Nathalie Himmelrich

Inspiring Hope | Finding healthy ways of Grieving | Writer

self development/motivation

Estelle Thompson on How Art and Yoga Saved My Life | Episode 32

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Estelle Thompson
Estelle Thompson

HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is completely self-funded, produced, and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich.
Consider making a small donation to support the Podcast here. Thank you! 

Today on the podcast I am speaking with Estelle Thompson, who has been an inspiration for me for years. We’ve met on Instagram as part of a yearly event called May We All Heal which I started in 2015 and gave grieving mothers a creative outlet and an avenue to share with others. Estelle has a way of using art and yoga in her healing journey that drew me in and it was an honor for me to be speaking with her. Here is someone who can laugh while crying, who exemplifies living with the paradox of living a creative life while holding the gift of what death has brought her.  

About this week’s guest 

Estelle Thomson, M.A. in Counselling Psychology is a leading yoga teacher and educator in the intersecting fields of expressive arts, embodied movement, and psychology. With over ten years of experience, her work explores the relationship between breath, body, emotions, imagination, and play. Estelle is a faculty member of Quantum University, internationally recognized for offering online courses and graduate degree programs in holistic, alternative, natural, and integrative medicine. Estelle leads numerous lectures, workshops, and retreats locally and internationally.

Estelle’s links: Website | Instagram

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Giving birth prematurely and the unexpected death of her son Tommy Tinker when he was just 2 years old 
  • Art and yoga saved her life
  • Writing for grief
  • Change of identity
  • How to use creativity

Resources mentioned in this episode 

Links

–> For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website. 

–> Subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.

–> Join the podcast’s Instagram page.

Thanks for listening to HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA. If you’d like to be updated on future episodes, please subscribe to my newsletter on Nathalie Himmelrich.com

If you need grief support, please contact me for a FREE 30 min discovery session.

HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich. 

Nathalie with Turiya Hanover on the Loss of Significant Partners in Life | Episode 4

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Turiya Hanover on How To Deal With Grief and Trauma Podcast

Today I speak with Turiya, who – among other losses and traumas – shares the turning point in her life when she lost her then 33-year-old husband Welf von Hannover in 1981. Her relationship with death and the impermanence of physical life significantly changed another time with the loss of her most beloved partner Maja just 6 months ago, where she experienced something, she never had before: 

‘Then one night the message came, and it was: Love Is All. And there was such a strong feeling. Love is the bond that brings us over the bridge and that brings two things into oneness, that overcomes the separation. In this case, the separation is a loss of the physical body. But the heart and the love are there. Love Is All.’ 

Turiya Hanover

Turiya’s story is deeply moving and will encourage you to look for something beyond the physical. 

About this week’s guest 

Turiya is the co-founder of Path Retreats and the transformational process – Path of Love with Rafia Morgan. Together they also lead a one-year Holistic Counsellor training for therapists called Working with People – School of Counselling. 

She has been trained in many different modalities such as Gestalt, Bioenergetics, Psychodrama, Family Therapy (V. Satir), NLP, Hypnosis, Somatic Experiencing™ (Peter Levine), Ego Psychology, Family Constellation, Enneagram and Astrology, and Essence Work.

Turiya’s personal journey into human development started when she did her first 2-year Jungian Psychotherapy course aged 22, followed by an encounter workshop in 1970 in Germany. The revelation and exploration of this Humanistic Psychology approach took Turiya by surprise. The internal shift that she experienced was so profound, that she and her husband, set on a new course of human discovery, which led them to India. Through learning meditation, living, and working in a community under the guidance of a master, she developed a unique approach to working with people that is a synthesis of eastern insights, living awareness, and a western approach to humanistic psychology.

The sudden, unexpected death of her husband marked a turning point in Turiya’s life. This profound experience deeply influenced her own personal search and how she works with people today.

Today Turiya has the joy of being a grandmother and spends her free time painting and writing a book about the rising of the feminine and about Death as a friend and the realisation of Impermanence. 

Topics discussed in this episode

  • The death of her grandfather when she was 7 years old 
  • The sudden and unexpected death of her husband Welf von Hannover at the age of 33 years old at the Osho Ashram
  • The lacking understanding of shock and trauma in the 80s
  • The fear of death always being present
  • Living in a culture that avoids death and experiences a lack of connection to the formless
  • Osho’s death
  • The death of her partner Maja
  • Grief and loneliness can make one feel orphaned by existence
  • The importance of contact in the face of grief

Resources mentioned in this episode

  • Quote by Carlos Castaneda:
    ‘Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, an arm’s length behind us. Death is the only wise adviser that a warrior has. Whenever he feels that everything is going wrong and he’s about to be annihilated, he can turn to his death and ask if that is so. His death will tell him that he is wrong, that nothing really matters outside its touch. His death will tell him, I haven’t touched you yet.’
  • A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as if It Were Your Last by Stephen Levine

Links

–> For more information, please visit Nathalie’s website. 

–> Subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on future episodes here.

–> Join the podcast’s Instagram page.

Thanks for listening to HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA. If you’d like to be updated on future episodes, please subscribe to my newsletter on Nathalie Himmelrich.com

If you need grief support, please contact me for a FREE 30 min discovery session.

HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AND TRAUMA is produced and edited by me, Nathalie Himmelrich. 

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Remember to keep breathing, I promise, it will get easier.

New Year New Grief

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woman in pickup
Photo by averie woodard on Unsplash

Setting intentions for the New Year ’s intentions are all around at this time of the year. For many of us, bereaved parents, the holidays and New Year’s celebration with its ‘merry’ and ‘happy’ wishes can lead us to slide down and get lost in another grief rabbit-hole. We are left with the sentiment that nothing that the New Year brings can make the feelings of loss any better.

Surviving the Holidays

The good news:

Welcome on the other side. Take a breath. You survived the holidays. 
As much as I love part of the holiday spirit, I often encounter myself in a quiet, unsociable mood and end up spending – at least some part of it – by myself. This is how I re-energize and re-calibrate for whatever newness might come with the New Year.

Setting Intentions

For the New Year, I asked the community of the Grieving Parents Support Network to share their intentions, relating to their grief. Here is what they said:

  • I spent the last year encumbered by grief, but unable to process. The loss of one twin and the survival of another have kept me in a state of limbo between that grief and the happiness being a first-time mom evokes. I have felt guilty for enjoying certain moments without Benji, just as much as I have felt guilty not enjoying others with his brother.
    My intention for 2018 is to process and get to a point where that guilt isn’t there, in either direction.
  • I am creating a bucket list, it reiterates the last line of the poem “to live in a way that would make you proud”  in memory of Sam 7/5/2015
  • I promise to hold onto hope even when I feel blind.
  • My New Year’s intentions are to keep Charlotte’s memory alive, to celebrate her birthday (15) and the day she gained her wings (28), to share pictures and videos of her that people haven’t seen on the 15th and 28th of each month, and to organize something for friends and family to participate in to remember Baby Charlotte.

Or it can be as simple as: “I intend to take one day at a time.”

Intentions don’t have to be hard and fast rules or goals as you would set them in a business plan. Whatever your intentions are, think about them as guiding principles that will lead you through the year.

Grieving in healthy ways, for me, means not to look for ways ‘to get over it’ or ‘through it’ as a way to get it done. It is about finding ways to be curious about what is stirring in my heart. Integrating not just the memory, but my ever-unfolding experience into my life. In this light, dear healthy grieved, here some New Year Review Questions for you:

  1. What have you learned about yourself and grief/grieving?
  2. What has changed since the loss of your child? Hint: make it specific. Look both for negative and positive things (for example I no longer take life for granted.)
  3. What are you ready to let go?
  4. How do you want to be with your grief in the New Year?

Looking Forward

What do you want to bring forward into this New Year?
Setting an intention can be powerful. Author Lynn McTaggart* has found that for something to occur it is 300,000 times more likely when one has set an intention.

INSPIRATION NEEDED?

You can check out mine on the GPSNetwork blog and take whichever you like.

* References can be found in the books by Lynn McTaggart: The Field and The Intention Experiment

This article was first published January 3, 2018 in Still Standing Magazine.

Who Is Your Spiritual Authority?

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milky way
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Going through life we learn from parents, teachers, lecturers, educators, coaches, trainers, workshop leaders, religious leaders, partners, and children. Spiritual seekers often learn from gurus. But who is your spiritual authority? Who tells you what’s right and what’s wrong? What to believe and from whom? When to apply what you have learnt and why?

The good, the bad and the useless

As a child, we learn and believe our parents. As pupils, we learn from our teachers. Sadly, not all the teaching we receive is beneficial. When the teaching is received in the formative years of a child, it is often taken on before they gain the ability to decipher between good and bad. As we grow older, we hopefully become more and more equipped to differentiate between what of the learning and beliefs we want to believe and what we need to throw overboard. 

Experience and perception

If you were to ask me what I believe after all that I’ve been through, I wouldn’t be able to give you a simple answer. The answer is continuously changing and adapting to the current experience. The personal experience comes from within my body and my perspective of the current reality based on my perception, which is based on my learning and experiences in the past.

What have you been encouraged to believe?

Luckily I haven’t been brought up with strong religious dogma. My parents were liberal in their religious thinking and early on my dad encouraged me to read spiritual books about the kabala, numerology, meditation, hypnosis and various eastern religions. With any of those he used to answer my question “Do you believe this?” with his permissive statement: “I see this as a possibility, an option of many.”

Admiration of teachers

Encouraged to read and learn more I followed the breadcrumbs from one book to the next, picking and choosing what resonated with me. I have fallen into the trap of admiration of teachers and gurus, believing their version of the story to be the one. And I have been disillusioned many times and thrown my admirations over board.

Claim your spiritual authority

Just the other day, a new friend of mine said something about ‘claiming spiritual authority’ and I suddenly felt alert. When speaking more about the topic, she explained that in relating teachings to personal experience and picking and choosing what related to the self I suddenly felt my process and experience to be understood. She spoke more about the process of owning your own spiritual authority. This concept makes sense to me and it ties in with owning our body, mind, emotions and our spirit. I like it.

The only answer to the question above is: “I am!”

Should I Tell Him?

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couple back to back

Entering into a new relationship means starting at the beginning and sharing your story with each other. The older you get and the more experiences you have collected, the more potential for aspects of your past that seems unworthy of sharing. Maybe some of your experiences make you feel guilty, ashamed or even disgusted with yourself. So, should you tell your new partner the whole truth or not?

Is it relevant right now?

Recently, a client of mine tormented herself about a past secret affair and whether or not she should tell her new partner, given the new man knew the man from the affair. What I asked her first is: “Is this part of your past relevant to you now and how?”

In regards to an affair, ask yourself whether you still have feelings for the other person, which might impede in your new forming relationship.

Ask yourself: Does my past affair emotionally stand in the way of forming this new relationship? 

Level or trust and vulnerability

A new relationship is at the building stage of trust. You need to give your partner and yourself the time and space to let this trust naturally build. In the beginning, you share only certain aspects of yourself and this is normal. Once you feel more secure you are naturally willing to be more vulnerable to share the less favourable aspect of your personality.

Ask yourself: What would I want to know from or about my partner? When am I ready to share with him the deeper aspects of myself?

Boundaries

The learning within a relationship always includes knowing yourself and defining who you are within that relationship. This means experiencing your boundaries, sharing them and standing up if they are being trespassed. At the beginning of a relationship, it is natural to accept more and be more forgiving.

Ask yourself: What and where are my boundaries? What would I want from a relationship and what is out-of-bounds?

Walk in their shoes

Changing the perspective is always a good way to gauge what you need to speak and what isn’t necessary.

Ask yourself: If he experienced what I had, would I want/need to know? When would I want to know and in how much detail?

The truth

Telling the truth and being honest has become a high standard and yet in our human experience, it needs to thought through a bit deeper. The truth has a time and place and that’s not always here and now.

In regards to telling the truth I like to ask myself these three questions first:

1. Is it absolutely true or have I just heard/read it?

2. Is ‘this truth’ kind?

3. Is it of benefit to the person to hear ‘this truth’ now?

If at least one of the questions receive a ‘no’ then I know it’s not the time and place to share.

What You Don’t Want In a Relationship

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relationship hands intertwined
Photo by Renate Vanaga on Unsplash

This week I heard the song “I can’t go for that” by Rumer and Daryl Hall. It made me ponder the question of relationship boundaries. Have you thought about where your boundaries in a relationship are lately? Ponder with me…

The beginning of a relationship

We usually start out with a relationship being in head-over-heels love for one another where we are tempted to full-heartedly believe in the romantic notion of “I’ll do anything for you”. Even though that is completely normal at the very beginning of a relationship, it is not normal, when you progress into everyday life.

The reality

When we relate with our partner past the honeymoon stage we usually come back to our more realistic self, meeting the more realistic self of the partner. That’s where, sometimes, the disillusionment sets in and some relationships fall apart.

In a perfect world

In everyday life and once we ‘come back to our true self’ we should, in a perfect world, re-evaluate our relating and discuss boundaries. What are the things, behaviours and actions you like or dislike and what is non-acceptable? Have you ever thought about it yourself, let alone communicated with your partner? Well, most couples would have to answer a truthful no – you’re not alone.

Where do you dare me to draw the line?

Start by thinking it through by yourself. Simply list things, behaviours and actions, in relation to your partner, in three categories: like/need – dislike but somewhat acceptable (borderline) – not acceptable or not possible.

Ask yourself:

  • From past experience or what I’ve seen and heard, what is it that I like and need in my relationship? It might be open communication, respect or honesty.
  • From past experience or what I’ve seen and heard, what is it that I dislike but can accept to a certain degree? It might be going out without telling me when you come back, taking my things (laptop) without asking or not communicating when we have visitors.
  • From past experience or what I’ve seen and heard, what is it that I dislike and is non-acceptable? It might be physical violence like hitting, stonewalling for days (not speaking as a form of punishment) or having sexual relationships outside our relationship.

I can’t go for that

Once you bring your list to an open discussion with your partner, you might find out that some things he/she likes, you don’t want to do or agree to or you simply might not be able to do. In the song, Daryl Hall says: “I can’t go for being twice as nice”. Your husband/partner might not be very social when visitors are around. Your wife/girlfriend might not want to be in a sexually open relationship.

Pretend or real? Dependent or honouring self?

You can choose the relationship you would like to be in, with your partner and also with yourself. Choose wisely.

Doing something for someone else, even if it’s your partner, which speaks against your core values will sooner or later dissatisfy you.

Learn more here

Love Languages

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    Nathalie Himmelrich

    I accompany people therapeutically as a holistic counsellor and coach.

    I walk alongside people dealing with the challenges presented by life and death.

    I’m also a writer and published author of multiple grief resource books and the founder of the Grieving Parents Support Network.

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