I mean it's not easy again, like relax when you're in so much pain or discomfort or sadness is not easy but if you can find that at least for a little bit and help yourself through it. Then it's like again remembering this is for a time, not forever.
Speaker 1:That is huge. Exactly, and moving through all of that, I already had tools and routines that were completely normal Meditation for me every morning and moving my body 30 minutes a day trying to choose good quality food options. So there were already those established. It's like the established foundation of the way of being, and so that also helped. So it was just kind of getting back to the routine that I had prior. But it was also like I do even sitting here today, especially with what came directly after that.
Speaker 1:I do experience the world differently. I experienced people differently on such a deep, emotional, open level where before people could be emotional in front of me and I would feel for them but I'd be like, okay, but now, if somebody will cry in front of me, I can literally feel myself like I'm gonna cry right along with you. And this deepening of connection with other people, even though it still feels terrifying at some times, like some points, it almost is like a remembrance for me. Wait a minute. This feels familiar and this feels more like home rather than the way of being before everything had happened, and it's leaning into that pain, like the freedom to just feel.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly. So what you experienced was really intense, and I don't know how many people have experienced I'm sure there are plenty that have experienced something in a similar sense of the extremity this extremeness of what happened, but I mean when you engage yourself in the work of evolution or a center expanding your consciousness.
Speaker 2:This is something that you experienced. I mean, we've all experienced having to let a part of ourselves go and the way that we've experienced ourselves and life and those around us. We've had to leave it in the past to move forward, and that can be very scary, right, it's like we've put ourselves in a box and in this box, this is. This box that we've created is how we understand ourselves and the world around us. And when we dissolve that box, then it's that new sense of freedom doesn't feel good at first, it's like now there's nothing holding me, it's the unknown. But then there's also nothing holding you back. I mean, not nothing, but a new. You have expanded boundaries. That's what evolution is and expansion is it's. You have new boundaries, right, a new understanding. The box is bigger, right, you know Right.
Speaker 3:And then there's also new possibilities. Again bringing it back to like living with an open heart, because there's so much more to experience with an open heart than shutting yourself down, which could have easily been the option for you, right Like I can only imagine how scary that is and the strong desire to like shut it down, like I need to close off.
Speaker 1:I need to protect myself For the what's familiar Right.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, work really consciously to keep your heart open, and even just to yourself, you know, and by putting the work in to do the practices that support you the best.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it was, yeah, the practices, but then it was also sharing my story and not being afraid or embarrassed, or Actually yes, that was huge, because I was fortunate that you opened up to me about it as well, and I know that it wasn't easy, because I could totally see and feel that in you, where you're like, okay, I'm kind of trying to figure out what the hell just happened.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:You know, and it's not easy, but you were very vulnerable. Your heart was completely open to sharing. You said it multiple times you can ask me anything, like you know, anything you wanna know, and I was like I just need to let you process this on your own, like I don't need any information. Yeah, you know, I want whatever you need to do, I wanna be here to support you, but like you were so ready and open from like the get-go yeah, which is really awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was, and that you know. First, just to like let the listeners understand that that's in anything you know, being able to share freely who what you're experiencing, because that is part of the healing and that is also huge medicine. And so and I'm also the type of person too is well that I learned that the strength lies within the vulnerability and the deeper that you.
Speaker 1:Amen sister, yeah the deeper that you allow yourself to be vulnerable, the more actual strength it creates. And the story was, it was just, it was necessary. And again I knew I can either take the path of contraction and crumbling into this and being so closed off, or I can take the path of being who I've always been, and that is, to just be completely, 100% authentic, even if I'm feeling inauthentic, being honest about feeling, saying ooh, what I just said did not feel authentic, and just having that openness with people, because then you don't have the sense of judgment that the world you know, in life and all the things are placed on you or created within, and so going deeper into pain. You know that situation was obviously extremely painful, really difficult, but we made it through and we made it through and I felt more me than I had ever felt and life was finally slowly, like about October time, felt like it was starting to come back to normal, like I started getting back into work deeply, like you had found your new normal yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, because that void, the unknown space in between, that can create a lot of panic and terror. But again it's another one of those. This is what is right now and I don't need to know, and not knowing is really the freedom and the truth of the human existence. Because not needing to know, because ultimately we never really do know which well, well, great cosmic joke, am I right?
Speaker 1:Two shape, two shape which leads me into then the next experience, if you didn't think that that experience was enough for 2023. So started getting back into work, created this beautiful group with Ms Kendra and just started feeling like my new version of myself again and softening into that. And Thanksgiving comes around and the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I get a phone call from my mom and she was like crying and like freaking out. She's like Natalie, I call the ambulance and I don't know what's going on, but I'm having a pain and I'm like I'm on my way. Where are we going? What hospital let's go?
Speaker 1:And basically she had a scare which the hospital did like a bunch of different heart tests and things like that ruled everything out and they sent her home. And then we had a good Thanksgiving and she was feeling a little reserved as somebody would going through that kind of an experience and not really having clarity as to what happened. And then that Sunday we ended up getting a phone call that she was back in the hospital. So we immediately rushed over there and we think either had a widow maker which is just like an instant explosion of the heart so a heart attack that would immediately kill you or they think what happened was that on that Tuesday she had torn her aorta and then on Sunday it had ruptured, so basically she had passed immediately. And what was interesting is like, coming to the hospital on Sunday, we didn't know. We knew it was bad, but we didn't know exactly what was going on and we were 20 minutes out. So we had a 20 minute drive and I was riding with my dad because we were actually together when we got the phone call and we get into the hospital and they immediately had pulled him into the hospital room and then that's when, like the shock started to set in, because I'm like that didn't happen on Tuesday, something's not okay In mind, everybody listening. I had my mom's brother, his wife and their two children all in the emergency room by the time that we had gotten there and everybody was crying and freaking out and I was like numb but shock, and what I mean by shock is like I can even feel it now, speaking about the shock, because that's how powerful our bodies are.
Speaker 1:It is like this like contraction state where you then start to get into like, like everything contracts and then you start some people start to shake. I'm a shaker, so like my hands will start to shake and I'll start to tremble, but there won't be like an emotion, like it's like numbness in the emotion, and that's what had happened. And then we get it. Then, all of a sudden, my dad came out, like maybe within a minute or two later, and said, natalie, get your ass in here. And I'm like what's going on?
Speaker 1:So then we actually sat and watched what felt like a complete out of body experience for myself, because you're walking in and there's, you know, eight to 10 doctors standing around, everybody's yelling at each other, yelling numbers, there's shit flying everywhere. And all of a sudden I see my mom's body on the table and I'm like what the hell is going on, like what's happening? You can't, it's like the mind can't grasp the trauma that it's experiencing. So it's like the body, it's like your mind's way of trying to survive, so it's trying to keep you safe.
Speaker 1:And so all of a sudden, like 10, we're sitting and we're watching this chaos for 10 minutes and all of a sudden, the doctor in the white coat was like time of death and it was like. I looked at the doctor and I'm like what do you mean? No, she's not dead. Like, continue working on her what are you guys doing? And they're all like we're so sorry, like there's nothing we can do. We've tried everything. And my entire system went into like purge shock. So I ended up puking, I ended up having to go to the bathroom, I was like completely a physical, like physical mess and there's still like yes, there was like tears and sadness, but it was more just like your worst fear coming true. Yeah, so with that experience it was not my first experience with grief, but definitely the biggest experience with grief that I've ever had.
Speaker 3:For sure.
Speaker 1:And that is and it's anybody who's ever experienced a massive loss, whether it's a death of a parent or somebody really close to you, and sometimes even animals too your body, your reaction to just anything that you love so immensely being just kind of gone out of your life. It's a physical sensation, it's not just an emotion, it is like a deep, concaving pit, like in the heart, in the chest, in the stomach, and you're in like almost what I could consider like a zombie-like state. Like it nothing makes sense and throughout, like the week of planning the funeral, because she passed away on Sunday and we had the funeral that following Friday. It's basically like trying to plan a wedding in a week is insane.
Speaker 3:While you're also experiencing such intense pain.
Speaker 1:True, yeah, and you're so numb and you're a zombie trying to make all of these decisions like rapidly fast. So we get through that week, which was very it was a numbing week because there was, I mean, I learned a lot about death this last year. So many people show up to your house and, like we I live in a small town in the state of Wisconsin and so the community, like it felt like the entire town, showed up at our house Even the night that she had passed away. We had probably 30 to 40 people in the house that just all started piling in from her friends to family, to like just tons and tons of people, which was so beautiful to witness. But I remember being like how can I, how can I help console you? Like every person that would walk through the door and we don't realize how much we try to like not necessarily consciously diminish our own experience, but we want other people to be comfortable and we want other people to be comfortable around us.
Speaker 1:Even in our deepest grief, even in our deepest grief.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't you know.
Speaker 3:I want you to be okay.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting thought, you know, because I mean an interesting reality, because, again, something you said at the beginning of this episode that helped you move through your experience in April was that community and like really opening yourself up to that community and that, you know, doesn't just mean letting them show up and so you can comfort them, right, like there's a real element that I think is healing. We can all take note here and, just when we're in pain, to let people be there and experience us and everything, however you know they're going to and let them feel with us, let them, you know, share the burden.
Speaker 1:I suppose, yeah, that seems that sounds healing.
Speaker 2:I mean, in the experiences I've had with that it has been healing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean, even if, when you look like back into old religious texts, it literally felt like we were sitting in Shiva, for, like in the Jewish community, they'd sit in Shiva. I think it's for either and I love you guys that are listening, don't quote me on this it's either seven or 14 days, but where they basically sit with all of their family and it is kind of like just a beautiful celebration of this person's life, and that's what it felt like we did, just not in a planned way. It's just kind of what happened is so many every night, just people, over and over and over again. And so you're experiencing this deep, deep, deep, deep physical pain. And it's been a really interesting aspect because we're sitting here recording this in January and it was only in November that she had passed there were these deep waves of grief that, just like these massive emotional aspects Because, again, trauma happens when there's like a break in your reality and your reality doesn't ever feel like it's going to be the same.
Speaker 1:So you have like small T trauma where it could be. You internalize something that you saw or that somebody said something to you or experienced, and then there's the big T trauma, like abuse and actual like physical alterings of reality that create the body to lock down these experiences because the body's too. It's too painful. I'm going to put that kind of in quotes the mind thinks what the body is experiencing is too painful. So the mind kind of severs itself from the body to not experience what the body is going through.
Speaker 2:Listen to you talk about it this way. It's almost like the body has to recalibrate. The body goes through a trauma and it has to like I mean, it knows what to do. Like you said, you experienced that shock and you didn't think anything. There was no emotional attachment to the sensation that you were holding in your body and it can be a more natural experience where you just let that Recalibration happen, you let it out of your body, instead of your mind saying we can't do this, yeah, we're gonna just stop feeling. And then you yeah, then there's that split between you and you, right?
Speaker 1:right exactly, and it's within that split that's gonna kind of hardwire that suppression of what the body is experiencing. And so, knowing what I, knowing what I knew at the time with the work and just the research and studying and work with clients, I was like, okay, we're not doing the split, like I'm noticing myself right now, purposefully numbing, or I'm noticing my mind, like leaving my body because it was too uncomfortable, so I would consciously Like lay in bed or lay on the couch or, late, sit in a chair and choose to be with the pain and I had to continue to like breathe into the body and bring the mind back to what it was that I was experiencing so this is good to know, I think, because I, you know, with meditation and either the mindfulness practices and I hate to diminish this to just call it mindfulness practice, but that's essentially what it is right is choosing Consciously.
Speaker 2:And people think, oh, I'm not good at meditating because I can't stop my mind from wandering. And the important thing to remember is that it's not about your mind not wandering, it's about consciously choosing to come back Right. So when you're moving through this grief or this pain, it's not about not numbing, it's not about escaping it sometimes because that's going to happen, right, like that's. I think sometimes it's even okay. Sometimes we might need a little bit of a break from ourselves you know, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Take a moment now mouth. Yes, the open-hearted element to this is choosing to come back into it 100%. Is that what you experienced?
Speaker 1:yes, 100%, because then what would? Then what started to occur when I was consciously choosing the pain and when I say choosing the pain, allowing myself to be in the Depths, you know what I mean. Then, when I say the depths, I mean it is like I'm breathing into the giant gaping hole in my chest. I am breathing into the giant weighted ball in my stomach, like we're going here, we're doing this. And that came with lots of rage. There was a lot of anger that started to move through, like why did this have to happen to me? What did I do? And then what was really really really profound Was, in a coaching session that I had, my coach had asked me. She had said you know, do you want to go back into the hospital experience? She's like are you ready for that? And if anybody knows me outside of here, I'm like we ride it dawn, we're doing this.
Speaker 2:Are you meaning that April Hospital or your with your mom, with my mother?
Speaker 1:Yep, with my mother, and Good clarification, I forget there's two hospitals there With my mom. And so we did. And as she brought me back into the moment of me like sitting on the chair in the corner Staring at all the doctors, like slowly walking away announcing the time of death, it all of a sudden brought up a trauma that I had experienced when I was a little kid, where I would write please don't leave me in the windowsill, when my mom would go to like a board meeting or something along those lines. And so there was this deep, deep, like root story and when I say root story it's like a root Conditioning. It was like one of the first cracks in the foundation of when you're a child that was developed that those who love me are gonna leave me the most and it's because I'm doing something wrong. And so when she brought me back in there, which came like tons, I mean, I literally it felt like my eyeballs were just like water fountains, like just Like dripping, without even any physical reaction, and so I knew that we had gone somewhere super deep. But that story came up the moment because it was like my biggest fear coming to fruition, like what did I do so wrong. My mom is leaving me, and so when we hit that, I know, I know, feel the tears to feel the tears.
Speaker 1:When that happened, it was like all of a sudden this huge, like burst of what I would consider like true love landed, and it was so visceral, yeah, it was so visceral. It was like this almost Gratitude for the experience with her gratitude, with the experience of even witnessing death, and it was, it was a complete rewritten moment, like in the fabric of me. And so Then we kind of repainted when that memory would show up, because again, your mind is always gonna kind of replay Everything from your past. And so I kept seeing her body in the hospital and that was the kind of the PTSD that we keep over playing between you know that call and the, the, the timing of her passing, and so With that experience it felt like You're experiencing two sides of the same coin grief and love at the exact same time, which is such it feel. It felt like a giant plant medicine experience, like it just felt like I was cracked open, and then Euphoria and that blissful aspect and it just felt like this big, overwhelming sense of peace Dropped and from that moment forward it was like I could freely Cry and there was no like crashing wave where a lot of people will describe grief like crashing waves of just intensified emotion.
Speaker 1:It felt like I would have some emotion, but that crash of a wave kind of really slow, started to slow down and dissipate, and so that, to me, is a, you know, a testament to not only the power that we cultivate from allowing ourselves to go into pain so Radically open that we then get to experience its polar opposite.
Speaker 1:And so when you think about Suppression, really what you're doing is you're ending your your, you're creating these almost like cellular Egregors with inside of your body that you can numb yourself to. But once you start to expose yourself to that actual depth of Feeling and frequency living inside of the body, you start to realize, holy buckets, I've never not lived this way. You know what I mean. Like, oh, I've never not lived. You know, when I walk into a gym or when I meet, or to see a hot guy on the street, or when I walk in, you know and I want to wear a cute little top, but I may be worried what people are thinking about me. You realize that ball in that weight has been living you most of your life and so to Experience such a traumatic aspect with my mom, but for it to have a full circle moment from like the first rooted Traumatic experience as a child, it was yeah, it was mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:I'm hearing this and seeing it in my mind almost as like a two fold experience. Right, where you're Keeping your heart open to feeling the pain and so you're able to feel the love. Right, because that's right. When you block yourself From feeling you're, it's across the board, right. Yeah and Lauren, you put it so beautifully earlier when you were talking about this that you build the walls around both sides of your heart, both from receiving and from giving the love right, so you're keeping yourself open across the board.
Speaker 2:But then, also because of that, it led you into, like that pain helped you access like a root Version of you. Know that pain, and so you were able to go in and root it out, you know. So you're not only staying open to experiencing life in fullness, but you're also opening yourself yourself up to like Look into the different chapters of you and also pull out and root out the things that you said are living you. Yeah, it's like, and it's such a natural, organic experience. You know not to say that it doesn't take effort, but I mean watching you go through it. Things just came out, yeah, came up, and it was all there. You, just all you were doing with an open heart. The openheartedness was just listening.
Speaker 3:Allowing that to be yeah, instead of suppressing it, like I feel like that keeps beat, that that continues to be the pattern with, like, what you've experienced. It's so intense and there's again like I feel like I just said this before, but there's like so much of anybody that would just want to run away.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and it's so easy and that was the other part is to watch how fast your mind tries to completely Disassociate from the experience that your body is having.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean, that's a good way to try to survive, yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, you're your, your mind is trying to survive something that feels insurvivable, but it's not insurvivable, yeah, and that's the key. But we, we don't know that because we're conditioned and opposite. You know you think about and not to go into like massive detail about it, but you think about childhood development and the moment that you know you cry and an adult says hey, don't do that, you know, suck it up, buttercup. Whatever it may be your, those are cracks in your foundation of experience and so Really understanding that you do have the power to be able to not Sever it yourself, like you don't have to be accustomed to the way that you've always been, that there is possibility to actually rewrite that survival mind and doing it without Needing anything. You know, like I didn't have, like really I didn't have, when I say like not needing anything, I didn't take any medicine, I didn't go on like a massive journey, I didn't need to go anywhere outside of myself.
Speaker 2:I did it all, which is so fun that you bring that up, because the really what? What pain is our life? Pain or the life? These big challenges Are there. It's like stepping into a plant medicine journey.
Speaker 2:Absolutely that life's writing for you like a divinely led. You know there's so many people are ready to jump into these. You know ayahuasca ceremonies and and these sacred ceremonies that I totally think are valuable and beautiful. But if you're not able to sit with the pain of life, that is life's plant medicine, right? So stop trying to avoid the pain that you already know is there by just going straight. You know I'm gonna go somewhere. A plant medicine will teach me when you have it all already. And that's all plant medicine does is. It just Wakes you up to that depth that's always accessible that you're just not necessarily your mind is is fighting against exactly exactly.
Speaker 1:You know, and I do think, like plant medicine, is beautiful for the the aspects of like you don't know what you don't know in your unconscious mind, and so ultimately, going going so deep into into all of that Biggest thing is is to really allow yourself to be in the fullest expression of who you are and the experience of what you're experiencing in real time, and that you do have the tools and the power Yourself, without anything outside of yourself, to get to that foundational place of really being able to live From the inside out with an open heart and to not and to a actually to really look at the fear of heartbreak, the fear of Pain, and to walk with it and say no, I've. I know this because you actually have already felt what is going to be the most difficult thing that you'll experience in your life the phrase do it?
Speaker 2:scared comes to mind, yes. Do it afraid? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I honestly just want to take another moment to share gratitude for you, natalie, to be able to share what you share with us, because I mean, like you said, it's literally been About two months, yeah, since this Just happened, and so to be willing to talk about it but also be able to like, share what you're going through like in real time is so admirable. So thank you for that.
Speaker 3:We really appreciate you, you and I think one of the things that could be really helpful for the people that are listening and like for me to, is to have some way of figuring out, like what the what is the application of this look like, because we've talked a lot about like not allowing ourselves to run away from the pain or the discomfort and like allowing ourselves to feel it so that we can, you know, start to work with it and and continue to grow from it, and that love can come from even such a Hard place. So what does it look like To apply this like for somebody who's going through something right now, potentially or, yeah, for any of us who will go through these kinds of things inevitably like how do you choose to go ahead and like step into it? Like what does that actually look like for you? Like what are some practices or things that people can like apply to help themselves lean into it rather than run away from it?
Speaker 1:great question and I think it kind of Could go back to what we all discussed this morning, which is that human suffering tends to come from the fact that you, that we, do not accept what is, and ultimately, through teachings and courses and all the things and my own just personal experience with coaching and my own personal experience with life a problem is something that we think isn't that should be, or a problem is something that we think should be that isn't, and it's all about the way in which we think about it. So if we really kind of break this down on a mind level, we have these areas that we think that what we're experiencing is not okay and it should be different. Right, yeah, and that suffering, then for me it's like and you can really see it too, and what I mean by that is like you can see the object at hand. We can look at something very kind of black and white, like this is what I'm, like.
Speaker 1:My mom died, she is not coming back, and that is a very, very, very painful thing to like really come to terms with, and I can even like feel it right in real time, like building in my stomach like oh, like it's still as, like. That's a hard reality, but it's when I just like right what I just did right here, I felt that in my stomach, I felt into my body. I didn't disassociate from my body, I didn't try to run away from what it was that I was experiencing internally, so it was something like grief, like something that is just very obviously gonna cause some pain or whatever.
Speaker 2:Whatever word you wanna use for that, it's just not. I mean, you're gonna have to deal with it at some point, right?
Speaker 2:So, this practice would be like you said just acknowledging it and stop running from it Correct. Let yourself feel it and then just like with anything, even if it's something much smaller, like you didn't get the job that you wanted or you're not falling, you're not falling in love the way that you want to and you don't have a partner like you want to, things like that, where if you just stop and say, well, what is real right now and how can I show up in that, instead of wasting energy trying to deny reality, wishing it was different, yeah, I mean, yeah, that's kind of what I'm speaking into and it's just it's accepting it.
Speaker 1:And then tools, modalities and practices there's. I kind of have this rule of thumb when it comes to my being, and it's something that I've established over the years, which is like I kind of think of myself a little bit as like a child, in a sense. Where am I hungry? Am I tired? Am I like really depleted? Am I hydrated? How have I been eating? I check off the main boxes and if I'm not doing those things, then my mind will be so chaotic that I have zero idea that maybe it's just my body needs something. It's requiring something, just like a baby when it cries. Does it need it's diaper change? Does it need formula? Does it need to be breastfed? Like what is it? Is it overly tired? Does it need a nap? You take the basics of life, check that first and if you're lacking in some of those categories, maybe let that be the focus rather than putting the focus on yourself internally, like there's something wrong with you.
Speaker 3:Oh, my God, I think that's so. Like that one piece specifically, like there's something wrong and it needs to be different. Cause that goes back to like what we're saying, like the resistance of it is what's actually creating more pain than just allowing it. So like trying to change it or distract from it is only gonna perpetuate it. Right, exactly, Cause what?
Speaker 2:you resist, persists.
Speaker 1:So, it's.
Speaker 2:I mean accepting it and embracing what is so that you can deal with it, which is a pretty crude way to say it. Just so clean and cut like that, but, like you said, because if you don't deal with it it will never, it's not gonna go anywhere. And that's why what you resist persists, because you don't give yourself the space and the permission to be like okay, well, here I am, and this is what is now what.
Speaker 1:What do I do with this Exactly? And I ask a lot of my excuse me. I ask myself the question a lot. What do I need?
Speaker 1:And again yeah, it's like it's fulfilling the basics, and then, if all of the basics feel checked off and I'm still experiencing this pain, this emotion, whatever it may be that's coming up, that makes me feel like I'm in an unbalanced space, like I'm thinking there's something wrong, then I'm gonna drop in deeper, and what that can look like is I mean, it's it could be a multitude of things.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you're driving and you just like talk to yourself out loud, or you send a girlfriend a voice note just to talk through what you're experiencing in the mind, or even emotionally, giving it getting into meditation, getting into breath work. Breath work is a really beautiful practice to kind of deepen and allow things to flow, without really fully even having context as to why that. You're just moving stuck energy, so getting yourself into a state of opening. And again, the thing, though, is that there's this experiential piece that needs to be moved through, so you can do modalities, but you also have to allow yourself to look at it and not think that there's something wrong with it, to like feel the feelings, like you're not broken, you've never been broken and we're taught and we have this condition that we're all broken and there's something wrong with us in some context.
Speaker 1:And so when you realize I'm not broken, there's just some imbalance or this is what's actually happening, kind of going back to what we said earlier, the what is then you can start to look at it from a place of allowing yourself to feel through it. But you have a clear context or you might be able to see it in a little bit more of a logical place.
Speaker 2:Some advice I've gotten on this that I have utilized a couple of times is like if something really big happens or something really upsetting happens, I embrace it by allowing, like I give myself, like a day or two. Like this is a lot and I'm gonna give myself. Sometimes there's no time, like you, just don't know how long it's gonna take, and you just take it day by day.
Speaker 2:Do you give yourself permission to feel it right and to really really feel like the yes and like yes, this sucks and I also am still totally in my power and I can move through it. But before you can move through, you kind of have to like acknowledge it. You have to see it correct. Yeah and then be like okay, I've given myself time to feel sorry for myself which is there's totally room for that. Now I'm going to decide what my role is from this point on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can, and you can. There's like I always kind of look at it like you can surrender which I know a lot of us have heard that term, utilize that term or you collapse, and they're really different. So collapsing into something heavy means you get kind of like taken away by it, blown away by it and spun out in the mind with it, surrendering to it. It's this different essence of more like an acceptance rather than like I'm blowing away, I'm no, I'm gonna accept this. And now, with the acceptance, I'm gonna move with the emotion. Once the emotion is moved, I'm gonna give myself what it needs. Like I ask myself all the time what do you need? It could be a hot bath, it could be a sauna, it could be a girls weekend that I've been trying to plan for quite some time. It could be any of those things. But it's really being honest with what you need and then actually allowing yourself and following through with giving yourself the opportunity to receive what it is you need. So, and it's that balance Again, I use the word balance so much, but it's a practice and it's a learned, it's kind of a learned way of being as well.
Speaker 1:So pain is, I mean, it's. To me, it was the ticket to learn how to live more openly. And so being okay with what is allowing yourself to go into practices, checking first the basic human needs am I hungry, am I tired? Do I need movement? Allowing yourself to be in that space too. It doesn't have to be this crazy difficult thing that can equate to reducing the amount of suffering you have in life.
Speaker 2:Lauren, your husband shared something with us this morning that stuck with me. That's coming back up right now this practice of how can I accept this and love it to the most, like the most that I can, which can sound maybe like I don't really feel like I can love my mom dying, but when? You think about what is there to love. Right now, it's remembering and recognizing how much you actually do love her right.
Speaker 1:We forget that when someone's always there.
Speaker 2:We can focus on their flaws, we can focus on our childhood wounds, whatever. And so when you lose someone, you also have the opportunity or the clarity. I should say you don't even have to try, you have the clarity just right there of how much you love them and how deeply you love them.
Speaker 2:It's like that Andrew Garfield video that's circulating, crying because of the loss of his mom and he's like this isn't. Don't mistake my tears for sadness. This is just me expressing all the love that I still have for her, that I never got to express to her yet.
Speaker 3:So beautiful.
Speaker 2:That could be an example of how can you love what is to the most and appreciate what opportunity it's offering or the clarity that it's bringing. I mean, is there some way that you applied this type of open-hearted living when you came out of the hospital in April A little less dramatic, I mean, it was pretty freaking dramatic still but yeah, that one's hard Ooh.
Speaker 1:So, like is your question, like how, after the experience in April, how was I able to get to that point of expressing love for the experience that I had? That was a hard one and I would say I'm still definitely in integration with that because, well, of course, it hit me in my biggest fears. So I experienced like my biggest fears happening, and so it's hard to see like you're even getting it. Get me in like real time. I'm having like a little bit of a call them a brain glitches.
Speaker 2:Well, let me reflect back to something that I've seen you do, which is another way of loving what is and fully embracing it and living with your heart open is. You've taken the experience you had and it was not a good one and it's made you feel passionate about the mental health industry, like, specifically the medical world and how that's handled, and you've really done a lot of research. You've reached out to different doctors in your family and this is a moment where your mess became your message and is becoming your message.
Speaker 1:I love that and really here's how I was able to start to love. It was loving telling the story of it. I loved being able to share my experience openly, without fear, feeling truly safe to share my story, and that the more that I shared it, the more acceptance came from sharing the story and I think it, I will say I learned to love myself deeper because I, like, was able to go through that and come through that, because what I experienced, so many people kind of fall victim into it. They fall victim into the medication, they fall victim into the system, they and it becomes their life, and it's really opened my eyes to being like, no, we are so powerful, like we truly are so powerful.
Speaker 1:Now, this is not to negate, you know, yes, there are people out there that might need that help and they might need to utilize that, but I think that we've over amplified and over trying to be mindful of the words I use here I don't know if I wanna say glamorize but we've made it like that's the only way to get through and it's not the only way, and so I just want people listening to this that, like understand that you know healing and going through something really dark, something super heavy. You can come back from that because you are that powerful, and so I do love that I was able to see strength on a different level, going through what I had gone through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think a lot of your life is like devoted to helping people grow and see their potential, and you, having this experience yourself, is just adding a whole another level of support that you're able to provide to others, right?
Speaker 1:right exactly. It's just kind of it's a lot, so big eggs. I'm like okay, there's a lot of times I look up to the sky. I'm like okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:You got a lot at once that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Ooh, we've lived some life and it's only been 30 years, 31,. But I mean it's, yeah, it's crazy. But the thing about it like is this, right here, right now, laughter, like laughing through it, and you know, it's not that it's making diminishing the context of like what I actually experienced, but like to really be like this is a crazy ride. We are on this thing called life and it's weird and scary and uncomfortable and amazing and euphoric and it's like this is the craziest thing and like, if I really scope it out, it feels like a I'm like I don't mean that life is a joke, but sometimes I'm like this gotta be a cosmic joke, Like what the heck? And having that open-mindedness about the experience does kind of bring some ease in Cause. Whether you went through anything compared to what I've gone through, or you've gone through the smallest things, I mean like it is a crazy journey, it is a roller coaster.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the great balance is treating your life and your time here as sacred, but also not taking yourself so seriously You're not taking life so seriously.
Speaker 2:So like, remember, we're on a giant rock floating through space and eventually we'll look back at this and it'll feel like, oh, that was, yeah, like almost almost on par with. Like this is it was almost like a joke, right, like it's a comedy. Like life can be a comedy in the very truest sense of the genre, to see it as something that can be lighthearted, which I mean it's kind of funny to wrap up this kind, this episode, with that context. But I think that that is the balance. Right Is treating time, our time here, as sacred and keeping our hearts open so that we can fully live right and not hold ourselves back from discovery, discovering what it truly means to be human, while also remembering it's not that serious.
Speaker 2:Right, like we are so much bigger than this and every like. One day it will make more sense and one day we'll see it for what it really is and just have just enjoy ourselves.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Well, Natalie, this was, this was so good. I think that I would call this a success for our first interview.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think so. I mean because we're just so lucky to have you be so open with us during such a incredibly challenging time, so to show up so vulnerably, we just we love you so much.
Speaker 1:And thank you guys for your hospitality and your friendship and your love and your space holding. I mean it takes a true bond to be able to do that and a trust. You know that was yet like. Another big thing is the trust and we were just saying in the kitchen earlier today. You know, we always think about our old friends that we grow up with, but what about the friends that you meet at the age in which you are, like, developed later in life? I mean, it's just a gift, such a gift. So thank you guys Totally agree.
Speaker 2:Well, if you guys have any specific questions for Natalie, if you wanna reach out to her to connect to you know, share your experience with her. Whatever she's on Instagram, remind us what your handle is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's at. I am Natalie Spath.
Speaker 2:S-P-A-E-T-H. Right, I'll put it in the. I mean, it'll probably it'll be in the, whatever the title of the episode, so you can turn it on. I am Natalie Spath. Thank you again so much for being here, for being our little interview Guinea Pig, and for being so open and vulnerable. And thank you all for listening. And you know, I hope, if nothing else, you take this episode the feeling of you're not alone, you're more powerful than you realize and your time here is sacred, but not to be taken too seriously so that you just lose, miss out on the discovery that's available to you To live open-holed. Let's do our best, all right, love you all. Love you bye.
Speaker 3:If you found any of what we shared today helpful, please share this with a friend, and we would so appreciate a rating and review to help us grow and reach more people. Also, please feel free to send us any feedback and questions. You can find us on Instagram. Kendra can be found at KendraDyerCrabb, k-e-n-d-r-a-d-y-e-r-c-r-a-b-b, and you can find myself at Lauren Penyadial, and it's L-A-U-R-E-N-P-E-N-A-D-I-A-L. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.