Ep.19/ Life, Breath and Death with Soph Trew
How can knowing we are going to die can transform the way we live? In a grief-illiterate society, how can we make peace with impermanence and mortality and live life to the fullest in the here and now?
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This episode is recorded with the incredible Soph Trew. Soph was diagnosed with blood cancer aged 23. After 6 months of chemo started integrating lots of mind-body tools. What began as her own healing path has expanded over the past 8 years into supporting others to connect to self-healing abilities, to come back into own bodies and to empower themselves in their own health. Soph has trained all over the world in different mind-body-soul modalities. Her primary work is in the power of the BREATH as a transformational breath-work practitioner and more recently she has ventured into end of life care training as a death doula. We live in what Soph describes as a 'grief-illiterate culture' - as a society we are generally quite afraid of speaking about death and endings. We are afraid of letting go and this can lead us to feel isolated when we are at the end. Soph and I open up the conversation around death, encouraging you to reflect upon your own relationship with LIFE and DEATH and how BREATH serves as the ongoing space in between.
In this episode:
Breathwork:
- discovering the power of our breath, coming into present moment, releasing tension and trauma, feeling more inspired and alive and creative
- breath and anxiety, breath patterns differentiating for each emotion
- inhale and exhale as setting the flow for our life - being and doing
- the mind body connection, trauma release and the regulation of the nervous system
Death:
- What is a death doula
- How our approach to death differs to other cultures
- Rites of passage in life; ritual and ceremony starved
- What supports us to let go
- End of life care, including past and recent exploration of psychedelics
Resources:
Peter Levine (author of 'Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma')
Alua Arthur - "Going with Grace", YouTube "Why I became a Death Doula"
Michael Polan - How to change your mind
“There’s so much power in talking about death. Truly knowing that we are going to die can transform the way that we live. It can transform our relationships, heal our relationships… do all the things we want to do… we realise it’s not a dress rehearsal, we don’t wait. ”
- Soph Trew
To connect with Soph, check out @Sophie_trew_ and www.sophietrew.com
