85% of people in the world have a religious belief.
As you were speaking, I was thinking, what's the thing that I believe in that's greater?
It's love.
And it's making me quite upset, but you've really just made it land for me that all of this...
The thing that I believe in that's greater is love, and that's beautiful.
Hey guys, how you doing?
Hope you're having a good week so far.
My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More.
What exactly is intuition?
What happens when we die?
And how does trauma get stored in our bodies?
Well, these are just a few of the fascinating themes that I explore in today's episode with returning guest, Dr Tara Swart.
Tara is a neuroscientist, a former medical doctor and psychiatrist, a lecturer at MIT, an executive coach, an author of two books, including her very latest, The Signs the new science of how to trust your instincts.
In today's episode, Tara shares her own personal story about love loss and learning to trust herself again after the death of her husband, Robin.
This life-changing experience left her questioning her deepest beliefs as a scientist when, in the midst of her grief, she started noticing unusual signs that she felt she was unable to ignore.
At first she was skeptical, But these moments gradually helped her reconnect with her intuition in ways she never expected.
In our conversation, we explore what intuition really is, why so many of us feel cut off from it and crucially, what practical steps you can take to start accessing your own.
We also talk about the disconnection that many of us feel in the modern world, the transformative and healing power of nature and the many different ways in which humans try to make sense of death.
This is a raw, honest and thought-provoking conversation that I'm certain will leave you feeling inspired and eager to rediscover your own inner wisdom.
It's pretty clear that modern life, is disconnecting us from so many truly important things.
One of the things that it's disconnected us from is our intuition.
So I wanted to start off by asking you, what is intuition?
And what are some signs that we can look out for in our own life that might indicate we're disconnected from our own?
Okay, so intuition, I've come to call it hidden wisdom.
Because you can't recall everything you've experienced in your life, but you pick up life lessons and you lay down patterns of behavior and pattern recognition from those memories that you're not sort of conscious of.
And I think I would have said to you before that, through the process called Hebbian learning, these patterns get pushed deeper and deeper into the brain, into the limbic system, the brainstem, the spinal cord and even into the gut neurons.
And that's why it's often called gut instinct, right?
But there's new evidence through the serotonin hypothesis that shows that trauma doesn't only exist in the PTSD circuits of the brain.
Through the action of serotonin, your blood products, your plasma, in your blood, the capillaries are constricted or dilated by the serotonin.
And that changes the nature of nutrients and oxygen going into the tissues of your muscles, your fascia.
And so the hypothesis says that that's one way that trauma is stored in the body.
You know, Bessel van der Kolk's work, the body keeps the score.
So the new hypothesis is that hidden wisdom or intuition is also stored in patterns that are held in the tissues of your body.
So it's a bit like saying you know, your mind isn't just in your brain, it's embodied, it's everywhere.
And for example, if you practice yoga, you would understand that really well.
So yeah, just like trauma can be stored in the body, intuition can be stored in the mind, the brain and the body.
And in terms of the things that we can look out for in our own life, that might indicate we're not accessing our intuition as much as we might want to, are there any things that we can look out for to go actually, you know, I struggle to make a decision, I'm constantly stressed, or whatever it might be.
You know, what would you say are signs of that?
People can use themselves to try and sort of figure that out.
So I think there's a few ways I could approach this.
One is if you keep repeating the same kind of patterns in your decision making, in your behaviour, in your relationship dynamics, then you're probably not evolving your intuition and learning from potential mistakes.
I think another thing because I talked about yoga being the union of the mind and the body is that we're very cut off at the neck and we very much separate our mind and our body.
So if you're overthinking, if you're anxious, if you're very rigid in your thinking, if you rely way too much on logic and rationality when it feels wrong in your gut, kind of thing, I think those are really good signs.
And you mentioned stress.
So, of course, because of the gut-brain connection.
If our gut microbiome isn't in good condition, that can actually cloud access to our intuition and lead to what's called brain fog.
And that's like a two-way thing.
Yeah.
When I think about stress and I think about intuition, I think about a relationship that perhaps goes both ways.
So when you're chronically stressed, of course, it's very hard to look inwards and access that deep wisdom.
And, at the same time, If you're not accessing your inner wisdom enough, it's probably going to lead to more stress in your life.
I think it leads to like a lack of direction and sense of purpose.
So, for example, I always kind of prided myself on my intuition and I would make my biggest life decisions based on my intuition.
But up until a few years ago, that was still very much something that I thought was only in my head.
It was only after my husband passed away that I really felt like I couldn't trust myself.
I couldn't trust my decision making.
I didn't have access to that voice anymore, that I had to find like a different way of operating.
And you know the first thing that it wasn't a choice, it just happened is that you know I'm very lucky with the amount of support I have.
So I got the psychological safety that I needed from my community and But I started spending a lot of time in nature.
And I believe that that's the way I reconnected with my intuition and realized that it's not just a mental thing.
It's a physical thing, too.
So any kind of physical activity like walking, yoga.
And you know how I love to go back to ancient wisdom about everything.
I was literally Googling things like How did humans rely on their instincts in Paleolithic times?
And is art what makes us human?
So I enjoyed that part of the research.
And so our ancestors, they didn't have spare resources for doing things for fun.
They had to use all of their resources for survival.
So basically food, shelter and reproduction.
So why did they drum, dance, hum, make cave paintings?
There must be something about that that's crucial to our survival.
And in some ancient cultures, like in ancient Greeks, when they bury their dead, they wail and beat their chests.
So I'm assuming that's actually a good way of dealing with grief.
Because one of the things I realized as well with grief is I had amazing talking therapy, but it's only when I started having body realignment therapy and craniosacral therapy that it accelerated my healing.
Yeah.
It's so interesting.
You mentioned ancient wisdom.
And earlier on, right at the start of this conversation, you said, the new hypothesis is.
And I thought, okay, I'm going to come back to that.
Because is it truly a new hypothesis?
Or is science just trying its very best to explain what all of our ancestors have known for tens of thousands of years?
I mean, I can just give a one word answer to that.
Yeah.
I mean, what's your take on how I frame that?
Because there's some beautiful things in the start of the book.
This point really deeply, deeply resonates with me and how I see the world.
You put here.
It also made me question whether only things that can be proven scientifically are important as part of the human experience.
Yeah.
Well, that's given me goosebumps because I'll tell you where that came from.
So within the first couple of weeks of Robin dying, I had a neighbour who had lost his partner five years previously.
And we didn't really talk about it much, but obviously I was searching.
So I said, is it okay to ask you something about, you know, death and grief?
And he said, sure.
And I said, do you think it's possible to get communication with them after they've passed?
And he got quite agitated and said absolutely not.
And then said if it were, everyone would be talking about it.
And I think, even though I was in acute grief at the time, I remember thinking well, I can't accept that it's not possible, just because everyone's not talking about it.
That doesn't make sense to me.
And so then, I mentioned it to a few people, and everyone that I spoke to had some kind of experience of sensing a presence or receiving a sign from a lost loved one.
So I just thought that was interesting at first.
And then, as I went on my journey of receiving signs, I was able to step back as a neuroscientist and kind of watch what was happening to me and thinking this is quite interesting.
I wonder if I'll find something that could actually help other people.
Because I had no intention of ever sharing my private story.
It was only if I felt like I learned something with the benefit of hindsight that could help.
And then, of course, what has happened is because I'm known for being a scientist and a doctor, And it's such a human and primal experience, and questioning the nature of life, death and birth, that it's had this phenomenal reaction.
Yeah.
Just for people who've perhaps not heard some of those other conversations when you say signs, can you just elaborate what you mean when you say you've been asking for signs?
Yeah.
Yeah, so my husband's name was Robin.
But for many people seeing a Robin is often a sign from a lost loved one.
White feathers, repeating numbers, different things for different people.
But I basically, out of desperation, consulted a couple of mediums after my husband died and I was very sceptical.
And anything that I thought could have been researched on the internet or social media, I was sort of I wouldn't give them the credit for.
But then it just occurred to me that if it's possible to open this channel of communication with someone that's passed away, that I should be able to do it myself, because this was my person.
And because I had a few friends who said that they'd received signs from lost loved ones, I obviously wanted to receive signs.
And at first, you know, I think I was overthinking it and I was, you know, just hoping for things and looking and but, you know, not really getting them.
I did see a lot of Robins.
And then there was just a point where I realized that it would make sense for him to communicate with me through numbers, because he wrote a like a mathematical report and he was very, very obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence.
So then, the sorts of you know number signs that I would get became more frequent, more timely, more exact, and And now I don't ask for specific things anymore
I just, I notice things and I think, oh, that was from him.
If I just zoom out for a moment, Tara.
We're talking about you being able to communicate or receive communication from your husband Robin, who has died.
So there's going to be some people I imagine listening going, wait a minute, hold on.
Like you've got a medical degree, you've got a neuroscience degree, you know how the brain works.
And you're also trying to tell me that you're getting signs from your husband.
Yeah.
For the skeptic who's listening, what would you say to them?
Yeah.
That, even though I'm a neuroscientist and a medical doctor, I'm a human being that's been through a life changing experience that I obviously needed to make sense of.
And I wanted to fully heal and not feel bitter and, you know, sort of let grief rule the rest of my life.
Yeah.
And like I said, I did step back as a neuroscientist and watch the journey that I went on.
But the number of stories I have, many of which are in the book, it's too much for me to explain away by coincidence.
And there's a lot of stuff that we don't know.
You know again, the ancient civilizations believed in souls or the afterlife, or reincarnation, and ancestor worship and communication from their ancestors and things.
So i think i i was just like, why not try this and see what happens and see if it makes sense for you?
Um, and at first it brought me comfort, you know, in the early days.
Later it it brought me guidance, but you could say that was me accessing my own intuition and that's okay too.
And now it actually like, brings me happiness.
So and you know it's not harming me or anyone else and in fact I've been overwhelmed by how much it's helped so many people.
That, yeah, of course, there'll be skeptics.
And that's fine.
You know it was a huge risk for me to write this book and go out on podcasts and say that I received signs from my dead husband.
But, you know, I am a risk taker.
That's one of the things he said he liked about me.
But I was so not worried about putting this book out there.
Because I'm so connected to myself and I trust myself and my instincts and my intuition so much that I just did it.
And I thought, you know it could have had a really bad response, but it's been more than I could have dreamed in a good way.
There's a key point there for me, which even goes beyond the message in this book which You said, that because you're so connected to yourself and your desires and who you are and how you want to live, the response to the book actually doesn't matter.
I get that more than you could possibly believe, right?
It's a realization I've come to over the last few years.
It's okay if people think differently to me.
Yeah.
There's 8 billion people on the planet.
How arrogant would it be of me to believe that everyone else on the planet is going to see the world in the same way as me.
Okay, cool.
You see it differently.
No problem.
Totally.
I mean, I actually got a message, an open comment on my Instagram the other day from someone saying I used to really respect her because she's a doctor, but I think this road that she's gone down is.
I think they used the word quack or something like that and said I'm now nervously watching her career.
And I mean, I literally laughed out loud.
I'm like, I'm not nervous about my career at all.
Yeah, and it's quite interesting to demonstrate that going forward.
If I think about the message in this book and then I try and compare it or draw parallels with The Message in the Source which came out pre-COVID, what 2018?
2019.
I guess one of the key messages you've been talking about for years, which you also write about in the science, is this idea that the brain, that there's so many inputs around us all the time right, so our brain has to filter out, like we couldn't possibly be aware of everything that's going on around us or we'd just be overwhelmed, right?
So if we practice what we want our brain to focus on, we're going to start seeing that more.
You've come on the show many times before and spoken about why you're a big fan of journaling and a practice of gratitude.
You know, focus on the good.
That say you're going to start to see more good.
Focus on the negatives you're going to see negatives everywhere, right?
But that of course, as you've also acknowledged when you say confirmation bias, could be what people are also not skeptically saying, but saying yeah okay, Tara.
But if you now are putting your attention on looking for robins, just as when you, you know, you know, just as when you look for the red car in the garage and you pump quite a ball you suddenly seeing red cars everywhere, because you've primed that part of the brain to start looking for that.
If, of course, your husband's called robin um, and robins are the symbol that many people say are you know, when someone's not here that they come and see you as robins um, i guess some people will think that, won't they?
They will think that Yeah, but if now you're putting your attention and looking for Robins, you weren't doing that before Robin died.
So perhaps now you're naturally going to see more Robins, because that's where you're putting your attention.
Yeah, someone did make a comment like that.
And it's actually not true because I was always fond of Robins because of his name.
So it's...
If they're there, you'll see them.
But I've literally got my friend Massimiliano said to me the other day.
I distinctly remember that last time we were together sitting outdoors at a restaurant and a robin flew right under our table whilst we were speaking.
I mean...
That robin's not meant to be there.
But I'm not saying well for a while.
At the time that he died I did see a lot of robins both in London and the countryside.
But I've noticed them before.
And now I think I see them a normal amount.
But I think probably an important point to make here is that this journey took me to a point where I had a choice at one point to really go down a rabbit hole and become kind of obsessed with this.
But I made the decision to think this is enough.
I've had the comfort and the guidance and the joy that I needed to get through these few years.
The real gift that my husband has given me is to re-engage with life, to start working again, to write this book, to spend time with the people that I love, to start traveling again.
Because, you know, for a while I was like well, I'm on my own, so I can't travel.
You know, getting over things like that.
So that's where I'm really at, which is that it's given me, in a similar way to how near-death experiences often do.
It's given me such an appreciation for life.
I'm so grateful that I'm alive, that I'm healthy.
That's not to be taken for granted.
And that you know, whether it's as a scientist or an author or whatever it is, that I have something to offer and I want to try and help people.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
You mentioned near-death experiences there and you reference I think is it Bruce Grayson in the book.
The doctor who's spent years actually researching them and documenting them.
Yeah, it's incredible.
And I think you shared some of his research in the book where he basically was saying that and this is where whether you believe in near-death experiences or not it doesn't really matter, because he's saying that people who've had near-death experiences they live their life with a sense of freedom and calm and they're happy to take risks
They're not as scared to fail anymore because they see the world differently.
Their perception has changed.
And would you say that that's what these signs have done for you?
It's changed the way you relate to life.
It absolutely has.
And I think what's really interesting about near-death experiences is that simply by learning about them, you can get some of the same benefits that people get from having had that experience themselves.
And that's a big part of the reason I wanted to write the book that if it's just the stories of other people that I've shared in the book or my own story that people read or listen to and that helps them to see the world differently, maybe from a slightly different perspective, maybe notice and appreciate beauty and nature more, connect more with people, then absolutely yeah, that's how I feel and how I would love people to feel.
I really like the chapter on community and tribes towards the end of the book.
And I'd love to talk a little bit about that.
There's so many elements you cover in that.
One thing you write about is the collective unconscious.
Mm-hmm.
What is the collective unconscious and how does it relate to what we're talking about?
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So this is Carl Jung, the psychologist's sort of theory about the fact that since the beginning of humanity, there are some shared constructs that we will all experience, namely birth, life and death.
And because of that, that there are inherited brain structures and genes, that we all have the same type of
And that that potentially means that there's a sort of cosmological things that we're all aware of exist and that you know we all have.
We're all tapped into that in a way.
And he created archetypes to try to explain that.
So, I mean, I think he was completely visionary.
You know, he talked about synchronicities as meaningful coincidences.
And these are just some of the conversations that I'm sort of trying to start up again and revisit, and maybe Now that science has progressed so much, there might be other ways of looking at that.
And at the moment, the research on near-death experiences, terminal lucidity and dark retreats are the closest that we can get to that.
So I think as a doctor, terminal lucidity is super interesting.
That's basically when somebody whose brain is irreversibly damaged as far as we understand it in modern science so like dementia is a classic example suddenly becomes completely lucid towards the end of their life.
So it goes from not recognizing their own children to having a completely like they used to before conversation with their children.
It usually means the person's about to pass away.
There are theories that say, you know, is this a surge of neurotransmitters?
But the circuitry in the brain isn't supposed to be working at that time.
So we don't know.
Um, But things like that and near-death experiences show that when the brain is under duress, like at the border of life and death, that the mind or psyche, or soul potentially can operate independently of physical matter.
And that's also connected to the collective unconscious.
I mean, it's amazing when you hear about something like terminal lucidity and we know those cases and and we put it through the lens of many things we've been talking about today this idea that the brain's not working anymore.
We can give you all these mechanisms.
There's a beta amyloid is accumulating.
There's tau protein there.
We can tell you why someone's brain or we can give a version of why we think someone's brain is not working and suddenly it seems to spark on.
I would hope that that's, engenders a feeling of awe in most people.
For me, I hear that go, wow, what's actually going on there?
Yeah.
And you know, if it's not provoking your curiosity, then I guess the alternative is that all that you see materially is what life is, and you just go through that life.
I don't want to live like that.
No, and I think that's one of the reasons why people struggle with death so much.
I think at least is if your life is just what you think, it is right.
And you're here, you're this body.
All you're concerned about is how do you get ahead in life?
How do you make enough money?
And then you suddenly die.
It is hard to make sense of.
Do you know what I mean?
It's kind of interesting.
I'm drawn back to... And it's sad.
And it's sad.
Yeah.
I'm drawn back to a conversation I had with Bronnie Ware a few years ago, the palliative care nurse who wrote the book Five Regrets of the Dying.
And in that conversation I asked her because she goes through the five regrets and we go through what they can all signify and how we can use those regrets to help us change the way that we live today.
I said, hey, Bronnie, does everyone on their deathbed have those regrets?
And she said, no, no, not at all.
I said oh, did you see any similarities in the people who you cared for who did not have those regrets on their deathbed?
She said, yeah, I did.
One of the things.
There were three things that she noted, but one of the things was a belief in something greater than themselves.
Oh.
Isn't that interesting?
Yeah, yeah.
Because what is it we want out of life, right?
Whether we can explain it or not, I think most of us want a sort of happy, meaningful life where, at the end,
We're not sitting there like wishing things were different, wishing we'd done something different.
So tying that back to what you're talking about, if someone has a near-death experience and whether you believe it or not and they use that to live, feeling that they're connected to something greater, why does it matter?
If you believe, and just to be clear, I'm not at all being sceptical here, right?
I'm just saying for the listener, if you believe that actually...
You're able to get signs from your husband and it's helping you believe in something greater and helps you make sense of his death and your existence.
Why does it matter?
That and also, as you said, that I was thinking for a lot of people that belief in something greater is God right.
Yeah.
85% of people in the world have a religious belief.
As you were speaking, I was thinking...
What's the thing that I believe in that's greater?
It's not actually signs, is it?
It's love.
And it's made me quite upset.
But You know if that means that I believe that the love that my husband had for me never dies, and I love the people who are in my life and I've always said that I want to live a life that's guided by love.
But you've really just made it land for me that all of this
The thing that I believe in that's greater is love.
And that's beautiful.
Yeah, it is.
This collective unconscious.
I think there's many ways that I think about it.
So I love music.
I've been a musician my entire life.
I'm obsessed with music and songwriting and lyrics and all kinds of things.
And some of the best songwriters of all time will tell you that these are not my songs.
The songs came through me.
The songs were out of there.
I was just playing and it came through me.
Even I'm pretty sure I mean.
You know, we just had the summer of Oasis in the UK and around the world right,
So Noel Gallagher... is regarded by many people as one of Britain's greatest songwriters.
Back in the late 90s, when Noel was writing hit after hit for Oasis, so much so that they would just shove out these amazing hits like Acquiesce and The Masked Man on B-sides because well, we've released the album.
They just, you know, he said in interviews that they were just falling out of the sky.
I wasn't doing anything.
The songs were just falling out of the sky.
And look, I don't know Noel Gallagher.
I don't know if he's spiritual or not.
I guess a lot of people would perceive that perhaps he's not, but perhaps he is.
Perhaps he never talks about it in those terms.
But if you believe that actually these are not my songs, I'm just here playing my guitar.
I'm showing up every day and there's stuff out there that's coming through me.
It's pretty interesting, isn't it?
Yeah, very, very.
And I mean this is really going out there now.
But I have had some times I'll give you a concrete example of watching myself on a podcast that I was on, where I wasn't thinking about what I was saying.
It was just.
You know, I'm even cautious about using the word channeling, but that's what it felt like.
So Yeah, and I just think that's because I've got an expanded openness to how the mind can work.
So I'm more able to use that word or think about it in that way.
But I can tell you for sure there have been times on podcasts when what I was saying was happening without me thinking about it.
Yeah.
This idea that there are ideas out there in the ether which suddenly I'll start talking about.
A podcaster in Canada will start talking about a podcaster in.
It's like we don't all read the same books.
We don't all consume the same material.
There's something going on.
I don't know.
This podcast, literally, you've come in today talking about this stuff.
Four days ago, Mo Gowdat was here.
Mo, I didn't plan to talk to Mo about this.
No.
Mo ends up saying that you can prove with physics and maths that death is not the end.
I know.
I mean, I was like well, I actually don't believe death is the end, but I don't know how to prove it with maths and physics.
And then literally a few weeks before that, I spoke to the Zen master, Henry Shukman.
Mm-hmm. about non duality for the very first time on the show.
So literally in the last few weeks I'm not saying this is the Collective Unconscious, but something's happening when people are rocking up in the studio and we're talking about similar themes.
So I think there is a zeitgeist around this topic at the moment.
And my publishers actually said that there are a few other books on similar themes that are coming out this autumn as well.
And Laura Lynn Jackson, the medium who wrote the book Signs.
I love her work and that book and have always felt it should have got much greater recognition than it did.
Well, finally, after years, this summer, it reached a New York Times bestseller list.
Wow.
Yeah.
I started off this conversation by asking you, or by stating that the modern world seems to have disconnected us in many ways from so many things that are truly important.
One of those things, of course, being intuition.
What is it do you think about the modern world in particular that has started to disconnect us from ourselves?
Let me start by saying what I think some of those forms of connection are.
I think of them as connection to yourself, which is your intuition, connection to others, which is community, and connection to the planet or the universe, which is, you know, something to do with understanding that the environment is very important and that we are, you know, contributors to that, both positively and negatively.
And then probably, you know, a sort of newer thing for me to say is connection to something greater, and that could be God, it could be the universe source, whatever you know lost loved ones, whatever you know people believe in, and so one of the things I believe is that nature is a really important way to connect back to all of those things, because humans have existed in the palette of nature for all time.
And we see in some marginalised communities, like in the first Americans, that when they were displaced from their land and their food sources, like the kinds of plants and animals that roamed there, that broke them as people.
And in the modern world, I think we've massively broken our own connection to nature.
So, like you said, the modern Western world, urbanised rise of technology obviously, but you know that's really second only to the rise of the importance of logic and rationality over everything else.
When you spend a lot of time in nature and you experience wonder and awe.
It gives you a connection to the environment, the planet.
There's something greater.
You know, when you spend time with people and you actually put your phone away and you actually look them in the eye and they care about you and you care about them.
That connects you to something you know and And then I think this loss of sense of purpose to me is connected to trusting yourself and your intuition.
So having a purpose, feeling like you've got some kind of direction that you're aware of, and for that purpose to be something that transcends just yourself as well.
They're all ways of reconnecting.
Yeah.
Reading that chapter on nature in your latest book, you were describing how, after Robin had died, you would go and walk in nature.
And I think from recollection, you would build up the time that you spent.
Initially you didn't want to do anything, you didn't want to do much, but you started and then you built up.
And just to be clear, I'm absolutely not comparing a spouse dying to a parent dying.
I think two completely different things.
But just as you were talking there and relating it to purpose, I was drawn back to my own experience after my father died back in 2013.
Because until then, I'd never really turned inwards.
Everything was outwards in my life.
And I remember in the months after dad had died, I would go walking.
Really?
A lot in nature.
I probably wasn't thinking about intuition or anything.
I was just trying to deal with something I was finding incredibly difficult at the time.
And what's really interesting is Dad dying.
For me was the very first time I asked myself the question whose life are you actually living?
And I could give you a two hour sort of explanation, or the simplistic explanation which is, I'm pretty sure, that what I do today in terms of this podcast, my books, what I try and advocate for in terms of health and happiness is, I think you can directly relate, certainly with hindsight, back to those walks in nature I took after dad died, which gave me the clarity for me to start following my heart.
Yeah.
Yeah, I got goosebumps whilst you were saying that.
And isn't it so?
It's interesting.
Obviously our instincts were working, because they drew us both to nature.
Yeah.
What did it do for you, those walks in nature?
Well, like you said at first, I would do a 30 minute walk because I thought that's like good enough for your physical health.
And then, because I sort of thought well, I don't really have that much else to do, I could walk for longer, I very quickly noticed that it made an impact on my mental health.
And interestingly, for me, because I was then living somewhere very remote.
So generally I would stick to paths that I knew, because I've got a really, really bad sense of direction.
And in that place I could walk for an hour or more and not pass anyone that could help me, point me in the right direction.
But I started going down paths that I'd never been down before.
And that felt like some kind of analogy for me in my brain of the neuroplasticity of navigating grief.
And I remember thinking I hope I don't get lost, but then just having this deep sense of knowing that either someone was guiding me or I had been in this place before, like in a spiritual sense, and that I would find my way.
So I think, but I think that that was really about me finding my way in life, not getting lost in the woods, kind of thing.
And just on that point I wanted to say that I started just looking at trees and leaves and fields and views and just being just gobsmacked by how stunning they were.
So I think I started noticing more than sometimes you just go for a walk and you don't really.
You know, you're a bit head down.
So that would have been stimulating my senses in many ways.
Yeah.
So there's a section in the book where you talk about the fact that humans have more than five senses.
So obviously, because you and I have been to medical school, we knew that there were more than five senses, but I didn't know there were 34.
When I started doing the research for the book, I first found a journal paper that said humans have 22 to 33 senses.
And then I did a full literature review.
And, you know, there's a table in the book of the 34.
So for example, taste is actually subdivided into five.
So sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami.
But umami was only discovered in the 1980s.
So it's It's our knowledge of them that's growing and evolving.
And the latest one that's actually been classified physiologically as a sense is the immune system.
So, you know, and there's appetite and waste senses, there's balance, all sorts of others.
I'm sure absolutely makes sense when people read them, but they're not things that we consciously go around, you know, thinking about and therefore probably not tapping into.
They decided that we have 34 senses.
I guess when I hear that and I'm sure you would agree with this it's like What we're saying is that so far we have words to describe 34.
It may be that in 100 years, we've got words to describe 100 senses.
So it's fascinating, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
And the way that you put that made me think.
Taking umami, for example, in the 1980s, before that was discovered, does that mean it didn't exist?
Yeah.
I mean, there's so much stuff like that.
You were saying about being in LA with our mutual friend, Drew.
Well, I went in a driverless car with him.
I mean, that was science fiction when we were growing up.
So there's all sorts of things that we didn't know before that we know now.
So why can't we accept that things that we don't know yet might be true?
Yeah, why do you think that is?
Why do humans struggle to accept that?
I've sort of started saying to a few people have you ever thought about a day in the life of Homo erectus or what he thought or cared about or believed about how the world worked?
I feel like we're so arrogant to think that we are the most evolved and the last type of human that's ever going to exist.
We too are just going to be a blip in history at some point.
I don't know if it's a survival mechanism.
I'd love to hear your theory on it.
I just think there's a level of just thinking that we're the latest and greatest and we know more than all other humans that have existed before.
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this too, right?
I'm currently just writing a new section for my not my last, but the book before Happy Mind, Happy Life, which is coming out in a new format in January.
So I'm just writing a new section for updating my views on it.
And one thing I've been writing about is In that book there are these three ingredients to happiness alignment, contentment and control.
And I think what you're talking about and what we're talking about at the moment is to do with our need for a sense of control.
So I think fundamentally the world is uncontrollable.
So the world is going to do what the world is going to do despite what you might want it to do.
But I think humans tend to feel better when they have a sense of control.
And it's interesting talking to a fellow doctor about this stuff, right?
I know you don't practice anymore and you've moved to neurosciences and coaching and writing and all that kind of stuff, but you practiced for many years, right?
And I feel within our profession and frankly, within the public you could say, there's open-minded people and closed-minded people.
I would say much, not all, but much of our profession can come across as being closed-minded.
Yeah, I agree.
Which is why so many patients get frustrated that they know something, that they're feeling a certain way.
They come in and the doctor will often try and put them into a box that they learn to medicate.
Which pigeonhole does this patient's symptoms fall into?
And if they don't...
If you can't quite put that collection of senses into this diagnosis or that diagnosis, I think a lot of doctors particularly if people are junior they don't know what to do with that.
So they try and force it in.
And the patient's thinking, no, that doesn't make sense to me.
I don't have depression.
So I think some of it comes down to a human's need for certainty and a sense of control.
I agree.
And I think there's sort of an additional danger, particularly in the medical profession, of having to be right all the time.
Again, when I was doing research for the book, I was reading a little bit about the biopsychosocial model for healthcare.
And interestingly, in the last 10 years or so there has been some research talking about the biopsychosocial spiritual model, particularly for care of the elderly and end of life.
And that obviously shows a more holistic view of someone's beliefs and, you know, life.
So I'm glad to see that's theoretically happening, but I don't feel like it's actually happening in the healthcare system.
That spiritual element.
Yeah, it's...
Like I said, I think it's quite dangerous when you feel like you have to be right all the time and that's actually what's driving your decisions.
Well, that need to be right.
Whether it's in your profession or in your relationships, it doesn't do you any good.
It's a very fragile place to be in.
You have written about near-death experiences quite a lot in The Signs, which is super fascinating.
I'm really interested, what has the feedback been?
Yes, from the public, but also from healthcare professionals.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
So I really, I had no idea of how much this would help people.
And interestingly, I have received DMs from doctors and clinical psychologists and psychotherapists as well, saying that they have similar beliefs to me but they don't talk about it because it's not accepted, you know, in those sorts of communities.
Yeah, let's just give us intuition a minute, right?
Because we've sort of, we started there, we've gone down a few different paths, which is great.
How much do you think intuition plays a role in a doctor's ability to help their patients heal?
Oh, I think it's massive.
And like I said, I've been intuitive for a long time.
But quite early on in my career I would have gut feelings that something wasn't what it looked like.
I'll give you one example.
I was in my second job.
So I'd done my surgery six months.
I was in medicine in London.
And a guy came in overnight.
And the A&E registrar said that he was having a heart attack.
And he should get treated for that.
I had struggled so much to read ECGs that show that some someone's having a pulmonary embolism.
But I looked at this ECG and I was like, I don't think he's having a heart attack.
I think he's having a PE.
And so we should send him for a scan.
And they said, if you ask for a scan at this time of night, you can wake up the consultant.
So I thought, I think I have to.
So I called my consultant and said, I want to send this guy for a chest CT.
But the AE registrar was saying that unless you know you give permission, they're not going to wake up the radiologist.
So he said, yeah, go and send him for the scan.
So I then went to bed.
And when I woke up for Wardrand in the morning I was like what happened about that guy that you know I had to call you up about for the scan?
And my consultant went.
Let me tell you the story of the junior doctor who correctly diagnosed a man that the AE registrar had misdiagnosed.
Yeah, well done.
Yeah.
And actually after that, I knew I wanted to do psychiatry.
But my registrar sort of said please please, consider staying in medicine, because I you know well.
He said something like because you know you're so good at it, or something like that.
And I was like Look, I want to go and do psychiatry, but I also want to know why you're saying this to me.
And he said, your judgment is really, really good.
And for me, that's intuition.
Of course, it's everything that we learned and it's experience.
But I feel like I've always had that radar for something that might not make sense on paper.
Yeah.
When you were relaying that story, you said...
I think you said something like, I'm really intuitive.
Which got me thinking.
Are we not all really intuitive if we don't allow other things to get in the way?
Yes.
So I think the correct way to have said what I meant was I rely on my intuition very strongly and I trust it.
And so I've had that comment from my registrar.
But also my first husband said My first husband really trusted my intuition too.
We were the same age, both doctors.
So, you know, I don't know why particularly if I said that's our destiny, he was fine with it.
But that obviously gave me confidence as well.
You know, a lot of my friends will say things like, follow your heart, follow your gut, you know.
So I think I've had a good experience of trusting that.
And taking the chance when logic and intuition didn't match up and saying I'm going to go with my intuition and see what happens.
And, But for me also.
You know, another part of that is saying whatever happens, I will roll my sleeves up and I will make it work.
So that also helps you to trust your intuition, because the what if it goes wrong?
Question is the reason that will hold a lot of people back from that.
Yeah.
It's kind of interesting hearing that.
We're talking about intuition, but there's also a inner confidence.
That's there.
You had the inner confidence to back yourself right.
When things around you were telling you not to.
So we've covered a lot of areas so far.
What intuition is why we're disconnected from it, how it can be so helpful for us?
But it's all under this wider umbrella of the hidden wisdom that exists that we're not accessing.
Yes.
So if someone was to phone you or come to see you as a coach Tara, and say, Dr Swart listen, I'm really struggling to trust myself.
I don't know how to.
I don't know how to act as my intuition.
Will you teach me how I can start?
What do you say to them?
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Well, what I do say to people because they do ask me this is to start keeping a journal, and particularly where you have a decision or a dilemma where your logic says one thing but your intuition says another.
And, you know, let's keep it safe and low risk at first.
But let's say actually you ignore your gut and you go with your logic.
We'll journal about how that panned out and try to demonstrate to yourself that you could have trusted your gut.
And then in the next low risk sort of situation, Go with your intuition, even if your logic tells you not to, and see what happens and journal about that and let that pan out.
Keep doing that for at least six months, I would say probably a year ideally.
And read over your entries to see where your repeating patterns aren't serving you.
And to show yourself that sometimes when you take a risk, it really works out for you.
There's also an exercise in the book that I really love to help people try to align that sort of head, heart and gut.
It's called the unfurling exercise.
And it's basically you sort of you know you have a question in your mind or a decision to make and you take five deep breaths, put your hands on your head and ask your logic to give you the answer.
Then you take five deep breaths, put your hands on your heart and ask your emotions to give you your answer.
And then you take five deep breaths, put your hands on your belly and ask your gut or your intuition to give you the answer.
Now, if they're all aligned, that's great, isn't it?
But if they're not, again, you know, journaling and learning from that.
And then I think one of the reasons that people struggle with this is because when you're in your own situation emotionally, it's very hard to get perspective.
So sometimes I say, you know, what would you say to your brother or your best friend?
Because we're all great at giving advice to our friends, but, you know, I can't give it to myself.
But one exercise I do that can, you know, feel very emotional.
I've often cried when I've done it and I've shared it with a few friends who've said they cried as well.
It's myself in seven years time.
So you know, I'd be sitting here and I'd say I'm Tara, this is how old I am, this is what I'm wearing, this is the thing I'm struggling with.
Give me some advice.
And then I would stand up, walk seven steps forward and turn around and say I'm now Tara, seven years older than I am, describe what I'm wearing and then ask that Tara the question and then, just like, go with the first thing that comes to your mind.
And the reason that that's quite an emotional thing is because that's actually come from you.
But if you didn't step outside of yourself in that way, you wouldn't trust that you actually know the answer.
Yeah, just a simple way of getting out of your head or putting you in a different well, quite literally a different physical space.
You're actually moving away from where you are.
That's quite powerful, isn't it?
Yeah.
There's another exercise that's similar, that also works, which is I think it's in the source and I called it creative mentoring, which is that you think of three people that you admire and trust.
They could be people that you know, they could be historical characters or people that you have passed on.
And you ask them each to answer your dilemma.
And you know, you go into a great deal of depth and say, like you know, you describe the person and their name and their age and what they're like, and then you say Okay, I'm asking you, like Winston Churchill or whatever?
And then then you, you know, you go through that process of describing the other person so that you're kind of, you're more like in there.
Yeah yeah, so you've been a fan of journaling for years um, and it's quite interesting when you're describing.
One of the ways in which we can start to figure out how to trust ourselves more is to basically, I guess, build up that evidence for ourselves, right?
Just write down what you're doing in life, write down how it pans out, and then you know, look back and go oh, when I did it that way, this is what happened when I did it that way.
And over time, build up some sort of evidence that, oh, wow, when I trust my gut, things go well.
Or it might be the other way.
When I trust my guts, maybe they don't go well, right?
At least you're starting to tune into that and take it out of your mind and getting it out onto paper.
Yeah.
At the same time, you did touch on this in the book actually which was the potential limitations of journaling, in the sense that journaling is from the mind.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's quite interesting.
This is what I've realized in my own practice over the last year.
Is that currently what I do is?
I will meditate first.
Mm-hmm.
And then I'll journal because I sort of feel the meditation and sometimes some movement first brings things up that I can, And those insights I can then crystallize in the journal.
But just trying to help people start to tap into this inner wisdom.
If, for example, they've been traumatized, right?
Or they've had, I guess you know lots of adversity in their life that they haven't done anything with, and their fascia is loaded with all these emotions and trauma and their posture might have changed or they're stuck a certain way.
Do you think doing it with the mind at that point can help?
Or do you think this is where somatic practices yoga, hands-on therapy from osteopaths or whatever it might be?
Speak to that a little bit as well, if you will.
Thanks.
I wanted to go there because people are also so disembodied in the modern world, in the Western world.
And what does that mean?
Because a lot of people, we hear that term.
I don't think everyone understands that term.
What does disembodied mean?
Like not connected to your body, not receiving messages from your body, not listening to your body.
Because what we're on screens?
We're sat down, we're sedentary, we sit on the sofa, we're not, I don't know, moving our bodies.
And you mentioned dancing rituals before from our ancestors.
You know different ways in which they would move.
Yeah.
And so well, because I mean they were, obviously they lived in a very physicality was a big part of the way that they lived, because they were like hunting and gathering.
So they had to be in tune with their bodies.
Yes, they were very in tune with their bodies.
And but creative things like art and dance, you know, and drumming and you know, sort of creating that vibration in the body was part of that.
So what I say to people in the modern day when they kind of say I don't know what you mean by listening to my body, I don't know how to listen to my body, is I say have you ever had a visceral reaction to something?
So have you heard a piece of news, good or bad, and had a chill go down your spine or your hair stand up on end?
And so that's the kind, most people will have had that.
So that makes it, I think, understandable for people.
And then you want to just notice that more.
Like it's very common phrase in my friendship group to say that gave me goosebumps or that gave me chills.
And it's, I think that's us affirming each other that we trust each other's intuition or we had a strong emotional agreement with whatever they've said.
But that kind of, sorry, on the goosebumps thing, right?
Like all of us can really tune into that.
We've all been in situations before where someone has said something or something has happened and we felt goosebumps, right.
You can't really explain that easily with a rational mind, right?
There's something happened and on a deep level, your body reacted, right?
I mean, I don't know, that's quite awe-inspiring as well to think about that.
Exactly.
And you know why are there even phrases like a chill ran down my spine, or you know, I mean because they're analogies to remind us that actually, everything that we're experiencing is happening to us physically, not just mentally.
I mean, as part of the research, I actually asked the question, is art what makes us human?
And what I found out that I thought was so interesting is that generally we think that cave paintings were made about 40000 years ago and that was the beginning of art for humans.
But actually...
20,000 years before that, in Southern Africa, people were making carvings into ostrich eggshells.
50000 years before that, they were making necklaces out of shells and wearing them and crumbling ochre and rubbing it on their face and their body to adorn themselves.
And 500000 years ago, we were making tools that were more beautiful and symmetrical than they had to be to do the job they were necessary for.
So this or this appreciation of beauty this, like you know, really like inhabiting your body and understanding that it's a two way thing, what you feel and what you think is, as well as the connection with nature, which I talked about much earlier, those are really important things for us to to reconnect, to truly be human, to be connected to ourselves as well, as you know, others and and the whole thing.
Yeah.
It's thought that one of the reasons why exercise is so good for us as humans is because it helps enhance our interoceptive abilities.
It helps us tune into our sensations.
So we know suddenly.
You know if you run regularly, you know what an elevated heart rate feels like.
Because if you don't, sometimes an elevated heart rate can make you feel like you're anxious, right?
But it's the same signal, but you know how to interpret it because you have that physicality.
It's kind of interesting.
I was actually this morning, i was uh, i saw this wonderful osteopath who i've been seeing for years and i told him you were coming in today and we were just talking about this idea of um trauma being stored in the body and what he has found.
You know, he's in his 60s now.
He's been doing this for decades yeah, you know and and what he can actually feel in people's bodies.
And we also talk about this idea that a lot of ancestral cultures, like you say um, have all of these kind of either they're physical anyway in terms of how they live, but they have all these practices like drum beating or dancing in particular ways, but uninhibited dancing.
Do you know what I mean?
So if there was trauma sort of locked in somewhere, it's almost gonna be released through those three-dimensional movements.
And we were just hypothesizing this idea that perhaps one of the costs of civilization is that we have suppressed our emotions and trauma into our fascia.
Because there are certain things that are acceptable to do in the world, aren't there?
We're allowed to do this, we're not allowed to do that.
Oh, I don't like that, I'm not gonna say anything.
That's not the right thing to do to say anything or whatever.
So by not saying anything, you suppress that, you lock it in within you.
So I don't know, it's quite an interesting thought.
Maybe the cost of civilisation is by not doing certain things in public.
It means that we've kind of suppressed those things down into our being.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
And I'm just remembering that in March 2020, when we did the podcast remotely because it was during the pandemic, I said to you I'm really concerned, there's going to be a mental health crisis.
And I also said, but it could be an opportunity for a spiritual revolution.
And the fact that we're having this kind of conversation now is.
It's been a really interesting journey with you doing these podcasts and seeing like, how different the conversations have become.
Yeah.
And actually that theme, because I can see what a risk you have taken in writing this book, or perceived risk at least.
Because what you've written about in this book is not the sort of thing that neuroscientists and psychiatrists write about.
Okay,
But if we just all have a bit more humility and go, we are living in an age that is literally unbelievable to people who were born 100 years ago.
Literally.
I mean yeah, planes existed, but even the fact, you know, I still am in amazement when I get on a plane.
I still don't understand how the hell this works.
I'm like, we've got all these people, the 300 people in here, we've all got bags and suitcases.
How has this thing got off?
And I know you can explain it with physics, but part of me is in awe every time I'm on a plane.
I'm like, this is nuts.
But even if you think about smartphones, I imagine if, when my mum was a kid, if someone said to her look, later on in your life there's going to be these things right.
It's going to be a tiny thing you can have in your pocket.
And you're going to be able to communicate with anyone in the world, not just on text, which you probably wouldn't know what text is back then, but on video.
Or you're going to carry something in your pocket where you can literally stream any film that's ever been made in the last 50 years.
People would think you're mad 80 years ago.
I think.
Do you know what I mean?
What does that teach us?
It teaches us that There are things that we are living through right now that would have been deemed ridiculous for the vast majority of our revolution.
But now we accept them as normal.
It's kind of nuts, isn't it?
It's nuts.
And it makes me feel like you know when you said writing this book was a perceived risk.
It makes me really realise and again thank you, because some things have really landed for me in this conversation that the biggest risk of my life would have been not coming out with this story.
For my life, for my soul, for my, you know, belief in love.
If I thought, oh, I better not do that because, you know, companies might not want to hire me.
That would have been like such a, such a shame.
Yeah.
It's so powerful that you would have been playing it safe rather than you know, rather than being authentic.
Right.
Which is what so many of us do, you know.
I want your take on something which I was getting to before, mind and body, okay?
And I'm really fascinated by your take on this, because you've written about fascia in the book and this idea that our emotions and a lot of our experiences are stored in our fascia, which I also believe.
But I have this thing I always think about, like how is it that we change and evolve?
So if we think about intuition... and this ability to access our inner wisdom, let's say.
But if we're stuck in certain patterns because of trauma, so our fascia is tight, our postures change.
You know, you were a psychiatrist for years.
There's a certain posture sometimes, you will see, in people who are struggling with their mental health right.
It's not open-hearted, open chested, standing up tall, right?
It's a lot more enclosed and sort of maybe bent over, hunched over at the shoulders or whatever it might be right.
So...
Whilst I think a lot of my improvements personally have come from cognitive reframing, I've also worked on my body for 12, 13 years, you know, improving my movement patterns, seeing therapists to regularly sort of work on my body as well.
So I guess I just want your take on that.
You know, can you do it all from the mind?
Can you do it all from the body?
Or do you need a bit of both?
I think the both takes it to the next level.
I'm just trying to think of the two options.
Can you do it just with your body?
No, I think it's got to be cognitively placed as well.
And we know from all of Bessel van der Kolk's research that just talking therapy is no way as effective as yoga or art therapy for PTSD.
Because actually the part of the brain that's to do with speaking, the Broca's area, actually gets shut down by PTSD.
And that's why people say things like I'm dumbfounded or I don't have words for this.
And that's where the body work comes in.
But the combination is that's where the magic is.
Yeah.
I think you referenced a trial therapy.
Is it firefighters who use creativity as a way of helping them with trauma?
Yeah, it's actually a charity called Ashes to Art where firefighters that go into a really traumatic scene as soon as they exit it, they immediately have to paint what they saw.
And it shows a massive reduction in a number of people getting PTSD from these things.
Wow.
I'm a parent, Tara, okay?
You've met my children on multiple occasions.
If I would like them to grow up with as much access to this hidden wisdom as possible, what are the kinds of things that you would recommend I do with them?
So I'm going to actually start answering this with a bit of a counter.
So I think often the reason that people are not able to trust their intuition is because they were ridiculed as children.
So, you know, if...
They had like a feeling about something that they wanted, and people like exactly what you're saying, like oh, don't say that.
No, we don't do that.
You know, that kind of thing all gets schooled out of you and parented out of you.
And so I would say, using making sure you're saying like how do you feel about that?
As much as you say what do you think of that?
Yeah, I like that.
Yeah.
Maybe using phrases like, you know, what does your heart say or what does your gut say?
You know, just to introduce that language, but also obviously to do like physical stuff, exercise with them.
Yeah, just really...
And demonstrating when you use your gut to do something, but just really getting them to tap into that.
Like, what do you feel is the right thing to do?
What do you feel is the best thing to do?
What does your heart want to do?
And then also teaching them to run that by logic.
I think you can then say, does that make sense to do that sort of thing?
And encouraging them to have those conversations with their friends as well and to see different perspectives.
Yeah.
This idea of hidden wisdom.
You can even look at it really simply where, if you go into a room where there has just been an argument, but you didn't witness the arguments, but there's tension between the two people in there, you can feel it that we all know that.
And that's kind of interesting, is it?
Because sometimes it's easy to go, hidden wisdom, what are you talking about?
You know, there's the way things are and there's the way things aren't, right?
But hold on a minute.
If you really start to ask yourself those questions, you go yeah, we've all been in a situation where something fell off or we could feel that oh, something's just gone down in here.
There's clearly, we do have an ability to pick up on something.
Yeah.
You're a very private person.
Yet over the past few months, you've been doing a lot of interviews talking about Robin.
How has that been for you?
It's actually been such a relief.
You know, I waited till I was ready to speak about it.
And that's been almost four years.
It was a long time.
So I kept things private whilst I needed to grieve.
But, as you mentioned, you know, I really like to be authentic, even like when I present on social media and podcasts.
And so I think I didn't feel inauthentic because I've, you know, chose to protect my privacy.
And that's my right, obviously.
But I just, yeah, I feel relieved that that, you know, that part of my life is now out there.
It probably explains like some of the decisions that I've made professionally in the last few years.
And Yeah, it just like feels like a massive weight off my shoulder.
And also, you know, a big part of grieving, as I'm sure you'll agree, is that you want that person to be remembered.
And so you know, I just I feel like yesterday was his birthday, because that date is written in the book.
People messaged me.
And, you know, it's just so lovely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting how our relationship with grief can change over time.
It's 12, 13 years since my dad died.
And it's kind of really interesting to.
For me on a personal level, it's kind of reflects on how my relationship with dad dying has changed.
Because now when I think back to dads, I just smile.
You know, everyone's experience of grief is individual and they're entitled to it and they're entitled to frame it however they want.
I now frame my dad's death as a gift to me.
Like I really do.
And I ask myself, you know, it's easy to go, yeah, I wish dad was still here.
Of course, on many levels I do, but do I? because it's really interesting.
Again, I'll be thinking about this while screening your book in the lead up to you coming into the studio today.
I was thinking, yeah, but dad's gift to me was his death.
It was the lessons that I learned through his death.
If my dad was still alive, I wouldn't be the person who I am today.
I wouldn't be doing what I am today.
I wouldn't know the things.
I wouldn't have that experience to draw upon.
So how we relate to death changes over time, doesn't it?
Yeah yeah yeah, and i think it's.
It's so beautiful that you could say that and i feel you know i, i understand it and maybe like not there yet, i couldn't.
Four years then um no um, but that's what he would have wanted.
He wouldn't have wanted you to be, you know, bitter and feel like life treated you unfairly and not be the best version of yourself that you could be.
So that's a really beautiful choice.
And I think you're right, it does take quite a lot of time.
But also, I, so I believe that the soul lives on.
Okay.
That's always brought up.
But as I get older, more and more and more, as I tune into me and what I think, I think yeah, it doesn't make sense to me that that's it.
So the funny thing is, So I don't think, or maybe I've not been looking, right?
I can't say honestly, oh, I've had signs from my dads, right?
I can't.
That would not be true because or certainly that's not the language I would have used or would use now.
Like, I don't think I've been looking for them.
I don't think I've been asking for them, but I still feel my dad's around.
Even if it's just simplistically, this idea that well I spent all those years with dads, like his ethos and who he is as a person, is ingrained and infused within me.
You know, people see so many similarities with me and my dad.
You know our manner, how we make jokes, right?
Of course you know I would have learned a lot of that from dad just growing up and being around him, right.
So you absorb that when you're a little kid, right?
So-
Whether I can go round and see my dad now and touch his skin or not, which I can't, the kind of weird thing is.
Over the last few years, I feel more and more that dad is around, that he is a part of me in everything that I do.
Yeah.
So I guess that's.
I haven't looked at my dad's death through the lens of signs yet I still feel my dad is around me.
Yeah.
But you've You are.
Your relationship with Robin has evolved, I guess, in a different way, right?
Yeah.
So what I wanted to ask you, do you have conversations with him in your head?
No, I don't think I do.
Because that's part of my journey as well.
And a lot of other people say they sense a presence.
I have had that, but it's not a big part of my journey.
A lot of people say that their loved ones visit them in their dreams.
I've had a couple, but that's not a major thing for me and Robin although he often goes into a few of my close friends often say that they had a dream about him and tell me what the message was and stuff.
So I think it's a bit of a spectrum or kaleidoscope I don't know how to describe it of various ways in which you can experience that that person hasn't disappeared altogether.
Yeah yeah yeah, i guess we've all got the right to experience grief in the way that we want to, and anything that we can individually do to make sense of that in our own lives has value.
Yeah oh tara, we've covered so many different areas.
Um, we haven't scratched the surface.
I don't think of what's in your book, the signs, which is a riveting read.
Um, Is there something we haven't spoken about yet?
That is a key message that you would love to share with my audience.
Yeah, and it's a bit of a challenge to you, but also to the audience, which is could you just try this little exercise?
So think of a really fond memory of your dad or, like you said, about jokes, a joke that you two had that only you two knew about or would get, and then choose a symbol that represents that memory or that joke and ask for a sign and then tell me what happens.
Okay.
All right.
Challenge accepted.
Okay.
So let's see what happens, if anything.
I mean, I have an open mind.
So yeah, okay.
I like that.
Tara right at the end of this conversation.
I'm sure that at various times throughout this, people may have got light bulb moments in their own life.
I certainly think that many people experience what you have experienced.
And I've seen the comments.
I've spoken to you.
I can see how validating it is for so many people to hear someone like you, with your prominence, talk about this.
So I think you're doing a lot of people a huge service simply by talking about your experience and they can really resonate with you through that.
For someone who's been listening and is kind of leaning in going yeah, I'm totally disconnected from this inner wisdom.
I don't know what I think.
I've had a difficult life.
Fear is what was behind all my decision making.
I don't know if something's coming from my heart or from my trauma.
Yeah.
But I want to move forward in my life.
I want to start trusting myself again.
I want to start tuning in again.
But I don't know where to start.
What would you say to them?
I'm going to go right back to pretty much where we started this conversation and talk about that time in nature that we were both drawn to at difficult times.
You've made me realize even more today how not just crucial, but sort of how much of a boost it gives people, and and i really, you know, want to sort of.
Obviously i love people to listen to podcasts, but not doing anything else when you're you're doing that walking in nature, that's that will give you the key to your inner wisdom.
Spending time with yourself in nature yeah, and you'll start to realize stuff about yourself you didn't know before.
Yeah Tara, thank you for coming back on the show.
Thank you for writing the signs.
I'm delighted to see what a positive reception it's getting.
And I look forward to the next time you come back.
Thank you.
Really hope you enjoyed that conversation.
Do take a moment to think about one thing you can put into practice in your own life.
And one thing you could share or teach to someone else.
Remember, when you teach somebody else, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information.
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As you may recall me chatting about with Tara earlier, My fifth book, Happy Mind, Happy Life, is being re-released on January 1st 2026 in a brand new format.
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