Gina Chick - Don't Fight Life

Gina Chick grew up… different. She wasn’t like the other kids, and they let her know about it. But as an adult she learned to see her “different” as a strength, which led to her most well-known achievement, outlasting everyone else for 67 days in the Tasmanian wilderness to win ALONE Australia. But as you’ll hear, that’s only a part of her story - as is the fact that she’s very close friends with Hugh Jackman. After going through some of the lowest lows a human can experience, Gina learned the power of discomfort and is here to spread the word in our very first ever outdoor episode! To learn more about Gina, her rewilding camps and 5Rythyms dance, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3QRnkzq To watch Alone Australia, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3Rd3m3 This episode includes a discussion about the loss of a child, if this feels like it might be too much for you to listen to right now, feel free to come back to it when you're feeling up to it. The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Gina, welcome to The Imperfects.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's such a privilege and an honour to be here. And I'd also like to echo your beautiful acknowledgement and just give my gratitude to the Palawa, just the Palawa people of Lutroeta, who've, you know, given me so much in my whole journey. So, yeah, it's great to be back on Lutroeta on Palawa country again.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Fantastic.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  Awesome. Wow.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  67 days, Gina. Now, for those who don't, who didn't follow the Alone series, I'm actually one of those. I couldn't watch it because I get quite bad vertigo. And with the handheld cameras, I just, they sent me into a spin. Hmm. Quite literally. So I read about it. I would, I would, I would actually read about your, what you did. And I'd watch small highlights that I could. And you did 67 days out in the wild.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  So you read, you read the book adaptation of Alone.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Had to read about it online.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  And watch small snippets. But that is but a snippet, a very small snippet of your extraordinary life. There are...

• 1:06Speaker 02

  We are definitely outside.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  We are definitely outside.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe it's worth for people, because there might be people out there who don't know what the show Alone really is about.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good idea.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  It might be worth, like, whether, Gina, you want to talk about, like, the experience of being on Alone and...

• 1:21Speaker 01

  So Alone Australia is a, it's a, they call it a reality show, but it's really a documentary series. And 10 Australians, well, in Australia, 10 Australians got dropped into the wilds of Lutroeta, Tasmania, with 10 items that we could choose from a very, very small list, very basic list, and our wits. And the aim of the game is to see who can last the longest. And the only ways to leave are to tap a red button on a sat device, which basically says, "This is crap. Get me out of here right now." Or, "I've been bitten by a snake." Or, "I'm drowning," or something like, that's the help button.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  And then you're still going to have to wait at least an hour for them to come and get you. So you want to be, wouldn't want to be bleeding out.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Jeez, that's terrifying.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  And then you can call on a satellite phone, which is the one where you see them going, "I'm officially tapping out." You can be medically extracted because the medic has decided that you are...

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Medically unfit to continue because you're at the risk of organ failure from starvation or some other health, some other health issue. Or you can find out that you've won by your loved one turning up to jump out from behind a bush to go, surprise.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  You won.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  You're the last person standing and that's what happened to me.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  How, how close were you before you won after 67 days? How many times, if at all, were you like hovering over the red button?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Never.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Never.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Not once.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  So this is, this is what I want to get to because you're, I mean, I, I feel like this experience alone is just but a fraction of your life and you've lived the most extraordinary life. Um, there's a quote that, um, when I was reading about you from Marcus Aurelius, one of the, um, Stoics who said, "We have control over our mind, not events. The sooner we realise that, the sooner we discover strength."

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Hmm. Good on.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  The, I mean, the other thing that comes to mind is tub thumping, chumbawamba. I get knocked down, I get up again. Uh, that's another one that came to mind, to be honest, but.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. So. Maybe the first time Marcus Aurelius. Yeah. Let's definitely keep the Marcus Aurelius bit in.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  I don't know. I get knocked down and I get up again.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Classic Gina Chick anthem.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  But you have seriously been knocked down and the way you have risen is just, it's glorious and it's so inspiring.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  So I want to talk about that today, but also, I mean, being here in Tasmania, I mean, we are going to get through this interview. If it rains, I feel like you've done 10 weeks in the wild. We can do an hour sitting around a table in drizzle and wind. That's totally fine.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  I'm happy to do that. But I also want to talk about the benefits of being outside and why, why it's just so great for us because it is. Um, and I want to get to that as well. So your childhood, um, this beautiful photo I've seen of you of chewing up bird seed.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  And a bird seed, eating the bird seed out of your mouth. From a young age, you must have felt like, like, I feel like I'm a bit different to the other kids around here. Is that a bit of a?

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Little bit.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Teeny tiny bit, tiny bit different, yeah. I can remember being about six years old and like being bullied ferociously. Like I was bullied ferociously. And just looking at the other kids and thinking, and having this epiphany moment of going, oh, all I have to do is be like them and this will stop. And then instantly this, uh-uh, can't do it.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Can't do it. And so, yeah, I, I don't know, I don't know how it works, or how our personalities come in. But one of the things that I see on our, on our rewilding camps is that when a kid jumps out of the car for the first time and runs towards the, the, the longhouse or hides in the car, we see them as they are, like we see who they're gonna be, right there. And then over the years, those kids evolve and then they're mentoring. And we can look back and go, we could see that. And I, and I came in like this. Like I came in, I came in with three people's energy in one body. And so I think it was like, it took a lot for me to learn how to function um in a, in

• 5:40Speaker 01

  a world that looked really, where humans looked very different to my experience of being in my, in my own body. And, and you know, as kids, we don't come in with a manual. We don't come in with a like, okay, this is, these are the challenges you're gonna face and this is how you're gonna do it. It's more, well, you just do what you do and then life feeds back, you know, information. And then how we respond to that is then creates, creates our next sort of choices. And I love that Marcus Aurelius quote, cause it's something that I always say, which is, we can't control what happens, but we can control what, how we respond. And it doesn't matter like how, how sort of like closely the world can come in on us, we still have a choice in how we respond to that.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  And I'm, I'm, I think I'm incredibly blessed to have a family where I've never for one second in my life doubted that I'm loved. Never for one second have I doubted that. And I think that my life would have been very, very different if that wasn't true.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Your mum seems like a, a beautiful, fascinating character who, um, you said before you came into the world with three, is, is, I'm guessing you're saying like your mum, the influence of your mum and her as a person?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, well, I mean, she was a part of that. No, I think I got born with the, the energy of three people or the personality of three people all in one squished into one body.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  And who are the three people?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Do I have to try and like extract those?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Well, it's not like there's three distinct people, but more just I've always felt too big for my skin. I've always felt too big for my skin and I've always haven't had that kind of human programming of conforming. Like I've just, I've never had it. I don't understand it. I don't understand a force that says that the way that we are is wrong. That, you know, for us to just be us is wrong. I mean, the way I see it is like, can, is a tree ever the wrong shape? Ever?

• 7:40Speaker 00

  Love it. Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  No, is that, does that, does a cloud like fluff up the wrong way? Is this, is a wave? You know, is a wave too wavy? Like, it's just like, everything is what it is. And, and everything else in the natural world is what it is. And we have this, like this meaning-making faculty where we can say, this is right and this is wrong and you're right and you're wrong. And you need to be like this to be loved. And I've just been like, well, fine, don't love me then. Because I'm not gonna not be myself.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  The first time you said you felt really sane was when you discovered the lesbian scene in Sydney when you'd finished school, is that right?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Fantastic photos I've seen of you.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Where you were saying before, like you were really sort of, like really embracing just yourself. And I think, I can't remember the words you used, but maybe your weirdness is.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Super weird. Um, yes. And they're the photos that you have seen.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  There's some that were like, that Oz Story got and um,

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Declined to use.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  The beautiful producer, Olivia Rusay, he's amazing. She's like, I really wanted to use the nipple shot and we couldn't do it. Damn it. It's a great shot, great photo. Um.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  That's where I want my taxpayer money to go to, those photos.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Oh, it's like a full, like a harness and these tiny little leather shorts and a cap and, and.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  There's little crosses over my nipples that were, you know, put on afterwards. But yes, didn't get used sadly. But no, it was the gay, it was, it was the gay and lesbian scene. Um, and it was probably gay men that accepted me in the beginning. Uh, when I first discovered the scene, uh, I just found a home, but just basically queer culture. Queer culture is incredibly accepting. I mean, it also can be incredibly judgy in different ways. But for me, especially in the nineties, it was this haven where to be larger than life wasn't something that, you know, I was getting chopped off at the knees, which in a little suburban Aussie bogan school, um, there's, there's not a lot of room for.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  For you, yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  No, for me. And I totally understand that. But yeah, in the, in the, in queer culture, they were like, fabulous darling, you know, and, and I got to, I got to really explore, um, my creativity and my flamboyance and the part of me that wants to express myself, you know, the, the passionate part. And that I get that from my mother. I mean, my mum's a force of nature as well. And yeah, in, in the, in queer culture, I found a home. And, and for 10 years more, actually, in the, in the nineties, I pretty much spent my entire twenties,

• 10:25Speaker 01

  um, immersed in that world. And, uh, some of those friendships are still the strongest friendships that I have today.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  When, when you were talking about, um, being, I was about five or six when you had the choice of like, I could change.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  To stop bullying or be me. Did you have anyone else in your world that was similar to you? Like, was there anyone at school, any friends that you could sort of, sort of saddle up to and do it together? Or were you alone in that?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  You're assuming I had friends. I had no friends. Yeah. Yeah, through primary school, I had no friends. Right. I, yeah, I like that. And I think these days I would have been diagnosed as, you know, with autism spectrum disorder. I've never been diagnosed. I'm not even interested in it, but I've spent a long time hacking my neurodivergence. And, and having a capacity to be able to analyse my own behaviour and see sort of where humans are doing one thing that makes no sense and how, how I can find an in, to be able to, to learn how to human. Yeah. And I feel like I've learned how to human, but it's taken a long time. Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Um, but back then, no, I was just weird. I, I was just, I was, I was super weird. But the only, really, my dad, he used to talk about lone wolves. And so I think he was a, a through line for me, um, when things were really gnarly at school. Yeah. Um, but also my family is amazing and beautiful, incredible and chaotic and creative. And we were all playing musical instruments and we were all, you know, going out, you know, on family adventures. And mum often says that she has regrets that she didn't realise how different I was because she had, they had three daughters under three. Hmm.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  And they were busy, you know, busy. Wow. And so as far as she was concerned, you know, Gina was a little bit different, but, but fine. Yeah, yeah. And they fed, they fed all of those parts of me, all the parts that got absolutely smashed at school. Yeah. I'd come home and they'd be celebrated. So it wasn't like it was just torment the whole time. I had a haven and then I'd buckle up and go to school and, and do that thing. Did you feel lonely? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, hard, humans are hardwired to connect. Hmm. And.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  I definitely, I wanted to connect and then when I'd try, I would, it'd just, I'd crash and burn.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Every time, every time, until it just became easier to climb a tree and talk to the magpies. Which I did.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  I really wanna hear about that. But I also, I'm just, you've mentioned a few times the word weird and I, I love the word weird.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  But I think, and look, I have not had the childhood that you've had at all, um, and far different experiences. But I, I'm, I'm interested in your, how your relationship with the word weird has it changed? If it's changed at all since you were a kid to when you found queer culture and became, found yourself.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Because I love the word weird now, but I do know that the word weird was sort of like, you don't wanna be weird at school.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Uh-uh.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  But as an adult, if you can, you know, embrace your weird, I guess, like Ben Crowe says, it's like, it's, it's a really magical thing. How's that changed for you over time?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Really good question. Thank you.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Um.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Cut that up for a promo.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  So, I don't know if you remember, like in the eighties and maybe early nineties, there was the, the, all of the comedy, like wogs out of work.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Where, um, uh, like ethnic comedians took the slur wog and went, no, we're owning this.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Like, and now it becomes like, this is our word. And I feel like that's what I'm like with weird. You know, taking the thing that, cause it's, cause absolutely I'm weird. I, it's not untrue. You know, when it's, when it's thrown as a kid and it becomes the, the, the pivot for a whole bunch of, of judgment, then that's, that's painful as a child. But, I mean, I absolutely celebrate my weirdness. I, the day I stop being weird, can someone just like come and kick me up the ass and, and give me a slap and go, oi, where'd you go?

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Cause something's gonna be wrong the day I stop being weird.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  I think it does, I think being weird though does scare a lot of people.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, I think it's, you know, look, if you, if you look at it, I know I spent a lot of time looking at, looking at this as a kid. Humans need to exist in groups to survive. And to exist in a group, you need to have um common beliefs. You have to, need to have um common like threads. Yeah, yeah, and common values. And anything that's different is a threat to a group. So in a hunter gather a little village, you know, if you've only got thirty people and you're reliant on the the um coherence of your group to survive in the wild, anyone who is destabilising to that is a threat to the survival of your group and therefore vanished.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  So, so weird, like we have, we have, we've evolved in a survival sense to kick the weirdos out. But also, like a, a, a group won't survive unless there's um newness, you know, unless there are outliers who can be like uh on the, on the edges to be able to take new ways of doing things and try things on.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And evolve.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  And so that that can then feed into the centre. So, so we need that weirdness. So that basically a mob will reject what's different. But as uh as humans, we actually need those outliers to be able to drive change. And there's, so there's this dynamic tension between those two forces. And um and kids don't know all of that. All kids know is that really deep primal sense of if it's different, kill it.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:34Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Which, you can look out the world right now and you can see that basically there's just like fucking billions of children running the world now. If it's different, kill it. But to me, there's like, there's a, there's a very fundamental um wisdom in a survival sense of that. But, you know, that's for a small band of people, not entire cultures.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  What do you, what do you, what do you think that fear of different comes from? Like, why, why are people scared of different, do you think?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  I think that's, that's part of it. It's, it's like, it's a threat to our survival.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  You know, so, so.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  For me, humans are essentially driven by by four fears, like fear of annihilation, fear of death, um, fear of abandonment, because if we get left on the hillside for the wolves as babies, we die. Um. Um, fear of being out of control, because if we're out of control, it's basically we could die. And um, fear of being seen to be defective, there's something wrong with me, you know, there's those four, there's. Yeah. There's, there's, there's fear of despair and hopelessness as well. But those four, I think fundamentally drive most of our unconscious behaviours. We will do anything not to feel a fear of annihilation, like ah, like I'm something, I'm gonna die, I'll do anything. Yeah. Give me the chocolate, you know, give me, give me the Netflix or abandonment,

• 17:55Speaker 01

  like I'll do anything to not feel that, I'll feel, do anything not to feel out of control. I'll do anything to not feel this part of me that thinks there's something wrong with me, which we all have. Yeah. You know, we've all got that. And so like underneath all of that is, you know, there's this kind of swirling morass of um, of drivers. And in the middle of that, anything that threatens that stability, we're like, oh, no, I don't wanna feel that. Rejection. Yep. Rejection, so that I don't have to feel this discomfort. And, and for me, this talks to a, like a deeper, a deeper conversation, which is that for any conversation about resilience, I think we need to talk about discomfort.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Because that is the seed and the essence of resilience, is being able to be uncomfortable, being able to be with the uncomfortable feelings inside, being able to be with fear of. Yeah. Death, the fear of abandonment, fear of loss of control, being able to be with discomfort of, okay, a little bit of rain came in then, and, you know, I got a bit of a chill, but hey, guess what, we're still here, it's uncomfortable, but, but we're still here. Hmm. And then we, we expand um, our, our, kind of like our capacity to metabolise that discomfort. And now we have wisdom rather than knowledge, which then builds the next and the next and the next. But most people who are in.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Just like doing their thing in the dominant culture, don't tend to consciously look at these feelings and therefore like we're just responding habitually to not feel and that turns into you're different, therefore you're wrong.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, because I only just realised, like as an adult, I kind of realised, like, hang on, all the people that I like admire, respect throughout history are the people who were weird.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  It's like there's no one that I really love, respect, have learnt from, who was just the same or, you know, normal.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  I think to add to that, also the people I would say I look up to are people who have been through a lot, who have really struggled, have been through a lot of discomfort. And so I think a combination of what we're talking about.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, true.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, the people that you really admire.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  And it's really, and that discomfort, whether it be in childhood or whatever, it's sort of helped them discover something about themselves or what they do. And were able to then create or discover something incredible. Um, yeah, I'm going to get this wrong, but I read somewhere that like Einstein came up, the three, those three big things that Einstein discovered, like the E equals M C squared, the two other things.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  I was wondering if you were going to name the other two. The three Einstein things, um, uh, he did in one year, in one year of his life. And it was like a result of being knocked back for all these jobs and all these things he applied for. And he would just go to the library and just work and think, I've definitely got this wrong, but it sounds like it's the gist of Einstein. That's all you need from Einstein. He grew from discomfort, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  I think, I think a lot of things grow from discomfort. Like I think there's, there's so much juice that comes from discomfort. And, and it's one of my great sorrows in our society is that we've evolved away from discomfort to, to there being so much distraction that's now available so we don't have to feel. And our entire society is now geared around force feeding us these distractions. So we never naturally, as our, you know, parents and grandparents did. Life will come along and smack everyone. And in past times, there wasn't any way to escape it. Whereas now, we can really, we can numb it in so many different ways with distractions. It means that we're not learning.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  You know, we're not learning how to be uncomfortable. And therefore, we're not learning how to rely on our own innate resources.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  We're not learning to rely on our own gifts. And we're outsourcing our authority and asking society to fix us. Instead of taking responsibility for fixing ourselves.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  I'm so glad we got onto discomfort because I really wanted to talk about it. Because I'm praising. Because it seems appropriate. Because I feel like I've spent a lot of my life trying to avoid it.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  Not so much mental discomfort. So I feel like I've put a lot of work in to try and work out what's going on inside my head. But I've always tried to avoid physical discomfort.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  And I really wanted to ask you about the value of physical discomfort. Because it's, I find it weird that I'd be so keen to do the, what I consider to be the difficult work of like analyzing what's going on and what my past and certain things. But the memory that keeps coming to mind is when I did this like two week camp at school that was whitewater rafting. And looking back on it, I just think it was the greatest thing ever. But I know for the whole time, I was like, I can't wait to get home and be out of this discomfort. And I, I just want to talk about physical discomfort because I'm sure you're, you've got a lot to say about it and the value of being through it, going through physical discomfort.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  So before we get to that, I've got a question for you.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  I think it's really interesting that you talk about mental discomfort and physical discomfort. Where's the emotional discomfort?

• 23:19Speaker 03

  I think I would tie, I think in what I was saying, I was tying emotional into mental.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  And pairing those two together.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  And maybe this speaks to something interesting in that I keep physical and I've traditionally in my mind, kept them separate. And I'm only just, I feel like I've just dipped my little toe in the water of physical discomfort. And I'm starting to feel. The link between emotions, but.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Great.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  So that, so my answer to that would be that to be physically, to be able to be in the physical discomfort, I would say for me, I have to be completely comfortable with my emotions.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Because what the physical discomfort does is it brings up emotions.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  So this isn't about like my historical past or the thing that happened when I was five. It's like right now, you know, there's cold and then that brings up maybe the, the fear that like this, this isn't going to end or um, there's like, there's an emotional response to whatever the physical discomfort is. And I would say that for me, these two are really linked.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  And once I'm okay with the emotional discomfort, then the physical discomfort is just, it's just uncomfortable.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  It's not gonna kill me. It's not like, you know, it's gonna end. And I think part of what stops us with physical discomfort is I think humans have this um, this way of, of thinking or having a like an unconscious feeling that whatever I'm feeling right now is forever.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  So if I'm on this, I'm on this whitewater rafting thing and it's like, oh my God, this is, this is forever. And now that's, that's unbearable. But if I know that this is going to end, it's like, oh, I can be here. Right now, I'm uncomfortable.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Not, right now, I'm uncomfortable and it means X, Y, Z. I'm gonna be stuck here forever. And so for me, because I have dived to the absolute depths of my own emotional processing, and I know that it doesn't matter what comes, it is gonna have a beginning, it's gonna have a crescendo, and it's gonna have an end, but that is metabolizing that particular bit of ick.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  And in that process, I'm teaching myself that I can go through these waves of processing. And then the physical discomfort just is background noise. Does that make sense?

• 25:37Speaker 03

  It sure does. And it's something else that popped up for me during that is this idea, and it links to what you're saying before. I've been thinking a lot about the word should recently.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I can't wait to talk to that guy.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Oh, great. But I, because in the physical discomfort, I think because, and I think this is one of those, I'm so excited to, yeah, a bit of physical discomfort, um. Because I grew up in a, playing sport in a sort of masculine culture thing, I feel like I've always had this idea of, I should be able to handle this.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, whereas. And you should, mate. You should.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Mate, yeah, you should, mate. I mean, yeah, there it is, the should, mate.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Whereas I think this speaks to you as a person and, and ever, I think it's been commented a lot in the public discourse about you on Alone, in that you're the complete opposite of that like masculine, hyper masculine, I'm gonna be man versus wild idea. Um, and yeah, I, I think the idea of being, you should be able to do something or you should be able to do something like that, I think speaks to a lot of why I feel the discomfort in nature, because I should be able to handle it.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Beautiful. Now, this is a great one to unpick. So for me, as soon as I hear the word should, it's not my voice. Should is someone else's voice that I've internalized. So it's the voice of mother, father, uncle, aunt, grandparent, teacher, culture, billboard. And should is telling us that we're not okay as we are. So whatever my feeling is, my feeling is, this sucks, but I should be able to. My need is to get the hell out, but I should stay here. Now we've got that tension. So, so as soon as I hear the word should, and I, and I'm like, okay, well, should in my world is always overriding a need.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  And that, and if I go, okay, if I've got the word should, that's not my voice. What is my voice? And there's like, what is should telling me is not okay about me? And so the need might be, I need to get off this boat.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  I need to get off this boat. This sucks. I really hate this. I need to get off, but I need to, you know, live up to someone else's idea of what's, what's, what I, you know, should be. That's not me. And because as soon as we, we do things from the place of should, we're, we're denying our own natural exploration. We're denying our own innate voice. And we're denying our instinctive voice. We're teaching our instinctive voice that it's wrong.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  And by doing that, we're denying our own risk taking that is generated by that voice as well. And then the learning that comes from that. So by taking should out of the picture, actually, there's a huge amount of freedom because then we can take whatever the step is that feels right for us in that moment, rather than pushing ourselves five steps over. And now we're floating around in the abyss of horribleness and actually traumatizing ourselves so we never want to do it again.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Does that make sense?

• 28:29Speaker 02

  And never getting any of the benefits of the experience in the first place. I mean, I feel like this is so incredible, the timing of this, because for anyone listening, it is, it's not pouring, but it's like, it's raining.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  It's raining.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  It's raining properly. You're talking about should. It's something that a lot of people, I think, can relate to. The voice that you're talking about, that should voice, was saying, we should stop recording. Like, we should go inside, we should take a break, because this is not the right conditions to be recording. You know, we should go inside, wait for the weather to pass. But I can see where the weather's coming from. I'm like, it ain't passing anytime soon. And then I could, I was sort of having this like inner dialogue with myself and like, no, this is what we're talking about. Don't like, and then what it makes for us is actually a much more interesting, I think, experience to actually just sit through it. There's rain all over the table. Like, this is very foreign to us as a podcast, as a podcast, you know?

• 29:23Speaker 02

  But it's a, it is, it is a very, just a very kind of poignant moment, I think, because should, the shoulds in my head, wherever they come from, whether they be from family or just from experience, working in TV and whatever, go like, oh, no, rain's here, stop, everyone stop. We should stop. But of course, everyone just puts an umbrella up and it's fine.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like, how beautiful is it? Like, how beautiful, like, the sun's peeking through the clouds now. Like, you know you're alive.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Like, right now, you know you're alive. You know, you've done how many podcasts, they all blur and you're never gonna forget this one.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  No, absolutely.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  You're never gonna forget this one. And having that, that's the other thing about discomfort. Discomfort snaps us out of our habit. It snaps us because there's the edge of like, whoa, and I have to pay attention. Again, evolution, in an evolutionary sense, when we're uncomfortable, we're paying attention.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Because you can't be complacent.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  You can't just like fold, you know, if you're sitting in front of your TV going all Homer Simpson going, oh yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, there could be, there could be an earthquake, you know, not an earthquake, there could be a tsunami coming on the horizon and you'd be like, ah. But here, like, all of our senses are alive right now. You're actually paying attention to the weather. When was the last time you paid attention to what was coming?

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And, and like in a, in a real sense.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  I know.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Had a sense of like, I am part of this. I am part of this weather. It is, it is impacting me. And therefore I need to know what's going on so I can make decisions that are going to keep me and everyone I know safe.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Well, it's kind of, it's, it's like problem solving. You never learn to problem solve without, without.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Discomfort.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Sitting in the discomfort.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Without discomfort. And so now, instead of should, you've clicked into a deeper level, which is now like, now we just need to look after physical safety.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  There's the should of, okay, well now we need to like, you know, we should go in because that's what you do. But the next question was, is the gear okay?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  What if we didn't? Yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is the gear okay? Are we actually safe to be here?

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Now, now you're talking.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Cause now you're alive. Now you're into the place where that sort of like primal part of us that is designed to survive.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Is taking information in from the environment and then metabolizing and analyzing, well, what is the, the safest, you know, how can I keep that me and those I love safe? And now I'm making choices that are real.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Just to really, um, I guess reiterate that point around, so on the drive here, it's about a five minute drive. So Gina and I are in a car together. And it is, we're driving through the bush to get here. And as we're, as we're driving, Gina goes, look, wallaby. And it was about.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  I know.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  It was about fifty meters away. And it's baby, about fifty meters away, behind the tree. And I couldn't see it. I was like, where? I don't know. And I just, I still don't understand how you saw her. And then we stopped and had a, had a nice little look at this beautiful wallaby's baby. And then I said, how did you see that? And then she turns her head the opposite direction and goes, rabbit, over there. There was a rabbit about probably sixty meters away that I, I didn't see. I just pretended. I went, oh yeah, there. I was like, I can't, don't see a rabbit. And then I saw like a rustling in the bush. You are so finely attuned to.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  It's kind of the equivalent of like, in my experience, that's the equivalent of me like driving down the highway as a kid going like, mackers.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Buggers.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  And you're like, rabbit.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Rabbit. But it was, it was so impressive, but also I was like, well, this is, this shouldn't be a surprise from someone who has lived a great part of your life outdoors and that's, that's survival. It's, it's, you're responding to your environment so that you can continue to live.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but that's how, we're like, we are hardwired for connection.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  We are hardwired for connection. And if you look at it this way, humans have been homo sapiens for, yeah, give or take, let's say 350,000 years. Okay. That's how long humans have been homo sapiens. And let's say, you know, we can take Aboriginal Australia, just put that out of the, this number for a minute. Um, we've been hunter gatherers for around 340,000 of those years.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  So about 10,000 years ago, people broke dirt, went, this is a great idea, let's plant things. And so we don't have to go out and risk life and limb hunting, like conservation of energy is the most, it's the number one law of survival. Everything does it, except us. Yeah. Cause we're, we're fat and living large and we can just go down the supermarket. We don't have to risk our lives to, to get food. And, um, and so 10,000 years ago, we went, cool, this is great. Let's, let's, let's grow things. And we started to make choices that, that led us towards the industrial revolution and towards our culture now. Now, the hunter gatherer bands, you know, for the 350,000 years, that like hunter gatherers

• 34:03Speaker 01

  lived in small groups and they lived on the land and they were completely dependent on the land for survival, just like any wild thing.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  So a wild animal will sleep when it's tired and it'll eat when it's hungry and it'll take shelter when there's a storm. Like that's, that's, that's the internal authority and that's the way we lived. So a wild animal that doesn't know when there's a storm coming could die. A wild animal that doesn't know where the game are could die. A wild animal that can't smell when a predator is hungry is lunch.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  That's how we have evolved for 340,000 years. We are designed to do it. And then we've ended up in these like, you know, making all the decisions that led us to the industrial revolution. And now we've got a society that product, that, that, um, a culture that prioritizes productivity over connection. We've flipped it. Connection used to be the most important thing.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Our productivity is, which has led us to this world where there are things. There are many, many things and we live in boxes.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  And that part of us that is designed to connect now gets as far as the box and then it stops.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  So we're now walking around with our connective function, stopping at the walls. But we're designed to have that, that deeper wisdom and that deeper relationship. So what you're talking about is just because I don't live in walls.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I, I don't live in walls. I spend very little time in walls. I will sleep outside wherever I can. Um, at the shack where I've been, you know, staying, I have my bed on the deck.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Because I don't like sleeping inside.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Uh, I've been in hotels the last two days and it freaks me out because the sheets are really crunchy. Cause they're like, they can make these horrible sounds and you can't open the windows and the air isn't fresh. Whereas this, like.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  This is living.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Well now, because I, my senses can go all the way to the horizon in, in all the directions. Instead of stopping at the walls.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  So yeah, this is like, it's actually how we're designed. And the beautiful thing is because we are so hardwired for connection and it nourishes us when we are.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  It doesn't take much to, to remember, to, to relearn. It doesn't actually take much.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  You're broadening the definition there because I think a lot of people, and I being one of them, would think of connection being just human connection. But you're broadening the definition to connection with nature and surroundings and yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Which is, sounds beautiful.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  We can't be separate from nature because we're grown from it.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  We are grown from atoms on this planet. Like our cells are grown from.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Big mama.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  And, and your, your, that description of like hotels versus sleeping outside is, is so nice. And I think we all know the feeling that we've got when we've been outdoors. Or we go to like Tasmania, for example, like where we are now. It's like you come out here and you're in the middle of, um, nowhere compared to.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  We say where we are, like for, we are on right on the edge of the. Tasmania.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  That's profound. We're right on the edge of the Tasmania.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  He's an outdoors guy.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  There's water just there, like there's, the ocean's right there.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  But it's like.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  We're girded by gum trees and we're sitting here with Gina Chick.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  This is. It's amazing. Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you're uncomfortable enough to remember it.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  But it's like the, that idea of when, when we, when we, when you come out here and you are conscious enough to go like, oh, this is really nice. Like, you know, like you just saying that here. It's like, yeah, this is so nice. And you all know that feeling of go, getting away for a weekend, going into the country or going to the beach. This is beautiful. But then I think that's when it comes back, for me at least, it comes back to that kind of like should thing. So I know I've had friends who like I want, I rented a house with a bunch of friends a couple of years ago. One guy was like, I'm gonna sleep in my swag outside. And I was like, really? There's a room for you? He's like, no, no, I'm happy to just sleep in the swag. I'm like, and my head's going like, but won't the animals get you? Like, I'm thinking like, what if there's a spider?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Like, my should, my should voice is like, but you should be inside because it's safe. It's dangerous outside. But, and then the next morning I was like keen to see how it was. I was like, how, you were like, was it okay last night? Still there? Yeah. Was it too cold? He was like, oh, it was beautiful. Stars, all this stuff. I'm like, oh, that sounds really nice. But because of my lack of outdoors experience and upbringing was always indoors. To me, that sounds like a big risk to sleep in a swag outside.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's like, the, the thing about risk is we only learn our capability by going outside our experience. Like, that's it. That's the only, like, you know, we don't learn theoretically. You can be a YouTube warrior. You see, you see this on survival shows all the time. The people who've done all the YouTube stuff and they get out into a, you know, into Survivor or Naked and Afraid or something like that. And, and in the clips beforehand, you see them doing all the things in their backyard and then they hit the reality. And because they've never experienced what it's actually like, it all goes tits up. So, so with the, you know, it's dangerous, like you've just had that experience of here's someone who's challenged your reality.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  He's slept outside, you've investigated to see how it was. He didn't get bitten by a spider, a yowie didn't come and chew him up, a drop bear didn't smash into him. Like, he's still okay. And then there's a little bit of curiosity. It's like, huh, okay. That's something that sounds really great, but I have this fear.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  So that's the first level, that's the inquiry level. But then there's the part where you then go, all right, I can't go maybe sleep out, you know, in the bush. But maybe I could sleep on a deck, in a swag, or in a tent or something, just to take that next step to learn that, huh. That was okay. And now I know, my nervous system knows that all of these fears aren't actually going to happen all at once. And then gradually, we expand our world. You know, we expand through experience and through taking those risks. We expand our understanding of our own capacity to solve those problems. And instead of having all of the stories of the spider's gonna get you, the snake's gonna get you, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  It becomes the, oh, actually, it's just like being inside, but with stars.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  And stark, yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I can feel the wind and, okay, initially that might be uncomfortable, but then after a while. You know, it's like, yeah, it's uncomfortable, but I'm okay.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  One of my most memorable meals, and I love going to restaurants and all that stuff. But I think one of my most memorable meals is, my partner and I jammed, we were on a road trip and we were camping. And I was not keen on the idea of camping, but she was like, no, we're gonna do it. She really wanted to do it. And we went camping and we're camping in this campsite and she was like, I'll make dinner. And I was like, okay. But I was like, internally, I was so suss on this. I was like, all right, but there is a pub. Like, we could just go to the pub. Like, it would be, we know that'll be good. Like, in my head, I'm like, I can trust the pub, I can get a palm or I can get a steak. She was like, and she was on a mission to prove to me that she could give me a good dinner.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  I love her already. Jam, you're a rock star.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  She is. And, and so she made this, uh, muscle pasta, like spaghetti. And it was unbelievable. Yes, because it was delicious, but because we were sitting around this fire. She cooked on the fire and it was so memorable, so incredible. And it would have still been good if she cooked it at home, but I wouldn't have remembered it like I remember, like I remember that pasta.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also, like, again, now here we are. This is like, this is just so perfect because it's cold, right? It's undeniably cold.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  I did notice, yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  The wind is, the wind is biting, the rain's been coming and going. Um, and so all of our nervous system is now awake and paying attention. So now when we eat, like our taste buds go, wow.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  And it's not just the, oh, here I am, I'm eating a muscle pasta. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The surface is kind of great. What am I gonna tip? Well, you know, where's a beer?

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, I'm sitting around a fire. I've got a bit of me that's hot next to the fire, but there's a bit of me that's cold. I've got this food that's coming in and I can taste every flavour and it's going in my belly. Now my belly is warm in contrast to what's on the outside. I don't have the, like the sterile air. It's like the, the volume of all of that information gets turned up and you're experiencing the way we are designed to experience.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Everything, like we are sensorially designed to have like a relationship with, like, you know, the bigger world. And that includes food.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  That includes food. So food does taste better.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Yes, because you're more conscious of it, more present with it.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  I've just had this realisation, sort of in the car, but also while we're talking. The other thing that happened when we were driving here and you, and we're, so we stopped the car so you can get footage on your phone of the lullaby. And as you're doing that, the birds started chirping, which I didn't realise. And you said, and the birds are trying to warn the lullaby that, that we're here and we could be dangerous. So.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Really?

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. But anyway, when I was in Fairhaven, which is on the Great Ocean Road last summer, I was driving down the road. Towards our place and there was a snake, a tiger snake, actually just crossing the road.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  And I slowed down in my car to get footage of it, exactly the same as what you just said. I'm getting footage and the bird started chirping and I'm saying to myself, that's so amazing. The birds are trying to warn me there's a snake here.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Classic human instinct. Yeah, it's all about me.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  On that to go, that's good on that, how we're so connected with birds. They're clearly trying to warn the snake. I'm in a car, like they're like going, quickly warn that guy in a car.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Actually, no, for that one, the, the birds would have been warning you about the snake.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Really?

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So snakes, so birds are totally patterned on snakes. Snakes are like, they're a massive bird predator.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  And so birds have got, there's, there's five different main calls that birds do. All birds pretty much do one of five, five calls. Um, and one of them is like the song of the bird. So you'll hear it in the morning when the magpies go.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a. What a magpie impression.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Yep. So the magpies like.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  That is perfect.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Birds.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Can't wait to listen back to that.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  They don't, birds don't pee on trees, like they, they, the way the birds define their territory. Yeah, well.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Birds, birds define their territory, not with scent, but with song. Like that's how birds exist in a universe of sound, right? That's everything.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  And because of sound can travel a long way. So there's this whole world, this is part of our connection. Like we in our, in our boxes, we think that information's got to come from within that. Whereas the birds are, they're the eyes and ears of the bush. And so they're communicating all the way as far as you can hear and they pass it on. So it's like whispers across the bush where the birds are communicating what's going on. And once you, once you're keyed into what the birds are saying, you know what's going on. As literally.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  To the horizons and, um, sorry, is my bird up there? Um, so the first, the first.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  Hey, join us here.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  G'day mate. Hunt on.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  So the first one is the song, and that is the territory. So every morning at dawn, the birds will go around and they will, they will go around their whole territory, bandage points, and they will sing their song, which is if you are ever up at dawn, you'll hear the bush goes berserk.

• 45:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  All of the songs of all of the birds. And then there's what's called a contact call. And because birds are prey for everything, everything eats the birds. So the birds have to keep an eye on each other. They're just like this the whole time, like what's, what's gonna get me? So when they're feeding, they're like, you all right? Yeah, I'm all right. You all right? I'm okay. You all right? You all right? You all right? Oh, yeah, I just had a bug in my mouth. You know, so they're just like, and you'll hear that when there's ploks of birds going through the bush. They're basically saying, everything's okay. So when you hear that, you know that everything's okay. The bush is at baseline. There's the baby birds.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  You know, there's the, there's the bird that's just wheezing and getting food stuffed in its mouth. And if you're out in the bush and you hear that, you know, you're probably gonna have some pretty amazing encounters because they're not real bright when they're, when they're adolescents.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  And, um, and they don't necessarily fly away because they just want mum and food. So you can, when you hear that, you can go up and I can get some really cool encounters.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  But the next one is the alarm call.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  And that is a bird telling everything that there's a predator. And if you're bushwalking, there's a very good chance that the only birds that you're hearing are going

• 47:06Speaker 01

  the birds are so pretty.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's because we have no manners. We have no manners. We tromp through the bush with our fucking big giant boots and we talk really loudly. We have no sense of respect.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Decency, yeah.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  But when it comes to snakes, birds will alarm because a snake is a threat to all the other birds. So whenever there's a snake, you'll know that there's a snake because you hear the birds going off. So when you, when you're like learning how to connect with nature, when you learn alarm calls, it means that you can be relaxed. So if you're sleeping outside, or if you're hanging outside and you're worried about snakes, the birds are gonna tell you. Birds are gonna say, if you start hearing the

• 47:50Speaker 01

  and it's low. It's probably a snake. If it's high, the kookaburras do this alarm when it's a gowanna that sounds like a cappuccino machine. So instead of doing that.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  It's like this rolling cappuccino machine sound. And that means there's a gowanna, which is up in a tree, could steal everybody's eggs. And so.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  And so do all the, do different birds have different roles? Or do all the birds, can, most birds do different sounds like?

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, all birds, all birds will have different, different like, like they've all got those five, five.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Oh, they can, oh my god.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, the, the fifth one is where the, it's springtime when the, the males are like, they're bluing for, for territory and they'll be like smashing into each other and.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  But, um, but all birds, all birds will alarm, yeah. And the alarm will tell everything in the bush, what's there. So, once we learn these alarms, we can be comfortable and safe in the bush because the, we're, like, the birds are our allies and they're gonna let us know. And they've got different alarms for different things. So there'll be, like a kookaburra will have a different alarm for a cat or a fox or a, you know, a gowanna.

• 48:56Speaker 00

  While we've been sitting here, and we'll get to your life in a second, but while we've been sitting here, we're out in the wild here in Tassie. Is there, like, what kind of stuff are you noticing that we're not noticing? What kind of things are you paying attention to that we?

• 49:10Speaker 00

  That's the warning, isn't it? Is that the warning?

• 49:12Speaker 02

  There's a bird.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Is that, is that Jenny?

• 49:19Speaker 02

  No way!

• 49:20Speaker 01

  That wasn't, that wasn't a wa, oh, it might have been a warning. It's more likely a song and a bit of curiosity. Oh no, there's a warning going on. Chit, chit, chit. Hear that?

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  What about seven cameras and a massive tarp horns threatening?

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Well, it's more because we haven't moved and because we've been very much focused in, the birds that have been watching us, they're not alarming. Now, if we went and ran into that bush, then they'd be like, holy shit, they're on the move. But now we're like, we're behaving a little bit predictably, so they're not really, they're like, you're weird. But, and we're just gonna avoid you, but they're not, they're not losing their minds right now.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  So when, so when you were, uh, we mentioned, we've mentioned Lee a couple of times. So when you were, I think it was thirty-six or thirty-eight years old, you went on a how to survive in the wild course and you met Lee, a man who I think you described as being really hot.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Lee is really hot.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  He's still really hot, yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then so you met Lee and then your life changes in a very big way.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I was actually, I identified as gay when I, you know, as a lesbian when I met Lee. I hadn't been near men for quite a while. And I didn't think I was gonna be going near men again, so there you go. I just never know. Anyway, so on this school, I ended up at this school and the way I ended up there was through my instincts. I just heard the name, I was like, oh, that looks, like, I need to go there.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  And when I went there on the first day, I met this tall, skinny, pommy guy, English guy. And I was just like, oh, you know, he was like, well, hello there, and I was like, oh, no. And then in two weeks, it was yes. And then he followed me home, so I kept him. Yeah, yeah, and, and we got married and he's still my best friend. Like, we, after Blaze, my, our daughter, you know, we had a daughter Blaze. And she died when she was three. And after that, we split about three years later. Because he desperately wanted to be a dad again.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  And he was like, oh, at least 12 years younger than me, so he was this like young, hot dad to be. And, you know, my ovaries were basically spitting out like one little egg that was bouncing around and crashing into things and not doing much else, so I wasn't really able to have any more, any more kids.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  I mean, that period of your life, I mean, you summarize it very quickly there. It was, I mean, first of all, when, I mean, you, you were unwell as well.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  When Lee and I, when Lee and I met, I was 38, he was 26. And he, you know, he came back to Australia with me to make a life. And that was interesting, it was like taking a wolf home and expecting it to be able to function in Bondi. But that was fun.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  And then I didn't think I could get pregnant, I really didn't. I was, by the time I got pregnant, I was 40. And four days after I found out I was pregnant, I found out I had breast cancer.

• 52:23Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  And the doctors told me that I had to terminate the pregnancy or I'd die. Because the hormones of pregnancy would feed the cancer. And they said, if you keep this child... You know, you might actually get the child out, but you'll be dead in six months. There'll be tumors in your liver and blah, blah, blah. And you have to terminate. And I said, no, I absolutely, I'm not going to. And it was an instinctive voice. It's like, it was just like this wolf mama just went, no, just no, no. Um, and then I made the choice to have chemo. So I had chemo for three months while I was pregnant and that is intense. I have to say, that is a very, very intense thing.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  Discomfort, my gosh.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  It's discomfort, exactly. And that's why alone was like, you know, that was, that was just uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. So, so having chemo, and the thing about chemo is it's, you know, it's a cytotoxic agent. It, it kills dividing cells and what is a baby but dividing cells.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  So it was a, it was a very big journey. And um, yeah, got, got Blaze healthy, healthy, big, beautiful, gorgeous. Both of us were bald from the chemo when she was born. And, but she was totally amazing and wild and smart and funny and so present. Like is incredibly present.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  I could tell that from the photo. You could see that from the photo. Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. She just, she just came out, she came out with her eyes open. She was like, whoa, I don't know where you've come from, but like there's like, I can see it looking out of your eyes. Like the mystery was looking out of her eyes. Yeah.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  And so how old was she when you found the lump?

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I found the lump in her when she was two and three quarters. And I don't, you know, anyone who's listening, who's ever felt cancer, had felt, like actually felt it tangibly. You know what it feels like afterwards forever. It is hard. It is like a, a stone. It's like a rock. And because I'd felt the cancer in my own breast. It's like when I felt the cancer, when I felt the lump in her, it was like I immediately knew that it was, that it was cancer. Yeah, and nine days in the ICU on life support. And then that was that. Turned off the, turned off the machines and said goodbye to my little one and sang to her as she flew away.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It was, that was, that was big.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  That's huge.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  That was, that was big. Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Unthinkable. I don't think I've ever felt comfortable asking anyone this question before, but I do feel comfortable asking you.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  Um, what's it like, what's it like to lose a child?

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Well, I can't say what it's like to lose a child, but I can say what it's like to lose mine. The actual losing part, death, is such a doorway. And a body without someone in it is like, oh, like I understood life by having my daughter not have it in her body anymore. Like having her there and then her not being in it anymore. It's like, I don't know where she went, but she's not here now. And it's like such a visceral and profound experience. To be able to midwife her out of life with the same presence that we brought her in was beautiful.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  And I said yes, I said yes to the grief, I said yes to that journey. And it meant that whenever I was grieving, I, I just went with it. Um, it's all going on now, bringing up the, bringing up the weather. Um.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  I can honestly say that having her was the greatest gift of my life and losing her was the second greatest gift of my life. Like because of her and because of losing her, I am stronger, I am calmer, I have more presence, I have more ability to hold people, I have more compassion. I'm a much better human. And the gift of her leaving is a gift that I walk around with every day. So every person who I touch or speak to, that's her. So it's like her gift is me in the world, or me in the world is her gift. It's unbearable and it's unthinkable and it's unspeakable, but it's also...

• 57:02Speaker 01

  It's been such a profound

• 57:07Speaker 01

  honour to hold her dying and everything that's come from her dying. And in the 10 years, because it's 10 years since she died, to look back now and go, okay, like all of these things that I've done since are because she died. Alone is because she died. The camps that Lee and I started are because she died. Like there's so much that is good in the world because she left. And so to be able to hold my own grief and my own, like, yearning and the horror, the horror of losing a child.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Is that's in one hand, but on the other is this profound understanding that death is going to come for all of us and we don't have... It's not like there's this like, okay, should, that shouldn't happen. Why shouldn't it happen? Things die. I mean, I go out in the wilderness and I jump on a wallaby and I kill it. Like that thing has given its life so that I can live. Everything, something's got to die for something else to live. And that's the same with us and... I think I have a really strong understanding of that.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  So I have grieved. I mean, I can say this as calmly as I'm saying it because I have grieved. I have grieved like it was a career, which I guess it was like I have lain on the carpet and screamed and shouted at the heavens to give a back like I have, you know, sat in the curb with my shopping, like just wailing with oranges rolling down the road. But I've also, I've laughed and I've made love and I've created art and I've danced and I've expressed my grief in every possible way. I'm a five rhythms dance teacher and Gabrielle Roth, who, um, who sort of brought the five rhythms practice into the, into existence.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  She says that we dance to turn our suffering into art. And I think for me, part of the metabolizing of that level of grief and, and that, like that kind of an experience is to be able to turn suffering into art. And by doing that, I have to feel all of it. And I'm not afraid of that because I've been doing it now for, for 10 years. So, yeah.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  And then after that, so soon after that, you said just before Lee wanted to be a dad and you wanted that for him as well. So you separated.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  You started doing these camps together.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  On one of those camps, Lee meets.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  I wasn't on one of the camps. It was on, it was on a vision quest. Yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  So, so Hannah, um, came along to one of our, one of our quests, I think. And anyway, they, she, we met, we met her then. This was when Lee and I were still together. And then we were doing another, after Lee and I had just separated, we were doing another, um, another program. And she was on it. And I could see how she was totally into him. And I'm like, hey dude, like, like that one. She's awesome. That's, that's, that's the one. And, um.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was into her as well, it seems, and and they've now been together for, I don't know, six years or seven.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  And they have kids and you are the godmother.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm the godmother to their, I'm the godmother to their daughters and I love them and you know, and Hannah and I adore each other. I honestly, I love her. And people come up to her all the time and say, you know, what's it like? And she's like, oh no, Gina's great. And they're like, no, but really, what's it like? And she's like, no, no, Gina's Gina's great. And the same thing with me. They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, but you know, what's it really like having, having, you know, him with someone else? I'm like, I love Hannah. I like, I love who they are as a family and those girls are so deeply in my heart. They're blazing sisters. And I, I mean, I just feel so grateful, actually. I'm a very big ex-wife. Like, I'm a very big present.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  There aren't many women who would be okay with me being in their partner's life.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Well, and and I think part of that maybe, and this is definitely not all the, all the time, but I'd say part of that is because you would go, most people as an ex would be like, I shouldn't like this new person.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  And that sort of should thing comes back. I'd be like, we're like. Should thing, what a lot of people think. Yeah, she or he, you know, they're the enemy, you know, they're the new me and I've been replaced by that. So I can't like that person. But I, I love that. It's like, it doesn't have to be that way.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Oh, they're like, they're, they're so good for each other. Like, I love her because like, you know, Leah's one of my best friends. He's the father of my child. He's no longer with us. We've, we've created this incredible community that helps, like, probably close to a thousand kids now and hundreds of families. We, they, you know, and it's now bigger than us and is expanding and growing and becoming more mature. Like, all of this has come into play because of our relationship. I want him to be happy.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  She is an incredible human who is great with him and they they are like they've got this beautiful family like why would I not want that for my best friend?

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  And Anne, I'm really lucky because she's the same. She's she loves having me around, I think. No, she does. And I love the girls and yeah, I just feel I just don't have this thing. I don't have bitterness. I do not have bitterness inside me. I don't understand it. I don't. It's just like it's just even thinking about it makes my guts squirm. Like there's no for me, there's no there's no need for it in me. I mean, I understand that not all breakups are like mine.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  And that there are there are really horrible stories out there, but yeah, that's just the way I'm built, I think.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  I I don't I didn't know your story until just now and um and I'm really I I find it quite it's a lot to really process and I can't I just cannot believe um like I don't have kids like I told you before and I just but I just like even me, I can't believe how someone comes back from that because to me it it just I can't imagine anything more traumatic and

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  And and it's just so inspiring. I I don't know. I think the thing that I want to ask you is and I know I I hear what you're saying about about being able to like live and the sort of almost the gratitude you have for that the honour that you had. But were there things that you learnt like tools seems too trite of a word, but were there things that you learnt in how to deal with that grief?

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  And how to get through it? Because obviously it's not going to be the same for everyone who deals with a similar situation, but um in your in your experience, were there things that you learnt?

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Probably what I would say is I'd already spent twenty odd years holding sessions with people in emotional process.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  And and working on emotional process tools myself. So I I I know how to feel.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  I know how to feel my feelings. And I'd gone from, you know, I I I'd sort of taken myself into those uh and those workshops and those modalities and then brought them back and then worked with people as well. So I I had a lot of like tens of thousands of hours of that under my belt.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  And then I realised this was all training. But basically, what I would say is that grief demands to be felt.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Grief demands to be felt, and we live in a culture that does not have rituals of grief. We don't have the rituals that our hunter-gatherer ancestors and that First Nations people the world over have for dealing with grief. We've got this very English buttoned up, don't talk about it, don't have a feeling, you know, shut it down. You know, we come from this colonial English stiff-up-a-lip background where, you know, we don't have feelings, oh no, they're terribly inconvenient, aren't they? And things like, you know, a funeral is some person who's never met your beloved standing up saying stuff that is often completely like, you know, nothing to do with them or in a religion that they don't even have.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  And everybody's sitting in this room with uncomfortable clothes on. And then if you look at, um, there's no connection there, there's no connection with death. It's like sterilise it and homogenise it and make sure grief doesn't poke its head out. Um, and then if you look at First Nations cultures, if you look at hunter-gatherer cultures, like their ceremonies and their rituals of grief are full expression.

• 1:05:45Speaker 00

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Grief needs, it demands to be felt and it comes in waves. Like grief doesn't, it's not like this heavy fist. It like, it comes in a wave and then it disappears again. It's designed to be able to bubble up and move through us and then fall away again. And so if we allow grief to have its way with us, then, I mean, what I would find would be like, I'd be just like going about my day and then there's that song. You know, that song that triggers you and the next minute it's like, there it is. And so if we give ourselves permission to let that wave move through, then it's like there's, it's weather, it's like this. Grief is like this. It's a wind that can roll through. The wind is not constant, it comes in waves.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  There it goes, and there it just picks up.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Thank you, Winn. Thank you for teaching. You know, it's, it's like, um, by being able to accept that, that, that emotions are weather.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  They are not going to destroy us. They are not going to break us. We have nervous systems that are designed to be able to process and metabolize our emotions, but to do that, we have to move. We have to move. We have to not think our feelings.

• 1:07:00Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Emotions coming through do this. They move. Our heads move, our necks move. We, we shake, we roll, we cry. You know, it's like this, it's, it's dynamic. And when we are in relationship with our bodies, and this was what I was asking about with the body thing, when we're in relationship with our bodies and with the, with the process of emotion moving through a body, we learn the skill of being present for that emotion coming through and letting it, letting it have its way. And when we do that, we're not holding it back, that wave can move.

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  And then on the other side, it's like, oh, what we'll find and what you will find, what people do find, what I find, is when I truly allow, uh, like, uh, an emotional storm to come through and, and feel it completely, on the other side is bliss.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Because there's like, there's this, there's this, there's this cosmic furball that I've just hoicked up. It's like,

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  and there it is. And then on the other side, it's like, oh, there's space. Or another way I like to describe it is, is like, if you've ever had a pet and in the morning, your dog or your cat goes out and has its morning crap, right? And then it comes in and it does the zoomies.

• 1:08:13Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah, yes.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  It's like, yeah, it's like, I've had the best shit ever. And my life is amazing. Testify, you know? And so that's what it feels like when we process our emotions.

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  But because we're scared of losing control, because we're come from this colonial background where we don't have feelings. Feelings are suspect and we just need to think them and put them in little boxes and stick them under where they can't hurt us. It means that we don't teach ourselves the natural capacity that we have to feel everything. There is nothing that cannot be felt.

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Nothing. We're designed to feel it all. We just have to do it in those little tiny bite sized chunks. You know, it's like, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  And so by allowing them to come up, and sometimes we can't, sometimes I'm, I'm, you know, I'm at work, I can't feel it right now.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  But maybe I can get in the car and just have the, have the screaming fit and try and tear the steering wheel off.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  It's, it's almost the opposite of what we've seen in films and stuff for so long, where it's like, if you, if something, usually it's like in a film, it's a breakup or something.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Big breakup and then you like go straight to bed and cry and watch TV and films for days.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  And just be still as opposed to what you're saying, which is like, you should, we should be moving more.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Move, move. Like, you know, it's the, it's the, like, and there's, there's no wrong way and there's no right way. I don't want to like, you know, say that if you've had a breakup and you've just gone, like, that's part of it. Part of it is having the cry and going to bed and watching Netflix for a week and crying at all the romantic movies. That's absolutely part of it.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  But for me, when we're, when we're looking at like the, the big losses, like the proper, like, ugh, those bone crunching griefs, um, whatever they are, which we will all feel because someone's gonna die. We're all gonna die. People around us are gonna die. And it's not even that people have to die. Um, it might be that a relationship dies. It might be that our youth dies. Hello? Time and gravity is gonna get all of us in the end. Uh, something that I'm noticing as a postmenopausal woman, I'm like, I'm looking in the mirror and just watching my face do things. I'm like, holy shit, like, you know, I'm used to a picture of myself in my thirties of being this like, you know, bouncy hot babe. And now I'm like, okay, this is, this whole thing is definitely changing.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  And having to grieve that part of myself, having to grieve our mobility, having to grieve our planet as it's going through this huge change of, of, of humans are colonizing and, um,

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Basically pillaging the resources and you know, species are dying by the day. Um, grieving culture where there is stuff going on in the world that is so heart wrenching, heart wrenching and appalling. Like we are going to be facing grief. So if we don't find tools to be with it, it's going to be a very, very challenging time. And my thing would be dance it. And when I say dance, I don't mean, you know, like do the disco hop. I mean, do what First Nations people, do what hunter gatherer people, what Indigenous people have always done, which is move. And, and move this, move your neck. Cause we hold our heads up. We're like this. I'm like, I'm moving.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  I'm dancing. No, to dance, we need to let our heads go and let our spine, our head, our neck all be one continuous unit, which if you look at traditional dancers, that is what they all do. And that is how we are designed to process our emotions by feeling it and moving it.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  It's so, I mean, that if I, um, every now and again, I'll do, there's this app that I have. Um, Hugh got me onto actually, which is like a breath work.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  And, and I, a couple of months ago, I, I was in the morning and I thought, I'm going to do one. It was like quite early, it's first thing out of bed. I was like, I'm going to try one of these things. And I just chose a random one. And it started with normal, like the normal breathing things you do. And then during it, uh, the, the guy who's leading the breath work in the thing goes, all right, now get up and, and dance.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  And I was like, what? Even though I was like completely by myself.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Lights were off. I just went with it.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  And for like, must've been like over five minutes, I was just like wild man dancing in my bedroom.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  And it was just, I, I, it felt weird at first, but it was so fun.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  And I don't, I've probably never done that before.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Beautiful.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  It was incredible.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  And the thing that you've brought in, which is, that's the other thing that I wanted to speak to, which is great, which is breath.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Hmm. Because.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  If you wanna get present, if you wanna get really present, follow your breath.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Because if you follow your breath, you're in the now.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Right? The breath is gonna rise and it's gonna fall. If you can bring your attention to that, nothing else exists. And then you pop out and you start thinking about other things. But to be able to be in, when we're in our breath, we are now in our present moment. And when we're in our present moment, we're feeling what's true in our bodies right now, rather than what we think or, or, you know, what we're worried about or whatever. It's like, right now, I feel, right now, I feel. And by following that breath, now we're accessing our feeling state.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  By following our breath, accessing our feeling state and then moving, we are now processing and digesting.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  And in that five minutes, you probably did more than like ten therapy sessions.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Because you, you were completely in the somatic intelligence of your body, which was shaking something off. And how did you feel afterwards?

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I felt so invigorated.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Like, there was, there was sort of a, uh, I guess, cause I'd, the, the insecurities that I had to like push through to actually move completely freely, not just like, you know, move my legs on the side of a dance floor, but to actually really like give into it was, I think I just felt, it was a bit liberating as well.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  So I'm a Five Rhythms Dance Meditation teacher. And what that means is it's not dance like, you know, like I said, disco dancing, handbags in the middle, doing the, doing the funky chicken or anything.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Stuff you did in the nineties?

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, did that.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Um, no, the, the, like, dance as in the intelligent movement to, to process. And there are many conscious dance modalities which are exactly for this. Uh, in my experience, Five Rhythms is the most powerful of these and it was kind of like the birthplace of all of them. Um, so when you were asking what, um, what tools I used for processing, um, processing grief, I ended up, uh, doing the Five Rhythms teacher training and I spent two years travelling around the world doing Five Rhythms workshops. And I spent at least two full days a week of those, on average, of those two years. In a workshop dancing like eight hours a day, six, seven, eight hours a day.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  And for a lot of that, I would be crawling around these floors. Like, there might be a hundred people and I have got tears and snot and I'm wailing and I'm howling and I'm moving. And I did that for two years to become a teacher. But in the process, I think I probably processed about fifty years' worth of grief. Not just blaze grief, but all of the griefs, all of the un-grieved griefs that we all carry. To be able to be, have that, like, understanding of what we can do. And that we can process anything, but we have to move and breathe.

• 1:15:35Speaker 03

  The movement, it hadn't occurred to me, but when I've started doing hot, cold showers in the morning.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Speaker 03

  And I'm loving the way it makes me feel. And I hadn't realised that there's this moment where I go to, from the cold and I'm like, alright, I'm gonna turn on the hot now. And there's a delay for the hot to kick in.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  And in that moment, I find myself doing these erratic, like, shaking movements. And like, and it's by far the best bit. I'm like, I find myself like almost laughing hysterically and I feel so good in that moment, in that.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:16:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  That's it, that's exactly it. And now that is your body actually doing what it needs to do. Our bodies know how to do this. Once we get our minds and our judgements and our awkwardness and, you know, the decisions that we've made, that we look silly or whatever, or people might judge us, whatever all that fucking bullshit is. And allow our bodies, like, once we free ourselves from the shackles of self-judgement, our bodies will do the movements and shake it through. And on the other side, you've got the zoomies.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, joy, just absolute.

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  That's it, that's it. Because now you have actually digested something, rather than thinking your way around it, you've processed something and you don't even know what, need to know what it is.

• 1:16:40Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter. Sometimes it's tears, what am I crying for? I don't know, doesn't, it wants to come out, fucking great.

• 1:16:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's almost like, I mean, like, we talk a lot on this podcast about vulnerability and how important that is with connecting with people. But, and being vulnerable is understandably very hard for a lot of people in any sort of way. But it feels like dancing, but like when I was dancing or moving by myself, it felt quite vulnerable, even though there was no one else around.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  And it felt like it's quite like, you know, like, I was like, oh my god, it's like, don't let myself see myself. You know what I mean?

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  It was like I was judging myself in a weird way.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Exactly, and so that's the should. It's like, there's the cultural voice, there's the English cultural voice saying this, you know, don't, don't, um, don't be messy.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't be messy.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Don't be messy.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  And don't lose control, I think.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Don't lose control, there is it, there we are. And, you know, humans are messy, life is messy. Fucking look at it, it's messy, storms come, rain comes, it goes away again, like, shit breaks.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  We break, that's, that's it, that is life. And when we just go with it, it's like, okay, well, then shit's breaking, well, it's breaking me this way. Oh, no, it's breaking me that way.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  And so the thing that I would probably say with how, how I handle grief, how I handle everything, is I don't fight life. I don't fight life when I, I look at capital R reality. So instead of going, well, it should look like this, or I don't deserve it, or why me? I'm like, well, here we are, there's a storm, okay. Can I stay dry? No, oh, well, I guess I'm gonna get wet. How do I get wet in the, the safest possible way?

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  Don't fight life is great.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  Don't fight life, yeah. If you're catching a wave, right, if you're catching a wave and you get dumped by a wave.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  What's the, what's the safest way to do that? If you get dumped by a wave, what do you do?

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Go with it and just, yeah. Go floppy.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Go floppy, curl up in a ball. You curl up in a ball and then you, and then you wait for the wave to go past and then you push to the surface. Okay, what happens if you stiffen up and away, you get, you know, dumped by a wave? What's gonna happen if you're like this?

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, you're gonna be like pushed even more and.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  What else? If you're, if you're like this.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  I can hurt yourself, yeah.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  You're gonna break.

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  You're gonna break, that's us and life. Life is full of waves and they're pushing us this way and that. One of the beautiful things I love about the five rhythms practice is it teaches us to, to trust our feet. And again, because we in our world, we are delivery system, our body is a delivery system for our head. We're walking around delivering our mind into places where it can think more. But we're not actually connected to our whole bodies, we don't trust our feet, we don't trust our instincts.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  And when we learn how to not fight life and when we learn to in little steps, start to trust our feet, it gets to the point where there can be a big bloody tsunami coming on the horizon, it's like woof, here comes a big one. You know, my mum is, or my dad is in the hospital and they've had a stroke and it's, it's coming, they're not, they're not. Gone yet, but I can feel it coming. And it's a big tsunami, how am I gonna be? But I've, I've been with it enough times now, but I know I can surf it.

• 1:19:52Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  You know, it's not even a matter of letting it. Like, I've got enough skill now. If I get dumped, I know what to do. But until then, I'm gonna, I'm gonna surf this thing. And I'm gonna surf it by being present. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna surf it by saying yes. Yeah, right now, I feel scared. Okay, what does scared want? Oh, it wants to shake.

• 1:20:10Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  Okay, right now, I feel numb. Okay, what does numb want? Wants to watch Netflix. Okay, I'm gonna wallow on purpose. Right now, I feel fucking pissed off. What does that want? It wants to smash every plate in the house. All right, go to a rage room.

• 1:20:26Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  You know, go to Vinnie's and buy some plates and smash them in the garage.

• 1:20:29Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  What is like, you know, it's whatever our emotions are asking of us. If we give ourselves the permission to do that, we're teaching ourselves how to say yes to life. And then we're not fighting it. And along the way, it's like we get to do a commando roll and, and end up like, I don't know where I'm gonna end up, but I know I've got um, the internal abilities and the wisdom and uh, then the tools to be with wherever I land. And it's usually, in my experience, somewhere amazing.

• 1:21:02Speaker 00

  Wowee. I don't, I don't know about you guys, but I don't feel like I've ever felt this present before. No, no, yeah. And if you've ever done before. And that's nothing against the other guests. I think it's, it's, it's um, it's a combination of so many things, but the amount of things going on around us, ironically, it's, there is so much happening around us this after episode with um, booms and cameras and people. And I've never felt so present. Just locked in. And when, what an incredible privilege to spend time with you. Um, I started off by saying I was thinking of the song, um, Tub Tapping, Chumpa Wambers, I Get Knocked Down.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:40Speaker 00

  The song on my head now is um, The Weeknd's I Can't Feel My Face. Whatever you, because I'm so fucking cold. But I've finished that song, I've finished that line, but I love it.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Speaker 00

  Uh, this has just been. What a, I don't know how long we've been here for, whatever, what a wonderful time we've had together.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:58Speaker 00

  And I found myself not wanting to ask questions because if I was asking something, you weren't talking. I just wanted you to be talking, so.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had a bit of a rant at the end there, didn't I? You got me going.

• 1:22:08Speaker 00

  It was a great rant. Thank you for talking about Blaze as well. And I mean, I say that, but the work you've done and the way you are with it. Yeah, I did notice as you were talking about, I was thinking, gosh, you talk about this with such ease, but now understanding you, I know why you talk about Blaze with such ease. And there was something really poetic about the more you spoke about Blaze, the more the wind picked up and it was just howling around us for a while as you talked about that group. It was really quite beautiful.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And in my experience, that's not an accident. Like that, in my experience, like when we really connect with nature, nature connects with us. You can call it woo, you can call it all the things, but I mean, I found that my whole time alone, whenever I needed something, I would go to the lake and I would say, all right, big mama, you got me here to tell a story and it's a story that's going to be different. And as I know, it's a story that you, that you want out there, this way of being, you know, connected to nature and connected to the wild. But if I'm going to tell this story, I have to be here and to be here, I'm going to need some food. So please, I'm going to need some food. And then that day, I'd like pull out a fish or pull out two fish.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, that, that whole time and everything that comes from it is actually part of a, like a deeper wisdom, wanting to express itself in the world. And I just happen to be a mouthpiece. It could have been anyone, it just happens to be me at this point, so great.

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  Wow. This has been, it sounds like an outer body experience, I think too, it really has been quite profound. Gina Chick, thank you so much for joining us here in Tassie for this beautiful conversation in the wild.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Yay. Thank you. Yeah. Amazing.

• 1:23:47Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.