Episode 12: Dr. Marnie Hartman; What If Your Hardest Struggles Become Your Superpower?

What if the hardest things you’ve lived through could become your superpower? We sit down with Dr. Marnie Hartman—physical therapist, yoga teacher, author, and death doula—whose life moved from the precision of competitive gymnastics to the intimate, human work of helping a rural Alaska town heal. From Orange County’s boutique sports clubs to a basement room next to a utility closet in Haines, Marnie shares how discipline, empathy, and a bluebird pass day pulled her toward a different kind of success.

We explore the inflection points: launching a rehab program in a place where everyone knows your name; discovering pain science and realizing pain lives in the nervous system, not just in tissues; and using yoga as a bridge—breath, attention, and values—to change a person’s experience of pain. Marnie takes us inside the making of Pain Science Yoga Life, written to help clinicians and teachers integrate neuroscience and yoga in real-world care. She also opens the door to death doula work and Death Cafés, where tea, cake, and honest talk about mortality make room for presence, clarity, and gentler lives.

This is a story about foundations and falling, about compassion as a verb, and about letting joy be a measure of health. It’s also a love letter to Haines: the trust of small-town life, the courage to start something new, and the shared work of showing up for each other. If you’ve ever wondered how to navigate chronic pain without losing yourself, how to talk about death without shutting down, or how to choose play over perfection, this conversation will meet you where you are and invite you a step further.

If this resonates, share it with a friend, subscribe for new Thursday drops, and leave a review to help more curious listeners find the show. What part of Marnie’s journey will you carry into your day?

Transcript

Meet Marnie: Roots And Grit

SPEAKER_06 0:00

Hi, thanks for joining us for this episode of Doug Hat's Questions. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like, subscribe. We're available if you want to watch us on uh YouTube or if you just want to listen to the podcast version on Apple Podcast and Spotify, and each episode goes live on Thursday morning. So I hope you enjoy this episode and we're happy to have you listening. Welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions. Today my guest is Dr. Marty Hartman, physical therapist, yoga instructor, strength instructor, author, many other talents that we're gonna hear about. Marnie has uh been a big factor in my life as far as pain management and as a yoga instructor and also as a friend, and look forward to diving into her life story and some of the things she's done beyond what I know that she's been doing in this. But I think my like I told you when I asked you to be on here, Marnie, you have such a compassionate, outgoing personality that the things that I know about you they're all about helping other people get through, whether it's pain, grief, a lot of things, just trying to bring out the best in people. And I I appreciate that about you, and I want to share that story with other uh everybody else. So thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Thank you for inviting me. It's really an honor to be here.

SPEAKER_06 1:24

Thank you. So let's let's start with uh early early Marnie. What what where did you grow up? What was your childhood like?

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Oh, um I was a military brat. Okay. So I was born in the Philippines, and we moved around quite a lot until I was about eight years old. And then we spent a big chunk of my you know adolescent teen until I moved here was in Southern California.

SPEAKER_06 1:53

So the different places you went to as so it's obviously eight years old, you didn't there's some of them you probably don't have much of a memory of, but were there any places that you're like, wow, that was really cool, that was a neat experience?

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Yeah, North Dakota. I spent a fair bit of time in North Dakota, which I think some people ask, like, think I have a bit of an accent, and I think it comes from that, you know, kind of Scandinavian. Riot of my not then? Grand Forks. Grand Forks. My dad was in the Air Force. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think that's maybe where I first really felt connected to nature. I mean, I was young, but um, you know, when I think back to fun childhood memories, it was going to this place called Turtle River and you know, camping out and things like that. And it felt like some of that shut away when we moved to California. Um, you know, just less access to um what I think of as the wild. Of course, there were the beaches and you know, things like that that were beautiful and fun, um, but not as much remote.

SPEAKER_06 2:51

And so you're saying you said it was Southern California?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

LA, San Diego, where Riverside, which is inland empire. Yep. Some people call it the armpit.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

I have heard that phrase to describe it before. I I do have great memories of um citrus groves.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

I often say the one thing that is, you know, maybe a little better about California than Haynes, Alaska is the smell of springtime because it smells like orange blossoms rather than dog poop.

SPEAKER_06 3:23

That that is a big improvement, I would agree. And I I've always been jealous when I've either traveled to uh Southern California or like friends in Arizona, the fresh citrus in their backyards, uh, they got lemon trees, orange trees, whatever in their backyards, and it's like, oh, that would be nice.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah, it is nice.

SPEAKER_06 3:41

Not to discount our blueberries and all the berries and stuff we get here, but you know, it's sometimes you yearn for that thing you don't have. Exactly. And see that. So growing up in Southern California, what what were your activities? Were you going to the beach quite a bit? Do a lot of swimming.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

I went to the beach a lot and like played in the waves. I did a lot of like boogie boarding and you know, beach sand volleyball. Um, but I was a gymnast um through most of my like older adolescence and teen high school years. And um, so I spent a lot of time indoors in the gym. In fact, at my gymnastics coach always made a joke like if we you know went away for the weekend and came back and were a little tan, he'd be like, You're too tan to be a gymnast.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Oh wow. Just in that that, like, you're not spending more time outside than inside. It was kind of a funny little joke.

SPEAKER_06 4:33

But what uh what did you enjoy most about gymnastics?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

I I think I have at least that I was really attracted and it's kind of stayed with me. Those sports that feel like they're it's a team environment, but the actual physical performance of it all is on you. You know, the person that I'm really competing with is myself on how, you know, can I can I do better than I did last time? And that better isn't impacted by how anybody else on our team performs. So I think I was always somebody who felt more comfortable in that environment than in like that real like competitive, you know, um the team sport of like taking things away from somebody else or you know, even like racing to a finish line. I'm the one who's gonna like in the bike races I've participated in here, like I'll ride with somebody for a long time, and right when we get to the finish line, I'll just pull back and let them have it. And it's not like a like, oh I let them have it, but it's just naturally that like I don't have that, like, I have to do better than you. And so I think in gymnastics it was, you know, really always about bettering your own performance. And I like the precision sports. I really like you know, finding those nuances of body mechanics and positioning to to change how something comes out instead of like um the more like aggressive thrill-seeking. I mean, gymnastics has some thrill to it, of course, but it's it's different.

SPEAKER_06 6:08

So you're at high school level.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_06 6:13

Were you on any traveling teams, anything like that as well, or just to the high school level?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Mm-hmm. I um, you know, at least in Southern California, high gymnastics is no longer part of a school sport because the insurance, the risk of injury is too high. And so I was in a club team. Um, and we traveled, you know, all over the state, the region a little bit. Um yeah, and I did apply uh to um compete for college. Um, but I knew pretty early, like I knew as a senior in high school that I wanted to be a physical therapist, and um I knew it was a rather competitive um program to get into, at least in Southern California. And um I was not a super strong academic individual. I struggled through high school. Um I mean, I struggled from the time I something many people wouldn't know about me, maybe or think, is when I was in first and second grade, I was a kid that like got pulled out of class because I was a slow reader. And so I was, you know, taken to Mrs. Wise's class and um, you know, individually had individual sessions to help me read. At that time I didn't know that it was something unusual. You know, that didn't come really into my awareness until I started working in the school as a physical therapist and was like, oh, like kids have IEPs, and you know, that that is likely what I what I had. So anyway, all that to say, um, I knew that I would have to work really hard in my first few years of college to be able to get into a physical therapy program, and I didn't think I could do both.

SPEAKER_06 7:58

Okay, we're gonna come back to that because we're gonna take a detour here. Okay. While you mentioned that, I think it's amazing that a young girl that had help in first and second grade with reading became an author.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Yeah.

Gymnastics, Coaching, And Discipline

SPEAKER_06 8:12

I think that's I mean, it just so many people that I've met, it's always really cool for me, they probably didn't understand the struggles, but when you see the things that people struggle with, and then the way that they can overcome them and the things that they do with that, with perseverance, support from family, friends, whatever. And to I think it's a great thing to show to other people that we're never a finished product. No, and this is kind of another this is one of the things I've always taken away from yoga class with you. You were always telling me just be good with where you are today. It might be better than yesterday, might be worse than yesterday. Tomorrow might be better, tomorrow might be worse. But you're in today, make the best of that, just enjoy what you have. And and I think moving forward with that is just recognizing that we're not the finished product, that we can be better tomorrow, that we can be even better the next day. It just depends if you want to be there and putting some time into it. But I I think that's amazing that you have that experience as a young child and became an author.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah. Yeah, I'm a terrible speller.

SPEAKER_06 9:25

Doesn't matter, they got spell check, they've got they've got editors, they got they got people that help with that.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 9:30

You don't have to be perfect at it.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Not at all.

SPEAKER_06 9:32

You just have to have the knowledge and be willing to put the time in.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, I mean, I do think part of you know, my young years of moving around a lot also meant that I was in a lot of different schools. Um, and like I remember real specifically going from second grade in North Dakota to second grade in in Kentucky and going from a class of 15 at a private school to a public county school with like a class of 35 and being super lost, you know, at in second grade, just going like, wow, they're learning cursive, and we hadn't even started or whatever, you know. And um, so I look back into a lot of my um the way I write, the way I spell, and I just think like those early years there were a lot of gaps. And you're right, you're not a finished product, you're also not who you once were, right? And it doesn't. It's a part of it. Yes, my story. Like, exactly. I mean, it's part of my story, and maybe it's partially, you know, I am kind of stubborn and driven in some ways. Of like, if somebody had said to me, like, oh, well, you had trouble reading, you're never gonna be an author, I'm gonna be the person that's like, Well, maybe I am. Maybe I am. Maybe I will.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Let's just wait and see. Just to prove you wrong. Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 10:48

We'll see who gets a last laugh on this one.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, yeah. So I I think it's it is a really beautiful point. And I, you know, I feel like I talk to a lot of the youth that are in my life in that way, of like the struggles that you have now. I mean, one of my dear friends will kind of sit with me in this one of like I often talk about the things that we struggle the most with in life can really become our superpowers, right? You know, if if if I have a because it allows me that insight into compassion, right? Because now I can understand from my lens of a struggle how something else might be harder for someone else. We don't have to have the same struggle for me to then go, like, oh, right, like this is hard for them.

SPEAKER_06 11:36

I I will agree with that 100%. I think that's something we share. I think the the the struggles that I've had in life, it's definitely made me more empathetic to others. And you know, the different traumatic experiences over time, it kind of gives you that sense of uh you can these moments don't have to define you, they're part of who you are, but the way you respond to them and you can definitely recover from them. But the way that you respond to that and take that in and learn from those experiences, um, I think is more powerful than the experience itself.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Completely agree.

SPEAKER_06 12:17

But it's sometimes it's hard to tell you that when you're going through those experiences.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 12:23

So that's why I appreciate you and others that have been on here sharing those experiences, that when they have had those difficulties, because there's a lot of people that don't hear that. Um and it's only been in the last five, ten years that I've there's people that have probably been telling me that, but telling somebody and them hearing it are two different things.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

And I really believe that you know we receive the lessons in life at the time that we really need them. You know, you can often look back and be like, oh yeah, like that that was coming at me, and it was coming at me. Why didn't I receive it then? Because it wasn't the right time. You know, like our teachings come when we need it the most.

SPEAKER_06 13:04

I like that. Okay, after that divergence there, let's let's go back to high school. Okay, high school.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

You were back at high school, yeah. Riverside poly high.

SPEAKER_06 13:15

Where was it?

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Riverside kind of high.

SPEAKER_06 13:16

Riverside poly high.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Yeah, poly high. We were the bears.

SPEAKER_06 13:19

The bears. Oh, see, similar. Very similar there. The the thing with me is every time that I've seen when they talk about gymnastics is the amount of hours put in for that. I knew what it was like practicing for basketball, you know, a couple hours a day or whatever. But seems like gymnastics, figure skating, some of those precision sports like you were talking about, where it's very refined movements. There's a lot of time. What was your daily practice schedule?

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Um, we practiced for three and a half hours a day. Okay. Five days a week.

SPEAKER_05 13:53

Five days a week.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

And when I was 14, I started coaching. So I um had an open sixth period. Um I started in my sophomore year of high school, um, I like petitioned to allow my gymnastics to count as PE credit. So that offered me more time outside of school. And then I ended up also doing something called an ROP program, which was regional occupational training, wouldn't be right, programming, regional occupational programming, which is how I kind of initially got a window into the physical therapy rehab world, but we can go back to that. And so I also got some credits for coaching, and so that left me with like basically three-quarters of a day in high school, in school. So I would leave school early, like 1:30, I think-ish. I'd go home, have a snack, go to the gym. I would teach preschoolers and what were called our um like our fast trackers. So anything from six to ten years old who appeared to have um kind of a extra gifted skill. So they were like the tops kids you were trying to bring in, you know, to the competitive scene a little bit earlier. Um and then so I spent two and a half hours coaching and then three and a half hours training straight after that. So it was usually about nine-ish o'clock by the time I got home. And I would eat dinner and go directly to bed. This is strange, I'll tell you that. So I would then so I would usually be in bed by 10:30, and then I would set my alarm and wake up at like 3:30, 4 o'clock in the morning and do my homework, and then I would go back to bed for like an hour before I went to school. And it was, you know, probably a ridiculous rationale, but then it at least made me feel like I hadn't been up since four in the morning because I'd had that little like nap in the middle. So yeah, I mean, I spent most of my, I feel like most of my high school career um was spent in the gym.

SPEAKER_06 16:11

Wow. That is so any part weekends you had off though, or were there meets on the weekends?

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Weekend, I mean, we hit when it was season, we had two kind of competitive seasons a year. So in season, then you usually had a competition at least all day one one of the Saturdays or Sundays. And if you were, you know, lucky enough to make it to the next, you know, level, then oftentimes you had to go back the next morning.

SPEAKER_06 16:36

Dang.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 16:38

That was a huge that I'm guessing that's uh where you learned a lot of discipline. Just that you have to keep up that regimen at a young age.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely discipline and you know, like that, the gym crew kind of gave me that like extended family feeling. You know, I spent a I spent at that time in my life, I spent more time with my teammates and my coach than I did with my family. Um, and I definitely, you know, it it's an interesting I think, like now looking back, I think that kind of helped to carve in that idea for me of like a chosen family. You know, I love my my blood family, they're really great. Um, and there's a lot of people in my life that I would say that I am, you know, even more like heart close to because it's like they're my chosen family, and we have those other kind of big life things in common. And you know, for me at that time my gym family was was definitely that.

SPEAKER_06 17:36

I think it's important to have those teams outside of your family that are with you at different stages in life. Yeah. That you have that connection to that you're sharing similar things, whether it's gymnastics or whatever other life experiences you're going through, that just have other people that are experiencing with you is is a huge part. And that's one of the reasons I've I've always appreciated athletics is you do have those teammates, those people that are working towards a common goal. Um working, hopefully everybody's working on the same page, not always, but uh um yeah, no, that's that's crazy. So I'm not saying you're crazy, but it's a you you look at that when people think that they don't have enough time to do something.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

I definitely think it's where I and it's definitely where I got that. Like I can be maybe to a fault productive, right? Like I I I don't have a real hard time checking boxes in my life, right? Like some of my friends are like, wow, you got a lot done today. Like, well I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 18:44

Yeah, I think I can get a lot done, but I just I just wait until seven to get started.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Well, see, we all have those different times. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:52

Four o'clock's a little early.

SPEAKER_05 18:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

And I I took, I mean, I took that kind of pattern even into college for a long time. Like the the mornings have always been my clear thought process time. Um, and so I think you know, it kind of stayed with me of like this is I wake up and study and focus, and I did a lot of the writing of the book also early in the early morning.

Choosing Physical Therapy

SPEAKER_06 19:17

So you said as so as you're going through high school, you said in your senior years when you first became interested in being going into physical therapy, was there an event or was it just being around having injuries yourself? What was that spark that got you going down the physical therapy path?

SPEAKER_01 19:33

I mean, I think partially recognizing that like there was obviously a passion to the body and physical movement and that connection to like learning to coach and like being able to communicate with somebody and getting them to shift their body into something else just by certain cues. I think that was a little bit of the intrigue, and also knowing I didn't necessarily want to be a professional coach. Um, and then through that regional occupational programming, I took a class called that was about athletic training. So I learned how to like tape ankles and do on-field assessments. And so my senior year, um, in addition to all the time at the gym, I also spent time with our high school football team. And so I'd go to their practices on the sidelines, I'd go to their their Friday night games on the sidelines with my little, you know, hip hip belt first aid kit and run out there. And um, in Riverside, California, they had this really cool place called the Sports Clinic, and it was connected with a um orthopedic medical office. So there were like 10 orthopedic um doctors, surgeons. Um, there were like 15 physical therapists and occupational therapists, all in the same big kind of building complex, yeah. Big um, and then there were also this team of athletic trainers, and they had a really cool setup where any high school or college, there were two colleges in in Riverside, both a junior college and UC Riverside, and University of California Riverside. Um, so anybody who was injured during an athletic practice that was school sanctioned or to at one of the games could come between six and eight in the morning to the sports clinic and get a professional assessment by one of the trainers. They've got assessed, they could get on, you know, electrical stem and ice, they might get a few little exercises to get them back into play. And so through this that was free? That was all free.

SPEAKER_05 21:38

They did that wow.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

They did it for free. Mm-hmm. And you know, the trainers from there were contracted with the schools to go and be the trainers of, you know, at the games. And so I think there was probably some, you know, agreement to that of like you get free access if you hire our trainers. I don't know all the ins and outs of that, but a lot of even just as

SPEAKER_06 22:00

U advertising thing, you know, if you got them in for free and you need to go back recurring, hey, where are we gonna go?

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Well, I mean, that was the most that was the really cool thing about it is that you know, if you came in for an assessment and it was like, Oh, well, you're gonna need the next level of care, here it is. Like, here's the physical therapist you can go see. And then beyond that, like, oh, you need something more. Here's the orthopedist that you can see, and then you could work yourself all the way back through, right? So the ortho could send them back to the PT that's in the same office, and then the PT could send them on to the athletic trainer, and then finally they're back out to play.

SPEAKER_07 22:33

Down the field.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

So it was a really cool thing to witness and be part of. And I recognized that all the volunteer work that I was doing on the athletic training side, I kept watching the physical therapists. And it was the difference of having, you know, four or five people in front of you that you were kind of dancing between, of like putting ice on, taping, you know, setting up East EM, whatever. And yeah, I always kind of joked that it was like you just taped them up, smacked them on the butt, and said, get out and play, right? Which is not really what we did, but it kind of felt like that. It was like you're putting a band-aid on it to get them back out to play. And the PTs were the ones that were really like having a relationship with these individuals, right? They were going deeper into the diagnostics, to the assessment of what was happening and bringing them around to like actually getting better instead of just like whatever you had to do to get through that game. And um I it just really it spoke to me. Like, I think I want that side, I want to be able to hear their stories, I want to be able to have more of a relationship, I want to see them, you know, come one step further. And so that sent me into wanting to be a PT. And I'll fast forward just to make the streamline. I ended up going to physical therapy school in Southern California at Loma Linda University. Um, and I my first job was at the sports clinic.

SPEAKER_05 24:06

Sweet.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

I went back to work with right to the full circle. Full circle, left an impression.

SPEAKER_06 24:16

Yeah. So what what was it like going through um PT school? I've knowing you know my niece has gone through it and I've talked to other people about it, it can be challenging to say the least. Um did you enjoy it from the start, or were there times that you're like, what was I thinking?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Um there were definitely times that I was like, what was I thinking? Because remember, like academics sitting with a book was not what I was loving in life.

SPEAKER_06 24:49

That's why I asked that question is because there's a lot, there's a lot of that once you got into graduate school, wasn't there?

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah. And you know, it's funny because at that like I, you know, the belief of like um, you know, teachings come when you need them. I I didn't want to be a PT. I wanted to be a PTA because of the short schooling.

SPEAKER_07 25:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

That was my initial was like, I need to get out of school. I'm not a school person. I don't like sitting with a book, you know. I want to be moving, I want to be here doing this thing. And I guess, you know, looking back now, I'm super thankful. And at the same time, I so I did my two years of undergraduate initially to apply to physical therapy school, which isn't for a PTA, which is an associate's degree, and I didn't get in. And so I was like, oh, well, all right, I guess I just keep going with the prerequisites. And then I got into the at that time I was a master's program. So I got into the master's program, and you know, to like give a tiny picture of what that and the our first quarter was gross anatomy. So for eight weeks, six hours a day, we did nothing but gross anatomy.

SPEAKER_06 26:04

Is that the cadaver scale? Yeah, cadavers.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Yep. So it was like three hours of didactic where you're, you know, in more of a traditional classroom setting learning medical terminology and just the straight anatomy, and then three hours in the cadaver lab every afternoon, you know, actually putting what you're learning like in front of you. And that is that did help with me for my learning, is that I I think I'm a kinesthetic learner. I'm somebody who likes moving and doing things and being part of the process gets it in. Just putting it in a book in front of me is like me, not that.

SPEAKER_06 26:43

I'm not I'm not big on I love to read, but trying to teach me something out of a book, forget it, just show me how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 26:52

I I yeah, I don't like reading uh learning something out of a book. Yeah. Drives me crazy.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah. Yeah, that's not easy. It's not that great for me either.

SPEAKER_06 27:03

No. So but what you so once you get past like gross amount and everything, you're thinking, okay, this is something besides the schoolwork.

Cadavers, Clinics, And A Doctorate

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Yeah, I mean, I think it was hard. It was all in, you mean it was all I did, but I also feel like you know, in hindsight, it doesn't matter. I it was I think you know, my life of in gymnastics helped with that, of the like, this is what I'm doing. You know, yes, I'm in college, I'm a you know, I'm a late teens, early 20s person. I started PT school when I was 20. And um yeah, like it was all I did. That you know, that was when my other friends were joining sororities and you know, living the college life I was in, I was studying a lot.

SPEAKER_06 27:53

And and I guess what I was asking is, were you were you like were there moments that you were like, man, what did I get myself into? Or was it still pretty much the more you did it, the more you're like, yeah, I'm on the right path. I'm really glad I went down this road.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

You know, I'll give Loma Linda good credit in that, just the little bit that I know of some of the other programs. Year one, they had us in practicals, so we were already out, at least for short, like three-week stints where you were in a clinic.

SPEAKER_07 28:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Couldn't do much but observe. But I think that being stuck in the middle of these, you know, it'd be like three months of intense study where you're going with why am I doing this? And then you'd get to go to a clinic. And it every time I spent time in a clinic or a hospital, wherever I was, it really fed like this is what I want to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 28:48

Once you got that connection with the people, it reinforced that this is I'm on the right path. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you graduate.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Yeah, so here's like one it's kind of an interesting thing that played out is that you know, my so I was in a three-year master program, and during my third year, there was all this discussion of the future of academics for physical therapists, is moving to the to a doctoral program. And so my lot my lab partner through the entire time, even in my um my prerequisite years was this my friend Travis Harp. And he and I looked at each other and we were like, This kind of sucks. Like we just spent all this time, you know, getting a master's degree, and we're gonna be out in practice for a year or two, and then everybody's gonna have doctorates behind us. Like, yeah, that's we we're not the tenure master person who has 10 years of experience, and like that's gonna hold them above. We're kind of stuck in this like no man's land that isn't gonna make us very attractive for competitive, you know, positions. So we made a pact that we would go to the dean and ask if we could petition into the doctoral program, and so we did. So basically, our last two quarters of the master's program, we added in the doctoral work. So when I was in my last rotations, like my residencies, um, I was also taking night classes to finish the doctorate. Then we graduate and we had one more year. So we graduated with our masters, we both went to work full-time and took night classes with this doctoral program that was going through. So then we ended up graduating with the first round of those doctoral students. Um, and again, it was like intense. And because we were in it, like it felt really nice to me to be working and putting all that stuff that I had been learning, you know, into work and then just you know, taking a few extra courses in the evening and doing some more research.

SPEAKER_06 31:06

Um Were you the only two in your group that did that? Do you think the rest were wish they'd did you mention it to anybody else? They're like, no, we're good with just being a masters.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

You know, we didn't I don't remember if we like asked anybody else to join us. I remember us like having kind of like a handshake agreement of like we're gonna go to the dean and ask for this, and we did. And I don't I think most of our friends were like, You guys are crazy. Like we're ready to get out of here. And I do know that both Travis and I in h like we're I'm very thankful that I did it because honestly, finishing school, I've never had an inkling really to be like, Yeah, I want to go back to school.

SPEAKER_06 31:49

Like Yeah, yeah, no, but yeah, so that to add that extra year right on, yeah, I think is definitely you get out of that, you were you probably weren't gonna be going back.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

No, no, I did do like an um my after that after finishing my doctorate, I had one year of a little bit more of like a more balanced life of just working, you know, a standard working 40 to 50 hour work week, you know, and um, and then my the next year actually Travis and I together again took this year-long residency program for um orthopedics for manual therapy. So we learned a lot more of like osteopathic manipulations and um kind of ended up with this manual specialty specialty at the time um in the orthopedic world.

SPEAKER_06 32:36

And so when you were doing that residency, was that a full-time residency or were you working at the clinic still?

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Working at the clinic still, and then that happened on the weekends.

SPEAKER_06 32:44

Okay. Man, you have a way of packing a lot in everything. You still take much time off, do you?

unknown 32:52

I didn't.

SPEAKER_06 32:53

You did not take much time off at all. So how so after that residency, you're still at the clinic. How long did you stay at the clinic?

SPEAKER_01 33:02

At the sports clinic, I was there for four and a half years.

SPEAKER_06 33:05

Four and a half years. And is that when you came to Haynes after that? Or was there a step between there?

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Um at that at the clinic, and I wasn't real happy with how the direction of things were going. And I was um emoting to my friend Travis, and he was like, I got a position available. He was working at this very high-end um very kind of boutique office inside this fancy sports um facility called the um the sports club LA.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

And the Sports Club LA had um multiple little offices settings around the West Coast. One of them was in Irvine, and then there was this place called Sports Med that was like a little entity of rehab within the Sports Club LA. So it was, I can't remember exactly, something like$350 a month to be a member of this sports club to exercise. I mean, this place was like in downtown Irvine with a sushi bar in the basement and you know, a pool outside, and an escalator to take up to the cardio loft. So you could ride an escalator and then go on to the Stairmasters.

SPEAKER_06 34:36

I've seen things like that in other places besides California. It's like, really?

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Do you really is that really what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 34:45

So it was very, you know, it was upper echelon, whatever. So Travis was like, he was at that time, he was um the like director of that little office. So he had, you know, a small staff. I think there were four other therapists, and they had a vacancy, and he was like, You can come down here and work with me. And I had some pull to get out of the inland empire, to get out of the armpit. And so, but I didn't love Orange County, it was always kind of intimidating to me. Um, so I found a little tiny studio in San Clemente, which, if you know San Clemente's little pier bowl, it's like this like beautiful quintessential Southern California, like quaint, beachy community. And when I was growing up, I always loved San Clemente the best because there was like this little pier bowl, the surf culture was there, but then there were all these mountain bike trails into the mountains, like right from this center place. Of course, by the time I actually moved there, those mountain bike trails had turned into you know track homes, had all been built out. Uh, but yeah, so I left Riverside, moved to San Clemente, and then and started working in Irvine at the sports club, Sports Fit, with Travis as my supervisor.

SPEAKER_06 36:01

All right. And so what what was the impetus for coming to Alaska? Well you're in San Clemente, this place you absolutely love, you think it's great. And California to Alaska is a big move.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

Yeah, you know, I think I definitely am somebody who can say for the bulk of my life, I felt like I wasn't enough and felt like I didn't fit anywhere. And um Orange County brought that to a head for me. Like this isn't this isn't my place. You know, if I could have, I've often said if I could have lived, worked, and played just in my little tiny thing of San Clemente, maybe California would have spoken to me more as as I continued to grow. Um, but I wasn't come I wasn't comfortable in my own skin there, you know. Um, it was the longest home I'd ever known, but it didn't feel like my home. My parents had already left, my sister had left. I didn't have extended relatives there. And um, yeah, then I met a boy who, you know, had some dreams of kayaking between Juneau and Seattle, and you know, asked if I wanted to join in that, and I was like, well, that's pretty extreme considering I just barely kayak in the back flat bay of Newport Beach.

SPEAKER_06 37:34

Might be a bigger step than I'm ready for at the moment.

High-End Sports Medicine To Burnout

SPEAKER_01 37:38

But that conversation, you know, kind of evolved into like, you know, what is it that you want and where do you want to live? And you know, maybe it's better to live where you can play. And you know, it evolved further into like him always wanting to live in Alaska. And I think my, you know, young upbringing of moving around a lot made it easy for me to be like, then then why not move? You've done this before, you've lived through it. And initially it was like really, I mean, um, I mean, most people I I would expect the majority of the people listening know that I moved here with Greg Schlochter, so that's the boy that I'm talking about. And um, yeah, I think you know, it just came to that conversation. And initially it was from my recollection, it was just like, well, you should go live where you play. We hadn't been dating that long, and then somehow it came in of like, oh, now we're both thinking of moving. And um, he actually found Haynes, Alaska, um, on the internet. It had just been written up in Powder Magazine of its being, you know, one of the premier heliski sport places. And I think really it was like had a little bit of all of Alaska without having like the intense cold of the interior or the big rain of you know Ketchkin or Sitka or things like that. And um, you know, we we came up for a trip for a visit. The one caveat I do remember saying is that I don't want to like if we're really thinking of moving, I don't want to see it at its best. And so when did you come? November.

SPEAKER_06 39:18

November?

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Yeah. Yeah, November.

SPEAKER_06 39:22

Depends on which day in November. Sometimes it's a Haynes at its best. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Sometimes it's not. November 2004, we came. Um and I had already done a little bit of research um and realized that there was no there was no rehab services here at the time. There was no physical therapist, um, there wasn't even a chiropractor in that gap of time. And I called the search clinic. Um, and Michelle Wing answered the phone. And I told her, like, I'm, you know, I'm a physical therapist in Southern California, coming to Alaska for a visit, and you know, kind of flirting with the idea of maybe relocating, and you don't have any therapy services. Like, how come?

SPEAKER_06 40:09

Do you do you want to have some? I know somebody that might be willing to work for you.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

How come? And she, you know, she put me in touch with Marsha Scott and Marsha, who was the director of the search clinic at the time, and Marsha said, Well, when you're here, you know, come into the clinic and like let's sit down and have a conversation. And so I did. And I met with Marcia Scott and Linda Kirstead, who was a medical director at the time. And I often joke that it felt like they like rolled out the red carpet a little bit, and that they were happened to be at a time when they were going actively going through a clinic remodel. And there was this little room. I don't know if you did you ever see me as a in my little tiny room in the basement.

SPEAKER_06 40:53

The room in the basement next door. Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:55

Yeah, next next door to the utility closet and the mechanical room.

SPEAKER_06 41:00

I think that was the first place I met you was there.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Probably.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

That's the first place I met a lot of people in town.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Um so they had that little room, and it was like, well, maybe this could be our rehab room. Like we realize we need we need this service, but we don't really know where to start. And um to shorten that in the end, by the time I left town, Marcia and Linda and I had agreed to pursue a grant together. And you know, search has great grant writers, and um, so they did that part of it, and I just implemented the physical therapy knowledge, like what kind of equipment do you need, you know, all of that little just the basics of things. Um, so we were here in November by January we had secured two years of funding to start a physical therapy program here in Haynes. And, you know, they were very clear with me that um it was a native preference hire. So even though I had done the back work to help, they need they had to put it out. And if an Alaskan native or um Native American applied for the job, they would get preference. And I completely understood that. And at this time, to be totally honest, I was still like, Am I am I moving?

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Did I just tap myself into a job and ask? Like I said I would help you with this project because that kind of sound sounded exciting to me.

SPEAKER_06 42:30

Along with that, what was the weather like when you're here in November?

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Well, I remember being cold and sunny and beautiful. Um and I it was like right around Eagle Fest time. I don't think the festival was happening, but I do remember Dan Eagle, like Greg had contacted Dan um about you know the Alaska Nature Tours, because that was kind of the world that he wanted to get into. And I remember driving out the highway and seeing all the eagles in the trees and getting a lot of the history in that way. Um, we stayed at the hotel housing land. This is one thing that I think is entertaining, especially now. But like we walked from the hotel housing land everywhere. So we had walked up like the highest, you know, the furthest we'd gone was like skyline area, kind of looking around, you know, just wandering. And um I didn't even we didn't even know that like anything past like the fort, like Mud Bay area existed. Like we didn't go in the same direction at all, which I just think is kind of humorous. But um, so the weather was cold and clear and lovely until the last day when we were supposed to fly out, and then it snowed. And um luckily, unbeknownst to us that this would be a rare thing, there was a ferry late that night. So we didn't even get snowed in a full twin.

SPEAKER_05 43:52

So you thought this was just like, wow, if we can't fly, we can just get on the ferry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

So here is kind of a fun part of this little story. That we had that extra day and we hadn't yet gone over to the fairgrounds. So we walked over to the fairgrounds and went to the brewery and met Paul Wheeler and sampled some beer and you know had a good long conversation with Paul. And there happened to be another person in there who later now I know is Lee Close.

SPEAKER_05 44:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:23

And so Paul and Lee and Greg and I were chatting, and you know, Greg and I taste the beer and we really like it. And it's this fun novel thing of like, oh, well, we can we could bring some growlers back to California with us. And so we decided we were gonna buy four growlers to carry. And this part it kind of doesn't fit with me. So I don't know when they stopped you out being being allowed to bring liquids on the airplane, but it's sometimes it had to have been after 2004. Because we I know because I would have thought it was 9-11.

SPEAKER_06 44:52

I thought it was after 9-11 too.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

But it had to have been later than that because we carried four growlers in a box on the airplane. On the airplane, but sidestep.

SPEAKER_06 45:01

So did you have to give one of them to the captain or something? Is that why you got cash? Percentage share on the way.

Why Move To Alaska?

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Yeah, exactly. No, so but the funny thing is is that you know, we are from California, and so we pretty much only carry bank cards.

SPEAKER_05 45:18

Okay. We didn't have we didn't have cash.

SPEAKER_06 45:20

Good luck paying for your beer at Paul's.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

Not in 2004 and not in 2026. Yeah. Still doesn't happen. Cash open. I love that. And Paul, like I definitely will credit Paul to putting the icing on the cake for Haynes for me.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Because when we said, Oh, we don't have we don't have cash, he said, it's snowing out. Take the growlers, take my car, go get cash at the bank, because there wasn't an ATM at Dalton City at the time, drop the growlers off at the hotel housing land, bring my car back, pay me, and then you can walk back. So that's what we did.

SPEAKER_05 46:03

And you're like, whoa, nobody would do this in Southern California.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

And that is like you can test drive a car without the dealership having to ride along with you. And it like that for me was the like, this is the kind of place I want to live. I want to live in a place where there's just like organic trust and connection of humans. And of course, you know, you find out a little bit later that some of that comes with this, you know, insulation of like we couldn't go anywhere with his car except to the border, and you're not gonna get across the border and or on the ferry, and you're not gonna get on the ferry. But still, like from that Southern California mindset.

SPEAKER_06 46:45

Your Southern Californians here with his car in a snowstorm.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 46:48

He doesn't know how well you're gonna be able to drive in snow.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 46:53

That's what I was worried about. Have you ever driven in snow before?

SPEAKER_00 46:57

I had not.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

Greg had, because he grew up in upstate New York.

SPEAKER_06 47:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

But yeah, I mean, yes. And then it is funny to hear, like, you know, Lee Close kind of joke and be like, yeah, Paul was a little nervous when you guys drove away with his car. But yeah, so if we back up, so then we got funding for two years. They put it out, they didn't have um other, I don't know what if they had other applicants for the position at all for the physical therapist, but they didn't have a native applicant. And so then they officially called and offered me the job. And then it became a real conversation of like, are am I moving to Alaska? Are we moving to Haynes, Alaska? Like, is this happening? And yeah, so but then by April we moved in 2005.

SPEAKER_06 47:47

Wow, that was quick. That was really quick. Coming up in November, and you're here in November, or in April the next.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_06 47:56

Wow. So did your friends appreciate the beer when you brought it home? Or did you guys just drink it all yourself? Did you share it with the phone? No, we shared it.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

We shared it. I don't know that part doesn't stand out real strong in my memory, but I'm sure, I'm sure we shared it with one of Greg's best friends, Wayne, who liked beer and was uh I I'm I I have an inkling that he loved it.

SPEAKER_06 48:16

Yeah. Anybody that drinks beer that doesn't like Haynes Brewing Company beer, I've I've yet to find that.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

Yeah, my dad still carries you know the now the cans in his in his you know, he'll put it in his checked luggage um to take it home because it is like this great novel thing to to share the yeah Haynes Brewery beer around the around the world.

SPEAKER_06 48:38

So April 2005. Moving to Haynes, Alaska. Was that a little nerve-wracking trying to figure out because you're from what you've said, you guys hadn't been dating that long, you and Greg. So now not only are you moving to Alaska, you're moving to Alaska with somebody that you haven't been in a relationship for was it a year at that point? It wasn't even a year. Was there a little second guessing? Am I doing the right thing here? Or was it just like, hey, this is gonna be a great adventure, let's go for it.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

You know, um, I've realized about myself. Uh I often have an exit strategy. Like I got a little safety net somewhere.

SPEAKER_07 49:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

And when I make a decision, I know that I have that, and then I don't look back. Like I do remember like leaving Riverside and moving to San Clemente, and my dad and I driving around looking for a place, and he said those words to me, like, because I was a little bit like, Am I doing the right thing? What am I, you know? And he said, Marnie, make make a decision and don't look back.

SPEAKER_07 49:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:47

And that stayed with me, you know, just a year and a half later.

SPEAKER_07 49:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

And I knew I had a job, like I had a career that I could go back to California and get a job. And I could go back to Orange County and get a job. I had set a diet a good relationship for myself there, a good reputation for myself there. I had some well-known orthopedic surgeons that were like, please don't leave. I was in working with the Angels Corporation, with their pitching crew, and I mean, I had kind of a cool little thing going there, but it was also all sports and orthopedics, and it had become somewhat predictable for me in the um injuries that were coming forward. But anyway, so that was a little bit of a safety net. Like I knew I was leaving all that in a very positive realm that if things didn't work out here, I could go back and have a job. I had a home in Riverside that I owned that I was renting. I knew so I knew I had a place that I could land at any moment. And we did have these good friends, Gene and Doug. And Doug happened to have a private small airplane, and he was a pilot, and he figured out exactly how many hours it would take to come get you if he needed to escape. So he wrote he wrote down his cell number and like the number of hours on this little slip of paper, and he said, Marnie, you put this in your wallet, and anytime you need me, you you there it is, just you put it on. That's how long it's gonna take. Call me and I'll be there. Yeah, and so I feel like that's awesome. Yeah, I had so I had this little safety net and I was excited for like this is an adventure, you know, all of it felt like an adventure. The moving with with somebody that I didn't know and hadn't had that, I knew him, of course, didn't have a long history with and didn't have huge like expectations at that time of like, you know, we're gonna live our whole life together, whatever. It was like we're going on this adventure together. Um, and I, you know, I think too, it was that like I had spent a lot of time up until then, you know, really as we talked about from like my high school years on being so focused on this, like a goal and just being really driven that this somehow felt like it felt like a fun, just like, let's just see. And I had a job here. You know, I had a job that was still my profession, that was still really gonna now challenge me in a whole different way. You know, now I'm coming up as a sole physical therapist, no other physical therapists in the community practicing. There was Margaret Piggott who had done um pediatric work and school work, but not like really community. I think people called on her in occasion, but she'd never practiced as like a community therapist. Um, and you know, starting a program and having to be responsible for that. And you know, we had grant funding for two years, but the hope was that within that two years it could be a self-sustaining pro entity and hopefully be profitable for search. Yeah, so you know, there was this like little challenge in me too of that like, can I can I do this? And um, you know, I think too, going like thinking about living in a place with four seasons, you know, a small community. There was like enough of that like thrill and excitement that I don't remember having a huge amount of anxiety around actually making the move.

SPEAKER_05 53:18

Did you guys drive all the way up? Mm-hmm. And it was what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 53:22

Oh, it was so great. Yeah, I remember us just really having a a a super fun time and you know, a lot of like some of this feels like it's Greg's story more than mine, but like he worked as a private trainer in that high-end sports club. That's how we met. And so he had these very wealthy clients, and I remember one of them handing him a whole lot of cash when we got into the car. We had all of our camping stuff. We were like in a camp the whole way, and instead we had money to like put ourselves up into some, you know, lodging that otherwise we would have never been able to do, which was pretty fun. And his like Gene and Doug, Doug the pilot, had they'd set up put us up in a fancy hotel in Seattle and and paid for a fancy dinner and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

We totally did, which is so funny because you know, then we're like coming to rural Alaska where that's not gonna be and it was never really part of my life in that like the fancy world.

Planting Rehab In Haynes

SPEAKER_01 54:26

That was a lot of the like I don't fit in Orange County, like I don't necessarily need to be wearing fancy clothes or going to fancy dinners, or you know, I I like something that tastes good, but I don't know that it has to have like a label on it or whatever. So um that that's a memorable part of the drive for me. It was definitely like kind of like saying goodbye to something that I didn't fit in that much anyway, and opening and then I I have this like clearer picture of leaving Haynes Junction and driving the path to Haynes in April.

SPEAKER_05 55:03

Was it good weather?

SPEAKER_01 55:04

It was bluebird perfect day, perfect day with everything just covered in white and mountains like I had never seen in my life.

SPEAKER_06 55:15

That's something else, isn't it? It I like I love making that drive.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

I do too. I still feel like it is one of the most therapeutic things that I can do for myself if I'm like struggling with making a decision or feeling anchored in myself, like getting in the car and driving to the pass is like it's it's medicine for me. And that like that first drive will never leave my visual you know mindset. I can I can just play it again and again.

SPEAKER_06 55:43

That's one of the drives I love to take if people it's their first time to Hanes, take them up to Haynes Junction, then bring them back. And like you say, if you get those bluebird days regardless of the season in the spring with all the snow, it's fabulous. But throughout the summer with different levels, you get those bluebird days coming across the pass, and just about all of them. You could be talking about anything, and all of a sudden everybody just kind of shuts up, and they're just looking around and going, Oh my god, am I really in this spot right now?

SPEAKER_01 56:10

Yep. Yeah, I mean that's what it was. Like there was I remember there was very little, if any, words exchanged during that time, and probably just lots of moments of like trying to make sure that I close my journal.

SPEAKER_06 56:26

Yeah, well that's that's one of the blessings of being here as we get to drive up there when we want to.

SPEAKER_01 56:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 56:35

So you get to Aynes, and now you get to start a start your own practice. Well, not yours, but you're building something that hasn't been there before. You're setting everything up from scratch. What was that like for you?

SPEAKER_01 56:50

I remember the thing that um like shook me a little, something that I was really not expecting was everybody knew who I was before I got there.

SPEAKER_07 57:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 57:05

Especially, you know, I have a unique name. And so like I remember being at the Mountain Market and like meeting somebody, and and I'd say, you know, oh yeah, I'm Marnie, I'm new to town, and immediately they were like, You're the new physical therapist. And here's the second thing that came in every time. You're gonna help Heather Lundy.

SPEAKER_06 57:26

Okay, because that was right after her, right after her accident.

SPEAKER_01 57:30

Right. I don't I don't know if I'm romanticizing it a little too much.

SPEAKER_07 57:35

Go ahead, it's your score. You can romanticize it if you want.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

I feel like one of these days I'll have to find like my journal entry and her full dates, but if not the exact day really close, the day that she got hit is like the day we left California.

SPEAKER_07 57:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 57:54

And um, so she was still down in Seattle at the, as she called it, the sleepless in Seattle nursing home. And, you know, apparently also kind of unbeknownst to me, you know, this the search clinic, and now I get it because I've seen it, like when things are happening and new in town, it's on the radio and it's in the newspaper. So there was already an article about the fact that there was gonna be a physical therapist and my name and where I was coming from. And um, and the doctors had already been talking to her doctors in Seattle, and the only way she was gonna get released is if there's a PT.

SPEAKER_05 58:30

There was somebody here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:32

And so I do remember at that moment being like, oh my. A lot of pressure on me here right at the start.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

How does everybody already know my name? My profession. And who is Heather Lindy?

SPEAKER_06 58:47

Who's Heather Lindy?

SPEAKER_00 58:48

And why why do I have to save her? I don't understand.

SPEAKER_05 58:53

You know, and it's a lot of pressure you guys are putting on me right here.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Right. And it slowly became clear, you know, over I can't remember exactly to ten days to two weeks after being here when she got to come home. And um, you know, the if you lived here I'd know your name book was released that same year. It hadn't I I can't remember if it came out. It must have come out either right before or right after, you know, I landed here. So that was it, like that was a big time in in her life too. And and Haynes, like a you know, a well-known published author, you know, getting that big first book. And um, yeah, so I remember really clearly driving into her driveway and like walking to her door and having to take a lot of long, slow breaths and being like, Well, if you can't do well on this one, you probably can't do it. You're not gonna be here very long. Yeah, like I could feel that right away on how important you know it is to take care of this community. Yeah, yeah. If you're gonna be a provider in this community and really respected and cared for in return, like you care for this community. That felt obvious to me on that day.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:14

And it was interesting because you Well you rose to the challenge because that was over 20 years ago, so you you conquered it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:22

Yeah, we did it together. Yeah, and I often, you know, I I feel like that first year of spending a lot of time with Heather, like Heather taught me how to live in Alaska during our physical therapy sessions, you know, like you know, some you know we would work on her gate walking the docks, you know, and I'd learn who owned all the boats. Yeah, you know, and like the if you lived here, I'd know your name book, I would read before bed at night, and you know, the next morning, like I'd read about I think it's okay to say I read about Maisie Jones in the book, and then Maisie Jones would happen to be to walk into my office. And I can't tell you how many times that happened over and over again of like, oh, like I know these are familiar names and stories, and like it helped me to really feel like an integral part of the community.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:17

So at the end of your two years, it was profitable.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:21

Yeah, yeah, so much so that then um at that time search as an organization had rehab in Sitka, but not in any of the other facilities. And so then I went to Juno um and helped set them up with rehab there. I just helped consult and get them up and running, and um, and then also the same thing at uh Prince of Wales.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:47

Yeah. So where in this journey? So you're setting up clinics, getting certs dialed in on the PT rehab part of this. Where does the yoga aspect come in for you? Was that before you came up here? Was that after you were here? How did how did that transfer in there?

Chronic Pain And Explain Pain

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

Yeah, so I had taken a few yoga classes um at the high-end sports club LA. Um, more power type yoga, um, or some restorative classes. I remember for a long time I like thought yoga was boring. You know, if you're gonna I was gonna spend an hour and a half doing something. I didn't want to be like laying on my back for a half of that time. Honest. Um, and I was so sometime in that first year. I mean, I was an exercise person. I was a gym person. I liked, I always liked having that. I ran a lot, but I also liked having weights and whatever. And there was the strong woman stay fit, was a book that was out at the time that a group of ladies had gotten together and they were using this book at the Haynes High School to have a little exercise class. But it was, you know, 10 exercises. They did the same 10 exercises for 10 repetitions every day, you know. And I went to like two classes and was like, this isn't this this isn't gonna work for me. And I don't remember if Pam Sloper approached me, who was the head of wise woman at the time, or I approached her, but somehow that strong woman stayed stays fit turned into what became Morning Muscles, which was a class that I taught for a long time. Um, so I was teaching already, you know, exercise classes in town. And it happened that I went, we went, I went to Hawaii on a little vacation, and in Hawaii there was a little yoga studio that the friend a friend of ours that I was traveling with wanted to go to. And so every morning we went to this little yoga studio, and it was the first yoga class that I really went to that I that I liked a lot. It had like this progression made a lot of sense. Like, yes, you started low, but then you worked up to some you know bigger move, and then you came back down. And I remember leaving it feeling that and you know, the little bit more of the understanding of like this is exercise, and yes, you get that like focus flow, but there's something more here. There's something more here, and I couldn't fully put my hand on it. I come home, and it just so happened that it was at a time when the you know Haynes had the Haynes Yoga Club for a long time where they had various members of the club teach. Nobody, as far as I know, was a like a certified yoga teacher, not that it matters that much. Um, but they had kind of lost their primary teachers. Um I think it Mandy Ramsay was pregnant at the time, and so she had kind of stepped out of teaching and even practicing that much. And Julie Anderson came to me and she was like, I really like going to yoga, and we don't have anybody who's like stepping into this teaching role. Like, would you consider teaching yoga? And I was like, Well, I can't even claim to practice yoga, like let alone decide that I'm gonna teach it. And she's like, Marnie, we just we really like we need a leader, and I said, Well, if people understand that I'll be teaching the yoga postures from my exercise and you know, physical therapy background without having like the full container of yoga. And she was like, I think that's better than nothing, and so I started doing that. And it held hands with the time that you know after the the rehab kind of department started running at search, it also became really apparent to me that one of the big reasons why they needed rehabilitation physical therapy was. Because of the chronic pain phenomenon that was happening and the opioid abuse that was happening, and they didn't know how to address it in any way. And I happened to go to Anchorage to a conference that was put on by the Alaska Chapter of Physical Therapy, where this group from Australia, from what's called NOI, NOI, the Neuroorthopedic Institute, came. The four of them came and they taught this, you know, continuing education class on the sensitive nervous system, which was about like nerve gliding or nerve flossing, which is more known now. You know, you can YouTube videos of nerve flosses. But at that time it was a little less known and very specific to like physical therapists doing this work. And the last half an hour of this four-day seminar, this gentleman, Adrian Lowe, gave a talk on explain pain. And it was the first time that I had ever heard in that way how pain is um an experience of our nervous system rather than an input from the periphery. And it gave me this whole idea of like understanding the physiology of pain can actually help us to cope when pain becomes chronic or persistent. Like in that 20 minutes, my mind was blown, and I had a spark of hope of like all these people who are being sent to me, you know, on my physical therapy schedule. Many of them sitting there telling me, I'm only here because if I don't come to see you, my doctor will no longer give me, you know, my narcotic prescription. And I felt like I had no hope on how I could really help them until I kind of got that inkling. So I dove hard into the explain pain world and understanding pain science. And the more I drove into that, I mean, I traveled to Australia, I traveled to the UK all to study with the NOI guys and this gentleman Laurel Murmosley, who at the time was like the big pain researcher, especially from the physical therapy world. Like he was putting, he was the author of this book, Explained Pain, one of them with David Butler. And he was like really just producing, you know, writings and research and like getting it out there of like we have to help this chronic pain, you know, pandemic that was out there that everybody's just addicted to narcotics because we don't know what else to do, and it's failing. Um, so through all of that learning, it kept coming back of like it's not about the part that's hurting, it's about the whole person, right? It's about all of it. What we know, what we don't know, what our thoughts and beliefs are, you know, what is our spiritual connection to life and why what's our you know definition of who we are and how we walk in this world. So this is like all in my headspace when I start leaning into teaching the asanas, postures from the yoga practice, and starting to look more into like what is yoga beyond these asanas? And it's that it's the study of self. Yoga means to yoke, to bring together body, mind, and spirit. And when you think of the whole yoga practice, yes, there's asanas in it, but it's also breath and mindfulness and kindness and how we are in the world, and um, and it just like you know, the teachings come to us when we need them. This is that coming back to that, of that like these two things started coming into my life space at this at a very similar time. And so I ended up deciding to go to yoga teacher training primarily because I wanted to see if I could learn further on that side and use it to help hold hands and bridge the gap with the pain science world. And with this idea of like if I'm gonna continue to teach yoga in Haynes, I should learn yoga. But it was really more of that, like, I think this, I think this could help, you know, where I feel like my profession, my academical, academical, is that a word? My academic background is falling short.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:04

Well, from personal experience, Mike, you went down the right road. Not that you care what I think or not, but just to share with others is that the I I knew you and Greg around town and everything, but when I the first connection I think that I really made with you on a on a deeper level is I was seeing you as a physical therapist because I had hurt my hamstring, and it was like a year and a half, two years, constant pain, it never seemed to go away. Kept having MRIs, trying to check is there hip, is there this? Everything comes back in it, and there's the one day that you were like, Have you ever thought of doing yoga? And I was like, No, that was the farthest thing from my mind. But I was I I think my answer was like, but if you think this would help, I'm willing to try I'm willing to try because I'm I'm tired of this. And but I the other thing I said is I'm just gonna do a private lesson. There's I cannot go to a group and try and learn that's not my personality. If I've got to go to a group of 20 people that all know how to do yoga and try and work through this, I'm never gonna show up. And you were gracious enough to say yes. And for what was it, five or five or six years, like every Monday in the evening, 5:30. You showed up at my house. I was me and Marnie's to learn yoga. And I I don't do all of the flow anymore, but about four or five days a week, I'm still doing like 15-20 minutes of different the hip openers, the different stretches that for my shoulders and stuff, pigeons, things that I feel are helping me with where I am at that moment. And I know that the days that I do, even the short practice, that I sleep better. And it does allow me that that time. Any other exercise I'm doing, I'm thinking about other things. But with the yoga, I'm I through your teachings of just being mindful that I'm I'm concentrating on where my body is, where my arms are, where my legs are, are my hips in the right position. And so all the other thoughts just kind of go through. And it's just that really relaxing part. And there's times that I've gone months without doing any yoga, and I realize the first time I go back is like, okay, I've been missing this. But it's made so I think I've thanked you before. I hope I've thanked you before, but to thank you in front of everybody else. That suggestion made a huge difference in my life. I hadn't gone to opiates before, but if it hadn't been for that, I probably would have at some point to cover that. Because it was, I wasn't sleeping at night. I mean, I was you can ask my friends and family, I was a jerk to be around because if you don't sleep, you're you're you're irritated all the time. Yeah, it's just not a good place to be. And then that mindfulness aspect that you started adding on to the yoga practice, like I'd mentioned earlier, because when I was trying to do a headstand, I remember that it took forever for me. I was so frustrated that I couldn't do it. And you every week you're like, doesn't matter where you're at today, you know, tomorrow. And then when I did it, and then I couldn't do it for like a couple weeks, it's like, you've got to be kidding me. And same thing. It's like tomorrow you might be able to do it, just just because you can't today doesn't mean there's anything wrong. And just and now I could I could probably do a headstand right here without a without a problem. And I haven't done one in a over a year, probably. But every time that I go to do one, it's I can pop right up and it's it's not a problem anymore. But yeah, it took it took I think it was like over a year.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:39

It was a long time.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:40

It was a long time for me to figure that one out.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:43

Yeah. And you know, I think like one of the when I came back from Hawaii and had gotten into that little yoga class, I also found this online source called Yoga Glow, which I always compared to like Netflix of yoga in their early years of like yoga being available online because they had, you know, 20 different teachers and all different styles and lengths of classes and whatever that you could jump on. And and I found this one particular teacher that was really like orthopedic in the way that she described everything, but there was lots of fun hand bounces and hops and and all of these things that like you know called to who I was at one time in my life with the genetics of it, but it also reminded me, and which is where I was going with this with the headstand, is that it's important for us in life to build a foundation, right? And once we have that foundation, which takes time, it takes gentleness, we can't rush through it, right? If if you don't set up that foundation of where your body is in space, where your breath is in a headstand or handstand or whatever, you're gonna fall.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:59

You're gonna fall. And if you rush it, if you try to jump into it, you likely will fall harder. And you know, anybody who's been in a yoga class with me who that we've done through handstands or arm balances or whatever, somebody falls, I always make the joke of like the person who makes it look sleep look the easiest is the one who has fallen the most.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:18

Yep.

Yoga Becomes A Bridge

SPEAKER_01 1:16:19

Like we do have to fall, and that's how we learn to like set up that foundation and to be really comfortable with where we are at that moment in time and knowing that it's gonna, it's gonna change because everything changes in life.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:34

It just seemed after month and month and month, I didn't know if it was ever gonna change. I knew the theory behind it, but it was kind of hard. Like, my gosh, am I this slow at learning?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:45

Yeah, yeah, and you're not, it's just you know, it takes time, and a lot of it is that like learning to be with your breath in those positions and learning not to bully ourselves, right? And I mean I I I still struggle with that. Of course, bullying myself. Don't we? Don't we? I mean that comes that comes right into our compassion world.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:05

Yeah, I'm I'm terrible at that. Yeah. I yeah. We won't we won't get into that.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:12

That's uh Well we can. We we can we can make an appointment. We can make it.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:16

We can, but yeah, no, the I I I think probably one of the best things I do in life is bully myself. That's probably yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:27

It might be the thing that you're the most practiced at.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:29

It is, absolutely. Yeah. And I think I've had a lot of uh um guidance from other people around me.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:39

Yeah. Yeah, we learn we learn that.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:42

We learn it from others, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because what what you were talking about with everybody knowing everybody in a small town and them knowing you when you got here, when you grow up in a small town, they really know you.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:55

Or they think they do.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:56

They think they do, and yeah, sometimes the sometimes the standards that you are held to um aren't always fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:05

No.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:06

No. Keep working through it.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:10

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:11

Gently.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:12

Gently. One day at a time.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:15

One breath at a time.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:16

One breath at a time. There you go. That's even better. One breath. See, it's been a while since I've been to class. Maybe that's why I'm slacking on some of my terms.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:26

You remember Freddie Sloane?

SPEAKER_06 1:18:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:29

He had a tattoo on the back of one of his shoulders. Can I swear on here?

SPEAKER_07 1:18:35

Sure, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:36

That said, um, your opinion of me is none of my fucking business.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:45

That sounds like Fred.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:47

And it's good words. It's good words. Yeah. Right? It's what somebody else thinks of you, what somebody else expects of you, what somebody else thinks they know of you. Unless you want to make it your business, it doesn't have to be.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:04

And the worst thing for me is it's not what you think of me, it's what I think you think of me. Absolutely, which is always worse. It's always worse. It's always worse. But yeah, that's because when you hear the negative from a few people, you assume every or at least I do, assume everybody else thinks that. And that some of them are if that's what they're telling me, then most of them think worse. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:30

Mm-hmm. And in the end, we're all humans having this human experience. And so usually the things, you know, the things that somebody says to you that feel negative to you, what they're saying to themselves about themselves, might be even harsher and uglier. And you know, we all have those battles that we fight inside, and we never know what somebody else is fighting.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:57

And that's that's one of the reasons I wanted to have this podcast is have conversations like this, that hopefully people out there that don't have somebody in their life that's telling them that, that they can see that there's other people that struggle, that have self-doubt, to have whatever it might be, but can overcome that. They have support, they can they're working through it, whatever you might be, that there's all of us have had trauma in our lives, all of us have had setbacks in our lives. It's how do you respond to that? How do you build off of that and use that and build that into a strength? Just because you have trauma doesn't mean that's brought you down at all. It's just how do we respond? And then the other aspect of it, how do we treat and support the other people? Because you don't know what this is one of the things when I was uh mayor that I mentioned to people quite often because people come into the office and they would just be a lot of times people would say that that's they seemed really off that the the level of the problem and their reaction were on two different levels. And some of this was based on trauma um readings and stuff that Cesare and Kelly had told me about. But it was like that's because that's that response is not based on what you're telling them here. It's a lot of times it can be based on you don't know, did they just find out that a family member has cancer? Did they just lose so there's so many things that stack up? And when I started reading about that, I realized I did a lot of that in my life that I'll take from when I was very young. I would take all these things in, and then just one day I just blow up, and everybody's like, what the heck's going on with that? Because I didn't know how to re- I didn't know how to process all these other negative things that had happened or all these other stressful moments that had happened. I just internalized them until that one time. It took me a long time, like 30 some years before I realized that. I'm still adjusting to it now, trying to figure out okay, how do I deal with these bad things that have happened and deal with them in a positive way rather than causing harm to myself or others? Yoga's helped that.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:25

Yay.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:26

You can get into that and just really yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:31

Yeah. Yeah, and it's a lifetime of practice, not just yoga practice, but it's a lifetime of practice, of of you know, learning how to how to how to cope and how to let trauma come through our beings, right? The trauma getting stored in our body, stop trauma being trauma being part of our bloodstream, you know, there's that ancestral trauma, cultural trauma. I mean, the word trauma sometimes to me gets like whew. We can traumatize our trauma too.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:11

We can.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:12

And um, you know, it's that like accept I use that a lot, like accepting that this is our story, this is part of who we are, and choosing to include it by talking about it, by acknowledging that we don't want it to continue, we don't want to pass this on to others, that we want to actually heal, you know, we want to move it through our body, we don't want it to be stuck in our hamstrings.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:43

Yes. And and that's one that you know I've I've talked to some people about trauma dealing with it, and their response has been, it's so overblown, everybody's complaining about trauma now. It's just I think trauma is a a word for it, but we've all had stressors in our lives, we've all had challenges in our lives. There's there's multiple ways that you can describe trauma without saying trauma. Because I think some people think of trauma, and for a long time, myself, it's like I wasn't in a war, I wasn't in a car wreck, I wasn't in these major incidents, I I didn't lose limbs, I didn't, you know, you you think of trauma as this huge thing, but there's a whole lot of levels of trauma, and I think each of us reacts to those differently. So, what might be something very traumatic for me, some things you might be like, eh, just move on, and vice versa.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:38

Yeah, and a lot of that has to do with what we talked about before of like modeling of your upbringing, of what that trauma or what that experience is triggers from your background that you may not even be aware of, and how you're met in the moment and those initial moments just after whatever that experience is. You know, if you if your whole person isn't seen, felt, heard, nurtured during that moment of stress, trauma, that's when trauma becomes something that doesn't get processed, right? So if you are in that moment and somebody walks by and is like, that's no big deal and moves on, or even worse, you know, shames you for that experience or turns their back against you because they don't believe whatever it was that you were doing was a valuable thing, like the Vietnam War is a huge example of that. We have all these soldiers coming back, being in this incredibly intense experience, and then not being received in the country, not being seen, held, heard, nurtured for all that they'd been through, instead maybe being, you know, shamed, condemned, whatever. That's when that now turns into PTSD, right? Because now we have this experience that we weren't actually able to process or nurture. And that happens all the time. I shouldn't, that happens often with things that we some people might feel like is not that big of a deal, but we also don't know what came before it. And so to me, like I said it this morning to a friend, like we don't need to, we don't need to compare or quantify traumatic experiences or grief. That's not what those things are meant to do. We all have an emotional space that just needs to be held for what it is.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:51

That was one of the things that Kelly and Cesare taught me during the during the slide event was the you don't compare you can't compare your grief to somebody else. Because just because a mother loses three kids and one only loses one, is one deserving of three times as much sympathy as the other? Nope. You don't get to compare them. So this this kind of sets up to the next stage. So we've gone through the PTE yoga, and the next thing that the yoga's gone on for years, but I remember after the slide, you reached out to me because you had been at a conference or something down south, and you'd run into I can't I I should have looked up, but I apologize for not looking up her name. But compassionate. And it wasn't compassionate, it was compassion IT. And to push compassion out. And you reached out to me, he's like, Hey, is this something I think our community needs this? How do we make this happen? And I appreciate you bringing that forward because I was all in on that.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:59

I think we're

SPEAKER_06 1:28:00

Both all in on that. And then we couldn't make it happen due to financial reasons. But I really wish we could do more with that. I'd like to find a way to move forward. What was what was your remembrance of seeing her and listening to her speech on compassionate?

Mindset, Failure, And Foundations

SPEAKER_01 1:28:17

Um it's interesting because I don't remember her name right now either, which is really sad.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:23

And I still have the wristband.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:27

Yeah, so I I I'll bring it back. It was um there's a woman in Southern California who started this compassionate campaign as turning the act of compassion into a verb. So that was like compassion it. And um she had gone through the I think it was the Stanford School of Compassion and altruistic um psychology. Maybe that's not right. Doesn't matter. But she was well schooled in this like getting compassion out there, um, and had written a book and had this campaign that came with these wristbands that were black and white, and they said compassionate on both sides. And the idea was like, you know, when you did a compassionate act towards somebody else, you flipped it over, and when you did a compassionate act toward yourself, you also flipped it over. So it was like this nice way of this consistent reminder to act in a compassion way and to put it out there. And you know, she was really well schooled in bringing things to um the business setting, and you know, I had approached her that we had gone through that the slide. Um, I think the year before I want to say this was 2021 when I was 2021. Um, and I thought it would be a beautiful thing to bring to our community and make it kind of multidisciplinary, bring the school in, you know, bring the search clinic in, um the you know, churches, and like really start to open our arms, you know, and come together. This is like compassion is something that we all need and we all benefit from giving as well. And then I I remember what put the halt on it, it was the price tag.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:22

Price tag was considerable.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:24

And it, I mean, maybe too much to a fault, but it turned me off of the whole thing because it made me feel like, oh, like that's not very compassionate. Like that's a business that like didn't feel good to me to say, like, now you're actually trying to somewhat take advantage of this community that has suffered a huge loss and needs something to bring them together. And I guess my remorse is that dropping that leadership campaign also sort of dropped the conversation of like us actually still creating something for the community, and um maybe someday that can still come back because compassion still is something, it's still an action, it's still a verb. Um, whether we bring in, you know, a more organized entity or we figure out a way to make it happen, it's still a beautiful thing to bring forward.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:20

Yeah, I was I was bummed when we got the the quote. It was huge. It was huge. Because I think we both had a figure. I think when we talked about it later, we were both thinking it was gonna be in X range. And we're like, yeah, we can figure it's gonna that was still gonna be expensive, but we could figure out a way to manage it with search or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:38

I think it was something like 16 times what we had.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:42

It was way beyond what we had expected. And we got the email and one of us called the other one right away. It's like, did are we reading this correctly?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:51

And I do remember sitting down and like punching the numbers of what it meant that that individual was actually gonna get paid by the hour. And I was like, Yeah, no, no, I can't justify this in any way. I can't even like I couldn't, it didn't feel right to me to go to the borough or to Rasmussen Foundation or the Community Foundation and ask for that kind of funding. It just was like no, we gotta figure something else.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:14

Figure out something else. But I I agree with you that that was that is something that more of us need to acknowledge on a day, whether we acknowledge it or not, to act in that manner. And I think it gets back to what we were talking about before is not knowing what somebody else is going through on a given day. Yeah. And the number of times in you you see it in interviews, you see it in books, you see it all this these people that is like, you know, this person kept me from doing this just because they acknowledged me. They smiled and said hi when I was going into the post office. They they opened the door for me or they gave me a hand with this, and I was on my way to to take my life. And that one person, that one interaction, it's like, oh wait, maybe somebody does care. And I think when you get that in your mind that it's not all about us individually, if we start thinking about the people around us and how we're interacting with them and what can we do to uplift your day. That and and I found especially um the end of December, beginning January, when the weather just absolutely sucked here, and everybody was coming and complaining about it. Uh, I was trying to say, well, you know, it's it's this, or it's you know, we do live in Alaska, and you know, it's in I can guarantee in June it's snow's gonna be gone. And you get it just to get a smile or a laugh or whatever, but it was just what's something positive I can say right now because everybody's thinking negative thoughts. We're done with the weather, we're done with shuffling snow, we're done with the rain, whatever it was. Everybody's done with it. And it's like, okay, what I don't know if it made any difference or not, but I was like, that's what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna try and make positive comments about this instead of adding it. Because I was for me, it's like I was done with it too. I was right with everybody. I didn't want to do anything. So a lot of those comments were for my own benefit.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:15

I had I told this story this morning to a friend as well that I had a day during that that like I had a full breakdown inside of just like and I, you know, it was an interesting thing of like it's that reminder of how when we can't have our favorite thing, when we can't go forward with our plans, you know, no matter how much we practice kindness to ourselves and whatever, like you know, we have emotions. I had emotions, I had big emotions that day. I was angry, I was sad, I was shoveling snow like a mad woman. And, you know, I had this voice in my head that was like, all of these thoughts that you're having are unjustified, like they are not warranted thoughts. You know, the the world was over in my head, right? Everything was bad. And then there's this like, you're making this as a story, stop, stop telling this story, like come back, be nice, blah, blah, blah. Like, this isn't true. Everything that I tell people to do, you know, I could tell myself to do, and I couldn't get out of this emotional tornado. And I remember like just like hocking snow over my shoulder and it flying back in my face. You know, it's like a windy, like, where do you put this? And um, I was like, I I need to call Russell Kennedy, who's my dear friend, and you know, has been a Zen Buddhist now for quite some time. And I was like, I need to call Russell Kennedy, I need Russell to ask his teacher, Reb. What do you do when you're in the emotional vortex and you have the rational mind telling you to stop it, and you can't make it happen.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:05

The wires aren't connecting.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:07

And you know what came to my mind? Compassion. I know that Reb would tell Russell compassion. And I know Russell would tell me compassion. And it was an amazing moment of like, oh, I don't I need to I don't have to tell myself that my thinking isn't rational. I don't need to tell myself to get out of these stories and to stop feeling this way. I just need to be nice to myself for a few moments and say, wow, there's this little being out there, and people know her as Marnie, and she's struggling right now. And that's okay that's okay. It's okay to have these emotions and just like give yourself an you know emotional self-hug, nurture that a little bit, honor it, and you know, does it make it go away? No, but it made the like battle of the battle soften a lot, which brings us full circle back to compassion.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:16

For for for me, it was because yep, snowblowers broken, oh yeah, furnace goes out, loaders broken, this is broke. Just like as soon as you get then the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. And and it was one of those the thing, the the thought process for me, I should have thought about compassion, but it was like like these are first world problems. There's a lot of people that don't have a snowblower that would love to have one even if it's broken so they could fix it so they could plow snow. There's a lot of people that don't have a furnace. Yeah, you can there's people that'll come, it's not gonna be on the time frame that you want, but there are people here that can take care of that, and you have the funds to pay that person to fix it.

Compassion In Community

SPEAKER_01 1:37:59

And that's comparing your struggles.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:01

Yeah, it is it is comparing it, it's it's not, but I looked at it that it was like it's very beneficial for me that there is a way to fix these. None of none of the issues that I was dealing with were unfixable.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:15

You're finding gratitude for what you're doing. I'm finding gratitude.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:18

I'm grateful for what I have, I'm grateful that I can fix everything. I was frustrated that it wasn't being fixed on everything wasn't going on my time frame, but nothing ever does. So yeah, it's just grateful for what I have, grateful for what's here, and be gr even more grateful when it's all working. And now it's all working. Great, and now we don't have snow.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:40

Well, it's perfect. It's still all the snow's gone. It's not even February yet.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:43

It's not even February yet. You're right. It will be when people see this. So okay, so now the next step, and you can tell me if I'm skipping anything. You're an author. So, how did the opportunity to co-author this book come about?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:00

Pain Science Yoga Life. Came um through those that, you know, five, six years of intense jumping into the pain science worlds and traveling mostly again to study under Laura Mosley, um, and doing these master classes that NOI had put on internationally. And I met initially um my co-author, Neave Maloney, um, in Manchester. That's not true. In England. The little town is not Nottingham. Notting, I'm like Robin Hood, Robin Hood, where was Robin Hood, not Manchester? Nottingham, England. We had gone to I'd gone to a master's class, and um she and I just kind of connected, you know, in a friendly way. She was at the time working um at a university in Australia as a researcher, originally from Dublin, Ireland, um, also as a physio, as a physiotherapist, um, but had gone more into the academic study and also a yoga practitioner. And so we started having that conversation about yoga as a container to put all of this pain science, treat the whole person, you know, um, think outside of the box of find it and fix it and get away from like the pain in your back is about your back. Um, so we had this discussion then that would have been 2010. And then in 2012, we um reunited again at another NOI conference in Adelaide, Australia. Again had a similar conversation and started saying, like, hey, now we've been talking about this for a couple years, like maybe we should put together like a research study. And so we bounced that idea back and forth for a while. Um, you know, we'd have phone conversations and emails, and in the end, you know, I kind of kept being like, I don't like I don't really have the population to pull a lot of data from, right? I live and work in this tiny community, like it's a microcosm of what we really want to be researching. Like I could do some great case studies, um, but it's not like you know, I can't collect data on a couple hundred thousand people to have like a good, you know, systematic review type study to put out there. And then in 2017, so this is a long, like, you know, and it wasn't like we weren't talking weekly, but we would come come together. And you know, the the pain world in Haynes was changing a lot. You know, we had the pain management and review committee at the search clinic, and you know, I had now stepped out of the search clinic and opened, you know, body IQ. And anyway, I traveled to now Neve had partnered with a gentleman who was living in Guernsey, which is one of the Channel Islands off of the UK. My sister lives in England, so I went to visit my sister and hopped over the channel to spend some time with Niamh in Guernsey. And during that little visit, we were like, it's time to do something. And I don't think a research, I don't think it's about research. I think it's about taking what we know, what we've observed, what we know from yoga, what other researchers have already done and put out there, and put it in in a book and make it readable for anybody who wants to pick it up. And so Pain Science Yoga Life was born out of that visit. We had an outline, we had the title.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:02

So you had the title at that visit? When you started that's what you guys wanted to have it as?

SPEAKER_01 1:43:06

I well, I remember it was like it was it was one of the ideas because it was kind of described the foundation of what we wanted to do, which was to teach you about pain science, about how to use yoga to get back to life. That was kind of the idea. Um, so then you know, we had this little outline, and I don't remember the exact time frame, but very shortly after I left Guernsey and returned home, she happened to be at a conference um where there was this publishing company there, Handspring Publishing, and she met an individual and just told them, like, hey, you know, I have a colleague that we've put together this outline, and you know, we'd like to write this book. And that contact jumped on it. She was like, I want to see some sample writing, which we did not have to do. We had a brainstorm. Hold that thought for a minute.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:08

It's gonna take a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:10

We basically had a whiteboard with a brainstorm on it, right? And so we were like, Okay, all right, we can write a sample chapter. And so we like took one of our little pieces that you know we had outlined out, like this could be a chapter, and we co-authored a chapter together. Sent it to this publisher, and they were like, We like it, we want a book proposal. Okay. We we don't have that either. So then, like, we had to, we didn't neither one of us had authored before. I mean, she had done a lot of research, um, and so she had a bunch of journal articles out there published. Um, but we had never put together a book proposal, so we had to learn how to do that, and we did that, which is for those that don't know, it's basically a marketing strategy. Um, looking at anything that's been written kind of under the subject, who's your target audience gonna be, why is this gonna be set aside from anything that else is already out there, why is it needed, um, you know, what's the purpose, mission statement, objectives, all those little things. You basically put together this like marketing package for like why your book needs to be published. So we sent that in, and they said, We want it, and we want it in a year.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:35

And we're both, she's a you guys are both working full time.

unknown 1:45:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:40

And yeah, you need to write a book in a year.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:42

And coordinate with somebody that's halfway around the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:44

Yep.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:45

Good thing for modern technology like email and Zoom. Zoom.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:52

And so we wrote we signed the contract. We argued, argued, negotiated for I think we ended up getting like a year and four months. Um and so we started writing in 20, the end of 2018. And the book was published in 2020. 2020. And it, you know, was hard because it was published in 2020 with a publishing company who published um alternative health stuff. And their primary means of marketing was going to conferences.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:36

And there were no conferences.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:39

No, so the whole like book tour, their their entire marketing strategy of how they'd always marketed things in the past didn't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:51

So is that something that did you ever talk to them about re-engage re-putting it out there or whatever after things changed a little bit, like in 2022, 2023, kind of putting some kind of a tour together to get it out there at all?

SPEAKER_01 1:47:05

We're just kind of all the marketing just kind of you know, um Neve and I tried, we tried to do some things together to put it out there. We also had both like, you know, put a lot of our lives aside to get this done.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:24

And you didn't really want to put a whole lot of it.

Writing Pain Science Yoga Life

SPEAKER_01 1:47:26

Well, it was like we had to like pick pick things back up, you know. Like I realized like I needed to pick body IQ back up, you know, to make sure that I could continue to still have a living and um make sure to me the the needs of the community at the time were being met. You know, I I know during that year of 2019 leading into you know 2020, like um I wasn't the most present community physical therapist because I was riding a lot. Um, and so there was that. Neve had had a baby in the time. She's like, I need to like actually be a mom. Um, she was also running a practice with her partner who was a therapist. They were wanting to get off of the island of Guernsey and go back into academia where they had both come from. Um and unfortunately, you know what also happens in partnerships across the world and seeing things differently. We had some disagreements that were like coming more and more to a head of like now the book is done, and how we want it to be carried forward, and we needed to like come to a better understanding of what that would look like and what our partnership would look like, and you know, in all honesty, I think it was hard. It was hard, and um, I think not having like that third party of the publisher saying, like, no, you have to show up, we're doing this marketing strategy. Instead, it was like, if we want this marketed, we gotta figure it out for ourselves, and we're tired and we're struggling, we're struggling in our lives independently, we're struggling in this partnership together, and um something has to give. And so we kind of agreed that um we were gonna set it down for a while. And then fairly quickly, I think in 2022-ish, Hanspring Publishing sold. And so it has a new publishing company. Um it's still out there. It's still out there.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:47

And you know The one the one thing that I've heard several people tell me is and you'd alluded this too in in a different way, you never know those lessons until it's the right time. There's a lot of times that books, different things, music sometimes, somebody will put something out there, it doesn't catch, and it's just the right person seeing it, the right person listening to it, the right person reading it, and it's got a whole new life.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:16

So you Yeah, and I, you know, I think the story isn't finished being written.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:20

No, and I never went in, I didn't go into it with the like, I want to be, you know, a New York Times bestselling author. That's not the subject matter of the book. We also, you know, Neve came to it from that strong place of research and academia. I mean, the reference pages at the end of every chapter are immense. And, you know, that was her pushing to make sure that we had the we had the meat behind, like we have evidence behind everything that we put in there. And if we didn't, we were very clear and like this still needs more. Um, but that doesn't always make it as chewable, as digestible, right? So I came into it more from the clinical side of like, but it's the person in front of me that's suffering, and that's the person that I want to write to. And she wanted to write to the clinician and the yoga teacher who's working with that person, and so we compromised in that like bringing the language down so that anybody could pick it up, but it is written as if you're talking to somebody who is the yoga teacher or the healthcare provider working with the person in pain. And I still think there's space for that same basic book, even now, you know, six years we'd have to go back in and do some fluffing of the research to make sure, you know, everything is sterile at that upper notch of what we know. But I still think it could be written a hundred percent to the person who's looking for it, and that could give the whole thing a whole new life. Um, and I've thought about it over and over again. I a couple years ago I set myself on a digital nomad retreat. Have you heard of these?

SPEAKER_06 1:52:15

You just go and there's no digital stuff at all. Is that what you're referring to? No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:18

No, a nomad meaning you can be anywhere.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:21

You can be anywhere, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:22

And connected digitally.

SPEAKER_07 1:52:24

Yep, okay. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:24

So I happen to find a place in Oaxaca and Mexico in um that just happens to be an aerial circus residency program that also allows these digital nomads to come in. So, like the idea was that I was gonna be on my computer writing.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:46

The way the way you're smiling and laughing, I'm guessing that there wasn't a lot of time on the computer writing.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:52

Well, I went there with the intention. And really, this was part of this was the intention of like it was starting creeping towards. I'd always told myself that I had a five-year umbrella to feel confident to stay within the bulk of the research that we had done without having to dive deep back into that research hole to up to upgrade that. And so it was like tipping on that, like it's 2024, you know, and it was published in 2020. So if I'm gonna like take this book and remodel it into the package that's for the person who wants to look at yoga as a modality to um shift their experience with pain, this is my time. So I sent myself to Mexico for a month thinking that well, there's these like aerial circus classes happening that I can drop into for an hour a day, and that'll like get my movement, and the rest of the time I can have this cute cabana to sit under and write.

SPEAKER_06 1:53:56

So were you I I'm I'm guessing you were at the aerial circus more than an hour a day.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:00

Well, after the first day. After the first day, and I saw what they were doing, I went to the the lead teacher and I was like, what would it take to not be a digital nomad, but actually be an Aerial Circus resident? And she was like, Do you have any Aerial Circus background? And I was like, No.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:19

I was in gymnastics. Okay, years in gymnastics is that count?

SPEAKER_00 1:54:23

No, no, but I don't want to sit here on my computer and sweat because you know it's 90 degrees and 100% humidity, and I'm just dripping sweat on the computer.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:34

And really, right now in my life, what I need is like joy and laughter and play and to get off of the computer and the production. And she said, You have to prove that you can hang. Okay, you gotta be able to physically stay with their eight hours a day of training. Yeah, and you have to show me that you don't care that you're gonna be the little man on the totem pole, because these were mostly females in their early 20s wanting to make a go at a professional aerial career. So they were there to put together an act that could be filmed, they had headshots, and there was like a big circus performance at the end of it all that everybody had to be part of that they could put together as a package to um promote themselves as an aerial performer, which is not what I am.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:34

And I was like, yeah, I don't care, I don't care. I got no ego in this. I'm really I just want to play.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:40

And so that's what I did for the month. I learned the aerial silks, I was part of the end performance, I had to put together an act, solo act, and be part of their whole, yeah, strictest school. But all that to say, at that moment in time, I did kind of make that decision that um there's more in me that needs to happen instead of just always like producing and doing that thing of driving all the time.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:13

So I I usually don't go to the fair, so I might have already missed this, but are we gonna have Marnie doing an aerial circus presentation at the fair anytime soon? Is this is this gonna happen now that you have this training? Or is that or is that just a personal thing that was just benefiting you?

SPEAKER_01 1:56:30

Yeah, yeah. I mean, right now, honestly, that was the easiest part of like saying I don't care that I'm the low man on the potem totem pole because I have nothing to lose. Like this performance, if I fall on my face or if I get laughed at because I'm not any good, like it doesn't it doesn't matter to me, especially in Mexico. I don't know anybody, they're never gonna see me again. Whatever. I came home and you know, I bought silks, I have them hanging in the lodge, I practice fairly regularly. I have a teacher that I still meet with online. I love it. I I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:06

Well, I think for me it's cool that you went somewhere with a goal in mind and you came out with something totally something totally different that you're still practicing. You had a very it sounds like a very joyous, fun experience learning it. And so I think just that's that's a skill set or a something that a lot of people have mentioned that I should probably embrace a little bit more about trying to just kind of to play. Well, play is it's it's difficult. But I admire that you went down there for one thing and came back with something totally different. I think that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:40

And I don't know if it'll ever be doesn't have to be.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:44

I'm just joking with you. Yeah. If it is great, yeah, but if that's something that's just for you and your relaxation and it brings you joy and you love doing it on your own, that's perfect. You don't have to share everything with everybody else. You can keep stuff to yourself.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:58

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:59

Not that you need my permission, but it's nice to have that validation. I did go to a writing workshop last year, and one of the things that they had us do was um write your life story in three sentences.

SPEAKER_07 1:58:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:14

Which is pretty fun. Yeah. When you really think about it, like it takes a while, but I don't have to share the whole thing, but two of the sentences, which makes sense with what we have been discussing, is that I grew up fast and I'm learning to be a child slow.

SPEAKER_07 1:58:31

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_06 1:58:38

I yeah, I I think my ch my childhood um got interrupted. And yeah, things different things happen in life and your life changes quickly. Yeah, and what you thought was real isn't real anymore. And so trying to I think I'm still trying to adjust to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:00

Yeah. And you can at any time.

SPEAKER_06 1:59:02

And I and I probably will be adjusting to that for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:59:06

Along with other things that have you never know what's gonna happen tomorrow, but we're always adjusting to something.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:13

Yeah, and it's never too late to be a child.

SPEAKER_06 1:59:16

Never too late. And it's it's the cool thing about having um a grandniece and a grandnephew in town, is you can it's really easy to be a child and be playful with little kids.

unknown 1:59:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:32

Especially when you don't have to be their parent.

SPEAKER_06 1:59:33

Especially when you don't have to be their parent. And yeah, it's it's it's amazing how much joy that brings, or the childish behavior that you can get away with when you're with a kid. And so yeah, I'm very thankful that they're they're here and get to spend time with them and be fun and goofy.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:52

Yeah. It's glad you're getting that experience. Pretty cool.

SPEAKER_06 1:59:56

So moving forward now onto more kind of a sadder topic, your death cafe. So what what brought that about? Um and explain what it is too.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:12

Well, I'll tell the bigger pick story if that's okay.

SPEAKER_06 2:00:16

Yes.

Aerial Silks, Play, And Permission

SPEAKER_01 2:00:16

Um the same year that I was in California, that I met the Compassionate Project, I was there um with the primary intention of spending time with one of my, well, not one of my longest childhood friend. So because we moved around a lot, I don't have a lot of those like I've known you since I was ex. Yeah. Um, but Aaron Norris, I met when I was eight years old, who's my first friend in California when we landed there, and um we always stayed connected, even if it was, you know, six months or a year without contact post-high school. Um, you know, we stayed uh involved in each other's lives in somehow, way or another. And um in 2021, he was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer, um, primary angiosarcoma. So he had a tumor the size of an egg in his heart, and they didn't know what it what it was. It's so rare that um most of the time cancer doesn't start in the heart.

SPEAKER_06 2:01:30

And that's the first time I've I'm I'm not real knowledgeable about cancer, but that's the first time I've ever heard of anything like that. And the size of an egg. An egg. Your heart's not that big to begin with. That is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:42

Yeah, and so you know, he was going to the doctor with chest pains and shortness of breath, and you know, it's still pandemic time. And he was having some other, you know, situational social stresses in his life, and the doctors kept just saying, you know, you have anxiety, you need to go home and take care of your stress. And finally, thankfully, somebody listened when he was like, Yes, I have stress in my life, and I know stress, and this is different. And they finally did a chest x-ray and they found this tumor, and within like 24 hours, had him in open heart surgery. So they removed the tumor and found out that it was cancerous. And in hindsight, he may have had a little better prognosis if they hadn't have removed the tumor, but they didn't know. I think of it like this is just my way of creating a vision, you know, when you grow a broccoli and you cut off the initial broccoli flower, all these other little florets come out. But they don't come out until you cut off like that big mother. And so that's the vision that has come to me in my time with him was like they removed that tumor, and I mean, within a month he had Mets all over his whole body.

SPEAKER_07 2:03:18

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:19

Brain, lungs, bones. And so he spent a year and a half um, you know, going down the um chemotherapy treatment, everything path, and um invited me into his journey. So we met every week on Zoom, and I was just a place for him to process whatever was coming up during this time, emotionally, psychologically, socially, and you know, I used my physical therapy and yoga training to help him process that, embody it, learn how to be in his body while his body was betraying him in this way, and he was, I mean, he was uh he was a Broadway um star, an off-Broadway star. So he was a dancer, he was an acrobatic, he was a singer, so like to have his body not there for him and to not be able to like feel like he could be in that place was a huge transition. He was a gay man, raised in a conservative Christian home. He'd gone through, you know, counseling to get the gay out of him. He had lots and lots of things to come to terms with in his life. And um I just became a place to air it all of it. And he invited me down to Santa Monica when he was put on a ventilator with the you know invitation of I I don't I don't know how long this can last. The doctors were still telling him they could try more experimental treatments. His life partner wanted that, and he didn't. And whether he knew it at the time, I have no idea, but what ended up transpiring with our time together while I was there with him at um UCLA Medical Center was helping him navigate the conversation that he wanted to come off of the ventilator, which meant that you know his life would not continue for long. Um so through that whole year and a half process from beginning to just having the diagnosis and coming all the way to the I'm ready, I've come to terms that my body's done, and I have made a lot of peace in my life, and I have told the people that I want to know that I love them and that they're important to me. I've said it, and I've told the people who didn't treat me well that they don't get to be part of my life anymore. I've said it, and I'm ready. I'm ready. Um that role that I played, that I got to share with another friend, and she told me, well, you were his death doula.

SPEAKER_07 2:06:40

His death what?

SPEAKER_01 2:06:42

Death doula.

SPEAKER_07 2:06:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:44

Which I didn't know was a thing. It's a thing. You know, like a birth doula. Yeah. Somebody who helps, you know, a mother navigate bringing a child into the world. So a death doula helps an individual individual navigate the end of their life.

SPEAKER_07 2:06:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:59

Not from the medical hospice world care, but from the psycho, social, emotional, um, spiritual, like, what do I want the end of my life to look like? And, you know, when I have control over the things that I have control over, how do I want that to be? Um, and so that put me on a whole other path of um training and education. So I went through a death doula certification through a place in Asheville, North Carolina called the Center for Conscious Living and Dying. And um did bedside training there with uh they have a be it's a beautiful center that people come to consciously process and go through the last few months of their life when they know that that's where they are. So it's not hospice workers are part of it, but it's not necessarily part of the hospice system. So that brought into my, I guess, teachings, my time of teaching, of knowing that, like, wow, we as a culture, we don't talk about death and dying. We often deny that it's part of living. Um I noticed myself feeling really interestingly defensive when people were trying to console me from the loss of Aaron. That, like, oh, he was so young, you know, it's not fair. I was like, don't cheapen his life like that. He died at 45 years old. He lived a full circle of life from birth to death, and he was ready. It's a tragedy for me because I I no longer get to hear his laughter or look in his eyes, but it's not tragic for him. And I wanted to ask that question bigger to all of us on why do we wait for that clarity? You know, now that I've been in this world for a little bit longer, and my exposure is still small compared to many who work as death doulas professionally all the time. But there is this beauty that comes, this clarity when you know that death is imminent. We aren't bullies to ourselves anymore. We don't allow people to perpetrate our emotions the way that we do when we think that we have to continue. And the reality is we all death is our birthright. It's it is the one known factor.

SPEAKER_06 2:09:46

One known factor for all of us.

Death Doula Work And Death Café

SPEAKER_01 2:09:48

Absolutely. And so why do we wait to have a diagnosis or to have something that's telling us we're at these end stages to gain that true clarity of what is the life legacy that I want? If we can start to pull down that path now, then we live that legacy. We have that opportunity to be more present in that place. So the death cafe is this international movement. I didn't make it up. I didn't even actually, I wasn't the one who brought it to Haynes. Ellen Larson was the first one who brought it to Haynes. Um but I put it together last summer, last fall, in conjunction to, I did a weekend long workshop with a death doula that I met at the writing workshop that I was talking about that I had to write the um my whole life in three sentences. This man, um, Darnell was one of the um facilitators. He's uh children's uh television show author, and just a super cool human. Um, and also happens to be a death doula. Was that not at all our topic of the writing seminar, but he and I connected on that subject, and then we were like, wouldn't it be super cool to do a writing workshop with yoga and movement and embodiment and breath in Haynes, Alaska? And so he came. He came and we put on this workshop, and then we also did this kind of, I think it was a little larger, more um promoted in different circles than what had kind of been the other uh death cafes that we've done. But the whole idea of the death cafe is to sit down over cake and tea, and the conversation is focused around death and dying, whatever that means. What questions do you have? You know, what do you want to say, and what do you want to have heard? And um, it's really a cool experience, and hopefully we're gonna have more. Um, in fact, it's kind of brought in this whole other conversation with some other friends of like, I feel a little bit driven. Now I'm gonna put it out there that I think we should have conversation cafes. Where we talk about things like what was a pivotal point in your childhood that changed your direction? You know, we put these things out here. Yeah, exactly, right? Like that like actually my friend Ben says in Haynes, you can have a lot of acquaintances for a long period of time. And we might call them friends, but are they really friends? Do we really know like what makes their heart beat? What gets them out of bed in the morning, what their struggles are, when they need us to show up for them. We know their name and who they are at the post office. But like how many people do we actually know? And like walking away from something like the Death Cafe, you probably know people deeper than you've known them in all of the times that you've, you know, sat across from them over bingo or not that those activities aren't good, you know, they're good, but sometimes when we know everybody's name, it stops us from actually asking a whole lot more. And so that I think is the foundation of this for me, this dream of maybe bringing in this conversation uh cafe is like just throwing topics on a table of like opening to things that we don't always want to talk about, um maybe just because we haven't been asked.

SPEAKER_06 2:13:22

Well, and that was that's kind of a as you were talking about that, it's kind of an offshoot because um I had a I had Gersh and Cohen on here earlier, and one of the things him and I had talked about was so many of us that live in Haynes, probably 90% of the things that we all want are the same. Yeah, you you want a safe environment, you want the roads to be plowed, you want a good school for your kids, you want some economic opportunity, but when you get into defining what is a good school, how how soon do the roads get plowed? How do the roads get when you get into the details and how to do it, that's where we all start arguing. We we we generally want most of the same things. It's just the definition of it and the means is where we come into conflict. And I think that what you're talking about, these a conversation cafe, could alleviate some of that just by getting to know people on a deeper level, what some of their struggles are with, and again, that's kind of why I started this is just let's get to know people in the community. Hopefully, people clue in, and I'm learning stuff about you that I've known you 20 years, and I'm learning stuff today. Just pretty much everybody I've had on here, a lot of them I've known for a really long time. Every person I've learned something new.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:42

Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_06 2:14:43

And so just having those conversations with somebody that other than yoga and stuff like that, that you and I generally don't hang out in the same circles. You know, I if I need physical therapy, I'll get in touch with Marty. I see you at the store, I see you around town, we say hi, and you know, I consider you somebody that, as you were saying before, I don't really have people that I would consider close friends. I do have a lot of acquaintances. And I think you're probably a closer to the friend than acquaintance in a lot of people, um, just because of the way, not because we do so many things together, but just the way that you've helped me and guide me through difficult parts of life. And so that those people get higher, higher status, if you will. Um, but yeah, we we do need to spend more time talking to others outside of our own little tight family circles or whatever it is. And that's one of the things I've I feel I've been really blessed with is growing up in a retail environment that I get to meet so many different people from different areas. And at there's times that I'm like, man, I do not want to have the same conversation with these people that I've had. But the last couple years I've started asking when people come in off a cruise ship or they're coming in off the motorhome, where are you from? What do you do? What's the best part of your trip? And just start engaging. And you can see a person's mood a lot of times shift when it's not like, hey, is there anything I can help you? But you start asking about their life and what they're doing. Tell me about you. What's and it's none of it's deep conversations, but man, there's sometimes somebody will be here for an hour and just talking about life in Nebraska or whatever, and about how they're growing corn or whatever it is that they do in their life. And I love all those conversations now. I love learning from other people about what makes them tick, what brought them to Alaska, what whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:16:44

It's fun. And you don't have to agree with everybody to have those conversations.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:49

Hopefully we don't. Hopefully we don't.

SPEAKER_06 2:16:52

Yeah, it's really boring. But it's it's it's it's and and I found too that getting to getting to know somebody's life story makes it easier for me to understand when we disagree. Because the things that they've been through, the experiences they've had, it's like, okay, yeah, I know why we diverge on that. Because this happened in my lifetime that really pushed me in this direction. I can see where that happened in their life put them in a different direction.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:20

Yeah, we see it from it from our own lens.

SPEAKER_06 2:17:22

We see it from our own lens.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:24

And sometimes we have to understand the lens that somebody else has in front of them for us to be able to and we have that means we have to step back and create some space, you know, from our own way of looking at things. But I mean, I think that's one of the things, you know, this intrigue and awareness and openness around death is that death is our great equalizer. We're all going to experience it, and all of us sitting together have not yet experienced it.

SPEAKER_06 2:17:55

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:58

So we can talk about it. Some of us maybe have even had near-death experiences that like create some different awareness around it all, but otherwise we're all, you know, we are all on the equal plane. We don't know exactly when or how. And you know, it's it's it's a cool thing.

SPEAKER_06 2:18:20

I I I I don't know if I'll agree with you on it's a cool thing. I'm I'm still uh I'm still processing.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:27

Um yeah, you can.

SPEAKER_06 2:18:29

And so um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:32

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you just lost you lost somebody really integral and important and intimate in your life.

SPEAKER_06 2:18:39

And but I I hope you do another one because I would I I learned a lot going through that. And I still there's I still have a lot of questions. There's still a lot that I would like to learn. So I hope uh I see a flyer up for another cafe.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:54

You got it. And I don't mean to make light in the it's a cool thing, you know. I think it's um it's a cool thing when we can recognize that every single one of us, regardless of the lens, the background, the upbringing, have a place that we can meet with equality. All of us will lose everything that we've ever loved.

SPEAKER_06 2:19:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:21

It's impermanence.

SPEAKER_06 2:19:26

So on that upbeat note, yeah. What what what else in the the life of Marnie or what you have going on in your life have have I missed asking you about?

SPEAKER_01 2:19:39

What we've been talking for a while.

SPEAKER_06 2:19:42

We have been talking for a while. What what do you what are you working on now? What it what's excites you going forward?

SPEAKER_01 2:19:50

Do you have any big plans coming up on new projects or um I mean I this winter I've been leaning I Aaron's still with me every day, and a lot of the things that we experienced together in that year and a half um have continued to encourage me to walk through the world differently saying yes to an aerial circus residency instead of having to write another book. Yeah. Um he always encouraged people to say yes to strange things and to take risks and be courageous and creative. And so this winter um I have leaned further into the kind of creativity mindset. Um I've been doing a journaling project. Um, there's a book called The Book of Alchemy by Seluka. I always mispronounce her last name. She's an incredible author. She wrote the book Between Two Kingdoms. But the Book of Alchemy is a hundred-day project of you read an essay, and then there's a little journal prompt after it. And so it's just been a really great morning anchor for me that I wake up in the morning, make my hot drink, roll out the yoga mat, spend my 20 minutes saying hello to my body and my breath, and then I sit down with this essay that I read, and then a prompt, and I write, and then I move on with the day. Okay. So that's been a really great way to just have a winter anchor. Um, today was day 60, and really what I didn't go into it with this expectation of like creativity is gonna be the thing, but it's been one of the things that has really come out for me. Um so I said yes to a workshop through the Haynes Arts Council that'll come out in March, which is a really different movement. It's gonna be a movement and journaling workshop.

SPEAKER_07 2:21:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:52

Um, and not yoga and not weight training, but just creative movement. I'm not gonna give away too much. Hopefully, people will be brave and show up and know that I too am teaching something new and different for me. Um and that there's nothing to lose, right? We're not doing a performance, nobody's judging you. It's a way to open into your body and um, you know, kind of create a monologue and process and move things through and then reflect on a page. So that's there. Um, I have another somewhat in the death awareness world workshop coming to Haynes in September, the um first weekend in September. My very dear friend Aditi Setti, who I first met here in Haynes, Alaska as a medical intern. She was a medical intern at the search clinic. She had been a kayak guide in the early 2000s for Ned Rasbicki, gone on to medical school, but always loved Haines. So came back and did one of her rotations with Dr. Julia Hines as her clinical, clinical instructor. I met her there, we connected. Fast forward. She is the founder of the Center for Conscious Living and Dying. She's done 15 years now of um palliative care. She's a hospice doc. And she had a similar, very um shape-shifting moment with one particular patient that turned into a movie called Elastic Static Days that's available on PBS. If you want to look at it, this man, Ethan Sether, really changed her. I shouldn't say changed it, it gave her the spark to create something new in that death and dying world and how people are supported at the end of their life. So she founded the Center for Conscious Living and Dying. She's the one who told me you were Erin's death doula. Okay. And she's gonna come back and come here. She's gonna come here, and we're doing a workshop called Presencing.

SPEAKER_07 2:23:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:52

And so it's, you know, there is that like having an awareness of our mortality helps us to be present in our life. But what else does? Singing, rituals, fire, breath, yoga, journaling, talking. So it's just it's gonna be a really beautiful weekend of participating in activities that help us to come back again and again to the act of being present. So presencing's kind of we sort of did the same thing of like we created a verb right out of the act of being present. Yeah, so that's out and about. Anyone who wants to sign up, happy to have you. Um, and it I I'm really excited about that. I'm also teaching um for yoga medicine coming up in February. Um yoga medicine is this big international organization founded by my first yoga true yoga teacher who I did my yoga teacher training through, Tiffany Krukchink. Um, and she every other year she does what she calls the Yoga Medicine Innovation Conference. So she reaches out to some of her teachers, and thankfully she's reached to me each time. And I've taught on pain science in the past, I've taught on um like interoception of how we interpret our body's um perceptions in the world and how we use that in athletics and performance, and now this time I'm doing it on death because that's where my mind is right now. But it's again, it's similar to the pain science yoga life of can we use the container of yoga, which is about the study of self, right? Can we use that to also help us open into this awareness of our immortality? And can that help us to be more clear in how we want to live our life now? So that's coming up in February online. You can go to the yoga medicine um website, which is just yoga medicine online, and um sign up for that if you want. Those are the things that are like immediately in my wheelhouse, and hopefully use more play and adventures in the wild. Um yeah, it's that's what's happening in my life right now.

SPEAKER_07 2:26:12

Dang, I got a lot going on.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:14

And you know what? I do a lot less now because I am learning to be a child slow. I am slowing down, I am committing myself less and making a lot more space for just being instead of doing.

SPEAKER_06 2:26:31

I need to hopefully some of that's rubbed off on me.

SPEAKER_00 2:26:34

It's a practice.

SPEAKER_06 2:26:36

Yeah. It's it's something I I don't spend a lot of time practicing. Maybe someday.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:42

Bring it to your yoga map.

Presencing, Projects, And What’s Next

SPEAKER_06 2:26:44

Yeah, true. Well, that all encompassed I I appreciate you sharing your story. Because I I think I think I could start at the beginning. Just so much of your life in Haynes as I've known it has always been about how do we help others, how do we how do we reach out, how do we include others, and just the compassion, the care um through everything you do. I'm really glad. I don't know if it was the beer, I don't know if it was the weather when you guys first came up here. Greg, however it was that brought you to the community. I think Haynes has been extremely fortunate and blessed that you decided to come up here um 21 years ago and that you've stayed all this time here. And and thank you for sharing all of your experiences with us today.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:33

Thank you for having me. And the third line of my tell your life story in three lines was I was born in a foreign land and I found home where the mountains meet the sea. Haynes is definitely my heart home. It's the home that I never knew I was looking for until it was in front of me. So I appreciate the gratitude that you share.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:59

And um I have so much gratitude for this land, for the people of this land, for the community of Haynes, for holding me in my times of tenderness and struggle, and for buoying me when I'm like, we're gonna change the way pain is talked about in this community, for whatever other crazy thing I've brought forward from all the well and fit community challenges that we used to do.

SPEAKER_01 2:28:26

And um, so yeah, the the gratitude is a bi-directional in this in this place for me.

SPEAKER_06 2:28:33

Well, getting to that, I think the when people were able to see from early on with the things that you were starting, I think they were able to see that the care and the love you had for people, and that when those manifested through the classes and through the different things you're pushing, each one it just it was like, oh Marnie's doing that. Oh, I should I should take a look at that. I think you just you've you've built up that uh um I don't know the right word for it, but that reservoir of trust and acceptance over from early on with the things that you were doing. That um I don't think I'm the only one that appreciates having you in Haynes.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:13

Thanks, Doug.

SPEAKER_06 2:29:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:16

Thank you for all your questions.

Gratitude And Closing

SPEAKER_06 2:29:18

Thanks for watching this episode of Doug Had's questions. Just a reminder if you've enjoyed the conversation today, please like, subscribe. We're available on YouTube if you want to watch us, if you just want to listen. Uh, it's on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Uh episodes be launched every Thursday. Thanks again for watching and following us. We appreciate your support.