Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris A Radical, Counterintuitive Stress Reliever with Alua Arthur | Staff Picks About this episode We're bringing you some of our favorite gems from the archives, as chosen by our staff. This week, we're hearing from death doula Alua Arthur, as chosen by our managing producer Lauren Smith. Arthur helps people with all the non-medical aspects of dying – emotional, spiritual, and practical – and she has a simple question that she says simplifies decision-making and stress.
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How Thinking About Death Can Improve Your Life | Alua Arthur https://www.danharris.com/p/how-thinking-about-death-can-improve-769?r=4o5o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Dan Harris? This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:19 Dan Harris? Hey, hey, happy Friday, everybody. Many of us, myself included, spend a lot of time caught up in our neuroses and hangups and workaday problems. So today, we're going to talk about a radical, deeply counterintuitive stress reliever. I'll tell you what it is in a moment, but first, let me give you some context. All this month, on Fridays, we're highlighting some of our favorite moments from past episodes, golden nuggets from our vast archive, actually is pretty vast at this point. And these nuggets are selected by members of the team right here at 10% Happier. So over the past few weeks, we've played you key moments from my interview with the comedian Bill Hader and also the Buddhist scholar Bhikkhu Bodhi. And this week, you're going to hear from Elua Arthur,
1:02 Dan Harris? who's an author and a death doula, which means that her job is to help people as they're dying. And it is Elua who has the aforementioned radical and counterintuitive anti-stress advice. It was actually several years ago, right here on the show, that Elua gave this advice, but over time, it has really stuck in the mind of our managing producer, Lauren Smith. So you will hear briefly from Lauren, and then we will play the key moment from Elua. But first, just to quickly remind you of this cool new thing we're doing over at danharris.com, if you become a paid subscriber, you'll get a companion bespoke meditation to go along with every full-length Monday, Wednesday episode. Today's a Friday, so there's no meditation today. But if you sign up today, you'll be ready for Monday's new
1:47 Dan Harris? companion meditation, led by our amazing teacher of the month, Dan Mauricio. Okay, right after the break, you'll hear from Lauren, and then Elua Arthur.
1:57 Dan Harris? If you care about supporting independent media, and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low-stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds, and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission.
2:42 Dan Harris? And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media, and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low-stakes way
3:26 Dan Harris? to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds, and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show.
3:49 Speaker 01 Hey, everybody. My name is Lauren Smith, and I am the managing producer here at the 10% Happier Podcast.
3:58 Speaker 01 The episode that I'm highlighting today is with Alua Arthur, who is a death doula. And I worked on this episode back in 2023 and just found it incredibly moving on many, many levels. As a death doula, Alua helps individuals who are dying, plan for their deaths and approach and face their mortality in a way that we don't usually see or experience in our culture. Her interview is just so wonderful and chock full of tools and meaningful insights.
4:39 Speaker 01 But there was one part of her interview in particular that really struck me and stuck with me. It's an exercise where she encourages people to imagine their own death on a very granular level. The rationale behind this is to help folks look at their deaths in a very specific and ideal way in order to elicit a sense of peace around their deaths. It's almost like an exposure therapy. So if we start to think about our deaths in this granular way,
5:20 Speaker 01 it could start to feel less scary and possibly serve as a helpful tool, not only for ourselves, but for the people around us at the time of our deaths. So, thank you to Alua for this tool and I hope it serves you all today.
5:39 Dan Harris? Thank you, Lauren. That advice stuck in my head as well. So now let's hear the key part of the interview with Alua Arthur. Just for context, Alua and I spoke right after she was on stage, delivering her bravura TED Talk at a TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. So here we go. So you're living your life now, employing and deploying a bunch of practices to prepare you.
6:05 Speaker 02 Yes.
6:05 Dan Harris? So what are the practices you personally engage in and that you would recommend to us in terms of getting ready for this? Which I'm deeply in support of this because I think not only will it prepare you for the inevitable, but it will revivify your life right now.
6:22 Speaker 02 That's a great word, revivify.
6:25 Dan Harris? I like to show off.
6:27 Speaker 02 It's like an SAT word.
6:28 Dan Harris? Yeah, yeah.
6:29 Speaker 02 I'm gonna look that up afterward.
6:30 Dan Harris? Thank you for accentuating what an asshole I am.
6:32 Speaker 02 You got it.
6:36 Speaker 02 I don't know how many of the practices are conscious, but I will tell you some of the ones that sometimes I use. Occasionally, when trying to make a decision in my life, I'll look at it from my deathbed. With this decision that I have to make right now, looking forward to my deathbed. Will I be happy I did it? Will I be sad I didn't do it? Or will it matter at all? Most of them fall on that it won't matter. Then it doesn't matter what I do. I can just figure out how I'm feeling that day, decide what direction I want to take it in. But if it has some other bigger implication, like moving or breaking up with somebody, then looking at it through the perspective of my death, I can see a little bit more clearly who I want to be and like how I want to show up for my life. So that's one that I use. But I use it sometimes for silly things,
7:20 Speaker 02 like trying to figure out whether or not I want to take a nap. And the answer is always yes, take a nap. I'm always going to take a nap when I think about it from the perspective of my death, which I think some people would think that you'd rather not nap and just do the thing because there's that old adage, you can sleep when you're dead, but that's not sleep at all, it's dead. But I like rest. I want to feel rested in my life. And so when I'm looking at it from the perspective of my death, I'll take a nap. Another thing that people can do that sometimes I suggest is to look in the mirror in the eyeballs, in your own eyeballs, like deep, not searching your face, but looking in the eyeballs and repeating, I'm going to die, a couple of times, and see what it brings up and be present with whatever it brings up. It could be scary,
8:04 Speaker 02 but I find that people often feel a little bit more peace. It's a little bit of a stress reliever to be aware of the fact that you're going to die consistently.
8:13 Dan Harris? Is it a stress reliever because it gets you out of worrying about demonstrably stupid shit? Or is it a stress reliever because you're taking this fear that's lurking in the corners of your consciousness and dealing with it forthrightly? Or both?
8:27 Speaker 02 Both, both. I think in the immediate, it makes microscopic the thing that you're worrying about. But in the longer picture, it gives greater perspective on life itself and has you look at the things that scare you and then be with the things that scare you and then take the sting out of them tiny, tiny.
8:46 Dan Harris? I have more questions about these practices and I've got a list of some of them I want to ask you about, but just on this question of fear at the end, I have, you know, no experience compared to you, but I did volunteer in a hospice for a few years.
8:59 Speaker 02 Wow.
9:00 Dan Harris? And made a lot of really good friends there and had some powerful experiences. And I, with one exception, didn't see a lot of fear toward the end. Did I just get lucky or is there something about the human organism that, I don't know, some sort of equanimity kicks in around the end?
9:17 Speaker 02 I think the latter. I think that folks at some point start to reconcile their lives with their deaths and say, all right, we're here. It's part of why, as a death doula, it's really important for me to work with somebody who's already come into some recognition of the fact that they're going to die, because otherwise I am just working with their fear. Not to say that there isn't anyone, the reconciliation is being made, but it's a much more pliable fertile ground to work with.
9:45 Dan Harris? As a death doula, you don't necessarily want to come in and work with somebody who's still quote unquote fighting?
9:50 Speaker 02 Right. Unless they can also hold that they're dying. People often think that my work is about helping people get over their fear of death, but it's not. I mean, have you ever tried to have like a friend break up with a bad boyfriend or something like that? It's so hard. People just have to be ready to step into it when they're ready. So I don't do that necessarily. I can just sit with people and their fear and their discomfort, but I'm not trying to get them from point A to point B. I'm just being with them where they are.
10:18 Dan Harris? So when people say to you, I'm terrified, I'm terrified, I'm just freaking out, you don't have something you say that's comforting, you just sit in the dark with them?
10:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, what are you scared of? You know, we start there. What is the fear? What's the root of it? Helps them tease it out. And often, like we were saying before, when we're looking at it directly, it starts to numb it. It's like exposure therapy in a weird way. Like you just start slowly numbing it. You take the sting out of the scary thing. And oftentimes, it's things that we can do something about. Like if one of the big fears is the process of the body, which is a big one, what happens when we're dying? What does that feel like? We can start making plans to make sure that your pain is well managed, that you can have clues for thirst. We can talk about how thirst is actually supportive at the end of life because it acts as an analgesic. It will numb the pain. There's things that we can discuss to take a little bit of the fear away.
11:11 Dan Harris? Thirst acts as a pain reliever or getting your thirst quenched?
11:15 Speaker 02 Dehydration.
11:16 Dan Harris? So dehydration is good?
11:17 Speaker 02 At the end of life, yeah. It serves as an analgesic effect.
11:21 Dan Harris? Interesting.
11:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:22 Dan Harris? Do you have any, having been around the end of so many lives, have you developed some sort of suspicion about what's on the other side?
11:32 Speaker 02 No, I know, I wish I did. What I notice is how often it looks like peace on people's faces as they're dying. Even if the mouth is open, because people do often die with their mouths open, it doesn't look scary.
11:51 Dan Harris? That's what I walked away with oddly was, you know, I haven't done it in a couple of years. This was pre pandemic, but I walked away from my time in the hospice feeling much less scared. It's come back because I haven't been exposed recently, but it was not a scary place and people weren't screaming in pain. Modern medicine is quite powerful. And as we established, there's something about the human organism that seems to ease into this transition. But I remember quite powerfully feeling like it was a relief to have that experience.
12:19 Speaker 02 Sounds like it's time for you to go back to the hospice.
12:21 Dan Harris? Yeah.
12:21 Speaker 02 And yes, absolutely. I find that people are more peaceful and they're ready on some level to die. Because likely, particularly in a hospice or so, it's coming at the end of a disease process. Probably just tired of being sick.
12:38 Dan Harris? Yeah, that's true.
12:39 Speaker 02 Like I get the flu and after three days I'm ready to be over it, you know? Particularly when you are in a disease process that's likely going to kill you. Man, at some point, you're just like, all right, enough already.
12:50 Dan Harris? My father used to have this joke about when you get the stomach flu, that you switch back and forth between thinking you're gonna die and fearing that you won't.
12:59 Speaker 02 Oh, that's good. Yeah, it's good.
13:03 Dan Harris? So, one of the other practices, if memory serves, that you recommend for people is to really get pretty granular in thinking about how you want to die.
13:10 Speaker 02 I love that one.
13:11 Dan Harris? Why? Why do you love that one?
13:14 Speaker 02 Because it creates an ideal that can serve to create peace around it. So much of the fear around death is like, what's gonna happen? What's it gonna feel like? What's it gonna be like? This is scary thing. I can't even think about it. So if I can think about it in a way that feels peaceful to me, my nervous system will be soothed by the idea. And so I suggest that people fill it with as much sensory detail as possible. What's it feel like? What's it smell like? Who's there? Who's not there? What are you wearing? What are you seeing? What are you smelling? What time of day is it? Where are you? What's the lighting like? Make it really tangible. Because I think once we can land it in the sensory experience, then we can ground it in the body, and then it doesn't feel so scary. Because this is my ideal death.
13:58 Speaker 02 This is something that feels comfortable or comforting to me. And oftentimes, what I hear is it's like people Sunday afternoon, or when they're with the people that they love, or when they're in their comfortable clothes or a place that they're already familiar with. So if I think, well, if I can die in a way that I'm comfortable living, then maybe the process of dying won't be so bad. Maybe.
14:17 Dan Harris? You do this in your talk, but can you paint a picture of what your vision is?
14:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, sunset. Sun's going down, the sky's changing. The colors are really vivid that day. It's not one of these days with all the clouds, so I can't see the sky. But everything's changing. It's really pretty. I can see it. Ideally, I'm outside on a deck or something like that, in my own bed or a bed that can be wheeled outside. There's no machines. I can hear the wind and the leaves. I can smell some nogchampa amber. My people are around, but they're not just hovering over me, looking at me, because I don't like being center of attention. It would make me really uncomfortable.
14:55 Dan Harris? You don't like being the center of it?
14:56 Speaker 02 No, I don't.
14:57 Dan Harris? You just came offstage in front of 2,000 people.
14:59 Speaker 02 And then wearing bright orange, but I don't like it.
15:02 Dan Harris? She's wearing bright orange and it's pretty fetching.
15:05 Speaker 02 Thank you, but I want them to be like over there, talking amongst themselves and comforting each other. I want soft things. I want to feel soft things. I would love it if there were sunflowers nearby. I want like a mustard yellow blanket or something. I just want to feel cozy and warm and safe and like people care, but I'm not going to totally fuck up their lives by the fact that I'm dying.
15:30 Dan Harris? What about pain relief? Do you have some desire to avoid that so you can be maximally conscious?
15:36 Speaker 02 Yes, I would like to be as conscious as possible, but with my pain managed.
15:40 Dan Harris? So middle path between obliteration through morphine and being as awake as you can tolerate?
15:46 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Although I know some people that want to be as awake as they can. One guy who I supported doing his end of life plan didn't want any pain medication at all. That's what he said.
15:58 Dan Harris? Did he change his mind?
15:59 Speaker 02 I don't know. He's still living.
16:00 Dan Harris? Oh, great.
16:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:09 Dan Harris? Thank you to Elua Arthur. She's amazing. And thank you to Lauren Smith for honing in on said amazingness. We'll put a link to the full episode in the show notes if you want to go check it out. Also, Elua wrote a beautiful book called Briefly, Perfectly Human, and you can learn more about her at goingwithgrace.com. Another quick reminder before you go, scoot on over to danharris.com to become a paying subscriber and you'll get access to a bunch of perks, including bespoke companion meditations that come with every full length episode, plus live video guided meditation sessions, ad free versions of this podcast and much more. Check it out, danharris.com. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan,
16:52 Dan Harris? and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
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