September 27, 2025 • 52 mins
Belinda spent her whole life struggling in relationships and rejection. Living with the painful condition of adenomyosis caused painful sex and infertility, leaving her single and questioning her self worth.
As she watched friends marry, have children, and move forward in life, Belinda faced grief, loneliness, and the challenges of chronic illness. She shares about the stigmas of single and childless women in society, and her path to mindfulness and creativity.
This is a raw and heartfelt conversation about grief, chronic illness, mental health, and the strength to survive loss.
You can find her mindfulness course on: www.heartmindbreathe.com
Her music on her instagram page: www.instagram.com/cellobelinda
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:04):
Whenever I was in relationships, they would sort
of end for the same reason, andit was because of painful
intimacy.
But there was a great sense ofshame around all of it, and it
also involved miscarriage acouple of times.
There wasn't ever a treatmentfor it, and there wasn't
anything that could fix orchange it.
I was carrying trauma in mybody.
(00:24):
I don't think being alone andloneliness have anything to do
with each other at all.
Trying to control our thoughtsis like trying to control the
weather.
We have that little control init.
We create a bit more spacewithin ourselves, and that
permeates into the rest of life.
There is no space for labelssuch as fat, thin, young, old,
(00:45):
ugly, beautiful.
They don't work anymore.
I am a mindfulness teacher and aprofessional musician.
I have a background in primaryschool teaching and teaching
English abroad and teachingacross the board, really,
(01:08):
adults, children, differentsubjects, different spheres.
I've always been a musician andI actually work in the health
service as well, part-time, soNational Health Service within
mental health.
So obviously that's all closelyrelated to the field.
SPEAKER_01 (01:22):
Love it.
It's great to hear that you'redoing so many things and you've
tapped into so many differentareas.
For reference, you know,listeners, I have listened to
some of the music and it'spretty amazing.
But we're gonna get to that in aminute.
I'm I'm I'm really curious as tosort of like, where does it all
begin for you?
SPEAKER_03 (01:37):
So early on, I took to music very, very young, and I
found it a very automatic thing.
I found it like it it felt likewhat I would describe as as an
affinity.
It was like a natural voice.
And this got this got cut offquite unfortunately.
You know, various thingshappened in childhood, and I
think I can I can reallypinpoint that that episode when
(01:58):
I was even younger as as a kindof a message to my subconscious
of that it wasn't really okay toshow up as me, you know, it was
like a quite a defining message,and I I've learned now that this
is very common for people to getthis message from things that
happen in the 70s.
Life went on and but just sortof zipping forward to early
(02:18):
adulthood, I actually found thatwhenever whenever I was in
relationships, they would sortof end for the same reason, and
it was because of painfulintimacy.
So I I think it's reallyimportant to say that I didn't
know there was anything wrongwith me, or I didn't experience
this as a problem before the wayit was manifesting.
And it's only come to merecently how much that
(02:40):
everything is in the way it'sframed in society, you know,
everything is in the way thingsare met and expected of.
Because with hindsight, what Iexperienced wasn't really making
a man feel really great aboutthemselves, you know, but I've
only I could only really seethis very recently because it's
expected that that's a normalpart of a relationship, but it
it wasn't for me without a greatdeal of pain.
(03:01):
So in my twenties, therelationships would come and end
very quickly, and in my 30s itwas three long-term
relationships that were spacedout, and it was devastating.
It was just devastating, and itwas always and I didn't really
know what was happening, it wasjust unfolding.
And it's that thing of when it'syou and when it's normal for
you, you don't really look atyourself from the outside and
(03:23):
think, Well, I'm so odd, I'm sodifferent.
You just carry on, but there wasa great sense of shame around
all of it.
I sometimes reflect that thatshame was felt like it was
linked to that early shame ofyou know not showing up as me.
It was never easy to talk about,and I never wanted to talk about
it because it's it's obviouslytaboo and it's uncomfortable for
me as well.
But whenever I would try anddiscuss it, or even in medical
(03:45):
settings um when trying to seekhelp, it was just only ever met
as something to be fixed andchanged, and it's it was like it
it was seen as a problem.
And then trying to tell people,and women as well as men, I mean
women have said more unhelpfulthings than men often, because
it's like people sort ofmentally grow horns on you and
pathologise you, and it'sactually such a random thing.
(04:09):
But the way this the effect onme was repeated rejection, you
know, which was reinforcing thatit's not okay to shelp as me and
I'm not okay as I am, andthere's a huge problem deep
within me.
So so it was very painful andand it also involved miscarriage
a couple of times, quite earlymiscarriage, but I I was
(04:32):
diagnosed at age 41 in a privatefertility clinic with what's
actually called adenomiosis, andI always remember the doctor,
the Spanish doctor, the way shesaid it to me at the time is
very matter-of-fact.
She said, You have adenomiosis,it will cause painful sex and
miscarriage for all of yourfertile years.
And I was quite gratefulactually that about her manner
because I didn't really wantsympathy and I didn't really
(04:54):
want all the sad looks I'd hadover the years.
But what I really wanted was allof those ex-partners lined up in
the room hearing, she can't helpit, it's genuine, it's not
psychological, you know, allthese things that were sort of
implied about me and projectedonto me.
This was a reality rooted in mybody that I couldn't do anything
(05:14):
about.
And it's was so it was onearbitrary thing, there was
nothing wrong with me.
SPEAKER_01 (05:19):
I read about this online and it and it turns out
that it's related to the uteruswall lining being really, really
thick, and which is common andapparently it's progressive for
a lot of women from the age oflike 30 to 50.
That's a thing that kind ofaffects um intimacy and
everything as well.
But yeah, you're right.
One of the most important thingsis almost being diagnosed in a
(05:42):
very objective andmatter-of-fact way, because that
makes you realize that hey, likethis this is a thing, and I'm
not the only one, and that thereare treatments for it, and that
there is a way out.
We have to go through so manybreakups and so much rejection
and so much pain, and thatsociety places so much pressure
on us as women, stigma aroundlike why can't you hold down a
(06:03):
relationship?
Why are you not able to havechildren?
And all of those kind of likeself-doubts that come in as a
result.
It's it's almost like if onlypeople had access to open and
honest conversations, kind oflike we do have today, maybe
things would be quite different.
SPEAKER_03 (06:19):
Yeah, very, very damaging all of that.
Um, and I'm not sure it wasn'tthe responsible for the whole of
the impact on me, actually,other than the problem itself.
Um, but interestingly, therewasn't a way of, you know, there
wasn't ever a treatment for it,and there wasn't anything that
could fix or change it.
It's only been in the reframing,which has been a whole scale
(06:40):
reframing of of all of it, evenincluding those early life
events to some extent, or orunderstanding them and the
impact on me that's that'sallowed any kind of healing and
health to come through becausethere just wasn't an answer to
it.
It always needed to be accepted,it needed acceptance, inclusion,
love, normalization, and none ofthat ever happened.
(07:01):
And I was never told you're justokay as you are until I came
across, you know, themindfulness teachings and
something bigger, a biggerframework, a bigger point of
reference, other perspectives,possibilities of possibilities
that went beyond societalexpectations.
I often reflect, you know, itwas the only thing big enough to
hold what I came to it with allthese life events and traumas.
(07:25):
My my dad was pretty much alwaysill since I was a young age.
He had MS, he was diagnosed whenI was 15.
It was a very dark, heavyshadow.
It was something that I I tookin on a very deeply somatic
level.
That's just my personality typebeing highly sensitive.
And I I know that it it kind ofwent into my cells, this dark,
dark, heavy feeling.
(07:46):
Because I I still have dreamsabout it now, about my dad's
illness, but it really affectedme.
And then my mum came ill in thelast few years of his life.
So I had one parent inend-of-life care and one parent
in and out of intensive care.
It was just a brutal regime.
And then they they eventuallythey finally died in 2019, and
my dad died in the August, andmy mum died two weeks later, a
(08:09):
day after his funeral.
My mum wasn't predicted to die.
My dad had been it, my dad'send-of-life care was seemed to
be very prolonged.
But when my mum died, she wasactually thought to be getting
better, so it felt very cruel.
But I think only only after myparents died, there was actually
the space to address some of theearly life trauma and the way
(08:29):
it's impacted me, especiallywith music.
And my foot into mindfulness wasalready quite well established
between five and eight years bythat point.
But I'd done the teachertraining, and when I now look
back on it, it actually wasgiving me some kind of a sense
of an anchor of something forme.
It hadn't fully opened out, butI continued with it because it
(08:50):
is a lifelong thing for me and away of life.
So it's that continual peelingback of onion layers to get back
to what was always originallythere, and quite beautifully for
me, there's this strong musicalvoice which I found, as well as
the layers of trauma which haveneeded to be addressed and all
of the unhelpful messages andthings I've picked up along the
(09:11):
way.
SPEAKER_01 (09:11):
Just to sort of unwrap and unravel this
condition a little bit more.
Is it common for it to be sortof related to stress or trauma?
Is that sort of like a generalcause for a condition like this?
I really don't know.
SPEAKER_03 (09:26):
I'm I'm really not too sure on that, but I think
what comes out resoundingly forme is the it was the inability
for things to show up asthemselves in the the pelvic
region, the way that theyweren't able to in the
subconscious.
It's almost like I was carryingtrauma in my body.
So I resonate with that, butI've never had any proof of that
(09:47):
or any anything to concreteevidence.
But I mean, it's so common withtrauma in general, isn't it,
that we somaticise it and thenand it shows up physically.
And there's certainly nothingthat's ever been pointed out
that's any concern or worrywithin within any of the tests.
I went through a number of verypainful, invasive, sort of
completely unnecessarytreatments actually, and having
(10:08):
foreign bodies put inside me andvarious different physio
techniques, which none of noneof which were necessary, but
it's this thing of there wasn'tever anything wrong in that
sense.
It's just a a sort of like anarbitrary condition, the bits of
cell are in the wrong place andit causes pain, which for all I
know is is gone now.
But it it's that whole way thatit was such a severe um the
(10:30):
impact of it, the impact of itwas so crushing.
And I I remember when I was age30 or 31, and I was just sitting
on a park bench before a dentistappointment, and I got a really,
really dark feeling inside me,and it just was saying to me,
You're never gonna have ahusband or children, and I
couldn't say why, but I justknew something about this
(10:55):
continual cycle of rejection ofwhenever I met someone and got
into a relationship, whether ithappened sooner or later, it was
still the same result, and itwas something so physical.
And I and there's no doubt itwas that reason, you know,
because I was told in manydifferent ways.
Because I guess for them, theythey couldn't, they weren't the
ones to fix it and heal it, andit didn't make them feel good
(11:18):
that they didn't make me feelgreat.
But for me it held no I adoredthe relationships in my 30s, I
would have happily I was in themforever, that's why I was in
them one at a time, you know.
But I didn't have that chance,so it was always taken away.
And and also all around me atthe time, um, especially as a
primary school teacher,everybody was going off on
maternity leave, buildingfamilies, and being celebrated
(11:40):
for their connections andmultiplying their connections,
and that was all a greatcelebration, whereas for me I
was just going through repeatedloss and rejection and
miscarriage.
So it I I I don't really knowhow I got through through that
time sometimes when I look back.
You know, there's been a lot ofreframing which has enabled me
to have any strength around it,and just like you say, as well,
(12:01):
all the pressure of themarginalization of childlessness
in society and all of that, andfeeling lesser, feeling
inadequate, and really beingreferred to as that and being
spoken to a number of times andbeing at the hand of that sort
of attitude of not not feelinglike a real woman and all of
that as well on top, as well asmy own grief.
So yeah, I was in a quite afragile, diminished state with
(12:24):
all of this, with my parents'health and the early life trauma
that I didn't really know aboutat that point, but in my late
30s, I really was in a quite afragile state when I when I
first found the mindfulness, andthat's the point that I first
ever had reference to it at all.
SPEAKER_01 (12:38):
I totally feel you when you talk about this,
because really hard in your day,in your waking day, when you're
going to work and you're tryingto do the best and you you know
you're going home to your ownempty space, how how hard it is
to sort of wrap your headaround, like, okay, you know,
I'm I'm okay on my own when youknow there is a certain life you
(12:58):
wish for, you look for.
And you know, the fact that youlost your parents quite in the
thick of it as well.
I can imagine, you know, youcontesting the idea of like
being alone versus loneliness.
I think that's that's a kind ofconcept that I've battled with
as well a lot.
You know, I can be surrounded byfriends, I can be surrounded by
relationships and partners andfamily, but ultimately there's
(13:20):
there's a stark differencebetween being alone in your own
space and feeling lonely.
Can you just talk to me aboutwhat was that like for you?
SPEAKER_03 (13:28):
Yeah, I mean I I don't think being alone and
loneliness have anything to dowith each other at all.
And I actually love, I mean, Ithink that there's a beauty in
solitude, you know, and I and Iwould quite often choose to seek
that out.
I really like my own company.
But loneliness is being insituations not feeling seen and
heard, just not feeling seen,not feeling represented by
(13:52):
society in any way.
I always remember something Iheard in the staff room of two
teachers talking and it wasafter one of the summer
holidays, and one was saying tothe other that her mother had
died in the holiday and she wasshe was in her fifties or
something, but they were bothcommenting on how well you take
on your new role as a mother,don't you?
You take on your new role, youhave your new new life and your
(14:12):
new circumstances and you and itgoes into the next phase.
And and I I mean I didn't knowhow my life would pan out, but I
had a fairly good idea that itwasn't going to pan out like
that at that time.
And I overheard them and I justI I really was sort of had this
voice inside me thinking, Well,what what what if it you don't
have your new role and your newlife, you don't become a mother,
(14:33):
and it was so unthought about,you know, it just wasn't given
any point of reference, it justdidn't it didn't have a place in
conversations or in in people'sthoughts.
I mean I think it's I know it'schanging a bit now, but that was
very, very tough to withstand.
I had a lot of invalidation inin various ways when I tried to
try to talk about it.
But I think sometimes the weightof adenomiosis and holding all
(14:56):
of that and being under thatweight of feeling there's some
terrible problem with me andthat it's always going to
manifest in this way.
I sometimes think now when Ilook back on that that what I
was holding was the sense thatwell I'm really different from
other people's.
I have to explain it to themwhen I can't explain it to
myself, but I also have to keepquiet because it's taboo.
I mean that's such a greatweight to have to hold.
SPEAKER_01 (15:19):
So I felt very fragile with it all.
To your close friends and lovedones, what kind of support did
you did you get?
Feel like you got from fromthem?
SPEAKER_03 (15:31):
To be perfectly honest, I had a lot of
invalidation from a sibling whotold me that I didn't have a
clue and that she had friendswith real problems such as
infertility, which I didn't havea chance to find out whether I
was infertile or not.
I mean, and then later themiscarriages, but that was the
most crushing thing.
That that felt very cruel, andit was very cruel, you know.
(15:52):
And also part of the layer ofignorance around it, because
there is no monopoly on becomingchildless, whether it's I mean,
that was I had a slip disc atthe time, so that time that was
going on.
So I was in a relationship I wastold not to try.
But I mean, really, it could be20 failed IVF attempts or that
you just don't meet someone.
(16:13):
I mean, there's no monopolythrough mitigating prenatalism,
the effects of prenatalism,marginalisation.
And actually, and on that point,you know, being offered IVF is
in in a way it's somewhat of aprivilege.
I had a very humiliatingconversation when I was 39.
Well, it wasn't thathumiliating, but I felt very
small and I felt that sense ofshame that I had to ask because
(16:36):
I didn't want to let that windowof time go by without asking.
And the doctor just looked at mevery, very sadly and
sympathetically and said, Well,you probably won't be allowed it
because you're single.
And it was a it was a postcodething, you know.
Like I I don't know if that'sthe case everywhere, but
certainly in England it is.
And of course, I got the lettera few weeks later, no, you can't
be granted it.
Um, and I had a friend who was asimilar age in a stable
(16:59):
relationship because she had therelationship, she had the IVF
and she got the child.
So it's almost as though, well,you're not you're not
significant, you're single, youdon't take up enough space in
society, you can't be giventhat.
And that felt really defining aswell.
SPEAKER_01 (17:12):
Yeah.
It's it's really frustratingwhen you hear these kind of
things because I have livingproof of a lot of people who've
had children out of wedlock orhad children without being
prepared or ready for it, orparents that couldn't actually
handle the responsibility ofchildren, put them in in foster
care and adoption centers.
And on the flip side, you've gotsomeone who, whatever the
circumstances is, they're ready,they want it, they're
(17:35):
financially ready for it,they're meant mentally and
emotionally ready for it to givea child a beautiful life, but
the system is just sort of makesthat kind of judgment on their
own kind of terms.
It's just so marginalizing in asense.
And I don't know if you everthought about or talked about
adoption and what that kind oflooks like for a single parent.
Is that something that you everthought about?
SPEAKER_03 (17:56):
I did I did momentarily look into it and I
actually got the fear at thetime that I would get rejected
on grounds of my slip disc andmy back at the time because I
had chronic back pain, andthat's actually what led me into
the mindfulness initially waschronic pain.
I I think and I didn't take itfurther because I thought, well,
that would just be the nail inthe coffin.
Everything was very fragilearound there, so I didn't feel
(18:18):
I'd get support.
I had a very good friendactually who um from university.
She had two children, but shealways said to me, Oh, Bella,
I'll put the children aside foryou.
I remember that I was trying tostart a group for childless or
child-free, you know, differentcommunities, but childless,
child-free people, single peoplein my late 30s.
And I mean it was a completeflop trying to set it up because
(18:40):
I wasn't very loud about it, andI sort of wanted to be
anonymous, but I wanted to so itwas the way I went about it, but
also to do with where I live, itwas a very pronatalist,
provincial, sort of 2.4, itwasn't the right place to be
doing anyway.
It didn't come to anything, butI always remember this friend
saying to me, Oh, but Belle, ifyou had those things, you
wouldn't need a group like that.
And that that was veryinvalidating because I'm the
(19:03):
point was I'm trying to spin iton its head and say, Well, I'm
gonna reframe this and I'm gonnatry and empower myself to make
the other side of it good.
But if I'm just told, Oh no,because you won't need a group
if you get a partner andchildren, you don't need that
group.
It was and she she was sayingout of kindness, but you really
want people to get the messageof can we bring the other side
(19:24):
up a bit?
And I've always had that sort ofsense of however much I wanted
to have a child or children,something in me also it doesn't
feel right about this imbalancearound it and all these
messages, and something in mewanted to be part of changing
that as well, and to stick upfor this the lesser side, the
smaller side, which is very muchwhat I used to do in my classes
(19:46):
of kids with the underdog.
The underdog always got a bitmore from me because I resonated
with them, but I didn't do itconsciously, it wasn't it wasn't
a very um obvious thing I wasdoing, it was very subtle, but
you see them, you just see thesekids straight away, and it's
like the loud, well-adjusted,privileged ones in that sense,
they can kind of take care ofthemselves more.
But on the face of it, you'rebehaving the same towards them,
(20:07):
but in your heart it'sdifferent.
And I always felt that about thechildless, child free, and
single community.
You know, I want to be part, Iwanted to be part of reframing
that, and I felt that really,even though I couldn't have
articulated it then, but Icertainly I think I did want
that inside to make society abit more equal.
Do you feel like that that'schanged now?
Yeah, um I think it's changing,um, and certainly because
(20:30):
communities have sprung up andI've had a dabbling in both the
childless and the child free,which are wildly different
communities, you know, evenwithin within those, there's so
many different nuances that umthey don't converge at all, but
where they converge is in termsof pronatalism because they both
face the same the same uhmarginalization, so I do relate
(20:51):
to everything everyone says inboth groups.
So there certainly wasn'tanything around like that 10-20
years ago when I desperatelyneeded it, but I but yeah,
that's very heartening.
And in terms of childlessness, Ihonestly feel I've gone through
post-traumatic growth sincelosing my parents, and I also
feel as though I've reframed it,and I would say that you have to
(21:14):
want to do that, and I I feelI'm allowed to say that because
I've done that, so you can stayin the identity forever of being
childless, but there's also away of empowering yourself
through it, and I think againthrough mindfulness, you come to
really know yourself and findyour voice in these ways and
finding ways of belonging aswell, because a lot of it is
around belonging when societydoesn't really let you belong.
(21:35):
So I think you really canreframe even the most painful
things, but you do have to beintentional around that.
SPEAKER_01 (21:42):
Belinda, I'm I'm interested to sort of like know
that mindfulness journey.
Like, what was the thing thatkind of really triggered you to
start looking into mindfulnessand some of the epiphanies and
things that you kind of came tounderstand in that process?
SPEAKER_03 (21:55):
Yeah, so the very first reference that I ever
heard to mindfulness was in achronic pain seminar at the
local hospital because I wasgoing through all this stuff
with my back.
And they actually were very,very brief with it.
It was hardly mentioned, but Ijust kind of got a sense out of
all the things they said thatday that this was something to
look into and explore further,and I did, but I I really sort
(22:18):
of took it on myself to researchit a lot.
Something really intrigued meabout the fact that we could
have any influence where ourmind goes.
It turns out to be, I mean,mindfulness is really about the
body, but I hadn't learnt thatmuch about it at that time.
So that really intrigued me, andI found the work of John
Cabotzin, and who very firstbrought it to the West in the
(22:40):
70s and 80s.
Uh, I was very determined aboutit at that point.
I would sit and do 45 minutemeditations on my own.
I downloaded his programmebecause I mean I don't want to
make light of the the sort ofstate I was in, I'd call it an
emotional rock bottom because Ifelt isolated.
I'd been through yet anotherrejection, and the impact of
(23:00):
these rejections was cumulative,you know.
I couldn't move a lot of thetime, my back was so much pain,
I couldn't walk.
That was when I had the slipdisk, it was particularly
debilitating.
So I felt I had this lifeline.
One of the things John Cabotzinsays that stuck with me, the few
things, but one of them was solong as you're breathing,
there's more right with you thanwrong with you.
(23:21):
And when you feel really at yourlowest, that's just something to
hang on to.
You think, oh, I've gotsomething to to work with here.
So I stuck with it.
And he also says about the thiseight-week programme, people in
his his programme he would sayto you, you don't have to like
it, you just have to do it.
And I I am a disciplined person.
I've been I was like thatgrowing up, and I I've always
(23:43):
sort of had that ethic aboutwork and stuff.
And to me, I was willing to putthat work in, and I did since
then it it's kind of grownexponentially.
When you embrace mindfulness andyou have a regular practice, you
adhere to the teachings and youknow you're following this this
way of sort of this path.
It actually enables you tonavigate every aspect of life.
It's not really one thing.
(24:04):
I was I was sort of I did theteacher training in um 2018, and
I only did it under two veryeminent Buddhist teachers who
I'd heard from for years doingtalks from Silent Retreats.
I wouldn't have learned fromanyone else at that point.
It just felt like things cametogether because I'd been a
former teacher and I wasentrenched in mindfulness, so
bring it together, but with thebest training, you know, and
this training took a year, it'sglobally accredited training,
(24:27):
and it's always far too big of athing for me to leave it aside.
It's it's it's forever work, youknow, and ever deepening into
it.
And I've I've kind of I'velearned, you know, especially
working in the health service,where I I was able to to
implement it to some extent, butbecause there's such a limited
understanding of what it reallyis, you know, it was it was
always in a limited form, whichis why I always wanted to break
(24:50):
out and do it in its full scopeon my own.
Um, but it's seen as um sort oflike another modality like CBT
or DBT or ACT, whereas itactually underpins those
modalities, you know, a lot oftheir the body of those models
are taken from the mindfulnessteachings, whether it's made
explicit or not.
And I think when it comes tolasting change, integration of
(25:13):
trauma, transformation,post-traumatic growth, whatever
we call it, I don't think youcan start with the top-down.
It there's no sort of substitutefor that really foundational
awareness training and reallysitting with the nervous system
and expanding the capacity ofthe nervous system.
And I heard an analogy which Iquite liked the other day about
when we plant seeds in soil forthe soil to take root, it's got
(25:37):
to be watered and cultivated andand nurtured, and this is like
the daily practice or theregular practice at least of
meditating.
And meditating, you know, islike the Petri dish of the rest
of life because we actually seethings in close up.
SPEAKER_02 (25:52):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (25:52):
So and I've done a number of silent retreats where
we just watch the differenttastes of the mind, and that
that's that would I would saythat's where the deepest
training happens, really, justreally when you're sitting with
yourself and you don't haveother stimulation and you don't
have distraction for for forextensive periods of time.
SPEAKER_01 (26:09):
Yeah, that's so interesting.
SPEAKER_03 (26:10):
And I think the way, you know, mindfulness has has
been sort of truncated, which isan inevitable process of the
popularity, and people jump onthe bandwagon, it's in every
sphere now.
But these byproducts that are aC, you know, like it brings
calm, it brings focus,productivity, but it's actually
at its core, it's it the it'sessentially non-attachment to
(26:32):
any of those outcomes at thestart.
And those things may or may nothappen, and there are
physiological reasons to why wemight feel calm after
meditating, because our systemsget the message they can slow
down a bit.
But you know, that might mightnot play out like that.
But the fact is that the thesort of the scope of awareness
training is so much bigger thanany of that, and it's so much
bigger than these sort of thebenefits, the way they're laid
(26:54):
out, and the way the apps allgear it towards these these
these benefits that can orcannot happen.
But I mean, I guess it's aboutpeople starting somewhere, but
I'm just quite hungry to putback some of the integrity into
these teachings, which I hope iswhat I've done in my course, my
eight-week course, to put backthat meaning and depth where so
(27:14):
much more is possible from, youknow, and it has been for me.
SPEAKER_01 (27:17):
Can you can you just elaborate a little bit more
about what does it actually looklike?
Because for a person who may nothave actually sat down and done
a meditation, um, they'reprobably likely to feel quite
dejected after a session or twobecause of how many distractions
our brain is kind of like filledwith, and how many, how often is
it we find ourselves, you know,deviating away from the actual
(27:40):
kind of purpose of thatmeditation.
SPEAKER_03 (27:42):
Yeah.
Well, I went straight in hardwith 45 minutes because they
were guided, because it was hisMBSR program.
And he wrote this program forit's called for chronic stress,
but it's basically even peoplethat are given terminal
diagnosis and they're told to goaway and live with it, but
they're not taught how to livewith it.
So it's not about solution, it'snot about answer or outcome or
(28:03):
goal, it's a way of livingalongside, and the way this
really happens, in in the bestway I can find to describe it,
because it's kind of beyondwords in a way, but we create a
bit more space within ourselves,and that permeates into the rest
of life, into our perspective,into our experience of things,
and that's on a fundamentallevel.
(28:23):
So creating this space canenable wiser choices or a pause
between how we react or in termsof habit change, you know, very
fundamental and addictive,wanting to change addictive
behaviours and patterns andanger management, things like
that.
But on a deeper level, it'sactually coming to know the self
(28:44):
because the more we sit, themore we're actually experiencing
the self.
We'll we we we learn to listento the body, we learn to listen
to very subtle sensations.
It's not about anythingglamorous or fancy, it's not
about adding music.
You asked if it's guided.
I started off with guided ones,I now prefer to do them
unguided, but it essentiallyit's always the same direction
(29:06):
in terms of the fact that we aregaining more distance from our
direct experience.
SPEAKER_01 (29:12):
What are the meditations that you you do?
You were talking about it beingum some guided meditations.
SPEAKER_03 (29:18):
What attracted me to the initially with the work of
John Cabotzin, which reallyessentially is mindfulness, you
know, I always thought therewere people that could meditate
and people that couldn't, and Iwas the latter, you know, and
then you hear people saying,Well, I can't meditate, I have
such a monkey mind, and and weall we all have that, you know,
and that needs to be normalized,and it's not about not thinking,
(29:41):
you know.
We have these five senses, wewouldn't expect them to stop
when we meditate, we can't stophearing, we can't stop seeing.
Well, we can close our eyes, butyou know, we don't expect sounds
to stop coming to us, so wecan't expect thoughts to stop
coming to us.
It's it's like uh it'sunrealistic and I think it was
John Cabotson that actually saidtrying to control our thoughts
(30:03):
is like trying to control theweather.
We have that little control init.
So that's really normalized.
But it's about seeing ourthoughts, seeing emotions,
seeing sensations.
It's a way of slowing everythingdown to see it and meet it and
know it and understand it.
And through that process, wecreate more space which is
(30:26):
instrumental in all the rest ofour going about our day.
You know, we actually meditatefor the time that we're not
sitting there.
We don't meditate for the timewe're meditating, it's for the
time that is all of the rest ofthe day.
So it kind of has this filtersin this impact gradually, and I
think the effects of it are whatmotivated me to continue.
(30:47):
You know, there is an amount ofyou you do it, but like you
said, you don't have to like it,you just do it, and there is an
amount of the intentionalityshowing up, doing it, but then
it becomes into its own flowbecause you know that you can
show up as you, you can think,you can it's however anything
is, you know, everything iswelcome in mindfulness.
(31:09):
So I think that there's so muchmisunderstanding around it, you
know, that it that we have tohave a clear mind or that we we
can't think and and that it'sthat's some cognitive thing,
whereas really it's about thebody in its true meaning.
SPEAKER_01 (31:22):
Can you tell me about when did you have your
first breakthrough in thismindfulness journey of yours?
Uh and especially in particularin your meditation journey, and
what was that breakthrough?
SPEAKER_03 (31:33):
I'm not sure that I actually had a breakthrough as
such.
I think it was all a verygradual continuum.
I feel that I got more handle onthe pain or more distance from
the pain because of the ways ofworking with chronic pain in
meditation.
So the very subtle ways that wecan tune into any part of the
body that isn't in pain, or theways that we can tune into the
(31:55):
fluctuations of sensation inpain rather than it being some
blanket thing sitting on us asas like a heavy trap of pain,
because pain feels very solidand stuck like that, doesn't it?
But um, and particularly for me,I I get really I'm very bad at
very low pain threshold reallyin general.
But um when we tune into it, wenotice that actually it's not a
(32:17):
big heavy block, it's actuallydifferent sensations of
tingling, burning, sometimeslesser, sometimes it's very
nuanced, and actually nosensations are the same.
So a few minutes later we canconcentrate on the same body
part and we'll be havingdifferent sensations, you know.
So it but then when it when it'stoo much, when it's
overwhelming, then we just tuneinto another part of the body,
(32:38):
and there's just these verysubtle ways that we cannot do
without that amount ofintentionality, you know.
That's not going to happen indaily life in all the busyness
of all the tasks and everythingwe have to keep up.
It takes that focused sitting,and and it's always important to
remember that you can't actuallyguess it wrong.
We can't get it wrong.
The only thing getting it wrongis not actually showing up to do
(33:01):
it because whatever happens in ameditation is valid, whatever we
meet is valid, we're justsitting and meeting it.
So we're always growing ourawareness all the time, and it
is it is this gradual thing.
I don't believe at all in sortof cutting things down and and
diluting them, chopping themdown.
I've had to do a lot of that inthe health service with the sort
(33:21):
of diluted, truncated forms ofeverything, but but the fact is
to have any meaning, it's not atick box sheet, it's not a
worksheet, it's not some quicktransformation, it's it's kind
of the long game, but it but itlasts forever because it's your
your foundational groundeddetachment that you can you can
live with.
(33:42):
I like that.
SPEAKER_01 (33:42):
It's ironic though, isn't it?
There is that common groundwhere it's like in in the
medical industry, they try to beas objective as possible and
then just tell you what thesymptoms are, what what the
experience is, what you can andshould expect that they really
chuck it down to a science.
But meditation, to an extent,it's all about feeling, it's all
about removing the judgment andthe label, and it's just about
really just tapping into thatfeeling that you might you might
(34:05):
have a label to.
You might even in thatmeditation journey be like,
okay, I know that this is aresult of the slip disk, and
that slip disk is a label initself, but you are able to sort
of look at it in a verydifferent way.
SPEAKER_03 (34:15):
Absolutely.
I think it's this whole thing ofapproaching life with the
intention of chronic well-beingas opposed to reacting to
chronic illness, which is whatthe medical model is there for.
Um, but I'm always veryinterested in chronic
well-being.
How can we live well?
And and mindfulness has beensuch a um it's been the
(34:38):
foundation for all other healingmodalities I've found along the
way, you know, breath work, um,shaking, tapping, lots of things
around nutrition.
It's been the whole groundworkfor those things to have so much
more benefit, I think, overall.
And and what you said aboutremoving labels, I mean, that's
exactly what that that's what'sso freeing on in the in the the
(35:02):
short term and also in the inthe longer, in the bigger
picture of things, because forinstance the body uh in the
teachings we can have these umthere are six contemplations of
the body.
One of them is in terms of theelements, so you probably heard
of this teaching, but it's wellknown about that the body can
purely be defined in terms ofearth, water, and fire.
(35:24):
And you can go into differentlevels of depth as to how we
define that, but very simply,you know, the fire is the
metabolism and heat and cool,the air is the way that we move
through the body, the spacebetween the cells, the water is
all the liquid, and the earthelement is just massive because
it taps into all of the traumahealing, the grounding,
(35:45):
stabilization, and the fact thatwe need to have a sense of
ourselves plugged into theground to not be up in the
mental space all the time, whicha lot of life encourages us to
do every day, you know, and justto keep up, that happens.
So, and under these theseelements that we're framing the
body within, there is no thereis no space for labels such as
(36:06):
fat, thin, young, old, ugly,beautiful, they don't work
anymore.
So it's immensely freeing, andall of the contemplations are
like that, they're all thesebeautiful alternatives of
viewing the body, and it's notabout this is the truth or this
is this is right and wrong, it'sabout challenging the duality
that society creates aroundthings and that we create in our
(36:28):
minds because we're sosusceptible to these messages.
SPEAKER_01 (36:31):
That's really well put.
Do you feel like it's importantin that process of like
mindfulness that we unravel someof the darker times of our
childhood?
And what was that like for you?
SPEAKER_03 (36:41):
Yeah, um, it really definitely is imperative in
doing that.
A big part of this isself-compassion, which also came
through these teachings, andthere are separate practices
that you can do specifically forcompassion, but it comes with
that basis of the traditionalmindfulness meditation.
So I was quite grounded in thiswhen one day I had an epiphany
(37:02):
about four years ago, and I Irealized this thing about having
the music taken away, and Iremembered the event very
clearly, and it was alwayssomething that I knew
cognitively had happened, but Isomehow got this visceral sense
in my body about oh, the violin,music, my voice, and everything
kind of I can't really put itinto words, but I got a very
(37:24):
strong sense of the impact ofthat event.
And what actually happened wasthat later on as a teenager I
was told the reason for ithaving been taken away.
And it was around the fact thatmy progress had been too quick
that would have outshadowed mysibling, who was only slightly
older than me.
So it was deemed and not ahelpful dynamic because it would
(37:48):
have caused rivalry.
In some ways, I I wish I hadn'tbeen told that because I I don't
know how it served me.
Um, but making sense of it, Ithink that that message put me
in a very sacrificial role ofyou know, someone else's needs
being put first, which theywere.
There's no argument around that.
And I don't say it withbitterness or angerness, I d uh
(38:08):
anger, sorry, I don't actuallyhave any anger towards my
parents.
That that's not something I'vedone a lot to overcome.
I just don't really have it forsome reason.
Um, because I think sometimeswhen I tell the story, people
try to incite that from me, andthat's just not the sense of it.
But it was a thing that impactedme very deeply and also played
(38:30):
into the sense of shame and wellcreated it really, um, of that
well, you can't have your voiceand don't don't show up as you,
you can't do that again.
So it's it it's really playedout in how I show up in music
and in life in general.
And the event when I was three,just to very quickly touch on
(38:50):
that, but I actually jumped intoa swimming class lesson when
there was a lesson going on andI didn't know, and the reaction
from adults was just puredisgust, you know.
But so that took in, and itsounds like a trivial thing, but
it was that message of no, youyou you can't show up as you.
I'd just seen it in water, Ithought it was exciting, but
whatever.
But both of those events werevery divining, and then the the
(39:11):
violin more so.
What what has happened throughthe journey of mindfulness is
that I really have discoveredthis inner musical voice, and
when I when I got the space,because I think things only
really come up when they havethe space to come up, um, and
you can't that's a process youcan't control in life.
But when I did start to think,well, blind me, I play all these
instruments.
(39:31):
Why am I not telling the worldand telling people and having it
as part of my identity?
I kind of felt like there'd beena lot of time wasted with it,
but I had to do what I could, soI made an Instagram page that
just showcases all of myinstruments.
I think whenever I'd said itbefore, so when I'd mentioned as
a primary school teacher or inany other capacity I was in, I
said, Oh yes, I'm a musician, itfelt cloaked in the shame.
(39:55):
It all felt cloaked in the shamethat accompanied a lot of my my
life until then.
Whereas now I feel it's reframedthrough mindfulness and through
inner work as something to bereally proud of, and that I I
love sharing it and I find ithealing to share it.
And I feel that the Instagrampage, you know, it's not done in
a in a marketing sales pitchtype of way, it's purely just
(40:18):
showing who I am, what I can do,and giving my voice, and people
enjoy it, you know, they loveit.
And when I feel that someoneacross the world has seen a
video or heard my music, it'slike it's a very health-giving
feeling.
I don't know, it's it's likeI've I've lived a bit more and
I've shared music I've givenbecause that's that's my real
powerful voice, you know, thatgot shut down and now I've kind
(40:40):
of reclaimed it.
SPEAKER_01 (40:41):
Yeah.
I I love the way that you sortof like described this whole
experience as well, in a sense,because that one event, that one
conversation that you knowhappened when you were much
younger, how it deeply impactedyou in the way that you showed
up to a lot of different things,and maybe the way that you
represented yourself fromrelationships as well, in the
sense that downplaying thetalents, downplaying that
(41:03):
wonderful, beautiful side ofyou.
When I heard your music for thefirst time, you know, when when
we when we first startedspeaking, and I was gonna have
you on the podcast, I was like,this is pretty, pretty cool.
I mean, I'm not I'm not inmusic, I don't know very much
about music, but the fact thatyou were able to play them all
so fluently, I was prettyshocked to see that the flute,
the piano, like whatever thatyou were playing, you were
(41:24):
playing it at such aprofessional level, and you're
you've been, you know, creatingyour own music, finding your own
voice, and even the style ofmusic that you have out there,
they're all so vastly differentfrom each other.
You've got that really classicalstyle, you've got the really
slow and somber kind of music,you've got the really uplifting,
happy tunes, and and it's justit's I felt like such a strong
(41:45):
emotion just kind of exude.
And I felt like so much of itwas kind of like based on maybe
the time of your life or theexperience, the circumstance
that you were in at the verytime when you were composing
this music, felt like it wasreal raw human emotions.
And and that's kind of why I wasreally drawn.
There's a type of music thatgoes for all kinds of, you know,
(42:06):
moods and circumstances, which Ithought was really, really cool.
Like that versatility, you don'thear very much in in many
musicians.
SPEAKER_03 (42:13):
Yeah.
Well, thanks so much for sayingthat.
Um, I think you've you'vedescribed it really well.
The thing with the over theoverriding feature of all of it
is I actually haven't practiced.
I haven't put my time intomusic.
Life could have been verydifferent in terms of music
being my whole life and where Icould have gone with it.
And and you know, I I rememberas a kid playing on the playing
(42:34):
in all the London concert halls,just um from from picking up the
cello a few years later, butjust the things I was involved
in and briefly being on TV andthings like that.
But the whole of life could havebeen a different route.
Um, but I really haven'tpracticed that I was spending
years being a teacher, you know,and I I rarely got my
instruments out, and I rarelyget them out now, and I
certainly don't practice when Ido.
(42:55):
So the thing I'm proud of isthat there's a certain amount
that's already always there forme.
It could have, yes, it couldhave been a lot better, it could
have been transcended a lot oflevels and been a different
life, but what is there isenough to be proud of, it's
enough to show, and it's prettymuch done in the rawness of lack
of practice.
That I know that professionalsthat I'm alongside, you know,
(43:18):
with the same kind of level, butthey've put the work in.
And you know, someone said to mea few years ago, um, well,
Belinda, people that are playingin concert halls now, they
haven't been a primary schoolteacher, they haven't taught
English abroad, they don't workin mental health.
Um, you can't do everything inlife, you know, and you've done
quite a lot.
And it and that that resonateswith me now.
Um, whereas when she said it, itwent over my head a bit.
(43:39):
But I think I think that's true,you know.
I think that the level of musicI have is is I I'm quite
impressed when I look at myselfalmost in that third person way.
Um, so I just want to get it outthere.
I just want people to hear it.
SPEAKER_01 (43:50):
Yeah, that's great.
And can you tell me a little bitabout like how that's helped you
find your voice or helped youkind of understand yourself on a
deeper level, like reintroducingmusic into your life again?
SPEAKER_03 (44:00):
Yeah, I just feel like it is my voice really.
It there's something very directabout it.
I mean, especially the recorder,you if you take the recorder,
it's it's breath, it'sbreathing.
So you kind of directly put yourput your expression into it,
yourself into it.
And various people say to me,How do you make that sound on
the recorder?
I've never heard it sound likethat, because that's your voice.
(44:20):
So I think it's my voice comingthrough.
SPEAKER_01 (44:22):
Um quite literally.
SPEAKER_03 (44:24):
But then all of the instruments lend themselves to
so much expression, you know.
People think the piano is justkeys that you hit, but no, you
can put so much interpretationand emotion through the waist of
the finger, the support of thefingers, and just really through
your heart.
I don't know, and it is one ofthose things again, it's beyond
words to explain.
But with me, it's always verydirect, it's always very
(44:44):
automatic, and it's it's justkind of there.
And there aren't many things inlife that we we turn our hand to
and think, oh, that you know,that's that's really easy for
me.
You know, it's a complex thing,but it's really easy for me.
And so it's just one of thosethings that I I I find myself in
it, and I think, oh, there sheis.
Lost it for a bit, but there sheis.
SPEAKER_01 (45:05):
Yeah, I love it.
When you are really one withthat instrument, you're kind of
no longer a part of this biggeroutside world, you're in a
space, you're in this littlebubble with you and that little
instrument where you're justtruly free.
And I can imagine that for youjust like being why, why it's
(45:26):
such a you know, attractive kindof dopamine hitting thing for
you to do because that's kind ofthat that non-judgmental space
that you can be in raw, true,authentic, and just free again.
SPEAKER_03 (45:38):
And it's it's healing as well because I mean
it does, it's not pain-free.
Music is always gonna be quite atriggering thing, but I think
that I'd rather have it outthere showing people and people
benefiting from it than justhide it away.
So I think that is healing.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (45:55):
Do you feel like like for you being creative is
also a part of the mindfuljourney?
You feel like is that somethingthat you would have also
recommend to people, like whenthey're going through their own
mindful journey to find acreative outlet?
SPEAKER_03 (46:08):
Well, I I have this kind of like almost a tagline
through my course.
I help people find theircreative inner voice.
We can all find ways of creativeoutlets, but I believe that the
statement actually points tosomething bigger in terms of the
fact that finding your creativeinner voice can be find your
creative way to be in the world.
How do we how are we gonna be?
(46:28):
How are we gonna exist?
How are we gonna show up?
So it's open to interpretation.
So yeah, there are all theseways, and I'm sure that it is
very important for people to do,even if it doesn't mean
resurrecting an old pastime, itcan mean a creative way of
being, you know, but I thinkit's essential for us to do,
yeah.
I think I would I would maintainit benefits every single human.
(46:49):
So I can't pin it down to thisgroup of people or this
demographic that it wouldbenefit because really it's it
benefits human nature to buildawareness and to live
creatively.
SPEAKER_01 (46:59):
Yeah, I love that.
Well, in the final plug-ins, canyou tell us a little bit about
this eight-week course of yours?
How and how can people find it?
I think it's actuallyseven-week.
I made a mistake, sorry.
SPEAKER_03 (47:07):
So the course has seven different themes.
Um, very, very briefly, we coverembodiment, the body, then uh a
brief journey into feeling tone,the senses, the emotions, the
thoughts, and self-compassion.
They all interweave, they're alloverlap into each other, um, and
they all actually could last formany weeks in themselves.
(47:28):
So it's very much of a sort ofgrounding in all of it.
And also another thing tomention about it is that part of
the sessions involvesmeditating, and it's done very
it's very approachable, youknow.
Um they start off very short,and the the little bits of work
to be done in between are veryare guided, and they're they're
they're very short, you know, soit's not sort of a big part of
(47:50):
our time that's taken up oranything.
But what we start to findthrough this is this other
aspect of abundance, which Ihaven't mentioned, but but
through meditating and throughthis that that very slight
curiosity and space that opensup, we can start to gain more in
every moment.
There's this abundance of takingin more from every moment, so
(48:11):
everything kind of getsenriched.
So that's just another area.
So the sessions are a mixture oftheory and concepts and
meditating.
Um, there's always a shortmeditation to arrive, and then
there's a a more meaty one lateron, which is part of the theme,
and it's also discussional.
In the meantime, there'shomework that's sent over.
(48:32):
Um, I don't like calling ithomework, but you know what I
mean?
It's just not just the sessions,it's important that somebody can
just show up to do that littlebit of input.
Very approachable, very gentle,um, and always learning to apply
kindness to ourselves.
We do that in each moment, ineach situation.
So the details, more informationabout that is on my website,
(48:53):
which is the three wordsheartmindbreathealtogether.com.
If if you want to sign up to thenewsletter, there's a free
meditation, and then the blogsget sent in the newsletter.
I've been told that I've beenfed back that my blogs are very
inspirational.
So hopefully they'reinspirational for people to
read.
And in terms of my music, I theInstagram page is at cello
(49:14):
belinda.
SPEAKER_01 (49:15):
So cello is C E L L O at Cello Belinda on Instagram.
Thank you, Belinda.
Thanks for sharing your story,your journey, and like all of
the sort of like, you know,healing and and the and the and
the mindfulness as well.
I think this is gonna be reallyinspiring for our listeners to
sort of take some, you know,nuggets of gold from this.
SPEAKER_03 (49:34):
Thanks so much.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (49:40):
If you enjoyed the episode and would like to help
support the show, please followand subscribe.
You can rate and review yourfeedback on any of our platforms
listed in the description.
I'd like to recognize our guestswho are vulnerable and open to
share their life experienceswith us.
Thank you for showing us we'rehuman.
Also, a thank you to our teamwho worked so hard behind the
(50:00):
scenes to make it happen.
SPEAKER_03 (50:02):
Stefan Menzel.
SPEAKER_00 (50:03):
Lucas, the show would be nothing without you.
I'm Jenica, host and writer ofthe show, and you're listening
to Multispective.
Whenever I was in relationships, they would sort
of end for the same reason, andit was because of painful
intimacy.
But there was a great sense ofshame around all of it, and it
also involved miscarriage acouple of times.
There wasn't ever a treatmentfor it, and there wasn't
anything that could fix orchange it.
I was carrying trauma in mybody.
(00:24):
I don't think being alone andloneliness have anything to do
with each other at all.
Trying to control our thoughtsis like trying to control the
weather.
We have that little control init.
We create a bit more spacewithin ourselves, and that
permeates into the rest of life.
There is no space for labelssuch as fat, thin, young, old,
(00:45):
ugly, beautiful.
They don't work anymore.
I am a mindfulness teacher and aprofessional musician.
I have a background in primaryschool teaching and teaching
English abroad and teachingacross the board, really,
(01:08):
adults, children, differentsubjects, different spheres.
I've always been a musician andI actually work in the health
service as well, part-time, soNational Health Service within
mental health.
So obviously that's all closelyrelated to the field.
SPEAKER_01 (01:22):
Love it.
It's great to hear that you'redoing so many things and you've
tapped into so many differentareas.
For reference, you know,listeners, I have listened to
some of the music and it'spretty amazing.
But we're gonna get to that in aminute.
I'm I'm I'm really curious as tosort of like, where does it all
begin for you?
SPEAKER_03 (01:37):
So early on, I took to music very, very young, and I
found it a very automatic thing.
I found it like it it felt likewhat I would describe as as an
affinity.
It was like a natural voice.
And this got this got cut offquite unfortunately.
You know, various thingshappened in childhood, and I
think I can I can reallypinpoint that that episode when
(01:58):
I was even younger as as a kindof a message to my subconscious
of that it wasn't really okay toshow up as me, you know, it was
like a quite a defining message,and I I've learned now that this
is very common for people to getthis message from things that
happen in the 70s.
Life went on and but just sortof zipping forward to early
(02:18):
adulthood, I actually found thatwhenever whenever I was in
relationships, they would sortof end for the same reason, and
it was because of painfulintimacy.
So I I think it's reallyimportant to say that I didn't
know there was anything wrongwith me, or I didn't experience
this as a problem before the wayit was manifesting.
And it's only come to merecently how much that
(02:40):
everything is in the way it'sframed in society, you know,
everything is in the way thingsare met and expected of.
Because with hindsight, what Iexperienced wasn't really making
a man feel really great aboutthemselves, you know, but I've
only I could only really seethis very recently because it's
expected that that's a normalpart of a relationship, but it
it wasn't for me without a greatdeal of pain.
(03:01):
So in my twenties, therelationships would come and end
very quickly, and in my 30s itwas three long-term
relationships that were spacedout, and it was devastating.
It was just devastating, and itwas always and I didn't really
know what was happening, it wasjust unfolding.
And it's that thing of when it'syou and when it's normal for
you, you don't really look atyourself from the outside and
(03:23):
think, Well, I'm so odd, I'm sodifferent.
You just carry on, but there wasa great sense of shame around
all of it.
I sometimes reflect that thatshame was felt like it was
linked to that early shame ofyou know not showing up as me.
It was never easy to talk about,and I never wanted to talk about
it because it's it's obviouslytaboo and it's uncomfortable for
me as well.
But whenever I would try anddiscuss it, or even in medical
(03:45):
settings um when trying to seekhelp, it was just only ever met
as something to be fixed andchanged, and it's it was like it
it was seen as a problem.
And then trying to tell people,and women as well as men, I mean
women have said more unhelpfulthings than men often, because
it's like people sort ofmentally grow horns on you and
pathologise you, and it'sactually such a random thing.
(04:09):
But the way this the effect onme was repeated rejection, you
know, which was reinforcing thatit's not okay to shelp as me and
I'm not okay as I am, andthere's a huge problem deep
within me.
So so it was very painful andand it also involved miscarriage
a couple of times, quite earlymiscarriage, but I I was
(04:32):
diagnosed at age 41 in a privatefertility clinic with what's
actually called adenomiosis, andI always remember the doctor,
the Spanish doctor, the way shesaid it to me at the time is
very matter-of-fact.
She said, You have adenomiosis,it will cause painful sex and
miscarriage for all of yourfertile years.
And I was quite gratefulactually that about her manner
because I didn't really wantsympathy and I didn't really
(04:54):
want all the sad looks I'd hadover the years.
But what I really wanted was allof those ex-partners lined up in
the room hearing, she can't helpit, it's genuine, it's not
psychological, you know, allthese things that were sort of
implied about me and projectedonto me.
This was a reality rooted in mybody that I couldn't do anything
(05:14):
about.
And it's was so it was onearbitrary thing, there was
nothing wrong with me.
SPEAKER_01 (05:19):
I read about this online and it and it turns out
that it's related to the uteruswall lining being really, really
thick, and which is common andapparently it's progressive for
a lot of women from the age oflike 30 to 50.
That's a thing that kind ofaffects um intimacy and
everything as well.
But yeah, you're right.
One of the most important thingsis almost being diagnosed in a
(05:42):
very objective andmatter-of-fact way, because that
makes you realize that hey, likethis this is a thing, and I'm
not the only one, and that thereare treatments for it, and that
there is a way out.
We have to go through so manybreakups and so much rejection
and so much pain, and thatsociety places so much pressure
on us as women, stigma aroundlike why can't you hold down a
(06:03):
relationship?
Why are you not able to havechildren?
And all of those kind of likeself-doubts that come in as a
result.
It's it's almost like if onlypeople had access to open and
honest conversations, kind oflike we do have today, maybe
things would be quite different.
SPEAKER_03 (06:19):
Yeah, very, very damaging all of that.
Um, and I'm not sure it wasn'tthe responsible for the whole of
the impact on me, actually,other than the problem itself.
Um, but interestingly, therewasn't a way of, you know, there
wasn't ever a treatment for it,and there wasn't anything that
could fix or change it.
It's only been in the reframing,which has been a whole scale
(06:40):
reframing of of all of it, evenincluding those early life
events to some extent, or orunderstanding them and the
impact on me that's that'sallowed any kind of healing and
health to come through becausethere just wasn't an answer to
it.
It always needed to be accepted,it needed acceptance, inclusion,
love, normalization, and none ofthat ever happened.
(07:01):
And I was never told you're justokay as you are until I came
across, you know, themindfulness teachings and
something bigger, a biggerframework, a bigger point of
reference, other perspectives,possibilities of possibilities
that went beyond societalexpectations.
I often reflect, you know, itwas the only thing big enough to
hold what I came to it with allthese life events and traumas.
(07:25):
My my dad was pretty much alwaysill since I was a young age.
He had MS, he was diagnosed whenI was 15.
It was a very dark, heavyshadow.
It was something that I I tookin on a very deeply somatic
level.
That's just my personality typebeing highly sensitive.
And I I know that it it kind ofwent into my cells, this dark,
dark, heavy feeling.
(07:46):
Because I I still have dreamsabout it now, about my dad's
illness, but it really affectedme.
And then my mum came ill in thelast few years of his life.
So I had one parent inend-of-life care and one parent
in and out of intensive care.
It was just a brutal regime.
And then they they eventuallythey finally died in 2019, and
my dad died in the August, andmy mum died two weeks later, a
(08:09):
day after his funeral.
My mum wasn't predicted to die.
My dad had been it, my dad'send-of-life care was seemed to
be very prolonged.
But when my mum died, she wasactually thought to be getting
better, so it felt very cruel.
But I think only only after myparents died, there was actually
the space to address some of theearly life trauma and the way
(08:29):
it's impacted me, especiallywith music.
And my foot into mindfulness wasalready quite well established
between five and eight years bythat point.
But I'd done the teachertraining, and when I now look
back on it, it actually wasgiving me some kind of a sense
of an anchor of something forme.
It hadn't fully opened out, butI continued with it because it
(08:50):
is a lifelong thing for me and away of life.
So it's that continual peelingback of onion layers to get back
to what was always originallythere, and quite beautifully for
me, there's this strong musicalvoice which I found, as well as
the layers of trauma which haveneeded to be addressed and all
of the unhelpful messages andthings I've picked up along the
(09:11):
way.
SPEAKER_01 (09:11):
Just to sort of unwrap and unravel this
condition a little bit more.
Is it common for it to be sortof related to stress or trauma?
Is that sort of like a generalcause for a condition like this?
I really don't know.
SPEAKER_03 (09:26):
I'm I'm really not too sure on that, but I think
what comes out resoundingly forme is the it was the inability
for things to show up asthemselves in the the pelvic
region, the way that theyweren't able to in the
subconscious.
It's almost like I was carryingtrauma in my body.
So I resonate with that, butI've never had any proof of that
(09:47):
or any anything to concreteevidence.
But I mean, it's so common withtrauma in general, isn't it,
that we somaticise it and thenand it shows up physically.
And there's certainly nothingthat's ever been pointed out
that's any concern or worrywithin within any of the tests.
I went through a number of verypainful, invasive, sort of
completely unnecessarytreatments actually, and having
(10:08):
foreign bodies put inside me andvarious different physio
techniques, which none of noneof which were necessary, but
it's this thing of there wasn'tever anything wrong in that
sense.
It's just a a sort of like anarbitrary condition, the bits of
cell are in the wrong place andit causes pain, which for all I
know is is gone now.
But it it's that whole way thatit was such a severe um the
(10:30):
impact of it, the impact of itwas so crushing.
And I I remember when I was age30 or 31, and I was just sitting
on a park bench before a dentistappointment, and I got a really,
really dark feeling inside me,and it just was saying to me,
You're never gonna have ahusband or children, and I
couldn't say why, but I justknew something about this
(10:55):
continual cycle of rejection ofwhenever I met someone and got
into a relationship, whether ithappened sooner or later, it was
still the same result, and itwas something so physical.
And I and there's no doubt itwas that reason, you know,
because I was told in manydifferent ways.
Because I guess for them, theythey couldn't, they weren't the
ones to fix it and heal it, andit didn't make them feel good
(11:18):
that they didn't make me feelgreat.
But for me it held no I adoredthe relationships in my 30s, I
would have happily I was in themforever, that's why I was in
them one at a time, you know.
But I didn't have that chance,so it was always taken away.
And and also all around me atthe time, um, especially as a
primary school teacher,everybody was going off on
maternity leave, buildingfamilies, and being celebrated
(11:40):
for their connections andmultiplying their connections,
and that was all a greatcelebration, whereas for me I
was just going through repeatedloss and rejection and
miscarriage.
So it I I I don't really knowhow I got through through that
time sometimes when I look back.
You know, there's been a lot ofreframing which has enabled me
to have any strength around it,and just like you say, as well,
(12:01):
all the pressure of themarginalization of childlessness
in society and all of that, andfeeling lesser, feeling
inadequate, and really beingreferred to as that and being
spoken to a number of times andbeing at the hand of that sort
of attitude of not not feelinglike a real woman and all of
that as well on top, as well asmy own grief.
So yeah, I was in a quite afragile, diminished state with
(12:24):
all of this, with my parents'health and the early life trauma
that I didn't really know aboutat that point, but in my late
30s, I really was in a quite afragile state when I when I
first found the mindfulness, andthat's the point that I first
ever had reference to it at all.
SPEAKER_01 (12:38):
I totally feel you when you talk about this,
because really hard in your day,in your waking day, when you're
going to work and you're tryingto do the best and you you know
you're going home to your ownempty space, how how hard it is
to sort of wrap your headaround, like, okay, you know,
I'm I'm okay on my own when youknow there is a certain life you
(12:58):
wish for, you look for.
And you know, the fact that youlost your parents quite in the
thick of it as well.
I can imagine, you know, youcontesting the idea of like
being alone versus loneliness.
I think that's that's a kind ofconcept that I've battled with
as well a lot.
You know, I can be surrounded byfriends, I can be surrounded by
relationships and partners andfamily, but ultimately there's
(13:20):
there's a stark differencebetween being alone in your own
space and feeling lonely.
Can you just talk to me aboutwhat was that like for you?
SPEAKER_03 (13:28):
Yeah, I mean I I don't think being alone and
loneliness have anything to dowith each other at all.
And I actually love, I mean, Ithink that there's a beauty in
solitude, you know, and I and Iwould quite often choose to seek
that out.
I really like my own company.
But loneliness is being insituations not feeling seen and
heard, just not feeling seen,not feeling represented by
(13:52):
society in any way.
I always remember something Iheard in the staff room of two
teachers talking and it wasafter one of the summer
holidays, and one was saying tothe other that her mother had
died in the holiday and she wasshe was in her fifties or
something, but they were bothcommenting on how well you take
on your new role as a mother,don't you?
You take on your new role, youhave your new new life and your
(14:12):
new circumstances and you and itgoes into the next phase.
And and I I mean I didn't knowhow my life would pan out, but I
had a fairly good idea that itwasn't going to pan out like
that at that time.
And I overheard them and I justI I really was sort of had this
voice inside me thinking, Well,what what what if it you don't
have your new role and your newlife, you don't become a mother,
(14:33):
and it was so unthought about,you know, it just wasn't given
any point of reference, it justdidn't it didn't have a place in
conversations or in in people'sthoughts.
I mean I think it's I know it'schanging a bit now, but that was
very, very tough to withstand.
I had a lot of invalidation inin various ways when I tried to
try to talk about it.
But I think sometimes the weightof adenomiosis and holding all
(14:56):
of that and being under thatweight of feeling there's some
terrible problem with me andthat it's always going to
manifest in this way.
I sometimes think now when Ilook back on that that what I
was holding was the sense thatwell I'm really different from
other people's.
I have to explain it to themwhen I can't explain it to
myself, but I also have to keepquiet because it's taboo.
I mean that's such a greatweight to have to hold.
SPEAKER_01 (15:19):
So I felt very fragile with it all.
To your close friends and lovedones, what kind of support did
you did you get?
Feel like you got from fromthem?
SPEAKER_03 (15:31):
To be perfectly honest, I had a lot of
invalidation from a sibling whotold me that I didn't have a
clue and that she had friendswith real problems such as
infertility, which I didn't havea chance to find out whether I
was infertile or not.
I mean, and then later themiscarriages, but that was the
most crushing thing.
That that felt very cruel, andit was very cruel, you know.
(15:52):
And also part of the layer ofignorance around it, because
there is no monopoly on becomingchildless, whether it's I mean,
that was I had a slip disc atthe time, so that time that was
going on.
So I was in a relationship I wastold not to try.
But I mean, really, it could be20 failed IVF attempts or that
you just don't meet someone.
(16:13):
I mean, there's no monopolythrough mitigating prenatalism,
the effects of prenatalism,marginalisation.
And actually, and on that point,you know, being offered IVF is
in in a way it's somewhat of aprivilege.
I had a very humiliatingconversation when I was 39.
Well, it wasn't thathumiliating, but I felt very
small and I felt that sense ofshame that I had to ask because
(16:36):
I didn't want to let that windowof time go by without asking.
And the doctor just looked at mevery, very sadly and
sympathetically and said, Well,you probably won't be allowed it
because you're single.
And it was a it was a postcodething, you know.
Like I I don't know if that'sthe case everywhere, but
certainly in England it is.
And of course, I got the lettera few weeks later, no, you can't
be granted it.
Um, and I had a friend who was asimilar age in a stable
(16:59):
relationship because she had therelationship, she had the IVF
and she got the child.
So it's almost as though, well,you're not you're not
significant, you're single, youdon't take up enough space in
society, you can't be giventhat.
And that felt really defining aswell.
SPEAKER_01 (17:12):
Yeah.
It's it's really frustratingwhen you hear these kind of
things because I have livingproof of a lot of people who've
had children out of wedlock orhad children without being
prepared or ready for it, orparents that couldn't actually
handle the responsibility ofchildren, put them in in foster
care and adoption centers.
And on the flip side, you've gotsomeone who, whatever the
circumstances is, they're ready,they want it, they're
(17:35):
financially ready for it,they're meant mentally and
emotionally ready for it to givea child a beautiful life, but
the system is just sort of makesthat kind of judgment on their
own kind of terms.
It's just so marginalizing in asense.
And I don't know if you everthought about or talked about
adoption and what that kind oflooks like for a single parent.
Is that something that you everthought about?
SPEAKER_03 (17:56):
I did I did momentarily look into it and I
actually got the fear at thetime that I would get rejected
on grounds of my slip disc andmy back at the time because I
had chronic back pain, andthat's actually what led me into
the mindfulness initially waschronic pain.
I I think and I didn't take itfurther because I thought, well,
that would just be the nail inthe coffin.
Everything was very fragilearound there, so I didn't feel
(18:18):
I'd get support.
I had a very good friendactually who um from university.
She had two children, but shealways said to me, Oh, Bella,
I'll put the children aside foryou.
I remember that I was trying tostart a group for childless or
child-free, you know, differentcommunities, but childless,
child-free people, single peoplein my late 30s.
And I mean it was a completeflop trying to set it up because
(18:40):
I wasn't very loud about it, andI sort of wanted to be
anonymous, but I wanted to so itwas the way I went about it, but
also to do with where I live, itwas a very pronatalist,
provincial, sort of 2.4, itwasn't the right place to be
doing anyway.
It didn't come to anything, butI always remember this friend
saying to me, Oh, but Belle, ifyou had those things, you
wouldn't need a group like that.
And that that was veryinvalidating because I'm the
(19:03):
point was I'm trying to spin iton its head and say, Well, I'm
gonna reframe this and I'm gonnatry and empower myself to make
the other side of it good.
But if I'm just told, Oh no,because you won't need a group
if you get a partner andchildren, you don't need that
group.
It was and she she was sayingout of kindness, but you really
want people to get the messageof can we bring the other side
(19:24):
up a bit?
And I've always had that sort ofsense of however much I wanted
to have a child or children,something in me also it doesn't
feel right about this imbalancearound it and all these
messages, and something in mewanted to be part of changing
that as well, and to stick upfor this the lesser side, the
smaller side, which is very muchwhat I used to do in my classes
(19:46):
of kids with the underdog.
The underdog always got a bitmore from me because I resonated
with them, but I didn't do itconsciously, it wasn't it wasn't
a very um obvious thing I wasdoing, it was very subtle, but
you see them, you just see thesekids straight away, and it's
like the loud, well-adjusted,privileged ones in that sense,
they can kind of take care ofthemselves more.
But on the face of it, you'rebehaving the same towards them,
(20:07):
but in your heart it'sdifferent.
And I always felt that about thechildless, child free, and
single community.
You know, I want to be part, Iwanted to be part of reframing
that, and I felt that really,even though I couldn't have
articulated it then, but Icertainly I think I did want
that inside to make society abit more equal.
Do you feel like that that'schanged now?
Yeah, um I think it's changing,um, and certainly because
(20:30):
communities have sprung up andI've had a dabbling in both the
childless and the child free,which are wildly different
communities, you know, evenwithin within those, there's so
many different nuances that umthey don't converge at all, but
where they converge is in termsof pronatalism because they both
face the same the same uhmarginalization, so I do relate
(20:51):
to everything everyone says inboth groups.
So there certainly wasn'tanything around like that 10-20
years ago when I desperatelyneeded it, but I but yeah,
that's very heartening.
And in terms of childlessness, Ihonestly feel I've gone through
post-traumatic growth sincelosing my parents, and I also
feel as though I've reframed it,and I would say that you have to
(21:14):
want to do that, and I I feelI'm allowed to say that because
I've done that, so you can stayin the identity forever of being
childless, but there's also away of empowering yourself
through it, and I think againthrough mindfulness, you come to
really know yourself and findyour voice in these ways and
finding ways of belonging aswell, because a lot of it is
around belonging when societydoesn't really let you belong.
(21:35):
So I think you really canreframe even the most painful
things, but you do have to beintentional around that.
SPEAKER_01 (21:42):
Belinda, I'm I'm interested to sort of like know
that mindfulness journey.
Like, what was the thing thatkind of really triggered you to
start looking into mindfulnessand some of the epiphanies and
things that you kind of came tounderstand in that process?
SPEAKER_03 (21:55):
Yeah, so the very first reference that I ever
heard to mindfulness was in achronic pain seminar at the
local hospital because I wasgoing through all this stuff
with my back.
And they actually were very,very brief with it.
It was hardly mentioned, but Ijust kind of got a sense out of
all the things they said thatday that this was something to
look into and explore further,and I did, but I I really sort
(22:18):
of took it on myself to researchit a lot.
Something really intrigued meabout the fact that we could
have any influence where ourmind goes.
It turns out to be, I mean,mindfulness is really about the
body, but I hadn't learnt thatmuch about it at that time.
So that really intrigued me, andI found the work of John
Cabotzin, and who very firstbrought it to the West in the
(22:40):
70s and 80s.
Uh, I was very determined aboutit at that point.
I would sit and do 45 minutemeditations on my own.
I downloaded his programmebecause I mean I don't want to
make light of the the sort ofstate I was in, I'd call it an
emotional rock bottom because Ifelt isolated.
I'd been through yet anotherrejection, and the impact of
(23:00):
these rejections was cumulative,you know.
I couldn't move a lot of thetime, my back was so much pain,
I couldn't walk.
That was when I had the slipdisk, it was particularly
debilitating.
So I felt I had this lifeline.
One of the things John Cabotzinsays that stuck with me, the few
things, but one of them was solong as you're breathing,
there's more right with you thanwrong with you.
(23:21):
And when you feel really at yourlowest, that's just something to
hang on to.
You think, oh, I've gotsomething to to work with here.
So I stuck with it.
And he also says about the thiseight-week programme, people in
his his programme he would sayto you, you don't have to like
it, you just have to do it.
And I I am a disciplined person.
I've been I was like thatgrowing up, and I I've always
(23:43):
sort of had that ethic aboutwork and stuff.
And to me, I was willing to putthat work in, and I did since
then it it's kind of grownexponentially.
When you embrace mindfulness andyou have a regular practice, you
adhere to the teachings and youknow you're following this this
way of sort of this path.
It actually enables you tonavigate every aspect of life.
It's not really one thing.
(24:04):
I was I was sort of I did theteacher training in um 2018, and
I only did it under two veryeminent Buddhist teachers who
I'd heard from for years doingtalks from Silent Retreats.
I wouldn't have learned fromanyone else at that point.
It just felt like things cametogether because I'd been a
former teacher and I wasentrenched in mindfulness, so
bring it together, but with thebest training, you know, and
this training took a year, it'sglobally accredited training,
(24:27):
and it's always far too big of athing for me to leave it aside.
It's it's it's forever work, youknow, and ever deepening into
it.
And I've I've kind of I'velearned, you know, especially
working in the health service,where I I was able to to
implement it to some extent, butbecause there's such a limited
understanding of what it reallyis, you know, it was it was
always in a limited form, whichis why I always wanted to break
(24:50):
out and do it in its full scopeon my own.
Um, but it's seen as um sort oflike another modality like CBT
or DBT or ACT, whereas itactually underpins those
modalities, you know, a lot oftheir the body of those models
are taken from the mindfulnessteachings, whether it's made
explicit or not.
And I think when it comes tolasting change, integration of
(25:13):
trauma, transformation,post-traumatic growth, whatever
we call it, I don't think youcan start with the top-down.
It there's no sort of substitutefor that really foundational
awareness training and reallysitting with the nervous system
and expanding the capacity ofthe nervous system.
And I heard an analogy which Iquite liked the other day about
when we plant seeds in soil forthe soil to take root, it's got
(25:37):
to be watered and cultivated andand nurtured, and this is like
the daily practice or theregular practice at least of
meditating.
And meditating, you know, islike the Petri dish of the rest
of life because we actually seethings in close up.
SPEAKER_02 (25:52):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (25:52):
So and I've done a number of silent retreats where
we just watch the differenttastes of the mind, and that
that's that would I would saythat's where the deepest
training happens, really, justreally when you're sitting with
yourself and you don't haveother stimulation and you don't
have distraction for for forextensive periods of time.
SPEAKER_01 (26:09):
Yeah, that's so interesting.
SPEAKER_03 (26:10):
And I think the way, you know, mindfulness has has
been sort of truncated, which isan inevitable process of the
popularity, and people jump onthe bandwagon, it's in every
sphere now.
But these byproducts that are aC, you know, like it brings
calm, it brings focus,productivity, but it's actually
at its core, it's it the it'sessentially non-attachment to
(26:32):
any of those outcomes at thestart.
And those things may or may nothappen, and there are
physiological reasons to why wemight feel calm after
meditating, because our systemsget the message they can slow
down a bit.
But you know, that might mightnot play out like that.
But the fact is that the thesort of the scope of awareness
training is so much bigger thanany of that, and it's so much
bigger than these sort of thebenefits, the way they're laid
(26:54):
out, and the way the apps allgear it towards these these
these benefits that can orcannot happen.
But I mean, I guess it's aboutpeople starting somewhere, but
I'm just quite hungry to putback some of the integrity into
these teachings, which I hope iswhat I've done in my course, my
eight-week course, to put backthat meaning and depth where so
(27:14):
much more is possible from, youknow, and it has been for me.
SPEAKER_01 (27:17):
Can you can you just elaborate a little bit more
about what does it actually looklike?
Because for a person who may nothave actually sat down and done
a meditation, um, they'reprobably likely to feel quite
dejected after a session or twobecause of how many distractions
our brain is kind of like filledwith, and how many, how often is
it we find ourselves, you know,deviating away from the actual
(27:40):
kind of purpose of thatmeditation.
SPEAKER_03 (27:42):
Yeah.
Well, I went straight in hardwith 45 minutes because they
were guided, because it was hisMBSR program.
And he wrote this program forit's called for chronic stress,
but it's basically even peoplethat are given terminal
diagnosis and they're told to goaway and live with it, but
they're not taught how to livewith it.
So it's not about solution, it'snot about answer or outcome or
(28:03):
goal, it's a way of livingalongside, and the way this
really happens, in in the bestway I can find to describe it,
because it's kind of beyondwords in a way, but we create a
bit more space within ourselves,and that permeates into the rest
of life, into our perspective,into our experience of things,
and that's on a fundamentallevel.
(28:23):
So creating this space canenable wiser choices or a pause
between how we react or in termsof habit change, you know, very
fundamental and addictive,wanting to change addictive
behaviours and patterns andanger management, things like
that.
But on a deeper level, it'sactually coming to know the self
(28:44):
because the more we sit, themore we're actually experiencing
the self.
We'll we we we learn to listento the body, we learn to listen
to very subtle sensations.
It's not about anythingglamorous or fancy, it's not
about adding music.
You asked if it's guided.
I started off with guided ones,I now prefer to do them
unguided, but it essentiallyit's always the same direction
(29:06):
in terms of the fact that we aregaining more distance from our
direct experience.
SPEAKER_01 (29:12):
What are the meditations that you you do?
You were talking about it beingum some guided meditations.
SPEAKER_03 (29:18):
What attracted me to the initially with the work of
John Cabotzin, which reallyessentially is mindfulness, you
know, I always thought therewere people that could meditate
and people that couldn't, and Iwas the latter, you know, and
then you hear people saying,Well, I can't meditate, I have
such a monkey mind, and and weall we all have that, you know,
and that needs to be normalized,and it's not about not thinking,
(29:41):
you know.
We have these five senses, wewouldn't expect them to stop
when we meditate, we can't stophearing, we can't stop seeing.
Well, we can close our eyes, butyou know, we don't expect sounds
to stop coming to us, so wecan't expect thoughts to stop
coming to us.
It's it's like uh it'sunrealistic and I think it was
John Cabotson that actually saidtrying to control our thoughts
(30:03):
is like trying to control theweather.
We have that little control init.
So that's really normalized.
But it's about seeing ourthoughts, seeing emotions,
seeing sensations.
It's a way of slowing everythingdown to see it and meet it and
know it and understand it.
And through that process, wecreate more space which is
(30:26):
instrumental in all the rest ofour going about our day.
You know, we actually meditatefor the time that we're not
sitting there.
We don't meditate for the timewe're meditating, it's for the
time that is all of the rest ofthe day.
So it kind of has this filtersin this impact gradually, and I
think the effects of it are whatmotivated me to continue.
(30:47):
You know, there is an amount ofyou you do it, but like you
said, you don't have to like it,you just do it, and there is an
amount of the intentionalityshowing up, doing it, but then
it becomes into its own flowbecause you know that you can
show up as you, you can think,you can it's however anything
is, you know, everything iswelcome in mindfulness.
(31:09):
So I think that there's so muchmisunderstanding around it, you
know, that it that we have tohave a clear mind or that we we
can't think and and that it'sthat's some cognitive thing,
whereas really it's about thebody in its true meaning.
SPEAKER_01 (31:22):
Can you tell me about when did you have your
first breakthrough in thismindfulness journey of yours?
Uh and especially in particularin your meditation journey, and
what was that breakthrough?
SPEAKER_03 (31:33):
I'm not sure that I actually had a breakthrough as
such.
I think it was all a verygradual continuum.
I feel that I got more handle onthe pain or more distance from
the pain because of the ways ofworking with chronic pain in
meditation.
So the very subtle ways that wecan tune into any part of the
body that isn't in pain, or theways that we can tune into the
(31:55):
fluctuations of sensation inpain rather than it being some
blanket thing sitting on us asas like a heavy trap of pain,
because pain feels very solidand stuck like that, doesn't it?
But um, and particularly for me,I I get really I'm very bad at
very low pain threshold reallyin general.
But um when we tune into it, wenotice that actually it's not a
(32:17):
big heavy block, it's actuallydifferent sensations of
tingling, burning, sometimeslesser, sometimes it's very
nuanced, and actually nosensations are the same.
So a few minutes later we canconcentrate on the same body
part and we'll be havingdifferent sensations, you know.
So it but then when it when it'stoo much, when it's
overwhelming, then we just tuneinto another part of the body,
(32:38):
and there's just these verysubtle ways that we cannot do
without that amount ofintentionality, you know.
That's not going to happen indaily life in all the busyness
of all the tasks and everythingwe have to keep up.
It takes that focused sitting,and and it's always important to
remember that you can't actuallyguess it wrong.
We can't get it wrong.
The only thing getting it wrongis not actually showing up to do
(33:01):
it because whatever happens in ameditation is valid, whatever we
meet is valid, we're justsitting and meeting it.
So we're always growing ourawareness all the time, and it
is it is this gradual thing.
I don't believe at all in sortof cutting things down and and
diluting them, chopping themdown.
I've had to do a lot of that inthe health service with the sort
(33:21):
of diluted, truncated forms ofeverything, but but the fact is
to have any meaning, it's not atick box sheet, it's not a
worksheet, it's not some quicktransformation, it's it's kind
of the long game, but it but itlasts forever because it's your
your foundational groundeddetachment that you can you can
live with.
(33:42):
I like that.
SPEAKER_01 (33:42):
It's ironic though, isn't it?
There is that common groundwhere it's like in in the
medical industry, they try to beas objective as possible and
then just tell you what thesymptoms are, what what the
experience is, what you can andshould expect that they really
chuck it down to a science.
But meditation, to an extent,it's all about feeling, it's all
about removing the judgment andthe label, and it's just about
really just tapping into thatfeeling that you might you might
(34:05):
have a label to.
You might even in thatmeditation journey be like,
okay, I know that this is aresult of the slip disk, and
that slip disk is a label initself, but you are able to sort
of look at it in a verydifferent way.
SPEAKER_03 (34:15):
Absolutely.
I think it's this whole thing ofapproaching life with the
intention of chronic well-beingas opposed to reacting to
chronic illness, which is whatthe medical model is there for.
Um, but I'm always veryinterested in chronic
well-being.
How can we live well?
And and mindfulness has beensuch a um it's been the
(34:38):
foundation for all other healingmodalities I've found along the
way, you know, breath work, um,shaking, tapping, lots of things
around nutrition.
It's been the whole groundworkfor those things to have so much
more benefit, I think, overall.
And and what you said aboutremoving labels, I mean, that's
exactly what that that's what'sso freeing on in the in the the
(35:02):
short term and also in the inthe longer, in the bigger
picture of things, because forinstance the body uh in the
teachings we can have these umthere are six contemplations of
the body.
One of them is in terms of theelements, so you probably heard
of this teaching, but it's wellknown about that the body can
purely be defined in terms ofearth, water, and fire.
(35:24):
And you can go into differentlevels of depth as to how we
define that, but very simply,you know, the fire is the
metabolism and heat and cool,the air is the way that we move
through the body, the spacebetween the cells, the water is
all the liquid, and the earthelement is just massive because
it taps into all of the traumahealing, the grounding,
(35:45):
stabilization, and the fact thatwe need to have a sense of
ourselves plugged into theground to not be up in the
mental space all the time, whicha lot of life encourages us to
do every day, you know, and justto keep up, that happens.
So, and under these theseelements that we're framing the
body within, there is no thereis no space for labels such as
(36:06):
fat, thin, young, old, ugly,beautiful, they don't work
anymore.
So it's immensely freeing, andall of the contemplations are
like that, they're all thesebeautiful alternatives of
viewing the body, and it's notabout this is the truth or this
is this is right and wrong, it'sabout challenging the duality
that society creates aroundthings and that we create in our
(36:28):
minds because we're sosusceptible to these messages.
SPEAKER_01 (36:31):
That's really well put.
Do you feel like it's importantin that process of like
mindfulness that we unravel someof the darker times of our
childhood?
And what was that like for you?
SPEAKER_03 (36:41):
Yeah, um, it really definitely is imperative in
doing that.
A big part of this isself-compassion, which also came
through these teachings, andthere are separate practices
that you can do specifically forcompassion, but it comes with
that basis of the traditionalmindfulness meditation.
So I was quite grounded in thiswhen one day I had an epiphany
(37:02):
about four years ago, and I Irealized this thing about having
the music taken away, and Iremembered the event very
clearly, and it was alwayssomething that I knew
cognitively had happened, but Isomehow got this visceral sense
in my body about oh, the violin,music, my voice, and everything
kind of I can't really put itinto words, but I got a very
(37:24):
strong sense of the impact ofthat event.
And what actually happened wasthat later on as a teenager I
was told the reason for ithaving been taken away.
And it was around the fact thatmy progress had been too quick
that would have outshadowed mysibling, who was only slightly
older than me.
So it was deemed and not ahelpful dynamic because it would
(37:48):
have caused rivalry.
In some ways, I I wish I hadn'tbeen told that because I I don't
know how it served me.
Um, but making sense of it, Ithink that that message put me
in a very sacrificial role ofyou know, someone else's needs
being put first, which theywere.
There's no argument around that.
And I don't say it withbitterness or angerness, I d uh
(38:08):
anger, sorry, I don't actuallyhave any anger towards my
parents.
That that's not something I'vedone a lot to overcome.
I just don't really have it forsome reason.
Um, because I think sometimeswhen I tell the story, people
try to incite that from me, andthat's just not the sense of it.
But it was a thing that impactedme very deeply and also played
(38:30):
into the sense of shame and wellcreated it really, um, of that
well, you can't have your voiceand don't don't show up as you,
you can't do that again.
So it's it it's really playedout in how I show up in music
and in life in general.
And the event when I was three,just to very quickly touch on
(38:50):
that, but I actually jumped intoa swimming class lesson when
there was a lesson going on andI didn't know, and the reaction
from adults was just puredisgust, you know.
But so that took in, and itsounds like a trivial thing, but
it was that message of no, youyou you can't show up as you.
I'd just seen it in water, Ithought it was exciting, but
whatever.
But both of those events werevery divining, and then the the
(39:11):
violin more so.
What what has happened throughthe journey of mindfulness is
that I really have discoveredthis inner musical voice, and
when I when I got the space,because I think things only
really come up when they havethe space to come up, um, and
you can't that's a process youcan't control in life.
But when I did start to think,well, blind me, I play all these
instruments.
(39:31):
Why am I not telling the worldand telling people and having it
as part of my identity?
I kind of felt like there'd beena lot of time wasted with it,
but I had to do what I could, soI made an Instagram page that
just showcases all of myinstruments.
I think whenever I'd said itbefore, so when I'd mentioned as
a primary school teacher or inany other capacity I was in, I
said, Oh yes, I'm a musician, itfelt cloaked in the shame.
(39:55):
It all felt cloaked in the shamethat accompanied a lot of my my
life until then.
Whereas now I feel it's reframedthrough mindfulness and through
inner work as something to bereally proud of, and that I I
love sharing it and I find ithealing to share it.
And I feel that the Instagrampage, you know, it's not done in
a in a marketing sales pitchtype of way, it's purely just
(40:18):
showing who I am, what I can do,and giving my voice, and people
enjoy it, you know, they loveit.
And when I feel that someoneacross the world has seen a
video or heard my music, it'slike it's a very health-giving
feeling.
I don't know, it's it's likeI've I've lived a bit more and
I've shared music I've givenbecause that's that's my real
powerful voice, you know, thatgot shut down and now I've kind
(40:40):
of reclaimed it.
SPEAKER_01 (40:41):
Yeah.
I I love the way that you sortof like described this whole
experience as well, in a sense,because that one event, that one
conversation that you knowhappened when you were much
younger, how it deeply impactedyou in the way that you showed
up to a lot of different things,and maybe the way that you
represented yourself fromrelationships as well, in the
sense that downplaying thetalents, downplaying that
(41:03):
wonderful, beautiful side ofyou.
When I heard your music for thefirst time, you know, when when
we when we first startedspeaking, and I was gonna have
you on the podcast, I was like,this is pretty, pretty cool.
I mean, I'm not I'm not inmusic, I don't know very much
about music, but the fact thatyou were able to play them all
so fluently, I was prettyshocked to see that the flute,
the piano, like whatever thatyou were playing, you were
(41:24):
playing it at such aprofessional level, and you're
you've been, you know, creatingyour own music, finding your own
voice, and even the style ofmusic that you have out there,
they're all so vastly differentfrom each other.
You've got that really classicalstyle, you've got the really
slow and somber kind of music,you've got the really uplifting,
happy tunes, and and it's justit's I felt like such a strong
(41:45):
emotion just kind of exude.
And I felt like so much of itwas kind of like based on maybe
the time of your life or theexperience, the circumstance
that you were in at the verytime when you were composing
this music, felt like it wasreal raw human emotions.
And and that's kind of why I wasreally drawn.
There's a type of music thatgoes for all kinds of, you know,
(42:06):
moods and circumstances, which Ithought was really, really cool.
Like that versatility, you don'thear very much in in many
musicians.
SPEAKER_03 (42:13):
Yeah.
Well, thanks so much for sayingthat.
Um, I think you've you'vedescribed it really well.
The thing with the over theoverriding feature of all of it
is I actually haven't practiced.
I haven't put my time intomusic.
Life could have been verydifferent in terms of music
being my whole life and where Icould have gone with it.
And and you know, I I rememberas a kid playing on the playing
(42:34):
in all the London concert halls,just um from from picking up the
cello a few years later, butjust the things I was involved
in and briefly being on TV andthings like that.
But the whole of life could havebeen a different route.
Um, but I really haven'tpracticed that I was spending
years being a teacher, you know,and I I rarely got my
instruments out, and I rarelyget them out now, and I
certainly don't practice when Ido.
(42:55):
So the thing I'm proud of isthat there's a certain amount
that's already always there forme.
It could have, yes, it couldhave been a lot better, it could
have been transcended a lot oflevels and been a different
life, but what is there isenough to be proud of, it's
enough to show, and it's prettymuch done in the rawness of lack
of practice.
That I know that professionalsthat I'm alongside, you know,
(43:18):
with the same kind of level, butthey've put the work in.
And you know, someone said to mea few years ago, um, well,
Belinda, people that are playingin concert halls now, they
haven't been a primary schoolteacher, they haven't taught
English abroad, they don't workin mental health.
Um, you can't do everything inlife, you know, and you've done
quite a lot.
And it and that that resonateswith me now.
Um, whereas when she said it, itwent over my head a bit.
(43:39):
But I think I think that's true,you know.
I think that the level of musicI have is is I I'm quite
impressed when I look at myselfalmost in that third person way.
Um, so I just want to get it outthere.
I just want people to hear it.
SPEAKER_01 (43:50):
Yeah, that's great.
And can you tell me a little bitabout like how that's helped you
find your voice or helped youkind of understand yourself on a
deeper level, like reintroducingmusic into your life again?
SPEAKER_03 (44:00):
Yeah, I just feel like it is my voice really.
It there's something very directabout it.
I mean, especially the recorder,you if you take the recorder,
it's it's breath, it'sbreathing.
So you kind of directly put yourput your expression into it,
yourself into it.
And various people say to me,How do you make that sound on
the recorder?
I've never heard it sound likethat, because that's your voice.
(44:20):
So I think it's my voice comingthrough.
SPEAKER_01 (44:22):
Um quite literally.
SPEAKER_03 (44:24):
But then all of the instruments lend themselves to
so much expression, you know.
People think the piano is justkeys that you hit, but no, you
can put so much interpretationand emotion through the waist of
the finger, the support of thefingers, and just really through
your heart.
I don't know, and it is one ofthose things again, it's beyond
words to explain.
But with me, it's always verydirect, it's always very
(44:44):
automatic, and it's it's justkind of there.
And there aren't many things inlife that we we turn our hand to
and think, oh, that you know,that's that's really easy for
me.
You know, it's a complex thing,but it's really easy for me.
And so it's just one of thosethings that I I I find myself in
it, and I think, oh, there sheis.
Lost it for a bit, but there sheis.
SPEAKER_01 (45:05):
Yeah, I love it.
When you are really one withthat instrument, you're kind of
no longer a part of this biggeroutside world, you're in a
space, you're in this littlebubble with you and that little
instrument where you're justtruly free.
And I can imagine that for youjust like being why, why it's
(45:26):
such a you know, attractive kindof dopamine hitting thing for
you to do because that's kind ofthat that non-judgmental space
that you can be in raw, true,authentic, and just free again.
SPEAKER_03 (45:38):
And it's it's healing as well because I mean
it does, it's not pain-free.
Music is always gonna be quite atriggering thing, but I think
that I'd rather have it outthere showing people and people
benefiting from it than justhide it away.
So I think that is healing.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (45:55):
Do you feel like like for you being creative is
also a part of the mindfuljourney?
You feel like is that somethingthat you would have also
recommend to people, like whenthey're going through their own
mindful journey to find acreative outlet?
SPEAKER_03 (46:08):
Well, I I have this kind of like almost a tagline
through my course.
I help people find theircreative inner voice.
We can all find ways of creativeoutlets, but I believe that the
statement actually points tosomething bigger in terms of the
fact that finding your creativeinner voice can be find your
creative way to be in the world.
How do we how are we gonna be?
(46:28):
How are we gonna exist?
How are we gonna show up?
So it's open to interpretation.
So yeah, there are all theseways, and I'm sure that it is
very important for people to do,even if it doesn't mean
resurrecting an old pastime, itcan mean a creative way of
being, you know, but I thinkit's essential for us to do,
yeah.
I think I would I would maintainit benefits every single human.
(46:49):
So I can't pin it down to thisgroup of people or this
demographic that it wouldbenefit because really it's it
benefits human nature to buildawareness and to live
creatively.
SPEAKER_01 (46:59):
Yeah, I love that.
Well, in the final plug-ins, canyou tell us a little bit about
this eight-week course of yours?
How and how can people find it?
I think it's actuallyseven-week.
I made a mistake, sorry.
SPEAKER_03 (47:07):
So the course has seven different themes.
Um, very, very briefly, we coverembodiment, the body, then uh a
brief journey into feeling tone,the senses, the emotions, the
thoughts, and self-compassion.
They all interweave, they're alloverlap into each other, um, and
they all actually could last formany weeks in themselves.
(47:28):
So it's very much of a sort ofgrounding in all of it.
And also another thing tomention about it is that part of
the sessions involvesmeditating, and it's done very
it's very approachable, youknow.
Um they start off very short,and the the little bits of work
to be done in between are veryare guided, and they're they're
they're very short, you know, soit's not sort of a big part of
(47:50):
our time that's taken up oranything.
But what we start to findthrough this is this other
aspect of abundance, which Ihaven't mentioned, but but
through meditating and throughthis that that very slight
curiosity and space that opensup, we can start to gain more in
every moment.
There's this abundance of takingin more from every moment, so
(48:11):
everything kind of getsenriched.
So that's just another area.
So the sessions are a mixture oftheory and concepts and
meditating.
Um, there's always a shortmeditation to arrive, and then
there's a a more meaty one lateron, which is part of the theme,
and it's also discussional.
In the meantime, there'shomework that's sent over.
(48:32):
Um, I don't like calling ithomework, but you know what I
mean?
It's just not just the sessions,it's important that somebody can
just show up to do that littlebit of input.
Very approachable, very gentle,um, and always learning to apply
kindness to ourselves.
We do that in each moment, ineach situation.
So the details, more informationabout that is on my website,
(48:53):
which is the three wordsheartmindbreathealtogether.com.
If if you want to sign up to thenewsletter, there's a free
meditation, and then the blogsget sent in the newsletter.
I've been told that I've beenfed back that my blogs are very
inspirational.
So hopefully they'reinspirational for people to
read.
And in terms of my music, I theInstagram page is at cello
(49:14):
belinda.
SPEAKER_01 (49:15):
So cello is C E L L O at Cello Belinda on Instagram.
Thank you, Belinda.
Thanks for sharing your story,your journey, and like all of
the sort of like, you know,healing and and the and the and
the mindfulness as well.
I think this is gonna be reallyinspiring for our listeners to
sort of take some, you know,nuggets of gold from this.
SPEAKER_03 (49:34):
Thanks so much.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (49:40):
If you enjoyed the episode and would like to help
support the show, please followand subscribe.
You can rate and review yourfeedback on any of our platforms
listed in the description.
I'd like to recognize our guestswho are vulnerable and open to
share their life experienceswith us.
Thank you for showing us we'rehuman.
Also, a thank you to our teamwho worked so hard behind the
(50:00):
scenes to make it happen.
SPEAKER_03 (50:02):
Stefan Menzel.
SPEAKER_00 (50:03):
Lucas, the show would be nothing without you.
I'm Jenica, host and writer ofthe show, and you're listening
to Multispective.
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My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com