Meg Berryman

An episode from the 2021 archives with Meg Berryman, Australian somatic practitioner, consultant and author focused on wellness, social change, and sustainability. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hi, I'm Sophie. Welcome to Big Things Little Things, a podcast series where I sit down with inspiring change makers to discuss the big things they're doing, the little things that make them who they are, and together we vision pathways towards a better future. Hey everyone, welcome to week 10. Today I sit down with Meg Berryman. Meg describes herself as a mother, teacher, podcaster coach, and consultant, seeking and teaching regenerative ways to live, lead, learn, and do business. So I've had Meg speak on quite a few podcasts, and she's just incredible. She honestly just everything she says resonates as such beautiful truth. And I think she talked about some things that are really important in terms of some of the inner work that's really necessary for each and every one of us to do as we transition through this difficult time of humanity and move towards this kind of new earth that we're inching towards. And part of moving through this and to a better place really starts with internal work. And that seems to me, that's my interpretation, is that a lot of women's purpose and a lot of work lies. So I won't blab on too much in this intro because I do ask Meg to tell us about herself and she does a better job than I could ever do. So yeah, I I won't talk on too much, but it was such a rich discussion and I just loved every second. So I hope you enjoy it and I'd love to hear your feedback. So if you do like the work that I'm doing, it would be very helpful if you could um leave a nice star review on um on iTunes and leave some comments because something that I'm gonna do is um I will start reading out some of the um the feedback that I I receive for the podcast because I think it's it's really nice to hear um the community that's listening and and how it's resonating. And maybe you know, if something's helped um you get on through your life, but I'd just love to hear about how it's helping. And um yeah, it's it's awesome to hear about some of the stories. I know the Jane Hardwick Collins um podcast episode particularly resonated with a lot of people who um perhaps had enjoyed those breadcrumbs of some of the birth experiences that they've had and how that has influenced their role as mothers following on. So yeah, fantastic to hear from you and um yeah, always welcome the feedback. So um thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoy, and I'll talk to you at the other side to begin with. I wanted to start out by um I guess making an observation from what I've seen of you or heard of you. So to me, you come across as somebody who who's deeply in tune with yourself, um, your essence, and um really try like strive to be in alignment with your purpose in everything that you do. So I was wondering if you might be able to describe for the listeners in your own words, um, who's Meg Berryman and what do you view as your role um or your offerings for the world?

SPEAKER_00 3:40

It's a big question. I love it. Um I believe that I am just a being that's part of a big web of other beings. And I have always had a deep, unbridled yearning and desire to connect with the natural world or the more than human world, and I've noticed over the years, although I lost my way for some time, how being in relationship with the natural world has enabled me to find that purpose and also find ways to express and communicate things that are inherent in the human experience. And so I think that where I am now is not seeing myself as like this individual hero who's got this mission to save us as humanity, but more someone who has an unfiltered relationship with life, and so I really see myself in service of life. Um, I don't see myself in service of humans or like one person in particular, one group of humans. I want to see life continue, and what I've come to see over the years through my own experience and through um working with a lot of modern lot of people is how the ways that we've organized ourselves as a society and the ways that we've organized ourselves culturally is fundamentally not life-giving, and that can result in a whole range of things. I talk a lot about burnout as the feedback of that, but I believe that underneath a lot of the ways that we've learned to be, and underneath a lot of the ways that we've learned to be in relationship with each other, and underneath all the ways we've learned to prioritize certain things over other things, that we lost that connection with life, and we lost that connection with that pulse of life that flows through all of us, and so my own regeneration, my own healing has been not only a physical process of uh getting better after burnout, it's been this deep homecoming back into what has always been the purest essence of me, which is someone who can be in relationship with life, with the natural world, and to communicate from that place. And I think we all have gifts, we all are here to play a function, and that's not a job, it's not a vocation, it's that we're here to play a function in a bigger web of interdependence and relationship. And I think my function is to communicate that which we know but can't often give words to, which is that what is life-giving is not what we've created, and helping folks um come back into alignment with what is life-giving, even when it means uh diverting away from the known path.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

That's a great response to that question. In in this sort of purpose of um helping others come more into alignment with those things that are life-giving to them. Can you um describe for the listeners a little bit about the services that that you provide um and how you've sort of um created your own um I guess a lot of the issues that that you sort of bring up are intrinsically related to capitalism and that model and the patriarchal um society. Um and so I guess we have to engage in it a little bit because we can't, it's very difficult to live in this world without money. So I'm interested in in how you have um aligned your purpose being to help others be in alignment and to live um in line with those things that are life-giving with um your career. So, how how does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah, it's a great question, and I think it's something I'm really in the process of considering a lot right now. Um and I'm always looking at it, right? Because I'm always, and I think the process through which I take folks through in I'm a consultant, so I work with organizations, but also as a coach, and also in uh my favorite thing is facilitating beautiful group journeys together where we can do this regeneration, this coming back to life together, because I think it's deeply relational work, um, is always starting with like what's the feedback telling me? And we have been taught so often to disconnect from that body wisdom because we haven't been given a lens to understand that feedback in a healthy way. We automatically go to like if I'm experiencing feedback in the form of burnout, for example, there must be something wrong with me, like I'm doing life wrong, not there's something wrong with the way we've organized ourselves, there's something wrong with the systems, there's something wrong with the fact that we orient to individual success and financial accumulation above everything else when we're essentially relational beings, right? So the first place we always start is like, what's the feedback coming through the body? And can we remove the shame of that feedback and just engage in it in a gentle way? And to do that, we need actual tools, embodiment tools to come to be with sensation and discomfort in the body when a lot of us have been taught to disengage from that. And so I think in my case, the feedback was very strong. I had a I had a career that was very high profile, high visibility. Like I was flying all over the world from a very young age, managing millions and millions of dollars of aid, like meeting with presidents and prime ministers and like you know, everything you dreamed of. But the cost of that was that the more, the higher and higher I got up that ladder, the more I had to compromise the authentic way I move in the world, which is not very linear, which is more organic, which is more relational, which is a little more uh neurodiverse, which is a little more on the margins of that, what what we think we should do, right? And so over time, squashing who I intrinsically was in order to get external validation and feedback resulted in this um in this experience in the body, which was deeply uncomfortable and uh get a bit of a reckoning, a breakdown, breakthrough, whatever you want to call it. And so I think in my own coming back to life, I had to really look at disentangling a lot of the lies that we've been taught, and really it's a practice in shame resilience, right? Because unless I can meet myself with love and grace when my whole identity is being is crumbling or being brought into question, there's no way I can make it out of that, right? So it was this process of who am I if I'm not working? Who am I if I'm not that career? Who am I if uh who do I belong to if I don't belong to these places and these groups? And who am I if my kid doesn't fit into a normal schooling system? Who like all these things, right, that we have to come to terms with in this regeneration process, but it's actually liberation to me because every time we untether from having to belong or be a certain way, we liberate the parts of ourselves that have been exiled and waiting to come back to life. We can bring more of ourselves into our service and impact-driven work in the world, and it can just be so much more useful because I'm not efforting to be someone I'm not anymore, and I'm not having to prove myself because fundamentally, where I came to in that in that healing journey in nature predominantly, but also relationally, and so with some really good mentors and therapists and other beings, um the place that I came to is that I belong to life and that I'm worthy and whole just as I am, um, regardless of my productivity, regardless of my economic output, regardless of my capacity to give care all the time, like I'm whole and enough just as I am. And that is what I call healing the wound of scarcity, right? Like that we're actually coming back into what is sufficiency, what is enoughness. And when we make decisions from that place, it's not that we don't hold the relationship with capitalism or having to earn money without conflict because it is, and sometimes a lot, a lot of the time, I say yes to things that are probably body no's because I also want to provide safety and stability for my family. However, I'm willing to engage in that conflict and that conversation, and I'm willing to acknowledge my feedback in my body and say, oh, that's a no, but also what are the other things, and how can I orient those things in relationship with my values? And I think that that's just it, right? Like that there's no, um, there's no what I've learned, and this is I don't know, a bit controversial, but I think sometimes we embark in this work of regeneration and like wanting to run a sustainable business and wanting to be purpose-led and wanting to slow down under the assumption that we're gonna hit this glorious place of like either being completely opted out of a system and living off grid and like that binary, or that we're gonna have found some place where we can hold both and it's really easeful. And I don't think that it is, I think it's a dance, and my life is a dance wherein I'm continually building my own internal sufficiency and resilience so that I don't need to make decisions from scarcity and fear, um, and also it's a path of experimentation, and my business over the years has evolved and changed according to those experiments, and it's an ongoing process of experimentation because that's how life evolves in the natural world. It's not that we make a five-year plan and we follow that to the T, and then life is great, just doesn't happen that way. We try something, we get the feedback from it, we orient accordingly, and then we take the next best step. But I think in a in a short way of answering your question, um it really starts with coming back into relationship with the body and being brave and courageous enough to acknowledge what's not working. Because when you start to pull that thread with compassion, you you can liberate yourself and start to go on this messy human journey of regeneration, and it's glorious.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah, no, that's a wonderful answer. And um, I think it's there's so much that I could just jump into. Like I have all these questions that I'm so interested to ask you, but then this has just generated all these other questions that I want to ask too. Um something that I think is really important for the listeners who may be unfamiliar with this work is to um to explain what what we're talking about when we talk about feedback. What did that look like maybe from a practical perspective for for you? What was the feedback like? Maybe um the more intense feedback you've you've um experienced in those greater periods of burnout or physical breakdown? And then maybe compared to the feedback that you might um receive now that you um have been really dedicating time to to work on this issue or listen to the feedback.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Yeah, it's a really good question. So I think the feedback often falls into it, it mirrors um the patterning of our nervous system. So what I would say is that there is feedback in the form of high anxiety, so um might be feeling agitated, it might be feeling uh really scattered. I notice a lot in women that I work with that there's a cognitive decline at some point where we stop being able to do the things that we can do with ease. We used to be able to do with ease because we're scattered or um just over-adrenalized. And so I think that that's kind of a symptom of our whole culture, right? Like that that uh putting the foot on the accelerator type experience without being able to slow down, insomnia, um, and then that also being correlated, I think, with a fight response. So being irritable more often, and being, you know, short with my kids, um being really uh short with other people as well. I think that that is one place that feedback shows up, and that feedback is so normalized, it's almost like we're we're used to operating in that state, so we don't know any different. But that state is not um life-giving, it's not sustainable, and it's certainly not regenerative. And I find that before we make any decisions about changing careers or slowing down or you know, making any big moves, finding some regulation in that part in and in the nervous system, and really it's a process of finding safety with slowing down, you know. Until we do that, the decisions are gonna be just reactions or or responses, not integrated from the feedback. So I would say that's one thing. There's this other path. Um, you know, by the time I was burnt out, I was in a full-blown autoimmune kind of mast cell situation. I had ovarian cysts that were close to rupture. I had um really poor gut health, you know, from being overseas for so long. Uh I was allergic or sensitive to a lot of food. Um, I couldn't get up and shower, I had no energy. It was like a total physical breakdown. And I think that we have become really used to operating in a way that we're managing pain or managing inflammation day to day, and we just think that that's a given because we live in such an inflammatory world, you know, and that's feedback. Like if we're not experiencing wellness compared with other times in our life when we've been experiencing wellness, and certainly after being having children, that regeneration was really tough because so many providers were like, Oh, that's just what it's like, you know, after having kids. And I just refuse to acknowledge that. I don't think I think it's how we're living, I think it's what we're putting into our mouths, I think it's our food systems, I think it's a stress, I think it's trauma, I think it's all of those things. Um, that we shouldn't just ignore that feedback and be like, oh, that's normal because it's because it's not. And then the last the last thing I see is that that we'll get to a shutdown place. So a lack of interest in life, you know, more of on the depressive side, I guess, lack of interest in activities, not experiencing joy, experiencing deep existential doom, which I've done, you know, in periods of um postpartum as well, those uh wanting to numb, wanting to avoid, just not feeling like you're engaged or in life. And I think that's also feedback. So they're kind of the the more extreme feedbacks that we might experience. And what I'll say about them is it's not if if you who are listening are experiencing those things, it's not your fault, there's nothing you've done wrong, you're not doing life wrong. Um, it's just feedback, and it's and it can be really neutral. And I think sometimes just acknowledging it to a close friend or a mentor or even to oneself if we're at that stage of having that courageous conversation, um, it softens everything and it actually enables connection to happen again, you know, because we're not holding on to this secret of like we're not coping. This world that we've built, we're just not it's not built for our thriving. The systems aren't designed for our well being, they're designed to accumulate wealth and resources at the top, right? So it's not anything we've done wrong. I think it's so important to know. Um, and then I guess now what the feedback looks like it's all those things, but dialed down, you know? It's just like The pendulations aren't so big that I'm in those periods for months and months, but I still oscillate and I still have hard days and I still have I'm still a human being with all the experiences of being human, and I think that the ambition is never to get rid of that or regulate myself out of it. It's how am I meeting myself in it, and how am I resourcing myself in it, and with how much grace can I acknowledge my humanity? Because I heard this beautiful quote last night, I'm gonna get it incorrect. I think it was from Thomas Hubel who says our greatest possibility uh lies in our humanity. You know, it's like as we start to inhabit these feelings and sensations and experiences which we've been taught to avoid and move away from and sweep under the carpet and try and work our way out of, then the greatest possibility lies in that because it's in our humanity, in all of its magnificence, with all of the different textures of that, that lies our creativity and our resourcefulness and our capacity to connect with others. So I think that re-inhabiting these expressions and acknowledging that it's part of being human. I have so much faith in what happens when we build our capacity to do that.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah, everything you say completely resonates with me. I was actually like, there is no coincidence in anything that happens in the world while I believe that. And I was like, it's not surprising that I'm speaking with Meg this week because probably the last two weeks I have definitely felt myself I've had a lot of that kind of feedback, like insomnia, extreme agitation, extreme frustration, shallow breathing. Um and I've just yeah, recognized that something I'm doing right now, or the everything I'm doing right now is a bit out of balance. So I recognize that there's like some recalibrating that needs to occur. However, um, you know, I I don't really know too much about um the tools, you know, maybe that that you would encourage people to use in response to that kind of feedback. Like for me, I I have been cutting way back on social media and really trying to let go of those pressures of feeling like I must respond within such a time, or I must, you know, I've just been really trying to check out from that for a bit and and try to be in the sun, you know, a bit more, get some more vitamin D, and try to cut back on my sugar. They're the sort of things that that I just recognize definitely have a negative impact on me. Um, but yeah, I'm interested to hear um maybe if you have any strategies that you think might be beneficial for, well, for me from a self-selfish perspective, or just for the listeners who might have these problems too.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

I love all the things that you're doing and I love them because what it tells me is that there's been periods in your life where those things have helped, and so you're tracking back and being like, I know sunlight. There's something about the sunlight, and there is, right? Like the uh our sunlight supports our mitochondria to function in our cells, so without it, we're we're not we're not great, you know. Same thing with sugar, where um I could go in a whole rant, which I won't, about our food systems and how they're putting us in states of scarcity and survival, and they're pitting us against each other, and they're affecting our cognitive functioning and our brain function, and you know, sugar is one of them. So I love that you're already listening to your wisdom, and I think that that's just it, is that everyone will have a different path back to life, but I think what I also loved about what you shared is that there was a piece in there about the expectations that you're holding of yourself to get back to people to uh to show up and be a certain way, and I think that burnout to me is the gap between who we actually are and then who we've been taught it's safe to be, and that gap, as that gap gets bigger, the more we're gonna experience burnout. So the further away from our actual selves we're gonna get, and there's a whole lot of fantastic reasons we do that. Mostly it's that we've been taught subconsciously that in order to be loved, in order to be safe, in order to be in air quotes successful and valid as a human being in a capitalist society, we need to be a certain way. And it's a very narrow definition of what that is, particularly for women, right? So we need to be nice, but we also need to be strong, we need to be calm, but we also need to be bold, we need to be like it's this absolute impossible tightrope, you know, of having to conform. And that subliminal expectations kind of becomes our nervous system patterning. So even if we don't have anyone explicitly saying, Sophie, you've got to get back to those people within 24 hours, otherwise, you're a bad person. That's the voice that we've internalized from culture that we tell ourselves. And so what I find, you know, I do a lot of like guided deep body work in sessions, but what I find the most beautiful thing to do, the most beautiful question to ask is well, when did you turn on yourself? It's a Tara Brack question, she asks it a lot. When did you turn on yourself? And what I often find is that perhaps someone, or perhaps you maybe had a had a bad night's sleep one night because you'd eaten too much sugar, say, or you'd had too much caffeine, or whatever it was. So you had a bad night's sleep, or you'd had just a like a semi-weird conversation with someone that activated an old body memory or whatever on a day, and that tiny thing registers a sensation in the body, and because we haven't been taught to sit with sensation in the body, we react to it and we're like, ooh, and we start that process of like, I don't want to feel this, so then I'm gonna try and numb it, probably with more sugar or more overthinking, or a classic is, and I see it all the time, is that we're in recovery from working, right? As a form of like, if I just can release the pressure valve by getting my to-do list done, then I'm gonna feel better. But it's all the misinterpretation of the original feedback, which was, oh, there's something uncomfortable come up about uh there's just an old body memory come up in relationship to that conversation, or I just say too much, or I'm just tired, or I'm just at a certain point in my cycle, and all of that being okay, and so then it spirals into this snowball of survival that we're like trying to avoid the sensation by doing things that actually compound the sensation, and then we end up kind of where we are as a society, and so I think that coming back to that question, and then of course, like there's the shame spiral that the one-two punch of like we're having a hard day, and then we're shaming ourselves for having a hard day. You should be better, you shouldn't be feeling like this. Be grateful, you've got it so much better than other people, right? All that we needed to do to interrupt that was just on that first day to be like, oh, I'm having a really hard day, right? And to take some breaths and to maybe have a nap, and to stretch the body, or to go out and plunge your hands into the earth or your feet, or to fall into someone else's body and just be like, I don't know why, but I just feel off today and it's really hard, you know, and instead of turning on ourselves and creating that cycle of survival and maladaptive coping strategies, we've just met the thing that needed to be met and honored it and acknowledged it and witnessed it. And so I think that a lot of this work is um self-compassion work and reparenting work and coupled with using the body as a tool, right? So if you're feeling discomfort right now, you said you're feeling agitation. Agitation isn't met well with trying to be like, just calm down, right? Have you ever been in a fight and then someone tells you to come, you're trying to get out of a fight response by fighting yourself. Yeah. Whereas agitation for me, it's like there's a playbook now for every experience I have in my body. Agitation is like I need to move. So I wonder whether, even now, if you're listening, you might just, if you're feeling that, you might just stretch out your arms really wide and roll your shoulders, or stretch up to the ceiling, or take a big breath, or roll your neck around. Agitation is a wave and it needs to be met with movement and breath. And so, so often we're trying to like faux regulate ourselves by like sitting still and doing a meditation when actually our body really wants to move that through, you know, and acknowledge, oh yeah, I am really pissed off about that thing, like I am really agitated about that thing, or like I didn't feel met by that person, or whatever it is. I've got a beautiful mentor that says all the time, mate, whether you like it or not, whether you think it's valid or not, your body is having that experience. So you can't bargain with it, you just have to meet it. And I think that a long way to answer your question is that we need to develop both the tools to track it and name it, but more importantly, how to meet it. And self-compassion and then embodiment practices like movement and breath and um really working on that emotional terrain is like has been the greatest gift for me.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Oh, that's such an awesome answer, and it's like you're reading my mind. Um, it's it's interesting that you say movement because yes, I have two small children, so um Argo's like uh one and a half nearly, and Sylvie's two and a half. And um, so I find sometimes if I was to illustrate how I feel sometimes, it's like I'm carrying two bags, big bags of flour, like in each arm. And and um and you know, I can't I just feel like I'm limited with how much I actually can move because um I have to consider these young things and um where I take them, and we've got to, you know, make sure I can there's some of the things I used to do, like I'd go for a massive um, you know, like go for a big run and run it out, listen to big music, and like it was great. And some of my old coping strategies uh yeah, have become quite difficult now that I have children. And the movement is a big thing that I definitely miss just to shake out like the cobwebs, like I shake out those um that anger and rage that I feel inside. And I am doing um like a it's called soul coaching with Adula um who's local to this area of southeast Queensland. And one of the strategies that she did with me actually recently, which was um really cool and relates to what you're saying, is um she gave me some songs, we were doing like a Zoom meeting, um, and she put on these this music and she's like, okay, for the first song, I just like I'm not gonna watch because I know that you're gonna feel shame about dancing. So I'm not gonna watch, but I'm gonna put on this song and I want you to just move, like just move as hard as you can and just do whatever you want to do for this entire song, but don't stop moving. And and just shake everything out, like shake all those this anger out of you. And then for the second song, she said, um, bring it, bring it a bit slower and try to feel maybe where you places that you haven't moved in a while and try and stretch them out. And so it went for about 10 minutes, and oh my gosh, I'm unfit. Like I was so sweaty puffing afterwards. But you know, so I had been feeling so bad like before our meeting that day. And after I did that exercise, I remember like sitting back down in front of the computer and we switched the camera back on and I felt like reinvigorated. I felt like my blood was pumping, like I was oxygenated, and I looked at my face and my face had color back, you know, like I just looked healthy again. Whereas like that that movement is something as a mother that I I really miss. But I guess the the conditioning, like you said, about women and and certain ways to move. We we like I was thinking there's part of my body that I just moved that I haven't probably really moved in two years because I'm just very holding a lot of tension and restriction in my body. So yeah, just uh like a comment, I guess, to what you're saying, but yeah, definitely that's a story.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yeah, and gosh, like having two little kids close in age and and that feeling of um that it's like I have I'm a big fan of saying the unspeakables, you know, because I think it neutralizes things, and I think sometimes you're just like, get off me, right? And that's totally normal, a totally proportionate response to lacking body autonomy in that season of life. And I think that what happens is that we bury the first feeling and then the second one and the third one, and then so when it does come out, it is a roaring rage, you know, rage has been one of my greatest teachers, particularly in parenting, um, and finding healthy ways. I often I'm just really feeling like particularly weak-free of my cycle, and I'm like, oh, everyone's just really pissing me off today. And I will grab the tea towel and turn my body away from my kids and twist that tea towel so hard and like make a growling, like a really primal growling sound, as a way of something to move that through, you know, like that's not going to come out at them or at my partner, or you know, but it's okay to feel rage and it's normal that rage and anger doesn't have to equal violence, which is what we've coupled it with in our bodies, you know, in our minds, in our hearts, and that if we keep living in the way that we are, which is fundamentally ignoring whole parts of ourselves and saying they don't belong, then we just end up deeply repressed shells of beings, and that is not life-giving. So, what I loved about your story is like how you were tracking the coming back to life, and I think that that is such a beautiful way, like we talked about tracking feedback, but also tracking the feedback that we're settling, and so you might see even just from listening to this call, you might start to feel that you want to yawn or that you want to rub your eyes or that your eyes are watering, or your tummy starting to gurgle, or your shoulders are coming away from your ears. And when we track when we're settling, then we learn that nervous system posture, and when we learn that and we start to make decisions from there, instead of making a decision at the peak of our survival or our rage or whatever, then that's what creates the outer flow, you know. So it's not like how do I change my whole life to slow down and opt out and uh regenerate? How do I change each bit of my life, like my parenting and my where I live and my career and like, or how do I just keep tending to the inner flow of my body, and then the regenerative decisions make themselves from there? And if I take that out into the global perspective of like, what if everyone did this work to feel safe, to feel settled, to feel enough? How would that differ? Like, how would that make the world different? Well, we wouldn't need to consume things because we wouldn't feel like we're not enough, and we needed to buy a way out of that. We wouldn't need to accumulate things because we'd feel okay letting go and sharing. We wouldn't need to extract beyond what the natural limit is of our resources because we'd learn what resourcefulness is. We wouldn't have generations of intergenerational trauma of all of us having experienced power over parenting. You know, there's so many things we would be able to be in relationship so much better, and a big part of my work is teaching that work of like being together, particularly in these times. So I think that when I hear folks who are really socially oriented being like, how do I start my business really quickly, or like, how do I make this impact? The the wisdom is always that like tending to your inner flow is enough, and it's more than enough, and it's essential, and you can't skip that step and try and make impact out there and still be in survival. Like it just doesn't work, it's not impactful, it'll work, but it's not sustainable, and it's not it's not really gonna transform the systems that are keeping us in this way. So I think that it's just like you doing that 10 minute of dancing, like that's enough, that's world-changing, that's gonna be life-changing for your kids, you know.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Yeah, it it has been so helpful already. Um, oh gosh, there's like a comment that I wanted to make too is that uh a bit back in the conversation, you made the comment of people thinking like that really divisive view of um being sort of out of alignment and then wanting to be in alignment and sort of getting there and reaching the goal. And you are, you know, this relaxed, calm guru-esque person, you know, but you're saying that no, it's actually like a dance. And I think that that's so true. Like recently, um, yeah, I recently saw something on Instagram that was somebody talking about, you know, the world at the moment, and and it was a really polarizing narrative about, you know, you're either in in the matrix or you're out of the matrix, but you can't be both. And like I I get that, but I I don't think that's uh like a practical way, you know. We can't we can't all go live on a mountain in the cave and be out of the matrix, you know, with the matrix being society and and the with the systems. So I think what you're saying is much more achievable. It's a dance and it's going to be delicate and individual to each uh person. And then I guess you've kind of started to answer it there, but I'm just interested in any more thoughts you might have. Because one of my questions here was um to do with wellness. And and I was interested to ask you whether you think individual wellness is correlated to the collective wellness. And do you think that achieving a state of individual wellness for every person is a necessary step in transitioning towards this new earth? And when I say new earth, what I mean is that right now, in my view, humanity is going through an enormous rite of passage. And we're gonna come out the other side in some way, you know. And when we come out through this kind of rite of passage, um, that's what I mean about this this new earth, or it's gonna be a different place, you know. Um, part of the work that I'm doing focuses on climate change, and that is in is part of this kind of rite of passage that we're going through. But I'm interested in, yeah, what you view that relationship between individual wellness, because I believe we we're in a state of of quite poor individual wellness, and you know, how that interrelates with the wellness of the whole.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

I love that question so much. I love that that's our meeting place of our two fields, right? Like that's where our passion work really correlates. Um go back to your first point about the process, because it's kind of related to the second point, that there's no there to get to. And the most delicious thing about regeneration, that coming back to life, and then sewing those ways into the collective so we can all come back to life, is that uh the process is just so much better than the outcome. Like, really, we've been taught that instant gratification, like having the thing now, having the wellness now, having the business now, having the whatever is is and we rush there, you know. It's like when I'm making a cake with my kids and they're like wanting to put their fingers in the mixture and they want to smell the chocolate and they wanna put their tongue on the bowl, and they want to feel the rhythmic beading of the eggs, and they want to, you know, like that the whole thing is this delicious dance. The cake is like a bonus, you know, but that process of connection, of working side by side, of rhythmic. Of hands in flour, like it's there's nothing like it in the whole world. We're sensory beings, we need that to sustain us and nourish us. And if we stopped valuing the outcome as the magic part and started valuing the process, regardless of the outcome, I think life would look really different. And I think this is where the individual journey to find more well-being requires of us not just to eat a bunch of supplements and go on a retreat and work through our own childhood trauma, although that's all beautiful. It requires us to have one hand on our hearts and one hand on the pulse of the collective, and to know that well-being, in order to really attain well-being, we're gonna need to change fundamentally the expectations we have of ourselves as human beings and our expectations of others. And we're gonna have to start making cool things that have been made wildly uncool, like resting and like napping, and like sharing things, sharing resources, and like living more communally, and like um like saying no. You know, all these things that we've been taught are really uncool. We have to make them cool again. We have to value them. We have to value a different way of being in the world. And so, so, yes, I think individual wellness is inherently correlated with collective wellness, but it's not the individual wellness that can be boxed up and sold in an industrial complex. It's just not the wellness that we've been taught that wellness is. To me, it's liberation. To me, it's self-compassion, to me, it's relational healing, like having the courage to be in a group of people and stay in that conversation even when you're uncomfortable. To me, it is getting so uncomfortable with the feedback in your body that you you make a bold move that opts out or says no or leaves a career, or you know, like that's well-being, that's coming back to life. It's not just a practice of like individual gratification or individual trophy getting, you know, it's a process of what would be the highest state of thriving for me, and also acknowledging within that the other beings that we interdepend that we're interdependent with, and that means that we take into account our climate footprint when we're buying our wellness things, that we take into account if I want to construct a swim, which I never will because I never have the money, like a swimming pool so that I can benefit my own wellness. Like, how does that benefit other people in my community? You know, it's well it's like well wellness and well-being, but with this sense of togetherness and interdependence as opposed to the individual's hero journey to get what they want. Does that kind of make sense?

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Oh, I love it. Yeah, no, everything is just resonating like crazy. And I've just done some diagrams because I've got two things that I've like must say.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Say them.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Yes. So um I often just something that struck me then, right? Is I um listened to you speak a lot recently, and I often hear you use the words scaffolding. And what's just kind of occurred to me while you were talking is that of course we're never all going to achieve individual wellness so that we can then achieve collective wellness and save the earth. Um something that, you know, obviously those two are interrelated, but probably a more practical way of moving forward, which I guess is probably exactly what you're doing, is um creating the scaffolding by which I mean the structures um that uh surround us in our life, not just individually, but as local communities, um that the support structures that when we all fall down, we can use it to climb back up and to to help ourselves and help our community. And the scaffolding are all those uncool things that you said, and they're uncool because capitalism and patriarchy have made them uncool because they can't make money out of them.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

And so um, I guess part of this cultural work that is required in moving to this new place is to um let's just put that scaffolding back up so that we can all um, you know, keep falling in heaps as we do because we're human, but you know, climb our way back up more easily than um without that scaffolding. And then the second thing that I was going to say is last night I listened to a podcast with Brene Brown and Simon Senek, I think his name is, and they were talking about just seems to relate exactly to what you're saying. Um, I don't know if my terminology is quite right, but the difference between viewing life from the point of there's uh two terms they were using, the finite game and the infinite game, I think, or there might be other words that they were using, but that's the gist. So the finite game is when we live at this is how we live in this capitalism society. Like it's a football game. We have the rules, we have the time frame, which you know is can be comparable to our life time frame. And what you achieve in that game within your lifetime, whether you win or lose, you know, there is an outcome. But so that's the way that we kind of are indoctrinated to to live in society. But what they were talking about is this transition that they both, when they learnt about the infinite game, which is that humanity, there is no winning or losing, there is no end. It can it continues. We are in touch and we can perceive but as a small tiny amount of of what is real in the world. We don't even understand so much, you know, of what's going on. And that life is this infinite game that cannot be won or lost, and you are but a piece in continuing that game. And when you realize that there is no outcome, you become more involved in the process and and viewing that, well, there's many, many lives to come after me, um, my winning or losing doesn't really matter because if I win, well, perhaps the person after me loses because I won.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

Yeah. I love that so much.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

Yeah, man. I interviewed Alex Stewart last Friday and I asked her, Who are your mind expanders? And she said, Brene Brown. And so since I'd never heard of her, but you know when somebody says something and then you just see their name everywhere. And so I've been like listening because you know, I'm getting this intense insomnia feedback. I've been um listening to Brene Brown during these periods of insomnia, and um, and it's she's incredible. Uh, have you listened to her at all?

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Yeah, I love her work. I a lot of the shame resilience work I talk about is derived from her work around connection and vulnerability. And I think that um I love Simon Snack as well, actually. But I love what you said about local futures, uh, which is wildly uncool, and yet something that the more I the more I engage with, the less I have to earn because I'm actually getting shared resources now, like people helping with my horses or me helping them, or um sharing seedlings, or swapping produce, or you know, having these little community projects, like it's given me so much joy, and I think local futures, local economies, you know, Helen and Norberg Smith work around local futures is incredible, and I think that's the way, that's the only answer, that's the antidote. And in order to do that, we're gonna have to get really okay with not all being heroes and not all being instantly gratified, and we're gonna have to get a little bit better at being in relationship, which is a whole nother podcast we could do, but yes, I love everything you just shared, and I think that um I think that this idea of like you were kind of describing donut economics, right? Like there is gonna be things that we need to give up as those who have privilege in order to lift others up, and how okay are we with that is gonna depend on how regulated we are in our nervous system, and how with how much grace we can find solutions is gonna depend on the extent to which we can heal this wound of scarcity within ourselves, um, and find that find find those relationships that you said that when we're down can help us. You know, I learned so much from my horses, and they have this rotational system, it's unspoken, it's unknown how they communicated it, that that they take it in turns to rest and they watch over each other, they watch over the herd, and we need to do that. That's how we need to survive. We can't all develop individual resilience, it's not how it works. We all need to figure out how to be together and how to share and how to look after each other, and then how we can admit and acknowledge in those periods when we're struggling, um, how we can be lifted up in that and be okay with that without it meaning a damn thing about us.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

I love hearing you um mention the horses. I think horses um they're like powerful kind of spiritual beings that can teach humans a lot. And um I I don't ride um at the moment, but I I used to do a lot of horse riding. Um and it's just interesting it ties into the feedback thing because I used to um I used to have a lot of feedback in the form of anxiety and like body tension and that. Um I I struggled with with riding often when I was younger because I did more competitive riding. But because I had this um, you know, very high anxiety um in my body, you know, the horses they sense that. And um and it makes it very hard if you're dysregulated in your nervous system because horses pick up on every tiny little thing and it influences their behavior. So they don't feel safe. And they um, you know, it's just a direct sort of extension of your internal feelings. Um, so yeah, I was I was a little bit interested to ask where your kind of connection with horses began, um, because I know they they play a big role in your life right now. And like what are some of the things that that you find really beneficial beneficial about having a relationship with horses?

SPEAKER_00 55:07

Such a good question. Um, I could talk about it all day. Um I it took me 35 years to make my way back to them, which makes me feel really sad, and also it makes me realise how much we put conditionality on the things that bring us the most joy. Like in our culture, we've learned that like you only get something good after you've done something good, right? Like, so you only we teach it to our kids all the time, you get to play after you've worked, which is total bullshit, by the way. But anyway, and so I was putting all this conditionality on like I can't have a horse until blah blah blah blah, you know, like all these things, until I've had my kids, until I've got enough money, until I've owned more land, blah. And it's just um the all the ways we remove ourselves from the things that bring us the greatest joy, because often the things that bring us the greatest joy are not necessarily the things that make us the most money. So um I was obsessed with horses growing up. I'd never had one, but we spent every holidays um up at my Annam Pop's house up in the Maui, and they had horses, and I would ride them, and every chance I would get I would be riding other people's horses, spending time with them. And I just don't I can't really explain it, but there's always been this deep, deep connection with it. My Silver Brumby was my favourite book. I read it a million times, and somehow, in an extraordinary turn of events this year, I um had a miscarriage earlier in the year, and and the subsequently to that, these a brumby came into my ownership, and I don't think I ever would have been able to own a horse again if this wasn't the path. Um, he's completely wild. He was off Cosyosco a month before, and also the most everyone that has met him has said he's the most highly scared, sensitive horse I've ever met in my life, right? And so you know how you attract the horse. But the way that I had learned to interact with horses was very much from a power over experience of like, I need to get them to do what I want, uh, so that they can be good, and I can be good, and I can get the trophies, because that's how we're taught to look after horses and to and and what they're there for. And so the greatest journey has been. I've now got two Brumbies, another one little foal that I rescued from a terrible situation, but working with them not as a rider but as a trainer, and learning, being so like a newborn foal myself in that experience of having to learn so much and being so out of my depth with this horse has been the greatest joy of this year. And yeah, like you said, they're inherently sensitive beings, but Banjo he needs me to go so slow, and the minute that he does that I don't, he will put me on my ass. And so I've already torn mine in this guest working with him because I was going too fast for him, you know, and so he is the literal definition of like all the work I do in the world, and can I be humble enough and gracious enough to focus not on the outcome of what I want him to be or my relationship with him to be, but to really focus on just the relationship full stop. And I think that that's been such a great teacher.

SPEAKER_01 58:41

I love what you say about like we just push our expectations onto everything, like with animals, you know, we push our expectations of well, this animal is ultimately here to give me eggs or to become my food or to win me trophies. And that kind of power over relationship that we think that we sort of can dominate everything, everything belongs to us. But I think that um, yeah, just as some an interesting observation from what you were saying is that that that relationship, you know, it really does need to be rethought. You know, why is it that we think that we have more right to exist than other animals or life forms? Um why can they not just exist in their own right and enjoy life as their own right? And these are sort of questions that I think that we need to ask ourselves moving forward because the abuse of uh of animals, you know, in the world is is just incredible. You know, we talk about the injustices of humans. Well, God, look at animals. So um, yeah, I just think that's uh very interesting. And yeah, it's it's crazy how they do just keep you on your toes. Like they're the ultimate feedback manifestation of your energy inside, you know, when you say Bandra just like reacts immediately when you don't go slow enough. Yeah, they really keep you on your toes, horses, I think. Yeah, they do. Yeah, I had there was something that I really wanted to to talk to you about because I thought it was just a helpful thing I've heard you um discuss. I think you talked about it with a brook in the Slow Home podcast, but I wanted to, yeah, just maybe explain it for the listeners here. So it's about taking back your power. So you talked about this and you said um you were discussing the importance of boundaries and standing in your power as a human being. And that especially as women, it's really important that we choose who we allow to infiltrate our boundaries and who we uh give our power away to. So I found this was a real like light bulb moment for me when I heard you talk about giving how we as a you know, particularly this was in the context of women, but it applies to everyone how we we really give our power away to so many people. Um and it's important that we consider this process and actively reclaim our power so that we can um harness that internally and use it for, you know, more important, um, bigger quests as human beings. So I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit to um to that boundary, um taking back power discussion that you had and um yeah, just explain it a bit for the listeners.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

It's um it's a cool question because I I recorded that a little while ago and I'm just feeling into my body of like, does that is that still true? And I think it's interesting. I think one of the many things that we have to make cool again is also changing our minds and also acknowledging how we've grown and evolved. So it's a really cool thing that I'm going through in my body right now of like, oh, am I gonna do the thing that leaders do and and stand by it, or am I gonna do the fallible thing like more embodied leaders do and be like, I'm not sure I agree with that anymore. So yeah, I do. I fundamentally agree that I think we we give our power away, but I wouldn't necessarily use that language, I don't think, anymore. I think how I would explain it is similar to the conversation we just had before about the horses and your beautiful reflection of like when we took ourselves out of nature and popped humans at the top of it, and we then became dominators and owners, whereas human beings had always been stewards of life, right? That we could move grazing cattle around pastures and enhance the health of those pastures, for example. We're a fundamental, intrinsic part of the web of life, we're not separate from, above, we are in it, interdependent in it. And sometimes we don't know what everything's function is, but the fact that it exists in an ecosystem means it has a function, just like us. And so I think that really starting to see when we start doing this work, we start to critically analyze systems and our place within them. And I think that that's a really important step as part of this reclamation of well-being. And I think that when we do that, we can begin to see that power over domination in all of our relationships and also all of our structures. So even just hierarchies in a workplace, for example, where we have to work our way up and prove ourselves. That pattern is mirrored in every single system, including the education system that we have built. And so I think part of taking our power back is just learning to question and critically analyze based on the feedback in our bodies of like this, just doesn't feel right, you know, whether the way that things are done is the right way, and whether there is a kinder way, a more equitable way, a way that orients to stewardship over ownership, a way that orients to relationship rather than outcome or output. And I think that when we do that, we begin to foster that interdependent power with, and we also begin to ditch the stuff and relationships in our lives that are wedded to that power over dynamic being the way things should be. And I think that's the natural result of that work is that we become much more empowered about how we spend our time and energy, not from a place of like I have to create boundaries because I'm a really sensitive person, not that, but more, I just really would prefer to spend my energy here on this project with these people. And I really think the meaning of life, right? This is where I'm at, is that um is that we're here to find, remember our function in the broader system, in the broader ecosystem, which means unearthing our gifts that have been uh put on the bottom of the pile underneath all this conditioned bullshit about who we are, and then to just do interesting things with interesting people, and those things can be wide-ranging, like this whole idea of like you're flaky if you change careers or like all of that conditioning. Just don't believe it's true. I think where we have through lines and essential threads of who we are in terms of the role that we play, but I think that how that's expressed changes in every season of life, and I think that that's okay, you know, like some seasons I mean, intense seasons of. Mothering and that's enough. Other seasons, I mean intense seasons of creating, and that's enough, even if nothing ever happens to the creations. So it's a total reorientation to life and our role in it. And I think that the more we do that, the more boundaries are just effortless, in that it's just a non-event. It's like, oh, I'm just gonna expend my energy here. Does that kind of make sense?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:27

Yeah, yeah, no, that definitely does make sense. I um it just kind of rang true to me, I guess, that that discussion that you were having because trying to um, I guess it was in the context of women when you were talking about it, just how we face so many um societal expectations from many different people. And sometimes I guess we invest our energy into other people's perception of us or other people's expectations of us, and by investing or buying into that, we we kind of are giving them this power that so we don't have it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:10

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

That that that really resonated with me because I feel like that's something I really struggle with is um is I'm a chronic uh like I'm trying to work on the stories I tell myself because sometimes I tell myself stories that I give them more power than they than they are in terms of actually being true. But something that I have struggled with in the past is being a you know, a people pleaser and a yes person and and really wanting to to meet the expectations of people around me and um and giving myself gratification based on their their interpretation of our interaction. And so I have traditionally given others a lot of power. My power, I I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:56

Um, and and so just when you you were discussing that, it just really hit me because I thought I need to break away from this investment in what others think about me because I have no control over that. No matter, even if I twist myself in knots, which I have been definitely I've done that, um, still people will find they might find something that they don't like about you.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:22

And so that's a kind of personal battle that I I don't know. I'm very much navigating those waters right now about how to disconnect from those relationships where I'm so invested in this other person's view of me. I need to just bring it back to me and my own how I feel internally. Um that was just kind of my comment on no, it makes total sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:44

I think it it kind of ties together everything we've spoken about today, and I've I've got to go soon for a call, but like that that is what we've done, is that we've built a culture where everyone else's opinion or perceived opinion of us matters more than our own opinion of us or our own relationship with ourselves. And I think that the most important thing to understand about that is that it's a deep survival response. It's not, again, anything that you've done wrong or any of us have done as women to feel like our sense of safety is inherently tied with other people's approval. In the absence of having folks who could really sit with us in our emotions and who could really lift up our gifts and see us for who we truly are and reflect that back. We became in that vacuum of those things, we have to create other stories, and unfortunately, a lot of the stories we create are around our not good enoughness and our needing to prove ourselves. So, again, healing that wound of internal scarcity of like I'm not lovable unless I'm performing as a caregiver or unless I'm working, overworking, right? There is root cause to every maladaptive coping strategy we have developed as a culture. And the root cause is fundamentally: do we feel safe? Do we feel safe? Do we feel loved? Do we feel enough? Do we have compassion? And when those pieces are there, we can do anything because we're no longer tied to having to perform, having to give care in order to be loved and worthy. And I think that you're well, sounds like you're well on your way to understanding where those patterns come from and having compassion for them, right? Because it's not, you know, I hear a lot of folks being like, Oh, I'm sabotaging myself, or I'm I've got blocks, it's none of that. You just learned that it was safe to do that, and it's completely understandable that we've attached love and validation to these ways of being in the world. So my little community and you know, the groups that I run and the things that I try and create in the world are like creating safe places for people that want to do life differently and creating safety for other ways of being, which are equally as valid and equally as beautiful. Um, because I think having pockets of that, just like your podcast, is so important.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:26

Oh, thanks, Meg.

unknown 1:11:27

What a great.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:31

Well, there we go. That was that was our chat, and I I really loved it. I I actually got a lot from it personally. It was like my own session where I got to work through some uh some problems that I'm facing right now because I have not arrived, guys. It's probably no surprise for you to know that I'm struggling often. I um yeah, I don't know. Life, I have good days, I have rough days, just like anyone else. And um, this podcast really is just documenting my progress as I learn more about these issues from some extremely wonderful um and interesting minds, you know, that I I stumble across through the research that I'm doing. And I'm really thankful to have um, I don't know, been struck by the creative light bulb that has um generated the formation of this podcast because it's yeah, it's really fantastic to do, and I'm gaining a lot from it. So I hope, I hope that you are too. So my podcast releasing is a little bit out of whack. I know that you are probably expecting this release to be Alex Stewart. I will um release Alex Stewart's um recording in the next few days. We had a bit of technical um difficulty with the recording, so it was a little shorter than um you know expected, but um still so, so great. You know, Alex is one of the nicest human beings in the world. Um, and just her complete chillness with all of the issues that we had with our recording demonstrates that. And um, yeah, she's just so down to earth, and it was really great to talk about her book and um some of the things that we touched on for her book, I think will be really informative and eye-opening for some people maybe who haven't given much critical thought to the um food systems in place. And then I also will be releasing um a fantastic conversation that I had with Eloise, Dr. Eloise Skinner. She's a uh disease ecologist and she does a lot of work on um mosquitoes in the context of the future and the warming climate and uh the kind of disease prevalence that we may experience as we go through changes because you know the pandemic is is just one but one element of um, you know, the kind of thing that we we could see a lot in the future. So it's interesting to chat to her about that and also just to chat to somebody who's from the scientific community and um ask some of those deeper questions about how they reconcile some of these big things that's going on in society in their life. So yeah, both fantastic conversations. So we're gonna have like a bam bam bam three episode release over the next few days. So um, you know, I hope you've got lots of ironing or whatever boring tasks, gardening. Not that that's boring, gardening is fun. I we've had so much rain lately and the weeds are just crazy in our garden, but it looks so lush and everything is growing so well. So um it's it's really exciting. But I hope you guys are doing well. Um I yeah, I look forward to to hearing some, you know, some thoughts that you might have while you're listening to this podcast. And um I look forward to to touching bass with you again soon. Okay. Have a great week, guys. Bye.