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THIS IS WE
Reshmi's Journey Through Love Loss and Healing
In this enlightening conversation, Reshmi reflects on her personal journey through grief, self-discovery, and healing, sharing the powerful tools that helped her navigate loss and transformation. The discussion highlights the importance of embracing emotions, revealing intuition, and finding community in our shared experiences.
• Exploring Reshmi's background in dance and natural health
• Confronting personal grief and caregiving challenges
• The impact of a caregiver’s emotional health on physical well-being
• The healing properties of meditation and self-reflection
• Creating safe spaces for vulnerability and ritual in healing
• The role of intuition in personal relationships and experiences
• Embracing the complexity of emotions during grief
• Finding solace and community in collective healing
Connect with Reshmi @reyshrituals
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Join me, portia Chambers, as I sit down with women just like you, sharing moments in their lives that shaped them into who they are today Stories of motherhood, betrayal, transformation, love and loss, vulnerable conversations, deep connection and collective healing. Welcome to the this Is we podcast. I am so excited to have our next guest here with us. Reshmi is an award-winning natural health practitioner, movement educator and Indian classic artist. Classical artist Reshmi brings 20 years of experience working with the human body, helping society connect to themselves through cultural dance, fitness, therapeutic movement, wellness and self-devotion. Reshmi currently serves as the founder and principal practitioner of her newest venue, resh Rituals, a natural therapy studio nestled in the heart of Markham Village, holding space for her clients and bringing together her life's work in movement, healing and human connection. I'm so excited that you're here with us. I'm so happy that you're here with us. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1:And before we even get started, I do have to say that I had a session with you and it was absolutely magical. I don't say this about a lot of sessions that I've been to, especially spiritual ones in regards to Reiki and things like that. I have experienced a lot of different types of treatments and sessions in regards to my body and spiritual energy and everything like that and, being my own Reiki practitioner, it's not that I have like a high expectation for anything, but walking into your space immediately was just like a weight had been lifted and the treatment itself and the experience itself was just so magical and I haven't experienced a Reiki session like that in a very, very long time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that. That means a lot. I'm so glad that you know. The space resonated with you, the work resonated with you and I always tell clients it's that I'm pulling from your energy and I'm.
Speaker 1:it's hard to find, I will admit it is hard to find somebody especially in when you're working kind of within your body and spiritually, and especially with Reiki, I find it somewhat vulnerable because you don't necessarily know what's going to come up and you have to feel safe, um, in that environment and in a space where you're not feeling judgment or an alternative motive in a way. And that's and that's hard to find. I've only found it a few times in the years, like I probably have been having Reiki sessions for over 10 years and it's it's few and far between and and I'm a firm believer, like when you find somebody you just like, hold onto them. So I'm so grateful that our paths have crossed and that I was able to experience your gifts, because honestly, it truly is a gift.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. And I do believe that people cross paths for a reason and I do feel like that with a lot of my clients, that I meet them at a certain time, especially in their life, that this work, again pulling from their energy and their path and their current trajectory, the work that I do pulls from their life and helps them explore themselves deeper. So I do really appreciate that and I do think we met at a certain time for a reason.
Speaker 1:I think so too, and I'm really excited. So let's dive into the conversation and I would love for you to share with us a little bit of your story. And I don't really know any of your story. I kind of just do a little bit of a deep dive in Instagram and just kind of find what I can find. But you do talk about kind of moving through darkness, so I would love to start there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I actually have a background in Indian classical dance. I've been an Indian classical dancer my whole life. I was born into a family of artists and entrepreneurs and the household was bustling when I was a kid and I grew up as a performing artist and I spent my years after high school between Canada and India actually studying Gathak, which is a North Indian classical form, and I was a bridge between North America and India and kind of passing on the art form to my mother's students, which were here at Turana Dance School. I did that and I actually planned to do that for the majority of my life. I was going to be a classical educator. That's what was going to happen Then.
Speaker 2:Fast forward, my mother is maybe 56 years old and we're starting to see some changes into her health. Me, particularly, because I work with her day in and day out. Me, particularly because I work with her day in and day out. Fast forward again. I'm noticing that her speech is changing, her routine is changing, her moods are changing, the way she sends an email is changing, and I'm starting to get annoyed with her. I'm her daughter. I'm about 26 years old. I'm like, well, hello, what's happening here? Fast forward, so more.
Speaker 2:That was the beginning of a very difficult period in our life, one that was very contrasting to what we had experienced, where it was bright, lights and stages, and my mother was a very well-known figure in our community, you know, a pioneer. And when I got the phone call that she was diagnosed with frontal temporal primary progressive aphasia, a very rare form of dementia which was early onset, and that it was degenerative, there was no cure and there was nothing that we could do. It gave a prognosis of five to seven years and that was the beginning of the end. And what I did not know was the beginning of a beginning. So often when we have everything kind of crumbling around us, we're like this is it? This is not what I anticipated.
Speaker 2:Nor did I ever hear anything about death and rebirth, transformation, expansion. I just knew of. You go to school and you become successful, and then you work at your job and you built a family, and that's what I knew. But the cycles of death and rebirth were now starting to come up in my life in a very prominent way. So my mother got this diagnosis and I'm still living at home with my parents at this time. I was just recently proposed to I was everything was again right at the precipice of old life and new life was again right at the precipice of old life and new life. At the time, I was just about to look into a season two of my television show. I had just launched a nonprofit organization and I was performing professionally. I looked at my mom after receiving this diagnosis and I was like okay, so now what for her?
Speaker 2:what happens now. So I decided to. I spoke with my fiance, who was my boyfriend for 10 years, very close to my mother, and I said I'm going to close my companies, I'm going to take this opportunity to take care of my mom. I don't know what's going to happen and I spent the next seven years of my life primarily as one of her caregivers, navigating the health care system, the caregiving process.
Speaker 2:Grief while somebody's alive, like loving different versions of them that they become, is a different type of grief. That's not just where the person passes away and then you have to go through that after process. It was every day, not knowing what version she was going to be and what version I had to become, almost in an instant. Yeah, so you know, it was very much a family effort and each person bringing a different aspect to themselves, to her and the relationship. And you know, I remember just kind of trying to become bigger than myself. I myself I'm an introvert and my mother was very much an extrovert and it worked really well for me because I kind of got tucked under her wing and I got to be myself right. Then, all of a sudden, that roof, that shelter was gone and I remember feeling bare and terrified and I just said like what a blessing it is the way that we were raised, both my brother and I, and we were provided with a childhood and upbringing that was very supportive. So if this is what the doctors are telling us, she's going to go through this with or without us.
Speaker 2:I wanted her to go through with us and so that began my shedding. I stepped away from a lot of the things I knew. I stepped away from a lot of relationships because I did not realize at that time about capacity nervous system regulation. I developed I'm celiac because an autoimmune disease triggered because of the amount of stress in my body and I couldn't maintain my life while trying to provide care and love for somebody else. So at this time now I was told that I couldn't have children because my body was shutting down in a way that again I had. No, I had pelvic pain that I had.
Speaker 2:You know it was just this sharp pain and the doctors couldn't find any problem with me. Everything was undiagnosable, nothing was coming up in the scans. And I will never forget the day when my doctor looked at me and he said Reshmi, I think you're suffering from a broken heart. And I looked at him and I was like that's it, that's where this ends. And at the time the only prescription that they were giving me for pain was Percocet and to me I was just like that medication was numbing every aspect of who I was. If I I hate, I did not like taking it because it meant I was in bed and so, if that was the end of the care and then that was the only prescription, you're telling me that this is how I'm meant to live the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:That began my search into natural health remedies. I, through research, we realized that I might be allergic to gluten and then we did our own tests and I went to the doctor and was like can you test me for celiac Positive? It wasn't something that they were exploring. And then reflexology and Reiki energy, and again I started to resonate deeply with these practices that I remember feeling as a kid. I remember walking into rooms and kind of knowing I remember feeling like when somebody's mood. Knowing I remember feeling like when, when somebody's mood changed, I could feel it as well. And you know, there's something about scanning a room and then there's something about feeling a room. Yeah, when I started to explore energy, I was like, oh, I feel, oh, that's doing something to me.
Speaker 2:And then, in 2019, I had my first son and I had a daughter again in 2021. And I was told I had a very low chance of having children and through seeing a pelvic floor physio, which, again, when I went to my doctor, when he couldn't really figure out what was wrong, he said you know what, give me a second and hats off to him for still having the card somewhere. But he said don't tell the practitioner. This is what the card looks like. Poor guy brought me a crumpled up card of a pelvic floor physiotherapist who came to do a presentation at the practice and he's like maybe this could help and it did, but it wasn't until I pushed and pushed and I kind of sat there looking at him like what's next Right? And this was this was in 2017, 2018. And so then I went to go see pelvic floor physio.
Speaker 2:I started meditation, I started and again, if you asked me five years prior to that to meditate, I would have laughed because I would have been like I can't sit. Still, I've got things to do, I've got a dance class to teach, I'm traveling. Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. There was no need to connect to the self, there was no need to go inner to explore, because we were just in the beginning phases.
Speaker 2:Meditation was probably one of the biggest aspects of my healing journey because it allowed me to tap into the inner voice that was inside, that seemingly had answers. I remember thinking is this my imagination? Who's talking? What is the face? You question these things, especially when you're going into the practice, and then you start to realize oh, this is what it means to meet yourself. Right, because we do have thoughts that pass through our head, but we also have a positive charge, a negative charge. We have a chance to reflect on how a thought makes our body feel, and so if I just go with the flow, with the negative, it's going to make me feel, but I might go with it until I give myself a moment to reflect on the positive. Oh, that feels a little bit better. So meditation, reflection and solitude was really a way that I met, I guess, myself my spirit and you start to weigh out what this practice does and how it amplifies your life on a daily basis, and then it becomes a non-negotiable.
Speaker 2:So then my mom passed away in 2020. I was 10 weeks pregnant with my daughter and I had a high risk pregnancy and I remember feeling this very strange feeling once she passed and my daughter was born, because after my mom passed away, the December after I was told I could lose my daughter, there were so many aspects that had fear at the root of it. There were so many aspects that had fear at the root of it also during the pandemic, and I just felt like we were surrounded by so much death. Both of my grandparents passed my grandfather I was the last person to see him dressed in a hazmat suit in the COVID unit. I went in because I remember my dad was my mom's primary caregiver and he couldn't go in because then he wouldn't be allowed access to her and I had a young baby at home. But I said to my husband my grandfather's not going to die without seeing one of us, mm-hmm, and I just remember going and having that hazmat suit on and he's in bed and he's aware that I'm there and video calling as many of his kids and as many people as I can for them to say goodbye, because I knew that when I left the room that that was the last time I would ever see him, that I was the last family member that he saw.
Speaker 2:It was a lot of emotions, a lot of feelings, a lot of ending. There was a lot of endings happening that I had known my whole life and I had felt privileged to experience. So I have always kind of been ceremonious, but then this chapter of my life really brought it in and rooted it down, because you can't go through experiences like this without reflecting and giving gratitude to them and giving ritual and ceremonious moments and thoughts and energy to them, because that moment won't come back. That soul is not here anymore, that body is no longer here. So it's almost like we're so used to being fast all the time and it's like how important is this moment when we're saying goodbye to a soul?
Speaker 2:And my daughter was then born in April afterwards and there was this weird experience of feeling the stillness of not needing to be in survival mode and I wondered at that time I was like, well, what am I needed for. And that's when postpartum came in, and I remember very openly sharing about this, because I had postpartum depression with anxiety, with my son, but with my daughter I had postpartum depression, anxiety, grief, rage, all of the things. And I found a beautiful therapist thank goodness, all of the things. And I found a beautiful therapist, thank goodness, and she was really a safe place for that transition. And I really think that having a good practitioner who's not only a safe place but a responsible practitioner, especially with these modalities, is really important. And that was really the beginning, because there was no going back to some of how life was before. You don't go through that much endings and death and grief and transformation and then you're like, all right, let's get back to life. It's almost impossible.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I remember once I had kind of it's so interesting, and I remember once I had kind of it's so interesting when I look back at my journals from 2017 through to 2021, a lot of the things that I had jotted down are now some of the fundamental pillars of race rituals. It's cleanse, connect, reflect, release was my process to try to get myself out of the chaos of life and into a meditative practice, but then it's something that I pass on to my clients now. It's almost like you cleanse your space, you connect yourself, you reflect on your life and then you release it. It's now the manifesto, but it was natural. So when I kind of got myself on my feet, it felt and I was like, okay, it's not about not experiencing the lows, it's about how to navigate with the nervous system that allows us to experience the highs and lows without wavering too far off high, way too far off low that fall off balance, off, balance, right. And it's like I told myself that we're all the same. Everybody is going to experience incredible highs and incredible lows, and that we're not meant to just define ourself based on who we become on the successful points, because there's so much gems and truth held in the valleys, in those lows, we find ourselves. In the highs, we share what we have learned. They are meant to coexist. But we don't really discuss the darkness or the shadow because it's seen as a place where nobody goes. But we go to meet our highest self there. But you can only experience that and learn that when you have a lived experience. Right, but you can only experience that and learn that when you have a lived experience.
Speaker 2:I also, the passion and the root was so deep that I was like once I came out and I said you can't go back. I'm like I don't want someone who's transitioning from one version of themselves to the next to feel that they're alone. And that was how Race Rituals was born. That was how Race Rituals was born. So I felt and feel so deeply about holding safe space for people, again with no judgment, to who they are becoming, because in order to become, we have to let go, and that's a messy process.
Speaker 2:Yes, right and so cool. Come as you are, take whatever time you need, and when you become, you go on and the cycle begins again. But I think that if we're taking change rooted in fear and desperation, that's also setting the intention for what we're bringing in when we create change and we have that messy transition, but rooted in love and hope and faith, it brings a different outcome and it also motivates us to keep going forward because, regardless, life is going to go forward. Yeah right, so why not go, rooted in love and hope and faith and know that you are supported? So that's the, that's the, could you? Could you believe it if I said that was the short version?
Speaker 1:oh my gosh, I am like in awe, like I'm like just like in awe of all of that, because in such a short period of time, when you really look at it and you stand back, it really is a short period of time, like those few years together, like that's a short period of time in the grand scheme of things. And to go through all of that while still trying to then figure out what's going on with yourself at the same time and you're not feeling the same as what you used to is, is a lot. And there were so many things that resonated with me that I feel that I almost experienced, in a way, through my own transitions through life, my own grief. And I remember when, after our session together, our treatment together, you had said, like Portia, I can feel the grief in your body, and that weighed heavy on me because, as a person, that felt like I've kind of harnessed my grief in a way, it was a little bit of a dose of reality of how much I thought I had control of it and I really didn't. And it was interesting to reflect on that after and to kind of go back to exactly what you're saying, like go back to self, go back to solitude, go back to the meditation practice and really dive into what this grief is, because I've talked about it with my husband and I've talked about it with my therapist, but it's still. It's still living inside of me. And so what guilt, what shame. What is holding onto it? Why am I harboring it so deeply? What's the need to hold onto it anymore? So it's just this whole conversation, your whole story is just so eyeopening and I'm sitting here kind of just like I can feel it moving through my body.
Speaker 1:You know how, like people say, like shivering, shaking, that's like your body, like I can feel that and I don't get this through many podcasts, ever really in any podcast and just it's almost just kind of working. I don't know like your words are almost like igniting the energy inside of me and I kind of want. There's so many things I want to go back to. Um, where do I start? I'm like geez, okay, um, I would love to start with the broken heart um diagnosis, because I think that is something that's not talked about often and my mother-in-law was actually diagnosed with it. She's had some great, great losses in her life. She's lost two partners in her life and you know they kind of the same thing a lot of health things, a lot of things going on and they finally finally diagnosed her like we think you have a broken heart.
Speaker 1:But then that's it to me how you know Western medicine is so not oblivious because I don't think that they are oblivious Want to shield us, let's just say, from all the other avenues that can be taken to heal yourself from a broken heart.
Speaker 2:I think that it's also important that we understand that there's a difference between responding to injury and healing Right, and I think our medical system is designed to respond to emergency and kind of go into a targeted area, and we're not again taught that it's not until we have these experiences, and I think alternative practices are meant to work in conjunction, not in replace of medical care, but then when it would be beautiful thing if, down the road, a doctor recognizes that this is an emotional release that needs to happen, that maybe a somatic practitioner is called in to help alleviate and remove the grief or to help move the grief, because here's the other thing is that they don't talk to you about the fact that, in order to move through something, you cannot numb it, you have to feel it. And we are also again discussing the things about celebrating the highs, celebrating the successes so intensely that when you have to feel something that is quote unquote a negative, we don't want to bring that up because of shame. However, imagine if it was celebrated that you're like, oh, okay, I have to move through this grief, and then society collectively is like we got you, however, whatever you need, because if somebody goes and breaks their arm. Everybody's coming over with soup and dropping off flowers and saying what can we do for you? Imagine you for like. Okay, the doctor says I need to spend the next six months to a year working on grief moving through my body and people say how can I support you?
Speaker 2:What do you need? That would be a beautiful thing, because it is so many people walking around today with deeply rooted traumatic and emotional experiences that were then the next day kind of brushed off because they had to go into the hustle bustle of life so they don't even realize what they're carrying within them. And it might be a six-year-old version of them that really experienced something traumatic but then had to move on from it or didn't even know to have the emotional regulation or maturity to process that. So now we have what is looking like the growth of a wellness space that allows people to treat their physical body, treat emergency situations, treat their emotional body subtle and energetic as an entire holistic view. People who are aligned a little bit better and we're not waiting for a bunch of symptoms to tally up so that we can receive emergency care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I feel like that's what happened to me, whereas when I was going through my grief I kind of just gave myself two weeks. I have two weeks to figure this out and then I'm like back to work and it caught up to me and I was telling a friend of mine this and she's really struggling right now and I said, you know, hear from somebody who's been through it. Now my grief is different from yours, but I know what it is when grief kind of catches up to you years later and how I know what it feels like. When my body shut down, I knew what it felt like internally, how angry I was that I allowed myself to get to this place and then how long it took me to get out of it. And I'm still not even out of it because I'm still trying to figure it out as a reminder.
Speaker 1:When I met you you know there's still so much grief inside of me and I was like wow, like I thought that that was something that I moved on from, move past from, because I'm not necessarily dealing with the daily grief, right, I'm dealing with grief that's, you know, reminded by an anniversary date or a time of the year or things like that and and I actually went through something a few weeks ago which I'm going to share on the podcast I won't share now that was a great reminder of how much I'm still harboring and it was very, very interesting.
Speaker 1:And so I love, I love this idea of all these different modalities and Western medicine meeting, you know these, this spiritual, natural, you know therapeutic spaces, because I think it's so needed, because I feel like when I went to my doctor, when I was kind of, when everything caught up to me, my heart rate wasn't worth like, my heart rate was super low, I was very fatigued, I couldn't understand, I wasn't depressed, but I like I literally couldn't get out of bed, like I literally was like laying in bed, like I don't want to, my brain couldn't shut off, but my body was just shut down and I'm like what's wrong with me?
Speaker 1:And they're like well, all your stuff is fine and all your, your vitamins and all your things and your blood work came back perfect. And then they checked my heart and they're like whoa, your heart is not right. And then I went through all of the testing for my heart and at the end of the day they're like no wait, it's fine, but we don't know what's wrong with you and I'm like, oh okay, so three months I was hoping for an answer, a solution, somewhere where I could start going from, and I was literally back at square one, feeling even less motivated, feeling so down on myself because what's wrong with me that no one can find out what's wrong with?
Speaker 1:me what am I doing so wrong in all of this?
Speaker 1:And so it's.
Speaker 1:It was hard to move through and I never thought at the end of the day that this would be something that I would ever have to go through because or not necessarily have to go through, or experience, in a way, because I felt like I was so self-aware.
Speaker 1:And so, when it happened, the anger was about not picking up on all the signs and signals, not tapping in, because I was so disconnected because, like you had said, I was so focused on the highs, I was so focused on the success, I was so focused on the external rather than the internal. And it was now I'm like, try not to swing too much to one side and too much to the other. And it's finding that balance, and I like how you had said that you know finding the balance between the highs and the lows, because the highs feel so good and you want to stay there, and when I'm in them, I'm always reminded that you have to come down and you can't live here forever, because we've lived here for a long time and look where it got us. It didn't get us where we thought we were going to go.
Speaker 2:That's right, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I kind of want to talk about feeling and walking into the room and feeling the room because I feel this, and I was when you said it. I was like, oh, I want to talk about this because I feel like it's unless you're talking to somebody else, that kind of knows yeah you just feel like you sound not crazy, but just like. How would you even know that?
Speaker 2:I know, it's true, it is true and I think that. So, like when I was younger, I just thought everybody could feel it as well. And you just start to learn that other people have different, different antennas, right. So some is sound, some it's you know. You know, for us it's the energy, some is like a physical feelings. Whatever it is, they have some sort of an antenna that guides their intuition, and intuition it's something as well. That is our birthright, it's a gift that's been given to all of us.
Speaker 2:It's a muscle, almost like the more you use it, the stronger it becomes, and everybody has access to it. So when you are younger, I feel like it's more stronger, and when we get older and we kind of go into the flow of society, we question it because, again, it's not the stuff taught in classrooms, it's not the stuff we're taught about getting jobs, but it's so loud that, like when I walk into a room, sometimes like I can just feel something like on my body, like I can feel the energy of the room, and sometimes I'll go somewhere and I'll just get so exhausted and so drained and I'm like I have to, it's time for me to go home and I will pass out, or other times I will go in and I can feel that it's light, it's inspiring, it's aligned, it's an energetic thing. And you know, they say, like, there have been studies by quantum physicists who have confirmed that we are energetic beings and that the world is made up of energy. And so when you start to recognize, like you know, when someone, you can feel somebody looking at you, and you look at them nobody said anything, nobody touched you, but you knew they were looking at you and you glanced at them, that's energy, you know. And so it's intuition as well. Right, when you kind of have a gut feeling a gut is one of our brains, we've got our brain in our head, we've got our brain in our heart, we've got our brain in our gut.
Speaker 2:And when those three kind of go, yes, yes, yes, you're like, oh, it's a lot right, but if something feels out of our body, that's just feeling the energy, right, yeah. And so when we start to trust it, like sometimes, obviously there's many, many years where I was just like that's no, that's not what I'm supposed to do, I'm supposed to go forward with this thing, and what do I end up with? Anxiety, regret of some sort, a little bit of remorse, like why did I do that, you know? And then, as I've gotten older and I've had my lived experiences, I'm like oh, I'm not supposed to operate the same as everybody else. Everybody else is not supposed to operate how I do. They've got their own way.
Speaker 2:And that's when we start to live in alignment, because we're like no, actually I don't want to do that, because it's actually giving me anxiety when I just think about it versus fear. Right, when we have some fear, you're supposed to be brave, but when your whole body is kind of alerting you to something, we listen now, right. So that feeling of energy when you walk into a room, it's something innate. It is a muscle that is again, once you use it more, it's more aligned with you and you feel it a lot more. And I think when you accept it yeah, acceptance is a big thing, because it's very easy to be like it's not real yeah, right, but then it'll just kind of keep nudging at you. Yeah, it's right, yeah, right, but then it'll just kind of keep nudging at you yeah, it's right, it's there, it's there.
Speaker 1:You know, I find sometimes with intuition, it's almost having other people accept it in a way, and I go always go back to this and it's my husband and I remember I think about this story all the time. I got a I don't know, people still do these things but you would send like engagement like postcards, like we got engaged and it was a photo of them and it was a friend of mine from college and she. We got one in the mail. It was her and her partner. I never met him in person before. Um, she might have talked to him about him a few times with us or with us or whatever.
Speaker 1:And anyways, I looked at this picture and it's sitting on my fridge and every time I looked at it I got this gnawing feeling and I wasn't really like at that time, overly spiritual, like I might've just started getting into a yoga practice. So I can't necessarily say like it was Portia of yesterday, like it was Portia like 15 years ago, portia. So I just, every time I looked at, every time I was like I just got this weird feeling about this guy, like I don't know what it is Like every single time we go to hit their engagement party. I think I told my husband before, before we even went, like I have a weird feeling. I don't know what this is, I don't know what it is, but there's something in me that just is wrong. I'm not going to say it to her, I don't know what it is, it could just be whatever, but something's not right.
Speaker 1:We go to the engagement party, we go, we leave, nothing really transpires, nothing really changes. A few months go by and she calls me and says the engagement's off. He ended up abusing her and I was like oh my God, yeah, I knew, like, not like I knew it, but like like, oh my God, that's what that was. That's what that was. And it happened again with another person's spouse. And this is like maybe five, six, seven years ago. Great friend of ours, he had this girlfriend and I met her and I said to my husband something's not right. And he's like Portia, stop being a girl.
Speaker 1:Like, stop being dramatic, it's like you know, immediately they're like oh, it's cattiness, it's not cattiness, it has literally nothing to do with her. It's this gut feeling like something is not right. And sure enough, we we go, we hang out with them, whatever she takes, whatever I said I don't even remember what it was and completely turned it and made me the enemy. But in regard was whatever she said that I said? She said I never said it to my husband, I didn't care. Like, whatever you say, what you want to say, it was about somebody else, I don't know what it was gossiping kind of manner.
Speaker 1:And our friend came up and confronted me about it and I'm looking at him like I never said that. I said you should know me better than that, I would never say that. And after that I said you know what I told you? I told you so something wasn't right. I would never say that. You would know, like my husband knows that he would know that obviously he was blinded by love and the lust of it all. And I get it whatever. And time went on and, sure enough, true colors prevailed and you know, she showed her true self and I wasn't there pointing my finger. I told you so.
Speaker 1:I was just kind of in the background like mm-hmm trusting this intuition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, letting it be. I'm trusting my intuition and being reminded that these feelings are right, they're there for a reason and that I do need to trust them. And these were like pretty big, obvious things, and obviously there's been so many subtle things along the way, but these are like two big ones where you could just feel it in your body and so it's just that reminder to stay with them, like I just kind of was like I'm not invested in this relationship anymore. I'm just going to stay on the outskirts and be polite, be cordial, but I'm not invested. I'm just going to kind of wait till it crumbles, basically.
Speaker 2:But you know they all have to go through their experiences to figure it all out and everybody has everybody's, and this is the other thing is is that when you start to connect to yourself and like I, don't even with like, a spiritual practice it's not so much about starting a spiritual practice, it's more so about living in your alignment.
Speaker 2:I think a spiritual practice is a way of living as well, and I think that we are connected to it from when we are born. What our soul is here to do, and that's why we get those nudges at such an early time in life and I always tell clients we're not starting a spiritual practice, right, I don't believe that there's a spiritual practice. Practice it's really about listening to yourself. Yeah, right. And so, whether you are doing any of the modalities, whether you are meditating or doing yoga or any, those are just tools to strengthen your existing connection to your spirit. It is, again, a birthright and it doesn't require tools, but the tools help us fine tune, to strengthen, to connect. And again, like you had mentioned that, that was before you had stepped into the space of connecting to yourself, because it was already part of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that is kind of showing you that, while it does support us during certain phases to have a practice of ritual, which which which is the same way with, like the education system, when we're trying to learn something, we're going to study about it and learn it, and then you release it. You release it so that you can then live in flow with yourself, the same way we go to a doctor. The modalities and the spiritual practice are meant to be tools for you to connect to the self, and then you release so that you can breathe and live at where you are. So I love that you recognize that that wasn't even when you were really exploring it, but it existed for you yeah, yeah it was.
Speaker 1:It was interesting because I like to reflect on that, because I'm like you know it was.
Speaker 1:It's always been there. It's like you had said it wasn't something that I taught myself or anything like it's, just it's was there. And I think a great moment of that I always think was was when my teacher training and so I just got I was into yoga a little bit before and it was that same thing. It brought me closer to myself and understand, like, why I was harboring so much anxiety within my body. It made me learn a little bit more about myself, understand my body and like what is actually going on. Like my 17 year old daughter, she's like my stomach hurts and I'm like, is it your stomach? Is it higher, lower? What does the pain feel like? Does it feel like churning in your stomach? Is it nervousness? Is it a period cramp? Like what's different? Like don't tell me your period cramp, is your stomach hurting? Because that's different, it's not the same. So it's like identifying these things and I remember this is probably like my first experience of like a download, let's say, or really just tapping into self.
Speaker 1:I was taking, I did a yoga practice, kind of fell out of it. A girlfriend of mine was going through postpartum and she was like, um, I want to join this thing, this yoga studio it's a different studio than I is and she's like you want to join me for 30 days. I was like sure, I'd love to join you, let's do it. So I go, I'm literally like warrior two, standing there and I just no intention of teaching yoga, no intention of ever doing this as a job or really doing it beyond this 30 days, and it literally was like Portia, you need to be doing this, this is what you're supposed to be doing. And I immediately didn't second guess. It went to my husband I'm going to go do a teacher training. I'm going to find one in town. My daughter was like five or six at the time.
Speaker 1:I was in a transitional period anyways in my life. I couldn't do the old job that I was doing before and I was kind of like I need something else to kind of fulfill me in a way that I guess I didn't even necessarily know I needed to be fulfilled in. And it was like that first experience and I still just very much hold it true to me because it's just that that's exactly everything that you're saying, like finding the solitude, even though you're in a group setting, you're still alone in your practice. It's not a group activity, it's very much a solo activity.
Speaker 1:You're finding stillness, you have a guide that's going to help you get a little bit deeper into your mind and deeper into your body, into your heart, and it was just like such a great reminder of just how much can be in that solitude. And this is going to transition into the meditation talk, because I am like the biggest advocate of meditation and when you said that meditation really helped you, you know, get out of those dark days, meditation did that for me, and so when I hear how it helped you, it just solidifies to me how powerful it is. And I loved how you had said like I don't have time for it you know my mind and all of these things because that is honestly the most common excuse that we hear and so I would love to hear your experience with meditation, sure.
Speaker 2:So, like I said before that, I couldn't even sit in a seated position and breathe for a long time because I was like, okay, what's the next thing we're doing? I would always make a joke that I'd rather be in a kickboxing class, like that's always, that was always the joke. And then all of a sudden I had hit rock bottom and I couldn't even stand in a kickboxing class if I wanted to, and the only thing I was craving was peace. And I remember we were living in a townhouse and I didn't have anywhere to like build like my little altar or anything like that. And so I took the landing of the stairs up to. We had a little roof patio on our townhouse and it was just the landing between the two set of stairs on the way upstairs and I just built myself a little spot between the stairs and I would just go up there and at first I would just sit there and I didn't know what to do, and then I would play music because that would always calm me down, and then I started closing my eyes and it was a natural progression into meditation, because I started to crave that feeling of not being overstimulated, of not being constantly thinking about where I'm supposed to go, what I'm supposed to do, when really, I was just trying to watch a TV show. That's how I knew something was off, because I couldn't just do day-to-day things grounded in my body. I was so outside of my body and then when I went up to do these quiet sitting periods, I didn't even know it was meditation at the time. It's just like hanging out by myself on stairs. I started to search for like guided journals and ask myself questions, and then I would play my music, answer the guided questions and then close my eyes and say what do you want me to know? Answer the guided questions and then close my eyes and say what do you want me to know? Yeah, and I would breathe and then it just, and then I was like okay, and then somehow 30, 40 minutes later I have the answers of what I was looking for. My nervous system was calm and at ease and I started to feel like what it was meant to feel like having a regulated system and then the same way that a doctor may have prescribed me, you know, anxiety medication or stuff which I think is still required and needed for many cases, that might've been an instance where I might've taken medication, versus understanding my breath and how that could help me. And so meditation is still something that I turn to nine, 10 years later, and it's a part of my daily practice, when I can still feel my system getting dysregulated and I'm like, oh, I have to go and meditate.
Speaker 2:Some people are like, well, how do you, how do you do it? What do you do? And I think it's really important again to utilize tools that you have that allow you to sit still. Some people it's a weighted blanket, tools that you have that allow you to sit still. Some people it's a weighted blanket, some people it's certain music that kind of helps them disconnect from what is the outside world and what is their internal world. We have both that coexist and we're trying to tap into the internal world when we're meditating. And so one there's multiple apps that can help us connect to that one. There's multiple apps that can help us connect to that. Some people utilize malas and branyam and counting different ways to go. Okay, here I am, and then they all of a sudden go inside. So also being aware of the external world and the internal world. The same ways, we have the successes and we have the lows. There's always dual yin and yang, there's light and darkness, there's internal, external.
Speaker 1:There's polarities everywhere that we look and we're trying to navigate how to live between them yeah both of them serving a purpose for us oh, I love your story on meditation and how it got you there, because I feel like it's so relatable in the sense where you just started, so small it wasn't. Mine was like, literally, like you need a space, and you need a space, like it doesn't have to be a full room, like you just need a spot that's yours that you can go to. I, I firmly believe in that. Um, mine is like, I have my see, my cushion right now it's on the floor in my office and it's just my little space. I can close the door, but sometimes it's, you know, beside my bed. If I don't necessarily, you know, if I want to just do a morning practice and I still want to be warm in my room, and you know, I just toss the cushion on the floor and, and you know, but I do, I am a kind of a firm believer that you do have to kind of change your body position a little bit, like I.
Speaker 1:I sometimes teach people not necessarily how to meditate, but have confidence in meditation. Um, and I'm like, if you, you know, you want to do a meditation before bed, you know, do it above your covers, not cozy in your covers, you know, so you can like have your bed ready for you so you can just kind of slip in because you don't want to be falling asleep, in that you still want to be very much aware of what's happening and what's going on within you, and so I just I just it's just so, it's so relatable and I think, like you had said, there are so many things out there that can help you. I started with an app because my mind was so busy that and that's kind of my, my, I don't want to say my problem, but kind of the thing that holds me back sometimes from meditating is when my mind is extremely busy and I am feeling anxious the same feeling that you had described when you're trying to watch TV and you just couldn't. You're just like I can't even focus on this 30 minute show. I'm so out of here.
Speaker 1:Like that's when I'm like I need to put on a guided meditation. I need something for my brain to go back to, to be like okay, wait, I'm anchored in that person's voice. I'm anchored in that song that's playing in the background. It pulls me back into myself rather than getting lost in all the noise. That's kind of living up there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I love that. And I think the self-awareness like when we have the noise or we have the feeling in our body that self-awareness guiding us to our practice, is an incredible gift. Right, and just, the first step is self-awareness and not shaming ourselves for where we are, but be like oh, I need something else today and then having, I think another great thing is that having self-compassion for ourselves. Right, we tend to shame ourselves so much that we think that we have to get through this thing and we have to do this to be better. No, it's okay. Today's meant to feel like this because we're learning something, we're integrating something, we're letting go of something.
Speaker 2:We're experiencing something, even if we can't see it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I'm so happy that you said that because I felt I know for myself and maybe those that are listening, like felt a lot of shame and feeling things and not being, you know, a hundred percent of myself all the time and living in the lows longer than what I was anticipating, living in them and struggling to kind of get out of those lows and still kind of trying to put on this face, this front, this mask, to be like I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. In the meantime, I'm struggling and going back to what had just happened recently to me. Going back to what had just happened recently to me grief, kind of resurfacing, you know, being fully. What happened is I was fully triggered without realizing that this particular situation everybody else realized it around me didn't want to tell me that this potentially could trigger me like really, really badly.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I was so oblivious, I was caught up in somebody else's experience let's just say I got lost in that in their feelings and their emotions and their experience that I forgot about myself. And it caught up to me super, super fast. But rather, pushing it all down and kind of living with the shame of not realizing, like being like how did I not know that this is going to happen? I just kind of went with it for the week and I was like I basically like canceled my entire week and I only did things that were really kind of really fulfilling to me, that brought me a sense of peace, that brought me solitude. You know, I went back to baking a little bit more. You know, started stopped doing a lot of podcasts and things like that, that where I had to kind of be on and had to be myself in a way where I wasn't really feeling myself. Um, and it was the first time that I actually honored my emotion self in that moment and as quickly as it came in I don't want to say as quickly as it dissipated, but it released a lot faster than what I was expecting based on past experiences Because I really thought, because I really told myself like I know what's going on in my body. I know what triggered me here. I see it now. Clearly, everybody else saw it. Now I see it. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:But I know that I don't want to live here and I know that I have the tools and the things inside of me to get me through this. I'm not looking to push it aside. I want to move through this. I want to move through this for this person that I experienced this experience with um, because they mean so much to me.
Speaker 1:It was my best friend, um. I don't want to feel these feelings around her and that particular experience like I want to be there for her and and if I hold on to this, I'm not going to be able to I'm really going to have to distance myself completely from her life and I don't want to do that. That's not what I want to do and it it was remarkable to kind of know where I was and know how those highs and lows had went, and then being back in it and being not so self-assured but assured enough to be like I can get through this. This isn't going to, this isn't something that I'm going to be like. Ah well, you know, give yourself a day portion. Move on tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Right, Like I'm going to.
Speaker 1:I'm going to live in this and I'm going to be honest with everybody around me. I had to be honest with my daughter, like, hey, I'm not feeling my best self right now. I'm really in a dark place. You're gonna probably see me excessively for the next week or so. You know, I know this is not who I am normally, but just know that, like, I'm just processing a lot, there's a lot happening. You know, if I'm short with you, it's not you, it's just I. My capacity is so low right now.
Speaker 1:But I want to be honest with you because the last time I was going through this I wasn't, and you were scared, because you could feel it, and you were scared for me and you didn't know what was going on. So I'm going to be honest. I'm going to be honest with my husband and move through it. And it was. It was amazing to, like you had said, have that support, that there were people, because at a time I felt so alone in something, in this grief, and at this time I felt so supported, and even my best friend, who's going through her own experiences. They're messaging me every single day. How are you feeling, portia? You know, don't feel obligated to message me today Like she's going through the happiest moment of her life and at the same time.
Speaker 1:I'm going through the lowest moment of my life and I'm like she's like how can I support you in this? And I'm just thinking I'm so grateful for you and I don't want to feel these things. And I had to be honest with her and send her messages of like this is what I'm going through. I'm not being distanced because of whatever. I'm being distant because of this and it's nothing to do with you, and I'm just trying to figure it all out of my body and look at how that, how that changes when we, when we're like rooted in shame and fear versus compassion and love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same situation, two very different outcomes could have come from that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible yeah, it was reminding me like we're doing it, we're doing it, we've grown, we've evolved, we've, we've, we can move through and, yes, we're not you're connecting, connected to the self, right, that's your compass, you are your compass, it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was amazing. Well, reshmi, this was amazing. I have to say, I didn't even have to look at my notes. That's when you know the conversation is that good. So thank you so much for sharing your story, for being vulnerable with us. So, thank you so much for sharing your story, for being vulnerable with us. It means the world to me, and there's so many correlations with your story and mine, and I know that it's going to correlate with so many of those that are listening. So, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:No thank you so much for having me my pleasure.
