Transforming End of Life Through Yoga and Service with Jeanette Sealy

Jeanette Sealy, a dedicated Yoga Therapist, loving mother of four, and a veteran of the United States Air Force, is on a mission to bring healing and transformation to people's lives. Her profound personal journey through complex trauma has given her a deep understanding of the healing potential of Yoga and Ayurveda. 

Since 1993, she has been unwaveringly committed to exploring the science of Yoga. As an Internationally Certified Yoga Therapist, Licensed Massage Therapist, and Transformational Retreat Leader, she is the founder of Metta Bhav, a School Of Yoga Therapy, Ayurveda, and Thai Massage. Jeanette is also a death doula and Ayurvedic postpartum doula, using her wisdom and compassion to guide others on their path to healing and an extraordinary quality of life.

After becoming a hospice volunteer, Jeanette quickly fell in love with the sense of purpose, the people she met, and the profound impact she could have on their lives. It wasn't just a job for her; it was a profound calling. For 26 years, she dedicated herself to working in various healthcare settings, including nursing homes, hospice, and long-term care.

Already a dedicated yoga practitioner, she introduced the healing power of yoga to the populations she served. In 2003, she embarked on a transformative journey to become a certified yoga therapist, aiming to learn techniques for bringing yoga to individuals, even those on their deathbeds. In Jeanette's perspective, yoga is not limited to modern postural practices but is a holistic system of teachings and practices designed to help individuals find inner peace and self-discovery.

This journey led her to transition away from the corporate healthcare world and focus on working one-on-one with individuals in grief support. Today, she wears multiple hats as a yoga therapist, Ayurvedic doula, and massage therapist. Yet, her overarching mission remains constant across her many roles: helping people tap into their inner resources and discover their true selves, thereby empowering them to make more informed choices in life.

https://www.jeanettesealy.com

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Jeanette: Our goal is to know ourselves, to have clarity around what brings us into that inner silence, and then to cultivate that as a practice, because that helps us die well. Welcome 

[00:00:11] Jill: back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life Coach here on my show. I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself.

[00:00:24] My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider Perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true. In this episode, my guest is Jeanette Seeley. Jeanette was inspired by her aunt's work in nursing homes.

[00:00:42] So she began volunteering and quickly discovered her deep calling in elder care. For 26 years, she dedicated herself to various healthcare settings, including nursing homes, hospice, and long-term care. In 2003, Jeanette embarked on a yoga therapy training journey to learn techniques for bringing yoga to individuals, even those on their deathbed.

[00:01:04] We talk about the practice of Shavasana, also known as Corpse Pose, and the delicate balance between appreciation and appropriation in the world of yoga. Jeanette shares how yoga, with its emphasis on surrender and lessening attachment, is a profound practice for approaching death. Thank you for joining us for this thought-provoking conversation.

[00:01:23] Welcome, Jeanette. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to talk with me. I'm excited about this conversation. 

[00:01:30] Jeanette: Thank you, Jill. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me here.

[00:01:32] Jill: You're so welcome. Now, can you just start us off with a little bit of background information? 

[00:01:39] Jeanette: So I come from New Jersey.

[00:01:42] I've lived in New Jersey most of my life, but I was in the Air Force. I enlisted when I was very young, uh, I enlisted at 17, and my first duty station was Aviano, Italy, and it was during Danai flight over Bosnia, and it was the Bosnian Herzegovanian crisis, and we were working with refugees, and so at a very young age, I was exposed to a depth of suffering beyond what I could even have ever imagined.

[00:02:08] When I got out of the Air Force, I came home and I started working at Buck Engineering because my job was technology in the Air Force. And my aunt worked in nursing homes and she was like, come volunteer with me. And I was like, sure. And I went and I volunteered with her and I fell in love with the work.

[00:02:24] I fell in love with the people. I fell in love with just, it was recreation, quality of life. It was bringing people nourishment and joy and learning as much as we could about their lives and their histories so that we could meet them where they were now in long term care and hospice. and bring kind of a sense of peace and joy back to them through knowing them deeply.

[00:02:47] I left a job at Buck Engineering at the time at like 22 years old. I was making maybe four times what the nursing home paid. But I was like, I gotta do what I love. I knew it in my heart that this was something that was a deep calling, not just a job. And so I did that work for 26 years. I worked in nursing homes, hospice.

[00:03:07] Long term care, sub acute care, worked with elders, learned so much about geriatrics, so much about recreation therapy, which is meeting people where they are and giving them leisure skills wherever they may be. You know, non pharmacological ways of relieving pain, holistic ways of bringing peace. So I had a long time yoga practice already.

[00:03:26] And I ended up bringing yoga to the populations that I was serving and it was 2003 and I started doing yoga training to learn yoga therapy, to learn techniques where I could bring yoga to people on their deathbeds. I did an internship at Debora Heart and Lung Center directly out of heart surgery.

[00:03:46] surgery. A lot of people think of modern postural yoga, but truly it's a whole series of teachings and practices that are really designed to help us know the self and to help us discover peace. I moved and transitioned into that as a career, leaving behind the kind of corporate healthcare world and doing now just much more one on one and individual grief support and helping people move through death and transition and birth as well.

[00:04:15] So I'm now a yoga therapist and a doula and a massage therapist. But overall, all of these years and all of these things have brought me in the same path of just helping people discover their inner resource and know themselves better so that they can choose better.

[00:04:30] Jill: I love it. I've had a yoga practice myself.

[00:04:34] Oh my gosh, really long time now. But then I became a yoga instructor in 2001 and I go in and out of teaching yoga to people. But I do find the job that I'm transitioning out of, I work with a lot of people that come from a lot of trauma from the prison system, from drug addictions, homelessness. And I was trying to bring some of like, what I would consider trauma sensitive because I did do a training in Philadelphia for trauma sensitive yoga.

[00:05:02] But like, bringing just a little bit of it in for people just to kind of get people in touch with their bodies. And most of us are not very good at listening to our bodies, understanding what our bodies need, and I'm still working on it. But I love that you're doing this work, especially with the elderly population, because It seems like there's, I don't know if it's fear, like even for me a little bit is like, oh, I don't want to hurt people.

[00:05:27] And I feel like when they're older, they're so frail and that their bodies would not be able to do the poses. When I took my teacher training, the poses had to be in a. certain order and they had to be done a very specific way. And it was like it trying to make that fit into this idea of working with people a little bit to their capabilities, their, what their body can do just was very hard for me to kind of transition into that.

[00:05:53] You can still have the basis of the yoga, which is the bringing the awareness. The mind body connection, connecting to the spirit, but not have to do this pose in this specific order, in this specific way, people can still get benefits. 

[00:06:07] Jeanette: Yoga therapy is very different from yoga. So a normal yoga teacher has 200 or 500 hours of training, whereas yoga therapists have over a thousand hours at least.

[00:06:15] It's very little about asana. It's very little about shapes or postures. There's almost none of that actually when we teach yoga to these populations like clients, residents, and patients. who are working with chronic illness or dealing with end of life situations where we're focused more on breath, on mutra, on mantra, on meeting them where they are spiritually, physically, emotionally, mentally, and bringing together the tools of yoga to support them on their journey.

[00:06:46] There's a beautiful, beautiful Phrase from the Katha Upanishad of the self that is then subtle and greater than great is seated in the heart of every living creature. And it's really just about bringing them home to that, home to the eternal nature of their being. It's interesting because I also work with people with trauma.

[00:07:05] With people with trauma, we're trying to get them into their body in a really safe way, in a way that they feel sovereignty and they feel a sense of stability safety and support and agency. And at end of life, we're helping people move out of their bodies. So it's two very different dichotomies of what we're doing.

[00:07:23] Jill: Yeah, that is an interesting way of putting it of like helping people move out of their bodies doesn't mean ignoring the body, but it's that we're just in a different phase of life, which is trying to get the soul and in some ways, the mind to let go of the body and I mean, to me, a lot of my yoga practice has just been a practice of letting go anyway, while I'm on the mat, but also carrying a lot of that over into my everyday life, because we are not taught well how to let go of anything in our culture.

[00:07:54] Jeanette: Exactly. It's so fascinating. And the, the practice of Shavasana, which every yoga I'm a student. It's familiar with. It's the lying down corpse pose corpse pose. It's a practice for dying. It's that practice of releasing attachment to the physical form to material reality and just connecting with the soul of the soul, if you will, and there's different.

[00:08:16] different ways of guiding people into that. A really good yoga class will have a Shavasana that is really long and somewhat guided, but then there's quite a bit of silence, ideally without music as well. To allow Pratyahara, which is like sense withdrawal, this is what happens naturally at the end of life.

[00:08:34] There's a turning away from the five senses and the input coming in. It is like a lack of desire to drink or eat, a desire for dark room. It's that turning inward, almost back into the womb space. And that's what Shavasana is a practice for, to come home to yourself and lessen your attachment to physical reality in a positive way, in a disassociative way.

[00:08:57] Jill: That's a good point. Yes. In a positive way. And it's interesting because it's one of the poses That I don't often hear people call it the corpse pose, they call it savasana. Even if they call every other pose by its English term, because we're so afraid of like corpse, like why? We can't say that. And I had seen a meme once that, I don't know, kind of, made me chuckle a little bit where somebody like kind of basically worked out in their brain of like what corpse pose actually was.

[00:09:27] And they were like, wait, wait, wait, like I just now realized that like we're pretending to be dead. Like that's kind of the goal of it in our culture. Unfortunately, a lot of the yoga practices have gotten so far away from the root of what they were. designed to be. And I know I struggle a little bit sometimes when, at one point I was teaching in a gym because that was the only available space to me.

[00:09:54] I was further south in New Jersey. It was going on 15 years ago now. Like there wasn't yoga studios around yet. I was trying to bring in a lot of the more traditional stuff, but it's a gym setting. And so I was trying to find this. balance. And I do feel that like my students really were able to get some of the real true teachings and meanings of yoga, but it's not really always taught that way.

[00:10:20] And it's partially because people don't want it. People just want the exercise, the movements of it. But I do find that They're still getting a lot of the benefit of going through the practice, right? It's still calming them. It's still relieving their stress. It's still carrying over into their lives where they're nicer to their kids.

[00:10:37] I kind of struggle sometimes with this idea that it's not always being taught because I was taught very much like it wasn't just the postures. It was also about the teachings and it was about. The mindfulness, the mantras and the chanting and the sitting in meditation. That's the way that I was taught, but trying to bring all of that to other people, they just don't want it.

[00:10:58] I know that's kind of why we connected originally was this idea of cultural appropriation of yoga within our society and being really mindful of that while also trying to bring it to a wider. group of people that can really benefit from the teachings. It's hard to find what's right and what's a balance between all of those things.

[00:11:21] Jeanette: Yeah, absolutely. It's a dance between appreciation and appropriation, and I've been really involved in that dance. I really was brought to my attention. I was taught in a really good way, I believe as well, I was really, really lucky and blessed to have been brought to a deeply authentic teacher and lineage holder, but I realize that's not always the way, and it wasn't the way I began.

[00:11:44] I began in a gym, but it's as if it's like when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Can we bring this level of interest and spirit? Spark the curiosity of the student to explore the deeper teachings, to explore the roots of yoga. And I've been looking to indigenous teachers to discover that and how to make that dance part of my life in a way that's as integrous as possible.

[00:12:08] So like Dr. Ananda Balayogi Babanani and Indu Arora and Kaya Saraswati. These are teachers who talk about appropriation and talk about how to move in the context of this. this western world in a way that sharing yoga is more about appreciation. Yoga is going to be okay. It's this thousands of years old practice and we're not going to be able to change that.

[00:12:31] But what will happen is I do see harm created when it becomes so popularized to do things like goat yoga or beer yoga or cannabis yoga or any other kind that is the opposite or the antithesis of yoga. It's like bringing attention. outward, bringing attention back into the material world, bringing attention onto attachment to things.

[00:12:55] Whereas yoga is about, like you said before, lessening attachment. It's surrendering, which is why it's such a great practice, profound practice for death.

[00:13:03] Jill: It really is a great practice for people at the end of life and I mean really all throughout our lives. I try to encourage my children. And it's hard because I also know with people, with humans, especially with children, the more that I'm trying to like Why don't you come sit with me and we'll meditate together or come do some yoga with me?

[00:13:23] The more they're like, no, no, thank you. So I'm hoping that just by my example, they know that every morning I get up and I do it. But I also did stop calling my practice. Yoga, when I practice myself, I just call it movement. And that's partially because I was in this one Facebook group and basically I was told that because I was white, that I should not be calling it yoga.

[00:13:48] And I said, even if I was taught by somebody that he was not from India, but his teacher was from India and they were like, doesn't matter. It's not yours. Like you can't have it. You can't call it that. And I said, well then what am I supposed to do? Does not call it yoga. And they were like, yeah, Basically, but my question was that it felt disrespectful for me to be doing yoga, but then not calling it yoga.

[00:14:10] Like that seemed even worse that I was still going through the same movements and still going through the same motions and then not calling it what it was because then I really felt like I was appropriating it by being like, well, I'm going to do this. And not honor the background. So now the movement that I do is still some yoga movements, but in the long run, it actually was good for me to let go.

[00:14:35] Because like I said, I was very structured. Like part of me was still holding on because I was like, I have to do the poses in this order, in this way, things have to be lined up exactly or else I'm not doing it right. And then once I kind of let go of some of that, and I just started listening to my body and bringing in more like, spirals and movement that my body never had done before.

[00:14:56] It was actually really good for me, but I am a little sensitive now where like, I don't want to say that I practice yoga anymore. I just say that I practice movement and I kind of try to leave it with that. But if I'm working with people and I'm trying to bring this work into hospitals, if I go into a room and I say to somebody, would you like to do some mindfulness, maybe some Reiki, maybe some movement, it, they don't understand what that means.

[00:15:21] Where if I can say, how about a little bit of like chair yoga, people get what that means. And so I don't know, I'm at like this weird place of like, I am not worried about doing it right in like an ego kind of way. I just am legitimately trying to do the least amount of harm possible while also still bringing the benefits.

[00:15:42] of how I know it changed my life. It literally saved my life. Yoga saved my life. I have no shame in saying that. And so I want to bring that to people. So, I don't know. I'm in like a weird place with that. I don't know the right or the wrong sometimes.

[00:15:55] Jeanette: Well, I love that. I love that yoga saved your life. I feel the same exact way.

[00:16:01] And I have some very wise teachers from India who say absolutely you can do yoga, call it yoga, and they come right out and say if you're white you can still be an amazing yoga teacher, better than many Indian yoga teachers. This is an incredible teacher. His Instagram handle is wanderingmat and he is...

[00:16:18] It's just a brilliant, brilliant light in the yoga industry, and he's doing a lot of work around dismantling appropriation as well, and he's an Indian man and an incredible teacher, very wisdom keeper. And he said that specifically, I really do believe as you shared. It's just about honoring the tradition, saying what you're doing, where it comes from, and making sure that what you're doing actually is that and does come from there.

[00:16:43] So like, for example, like the chakra system is a series of systems of energy centers in the body, and there are anywhere from 21 to more in the ancient texts. As we know them today in the West, The seven or chakra, I should say, in the West rainbow system is not an ancient system at all. It's an appropriated system.

[00:17:05] And so there's a lot of that. It's like what has become very popular and well known and brought into all kinds of circles and brought into Reiki trainings and all kinds of things is its own thing. As yoga is a living system that's always evolving, but also it doesn't have ancient roots by any means.

[00:17:23] And so I think that's where it gets tricky. And I think in the idea of, or the context of surrendering, surrendering and attachment, and what we're really doing when we work with death and dying, is focused on gaining clarity about what is real and what is not real. And I think that level of discernment comes with a dedicated yoga practice.

[00:17:45] which is why it helps so much during the dying process because we want the families, the person dying to have such clear discernment about what is real and what is unreal that they can die more peacefully, they can live more peacefully, they can make better choices for their lives. And yoga does help us do that, but it's difficult when we don't even know what's real or don't even know that we don't know.

[00:18:10] And so, So part of the work of dismantling systems of oppression, particularly around indigenous practices, whether it be yoga or ancient care practices around dying and birthing, we are working to bring about that sense of clarity and that sense of openness. So we're not so attached to an idea that we're not willing to see how it might not be The truth.

[00:18:32] Jill: Yeah, because that's it. None of us honestly know the truth. Like, we don't. I don't care who you are. I don't care how long you've devoted yourself to any practice. None of us really know the truth of what will come after we die. And the attachment that people have to those beliefs, in some ways I can see how it can Help give people a sense of peace if they really truly believe that they're going to go to heaven that allows them to have a sense of peace, especially when God forbid, there's a traumatic death in your life, your child dies, your spouse dies suddenly to have this belief of like, well, I will meet them again in heaven.

[00:19:08] I can see how that's really helpful. But also I personally like kind of not knowing I kind of like having that openness, but trying to use even more so now my meditation practice and my movement practice to prepare myself for the fact that I don't know. And that no matter how much I think I'll be ready, I might not be.

[00:19:30] I really do like to think that maybe I could meditate myself like into, I don't know, The state essentially that I can be in totally prepared for death. But I also thought when I was having my children, that I'd be able to like meditate through that pain. And that did not work. I still didn't get the epidural.

[00:19:47] I was still adamant that I wanted to feel all of it because I wanted the experience, but nothing I tried helped to alleviate that physical pain in my body. And so, I don't know, I'm not looking forward to it necessarily, but I'm really curious. what that's going to be like, how I will meet the end of my life and how different people meet it is really interesting to observe.

[00:20:12] I love this work. I love being in this space with people. It feels like a gift. It feels like it's an honor for me to be invited into this time of people's lives for them to trust me and to allow me to come in and sit with them and hold space with them and their families. And I think it's beautiful work.

[00:20:31] I love it.

[00:20:31] Jeanette: And it's such a privilege. I just I did one time try to count. I think I've gotten the privilege of sitting by over 800 bedsides. And I've taught people to do the same. And I run hospice volunteer programs. One of the keys is having someone there. who's not attached to you sticking around. So if families are there, if they're able to keep their grief somewhat quiet and just reassure the person that it's okay to go, if there's a non biased person there who can just hold that space to just be a peaceful presence to help co regulate the dying person's nervous system, to bring them down if they're in pain or if they're anxious.

[00:21:14] or really clinging to life because that creates a certain level of suffering at death, then it can be so helpful. I do talk about it a lot with my children. I'm sure you do. And so my seven year old talks about death all the time. He shocks his friends. But I do tell them, feel free when it's my time to like come visit and leave.

[00:21:34] I don't really want you to be the one holding bedside vigil. I really don't. And it's amazing because a dying person will wait for all the family to arrive before they go sometimes. Sometimes they'll wait till everybody's gone. There are different ways that people cling to life. And I'm like, I'll cling more if you're there.

[00:21:52] So just say your goodbyes and leave me be. Put on chanting for me. Do your thing. Lavender oil, close the blinds, and it'll be beautiful. But I think that's our goal, is to know ourselves, to have clarity around what brings us into that inner silence, and then to cultivate that as a practice again and again.

[00:22:11] But however that may be, whether it's through yoga, through Qigong, through gardening, how do you do it? How do you access that inner silence and then make it a practice? Because that helps us die well. Yeah, it's powerful when we can. I've seen people die well, and I'm always like, Oh my gosh. And that looks like peace, maybe even anticipation or joy.

[00:22:32] My mom, when she died, and this happens a lot, but they will see people that have already passed. It happens so frequently. And my mom was sitting there so excited, calling out all of the people that were there. But they all had numbers. They were like, number one, number two. 

[00:22:48] Jill: Oh, that's so cute though, I like that.

[00:22:49] Jeanette: She was fun, she was feisty, and she was funny even in death. Like, in the last hours of her life, my sister and I and my kids were there. She was like, I like men and unwrapped candy. All right. Okay, mom. That sounds good. Like all these little things she was saying, and then she was calling out numbers. And so sometimes death, even though it's so hard, it can be joyful, which is such a gift.

[00:23:11] And even when there's pain and suffering and sometimes agony, that can also be its own gift. If you are the death worker, or caregiver, to be able to offer moments of peace. to be able to bring them out of that, which is really just a clinging to life, clinging to the physical body, to bring them away from that clinging into a deeper state of union.

[00:23:35] And sometimes that can be a very visceral, visible experience. And sometimes it just happens. slow over time, almost imperceptibly. But having death doulas and caregivers that understand ways to bring people into this peaceful state is so important. 

[00:23:51] Jill: I'll get asked a lot, when should somebody call and hire a death doula?

[00:23:55] The sooner the better, especially if you're diagnosed with an illness that even if you're not sure that it's terminal, but you're diagnosed with an illness, the longer we have to work with somebody, the more that we'll be able to know the person to know what they need. at that last couple of hours, days, whatever it is, to help bring them peace and comfort and allow them to kind of go through their process.

[00:24:21] I'm a death doula that I will help also the family members because they're going through their own process. And if I get called in towards the end, I mean, that's. fine. I could still help, but I don't really know the person. I don't know the families. I don't know what is going to be the most beneficial.

[00:24:38] And the point too, where you were saying how some people wait until the family shows up and some people wait until the family leaves. I've almost wondered if like on an energetic level, almost the family that's not able to let go, if we're almost holding. Our people there that like are not letting go is like keeping them in their body, keeping them kind of trapped.

[00:25:00] And then that's why as soon as people leave the room, I've heard it some cases happen within minutes. And it's like, well, maybe because we're actually so connected, which is wonderful. My daughter and I are so connected. So if it was me on my deathbed, or again, God forbid, if it's her on her deathbed, like how is that connection going to keep our souls from transitioning?

[00:25:21] Because We're just that connected to the people that we love.

[00:25:24] Jeanette: One of my favorite books is the Tibetan book of living and dying. And it talks about the important conversations about death. I think with attachment, I see it. I feel like I have not, thank God for me that have not had the experience of.

[00:25:40] Witnessing a child die, but I would think it would be very comforting for them to have their parents there if possible as a parent, though, I think it's a little more difficult when your Children are present. If you're the one who's dying because you're attached to making sure they're okay for a child, your relationship with your parent is about receiving comfort and with a parent, your relationship is about giving comfort.

[00:26:03] So I find even with my mom, she died when we left the room and what I've seen all of the years with children particularly. It's much more difficult for parents to let go if they're dying and their child is present at their bedside. It's sort of like that need to make sure they're okay is strong enough of a tether to keep their body here, even though they can no longer care for their child in any way, right?

[00:26:28] Their child may not need care at all in any way. There's still such a tether. Between mothers and children, I need to make sure everything's okay for you. So it's really fascinating. My mom kept saying that too. She was just over and over again. Take care of your sister. And there's that focus. So even if they can lessen attachment on material plane, on their physical bodies.

[00:26:49] The love attachment is deeply embedded in the subtle body, so it does keep them here longer. 

[00:26:56] Jill: Have you ever seen any experiences with families where there really had to be like closure between a family member that was dying, whether it's with their parents or their children, brothers, sisters, whatever it is, that once they have that closure that then the person is able to move on.

[00:27:14] Jeanette: I wasn't caring for people in their own home where you probably see a lot more families when you're doing that in the nursing homes. Oftentimes the family members were not there if they were dying and especially during COVID and weren't even allowed to be there, which was a whole nother tragedy. So whether they're not there because they just visit once a week or whether they're not there because they kind of.

[00:27:37] Drop mom off and like go about their lives a little bit. It could be really interesting But I did see one situation where the man held on he was one of the most painful deaths. I had witnessed and he held on for 10 days and We knew that he was waiting for his son and we called his son, let his son know, but his son never came and he just waited and waited and every day the charge nurse and I would come into work and every day we would look at each other and we would say, is so and so still alive?

[00:28:06] And we'd find out yes and bowls of our hearts would like, drop because he held on and held on and held on and he probably had something he needed to say to his son. So that was a tough one. It was a tough one to witness and to be present with because he was in a lot of pain and 10 days without food and water, 10 days at the end in renal failure, 10 days is a very long time to hold on.

[00:28:28] Usually after someone stops drinking and eating and completely refusing everything, it's generally a time where it's really in process. You start to see the modeling of the skin and you really start to see the body with the soul withdraw from the body and you see them withdraw from the senses. They're not here with you anymore necessarily, they're like half in and half out of the world.

[00:28:51] And so that starts to happen in 48 hours. They're generally gone, but this man held on for 10 days, and I'll never forget him. And it was a really big lesson for those of us that got to be there of how to bring peace in really challenging situations, and also how to make sure that we have so much more peace in life that death didn't end up looking like that.

[00:29:12] Jill: Yes. That is one thing I have learned from working in this space is I really want to make sure that I can get closure with as many situations as possible, even if it's just on my end. I don't want to say I don't care what they feel or think because that's not the way that I mean it. It's more meaning like they can have their experience.

[00:29:33] But I want to feel that closure so that I'm not on my deathbed thinking I just have to say this one thing. Because in the long run, what he had to say probably wouldn't have really changed anything anyway, but he felt that he had to say it. There was just this, I'm sure, ache inside of him where he was like, but I need to say whatever it is.

[00:29:52] But there's also this idea, too, where there's people in our lives that have caused us harm. And do we owe them something at the end of their life to show up and have them say their last words, whatever it is that they want to say, when they caused us harm? I don't believe that we do. It's just unfortunate that this man and his son, I can't imagine feeling whatever it was that he felt towards his father that he wouldn't even show up when the man was dying to have any time with him.

[00:30:23] I can't imagine feeling that way about anybody, but. But again, I don't know what their relationship was, but yes, I don't want to die that way. But of course, we also can't control it. Every time I think about my own, I see myself in my 90s, sitting comfortably in my bed. That's the way that I envision it, but it may not be that way.

[00:30:43] don't have any control in the long run, right? Like it could be tomorrow in a car accident, and I hope that's not the case, but it might be, and so I just hope that no matter when it happens, I can feel that I had a life that I lived well, and that I appreciated as much as I could, and that I spread as much love and joy and happiness as I could.

[00:31:06] Jeanette: That's my goal. Just give all the love we have, and make sure that we right any wrongs. to the best of our ability, and I do believe that it's really important to hold boundaries with family members as well. And so if you aren't able to be there with a family member, I think that's totally fine. There's this idea in yoga of divine luck, like you've done good and so you do receive good and there's no really thing as good or bad karma.

[00:31:31] It's kind of every action has a reaction. But there is this idea of negative karma that you have built up, and there are pathways that are opened as a result. And those pathways might be to greater suffering, or to being alone, or having a health condition due to a lifestyle choice, or something like that.

[00:31:50] And sometimes it happens for old karmas, lifetimes ago, and sometimes it happens for now, and sometimes it happens to resolve karma, to like burn through it quickly in a single lifetime. We aren't able to, to fully discern how our karmic path will play out. We can only do our best in any given moment to create positive ripples, the ocean of time, and then we'll have the opportunity to have more peace, more harmony, more equilibrium. Throughout life with practices that support that and that leads us to a better death for sure.

[00:32:25] Jill: Yeah, that's the goal, right, is to work towards having a better death. It's not a guarantee, it's not a promise, no matter what we do. I feel like it's just, it's all that internal. Work of that, no matter what your death is being okay, not being attached to how you thought it should be or how you thought it was going to look death and birth are so similar in a lot of ways where you don't have any idea what it's going to be like until you do it.

[00:32:53] And most of us, especially with death, we only do it once, even though there are the people that have had the near-death experiences where they've died and then come back. But for most of us, we're only going to do it once. And so we don't really know what it's going to be like, but I'd like to think that if we can think about it and talk about it and just prepare ourselves, that then no matter what the experience is, it'll be a good death for us in that if we could just let go of any ideas of what it's supposed to be, but easier said than done.

[00:33:24] Jeanette: Yeah. Something practiced though, for sure. I feel like The gift of sitting at people's bedside is that it makes us so much more aware. And then if we can touch another person's life with those insights to provide them an experience of curiosity or conversation, then it spreads and it ripples out in our culture, hopefully, eventually.

[00:33:46] We'll understand death as just such an integral part of life, such a daily part of life. We can talk about it without fear and we can share our experiences without aversion and we can have greater openness and support for it when it comes.

[00:34:01] Jill: How many of us have never thought about the fact that we're actually going to die because we're scared to, you know, it's like, we don't talk about it.

[00:34:11] And so we don't think about it. And then there's always the superstition of like, well, if I think about it, it's going to make it happen, which is not true. We're going to die. We have to, our body has to die, whether the soul dies or not. That's a whole different topic. I can't even say for sure that I do believe in like reincarnation and going from life to another, but even if.

[00:34:31] I reincarnate the me that is me. It's not going to be in this body. It's not going to be in the same space, even again, if my children reincarnate with me or my husband, like the people that I love the most, but maybe my children are going to be my parents. Maybe they're just going to be my friends. It's not going to be this life though.

[00:34:50] And that's where that letting go and trying to appreciate it and experience it. Focus on what's important. We really have lost focus in our society on what's important and how many of us and me included still working on it. The priority is going to the work, going to make the money, going to the events, going to do these things, and then when you sit back and you think about it, free COVID.

[00:35:17] When I really thought about how little time I actually spent with my family, it was very, very little time. And it was startling to me when I had to stop and I had to slow down. And I was like, wow, other than sleeping in the same house together, we didn't spend a lot of waking hours. together because we were working and we had activities and they had school.

[00:35:40] I don't want to look back at my life and realize that I spent the bulk of it on things including stupid arguments on Facebook. I really stopped like arguing with people on Facebook for my own mental health. for sure. But some of it is also just like, how much time does that like suck out of your life when I could be sitting there playing a game with my children or even sitting there doing something with them?

[00:36:05] Not like in this other space that when I'm dying, that's not going to matter. But it really took the death doula training. It's not just the becoming the death doula, it's like doing the training and reading and learning and starting to understand What people cared about when they were actually dying. I was like, Oh, Oh, wow Jill, like you are on that same path you are, and I don't want to be.

[00:36:31] Jeanette:  So it's the gift of discernment, really discernment around what do I want? What is my. What does my soul want? What does my heart want? Not, what does my brain want? Your mind is connected with your ego and will always want things that are on some level superficial.

[00:36:45] But if you can really tune in and discern what does my heart want and are my activities supporting that, that's going to serve you so well your whole life. And that's something I learned in my early 20s, which was Such a profound gift. I learned it from the refugees and seeing war and seeing crisis up front at a young age and maybe younger.

[00:37:05] I think I read the I Ching when I was 14 years old. So I was always on a path. I mean the Dao Te Ching. Okay. Yeah. So I was always on a path and it just, it comes back again and again too. Knowing yourself, your true self, not the superficial version of yourself of I am this, I am a mother, I am a death doula, I am a this, I am my career, I am that.

[00:37:27] It's who am I at the core of myself and how do I support that to thrive? And that travels through whether you are working with a three year old or a hundred and three year old. Finding out the core of who a person is as best as you can or helping them do so makes life so much more full. It doesn't help us avoid suffering, but it helps us move through it more gracefully and a little more easily.

[00:37:51] And if we can do that, even if we stop for a moment, you know, we lived well. Thank you for having me today, Jill. 

[00:37:58] Jill: Thank you so much for coming on. This was awesome. Please tell us where we can find you, whatever you want to talk about.

[00:38:04] Jeanette: Well, thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity and thank you to your listeners for spending the time with us.

[00:38:09] If you're still podcast I have is called The Nourish Collective, and I hope to have you on there. It's all about people doing work that nourishes others. So we have herbalists and holistic nurses and myself and a dear friend co host it, and it's just an open call for those in the nourishment field and to share wisdom and create community connection and the idea of bringing back the village because we all need multiple levels of support in different phases of life and we need to bring that back.

[00:38:39] I also have a beautiful program that's relevant to what we're talking about today. It's a pay what you can. It's called “Architects of Now”. It was a nine day. virtual summit that I created around death and dying. And so there are all kinds of opportunities with with wise, wise teachers for support. There's for support for the person who's grieving, support for the person who's dying, ways to sit by a family member's bedside, ways to move to help children move through grieving processes.

[00:39:10] So that's a beautiful thing that I created during COVID with with colleagues. And then the last thing is if you are a healthcare professional or yoga teacher, I offer training around this, training for how to teach yoga to people at the end of life. So there are free resources around that on my website.

[00:39:27] You can check that out. And then if you want to go deeper and receive a certificate, not that certificates mean that much, but there is a certificate program that helps you learn how to bring yoga to elders, to those with chronic illness and to people at the end of life. so that you can support them with these tools and practices and ways that bring peace.

[00:39:47] Jill: Wonderful. And I'll put links to all of it in the show notes so it's easy for people to find them. 

[00:39:52] Jeanette: Thank you, Jill. And I love what you're doing too. So sweet to have this conversation and I look forward to the next time. 

[00:39:58] Jill: Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death Clearly. On next week’s episode, I am joined by Eryn Johnson, who I discovered years ago through her podcast Living Open.  She has a diverse background in spirituality and a passion for open conversations about everything having to do with life and death. Erin shares her experiences growing up in a strict religious environment, where beliefs about heaven and hell shaped her views on death. She shares with us that her early encounters with death were characterized by unspoken grief and anxiety. Join us for a deep and candid conversation about spirituality, childhood beliefs, and personal growth.

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[00:41:09] You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one time contribution. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of Seeing Death Clearly.