In this episode 

Join me for the second episode in the Soul-Care Series where I chat with my dear friend Kelly Watkins about Grief. Kelly is a Board Certified Polarity Practitioner, a fellow polarity teacher (who happened to help me start the Hive!) and a grief expert who offers online sessions and mourning circles for anyone who has experience loss, trauma, or has endured the trials of being human. In this down-to-earth and intimate conversation Kelly shares about some of her own losses including her current walk with cancer, and offers some helpful ways to process and honor grief.

In this episode of the Soul-Care Series you will hear:

• About the ether element (throat chakra) and its relationship to grief and bliss
• About the importance of honoring grief and the whole continuum of our experience
• How grieving is both personal and universal
• Kellys amazing "wailing tub" exercise for allowing grief to leave your body and go down the drain
• A poem from my book which you can learn more about or purchase on Amazon here:   The Soul-Care Workbook: A 33 Day Journey Through your Chakras and Elements  

Summary 

Welcome dreamers, seekers, empaths, and healers! My name is Amanda Lux of the Elevation Hive school and community membership for energy medicine and dreamwork. In this podcast, I share teachings, musings, poems, songs, and interviews with other amazing humans who walk the healer's path. 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Go to Elevationhive.com to learn more about the upcoming classes in Polarity therapy and in-person and online dream circles  

• Learn more about Kelly Watkins and her Mourning circles
• Check out my art at AmandaLux.com
• Purchase the Soul-Care Workbook on Amazon here:   The Soul-Care Workbook: A 33 Day Journey Through your Chakras and Elements  

• Click here buy me a cup of coffee or show your support for this podcast. So much energy goes into the creation of this free content and I'm a one-woman show over here. I really appreciate your appreciation! 

Thank you for listening, sharing, reviewing and sending me your dreams! 

I love to read them. 

Songs used in this episode:

Alone/All One theme song written and performed by Amanda Lux

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/sonder-house/let-go-josh-jacobson

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/sonder-house/ventes-tsunami-stones

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/danijel-zambo/sun-in-the-heart

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/adi-goldstein/what-really-matters

I feel like intimacy with yourself has to involve

catastrophic grief, you know, that knock you to your knees.

I can't catch my breath.

Grief, and that you find pieces of yourself and definitely some

compassion that is inaccessible.

Otherwise, if we don't fall down and grind your face into the asphalt a little...

Welcome to a Lone Traveler's Guide to the Divine, a podcast for

dreamers, seekers, healers, and anyone on their healer's journey.

My name is Amanda Lux and I'm the creator of The Elevation Hive School and Community

for Energy Medicine and Dreamwork.

And this is the second episode in a series on soul care, which is a term

that I've created and I write about in my book, the Soul Care Workbook, which

offers a multidimensional view of tending to the deeper self or tending to our

whole self beyond the physical body or even our emotions or mental states.

Which is implied in self-care, but soul care really goes beyond that.

Incorporating tools and exercises based in polarity therapy that help

us to tend to our energy body as well.

In this series of episodes, I am sharing some poems from the book.

Uh, I write a poem for each of the elements, and I will be

opening and closing each episode in this series with those poems.

And in each episode I will be focusing on soul tending by exploring sort of the,

what we call in polarity, the negative and positive polls of each element.

And today's element is the ether element , and we're focusing on

the, , continuum of grief and bliss.

Those are the positive and negative pull experiences that reside in

our ether or our throat chakra.

So I invited a really dear friend of mine, kelly Watkins to share some

of her wisdom around this topic.

From a polarity perspective, she is an incredibly wise learned person and

she is going through her own cancer journey, and has probably endured more

loss than anybody I've ever met in my entire life, with so much grace.

She spent most of her life supporting other people through their grief.

I would definitely consider her a grief expert.

She was a hospice nurse for nine years and labored and delivery

nurse for the same amount of time.

She works now doing polarity therapy with and leading mourning circles

where you mourn, uh, and grieve together, which is just a beautiful

thing, , for people who have experienced all kinds of trauma and loss.

And, you know, just anyone who's been human and had challenges

you're all welcome to attend.

So I'm excited to share that conversation where Kelly and I discuss grief in some

of her, her wisdom and , some helpful tools and suggestions that she offers.

But before I get into the interview, I wanted to just give a little bit of

context around this energetic continuum of the ether that I was sharing, and kind

of offer a little attunement to the e.

and a little story.

So it's gonna be a juicy episode full of resources

. And if you're listening to this and

something, this is definitely going to offer some medicinal bits for you.

And if you're, you're not there currently, and you're wondering, well,

why would I want to, uh, dip into grief?

How would that even serve me to consider

I mean, don't we usually wanna keep grief away, , if we're not in it

actively, why would we want to go there?

Is really what I wanted to say.

And I wanna just offer this idea that we all experience grief and

at different times, and especially in our culture, there's not a lot

of resource and or encouragement.

To really fully experience our own grieving, it's often encouraged

that we hide it or move through it as quickly as possible, and there's

a lot of judgment and shame around feeling those difficult emotions.

And I wanted to share this great quote by Francis Weller who wrote the

book, the Wild Edge of Sorrow, rituals of Renewal, and the Sacred Work of.

He says, I am not suggesting that we live a life preoccupied with sorrow.

I am saying that our refusal to welcome the sorrows that come to us, our inability

to move through these experiences with true presence and conscious awareness,

condemns us to a life shadowed by grief.

welcoming.

Everything that comes to us is the challenge.

This is the secret to being fully alive.

So just honoring that we are all going to experience grief at

different times, and this is because our energy is meant to pulse.

It contracts and expands.

and we're not meant to stay open.

We're meant to close at times, and the amount of grace that we can bring to

this process of dipping in and out of our positive and negative experiences.

Is really what we want to learn how to cultivate is that ability to move between

them, to hold them even simultaneously, to actually embrace and go into our grieving

while maintaining that deeper knowing of our oneness and our interconnection

to feel in the depths of our soul, the, the separation and the struggle.

and the sorrows.

While experiencing and staying in touch with the depth of our joy and

our connection and our belongingness.

This is how we can increase our vitality.

This is how we can fully experience what we're here to experience in the full.

. So just to consider this, that

in that pulsation, that we're not here to avoid one end or the other.

and to get out of grief as quickly as possible isn't really the point.

It's to experience it as thoroughly and with as much resource as possible

to modulate that in the ways that we need to while also moving through

what we need in order to really.

and there's a really beautiful story that illustrates this that I wanted

to share and I found, I came across this story in one of the old handouts

I had for the Polarity energetic communications class, which I'm actually

about to teach in a couple of days

here in Olympia, Washington.

And this story is called the, but.

There is a person who finds a cocoon of a butterfly and one

day a small opening appears.

They sit and watch the butterfly for several hours as it struggles to force

its body through the little hole until it seems to stop making any progress.

It appears as though it could go no further.

This person decides to help the butterfly, so they take a pair of scissors and snip

off the remaining bit of the cocoon.

The butterfly then emerges easily, but it has a swollen

body and small shriveled wings.

The person continues to watch the butterfly because they expect that

at any moment the wings will enlarge and expand and be able to support

the body, which would contract in time, but neither happens.

In fact, the butterfly spends the rest of his life crawling around with

a swollen body and shrivelled wings.

It is never able to fly.

What this person in their kindness and haste does not understand is that

restricting the cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get

through the tiny opening is the way that the fluids get forced from the

body of the butterfly into its wings so that it can be ready for flight.

Once it has achieved its freedom from the co.

Sometimes our struggles are exactly what we need in our life, and if

we go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us.

We would not be as strong as we could have been, and we could never fly.

So just tuning into now this story and

recognizing that

we can trust our own process, even the uncomfortable,

, terrible, struggling parts.

and we can be patient with ourselves in those moments.

Remembering that those two are necessary experiences in order

for us to learn how to fly.

And I wanna just invite you now to just tune into your own ether as you

consider this to your own throat center.

Maybe taking a breath and allowing the words that I'm speaking to just wash

over you for a moment as we invoke the ether element, tuning into that continuum

of grief and bliss that resides there.

Bringing your awareness into your body and the sensations and to the subtle.

That resides within and around your physical body and in this location,

in the Throat Center, we have the seat of our truth and our ability

to be expressed authentically.

And here we can open up, we can be heard, we can be seen and witnessed,

and we can deeply listen to others without, with our whole being.

and we cannot even listen to spirit, to our own guidance, our inner

guidance, our higher guidance as well.

From this place, we can engage in the conversation that Spirit is having with us

and, and our throat center.

When our energy is flowing, we can experience incredible connect.

A blissful sense of oneness as we merge with the vast

universal awareness that is us.

And then there will be moments when our energy will contract, when we

will move into a cycle of smallness and we may feel alone or far away.

Or helpless.

Or constricted.

And that's okay.

And we're just gonna say hello to the grief and to the old

grief that might be there.

And we're going to acknowledge that we're here to experience

the full range of our humanness,

that we're here to be both vast and separate.

and that the gift is that when we can hold both of these poles and

slide between them with fluidity and grace, then we can drop, then we can

experience ourselves as that single drop in the ocean separate from the rest

while simultaneously know.

and feeling and experiencing ourselves as the entire ocean itself.

We are both.

And I'm gonna open this episode with this poem from the Soul Care

workbook on Ether Space Sound.

Form grief, the unborn star filled knights and open vistas,

imperfections and reflections.

Choking notions.

Om filled oceans of renewal space.

Oneness and separation.

The hollows, the bellows, the hallowed places.

Whole spacious, graciously returning to center to now flying through Infinity

Sparkling with pur.

Vibing with the frequency of luminosity, invoking, yaking, all things no things.

The creative spark, stark and empty, full of neutrality,

unlimited possibilities space.

As I move into this conversation with Kelly Watkins, I invite you to listen.

Enjoy yourself.

This is a fun conversation.

She's a very fun person.

As we explore and splash around in the topic of grief.

You

have Kelly, an incredible perspective that's

really rare and sacred and special.

And so, because you know, a lot of us have our own grief and some

of us get extra loads of that.

and then there's those of us who show up and hold space for other people's

grieving in all kinds of ways.

And you are one of those people that have been specifically on the planet holding

space for all kinds of grieving, for, for decades, maybe your entire life.

Have you, when you were little, were you doing this?

I think you were.

I was.

And thank you.

Oh my gosh.

Uh, yeah, I think I was about four years old doing an animal cemetery.

My friend Carol and I like, uh, walking up and down the alleys

and to find a dead animal.

Cause we wanted to bury it.

We wanted to say a prayer, we wanted to make a cross and we wanted to have some

kind of special thing cuz oh my gosh, poor thing died and he's gonna do this.

I don't know what the feeling was, but it was something, you know, it felt like

some important job that we needed to.

Yeah.

Until my mom found out and she was, you know, a little grossed out and

she was a little grossed out by it.

Yeah.

. Amanda Lux: I think that's really cool.

But I love that, that you did that and that that's sort of been

a theme throughout your life.

And I know that you spent a long time working in this field of death and

I know that you've spent a long time also working in the field of, of birth.

, do you wanna say anything about your life experience in relationship to grief or

how that's taken you to where you are now?

Yeah, so I think that having a mom that died when I was

young certainly ignited something.

I was about 22 when she died, and you know, little babies and you just kind

of want that older layer ahead of you.

And if it's not there, then.

A little, you know, I don't wanna say broken, but it

definitely shapes who you become.

And in some ways I think the death work that I've done is still

tending to that pain that I have.

You know, of course.

But also I'm fascinated by how little attention we put towards

something that is basically the one of the largest moments of our life.

Like we have to literally muster up the courage to.

Goodbye to everything.

We love every person.

We love every feeling.

We love every emotion, every experience, every food, every orgasm, every whatever.

It all goes away and nobody wants to talk about it.

for good reason,

but I don't know.

I'm a sucker for the underdog and I'm bummed that nobody wants

to walk arm and arm with death.

It's just the.

This is the story of your life.

How are you gonna fit everything in, in this little thing?

And if you don't, what happens?

And if you do, what happens?

And how do you walk with other people that are saying goodbye

to literally all the things that they have loved in their lifetime?

So I guess mostly I just wish that maybe now my biggest platform is

that I want people to feel really.

, like they're good stewards to humans and that they, they wanna help people through

the really difficult things that maybe nobody has been able to help them through.

And just how to be a good community member through caring for one

another with death and birth.

You know, that whole gig.

Yeah.

So I was a nurse, like my mom died when I was 22.

I started nursing school the day after her funeral per her.

Per her orders and then did labor and delivery for a good eight years and

then did hospice for another eight years and it had, you know, that weird

experience of seeing those as both in the same job, you know, the same

experience, the same veil for sure.

Somebody's coming in, somebody's going out.

They both have about as much information.

, you know, . Yeah, it's kind of cool.

It's really like a beautiful thing and um, I just tr love trying to find as many

ways as I can to wiggle that into whatever it is I'm doing in the world at the time.

Yeah.

Well, and I know that you've been also leading some mourning circles and.

That's morning.

Not good Morning.

Morning.

Not good morning.

I did have one person show up for it thinking it was a good morning circle

and it was a cry morning circle.

So I might, I might change the name.

. Amanda Lux: Well, I know that you've been

I mean, there are.

Grief circles, but I love, I actually love the idea of mourning as a

communal practice, as something that we could come together and do to mourn

together is really a beautiful thing.

And you're working with all kinds of people with all kinds of grief.

And you do that in private practice and you do that in groups and.

. I know that you know some things about that.

In addition to walking with your own grief, I know like you've been

dealing with cancer, you have had multiple mothers die recently.

You were mentioning that when we first got on here, . That sounds weird.

Multiple mothers.

I had a remarkable set of mothers.

There's no denying it, and so their absence is definitely felt right now.

propelling me more into this subject and more into honoring like our ancestors

before they become dead ancestors.

Like we wanna really capture these humans that shape us and soak,

soak them in before they're gone.

Yeah, our culture's a little funny about that, but yes, I have definitely,

uh, . I had one of my, my ex-mother-in-law was 97.

My other mother-in-law was 87.

And um, I think my stepmom was up in her late seventies, but such a contrast

from my mom, mom who died at 55.

Yeah.

and now I'm kind of doing this, I, I don't feel like I'm dying right this

minute, but I have been diagnosed with a blood cancer that they

consider incurable three years ago.

And let me just say, I thought, wow man, this fits, I'm gonna really, really know

how to handle myself being diagnosed with cancer cuz I'm really knowledgeable.

, you know where that's going.

Yeah.

I just.

, I'm not good at it.

It's not the same thing.

to walk in your own finiteness.

There, there's something in there of course, but it's a whole different

experience to have courage or to be clear and communicate and know what

you need and, and to do it, you know, alone is, uh, I mean like without

a partner, it's just really a trip.

But as we know, there's no accident.

So I'm walking this thing, really trying to hear.

You know, the information and then transmute it or, or recreate

it or do it in a new recipe so that it's helpful before I crop.

You know, I'm gonna have some really helpful wisdom that can bubble up to

the surfaces for everyone, for my kids,

especially.

Getting to hear you talk about your life and your walk and your path and

where you are now is so humbling to me.

I just feel in awe of all that you have done and are you have a breadth

of experience and knowledge when it comes to this topic, specifically

of grief and a way acknowledging and holding space for the importance of

grieving and acknowledging our grief.

And I just.

I just wanted to give you an opportunity to speak to that because there's people

who are listening who have grief.

We all have grief.

You know, it actually makes me wanna kind of choke up just thinking about , how much

grief we all have in all the different ways that we carry it, you know, that

we accumulate it just from being born.

It's difficult being.

and there's all kinds of difficulties that come up along the way, and we're

not, we're not taught how to deal with it.

We're not really given those tools.

And maybe at some point in history they were preserved and

passed down from our elders.

But like you were saying, in our current culture, our elders are not

valued in the way that they could.

and their wisdom and all that they have walked through and accumulated

and learned is not necessarily sought after in the way that it could be.

I guess my point is that it, it's, it's difficult to be human.

We all have grief and we don't really know how to do that.

You know, I think most people could be better at it.

I could be better at.

, and I mean, I, I've thought a lot about it, you know, uh, just in a

polarity context, of course, how to hold space for the whole spectrum of

experience that we, we get to have, but specifically that one grief in and of

itself relating to the ether element, the throat chakra in the polarity model.

And I'll just say that, that.

, there's the positive pull and the negative pull emotion associated

with every element or chakra.

And for ether, the positive pull would be that sense of total oneness,

bliss out connectedness with spirit.

And for the negative pull it would be grease and then, and that's not bad.

It's just like the, the other end of the pole . Right.

I would, I would rather say south.

And North Pole then positive, negative in this context, actually,

it's true.

Yeah.

It's a giant continuum too.

I think that it's, you aren't in touch with that part of your identity until you

experience grief and loss and that becomes just like a part of your soul then.

And I think it changes in, in expression maybe.

Potency and sometimes still, I mean, my mother's been gone for 33 years.

Sometimes I'll pop open the fresh sheets from the dryer and just crawl

to my knees brawling like a baby.

Cuz I need my mom.

Yeah.

And that's really hard for us to accept in our culture where we really want to

kind of have a remedy for everything.

We wanna smooth things and.

Be, um, you know, we, we just want an antidote, . It's such a bummer

and I'm really enjoying this process.

Maybe not for the last three years, but certainly in and out of it, of just, uh,

just devoting my heart to that part as well, like just the real disturbance of.

I'm just so sad and I'm just so bummed out, and I'm also so, so hopeful and

happy and like, gosh, wouldn't that be interesting if I just have one of

those like miraculous healings and I'm totally down for it, but it's hard to

walk with this new set of circumstances or this new feeling in your body

or this new absence of brain power.

you know, whatever the things are that Finiteness bring.

. Yeah.

To your experience, it's probably a little bit the same for everyone

because it's just a, I don't think I've ever tended to a person that was

dying, that expected on on some level.

I don't think that we walk around going, I bet it's around the corner.

You know?

I think it just shows up and you go, oh shit.

Whoa.

I don't know how to walk with the end of me.

I don't know what that even.

. Yeah.

I would say that I've never really seen grief being expressed in the same way.

Really.

Really.

And even when our parents died, each of my five siblings had a completely different

version of what acclimating to life was.

Yeah.

And all of the little things that you get to patch up the holes

of energy leaking out of your.

Right.

Sometimes booze, sometimes a bike.

You know, different tools and, and when I think of tending energetically

or being a doula, a life doula to your soul, like what is that?

And really just is a lot of patience and a lot of listening, which is

what we have been trained for.

You and I.

We're trained to listen and have patience.

. Yeah.

I love that.

That nobody does it the same way, and that even within our own

experience, it's not linear and it's, it, it, there's no remedy.

It's something that we have to learn how to be with as opposed to get through,

and that it does change and evolve.

and become easier at different times.

Yet there's no way to, to just say, this is what it is, or this is how it will be.

We're always a little blind with it.

We really

are.

Yeah.

And I think, uh, you know, I guess that comes from a lot of

different things, but what I'm.

What I have a challenge with is equipping like the idea or the

notion that you could equip the people that will be grieving for you.

Like is there something that you can do?

Is there some part of the puzzle that you can capture and live while you're here

in your life and in your relationships?

Is there healing to be done before you're dead?

That's where I'm at.

That's where I'm at right now.

I was like, okay, how do I do.

in a way that's healthy for everyone.

Yeah.

To revisit parenting errors or to revisit life mistakes or whatever.

What, uh, I mean, I'm.

We all have tons of it and some people are like, dude, I don't need to go back.

I'm good with whatever I chose and how I'm living and what I believe and

who I hurt and whatever, whatever.

Like that's just what I did and I don't feel like I have a million apologies to

do, but I'm darn sure curious and hopeful and interested if maybe we could find

some soft water to kind of float around in and be like, let's talk about some of.

Like the experiences that you had that created pain in your life.

Mm-hmm.

But also so that we can untangle some of our knots so that we can

untangle some things and have a deeper understanding of what some of those

memories were, or instances or, you know.

Wow.

That just sounds like such a gift.

And you know, just in that thought of like, we're all

going to die at some point.

wouldn't it be good if we lived like that?

Just making sure that we're untangling all of our knots, clearing up any of

the misconstrued things, places we've unintentionally caused harm to go

back and do those repairs in our life.

I, I feel inspired.

I had this idea on that vein when I reached out to you recently.

I was just sitting in bed the other morning and suddenly it occurred to me,

I was thinking about this topic of grief and grieving and how do we do it well?

How do we do it thoroughly?

How do we do it with the most possible consciousness and attention and to just

really, really be good at grieving?

How do we do that?

What does that take?

And then I started to think about really why.

Why is this something that we don't consider until we have a

death sentence or or until we're in the throes of it ourselves?

Why aren't we doing more preventative grief work?

And especially, why aren't we teaching our children these skills in school

or before they even get to school?

Because children often grieve open.

and thoroughly they're, they're pretty good at it, actually.

Perfect.

When they're little, and it's only over time as we get older that we

start to separate from our truths, our authentic experience and our authentic

ability to process our experiences.

And what if we were to like help them stay with that innate ability to grieve

What would the adult world look like?

if we weren't told to stop crying and do the thing, you

know, get it together or, yeah.

And think about all of the times that we grieve, that

doesn't have anything to do with death.

We're grieving all the time.

Yeah.

We don't really know how.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe we do.

Maybe it is.

Maybe the right way is to lay down and kick your feet and

vomit when you cried so hard.

Yeah.

Well certainly that's a right way.

I think that probably the right way would.

, I am guessing that the right way to grieve would be whatever feels the

most right to you in the moment.

. Kelly Watkins: Amen.

Amen.

And it has changed quite a few times.

You know, it just does grief changes and especially when you be access some

new resource that you didn't have, and then you kind of rise up a little and

then something brings you down and you know, you shuffle over to the east or

the west with your grief, . But I do think that it, there is some really

helpful information and that, um, grief doesn't have to be an overwhelming idea.

We're already living with grief anyway.

It's just a, a new way to maybe hold it for yourself and hold it,

brothers.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, one thing that I think about, so in polarity

there is that continu.

of the whole spectrum of experience within each of the elements, and for the ether,

as we mentioned, it's grief or as an experience of blissful interconnectedness

on the other end of that continuum.

But they're related.

And one thing that I really love about the e Easter element in

particular, in the the medicine wheel, we have the four directions.

Ether is sort of the whole wheel itself.

It contains everything.

And there's this sense of that when you go into ether, you're touching all the

things and you're holding all the things.

And so when I think about grief in particular as an experience, or

even bliss as an experience in total interconnected, There is on that

continuum, this feeling of being in touch with all the things at once.

It's so funny.

You can think I'm a big dork, but I ha I make appointments for my grief now.

I really do because I, you know, I'm kind of a pretty dramatic human being and I

really like to cause a big some chaos.

I just do.

I like to feel it so loud and big, and.

, but I just make appointments for a long time.

It's been Thursday at six and then at six o'clock I say okay,

and I, I mean probably before six I'll start getting my situation.

It's bath usually and I call it a wailing bath . And I put baking soda and I put

salt and I put EPS and salts and I'll output sometimes some essential oils.

Bergamont is really good, I think, for like just allowing stuff to, for me.

and sometimes my tuning forks, and sometimes I'll just put on some great

music and sometimes absolutely nothing.

But I just know that that particular time is for me to really be genuine

with what my heart feels like and not to feel embarrassed about letting it

rip and just like really going into it.

And sometimes it's that chaotic.

A lot of structure to it, but sometimes I really wanna get better and I

wanna like take what I'm hearing and feeling and transform it into

something that could be useful.

So getting in the tub while it's empty, and then putting a plug in and filling

it and then doing your wailing back.

And then when you, uh, pull the plug, you stay in the tub and you

keep wailing if you have it in you.

Yeah.

So the idea is that it.

Going out of the tub, going out of your body, and it has been unbelievably

helpful to just, um, maybe it's just saying it's important enough to me

that I'm going to show up for it every single week no matter what.

Even if it's ridiculous.

, even if that's not what other people do, I just get in the bathroom, cry my

head off, and it's helping me . Yeah.

Well, and I know that you mentioned you've been

doing this with others too.

You have shared this tool with other,

that you work with?

I do.

I work, I work for a nonprofit in Arizona, but that does a 16 week program

with all kinds of different traumas.

uh, we some really gnarly stuff.

So a lot of grimy, deep grief.

And

many humans,

you know, especially in the United States, are not,

like we've been saying, we just don't, we don't validate grief.

We think that means we're wimpy or we think that we should have our

crap together in order to not feel that, or that there's something

that other people have that we don't, that helps us be stronger.

I don't know.

What all of that is.

It's probably a million different things, but I think just saying, I have your back.

I know you're hurting.

I'm gonna be here with you while you cry it out.

I don't have any answers, but I definitely care about us enough to hold, hold this.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

Thank you for sharing that tool.

I think that could be really useful for some people.

, Kelly Watkins: what do

I know you paint

your grief.

I definitely think that art is a huge outlet for me, for all the

range of emotions and you know, specifically when I think about grief.

Absolutely.

Like creating, crying, singing, you know?

Yeah.

singing is, is a helpful tool for me.

But you know, I'm not in a place in the moment in my life where I'm

doing a lot of active grieving.

I have been there, I visit grief and I definitely hold

space for it with other people.

It's not something I'm, I'm daily tending in the moment, but that's

just where I'm at in the moment.

I certainly have, and I, when I have been in acute states of, of grieving.

, I can recall that there were so many emotions there that, that

remind me of that hoop of the medicine wheel, of the, the way

that grief contains all the things.

Like there was anger, there was frustration, there was

helplessness, there was disgust.

You know, there were all these other emotions that, that were

really part of that grief soup.

, it was super bitter, you know, , it did not taste good at all, and I

didn't wanna eat it or chew it up, you know, I didn't want to digest that.

It was just like, blah.

It's something that I personally, in my experience, of acute

breathing, wanted to get it out.

And so finding ways to get it out with, you know, sound or movement,

you know, running has been helpful.

I've had.

Runs where I'm crying and yelling while I'm running and that's

really great , that that would be good.

I run to move energy.

I paint, I create to move energy, but, and to like to be in the experience for sure.

Painting is really helpful for that.

It helps me to like to really view it from different angles, take a good deep

look at things and then I see things that I didn't see before and maybe.

The value in that for me personally, is that I can honor it as a whole picture.

It gives me a chance to step back and see it in a new light, and then I can really

appreciate that there's even beauty there.

You know that the bliss is in the grief, and at some point, if you

go through it deeply enough, there is this lovely, blissful place on

the other side, this sort of soft,

floaty feeling.

Well, our teacher says, hang out in the fire long enough and you'll slip on into

the softest water you've never seen.

Mm-hmm.

, it's our, our natural desire to just step out of the discomfort.

And I, I don't mean like stay in it and celebrate it and, and belong to it like

you're in a, a club, cuz I do that too.

I definitely sign up for grief and I believe what that is.

A storage container of things that you didn't quite know how to process through

for your life, and so now maybe they need a little extra attention or you know,

you're still learning this part that you weren't listening to for a few decades.

The word that I think about it is wholeness.

, I feel like intimacy with yourself has to involve catastrophic grief, you

know, that knock you to your knees.

I can't catch my breath.

Grief, and that you find pieces of yourself and definitely some

compassion that is inaccessible.

Otherwise, if you don't fall down and grind your face into the asphalt

a little, I definitely feel you there about the whole.

The whole in that there is something about going into the center of a thing

and eventually it's all the things

are there, turns it on.

The large, you know, the huge reverberated level, that's

what an enlightened person is.

Somebody that just sits in the drop of the thing.

He goes, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

. It's revolting and gorgeous and disgusting and disturbing and.

So I think what I'm saying is that it's a, it's an intimate walk that you sign up

for and you definitely want to take it.

And what you'll find is something that we don't even have language for and

it's fullness, if I could say that.

It's like tiny little molecules and little tiny threads of all the parts of yourself

you didn't even know you were missing.

And then you get to just sit there and hold that and know that you're safe.

I love the wailing tub and I love just so many things that

you shared about just being with yourself and that it's that it is a

unique experience to everyone and that we get to just learn it on our own.

Really, nobody can tell us how to do it.

There are no maps for how to grieve.

That we have to figure that out on our own.

And yet there are, you know, some tools.

I think in polarity the, probably the biggest tool I could think of is how to

be in neutrality, how to come to all of our experiences from a place of curiosity.

An openness and not needing to change it and having an, an ability to just

allow things to be what they are.

And that leads me to a place of trust of really deeply trusting that we do

have this innate intelligence that is, is organized in a way beyond

our knowing and that our experience and everything that we go through.

Has some organizational factors to it as well, and I like to think from

that place and polarity, when I come to my clients with that consciousness

or come to my own suffering with that consciousness, I feel better.

It's like there's this relief, this sense of, well, I know that there's something

right about this, even if I don't know what that is and I know that I have what

I need, even if I don't know what that is.

In the moment, and I know that I'm here to meet this, that

this is part of my journey.

I'm meant to do this and that it's growing me in the direction

that I need to be growing, even if it looks completely wrong.

I know that through the perspective of polarity and that philosophy,

that it's always right on some level.

It can't be wrong if you're having the experience.

It's the experience you're supposed to be having and to just come at it with

that total neutrality of this is the experience I'm having, and to be in it

and be with it, so totally and completely.

It can't help but open up.

That was

astonishingly gorgeous.

I like everything that you just said, and it's.

Exactly right.

That's exactly how it is for me and in our polarity world.

It's funny, you, you just made me realize a, a new way that I've

been in accessing neutrality.

You know how it is in our work, sometimes we, it's not so easy to be neutral,

especially around a subject or something, or a person that we care deeply about.

So.

, if I can just throw this out there since you've brought it up.

This is another thing that I used to do with my clients when they were,

um, in their stages of pain or in their stages of losing some function

in their bodies or physicality.

And it's funny how much it fits our work now, and it's actually how I do fulcrums

on when I'm about to begin a session.

I do this thing now.

It's almost like the 3D posters that we used to have where you stare off.

But I will name all the things I see, I'll say computer screen, the curtains,

the blind, this furniture that notebook, and I'm absorbing every single thing

that I see in it's full capacity.

And that tree that's six miles away in the moon and the thing, and that

bird that just flew by, and I'll just hold that pattern of the everything.

Everything Bagel , and I'll just hold that for literally 30 seconds

and it's almost like a vector.

And then I'm in my neutrality.

I'm like in the driver's seat of everything's okay.

It's all existing all at once.

It's all perfect.

Everything's right here, right now.

And I don't know, it's a funny little thing.

It just opens up a new room in my experie.

So it sounds to me like you're describing a way of attuning

to yourself that rather than attuning to having an earth or some idea of,

you know, your spirit in the center of your body or some breath or something

else that we might use, right.

Or go to, you're attuning.

Your energy and yourself to the present moment and to everything that's in the

field that's vis visible to you, and there's something that just like puts

you into the place of where you are.

Yeah, I, I mean, it's funny cuz when I used to teach clients

that are in the hospice world, I would probably be in bed with them,

which is really against the rules.

But that's probably where I would start, is being next to somebody to see what

the perspective is that they're having.

You could also do a chair.

You could just be there with yourself.

And just, uh, begin naming things.

And with the intention.

I would say before you start with the intention that you're going to try to

enter in the room of Everythingness and see what that feels like.

You're not trying to find anything.

Just see if you can access that cellular memory in your

body of being completely okay.

For just one.

Just for a.

with everything that you're aware of in your field.

And lord knows there's a million things we aren't aware of in our field.

But just, I'll start just naming things from the perspective that

this person is here with, with me.

And then males start saying, I hear a car, I feel the wound.

Um, my stomach hurt.

, I see that they're, you know, and just calling everything out that you could

possibly see in your visual field.

And adding to it.

And adding to it.

And adding to it until you think you've got it all.

And it's almost like a crass eye feeling.

Maybe like maybe you're just staring with everything coming in in symphony.

Mm-hmm.

that I think everybody's experienced that staring away feeling or staring

out into space thing where you can't wake up, you can't get out, it's.

, it's that that you're trying to capture, but you're inducing it and maybe you could

say you're inducing your own still point.

That's beautiful.

It feels to me like an etheric tool.

It feels like when you are trying to accept that all things can

exist and all are existing with or without your permission, and that

you have a place that's perfect and that there is a sequencing that you

aren't aware of, and that there.

Motion and movement and intelligence, like you said, working on your behalf.

So all that you're doing right now is to try to find the

muscle to get in that place.

I think people that are deep meditators have, um, you know, really easy tricks

of getting themselves into that place.

And maybe it is the same place for me.

I'm probably thinking of something a little more.

conscious maybe, or like workable.

From my perspective, it helps with accepting life.

Hmm

hmm.

Yeah.

So whenever we're in a place, if we have something going on that is

worthy of grieving or if we have ever experienced something that is.

Throwing us off our game a little bit, right?

And we're needing to find a way through the experience that we're

having emotionally, physically, mentally, whatever it might be.

Then one way is through this etheric tool that you're describing, one way

to ground or center or find acceptance.

Is to just start to name the things in your, that are in your visual

field and to become aware of all the sensations and all of the things.

It's a way of becoming fully present and that through that presence we

come to a natural state of sort of more acceptance or neutrality.

Right.

And neutrality.

And neutrality is just, It's the absence of a charge, right?

We feel charged in a negative way, or we can feel charged in a positive way too.

But neutrality is that that experience of not being charged about anything, of being

in totally present with and in acceptance of an observation of what is right.

Beautiful.

and that's a good place to be, especially in terms of, you know,

when we're, when we have something really big going on or when we are wanting to

honor grief in ourselves or with another, for another, then it can be helpful

to tune into that as a tool, right?

That way of how do we find acceptance in all things.

and it starts with the the here and the now and the basic, what's

in front of you, what's really happening, just what is this?

And like we were saying earlier, of course, if you can get really,

really, truly, deeply present with just what is everything, is there

? Kelly Watkins: Right?

Yeah, and I mean, grief aside, we could call everything that exists

on a Tuesday grief right now.

The world is full of reasons for grief of course, but we

becoming neurologically resilient.

Sounds so delicious.

And I think that's what any of these things with our polarity worlds will

definitely reveal is like, wow, you can become really strong in your.

You can become really strong in the invisible ways that just

make life feel supported and you didn't do an action to get it.

You're just growing neurologically and nervous system.

Yeah, and I think that that exercise that we just talked

about, that to me is in that lane.

It's in that vicinity of I'm just becoming strengthened with my invisible mesh.

I don't even know what that means, but I'm becoming, my baseline

is now 3.5 instead of minus two.

Yes, yes.

And I'm buoyant.

And I'm bouncy, and I'm a little plump most days.

And.

can feel something all the way to its fullness and then I'd still let it roll.

Well, yeah, and to me that's like, I'd rather have that than

just about any super Tylenol.

Hmm.

To stay calm in a storm, genuinely like, wow, I really have those ingredients.

It's not to say like you, it sucks to fold at the knees, and I do that too.

I think it's all.

\ related.

Yeah, I love that.

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and your wisdom

and some of your experience and tools.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of a Lone

Traveler's Guide to the Divine.

If you found this episode to be helpful, inspiring, supportive at all, please share

it with someone you think would appreciate it and consider leaving a review on Apple

Podcasts or wherever you're listening, that it would just mean so much to me.

If you would like to learn more about Kelly Watkins, you can

check out my website, elevation hive.com/ Kelly Watkins.

I have an entire page dedicated to her awesomeness and you can learn

more about her mourning circles and getting private session work with her.

I also have a link in the show notes to my book, which you

can purchase on amazon.com and.

, you can learn more about my upcoming classes in polarity therapy, energy

Medicine, and Dreamwork that are all listed on my website@elevationhive.com.

I appreciate your.

And participation in listening, and it is such an honor to be

in sacred community with you.