# Gina Chick - Don't Fight Life

An episode of [The Imperfects](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1476501557), 26 Nov 2023, 1 h 49 min.

Audio: https://enrichment.soundstack.com/4vjqq8/episode.flightcast.com/fq5aavg1i6nol6g8yd1g90r4.mp3

Gina Chick grew up… different. She wasn’t like the other kids, and they let her know about it. But as an adult she learned to see her “different” as a strength, which led to her most well-known achievement, outlasting everyone else for 67 days in the Tasmanian wilderness to win ALONE Australia. But as you’ll hear, that’s only a part of her story - as is the fact that she’s very close friends with Hugh Jackman. After going through some of the lowest lows a human can experience, Gina learned the power of discomfort and is here to spread the word in our very first ever outdoor episode! To learn more about Gina, her rewilding camps and 5Rythyms dance, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3QRnkzq To watch Alone Australia, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3Rd3m3 This episode includes a discussion about the loss of a child, if this feels like it might be too much for you to listen to right now, feel free to come back to it when you're feeling up to it. The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:03] My name's Ryan Shelton, and in this episode of The Imperfects, we would like to acknowledge the Palawa people of Lutruita, the original custodians of the island now known as Tasmania, where we're recording today's interview.
[0:15] We'd also like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the traditional owners of the lands where we live and work.
[0:22] To any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today, we extend a very warm welcome and our deepest respect.
[0:29] It's your culture's rich history of storytelling that we proudly pay homage to when we share stories on the imperfects.
[0:48] We're all imperfect.
[0:50] And on this podcast, I'll be chatting with a variety of interesting people who are willing to make themselves vulnerable by sharing their own struggles and imperfections.
[0:58] Then we'll discuss the invaluable takeaways we can all apply to our own imperfect lives.
[1:03] I'm Hugh Van Kylenberg from The Resilience Project.
[1:06] And I'm Ryan Shelton from My Mum.
[1:08] And I'm Josh from Hugh's Mum.
[1:10] And this is The Imperfects.
[1:24] Well, this is a different one.
[1:25] It's an exciting one, a great one, an outdoors one, a wild one.
[1:29] We are chatting to the winner.
[1:30] That is said with so much gusto.
[1:32] Yeah.
[1:33] Oh, I'm excited.
[1:34] It is.
[1:35] It's our first outdoors.
[1:37] I mean, we're not outdoors now.
[1:38] No.
[1:38] We're very much indoors.
[1:39] No, we are introducing the fact that we're about to be outdoors.
[1:42] Yes, exactly.
[1:43] This is the introducing for the out-troduce for the... Nah, it doesn't quite work.
[1:47] No, not at all.
[1:48] Damn.
[1:48] Far from it.
[1:49] But we are... Far from it.
[1:53] Jeez, you feel like I'm in the triple M box.
[1:55] I didn't mean it to be – I'm sorry about that.
[2:03] It's a long chat that I want to get to really quickly and I was just in my head thinking, let's make this quick.
[2:07] So I tried to wrap it up there by saying – I'm so sorry.
[2:11] No, no, no, no.
[2:12] Jokes that don't work.
[2:12] We don't have time for it.
[2:14] I'm so sorry.
[2:16] We have Judith Chick, the winner of Alone, the SBS.
[2:19] Incredible show.
[2:20] She survived in the wild for 67 days, shot to celebrity stardom with that incredible victory, I guess you've called, living in the wild.
[2:32] She didn't just survive though, she flourished.
[2:34] Yeah, I think so.
[2:35] Totally, totally.
[2:36] Basically just like hanging out.
[2:37] Yeah, and so for a long time we wanted to talk about the power of wilderness or being outside, being in the elements as far as the impact it has on your mental health and, well, there's no one better to do it.
[2:49] Then we joined a chick and especially to do it, we went to Tasmania for it.
[2:52] I know.
[2:53] So we did it in the elements too.
[2:54] We actually did it in the outdoors and it was just, it was brilliant.
[2:59] Yeah.
[2:59] Bit windy.
[3:00] Yes.
[3:00] Yeah.
[3:01] Apologies for that.
[3:01] We've done a bit of work to try and bring that down a little bit.
[3:04] It was.
[3:05] I don't know if you're going to bring this up, but did you guys notice how we were, it was cold and windy in Tassie.
[3:12] But in like an electrifying sense.
[3:14] Oh, it was the best.
[3:15] Felt alive.
[3:15] Yeah, sure did.
[3:16] It was amazing.
[3:18] And, but I was like jacket, had a blanket over my legs and was pretty cold throughout the interview because we were just sitting there talking.
[3:25] And then at the end I noticed she wasn't wearing any shoes.
[3:27] Oh yeah.
[3:29] Loved it.
[3:30] Classic Gina.
[3:31] Yeah.
[3:32] Before we do go to Gina, I mean, what she did is so incredible.
[3:38] I mean, I have a few strengths in this life, but I would be so bad.
[3:44] I would be so bad at what she did.
[3:47] Like this morning on the way here.
[3:49] I mean, she had to hunt her own food and gather her own food.
[3:52] Bitter hunting, a lot of gathering.
[3:54] I found it hard to buy an apple this morning.
[3:57] I stopped at the supermarket on the way and my favorite apple is a pink lady apple.
[4:03] I think they're the nicest.
[4:04] And I just like – when I was – I couldn't find them anywhere but I couldn't remember what it was called, the type.
[4:11] I was like, pink lady, that sounds like a weird name for an apple.
[4:14] Isn't it actually cool?
[4:15] I just was second guessing myself and there was a man stocking the shelves.
[4:17] I said, excuse me.
[4:19] Do you have any pink?
[4:21] And I paused for ages hoping that he would like – Continue, yeah.
[4:25] Finish and I would go, oh, pink ladies.
[4:26] But he didn't say anything.
[4:27] I said, do you have any pink – Dildos?
[4:29] Dildos.
[4:32] For those just tuning in for the first time, that, of course, is a reference to an older episode, specifically the Tim Minchin episode where Hugh told an astounding...
[4:42] It's got nothing to do with Tim Minchin, though.
[4:44] No, no, no.
[4:44] No, it is not a story about Tim Minchin.
[4:46] It is a story that Hugh told before the Tim Minchin chat, an astonishing story about an encounter with a pink dildo.
[4:53] An encounter, yeah.
[4:54] It wasn't mine.
[4:55] I didn't encounter it.
[4:56] We're not going into the story again.
[4:58] Anyway, yeah.
[5:00] And he didn't say anything.
[5:01] I went, it's like lady apples?
[5:05] He went, any what?
[5:07] And I said, do you have the lady?
[5:10] Is that a type of apple?
[5:10] He goes, what are you talking about?
[5:12] And we couldn't, we just didn't.
[5:13] I said, is that a, and I was like, it's not a type of apple.
[5:16] What am I doing?
[5:17] And then I couldn't, and I panicked.
[5:18] And then I was going to leave.
[5:20] I was just going to turn around and leave.
[5:21] So I was like, oh, I've really stuffed this up.
[5:23] I couldn't even buy myself an apple this morning.
[5:25] Jeez.
[5:26] Yeah, I mean, it is hard though to buy apples.
[5:29] Like I totally get it.
[5:31] Because you didn't even think to go and search for it.
[5:34] You just asked.
[5:35] No, I was looking around.
[5:36] I couldn't see.
[5:37] I couldn't see the pink ladies.
[5:37] I was looking for like, what's the name that's a bit like a pink lady?
[5:41] If it's not pink lady, it'll be in the ballpark.
[5:43] So did you get an apple at all?
[5:44] I bought a huge box in the end because... Of pink ladies?
[5:47] Yeah, I think so.
[5:49] Yeah.
[5:49] I think so.
[5:50] Anyway.
[5:51] I think so.
[5:54] They're green, but...
[5:57] So good.
[5:58] Not a jazz man or whatever it is.
[5:59] Jazz.
[6:00] Just jazz.
[6:00] Oh, just jazz.
[6:01] A jazz man.
[6:03] There's pink ladies and jazz men.
[6:04] Where are all the jazz men?
[6:09] Where do they hang out?
[6:11] Over by the trombones, you'll find them.
[6:14] The trumpets and the big piano.
[6:15] That's where the jazz men are.
[6:17] He's chilling out.
[6:19] He's got a big pile of apples with long cigarettes and... And hats.
[6:24] And some soothing piano playing.
[6:26] They're the jazz man.
[6:27] Wouldn't that be great?
[6:28] I'd get one of those apples.
[6:30] The jazz man.
[6:32] The jazz man.
[6:33] The big lady.
[6:35] Anyway, Gina Chick.
[6:36] Gina Chick, yeah.
[6:37] So she talks about so many incredible things in this.
[6:40] I mean she talks about the just tragic, the grief that she's experienced in her life and how she dealt with that and just like the positive outcomes that come from discomfort and like leaning into discomfort, which she has.
[6:53] put herself through a lot of discomfort with being on alone for starters.
[6:57] And yeah, and just I loved this chat so, so much.
[7:01] And I think the connection to nature and how alive you feel.
[7:07] Well, it's almost like as soon as we got to Tasmania, it's like we kind of felt, you kind of feel it.
[7:11] Like as soon as you get into a place like that, you're like, oh God, this is really, something feels good.
[7:16] And she really explains why we felt good being there.
[7:20] yeah and and the other thing to say is just when you watch it on television you kind of think when i knew we were going to meet i was thinking i hope she's the real deal i hope that is what she's like she's more than the real like she is absolutely legit the real that is her what you see on television that is her and she's um what a force of nature quite literally
[7:40] Yeah, absolutely.
[7:41] Even if you didn't watch the series, even if you don't know who she is, it doesn't matter.
[7:46] You'll get a feel for who she is very quickly.
[7:49] She is so full of life.
[7:51] And the other thing, just bonus fact, she's friends with Hugh Jackman.
[7:55] I think she's best friends with Hugh Jackman.
[7:57] I didn't know he had a MySpace top friends list.
[8:02] Yeah, Gina Chicks and Hugh Jackman's Top 8 Friends on MySpace, so that's pretty good.
[8:08] A jazz man himself.
[8:09] He is a real jazz man.
[8:10] Yeah.
[8:10] Yeah.
[8:15] Well, we... Well, two things.
[8:21] We're in Tassie.
[8:22] We're in Tasmania and we are outside.
[8:26] It's an outdoors episode.
[8:28] The first ever.
[8:28] We, for a long time, we've wanted to do an episode on...
[8:32] the incredible benefits of being outside, being in nature, wilderness, and who better in the world to do this episode with than Gina Chick, the winner of Alone, the SBS series, which was just magnificent.
[8:50] Gina, welcome to the Imperfects.
[8:52] Thank you.
[8:54] It's such a privilege and an honour to be here.
[8:57] And I'd also like to echo your beautiful acknowledgement and just give my gratitude to the Palawa, just the Palawa people of Lutruwita who've, you know, given me so much in my whole journey.
[9:09] So yeah, it's great to be back on Lutruwita on Palawa country again.
[9:14] Beautiful.
[9:15] Thanks.
[9:15] Fantastic.
[9:16] Wow.
[9:17] 67 days, Gina.
[9:18] Now, for those of you who don't, who didn't follow the Alone series, I'm actually one of those.
[9:23] I couldn't watch it because I get quite bad vertigo.
[9:25] And with the handheld cameras, I just, they sent me into a spin, quite literally, so I read about it.
[9:32] I would actually read about what you did, and I'd watch small highlights that I could.
[9:36] And you did 67 days out in the wild.
[9:40] So you read the book adaptation of Alone.
[9:43] I had to read that.
[9:44] I had to read about it online and watch small snippets.
[9:47] But that is but a snippet, a very small snippet of your extraordinary life.
[9:55] There are... We are definitely outside.
[9:58] We are definitely outside.
[10:00] Yeah, well, I mean, maybe it's worth for people, because there might be people out there who don't know what the show alone really is about.
[10:05] Yeah, yeah, good idea.
[10:06] It might be worth, like, whether, Jeannie, you want to talk about, like, the experience of being on alone and...
[10:12] So Alone Australia is a, it's a, they call it a reality show, but it's really a documentary series.
[10:19] And 10 Australians, well, in Australia, 10 Australians got dropped into the wilds of Lutruwita, Tasmania, with 10 items that we could choose from a very, very small list.
[10:32] very basic list and our wits.
[10:35] And the aim of the game is to see who can last the longest.
[10:39] And the only ways to leave are to tap a red button on a sat device, which basically says, this is crap, get me out of here right now.
[10:50] Or I've been bitten by a snake or I'm drowning or something like that's the help button.
[10:55] Yeah.
[10:56] And then you're still going to have to wait at least an hour for them to come and get you.
[10:59] Yeah.
[11:00] So you wouldn't want to be bleeding out.
[11:02] Jeez, that's terrifying.
[11:04] And then you can call on a satellite phone, which is the one where you see them going, I'm officially tapping out.
[11:10] You can be medically extracted because the medic has decided that you are medically unfit.
[11:18] to continue because you're at the risk of organ failure from starvation or some other health issue.
[11:25] Or you can find out that you've won by your loved one turning up to jump out from behind a bush to go, surprise!
[11:33] You won.
[11:34] You're the last person standing, and that's what happened to me.
[11:37] How close were you before you won, after 67 days?
[11:42] How many times, if at all, were you hovering over the red button?
[11:45] Never.
[11:46] Not once.
[11:46] So this is what I want to get to because you're...
[11:50] I mean, I feel like...
[11:52] This experience alone is just but a fraction of your life and you live the most extraordinary life.
[11:59] There's a quote that when I was reading about you from Marcus Aurelius, one of the Stoics, who said, we have control over our mind, not events.
[12:09] The sooner we realise that, the sooner we discover strength.
[12:12] Yes.
[12:13] I mean, the other thing that comes to mind is tub-thumping Chumbawamba.
[12:17] I get knocked down, I get up again.
[12:19] That's the other one that came to mind.
[12:20] I have to give you to be honest.
[12:23] Maybe the first time Marcus Aurelius.
[12:25] Let's definitely keep the Marcus Aurelius bit in.
[12:29] I don't know.
[12:29] I get knocked down and I get up again.
[12:32] Classic Gina Chick anthem.
[12:35] But you have seriously been knocked down and the way you have risen is just, it's glorious and it's so inspiring.
[12:42] Oh, thank you.
[12:43] So I want to talk about that today.
[12:44] But also, I mean, being here in Tasmania, I mean, we are going to get through this interview.
[12:49] If it rains, I feel like you've done 10 weeks in the wild.
[12:52] We can do an hour sitting around a table in drizzle and wind.
[12:55] That's totally fine.
[12:56] So I'm happy to do that.
[12:57] But I also want to talk about...
[12:59] the benefits of being outside and why it's just so great for us, because it is, and I want to get to that as well.
[13:05] So your childhood, this beautiful photo I've seen of you of chewing up birdseed and a birdseed and eating the birdseed out of your mouth.
[13:16] From a young age, you must have felt like, I feel like I'm a bit different to the other kids around here.
[13:21] Is that a bit of a... A little bit?
[13:23] Teeny, tiny bit, tiny bit different.
[13:26] Yeah, I can remember being about six years old and, like, being bullied ferociously.
[13:31] Like, I was bullied ferociously.
[13:33] And just looking at the other kids and thinking and having this epiphany moment of going, oh, all I have to do is be like them and this will stop.
[13:42] And then instantly this, uh-uh, can't do it.
[13:45] Wow.
[13:45] Can't do it.
[13:46] And so, yeah, I...
[13:51] I don't know how it works, how our personalities come in, but one of the things that I see on our rewilding camps is that when a kid jumps out of the car for the first time and runs towards the longhouse or hides in the car, we see them as they are.
[14:07] Like, we see who they're going to be right there.
[14:09] And then over the years, those kids evolve, and then they're mentoring, and we can look back and go, we could see that.
[14:15] And I came in like this.
[14:18] Like I came in with three people's energy in one body.
[14:22] And so I think it was like it took a lot for me to learn how to function in a world that looked really – the way humans looked very different to my experience of being in my own body.
[14:36] And, you know, as kids, we don't come in with a manual.
[14:40] We don't come in with a like, okay, these are the challenges you're going to face and this is how you're going to do it.
[14:44] It's more, well, you just do what you do and then life feeds back, you know, information.
[14:51] And then how we respond to that is then creates our next sort of choices.
[14:55] And I love that Marcus Aurelius quote because it's something that I always say, which is we can't control what happens, but we can control how we respond.
[15:05] And it doesn't matter like how...
[15:08] how sort of like closely the world can come in on us, we still have a choice in how we respond to that.
[15:15] And I think I'm incredibly blessed to have a family where I've never for one second in my life doubted that I'm loved.
[15:24] Never for one second have I doubted that.
[15:25] And I think that my life would have been very, very different if that wasn't true.
[15:29] Your mum seems like a beautiful, fascinating character who you said before that you came into a world with three...
[15:37] I'm guessing you're saying, like, your mum, the influence of your mum and her as a person.
[15:40] Yeah, well, I mean, she was a part of that.
[15:43] No, I think I got born with the energy of three people or the personality of three people all in one, squished into one body.
[15:49] And who are the three people?
[15:51] Ah, yeah.
[15:52] Or do I have to try and, like, extract those people?
[15:55] Well, it's not like there's three distinct people, but more just...
[16:00] I've always felt too big for my skin.
[16:03] Right.
[16:03] I've always felt too big for my skin and I've always haven't had that kind of human programming of conforming.
[16:13] Like I've just, I've never had it.
[16:15] I don't understand it.
[16:16] I don't understand a force that says that the way that we are is wrong, that, you know, for us to just be us is wrong.
[16:24] I mean, the way I see it is like, is a tree ever the wrong shape?
[16:30] Ever?
[16:31] Yeah, love it.
[16:32] Yeah.
[16:33] No, does a cloud like fluff up the wrong way?
[16:37] Is a wave, you know, is a wave too wavy?
[16:40] Like it's just like everything is what it is and everything else in the natural world is what it is and we have this like this meaning-making faculty where we can say this is right and this is wrong and you're right and you're wrong and you need to be like this to be loved.
[16:57] And I've just been like, well, fine, don't love me then.
[17:00] because I'm not going to not be myself.
[17:02] The first time you said you felt really seen was when you discovered the lesbian scene in Sydney when you'd finished school.
[17:08] Is that right?
[17:09] Yes.
[17:09] Those are fantastic photos I've seen of you.
[17:12] Yeah.
[17:12] You were saying before, like, you were really sort of, like, really embracing just yourself.
[17:19] And I think, I can't remember the words you used, but maybe your weirdness.
[17:21] Is that what you always said?
[17:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[17:22] Super weird.
[17:24] Yes, and they're the photos that you have seen.
[17:25] LAUGHTER
[17:29] There's some that were, like, that Oz Story got and the beautiful producer, Olivia Russe, who's amazing.
[17:37] She's like, I really wanted to use the nipple shot and we couldn't do it.
[17:41] Damn it.
[17:42] It's a great shot, great photo.
[17:44] That's where I want my taxpaying money to go to, those photos.
[17:49] Oh, it's like a full, like a harness and these tiny little leather shorts and a cap and...
[17:56] There's little crosses over my nipples that were, you know, put on afterwards.
[17:59] But, yes, didn't get used, sadly.
[18:01] But, no, it was the gay and lesbian scene.
[18:04] And it was probably gay men that accepted me in the beginning.
[18:08] When I first discovered the scene, I just found a home.
[18:12] But just basically queer culture.
[18:14] Queer culture.
[18:15] is incredibly accepting.
[18:16] I mean, it also can be incredibly judge you in different ways, but for me, especially in the 90s, it was this haven where to be larger than life wasn't something that, you know, I was getting chopped off at the knees, which in a little suburban Aussie bogan school, there's not a lot of room for... For you, yeah.
[18:39] No, for me, and I totally understand that, but, yeah, in queer culture, they were like...
[18:44] fabulous darling you know and and I got to I got to really explore um my creativity and my flamboyance and the part of me that wants to express myself you know the passionate part and that I get that from my mother I mean my mom's a force of nature as well
[19:05] And yeah, in queer culture, I found a home.
[19:10] And for 10 years more, actually, in the 90s, I pretty much spent my entire 20s immersed in that world.
[19:19] And some of those friendships are still the strongest friendships that I have today.
[19:25] When you were talking about being, it was about five or six when you had the choice of like, I could change.
[19:31] Yeah.
[19:31] To stop bullying or be me.
[19:34] Did you have anyone else in your world that was similar to you?
[19:39] Was there anyone at school, any friends that you could sort of saddle up to and do it together?
[19:45] Or were you alone in that?
[19:46] You're assuming I had friends.
[19:49] I had no friends.
[19:50] Yeah.
[19:50] Yeah.
[19:51] Through primary school, I had no friends.
[19:53] Right.
[19:53] Yeah.
[19:54] Yeah.
[19:54] I like that.
[19:55] And I think these days I would have been diagnosed as, you know, autism spectrum disorder.
[20:02] I've never been diagnosed.
[20:03] I'm not even interested in it, but I've spent a long time hacking my neurodivergence and having a capacity to be able to analyze my own behavior and see sort of where...
[20:18] humans are doing one thing that makes no sense and how I can find an in to be able to learn how to human.
[20:26] Yeah.
[20:26] And I feel like I've learned how to human, but it's taken a long time.
[20:29] Yeah.
[20:29] But back then, no, I was just weird.
[20:32] I was just, I was super weird.
[20:34] But the only, really, my dad, he used to talk about lone wolves.
[20:39] And so I think he was a through line for me when things were really gnarly.
[20:49] At school.
[20:49] Yeah.
[20:50] But also my family is amazing and beautiful, incredible and chaotic and creative.
[20:56] And we're all playing musical instruments and we're all, you know, going out, you know, on family adventures and, you know,
[21:04] Mum often says that she has regrets that she didn't realise how different I was because they had three daughters under three.
[21:12] And they were busy, you know, busy.
[21:15] And so as far as she was concerned, you know, Gina was a little bit different.
[21:20] but fine.
[21:21] Yeah, yeah.
[21:21] And they fed.
[21:22] They fed all of those parts of me, all the parts that got absolutely smashed at school.
[21:27] Yeah.
[21:27] I'd come home and they'd be celebrated.
[21:29] So it wasn't like it was just torment the whole time.
[21:32] I had a haven and then I'd buckle up and go to school and do that thing.
[21:39] Did you feel lonely?
[21:40] Yeah.
[21:41] Yeah.
[21:42] Yeah.
[21:42] I think, you know, humans are hardwired to connect.
[21:45] Mm.
[21:46] And...
[21:48] I definitely, like I wanted to connect.
[21:51] And then when I'd try, I'd crash and burn every time, every time, until it just became easier to climb a tree and talk to the magpies.
[22:00] Which I did.
[22:01] I really want to hear about that.
[22:03] But I also, I'm just, you've mentioned a few times the word weird.
[22:07] And I love the word weird.
[22:09] Yeah.
[22:09] But I think, and look, I've not had the childhood that you've had at all and far different experiences.
[22:17] But I'm interested in how your relationship with the word weird has changed.
[22:24] if it's changed at all since you're a kid to when you found queer culture and found yourself.
[22:30] Because I love the word weird now, but I do know that the word weird was sort of like, you don't want to be weird at school.
[22:36] But as an adult, if you can embrace your weird, I guess like Ben Crow says, it's a really magical thing.
[22:44] How's that changed for you over time?
[22:47] Really good question.
[22:48] Thank you.
[22:48] Thank you.
[22:49] Cut that up for a promo.
[22:55] So I don't know if you remember, like in the 80s,
[22:59] And maybe early 90s, there was all of the comedy, like, wogs out of work.
[23:05] Yeah.
[23:06] Where, like, ethnic comedians took the slur wog and went, no, we're owning this.
[23:15] Yeah.
[23:15] Like, and now it becomes, like, this is our word.
[23:18] And I feel like that's what I'm, like, with weird, you know, taking the thing that, because absolutely I'm weird.
[23:28] it's not untrue.
[23:29] You know, when it's thrown as a kid and it becomes the pivot for a whole bunch of judgment, then that's painful as a child.
[23:40] But, I mean, I absolutely celebrate my weirdness.
[23:43] The day I stop being weird, can someone just, like, come and kick me up the arse and give me a slap and go, Oi, where'd you go?
[23:49] Yeah.
[23:49] Because something's going to be wrong the day I stop being weird.
[23:53] I think it does.
[23:53] I think being weird, though, does scare a lot of people.
[23:56] Sure.
[23:57] I mean, I think it's – you know, look, if you look at it – I spent a lot of time looking at this as a kid.
[24:03] Humans need to exist in groups to survive.
[24:06] And to exist in a group, you need to have common beliefs.
[24:09] You need to have common threads.
[24:13] Yeah, yeah, and common values.
[24:16] And anything that's different is a threat to a group.
[24:19] So in a hunter-gatherer little village, you know, if you've only got 30 people and you're reliant on the coherence of your group to survive in the wild,
[24:29] Anyone who is destabilising to that is a threat to the survival of your group, and therefore...
[24:35] banished.
[24:37] So weird, like we have evolved in a survival sense to kick the weirdos out, but also like a group won't survive unless there's newness, you know, unless there are outliers who can be like on the edges to be able to take new ways of doing things and try things on and so that that can then feed into the center.
[25:00] So we need that weirdness.
[25:02] So basically a mob will reject what's different, but as humans, we actually need those outliers to be able to drive change.
[25:13] And so there's this dynamic tension between those two forces.
[25:17] And kids don't know all of that.
[25:20] All kids know is that really deep primal sense of if it's different, kill it.
[25:24] Yeah.
[25:25] Which you can look at the world right now and you can see that basically there's just like fucking billions of children running the world now.
[25:33] If it's different, kill it.
[25:35] But to me, there's a very fundamental wisdom in a survival sense of that.
[25:41] But, you know, that's for a small band of people, not entire cultures.
[25:46] Where do you think that fear of different comes from?
[25:50] Like why are people scared of different, do you think?
[25:54] I think that's part of it.
[25:56] It's like it's a threat to our survival.
[25:58] Yeah, okay.
[25:59] You know, so...
[26:02] For me, humans are essentially driven by four fears, like fear of annihilation, fear of death, fear of abandonment, because if we get left on the hillside for the wolves as babies, we die.
[26:16] Fear of being out of control, because if we're out of control, it's basically we could die.
[26:22] And fear of being seen to be defective.
[26:24] There's something wrong with me.
[26:26] You know, there's those four.
[26:28] There's fear of despair and hopelessness as well.
[26:30] But those four, I think, fundamentally drive most of our unconscious behaviors.
[26:35] We'll do anything not to feel a fear of annihilation.
[26:39] Like, ah, I'm going to die.
[26:41] I'll do anything.
[26:41] Give me the chocolate.
[26:42] You know, give me the Netflix or abandonment.
[26:46] Like, I'll do anything to not feel that.
[26:48] I'll do anything not to feel out of control.
[26:50] I'll do anything to not feel this part of me that thinks there's something wrong with me, which we all have.
[26:56] You know, we've all got that.
[26:57] And so like underneath all of that is, you know, there's this kind of swirling morass of drivers.
[27:06] And in the middle of that, anything that threatens that stability, we're like, oh, no, I don't want to feel that.
[27:13] Rejection.
[27:14] Yeah.
[27:14] Rejection so that I don't have to feel this discomfort.
[27:18] And for me, this talks to like a deeper conversation, which is that for any conversation about resilience, I think we need to talk about discomfort because that is the seed and the essence of resilience is being able to be uncomfortable, being able to be with the uncomfortable feelings inside, being able to be with fear of.
[27:38] Yeah.
[27:38] Yeah.
[27:39] death, the fear of abandonment, fear of loss of control, being able to be with discomfort of, okay, a little bit of rain came in then and, you know, I got a bit of a chill, but hey, guess what?
[27:49] We're still here.
[27:50] It's uncomfortable, but we're still here.
[27:53] And then we expand our, kind of like our capacity to metabolize that discomfort.
[28:00] And now we have wisdom rather than knowledge, which then builds the next and the next and the next.
[28:06] But most people who are in
[28:11] just like doing their thing in the dominant culture, don't tend to consciously look at these feelings and therefore like we're just responding habitually to not feel and that turns into you're different, therefore you're wrong.
[28:28] Yeah.
[28:28] Yeah, because I only just sort of realised like as an adult, I kind of realised like, hang on, all the people that I...
[28:35] like admire respect throughout history are the people who were weird.
[28:40] Yeah.
[28:41] It's like there's no one that I really love, respect have learnt from who was just the same or, you know, normal.
[28:48] Yeah.
[28:48] I think to add to that, also the people I would say I look up to are people who have been through a lot, who have really struggled, have been through a lot of discomfort.
[28:57] So I think a combination of what we're talking about.
[29:00] Yeah, true.
[29:00] Yeah, the people that you really...
[29:03] And it's really, and that discomfort, whether it be in childhood or whatever, it sort of helped them discover something about themselves or what they do.
[29:11] And we're able to then create or discover something incredible.
[29:16] Yeah, I'm going to get this wrong, but...
[29:19] I read somewhere like Einstein came up.
[29:22] Those three big things that Einstein discovered, like the E equals MC squared, the two other things.
[29:26] That was physics.
[29:28] I was wondering if you were going to name the other two.
[29:31] The three Einstein things he did in one year, in one year of his life, and it was like a result of being knocked back for all these jobs and all these things he applied for, and he would just go to the library and just work and think, I've definitely got this wrong, but...
[29:48] Sounds like it's been good.
[29:49] The gist of Einstein.
[29:51] That's all you need from Einstein.
[29:52] He grew from discomfort, yeah.
[29:54] Yeah, yeah.
[29:55] I think a lot of things grow from discomfort.
[29:57] Like I think there's so much juice that comes from discomfort and it's one of my great sorrows in our society is that we've evolved away from discomfort to there being so much distraction that's now available so we don't have to feel.
[30:12] And our entire society is now...
[30:14] geared around force feeding us these distractions.
[30:18] So we never naturally, as our parents and grandparents did, life will come along and smack everyone.
[30:26] And in past times, there wasn't any way to escape it.
[30:29] Whereas now we can really, we can numb it in so many different ways with distractions.
[30:34] It means that we're not learning.
[30:36] You know, we're not learning how to be uncomfortable and therefore we're not learning how to rely on our own innate resources.
[30:43] We're not learning to rely on our own gifts and we're outsourcing authority and asking society to fix us instead of taking responsibility for fixing ourselves.
[30:52] I'm so glad we got onto discomfort because I really wanted to talk about it.
[30:55] Because I'm praising.
[30:56] Because it seems appropriate.
[30:59] Because I feel like I've spent a lot of my life trying to avoid it.
[31:02] Yeah.
[31:03] Not so much mental discomfort.
[31:06] So I feel like I've put a lot of...
[31:08] working to try and work out what's going on inside my head.
[31:12] But I've always tried to avoid physical discomfort.
[31:16] And I really wanted to ask you about the value of physical discomfort, because I find it weird that I'd be so keen to do what I consider to be the difficult work of like analyzing what's going on and what my past and certain things.
[31:30] But...
[31:31] The memory that keeps coming to mind is when I did this two-week camp at school that was whitewater rafting.
[31:40] And looking back on it, I just think it was the greatest thing ever.
[31:43] But I know for the whole time I was like, I can't wait to get home and be out of this discomfort.
[31:48] And I just want to talk about physical discomfort because I'm sure you've got a lot to say about it and the value of being through it, going through physical discomfort.
[32:00] So before we get to that, I've got a question for you.
[32:01] Yeah.
[32:02] I think it's really interesting that you talk about mental discomfort and physical discomfort.
[32:07] Where's the emotional discomfort?
[32:10] I think I would tie, I think in what I was saying, I was tying emotional into mental.
[32:14] Okay.
[32:15] And pairing those two together.
[32:16] Okay.
[32:17] And maybe this speaks to something interesting in that I keep physical and I've traditionally in my mind kept them separate.
[32:26] And I'm only just, I feel like I've just dipped my little toe in the water of physical discomfort.
[32:31] And I'm starting to feel...
[32:34] the link between emotions.
[32:36] Great.
[32:36] Yeah.
[32:37] So my answer to that would be that to be physically, to be able to be in the physical discomfort, I would say for me, I have to be completely comfortable with my emotions.
[32:47] Yeah.
[32:47] Because what the physical discomfort does is it brings up emotions.
[32:52] So this isn't about my historical past or the thing that happened when I was five.
[32:55] It's like right now, there's cold, and then that brings up maybe the fear that this isn't going to end or...
[33:07] There's like, there's an emotional response to whatever the physical discomfort is.
[33:11] And I would say that for me, these two are really linked.
[33:15] And once I'm okay with the emotional discomfort, then the physical discomfort is just, it's just uncomfortable.
[33:23] It's not going to kill me.
[33:26] It's going to end.
[33:27] And I think part of what stops us with physical discomfort is I think humans have this way of thinking or having an unconscious feeling that whatever I'm feeling right now is forever.
[33:41] So if I'm on this whitewater rafting thing and it's like, oh, my God, this is forever and now that's unbearable.
[33:50] But if I know that this is going to end, it's like, oh, I can be here.
[33:53] Right now, I'm uncomfortable.
[33:54] Right now, I'm uncomfortable.
[33:56] and it means X, Y, Z. I'm going to be stuck here forever.
[33:59] And so for me, because I have dived to the absolute depths of my own emotional processing, and I know that it doesn't matter what comes, it is going to have a beginning, it's going to have a crescendo, and it's going to have an end, but that is metabolizing that particular bit of ick.
[34:17] And in that process, I'm teaching myself that I can go through these waves of processing.
[34:23] And then the physical discomfort just is background noise.
[34:27] Does that make sense?
[34:28] It sure does.
[34:29] And it's something else that popped up for me during that is this idea.
[34:32] And it links to what you're saying before.
[34:34] I've been thinking a lot about the word should recently.
[34:38] I can't wait to talk to that guy.
[34:39] Oh, great.
[34:40] But I, because in the physical discomfort, I think because, and I think this is one of those I'm so excited to hear a bit of physical discomfort, because I grew up in a, playing sport in a sort of masculine culture thing, I feel like I've always had this idea of I should be able to handle this.
[34:59] Ah.
[34:59] Oh, that's right.
[35:00] Yeah.
[35:01] Yeah.
[35:01] Whereas, and you should, mate.
[35:03] you should mate I mean yeah there it is the should yeah whereas I think this speaks to you as a person and and and ever I think it's been commented a lot in the public discourse about you on alone in that you're the complete opposite of that like masculine hyper masculine I'm gonna be man versus wild idea um and
[35:25] Yeah, I think the idea of being, you should be able to do something or you should be able to do something like that, I think speaks to a lot of why I feel the discomfort in nature because I should be able to handle it.
[35:35] Beautiful.
[35:36] Now, this is a great one to unpick.
[35:38] So for me, as soon as I hear the word should, it's not my voice.
[35:43] Should is someone else's voice that I've internalised.
[35:46] So it's the voice of mother, father, uncle, aunt, grandparent, teacher, culture, billboard.
[35:53] And should is telling us that we're not okay as we are.
[35:57] So whatever my feeling is, my feeling is this sucks, but I should be able to.
[36:02] My need is to get the hell out, but I should stay here.
[36:05] Now we've got that tension.
[36:06] Right.
[36:07] So as soon as I hear the word should and I'm like, okay, well, should in my world is always overriding a need.
[36:15] And if I go, okay, if I've got the word should, that's not my voice.
[36:18] What is my voice?
[36:20] And there's like, what is should telling me is not okay about me?
[36:23] And so the need might be, I need to get off this boat.
[36:27] I need to get off this boat.
[36:28] This sucks.
[36:29] I really hate this.
[36:31] I need to get off, but I need to, you know, live up to someone else's idea of what I, you know, should be.
[36:38] That's not me.
[36:39] And because as soon as we do things from the place of should, we're denying our own natural exploration.
[36:45] We're denying our own innate voice.
[36:48] And we're denying our instinctive voice.
[36:49] We're teaching our instinctive voice that it's wrong.
[36:52] And by doing that, we're denying our own risk-taking that is generated by that voice as well.
[36:58] And then the learning that comes from that.
[37:00] So by taking should out of the picture, actually there's a huge amount of freedom because then we can take whatever the step is that feels right for us in that moment rather than pushing ourselves five steps over.
[37:12] And now we're floating around in the abyss of horribleness and actually traumatizing ourselves so we never want to do it again.
[37:18] Yeah, yeah.
[37:19] Does that make sense?
[37:19] Yeah, and never getting any of the benefits of the experience in the first place.
[37:23] I mean, I feel like this is so incredible, the timing of this, because for anyone listening, it's not pouring, but it's like...
[37:29] It's raining.
[37:30] It's raining.
[37:30] It's raining.
[37:31] It's raining properly.
[37:32] You're talking about should.
[37:33] It's something that a lot of people, I think, can relate to.
[37:36] the voice that you were talking about, that should voice, was saying we should stop recording.
[37:41] Like we should go inside, we should take a break because this is not the right conditions to be recording.
[37:46] You know, we should go inside, wait for the weather to pass.
[37:50] But I can see where the weather's coming from.
[37:51] I'm like, it ain't passing anytime soon.
[37:54] And then I was sort of having this inner dialogue with myself.
[37:57] I'm like, no, this is what we're talking about.
[37:59] Don't like...
[38:00] And then what it makes for is actually a much more interesting, I think, experience to actually just sit through it.
[38:07] There's rain all over the table.
[38:09] Like, this is very foreign to us as a podcast, you know, but it is a very, just a very kind of...
[38:19] poignant moment I think because uh should the shoulds in my head wherever they come from whether they be from family or just from experience working in tv and whatever go like oh no rain's here stop everyone stop we should stop but of course everyone just puts an umbrella up and it's fine yeah and like how beautiful is it yeah like how beautiful like the sun's peeking through the
[38:43] Yeah, absolutely.
[38:44] Right now, you know you're alive.
[38:46] You know, you've done how many podcasts, they all blurring.
[38:49] You're never going to forget this one.
[38:50] No, absolutely.
[38:51] You're never going to forget this one.
[38:52] And having that, that's the other thing about discomfort.
[38:55] Discomfort snaps us out of our habit.
[38:58] It snaps us because there's the edge of like, whoa, and I have to pay attention.
[39:01] Again, in an evolutionary sense, when we're uncomfortable, we're paying attention.
[39:06] Yeah.
[39:06] Because you can't be complacent.
[39:08] Yep.
[39:08] You can't just like fold, you know, if you're sitting in front of your TV going all Homer Simpson going, oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[39:14] Yeah.
[39:15] Like there could be an earthquake, you know, not an earthquake.
[39:17] There could be a tsunami coming on the horizon and you'd be like, ah.
[39:22] But here, like all of our senses are alive right now.
[39:25] Yes, yeah.
[39:25] You're actually paying attention to the weather.
[39:27] Yeah.
[39:27] When was the last time you paid attention to what was coming?
[39:30] Oh.
[39:30] Yeah.
[39:31] And like in a real sense.
[39:33] I know.
[39:34] At a sense of like, I am part of this.
[39:37] I am part of this weather.
[39:38] It is impacting me and therefore I need to know what's going on so I can make decisions that are going to keep me and everyone I know safe.
[39:45] Well, it's kind of, it's like problem solving.
[39:47] You never learn to problem solve without sitting in the discomfort.
[39:51] Without discomfort.
[39:52] And so now, instead of should, you've clicked into a deeper level, which is now like, now we just need to look after physical safety.
[40:00] There's the should of, okay, well, now we need to, like, you know, we should go in because that's what you do.
[40:05] But the next question was, is the gear okay?
[40:07] Okay.
[40:07] What if we didn't?
[40:08] Yeah.
[40:09] Is the cure okay?
[40:10] Are we actually safe to be here?
[40:12] Yeah.
[40:12] Now you're talking.
[40:13] Yeah.
[40:14] Because now you're alive.
[40:15] Now you're into the place where that sort of like primal part of us that is designed to survive is taking information in from the environment and then metabolizing and analyzing, well, what is the safest?
[40:28] You know, how can I keep me and those I love safe?
[40:31] And now I'm making choices that are real.
[40:34] Just to really, I guess, reiterate that point around.
[40:38] So on the drive here, it's about a five-minute drive.
[40:40] So Gina and I are in a car together, and we're driving to the bush to get here.
[40:45] And as we're driving, Gina goes, look, wallaby.
[40:50] And it was about 50 metres away.
[40:53] And it's maybe about 50 metres away.
[40:55] Behind the tree.
[40:56] And I couldn't see it.
[40:57] I was like, where?
[40:57] I don't know.
[40:58] And I still don't understand how you saw it.
[41:00] And then we stopped and had a nice little look at this beautiful waldemons baby.
[41:04] And then I said, how did you see that?
[41:06] And then she turns her head in the opposite direction and goes, rabbit over there.
[41:10] There was a rabbit about probably 60 metres away that I didn't see.
[41:13] I just pretended I went, oh, yeah.
[41:14] I was like, I don't see a rabbit.
[41:16] And then I saw like a rustling in the bush.
[41:18] You are so finely attuned to...
[41:20] It's kind of the equivalent of, like, in my experience, that's the equivalent of me, like, driving down the highway as a kid going, like, Maccas!
[41:28] Maccas!
[41:30] And you're like, rabbit!
[41:31] Yeah.
[41:32] Grab it.
[41:33] But it was so impressive.
[41:34] But also, I was like, well, this is...
[41:37] This shouldn't be a surprise from someone who has lived a great part of your life outdoors, and that's survival.
[41:44] It's you're responding to your environment so that you can continue to live.
[41:47] Well, yeah, but that's how we're like, we are hardwired for connection.
[41:50] Yeah.
[41:51] We are hardwired for connection.
[41:52] And if you look at it this way, humans have been homo sapiens for, give or take, let's say 350,000 years.
[41:59] Okay, that's how long humans have been homo sapiens.
[42:01] And let's say, you know, we can take Aboriginal Australia, just put that out of this number for a minute.
[42:08] We've been hunter-gatherers for around 340,000 of those years.
[42:10] So about 10,000 years ago,
[42:15] People broke dirt, went, this is a great idea, let's plant things.
[42:19] And so we don't have to go out and risk life and limb hunting.
[42:21] Like conservation of energy is the most, it's the number one law of survival.
[42:25] Everything does it except us.
[42:27] Yeah, because we're fat and living large and we can just go down the supermarket.
[42:30] We don't have to risk our lives to get food.
[42:35] And so 10,000 years ago, we went, cool, this is great.
[42:39] Let's grow things.
[42:40] And we started to make choices that led us towards the Industrial Revolution and towards our culture now.
[42:47] Now, the hunter-gatherer bands, you know, for the 350,000 years, like hunter-gatherers lived in small groups and they lived on the land and they were completely dependent on the land for survival, just like any wild thing.
[43:02] So a wild animal will sleep when it's tired and it'll eat when it's hungry and it'll take shelter when there's a storm.
[43:07] Like that's the internal authority and that's the way we lived.
[43:12] So a wild animal that doesn't know when there's a storm coming could die.
[43:17] A wild animal that doesn't know where the game are could die.
[43:21] A wild animal that can't smell when a predator is hungry is lunch.
[43:26] That's how we have evolved for 340,000 years.
[43:31] We are designed to do it.
[43:33] And then we've ended up in these, like, you know, making all the decisions that led us to the Industrial Revolution, and now we've got a society that – a culture that prioritises productivity over connection.
[43:44] We've flipped it.
[43:45] Connection used to be the most important thing.
[43:47] Now productivity is, which has led us to this world where there are things.
[43:51] There are many, many things, and we live in boxes.
[43:54] And that part of us that is designed to connect now gets as far as the box, and then it stops.
[44:00] So we're now walking around with our connective function, stopping at the walls, but we're designed to have that deeper wisdom and that deeper relationship.
[44:09] So what you're talking about is just because I don't live in walls.
[44:13] Yeah.
[44:14] I don't live in walls.
[44:15] I spend very little time in walls.
[44:16] I will sleep outside wherever I can.
[44:19] At the shack where I've been staying, I have my bed on the deck.
[44:24] because I don't like sleeping inside.
[44:26] I've been in hotels the last two days, and it freaks me out because the sheets are really crunchy because they can make these horrible sounds and you can't open the windows and the air isn't fresh.
[44:37] Whereas this, like...
[44:39] This is living...
[44:39] Well, now because my senses can go all the way to the horizon in all the directions instead of stopping at the walls.
[44:46] Yeah.
[44:46] So, yeah, this is like it's actually how we're designed.
[44:49] And the beautiful thing is because we are so hardwired for connection and it nourishes us when we are, it doesn't take much to remember, to relearn.
[44:58] It doesn't actually take much.
[45:00] You're broadening the definition there because I think a lot of people, and I being one of them, would think of connection being just human connection.
[45:06] But you're broadening the definition to connection with nature and surroundings.
[45:10] Yeah.
[45:11] Yeah.
[45:11] I mean, we can't be separate from nature because we're grown from it.
[45:16] Yeah.
[45:16] We are grown from atoms on this planet.
[45:19] Like our cells are grown from Big Mama.
[45:22] Yeah.
[45:23] And that description of like hotels versus sleeping outside is so nice.
[45:30] And I think we all know the feeling that we've got when we've been outdoors or we go to like Tasmania, for example, like where we are now.
[45:37] It's like you come out here and you're in the middle of nowhere.
[45:41] We should always say where we are.
[45:43] We are right on the edge of the Tasmania.
[45:49] we're right on the edge that's profound we're right on the edge of the Tasmania he's an outdoors guy there's water just there like there's the ocean's right there yeah but it's like we're girt by gum trees and we're sitting here with Gina Chick this is it's amazing yeah and you're uncomfortable enough to remember it yeah but it's like that idea of
[46:12] When you come out here and you are conscious enough to go, oh, this is really nice.
[46:17] Like, you know, like you just saying that here.
[46:18] It's like, yeah, this is so nice.
[46:19] And you all know that feeling of getting away for a weekend, going into the country or going to the beach.
[46:24] This is beautiful.
[46:25] But then I think that's when it comes back, for me at least, it comes back to that kind of like should...
[46:31] So I know I've had friends who, like, I rented a house with a bunch of friends a couple of years ago.
[46:37] One guy was like, I'm going to sleep in my swag outside.
[46:40] And I was like, really?
[46:41] There's a room for you?
[46:42] He's like, no, no, I'm happy to just sleep in the swag.
[46:45] I'm like, and my head's going like, but won't the animals get you?
[46:49] Like, I'm thinking, like, what if there's a spider?
[46:51] Like, my should voice is like, but you should be inside because it's safe.
[46:55] It's dangerous outside.
[46:56] Yes.
[46:57] And then the next morning I was like keen to see how it was.
[47:00] I was like, was it okay last night?
[47:02] Is he still there?
[47:03] Yeah.
[47:03] Was it too cold?
[47:04] He was like, oh, it was beautiful.
[47:06] Stars, all this stuff.
[47:08] I was like, oh, that sounds really nice.
[47:09] But because of my lack of outdoors experience and upbringing, it was always indoors.
[47:17] To me, that sounds like a big risk to sleep in a swag outside.
[47:21] Yeah.
[47:21] Yeah.
[47:22] And that's like the thing about risk is we only learn our capability by going outside our experience.
[47:29] Like that's it.
[47:30] That's the only like, you know, we don't learn theoretically.
[47:33] You can be a YouTube warrior.
[47:35] You see it.
[47:35] You see this on survival shows all the time.
[47:37] The people who've done all the YouTube stuff and they get out.
[47:39] into a, you know, into survivor or naked and afraid or something like that.
[47:44] And in the clips beforehand, you see them doing all the things in their backyard and then they hit the reality.
[47:50] And because they've never experienced what it's actually like, it all goes tits up.
[47:56] So with the, you know, it's dangerous, like you've just had that experience of here's someone who's challenged your reality.
[48:06] Yeah.
[48:07] He's slept outside.
[48:09] You've investigated to see how it was.
[48:12] He didn't get bitten by a spider.
[48:13] A yaoi didn't come and, you know, chew him up.
[48:16] A drop bear didn't smash into him.
[48:18] Like, he's still okay.
[48:18] He's okay, yeah.
[48:20] And then there's a little bit of curiosity.
[48:21] It's like, huh, okay.
[48:23] Yeah.
[48:23] That's something that sounds really great, but I have this fear.
[48:26] Yeah.
[48:27] So that's the first level.
[48:28] That's the inquiry level.
[48:29] But then there's the part where you then go, all right, I can't go maybe sleep out, you know, in the bush, but maybe I could sleep on a deck in a swag or in a tent or something just to take that next step to learn that, huh, that was okay.
[48:45] Yeah, yeah.
[48:46] Now I know, my nervous system knows that all of these fears aren't actually going to happen all at once.
[48:53] And then gradually we expand our world.
[48:58] You know, we expand through experience and through taking those risks, we expand our understanding of our own capacity to solve those problems.
[49:06] And instead of having all of the stories of the spider's going to get you, the snake's going to get you, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it becomes the, oh, actually...
[49:14] It's just like being inside, but with stars.
[49:16] And stark, yeah.
[49:17] Yeah.
[49:17] Yeah.
[49:18] And I can feel the wind and, okay, initially that might be uncomfortable, but then after a while, you know, it's like, yeah, it's uncomfortable, but I'm okay.
[49:27] Well, one of the...
[49:29] my most memorable meals.
[49:32] I love going to restaurants and all that stuff, but I think one of my most memorable meals is my partner and I jam, we were on a road trip and we were camping and I was not keen on the idea of camping, but she was like, no, we're going to do it.
[49:46] She really wanted to do it.
[49:47] So we went camping and we're camping in this campsite and she was like, I'll make dinner.
[49:54] And I was like, okay.
[49:55] But I was like, internally, I was so suss on this.
[49:57] I was like, all right, but there is a pub.
[50:00] Like we could just go to the pub.
[50:01] Like it would be, we know that'll be good.
[50:04] Like in my head, I'm like, I can trust the pub.
[50:07] I can get a palm or I can get a steak.
[50:09] She was like, and she was on a mission to prove to me that she could give me a good dinner.
[50:13] I love her already.
[50:14] My jam, you're a rock star.
[50:16] She is.
[50:17] And so she made this mussel pasta, like spaghetti, and it was unbelievable.
[50:25] Yes, because it was delicious, but because we were sitting around this fire.
[50:29] She cooked on the fire.
[50:31] And it was so memorable, so incredible.
[50:35] And it would have still been good if she cooked it at home, but I wouldn't have remembered it like I remember that pasta.
[50:41] Yeah, and also, again, now here we are.
[50:45] This is just so perfect because it's cold, right?
[50:48] It's undeniably cold.
[50:50] I did notice, yeah.
[50:51] The wind is biting.
[50:52] The rain's been coming and going.
[50:54] And so all of our nervous system is now awake and paying attention.
[50:59] So now when we eat, our taste buds go, What?
[51:03] And it's not just that, oh, here I am.
[51:05] I'm eating a mussel pasta.
[51:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[51:06] The surface is kind of great.
[51:07] What am I going to tip?
[51:09] You know, where's the beer?
[51:10] It's like, oh, I'm sitting around a fire.
[51:12] I've got a bit of me that's hot next to the fire, but there's a bit of me that's cold.
[51:15] I've got this food that's coming in and I can taste every flavor.
[51:19] Yeah.
[51:19] And it's going in my belly.
[51:20] Now my belly's warm in contrast to what's on the outside.
[51:24] I don't have the sterile air.
[51:26] It's like the volume of all of that information gets turned up.
[51:30] And you're experiencing the way we are designed to experience everything.
[51:35] Like we are sensorially designed to have a relationship with the bigger world.
[51:42] And that includes food.
[51:44] That includes food.
[51:45] So food does taste better.
[51:47] Yes, because you're more conscious of it, more present with it.
[51:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[51:49] I've just had this realisation, sort of in the car, but also while we're talking.
[51:53] The other thing that happened when we were driving here, and so we stopped the car, so you can get footage on your phone of the wallaby.
[52:00] And as you were doing that, the birds started chirping, which I didn't realise.
[52:03] And you said, the birds are trying to warn the wallaby that we're here and we could be dangerous.
[52:07] Really?
[52:08] But anyway, when I was in Fairhaven, which is on the Great Ocean Road, last summer, I was driving down the road,
[52:15] towards our place and there was a snake, a tiger snake, which was just crossing the road.
[52:18] Uh-huh.
[52:19] And I slowed down in my car to get footage of it, exactly the same as we just did.
[52:23] I'm getting footage of it and the birds started chirping and I'm saying to myself, that's so amazing, the birds are trying to warn me that there's a snake here.
[52:31] That's what I'm not.
[52:32] Classic human instinct.
[52:34] Yeah.
[52:34] It's all about me.
[52:35] How's the ego on that?
[52:36] To go, that's good, how we're so connected with birds.
[52:39] They're clearly trying to warn the snake.
[52:41] I'm in a car, why not going, quickly warn that guy in a car.
[52:45] Actually, no.
[52:46] For that one, the birds would have been warning you about the snake.
[52:49] Yeah.
[52:50] So birds are totally patterned on snakes.
[52:53] Snakes are like they're a massive bird predator.
[52:56] Right.
[52:56] And so birds have got this.
[52:59] There's five different main calls that birds do.
[53:01] All birds pretty much do one of five calls.
[53:05] And one of them is like the song of the bird.
[53:08] So you'll hear it in the morning when the magpies go.
[53:10] Oh, that's a.
[53:14] What a magpie impression.
[53:16] Yep.
[53:16] So the magpies, like... That is perfect.
[53:19] Wow.
[53:20] Birds... Can't wait to listen back to that.
[53:23] Birds don't pee on trees.
[53:25] Like, the way the birds define their territory... Me neither.
[53:28] Yeah, well...
[53:30] Birds define their territory not with scent but with song.
[53:35] Like that's how birds exist in a universe of sound, right?
[53:39] That's everything.
[53:40] Yeah.
[53:41] And because of sound can travel a long way.
[53:43] So there's this whole world.
[53:44] This is part of our connection.
[53:46] Like we in our boxes, we think that information's got to come from within that, whereas the birds, they're the eyes and ears of the bush.
[53:56] And so they're communicating all the way as far as you can hear, and they pass it on.
[54:00] So it's like whispers across the bush where the birds are communicating what's going on.
[54:04] And once you're keyed into what the birds are saying, you know what's going on literally to the horizons.
[54:13] Sorry, there's a bird up there.
[54:14] Winked at you.
[54:15] How are you doing, is it?
[54:19] G'day mate.
[54:20] Hunt on.
[54:22] So the first one is the song and that is the territory.
[54:25] So every morning at dawn, the birds will go around and they will go around their whole territory, vantage points, and they will sing their song, which is if you are ever up at dawn, you'll hear the bush goes berserk.
[54:35] Yeah.
[54:35] All of the songs of all of the birds.
[54:37] And then there's what's called a contact call.
[54:40] And because birds are prey for everything, everything eats the birds.
[54:44] So the birds have to keep an eye on each other.
[54:46] They're just like this the whole time.
[54:47] Like, what's going to get me?
[54:49] So when they're feeding, they're like, are you all right?
[54:51] Yeah, I'm all right.
[54:52] You all right?
[54:53] Yeah, I'm okay.
[54:54] You all right?
[54:55] You all right?
[54:56] You all right?
[54:56] Oh, yeah, yeah, I just had a bug in my mouth.
[54:58] You know, so they're just like, and you'll hear that when there's fox and birds going through the bush.
[55:03] They're basically saying everything's okay.
[55:05] So when you hear that, you know that everything's okay.
[55:07] The bush is at baseline.
[55:09] There's the baby birds.
[55:14] You know, there's the bird that's just wheezing and getting food stuffed in its mouth.
[55:19] And if you're out in the bush and you hear that, you know you're probably going to have some pretty amazing encounters because they're not real bright when they're adolescents.
[55:27] Yeah.
[55:29] And they don't necessarily fly away because they just want mum and food.
[55:32] So when you hear that, you can go, I can go up and I can get some really cool encounters.
[55:36] Yeah.
[55:36] But the next one is the alarm call.
[55:46] And that is a bird telling everything that there's a predator.
[55:50] And if you're bushwalking, there's a very good chance that the only birds that you're hearing are going, oh, the birds are so pretty.
[55:57] Because you're speaking of you.
[56:03] It's because we have no manners.
[56:04] We have no manners.
[56:06] We tromp through the bush with our fucking big giant boots and we talk really loudly.
[56:11] We have no sense of respect.
[56:13] Decency, yeah.
[56:14] But when it comes to snakes, birds will alarm because a snake is a threat to all the other birds.
[56:20] So whenever there's a snake, you'll know that there's a snake because you hear the birds going off.
[56:24] Mm-hmm.
[56:24] So when you're learning how to connect with nature, when you learn alarm calls, it means that you can be relaxed.
[56:30] So if you're sleeping outside or if you're hanging outside and you're worried about snakes, the birds are going to tell you.
[56:37] The birds are going to say, if you start hearing the choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo
[56:54] It's like this rolling cappuccino machine sound.
[56:57] And that means there's a goanna, which is up in a tree, could steal everybody's eggs.
[57:01] And so... And so do all the different birds have different roles or do all the birds can...
[57:08] Most birds do different sounds, like...
[57:09] Yeah, all birds will have different, like, they've all got those five boards.
[57:13] Oh, they can?
[57:15] Oh, my God.
[57:15] The fifth one is where it's springtime when the males are, like, they're blueing for territory and they'll be, like, smashing into each other and... Oh, yeah.
[57:25] But all birds will alarm, yeah, and the alarm will tell everything in the bush...
[57:30] What's there?
[57:31] So once we learn these alarms, we can be comfortable and safe in the bush because the birds are our allies and they're going to let us know and they've got different alarms for different things.
[57:41] So there'll be like a kookaburra will have a different alarm for a cat or a fox or a, you know, a goanna.
[57:47] While we've been sitting here, and we'll get to your life in a second, but while we've been sitting here, we're out in the wild here in Tassie.
[57:53] Is there, like, what kind of stuff are you noticing that we're not noticing?
[57:56] What kind of things are you paying attention to that we...
[58:01] That's the warning, isn't it?
[58:02] Is that the warning?
[58:03] That's a bird.
[58:04] Yeah.
[58:06] Is that Jenny?
[58:07] No way.
[58:11] That wasn't a warning.
[58:12] There might have been a warning.
[58:14] It's more likely a song and a bit of curiosity.
[58:17] I know there's a warning going on.
[58:18] Hear that?
[58:20] Yeah.
[58:22] What about seven cameras and a massive tarpaulist threatening?
[58:26] Well, it's more because we haven't moved and because we've been very much focused in, the birds that have been watching us, they're not alarming.
[58:34] Now, if we went and ran into that bush, then they'd be like, holy shit, they're on the move.
[58:38] But now we're behaving a little bit predictably.
[58:40] So they're not really, they're like, you're weird.
[58:42] And we're just going to avoid you.
[58:43] But they're not losing their minds right now.
[58:46] So when you were, we mentioned Lee a couple of times.
[58:50] So when you were, I think it was 36 or 38 years old, you went on a How to Survive in the Wild course and you met Lee, a man who I think you described as being really hot.
[59:04] Lee is really hot he's still really hot yeah yeah and then so so you met Lee and then your life changes in a very big way yeah well I was actually I identified as as gay when I you know as a lesbian when I met Lee I hadn't been near men for quite a while and I didn't think I was going to be going near men again so there you go I just never know
[59:26] Anyway, so on this school, I ended up at this school, and the way I ended up there was through my instincts.
[59:32] I just heard the name of it.
[59:32] I was like, oh, that looks like I need to go there.
[59:35] Oh, wow.
[59:35] And when I went there on the first day, I met this tall, skinny, pommy guy, English guy.
[59:43] And I was just like, oh, you know, he was like, well, hello there.
[59:46] And I was like, oh.
[59:48] No.
[59:49] And then in two weeks it was yes.
[59:52] And then he followed me home, so I kept him.
[59:54] Yeah.
[59:55] Yeah.
[59:56] And we got married and he's still my best friend.
[1:00:01] Like we, after Blaze, our daughter, you know, we had a daughter, Blaze, and she died when she was three.
[1:00:12] And after that we split about three years later.
[1:00:16] because he desperately wanted to be a dad again.
[1:00:19] And he was at least 12 years younger than me, so he was this young, hot dad-to-be.
[1:00:25] And my ovaries were basically spitting out one little egg that was bouncing around and crashing into things and not doing much else, so I wasn't really able to have any more kids.
[1:00:36] That period of your life, you summarised it very quickly there.
[1:00:41] First of all, you were unwell as well.
[1:00:45] When Lee and I met, I was 38, he was 26, and he came back to Australia with me to make a life, and that was interesting.
[1:00:55] It was like taking a wolf home and expecting it to be able to function in Bondi.
[1:01:00] That was fun.
[1:01:02] And then I didn't think I could get pregnant.
[1:01:05] I really didn't.
[1:01:06] By the time I got pregnant, I was 40, and four days after I found out I was pregnant, I found out I had breast cancer.
[1:01:14] Oh, my God.
[1:01:15] And the doctors told me that I had to terminate the pregnancy or I'd die because the hormones of the pregnancy would feed the cancer.
[1:01:22] And they said, if you keep this child, you know, you might actually get the child out, but you'll be dead in six months.
[1:01:27] There'll be tumours in your liver and blah, blah, blah.
[1:01:30] And you have to terminate.
[1:01:31] And I said, no, I absolutely, I'm not going to.
[1:01:36] And it was an instinctive voice.
[1:01:38] It was just like this wolf mama just went, no, just no.
[1:01:45] And then I made the choice to have chemo.
[1:01:48] So I had chemo for three months.
[1:01:50] while I was pregnant, and that is intense, I have to say.
[1:01:53] That is a very, very intense thing.
[1:01:55] You're talking about discomfort, my God.
[1:01:56] It's discomfort, exactly.
[1:01:58] And that's why alone was like, you know, that was just uncomfortable.
[1:02:02] Yeah.
[1:02:03] So having chemo, and the thing about chemo is it's, you know, it's a cytotoxic agent.
[1:02:08] It kills dividing cells, and what is a baby but dividing cells.
[1:02:11] Yeah.
[1:02:11] So it was a very...
[1:02:14] Big journey.
[1:02:16] And, yeah, got Blaze healthy.
[1:02:19] Healthy, big, beautiful, gorgeous.
[1:02:22] Both of us were bald from the chemo when she was born.
[1:02:25] But she was totally amazing and wild and smart and funny and so present, like is incredibly present.
[1:02:34] I could tell that from the photo.
[1:02:36] You could see that from the photo.
[1:02:37] Yeah.
[1:02:38] Yeah, those eyes are like... She just came out.
[1:02:40] She came out with her eyes open.
[1:02:41] She was just like...
[1:02:43] whoa i don't know where you've come from but like there's like i can see it looking out of your eyes like the mystery was looking out of her eyes yeah and so how old is she when you found the lump yeah i found a lump in her when she was two and three quarters and i don't you know anyone who's listening who's ever felt cancer had felt like actually felt it tangibly you know what it feels like afterwards forever it is hard it is like a
[1:03:11] a stone it's like a rock because I'd felt the cancer in my own breast I say when I felt the cancer when I felt the lump on in her it was like I immediately knew that it was that it was cancer yeah and um nine days in the ICU on life support and then that was that turned off the turned off the machines and
[1:03:36] Said goodbye to my little one and sang to her as she flew away.
[1:03:40] Yeah.
[1:03:41] Yeah.
[1:03:42] It was, that was, that was big.
[1:03:44] That's huge.
[1:03:45] That was, that was big.
[1:03:46] Yeah.
[1:03:47] Unthinkable.
[1:03:48] Yeah.
[1:03:48] I don't think I've ever felt comfortable asking anyone this question before, but I do feel comfortable asking you.
[1:03:56] What's it like, what's it like to lose a child?
[1:04:02] Well, I can't say what it's like to lose a child, but I can say what it's like to lose mine.
[1:04:07] The actual losing part, death, is such a doorway.
[1:04:14] And a body without someone in it is like, oh, like I understood life by having my daughter not have it in her body anymore.
[1:04:26] Like having her there and then...
[1:04:28] her not being in it anymore.
[1:04:30] It's like, I don't know where she went, but she's not here now.
[1:04:32] And it's like such a visceral and profound experience to be able to midwife her out of life with the same presence that we brought her in was beautiful.
[1:04:47] And...
[1:04:49] I said yes.
[1:04:50] I said yes to the grief.
[1:04:53] I said yes to that journey.
[1:04:54] And it meant that whenever I was grieving, I just went with it.
[1:05:02] It's all going on now, bringing up the weather.
[1:05:06] Yeah.
[1:05:09] I can honestly say that having her was the greatest gift of my life and losing her was the second greatest gift of my life.
[1:05:16] Like because of her and because of losing her, I am stronger, I am calmer, I have more presence, I have more ability to hold people, I have more compassion.
[1:05:29] I'm a much better human.
[1:05:32] And the gift of her leaving is a gift that I walk around with every day.
[1:05:37] So every person who I touch or speak to, that's her.
[1:05:41] So it's like her gift is me in the world, or me in the world is her gift.
[1:05:48] It's unbearable and it's unthinkable and it's unspeakable, but it's also, it's been such a profound honour.
[1:06:00] to hold her dying and everything that's come from her dying.
[1:06:06] And in the 10 years, because it's 10 years since she died, to look back now and go, oh, okay, like all of these things that I've done since are because she died.
[1:06:18] Like, alone is because she died.
[1:06:20] The camps that Lee and I started are because she died.
[1:06:23] Like, there is so much that is good in the world because she left.
[1:06:27] And so to be able to hold my own grief and my own, like, yearning and the horror, the horror of losing a child.
[1:06:39] That's in one hand, but on the other is this profound understanding that death is going to come for all of us and we don't have...
[1:06:47] It's not like there's this like, okay, should.
[1:06:49] That shouldn't happen.
[1:06:50] Why shouldn't it happen?
[1:06:51] Things die.
[1:06:52] I mean, I go out in the wilderness and I jump on a wallaby and I kill it.
[1:06:56] Like that thing has given its life so that I can live.
[1:06:59] Something's got to die for something else to live.
[1:07:03] And that's the same with us and...
[1:07:07] I think I have a really strong understanding of that.
[1:07:11] Hmm.
[1:07:12] So...
[1:07:13] I have grieved.
[1:07:14] I mean, I can say this as calmly as I'm saying it because I have grieved.
[1:07:18] I have grieved like it was a career, which I guess it was.
[1:07:21] Like I have lain on the carpet and screamed and shouted at the heavens to give a back.
[1:07:28] Like I have, you know, sat in the curb with my shopping, like just wailing with oranges rolling down the road.
[1:07:35] But I've also, I've laughed and I've made love and I've created art and I've danced and, yeah.
[1:07:40] I've expressed my grief in every possible way.
[1:07:44] I'm a Five Rhythms dance teacher, and Gabrielle Roth, who sort of brought the Five Rhythms practice into existence, she says that we dance to turn our suffering into us.
[1:07:58] And I think, for me, part of the metabolizing of that level of grief and that kind of an experience
[1:08:06] is to be able to turn suffering into art.
[1:08:09] And by doing that, I have to feel all of it.
[1:08:12] And I'm not afraid of that because I've been doing it now for 10 years.
[1:08:16] So, yeah.
[1:08:17] And then after that, so soon after that, you said just before, Lee wanted to be a dad and you wanted that for him as well, so you separated.
[1:08:26] Yeah.
[1:08:26] You started doing these camps together.
[1:08:28] Yeah.
[1:08:28] On one of those camps, Lee meets...
[1:08:30] I wasn't on one of the camps.
[1:08:31] Oh, right.
[1:08:32] It was on her vision quest, yeah.
[1:08:33] Right, okay.
[1:08:35] So Hannah came along to one of our quests, I think.
[1:08:39] And anyway, we met her then.
[1:08:43] This was when Lee and I were still together.
[1:08:46] And then we were doing another, after Lee and I had just separated, we were doing another program.
[1:08:54] And she was on it.
[1:08:56] And I could see how she was totally into him.
[1:08:59] And I'm like, hey, dude, like that one.
[1:09:02] She's awesome.
[1:09:05] That's the one.
[1:09:07] And, yeah, he was into her as well, it seems.
[1:09:11] And they've now been together for, I don't know, six years or seven.
[1:09:15] And they have kids and you are the godmother.
[1:09:17] Yeah, I'm the godmother to their daughters.
[1:09:19] And I love them.
[1:09:20] And, you know, Hannah and I adore each other.
[1:09:23] Honestly, I love her.
[1:09:25] And people come up to her all the time and say, you know, what's it like?
[1:09:29] And she's like, no, no, Gina's great.
[1:09:31] And they're like, no, but really what's it like?
[1:09:32] And she's like, no, no, Gina's great.
[1:09:34] And the same thing with me.
[1:09:35] They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, but, you know, what's it really like having him with someone else?
[1:09:40] I'm like, I love Hannah.
[1:09:42] I love who they are as a family.
[1:09:44] And those girls are so deeply in my heart.
[1:09:47] They're Blazer's sisters.
[1:09:48] And I mean, I just feel so grateful, actually.
[1:09:52] I'm a very big ex-wife.
[1:09:54] Like, I'm a very big present.
[1:09:56] There aren't many women who would be okay with me being in their partner's life.
[1:10:03] And I think part of that may be, and this is definitely not all the time, but I'll say part of that is because you would go, most people as an ex would be like, I shouldn't like this new person.
[1:10:15] And that sort of should thing comes back.
[1:10:16] The should thing.
[1:10:18] What do other people think?
[1:10:19] Yeah, like she or he, you know, they're the enemy.
[1:10:21] You know, they're the new me and I've been replaced by that.
[1:10:24] So I can't like that person.
[1:10:26] But I love that it's like it doesn't have to be that way.
[1:10:29] Oh, they're so good for each other.
[1:10:31] Like, I love her because, like, you know, Leah's one of my best friends.
[1:10:34] He's the father of my child who's no longer with us.
[1:10:38] We've created this incredible community that helps, like, probably close to 1,000 kids now and hundreds of families, you know, and it's now bigger than us and is expanding and growing and becoming more mature.
[1:10:51] Like, all of this has come into play because of our relationship.
[1:10:56] I want him to be happy.
[1:10:57] Yeah, absolutely.
[1:10:59] She is an incredible human who is great with him.
[1:11:04] And they are like, they've got this beautiful family.
[1:11:08] Like, why would I not want that for my best friend?
[1:11:10] Yeah.
[1:11:11] And Anne, I'm really lucky because she's the same.
[1:11:13] She loves having me around, I think.
[1:11:17] No, she does.
[1:11:19] And I love the girls.
[1:11:20] And, yeah, I just feel – I just don't have this thing.
[1:11:22] I don't have bitterness.
[1:11:23] I do not have bitterness inside me.
[1:11:25] I don't understand it.
[1:11:26] I don't – it's just like – even thinking about it makes my guts squirm.
[1:11:31] For me, there's no –
[1:11:33] There's no need for it in me.
[1:11:35] I mean, I understand that not all breakups are like mine and that there are really horrible stories out there.
[1:11:42] But, yeah, that's just the way I'm built, I think.
[1:11:47] I didn't know your story until just now.
[1:11:49] And I find it quite, it's a lot to really process.
[1:11:54] And I just cannot believe...
[1:11:58] Look, I don't have kids, like I told you before, but I just, like even me, I can't believe how someone comes back from that because to me, it just, I can't imagine anything more traumatic and it's just so inspiring.
[1:12:13] I don't know.
[1:12:13] I think the thing that I want to ask you is, and I know I hear what you're saying about being able to live and almost the gratitude you have for the honour that you had.
[1:12:28] But were there things that you learned, like tools seems too trite of a word, but were there things that you learned in how to deal with that grief and how to get through it?
[1:12:39] Because obviously it's not going to be the same for everyone who deals with a similar situation, but in your experience, were there things that you learned?
[1:12:48] Yeah, absolutely.
[1:12:49] Probably what I would say is I'd already spent 20 odd years holding sessions with people in emotional process and working on emotional process tools myself.
[1:13:02] So I know how to feel.
[1:13:04] Okay.
[1:13:05] I know how to feel my feelings.
[1:13:07] And I'd gone from, you know, I'd sort of taken myself into those workshops and those modalities and then brought them back and then worked with people as well.
[1:13:17] So I had a lot of, like tens of thousands of hours of that under my belt.
[1:13:22] Okay, yeah.
[1:13:23] And then I realized this was all training.
[1:13:25] But basically what I would say is that grief demands to be felt.
[1:13:29] Okay.
[1:13:29] Grief demands to be felt.
[1:13:31] And we live in a culture that does not have rituals of grief.
[1:13:34] We don't have the rituals that our hunter-gatherer ancestors and that First Nations people the world over have for dealing with grief.
[1:13:43] We've got this very English button it up, don't talk about it, don't have a feeling, you know, shut it down.
[1:13:48] You know, we come from this colonial English stiff upper lip background where, you know, we don't have feelings.
[1:13:55] Oh, no, no, they're terribly inconvenient, aren't they?
[1:13:59] And things like, you know, a funeral is some person who's never met your beloved standing up saying stuff that is often completely like, you know, nothing to do with them or in a religion that they don't even have.
[1:14:13] And everybody's sitting in this room with like uncomfortable clothes on.
[1:14:19] And then if you look at, there's no connection there.
[1:14:22] There's no connection with death.
[1:14:23] It's like sterilize it and homogenize it and make sure grief doesn't like poke its head out.
[1:14:29] Mm-hmm.
[1:14:30] And then if you look at First Nations cultures, if you look at hunter-gatherer cultures, like their ceremonies and their rituals of grief are full expression.
[1:14:37] Grief needs, it demands to be felt and it comes in waves.
[1:14:41] Like grief doesn't, it's not like this heavy fist.
[1:14:45] It comes in a wave and then it disappears again.
[1:14:47] It's designed to be able to bubble up and move through us and then fall away again.
[1:14:52] And so if we allow grief to have its way with us, then, I mean, what I would find would be like I'd be just like going about my day and then there's that song, you know, that song that triggers you and the next minute it's like blah, there it is.
[1:15:07] And so if we give ourselves permission to let that wave move through, then it's like it's weather.
[1:15:15] It's like this.
[1:15:16] Grief is like this.
[1:15:17] It's a wind that can roll through.
[1:15:19] The wind is not constant.
[1:15:20] It comes in waves.
[1:15:22] There it goes.
[1:15:23] And there it just picks up.
[1:15:24] Thank you, wind.
[1:15:25] Thank you for teaching.
[1:15:27] You know, it's like by being able to accept that emotions are weather.
[1:15:36] Yeah.
[1:15:37] They are not going to destroy us.
[1:15:38] They are not going to break us.
[1:15:40] We have nervous systems that are designed to be able to process and metabolize our emotions.
[1:15:45] But to do that, we have to move.
[1:15:48] We have to move.
[1:15:49] We have to not think our feelings.
[1:15:51] Emotions coming through do this.
[1:15:54] They move.
[1:15:55] Our heads move.
[1:15:56] Our necks move.
[1:15:56] We shake.
[1:15:57] We roll.
[1:15:57] We cry.
[1:15:58] You know, it's like this.
[1:16:00] It's dynamic.
[1:16:01] And when we are in relationship with our bodies, and this was...
[1:16:04] what I was asking about with the body thing.
[1:16:06] When we're in relationship with our bodies and with the process of emotion moving through a body, we learn the skill of being present for that emotion coming through and letting it have its way.
[1:16:19] When we do that, we're not holding it back.
[1:16:21] That wave can move.
[1:16:23] And then on the other side, it's like, oh, yeah.
[1:16:26] What we'll find and what you will find, what people do find, what I find, is when I truly allow like an emotional storm to come through and feel it completely, on the other side is bliss.
[1:16:41] Because there's like this cosmic furball that I've just hoiked up.
[1:16:46] It's like, what, what?
[1:16:49] And there it is.
[1:16:50] And then on the other side, it's like, oh, there's space.
[1:16:52] Or another way I like to describe it is like if you've ever had a pet and in the morning your dog or your cat goes out and has its morning crap, right?
[1:17:02] And then it comes in and it does the zoomies.
[1:17:04] Yes, yeah.
[1:17:05] It's like, yeah, it's like I've had the best shit ever.
[1:17:10] My life is amazing.
[1:17:12] Testify, you know.
[1:17:14] And so that's what it feels like when we process our emotions.
[1:17:18] Yeah.
[1:17:18] But because we're scared of losing control, because we come from this colonial background where we don't have feelings, feelings are suspect, and we just need to think them and put them in little boxes and stick them under where they can't hurt us, it means that we don't teach ourselves the natural capacity that we have to feel everything.
[1:17:35] There is nothing that cannot be felt.
[1:17:37] Nothing.
[1:17:38] We're designed to feel it all.
[1:17:40] We just have to do it in those little tiny bite-sized chunks.
[1:17:43] You know, it's like, how do you eat an elephant?
[1:17:44] Yeah.
[1:17:45] One bite at a time.
[1:17:46] And so by allowing them to come up, and sometimes we can't.
[1:17:50] Sometimes I'm at work, I can't feel it right now.
[1:17:53] But maybe I can get in the car and just have the screaming fit and try and tear the steering wheel off.
[1:17:59] It's almost the opposite of what...
[1:18:01] we've seen in films and stuff for so long where it's like, if something usually it's like in a film it's a break up or something big break up and then you like go straight to bed and cry and watch TV and films for days and just be still as opposed to what you're saying which is like we should be moving more.
[1:18:19] Move!
[1:18:19] Like, you know, it's the, like, and there's no wrong way and there's no right way.
[1:18:24] I don't want to, like, you know, say that if you've had a breakup and you've just gone, like, that's part of it.
[1:18:29] Part of it is having the cry and going to bed and watching Netflix for a week and crying at all the romantic movies.
[1:18:33] That's absolutely part of it.
[1:18:34] Yeah.
[1:18:35] But for me, when we're looking at, like, the big losses, like the proper, like, oh, those bone-crunching griefs, whatever they are, which we will all feel.
[1:18:47] Because someone's going to die.
[1:18:49] We're all going to die.
[1:18:50] People around us are going to die.
[1:18:51] And it's not even that people have to die.
[1:18:55] It might be that a relationship dies.
[1:18:57] It might be that our youth dies.
[1:18:58] Hello.
[1:18:59] Time and gravity is going to get all of us in the end.
[1:19:02] Something that I'm noticing as a post-menopausal woman, I'm like I'm looking in the mirror and just watching my face do things.
[1:19:07] I'm like, holy shit.
[1:19:07] shit like you know i'm used to a picture of myself in my 30s of being this like you know bouncy hot babe and now i'm like okay this is this whole thing is definitely changing and having to grieve that part of myself having to grieve our mobility having to grieve our planet as it's going through this huge change of humans are colonizing and um
[1:19:35] Basically pillaging the resources and, you know, species are dying by the day.
[1:19:41] Grieving culture where there is stuff going on in the world that is so heart-wrenching, heart-wrenching and appalling.
[1:19:48] Like we are going to be facing grief.
[1:19:50] So if we don't find tools to be with it, it's going to be a very, very challenging time.
[1:19:55] And my thing would be...
[1:19:56] Dance it.
[1:19:57] And when I say dance, I don't mean, you know, like, do the disco hop.
[1:20:01] I mean, do what First Nations people, do what hunter-gatherer people, what Indigenous people have always done, which is move.
[1:20:10] And move this.
[1:20:11] Move your neck.
[1:20:12] Because we hold our heads up.
[1:20:13] We're like this.
[1:20:14] We're like, I'm moving.
[1:20:16] Yeah.
[1:20:16] I'm dancing.
[1:20:18] No.
[1:20:18] To dance, we need to let our heads go and let our spine, our head, our neck all be one continuous unit, which if you look at traditional dancers, that is what they all do.
[1:20:28] And that is how we are designed to process our emotions, by feeling it and moving it.
[1:20:32] It's so, I mean, every now and again, I'll do, there's this app that I have, Hugh got me onto actually, which is like a breath work app.
[1:20:40] Yeah, yeah.
[1:20:41] And a couple months ago, I was in the morning and I thought, I'm going to do one.
[1:20:46] It was like quite early.
[1:20:47] First thing out of bed, I was like, I'm going to try one of these things.
[1:20:49] And I just chose a random one.
[1:20:51] And it started with normal, like the normal breathing things you do.
[1:20:54] And then during it, the guy who's leading the breath work in the thing goes, all right, now get up and dance.
[1:21:02] And I was like, what?
[1:21:03] Even though I was like completely by myself, lights were off.
[1:21:08] I just went with it.
[1:21:09] And for like, must have been like over five minutes, I was just like wild man dancing in my bedroom.
[1:21:16] And it was just...
[1:21:18] It felt weird at first, but it was so fun.
[1:21:22] Yeah.
[1:21:22] And I've probably never done that before.
[1:21:24] Beautiful.
[1:21:25] It was incredible.
[1:21:26] And the thing that you've brought in, which is that's the other thing that I wanted to speak to, which is great, which is breath.
[1:21:31] Yeah.
[1:21:32] Because...
[1:21:35] If you want to get present, if you want to get really present, follow your breath.
[1:21:39] Because if you follow your breath, you're in the now, right?
[1:21:43] The breath is going to rise and it's going to fall.
[1:21:45] If you can bring your attention to that, nothing else exists.
[1:21:48] And then you pop out and you start thinking about other things.
[1:21:50] But to be able to be in, when we're in our breath, we are now in our present moment.
[1:21:55] And when we're in our present moment, we're feeling what's true in our bodies right now rather than what we think or what we're worried about or whatever.
[1:22:02] It's like right now I feel, right now I feel.
[1:22:05] And by following that breath, now we're accessing our feeling state.
[1:22:09] Yeah.
[1:22:09] By following our breath.
[1:22:11] accessing our feeling state and then moving we are now processing and digesting and in that five minutes you probably did more than like 10 therapy sessions because you you were completely in the somatic intelligence of your body which was shaking something off and how did you feel afterwards
[1:22:29] Yeah, I felt so invigorated.
[1:22:31] There was sort of a...
[1:22:34] I guess because I'd...
[1:22:37] The insecurities that I had to push through to actually move completely freely, not just like...
[1:22:43] you know, move my legs on the side of a dance floor, but to actually really, like, give into it was, I think I just felt it was a bit liberating as well.
[1:22:51] Yeah.
[1:22:52] Yeah.
[1:22:52] So I'm a five rhythms dance meditation teacher.
[1:22:55] And what that means is it's not dance like, you know, like I said, disco dancing, handbags in the middle, doing the funky chicken or anything.
[1:23:01] Stuff you did in the 90s.
[1:23:02] Yeah.
[1:23:02] Did that.
[1:23:03] Yeah.
[1:23:04] Um, no, the, the, the dance as in the intelligent movement to, to process.
[1:23:11] And there are many conscious dance modalities, which are exactly for this.
[1:23:15] Uh, in my experience, five rhythms is the most powerful of these.
[1:23:20] And it was kind of like the birthplace of all of them.
[1:23:22] Um, so when you're asking what, um, um,
[1:23:25] what tools I used for processing grief, I ended up doing the Five Rhythms teacher training and I spent two years travelling around the world doing Five Rhythms workshops and I spent at least two full days a week
[1:23:41] on average of those two years in a workshop dancing like eight hours a day, six, seven, eight hours a day.
[1:23:47] And for a lot of that, I would be crawling around these floors.
[1:23:51] Like there might be 100 people and I have got tears and snot and I'm wailing and I'm howling and I'm moving.
[1:23:57] And I did that for two years to become a teacher.
[1:24:00] But in the process, I think I probably processed about 50 years' worth of grief, not just blazed grief, but all of the griefs, all of the ungrieved griefs that we all carry to be able to have that understanding of what we can do and that we can process anything.
[1:24:24] We have to move.
[1:24:25] And breathe.
[1:24:26] The movement, it hadn't occurred to me, but I've started doing hot, cold showers in the morning and I'm loving the way it makes me feel.
[1:24:33] And I hadn't realised that there's this moment where I go from the cold and I'm like, all right, I'm going to turn on the hot now.
[1:24:39] And there's a delay for the hot to kick in.
[1:24:41] And in that moment, I find myself...
[1:24:44] doing these erratic, like, shaking movements.
[1:24:46] And, like, and it's by far the best bit.
[1:24:48] I'm, like, I find myself, like, almost laughing hysterically.
[1:24:52] And I feel so good in that moment, in that.
[1:24:54] Yes.
[1:24:55] Yeah.
[1:24:55] That's it.
[1:24:56] That's exactly it.
[1:24:56] And now that is your body actually doing what it needs to do.
[1:24:59] Our bodies know how to do this.
[1:25:01] Once we get our minds and our judgments and our awkwardness and, you know, the decisions that we've made that we look silly or whatever, or people might judge us, whatever all that fucking bullshit is, and allow our bodies.
[1:25:12] Like, once we free ourselves from the shackles of self-judgment, our bodies will do the movements and shake it through.
[1:25:19] And on the other side, you've got the zoomies.
[1:25:20] Yeah, a joy.
[1:25:21] Just absolute.
[1:25:22] That's it.
[1:25:23] That's it.
[1:25:23] Because now you have actually digested something.
[1:25:26] Rather than thinking your way around it, you've processed something.
[1:25:29] You don't even need to know what it is.
[1:25:31] No.
[1:25:31] Doesn't matter.
[1:25:32] Sometimes it's tears.
[1:25:33] What am I crying for?
[1:25:34] I don't know.
[1:25:35] It wants to come out.
[1:25:37] Fucking great.
[1:25:37] Yeah.
[1:25:38] Yeah.
[1:25:38] It's almost like, I mean, like we talk a lot on this podcast about vulnerability and how important that is with connecting with people.
[1:25:43] But, and being vulnerable is understandably very hard for a lot of people in any sort of way.
[1:25:50] But it feels like dancing, but like when I was dancing or moving by myself, it felt quite vulnerable, even though there was no one else around.
[1:25:58] And it felt like it's quite like, you know, like I was like, oh my God, it's like, don't let myself see myself.
[1:26:03] Yeah.
[1:26:04] You know what I mean?
[1:26:04] Yeah.
[1:26:05] It was like I was judging myself in a weird way.
[1:26:07] Exactly.
[1:26:08] And so that's the should.
[1:26:09] It's like there's the cultural voice.
[1:26:11] There's the English cultural voice saying this, you know, don't be messy.
[1:26:18] Yeah, don't be messy.
[1:26:19] Don't be messy.
[1:26:20] And don't lose control, I think.
[1:26:21] Don't lose control.
[1:26:22] There we are.
[1:26:23] And, you know, humans are messy.
[1:26:26] Life is messy.
[1:26:27] Fucking look at it.
[1:26:28] It's messy.
[1:26:29] Storms come.
[1:26:29] Rain comes.
[1:26:30] It goes away again.
[1:26:31] Like, shit breaks.
[1:26:34] Yeah.
[1:26:34] We break.
[1:26:35] That's it.
[1:26:36] That is life.
[1:26:37] And when we just go with it, it's like, okay, well, then shit's breaking.
[1:26:39] Well, it's breaking me this way.
[1:26:41] Oh, no, it's breaking me that way.
[1:26:42] Yeah.
[1:26:42] And so the thing that I would probably say with how I handle grief, how I handle everything, is I don't fight life.
[1:26:50] I don't fight life when I look at capital R reality.
[1:26:54] So instead of going, well, it should look like this or I don't deserve it or why me?
[1:26:58] I'm like, well, here we are.
[1:27:00] There's a storm.
[1:27:01] Okay.
[1:27:02] Can I stay dry?
[1:27:03] No.
[1:27:03] Well, I guess I'm going to get wet.
[1:27:05] How do I get wet in the safest possible way?
[1:27:07] Don't fight life is great.
[1:27:09] Don't fight life.
[1:27:09] Yeah.
[1:27:10] Yeah.
[1:27:11] If you're catching a wave, right, if you're catching a wave and you get dumped by a wave, what's the safest way to do that?
[1:27:19] If you get dumped by a wave, what do you do?
[1:27:21] Go floppy.
[1:27:22] Go floppy.
[1:27:23] Curl up in a ball.
[1:27:25] You curl up in a ball and then you wait for the wave to go past and then you push to the surface.
[1:27:30] Okay.
[1:27:31] What happens if you stiffen up and away you get dumped by a wave?
[1:27:35] What's going to happen if you're like this?
[1:27:37] Oh, yeah, you're going to be, like, pushed even more and...
[1:27:40] What else?
[1:27:40] If you're like this.
[1:27:41] I feel like you'll get hurt.
[1:27:42] I can hurt yourself.
[1:27:43] You're going to break.
[1:27:45] Yeah.
[1:27:46] You're going to break.
[1:27:46] That's us and life.
[1:27:47] Life is full of waves, and they're pushing us this way and that.
[1:27:51] One of the beautiful things I love about the five rhythms practice is it teaches us to trust our feet.
[1:27:56] And again, because we in our world, our body is a delivery system for our head.
[1:28:02] We're walking around delivering our mind into places where it can think more.
[1:28:06] but we're not actually connected to our whole bodies.
[1:28:09] We don't trust our feet.
[1:28:10] We don't trust our instincts.
[1:28:12] And when we learn how to not fight life and when we learn to, in little steps, start to trust our feet, it gets to the point where there can be a big bloody tsunami coming on the horizon.
[1:28:23] It's like, woof, here comes a big one.
[1:28:26] You know, my mum is, or my dad is in the hospital and they've had a stroke and it's, it's coming.
[1:28:32] They're not, they're not, they're not,
[1:28:34] gone yet, but I can feel it coming.
[1:28:36] And it's a big tsunami.
[1:28:38] How am I going to be?
[1:28:39] But I've been with it enough times now that I know I can surf it.
[1:28:43] You know, it's not even a matter of letting it.
[1:28:46] Like I've got enough skill now.
[1:28:48] If I get dumped, I know what to do.
[1:28:50] But until then, I'm going to surf this thing, and I'm going to surf it by being present.
[1:28:55] I'm going to surf it by saying yes.
[1:28:57] Yeah, right now I feel scared.
[1:28:59] Okay.
[1:28:59] What does scared want?
[1:29:00] Oh, it wants to shake.
[1:29:01] Okay.
[1:29:02] Right now I feel numb.
[1:29:04] Okay, what does numb want?
[1:29:05] It wants to watch Netflix.
[1:29:06] Okay, I'm going to wallow on purpose.
[1:29:08] Right now I feel fucking pissed off.
[1:29:11] What does that want?
[1:29:12] It wants to smash every plate in the house.
[1:29:14] All right.
[1:29:15] Go to a rage room, you know, go to Vinny's and buy some plates and smash them in the garage.
[1:29:20] What is like, you know, it's whatever our emotions are asking of us, if we give ourselves the permission to do that, we're teaching ourselves how to say yes to life and then we're not fighting it and along the way,
[1:29:34] It's like we get to do a commando role and end up like, I don't know where I'm going to end up, but I know I've got the internal abilities and the wisdom and then the tools to be with wherever I land.
[1:29:47] And it's usually, in my experience, somewhere amazing.
[1:29:52] Wowee.
[1:29:54] I don't know about you guys, but I don't feel like I've ever felt this presence before.
[1:29:58] No.
[1:29:59] No.
[1:30:00] Yeah.
[1:30:00] Any interview we've ever done before.
[1:30:01] And that's nothing against the other guests.
[1:30:03] I think it's a combination of so many things.
[1:30:07] But the amount of things going on around us, ironically, there is so much happening around us this after episode.
[1:30:13] with booms and cameras and people, and I've never felt so present.
[1:30:18] Just locked in, yeah.
[1:30:19] And what an incredible privilege to spend time with you.
[1:30:25] I started off by saying, I was thinking of the song, I mean, Jumble Wonders, I Get Knocked Down.
[1:30:31] The song on my head now is the weekends, I Can't Feel My Face, whatever you do, because I'm so fucking cold.
[1:30:37] But to finish that song, or finish that line, but I love it.
[1:30:41] This has just been...
[1:30:44] I don't know how long we've been here for.
[1:30:47] What a wonderful time we've had together.
[1:30:49] And I found myself not wanting to ask questions because if I was asking something, you weren't talking.
[1:30:54] I just wanted you to be talking.
[1:30:56] Yeah, I had a bit of a rant at the end there, didn't I?
[1:30:58] You got me going.
[1:31:00] It was a great rant.
[1:31:01] Thank you for talking about Blaze as well.
[1:31:03] I mean, I say that, but the work you've done and the way you are with it, it...
[1:31:08] Yeah, I did notice as you were talking, I was thinking, gosh, you talk about this with such ease.
[1:31:11] But now understanding you, I know why you talk about Blaise with such ease.
[1:31:15] And there was something really poetic about the more you spoke about Blaise, the more the wind picked up.
[1:31:20] And it was just howling around us for a while as you talked about that group.
[1:31:24] It was really quite beautiful.
[1:31:25] Yeah.
[1:31:26] And in my experience, that's not an accident.
[1:31:29] In my experience, when we really connect with nature, nature connects with us.
[1:31:34] You can call it woo-woo, you can call it all the things, but I found that my whole time alone, whenever I needed something, I would go to the lake and I would say, all right, big mama,
[1:31:43] You got me here to tell a story and it's a story that's going to be different.
[1:31:47] And as I know, it's a story that you want out there, this way of being, you know, connected to nature and connected to the wild.
[1:31:56] But if I'm going to tell this story, I have to be here and to be here, I'm going to need some food.
[1:32:00] So please, I'm going to need some food.
[1:32:03] And then that day I'd like pull out a fish or pull out two fish.
[1:32:06] Yeah, for me, that whole time and everything that comes from it is actually part of a deeper wisdom wanting to express itself in the world.
[1:32:15] And I just happen to be a mouthpiece.
[1:32:18] It could have been anyone.
[1:32:19] It just happens to be me at this point.
[1:32:20] So, great.
[1:32:22] This has been, it sounds like an out-of-body experience.
[1:32:25] Yeah, yeah.
[1:32:25] It really has been quite profound.
[1:32:28] Gina Chick, thank you so much for joining us here in Tassie for this beautiful conversation in the wild.
[1:32:34] Yay.
[1:32:34] Thank you.
[1:32:35] Yeah.
[1:32:36] Amazing.
[1:32:37] Thank you so much.
[1:32:37] Thanks, Gina.
[1:32:38] Well, it's been an absolute privilege, and I'm just so glad that you did this outside.
[1:32:43] And thank you so much for inviting me here.
[1:32:45] I've had such a ball.
[1:32:46] Oh, thank you.
[1:32:47] Yeah.
[1:32:47] Thank you.
[1:32:48] Thank you.
[1:32:49] Well, other than the fact it's nice to warm up again, it is so, so...
[1:32:53] Isn't she just...
[1:32:55] I mean, like you said before, Hugh, she is a force of nature.
[1:33:17] So she came to our live show in Sydney.
[1:33:20] Do you remember what?
[1:33:21] She came up to us afterwards.
[1:33:22] We do like a meet and greet and she came up to us afterwards.
[1:33:24] She gave me a hug and said, you three are beautiful nerds.
[1:33:31] Beautiful, beautiful nerds.
[1:33:34] And I think nothing could sum that up more than when we finished that episode, the interview, sorry, and we were all freezing because we'd been sitting there in a pretty windy environment for a couple of hours and there was a little hut nearby and we thought we should definitely put the fire on.
[1:33:50] And I think all of our initial thought was, well, there's no kindling.
[1:33:54] We can't put a fire on.
[1:33:55] Oh, God, yeah.
[1:33:55] We haven't bought any kindling from the service station.
[1:33:58] I know.
[1:33:58] I mean, I've got a fireplace, but the place where I have my fireplace, there is no big trees or anything.
[1:34:03] So you have to go and buy kindling from a service station.
[1:34:06] And yeah, I'm like putting the fire together and looking around.
[1:34:08] I'm like, oh, there's no kindling here.
[1:34:10] Oh, well, I guess no fire today.
[1:34:13] And then, yeah, of course, Gina sees us struggling with the fire.
[1:34:17] And then she's like, do you guys want me to do it?
[1:34:20] And weirdly, I was reluctant to let her do it.
[1:34:24] Like I wanted to show her that I could do a fire.
[1:34:27] But very quickly she was like, I'll do it.
[1:34:28] And then still barefoot, she walks out into the bush.
[1:34:31] Middle of the bush.
[1:34:32] Middle of the bush and grabs like kindling and leaves.
[1:34:35] All this stuff.
[1:34:36] And there was real purpose about what she was collecting.
[1:34:38] Yeah.
[1:34:39] Surprisingly.
[1:34:40] The best fire I've ever seen in about five minutes.
[1:34:41] Yeah.
[1:34:42] So what I wanted to talk about mainly, and I'm going to do this quickly because it has been a long episode, but what really, really fascinated me, I mean everything about that chat absolutely fascinated me.
[1:34:51] The one thing that stood out the most was –
[1:34:55] The whole conversation around discomfort, seeking it instead of leaning into it and then enjoying the impact it then has on your life.
[1:35:08] What she did was, I mean, I was even watching on the way back from our show at the Opera House, I was watching a show which I think I believe is on Netflix.
[1:35:17] It was on the Qantas in-flight entertainment and it was called The 100 Foot Wave.
[1:35:22] And there's a guy called Garrett who is like one of the world's best big wave surfers.
[1:35:29] And he talked about how at age 35, I think it was, he loved surfing as a young man but he stopped and,
[1:35:35] and opened up a surf shop and because he was running the business, he didn't have time to surf.
[1:35:39] And I think it was age 35, he decided, he set his sights on surfing again and surfing big waves and then decided he'd set himself to be the first person to surf a hundred foot wave.
[1:35:50] And the amount of discomfort he has to go through to do that.
[1:35:53] And he spends, he goes back every year to this one place in Portugal to try and surf this wave.
[1:35:59] And
[1:36:00] seeing like the look on his face he was so lit up and so alive it kind of reminded me of Gina this who's doing something really physically difficult and kind of embracing it and leaning to discomfort I loved it so much I because I've been reading so much about it recently there's two quotes I want to read to you which I love and I have read these to you guys in fact I read them before we did the show when we were chatting on the weekend but now I can't credit the person who came up with it because I don't know who it was but I love it so much and
[1:36:28] And I'm bringing this quote up because it's relevant to something I want to do in a second.
[1:36:32] So the quote is, I believe that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.
[1:36:37] The more aggressively we seek comfort, the faster we age.
[1:36:42] Oh, that's a good point.
[1:36:43] Now, I do not think of this surfer now, I think he's in his early 50s.
[1:36:47] At one point, not at one point, I think, oh, he looks old.
[1:36:50] But he just looks so young and full of life.
[1:36:52] He is pursuing something very uncomfortable, very scary, and he's just going for it.
[1:36:56] There's a lot of preparation that goes into it.
[1:36:58] Gina, probably a similar age.
[1:36:59] To me, she just seems so young.
[1:37:02] And I think it's because she's someone who just deals with discomfort and is okay with it.
[1:37:06] And jokingly, obviously jokingly, but when I read that out, I read that quote out to you guys before we went on stage at the Opera House and Hamish was there.
[1:37:15] And Hamish jokingly said, well, Ryan, you're fucked.
[1:37:19] Yeah.
[1:37:21] Because I famously, as he's known me since I was 14 years old, famously seeking comfort left, right and centre is what I've been doing.
[1:37:32] Yeah.
[1:37:32] Less so actually now.
[1:37:34] I'm probably getting a little bit better now.
[1:37:35] But yeah, my entire life, comfort bandit.
[1:37:38] And so here's the reason I bring this up.
[1:37:43] When I look back on this year, there'll be two things that really stand out to me as very big highlights.
[1:37:48] One will be the camping trip I did in the snow for three days.
[1:37:51] Now, I have told you guys before, but the thought of camping… I still can't believe you did that.
[1:37:56] Yeah.
[1:37:57] As soon as I said it to you, you laughed.
[1:37:58] When I told you I was going to do it, you laughed so much and said, well, that's just ridiculous you're doing that because I do hate being in a tent.
[1:38:03] I get quite claustrophobic and then I'm away from all the comforts that the three of us love and it's hiking to get to these camps.
[1:38:12] and the whole leading up to it, I was so nervous going, I don't know if I can actually do this.
[1:38:16] I'm going to hate big parts of this I'm going to hate.
[1:38:21] The second highlight I think for this year on Saturday, I'm trying to break a national record with these guys, a 4x400, and there has been the preparation to this has been so much discomfort and so much training and just running a 400 is a disgusting thing to do.
[1:38:34] It hurts so much.
[1:38:37] They are the two things that will stand out to me as two of the biggest highlights of the year for me.
[1:38:40] Both of them have been events that I've known coming up throughout the year.
[1:38:46] Gina's experience on Alone was life-defining for her.
[1:38:50] This big wide surfer, Garrett, and I keep not saying his name because I've forgotten it, but it's McSomething.
[1:38:55] Garrett, life-defining event.
[1:38:58] Yeah.
[1:38:59] I want to put it out there to the two of you and to all our listeners and you can put yourself on a scale from Garrett and Gina to, I don't know who's at the other end of that scale.
[1:39:12] Well, Ryan.
[1:39:14] No, that's not.
[1:39:16] Because you have been doing things like cold plunge and stuff like that.
[1:39:19] So you have been going through discomfort.
[1:39:20] Thanks.
[1:39:21] Thank you.
[1:39:24] But I would love –
[1:39:25] What has been so special with you this year is having an event coming up that I've had to prepare for that has scared me.
[1:39:32] Both of them scare me, but I've had to do a lot of preparation for that I know is going to lead to a lot of discomfort.
[1:39:40] But it's just given me so much focus and structure and healthy habits.
[1:39:47] It's forced me to have healthy habits throughout the year.
[1:39:50] And the discomfort that I went through when I was camping in the snow for three days, I still think about it when –
[1:39:58] I'll give you a terrible example.
[1:40:00] You know, sometimes you wake up at like 3 in the morning and you need to go to the toilet and you're like, I can't be bothered.
[1:40:05] I'll get cold feet.
[1:40:06] I don't want to do this.
[1:40:08] I think about the fact that I did that in the snow when it was snowing at 3 in the morning.
[1:40:12] I need to go to the toilet.
[1:40:12] So I got up and I got completely dressed, put my boots on, went into the snow, got snowed on, came back and went back to bed, woke up the other two people in the tent to do it.
[1:40:21] Yeah.
[1:40:22] Now I'm like, this is easy.
[1:40:25] This is so easy.
[1:40:26] Going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you can, oh, wow, yeah.
[1:40:28] Terrible example.
[1:40:29] You found out what you're capable of.
[1:40:31] You've really pushed yourself.
[1:40:32] Terrible example.
[1:40:33] It's just the first one that came to mind.
[1:40:35] But there are so many examples of things of like, I can do this.
[1:40:38] I did that.
[1:40:39] And I'm still blasking in the glow of that trip that I went on for three days.
[1:40:42] Mm-hmm.
[1:40:43] And this event coming up, the joy it's brought me, I'm so scared of it, but I can't wait for after it.
[1:40:50] I can't wait to have got through that and then to just reflect on it.
[1:40:54] And so what I'd love you two to do, I think it's a bit much to say to you, come up with something now.
[1:40:59] I discussed with Bridge beforehand.
[1:41:01] I was like, I think it's too much to put him on the spot.
[1:41:03] Maybe there's something that you have thought about you would like to commit to.
[1:41:07] Now, it might be, maybe asking people to come up with a year-long, you know, a year-long thing is a bit much, like a year-defining thing.
[1:41:13] Maybe it's a month-defining thing.
[1:41:14] Maybe it's, I'm going to have cold showers every morning for a month.
[1:41:19] Well, you already do that, Ryan, so that's the discomfort that you do.
[1:41:22] It has to be physical discomfort.
[1:41:23] No, I don't think so.
[1:41:23] The two examples I've given there, they're very specific to me.
[1:41:26] And I'm not saying everyone go camping for three days and then do a 400-meter race.
[1:41:31] Thank God.
[1:41:32] But I would like you to think about for you personally, and I don't want to put you guys on the spot, so I'm not saying come up with the answer now, but I would like to pick this up with you guys early next year.
[1:41:42] I'd love you to have the next couple of months to think about something that you would like.
[1:41:45] I'd love everyone to think about what is something that you could do
[1:41:48] that might be month defining, could be year defining.
[1:41:51] It doesn't have to be a physical pursuit.
[1:41:53] It could be you are going to go to your school reunion.
[1:41:56] It could be that you are... Well, I guess the interesting thing is that they're not necessarily separate because putting yourself in a physically uncomfortable thing brings up a lot of emotions and mental things, as Gina was talking about in the episode.
[1:42:11] So they're kind of intertwined in a way, the physical challenge.
[1:42:16] Yeah.
[1:42:16] It could be you're going to journal every morning for a month.
[1:42:19] That might be it.
[1:42:21] For me personally, and I know we are trying to be inclusive of everyone.
[1:42:25] We're trying to come up with examples so everyone can feel like they can do this.
[1:42:29] What has been so incredibly great for me is to, and that's just maybe the way that I'm wired, is to identify an event.
[1:42:35] or a date in the year where I'm working towards something.
[1:42:38] So I'm training for that.
[1:42:40] I'm preparing for that mentally and emotionally and physically.
[1:42:43] That has just been amazing for me but that might not work for you.
[1:42:47] Perhaps it's more of an emotional risk that you're trying to take here.
[1:42:52] Like going to a school formal.
[1:42:53] Like this year I will go to the school.
[1:42:54] Sorry, maybe it is a school reunion.
[1:42:57] A little bit creepy.
[1:42:59] I'm going to go to a school formal.
[1:43:03] Maybe it is a school reunion that you're setting yourself to go towards.
[1:43:06] And so in the lead up to that, you're going to catch up with a few people that you know you're going to see.
[1:43:09] So it is less daunting.
[1:43:11] But it's something I'd love to pick up again at the start of next year, early on, maybe in an episode we do early in the year where I'm going to ask people to come back to that event or whatever it is that you're going to commit to for next year.
[1:43:26] Or again, if the year finds it's a little bit too daunting,
[1:43:30] I'm in the process now of having done two great challenges this year.
[1:43:33] I'm trying to think what will I do next year that's really going to challenge me.
[1:43:36] That's a lovely thing to have in the back of your mind because I find when things don't go well at work or with your family, you've got this other thing that you're like, well, I'm also working towards this really exciting thing and it's going to be hard and scary but I think I can do it.
[1:43:48] It's like a goal, like a big goal to achieve.
[1:43:50] Okay.
[1:43:51] I'm going to think about it.
[1:43:54] Is anything jumping out to either of you?
[1:43:57] Not really, to be honest.
[1:43:59] I mean, I'd love whatever you run on Saturday.
[1:44:05] I'd love to beat that.
[1:44:06] I shouldn't laugh that much.
[1:44:11] I would also love.
[1:44:11] That would be kind of good.
[1:44:13] I'd also love for you to beat that.
[1:44:14] God, it'd be incredible.
[1:44:15] What do you think you'll run?
[1:44:16] Your leg?
[1:44:17] Your leg?
[1:44:18] I have to run 51.5 for us to break the national record.
[1:44:21] Do you?
[1:44:22] Yep.
[1:44:22] Which is a PB.
[1:44:23] Jesus.
[1:44:24] Yep.
[1:44:25] Wow.
[1:44:25] Which is a PB.
[1:44:26] That's discomfort.
[1:44:27] Wow.
[1:44:28] If I do that, I know you both will be watching me vomit a lot afterwards.
[1:44:31] Yeah.
[1:44:31] No question.
[1:44:32] All right.
[1:44:33] Fingers crossed for somebody.
[1:44:33] Yeah, that'd be great.
[1:44:35] Yeah, I mean, mine is to, I would love to write an album based off the song that I did already and continue to do that.
[1:44:45] And I think there's a certain amount of physical discomfort there because it's, I have to do it alone.
[1:44:50] And being alone, I find physically discomfort.
[1:44:52] Do you have to do it alone?
[1:44:54] I think so.
[1:44:55] Well, I have to do the first part alone.
[1:44:56] I have to write the songs and lyrics alone.
[1:45:00] Okay.
[1:45:01] And then involve other people from there.
[1:45:03] And that bit's not discomforting.
[1:45:05] That's just like playing and that's fun.
[1:45:07] But uncovering something has to be done alone.
[1:45:10] So I'd like – but I'm kind of scared to – I hate committing to –
[1:45:17] I struggle to commit to things publicly.
[1:45:18] I know that's the way you have to do it and I kind of had to do it for writing to you guys to write the song for the live show.
[1:45:24] And also to get off Instagram.
[1:45:25] You committed publicly to get off Instagram.
[1:45:27] Yeah, true.
[1:45:28] But I link it a bit too much to exercise in the past where I've said to people, I've started running, I'm going to commit to running.
[1:45:35] As soon as I do that, I stop.
[1:45:37] And it's just another reminder of failure.
[1:45:39] So yeah, it's tricky.
[1:45:41] I don't know how to square those two.
[1:45:45] So I'll just add to that I mean Josh you've just said you're going to Write an album but if By chance either of you choose A physical challenge That you would like to define your year or month By I mean I'll do it with you I don't know what it is yet but if you come up with one I'll do it with you if you're looking for someone to do that With any physical challenge Yeah but you have to do it too You want to start pole dancing with me Yeah
[1:46:11] If that's your defining, that'd be life defining.
[1:46:16] It would define something.
[1:46:20] I will be in because I find those things to be so much more enriching when you're doing it alongside someone else.
[1:46:27] I feel bad that I haven't got one.
[1:46:29] No, no, but that's like I was discussing with Bridget before.
[1:46:33] We want it to be a really big and wonderful thing that you're going to do.
[1:46:36] Well, it doesn't have to be, but I don't think it's something you can come up with straight away.
[1:46:40] God, it'd be amazing if I could somehow find the courage to get a massage every day.
[1:46:48] Something like that.
[1:46:51] That can be a bit uncomfortable.
[1:46:52] Yeah, but like a hard massage.
[1:46:53] Yeah.
[1:46:54] Like a really strenuous one.
[1:46:56] Yeah.
[1:46:57] Oh, God, could I do it?
[1:47:01] Anyway, Gina Chick had such an inspirational chat and I feel so grateful to have met her.
[1:47:07] Absolutely.
[1:47:07] Yeah.
[1:47:09] Thanks, everyone.
[1:47:10] Thank you.
[1:47:24] Hugh, it's Ryan.
[1:47:26] I just wanted to give you the heads up that I was so inspired by Gina and what she did on Alone that I've decided to get outside my comfort zone and do it as well.
[1:47:35] So for the next 67 days, I'm gonna be all alone out here in wild Tasmania.
[1:47:43] I am scared, yes, but honestly, I can already feel myself learning and growing from all the discomfort I'm currently experiencing out here.
[1:47:54] Sir, still sparkling.
[1:47:56] Sparkling, thank you.
[1:47:58] Sorry, that was a mountain lion, I think.
[1:48:02] Anyway, wish me luck, Hugh.
[1:48:04] It's Ryan Shelton from the podcast.
[1:48:07] Call back.
[1:48:08] Where's the new people?
[1:48:14] The Imperfects is hosted and produced by Hugh Van Kylenberg, Brian Shelton and Josh Van Kylenberg.
[1:48:19] Our executive producer is Bridget North East.
[1:48:22] We'd like to thank Andrew Poole, George Martin, Adam and Rob Rebel, Dave Senovaratny from Oye Studios, Tomi Armbruster and Windmill Audio for their help in making this episode.
[1:48:34] The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment.
[1:48:41] The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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