A Radical, Counterintuitive Stress Reliever with Alua Arthur | Staff Picks

(upbeat music) This is the 10% happier podcast, Dan Harris. (upbeat music) Hey, hey, happy Friday, everybody. Many of us, myself, included, spent a lot of time caught up in our neuroses and hang ups and work-a-day problems. So today, we're gonna talk about a radical, deeply counter-intuitive stress reliever. I'll tell you what it is in a moment, but first, let me give you some context. All this month on Fridays, we're highlighting some of our favorite moments from past episodes, golden nuggets from our vast archive. Actually, it's pretty vast at this point. And these nuggets are selected by members of the team, right here at 10% happier. So over the past few weeks, we've played you key moments from my interview with the comedian Bill Hader and also the Buddhist scholar, Bikhu Bodhi. And this week, you're gonna hear from Alua Arthur, who's an author and a death doula, which means that her job is to help people as they're dying. And it is Alua who has the aforementioned radical encounter intuitive anti-stress advice. It was actually several years ago right here on the show that Alua gave this advice, but over time, it has really stuck in the mind of our managing producer, Lauren Smith. So you will hear briefly from Lauren and then we will play the key moment from Alua. But first, just to quickly remind you of this cool new thing we're doing over at Dan Harris.com. If you become a paid subscriber, you'll get a companion bespoke meditation to go along with every full length Monday Wednesday episode today's a Friday, so there's no meditation today. But if you sign up today, you'll be ready for Monday's new companion meditation led by our amazing teacher of the month, Don Mauricio. Okay, right after the break, you'll hear from Lauren. And then Alua Arthur. Hello, everyone. I'm Lauren Smith. I'm the manager of the channel. I'm a great host of the channel. I don't know how many of the practices are conscious, but I will tell you some of the ones that sometimes I use occasionally. I'm trying to make a decision in my life. I'll look at it from my deathbed. I can just figure out how I'm feeling that day. So I don't do that necessarily. I can just sit with people in their fear and their discomfort. But I'm not trying to get them from point A to point B. I'm just being with them where they are. So when people say to you, I'm terrified. I'm terrified. I'm just freaking out. You don't have something you say that's comforting. You just sit in the dark with them. Yeah. What are you scared of? You know, we start there. What is a fear? What's the root of it? Help them tease it out. And often, like we were saying before, it's like, it's always your therapy in a weird way. Like you just start slowly numbing it. You take the sting out of the scary thing. And oftentimes it's things that we can do something about. Like if one of the big fears is the process of the body, which is a big one, what happens when we're dying? What does that feel like? We can start making plans to make sure that your pain is well managed, that you can have clues for first. We can talk about how thirst is actually supportive at the end of life, because it acts as an N.O.G.sic. It will numb the pain. There's things that we can discuss to take a little bit of the fear away. Thirst acts as a pain reliever or getting your thirst quenched. Dehydration. So dehydration is good. At the end of life, yeah. It serves as an N.O.G.sic. - Interesting. - Yeah. Do you have any, having been around the end of somebody's lives, have you developed some sort of suspicion about what's on the other side? - No. I know, I wish I did. What I notice is how often it looks like peace on people's faces as they're dying. Even if the mouth is open, because people do often die with their mouths open, it doesn't look scary. That's what I walked away with. Oddly, I haven't done it in a couple of years. This is pre-pandemic, but I walked away from my time in the hospice feeling much less scared. It's come back because I haven't been exposed recently, but it was not a scary place. And people weren't screaming in pain. Modern medicine is quite powerful. And as we establish, there's something about the human organism that seems to ease into this transition. But I remember quite powerfully feeling like it was a relief to have that experience. It sounds like it's time for you to go back to the hospice. And yes, absolutely. I find that people are more peaceful and they're ready on some level to die because likely, particularly in a hospice or so, it's coming at the end of a disease process. I was just tired of being sick. I get the flu and after three days, I'm ready to be over. Particularly when you are in a disease process, that's likely going to kill you. At some point, you're just like, all right, enough already. My father used to have this joke about when you get the stomach flu that you switch back and forth between thinking you're going to die and fearing that you won't. No, that's good. Yeah, it's good. So one of the other practices, if memory serves that you recommend for people is to really get pretty granular in thinking about how you want to die. I love that one. Why? Why do you love that one? Because it creates an ideal that can serve to create peace around it. So much of the fear around death is like, what's going to happen? What's it going to feel like? What's it going to be like? This is scary thing. I can't even think about it. So if I can think about it in a way that feels peaceful to me, my nervous system will be soothed by the idea. And so I suggest that people fill it with as much sensory detail as possible. Was it feel like? Was it smell like? Who's there? Who's not there? What are you wearing? What are you seeing? What are you smelling? What time of day is it? Where are you? What's the lighting like? Make it really tangible? Because I think once we can land it in the sensory experience, then we can ground it in the body, and then it doesn't feel so scary. Because this is my ideal death. This is something that feels comfortable or comforting to me. And oftentimes what I hear is it's like people Sunday afternoon, or when they're with the people that they love, or when they're in their comfortable clothes, or place that they're already familiar with. So if I think, well, if I can die in a way that I'm comfortable living, then maybe the process of dying won't be so bad. Maybe. You do this in your talk, but can you paint a picture of what your vision is? Yeah, sunset. Sun's going down, the sky's changing. The colors are really vivid that day. It's not one of these days with all the clouds, so I can't see the sky. But everything's changing. It's really pretty. I can see it. Ideally, I'm outside on a deck or something like that. In my own bed, or a bed that can be wheeled outside. There's no machines. I can hear the wind and the leaves. I can smell some knock-tompa amber. My people are around, but they're not just covering over me, looking at me, because I don't like being center of attention. It'll make me really uncomfortable. You don't like being the center of danger. You just came off stage in front of 2004. And they were in Bright Orange. And I don't like it. She's wearing Bright Orange, and it's pretty fetching. Thank you. But I want them to be like over there, talking amongst themselves and comforting each other. I want soft things. I want to feel soft things. I would love it if there were some flowers nearby. I want like a mustard yellow blanket or something. I just want to feel cozy and warm and safe. And like people care, but I'm not going to totally fuck up their lives by the fact that I'm dying. What about pain relief? Do you have some desire to avoid that so you can be maximally conscious? Yes. I want to be as conscious as possible, but with my pain managed. So middle path between obliteration through morphine and being as awake as you can tolerate? Absolutely. Although I know some people that want to be as awake as they can, one guy who I supported doing his end of life planned didn't want any pain medication at all. That's what he said. Did he change his mind? I don't know. He's still living. Oh, great. Yeah. Thank you to Aloa Arthur. She's amazing. And thank you to Lauren Smith for honing in on said amazingness. We'll put a link to the full episode in the show notes if you want to go check it out. Also, Aloa wrote a beautiful book called "Refleaf Perfectly Human." And you can learn more about her at goingwithgrace.com. Another quick reminder before you go, scoot on over to DanHarris.com to become a paying subscriber. And you'll get access to a bunch of perks, including bespoke companion meditations that come with every full length episode, plus live video guided meditation sessions, add free versions of this podcast and much more. Check it out, DanHarris.com. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasilie are recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer, Marissa Schneidermann, is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere, is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band. Islands wrote our theme.