Dr Tara Swart: Losing My Husband and the Science Behind The Signs He Sends Me

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0:43Sierra, let's get moving. I've never shared these things before, but six weeks after my husband died, I actually saw him standing next to my bed. You are a psychiatrist and a neuroscientist. I couldn't just make myself believe you can communicate with someone that's passed away because it would make me feel better. I had to be able to prove it. Tell me about Robin. I remember the doctor said to me, you need to start treatment straight away. He thought he was still going to make it. And then it had kind of hit him that he was definitely going to die. And after Robin passed away, I asked for a sign.

1:15And then I was about two and a half years in and I was in daily communication with Robin. For anybody that has lost somebody, how do we be more open to signs? There were two things that started me on this journey. First of all, you're more likely to see them if you're spending time in nature. But the signs really started... Are you kidding me? Just an absolute knowing that love never dies. Can you tell me your most outrageous sign? This is going to blow your mind.

1:49So today I am interviewing Dr Tara Swart. I am... well, I love you. I mean, we're friends, right? So it's really nice to be sat here in front of you. And Tara is a psychiatrist and a neuroscientist and has worked all over the world with very important people and businesses. But today I want to talk to you about something which I am so pleased you've brought to the fore. Your book, The Signs. I love this book so much because it gives us permission to see and feel what we really need to see and feel to carry on sometimes and that'll become clear I think after we've spoken what I mean by that but thank you.

2:42Obviously you met your soulmate Robin and well let's just talk a little bit about meeting Robin. Can you talk me through where you're at in your life? Because you were a bit like, I'm never going to meet anyone. That's it. I'm done with love. So I'd been married before and got divorced. And then I had dated on and off for a while, but very much protecting my heart, like not anybody that, you know, I thought could break my heart. And then I dated someone for a while and I decided to stay completely single for two years because I just felt like I was wasting my energy that I could be putting into my business so basically I became like a total workaholic flying all over the world and that's that is a danger isn't it for for people who love their their job deciding not to have a relationship is basically quite a dangerous thing in a funny sort of way yeah and I think looking back that I was definitely running away from you know love or potential heartbreak so the second year I put a tiny heart on my action board you know I call vision boards action boards but it was still a lot of business and travel and it didn't make any difference so I thought if you really believe in this manifestation and it works for everything else like really like try it for love so I found this big pink engagement ring and I put it on the top left corner and I don't normally put words on but I found this phrase joy comes out of the blue put that on the top middle and early February I I met Robin on a plane in the sky out of the blue.

4:14Oh, my God. Wait, and I just quickly want to talk to you about your vision boards and manifesting, because obviously you wrote a book before this. And just in a nutshell, can you just tell us about that? Because that will also help people if they want to do what you're just talking about. Yeah. So manifestation is bringing into reality the things that you want. And I do that through what's called vision boards. But I also say you have to do the things that make it come into your life, not just create a fantasy and sit on the sofa waiting for it to come true. So even though I wasn't dating at the time, but I had a very big intention of a relationship that would actually lead to another marriage.

4:52And we actually got engaged that year as well. So, yeah. Absolutely incredible. So you met him on a plane? I think I saw him in the lounge. Oh, I see. Okay. Then we were in seats 1A and 1K, so they're far apart from each other. Yeah. Were you like that? I looked at what he was reading Did you? What was he reading? The Romanovs Oh, okay Were you impressed by that? Were you like, oh, I feel like a reader Okay And if we're going to go into it He just had cheese and red wine For his dinner Is it quite difficult sometimes Being a neuroscientist And looking at people And kind of understanding why they're doing something or the motives behind something or also wondering I wonder what it is that's making them do I mean it must be exhausting no because if something alerts my radar then I'm right in on like why is this person behaving like this what's going on but the rest of the time you can't be like that or like you said you would go and say go mad yeah so um I'd like to just talk to you a little bit and we'll we'll go back to Robin a bit later obviously you lost Robin and when you lose somebody so I've like that's my sister obviously over there in the urn yeah that's my dad on the top shelf and that's my grandpa on the middle shelf um and when you've lost somebody when when I lost my dad he had Alzheimer's and he was in a home and the nurse came in who we knew quite well and after he died she opened the window to let him out oh wow and they do that with everybody that passes in the home and I was so I've never seen that before but what was interesting I'd I'd been with my sister when she died but with my dad it was really apparent that he just left his body he'd gone and you talking about the soul and the body being separate things where where does your belief in that come from because to me it made complete sense yeah so I mean I was brought up Hindu so obviously reincarnation ancestor worship past lives were you know what I was brought up to believe in but Robin getting leukemia and then me knowing that the treatment wasn't going to work shattered everything that I believed in including manifestation um love abundance reincarnation soulmates and it was all like I felt quite angry Yes, I bet But I was with him when he died and I immediately knew that that body lying there wasn't him I didn't know where he was, I didn't know what it meant I was just like this absolute sense of knowing which really helped me during the cremation because I didn't identify with the body in the coffin being him That is quite interesting actually the idea of cremating just a vessel A vessel, that's exactly how it felt like the essence of him the spirit of him even though he was so so poorly in the last few weeks like he couldn't raise a glass of water to his lips he you know still tried to smile at me and so he you know he definitely wasn't his old self in that he was a sort of shadow of his old self but the spirit was very much there and it was just it was so odd I can't really describe it but that that was the first thing that happened then as in you know you said in the book that I've written about dualism and materialism and all of this kind of stuff because I had to know as a scientist you know I couldn't just believe and you know make myself believe something that would make me feel better I had to be able to prove it which you know in some ways there are unprovable things obviously in the book but as much of the stuff like near-death experiences and terminal lucidity and the nature of consciousness that I could try to prove I had to I mean I think this is the power of it is that um these are things that i think as as lay people we experience but we think don't be ridiculous and it's um i got so excited way before i was even thinking that you might even deem to come on my podcast about this coming out because of my experiences of losing people that i love and how much these signs mean to me yeah that i've always slightly poo-pooed them you know like don't be ridiculous there's it's just because you need it or but to have somebody in science look into it and give it meaning which is kind of ironic in a way that it had to be that but obviously I feel super privileged that that's added to the you know the the impact that it's had for people I think where I'm at now you know it'll be four years at the end of this month October we're in um he will actually have been dead for longer than we were married this year so that's quite a how does that feel it feels I mean I feel very relieved that my story's out there and I can live fully authentically now it feels like permission to move forward with my life yeah but it's strange yeah um yeah just I mean it's not longer than we were together but it's longer than we were married and it just seems like so odd because I felt like we were married for a long time but this four years just seems so short.

10:35So, you know, that perception of time passing is something I've written about in the book as well. But where I'm at now is so unscientific. It's just an absolute knowing that love never dies.

10:50I know that like 100%. Sorry, that's so comforting.

11:00and I mean you say it out loud and that makes such absolute sense of course it doesn't it's a feeling um and that person never dies because of that you know and I think sometimes I've enjoyed the pain of grief because it shows me and them wherever they are how much I loved them so I had a moment in the mirror where I realized that staying in a certain part of the grief being unhappy kind of you know feeling like your life is never going to go back to normal or how it was is actually easier than being happy and re-engaging in life and I had a moment where I thought it's okay for me to be happy again it's okay for me to say I'm happy it's okay for me to have career ambition again um how long in was that oh it was quite recent so I'd say like three and a half years yeah it does take time yeah but that realization that that saying I'm happy and being okay was actually harder than staying in the grief for that long.

12:18God, that's interesting too, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, obviously I've learned so much and I always said I was never ever going to share my private story unless I learned something that I thought would help people. So I'm glad I got to that point as well and obviously been just like blown away by the response to it all. What made you start? Because you've really gone into quite a lot of work to find out the ways that we can get ourselves into a position where we are able to receive signs and um at what stage of your grief did you start looking into that or think one day or i'm going to start doing this work now as groundwork and i might publish it was did was it like that or no how did it work um there's about two and a half years in and I was in like daily communication with Robin and then a big beauty brand in China wanted 60 copies of the source in simplified Chinese and couldn't get hold of it for some reason so I texted my publisher and he said you know we'll sort that and how about another book Tara and they hadn't asked me for five years and I think I've been pretty vocal about saying I absolutely hate writing and don't think I'm good at it so because I was in this daily communication with Robin I thought that's the first time I thought I could write a book so I said actually I have an idea so he said let's have a coffee um next thing I know I've got a contract being being waved under my nose and it just it was easier for me to stay at home and write for a year so yeah I started um and it was hard you know people said it'll be cathartic it wasn't cathartic it was I mean last October around the time of the anniversary it was so sad it just made me so sad and you know I even felt sorry for the desk editor knowing that they were reading this with the dates that were coming up and you know kind of understanding how difficult that must be for me um but but now it's cathartic that it's out and you know it's helped so many people so that's interesting that writing it wasn't what what made it hard I had to relive a lot of memory Right.

14:34I couldn't tie apart the emotional stuff when I had to put personal story in for some reason. I had to handwrite it. And then the way I worked with my desk editor was that we would have a Zoom call that would transcribe it so that we had what I'd said was written down already. So I said, oh, the easiest thing will be for me to just read this out to you on Zoom. And I couldn't I couldn't read it without crying. I struggled reading the preface of the audio book, to be honest. I would be exactly the same it's a huge deal and I I think the person that I was probably the most I struggled with losing the most was my sister we lived together up until the day she died we had six years apart when she stupidly went to live in London I was like what are you doing but then she came to live with me again I was like good and I really just missed her we were together all the time a bit like you would a partner like she was really part of the fabric of life yeah if you live together then I think the gaping loss is so much more in your face and then you know about this caring for somebody that's sick when they die that also leaves a big hole of the caring you know they're remembering the medicines the names of the medicines they're going to the pharmacy they're talking to the pharmacist about how your loved one is the taking all the meds back the not having to go over and check on them three times a day it was such an interesting loss that of the medicine and the caring about someone that's left a huge hole and so when I when I lost her that was that was the hardest thing ever but and I I pined for her but then a big pain and real grief came again seven years after she died oh no yeah it was so weird and I don't know if you're having this now sorry I'm talking I don't know if you're having this now but around an anniversary the light at the various times of day and the temperature of the air and the clothes that people wear all bring it back to me because it reminds me it's this time of year do you know what I mean?

17:10I know what you mean but I hadn't thought about it like that because for me it's the autumn leaves isn't it and the robins and now that I practice neuroaesthetics which will also go into which is the art of noticing beauty in nature and I'm just so in love with autumn leaves so it's kind of become a positive yes um and I think because I was so isolated because I was living in the middle of nowhere when Robin passed away that I well I did people came to visit me every day but I don't think I was really noticing what they were wearing or anything Yes. I mean, I feel really strongly like Robin is doing all of this with me.

17:46Yeah. Everything that's in the book. Yeah. You know, every podcast that I speak on. And, you know, when people say his name and talk about him, like, almost as if they know him a little bit. Yeah. To me, that keeps him alive. Isn't that a beautiful thing? Mm. It's a legacy. And I don't know if you've seen Inside the Cover. Mm. have you have you taken the paper cover oh no i haven't let's do a reveal yes okay oh my god how funny is that i didn't

18:20oh i love that

18:27oh so sweet like my publishers they promised me that they would like do put a little gold embossed Robin on. And tell me about the three circles and the triangle. It's not a particular choice. It's to do with sacred geometry, which is like how nature works and the world works. And Robin was obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence. I had a nod to that. That's really lovely. I know. Ah, thanks for telling me about that. That's so nice. So when you were sort of, did you talk to other people had you talked to many other people about signs that they'd received or how did you know that it was a uni I mean universal thing yeah I mean I have a few friends who have lost people but I don't know anyone that had lost their partner so I'd heard it spoken of before and I think I was like desperate to get one right and apart from seeing a lot of robins I didn't but then six weeks after he died I actually saw him standing next to my bed when how did that happen yeah so it was 4 a.m when that happened and it was I was sleeping on my left hand side at the edge of our bed with my right shoulder exposed from the duvet and I just got this massive thump to my shoulder and I had been awake about an hour earlier because I heard a strange sound which it's only just clicked for me now that was probably him starting to come through because there's something else that happened with some electrical glitches and then he came through recently which I can also tell you about so I we'd been burgled when he first got diagnosed um the garages um outside so I got up to go and check if it was that but the noise got quieter as I went away from my bedroom so I came back and I thought maybe it was birds in the distance but actually again thinking about it I've never heard birds in the distance like that there it's a very silent place I went back to sleep I'm a good sleeper so I was fast asleep got this thump to my shoulder as my eyes acclimatized to the darkness I just saw him coming through like becoming more and more solid and I could see life-size the outline of his face and hair and then he just dissolved from the top down and I just like gasped and fell back asleep and when I woke up in the morning I googled is it possible to see a lost loved one and then I think within a few days of that one of my neighbours wanted to drive me to the Christmas market because it was sort of mid-December and I didn't know her that well and I didn't know if she was spiritual or religious but I guess because I you know wasn't really seeing that many people I just blurted it out and she turned to me with this beautiful smile on her face and said you are so lucky and she shared about losing her dad the year before and she's never you know seen him or received anything and again I think he was still in a bit of shell shock I didn't really realize how lucky I was of course now I realize everyone that's lost somebody would love to see them again you know you'd give everything for a second with them again um but the signs really started I think how I it just clicked for me one day that numbers would be the way I think I'd just been seeing a lot of angel numbers a lot of 11 11 and I told him he was my twin flame and that's the number for twin flames and I was going through a really difficult period I had to leave that house where we'd got married and where I'd scattered his ashes and moved back to London um and I kept seeing four four everywhere and I looked up what it means and it means your angels are protecting you and guiding you and you're on the right path and that meant a lot to me at the time and then he always used to say to me about any sort of dilemma you have to rubik's cube it that's the way his brain worked yes um and i was watching just like some psychological thriller and and somebody mentioned the rubik's cube and i just thought it's really odd and then i sort of just had this moment of insight where i thought he would communicate with me through numbers and so once i opened myself up to that i started asking for specific numbers like at anniversaries and stuff and this is something I find fascinating that you can ask and I've never done that this yeah it sounds amazing yeah it is and the number of dms I've heard from people saying I heard you say that on a podcast so I asked and it came almost immediately is astounding but you in your book you say people do come and be present so where I've written about near-death experiences I said that people who who have them and people who sort of induce the closest thing through dark retreats they don't fear death anymore so they live life with like much more gusto like more likely to take healthy risks don't you know don't worry about failing and I think that's what happened to me I think because I lost my husband I remember like even though I then like lost my house and my car and quite a few other things thinking like nothing can be as bad as losing Robin.

23:32Like there's nothing that can scare me now because I've lost like the single most important thing in my life. So if you actually think about it, which I stupidly didn't, I'll say, that book could have been career suicide for me. I could have become so discredited in the scientific community.

23:54And actually at the Penguin sales team conference where I presented the book for the first time, so that was the first time I spoke publicly about losing Robin, someone did say, are you concerned about criticism? And I said less so than with the source for some reason. I think I was just not as evolved in my career and personality like that five years ago. And then I said, well, of course, you know, there will be some criticism, but I'm confident that I can speak to it if that happens. but I mean that was foolish really um and I just like to say that amongst the people that have written to me there are so many psychologists psychiatrists dentists doctors who have written to me as well and I just feel so sad that we're literally like handcuffed and gagged and not allowed to speak about stuff like this and what I really like about what you said about opening the window to let your dad out is that there's lots of research on so we have what's called a biopsychosocial model of healthcare, which is you look after the body, you look after the mind, you look after the, you know, who's around that person that's important.

25:01But we should have a biopsychosocial spiritual model. And there's papers dating back 10 years that say this, but I don't really see it happening in practice. What is that? A biopsycho? So as well as the body, mind and community also taking into account the person's spiritual or religious beliefs right because especially for care of the elderly and at end of life that's that could make a very big difference to you know like for example robin didn't practice as a catholic but he wanted last rites um and so of course i made sure that happened um do you think it is a natural thing like robin did to go back to a religion that you have practiced maybe as a child or your family practiced when you're near death I think so because I think the risk of not doing the thing that you've you know that you've believed in or been brought up around it would be quite hard he didn't want a religious um memorial or anything like that um but he did yeah it was interesting that he wanted last rites um yeah I mean it the other thing I think talking to you and for anybody else that's been going through something similar is that there are so many awkward moments and how to talk to somebody about the fact that they're going to die and how hard that is sometimes and how funny it is when somebody from the outside comes in with all their weird living energy.

26:42it's like some weird outside energy there's there's something that happens when you're just with somebody in that very enclosed yeah we were in such a bubble we you know we'd really been in a bubble for over one and a half years because I was shielding him during the pandemic of course yeah um and then I've never shared these things before but I I gave him I had to give him his diagnosis. So we'd been seeing the lymphoma doctor and the doctor emailed me and said I need to speak to you this evening after clinic but we need Robin's permission for me to speak to you and not him which Robin obviously immediately gave and the doctor said to me don't come and see me on Monday you need to go to the leukemia ward and he has to start treatment straight away.

27:28so I walked around and told him this and his immediate reaction with no hesitation was well it's been the happiest five and a half years of my life and I said to him I love you so much I wish this was happening to me not to you

27:48and then when so then he started the treatment and you know I had to take his temperature all the time but I kept him like so safe we did not see anyone go anywhere apart from the hospital so at first he was still able to like get up and walk to the ensuite bathroom by himself but then later it was just easier for a while you know there was a sort of in between period where it was just easier to help him like you know in the bed and so the nurse he needed to use you know to use the bathroom the nurse came to help him and he didn't want her to help because because I was there so he said I'd rather my wife does it and which you know it was fine but I did say to him you know I'm not here 24 7 and you've got to let the nurses help you and he's he looked at me and he said why would anyone want to be a nurse and I said darling they they want to give your you know to preserve your dignity like when you're like feeling like this and they're like angels and you've just got to let them help you um yeah and so yeah the kind of conversations you have the things you have to say like the things I had to do no wife should have to do yes um and because I'm I was a doctor I could do a lot more than any loving wife would even be you know capable of doing so um Tara I feel really bad because I really feel like I'm traumatizing you here you know I don't know how we've ended up here but I I'm if you're okay I'm okay yeah yeah I'm okay I you know for me the reason that I've been through everything that I've been through and carried on is because it's not about me.

29:24It's about helping people. And so as long as I feel like this conversation might help people who've been in a similar position, then I can have it. I mean, I think in particular just hearing people talk about their grief or grieving or when somebody's ill. I've talked about my sister. I talked about it to Stephen Bartlett on Diary of a CEO. Talked about her dying. And the number of people that loved hearing that because they'd been through something similar. There is something rather lovely hearing someone else's very difficult moment. Yeah. And, you know, we talked about, you mentioned joy in grief, like after they've died.

30:08But in those last moments, days that we shared together were like the saddest but most precious moments I ever had with her. Like it was magic. And I am so grateful to have had that time. You know, I think of all those people that lose someone in an accident. Yeah. Oh, the shock. Yeah. You know, that I had a chance to properly... Yeah, that's true. How do you take your tea, Davina? Milk, no sugar, and a scoop of A &B tea, please. A &B what? It's Ancient and Brave True Collagen, the sponsors of our show. When you're born, your body stores of collagen are full, but in your 20s, it starts getting less and less each year.

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31:45Cheers to that. Cheers to that.

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32:39They know the rules but behave as if they do not exist. Muteen, the new fragrance by Miu Miu, defined by you. For anybody that has lost somebody and, you know, there's a blueprint in the signs of lots of different ways that we can prepare ourselves to be more open to signs. Could you talk me through some of those? yeah um i think first of all having this conversation and having the psychological safety in your own community to have that conversation is important um because obviously if i started talking about science and everyone just thought i was losing my mind from grief or my friends started to get worried about me because i was talking about science it it would have pushed my you know it would have changed my journey um so i i already in the past few years have been having that conversation a lot with my friends and they get signs from Robin as well which is wonderful um oh that's even want people that didn't know him

33:49um and I don't see him in dreams that much so but I two or three of my friends they get dream messages from him I get so jealous of people that dream of loved ones I know because it's like you're actually seeing them yeah I never get that I've had it a couple of times but and I'm I can partly do lucid dreaming so I managed to extend one of them a little bit but then I think I must have fallen asleep or something and I was like oh I wish I'd stayed in that dream for longer because it was so vivid what is lucid dreaming so lucid dreaming is when you're aware you're dreaming and you can actually control the events and dream okay yeah I think I've had that like once or twice have you do you get that a lot no not a lot I've had it so yeah yeah if I ever became aware that I was in a dream with Robin I would try to keep going.

34:35Of course. And so one of the things obviously is getting your community aware that you're not going that shit crazy. And being able to have mutual conversations about it. And then for me the first two things that started me on this journey that I had no idea how I was going to navigate were nature and community. So I mean people came to visit me every single day. I got so many flowers that I had I ran out of vessels to like put them in and so I one thing I learned is that if someone close to me loses someone I'm going to buy them a vase not flowers yes um oh my god that's good it was a good learning um and and I'm talking about like six months solid of getting flowers like all the time wow um even now and it's been nearly four years I would say borderline overly protective friends but I love them obviously oh that's nice though isn't it um I think they just couldn't bear to see anything else happen you know bad happened to me yes um which I get yes and that's really lovely isn't it it's it's um well you were talking about community yeah yeah and you know I I worry for people that don't have that level of support because I I mean I just had such a like you know fallback amount of people to fall back on that yeah so when people sometimes write to me and say I don't have anyone I just I just can't bear it so I've written about how to try to bring some form of you know support into your life if you don't have a lot of friends by either volunteering or joining like an interest group like a walking one or an art one or something um so I was you know living on a a large property that I would just like walk around for half an hour every day and then because I didn't really have anything else to do or couldn't really do anything else I just started walking for longer and longer and I felt the benefits on my mental health of doing that and I also had a weird analogy which is that I have a terrible sense of direction and where I was living I would have no signal so if I got lost I wouldn't be able to use Google Maps and I could walk for hours without seeing anyone but I started going down paths I'd never been before and I just had this a bit like that you know the weird feeling of him not being him when he died I just had this weird feeling that I would find my way and on some kind of spiritual level that I'd been in that place before which I can't explain but the for me to I mean I can lose my way in London I can be crying on a street corner in London I've lived here my entire life for me to say it's okay to just keep walking because eventually you'll find your way back felt like a analogy for grief yes even having to drive because Robin always drove and even when he was between treatments I would drive to to the country but he would say get into this lane go down to 50 turn off here so suddenly having to drive on my own um at first I was like you know shaking and terrified and didn't even feel like oh my god I got home safely that's great I just looked at the seat next to me and just thought like why aren't you here um but then my driving improved you know like it had to um and so I use that as an analogy I was like I can't see my grief journey but I can see that I've improved in driving this much in six months so it must be the same I like this idea of nature being so healing and um often you know these long walks are like I just need to keep going and how much they help yeah and I think so my neighbor she lost her brother and she said to me just walk your way but you know back to healing wow um she specifically said that yeah so great yeah but I think the thing for me was when you walk and it goes across the seasons as well you see this continuous cycle of of how nature recycles everything yes like yes Yes.

38:51And even in, weirdly, in the bouquets of flowers I would get, the roses always die first. And so I became a bit obsessed at watching the life cycle of a rose. But understanding that the petals and, you know, they go back into the earth and they form some of the soil that helps new ones to grow. But also, when nature is so beautiful, you feel awe and you feel connected to something greater. And I think that really helped me as well. and also a lot of signs come from nature because the classic ones like the white feather the robins you're more likely to see them if you're spending time in nature you talk about regulating your nervous system in the book about that's another way to help yourself yeah tell me a little bit about the other ways that you can kind of regulate your nervous system so I believe in creating what I call a patchwork quilt throughout the day so there are lots of different touch points that that you know do that for me um but also long term you know I've obviously built up a lot of mental resilience and um have learned to stay in a in a regulated state most of the time um but I listen to classical music or chanting in the morning whilst I'm chanting can we can we spotify that yeah like buddhist buddhist chanting um I think find one that you like because there are a few different ones and um so I listen to either Buddhist or um Hindu chanting so chanting is good right for us why is it good um I think it is and humming as well so because I listen to that I hum a lot musical chanting in the morning I'm then humming it for a lot of the day so that kind of continues it I think it's to do with the vibrations in your body um and i you know you know i love going back to evolution and if you think about our ancestors in paleolithic times they had no spare resources for anything that was just like fun or a luxury everything was to do with survival so basically food shelter and reproduction so why did they drum and chant and hum and dance and make cave paintings it must be integral to human survival um so yeah gratitude practice I sort of I start my day with that but if I'm ever feeling stressed then I will do it immediately and it changes my mindset quite quickly a gratitude practice yeah yeah so tell me what does that look like you just would lie there and you'd think of things that you're grateful for um so I start it in bed in the morning but I start it very practically because I think I've got the you know the ideal bed for a neuroscientist it's just like side sleeping pillow, silk pillow case, like really good mattress and wool topper and like lovely sheets and stuff.

41:44So I just give gratitude for those immediately because I can latch on to something before I start thinking, oh my God, I've got Davina's podcast today. What should I wear? You know, because it's easy to go down that road first. Yes. OK, that's quite nice. So regulate your brain before you start worrying about the day. Yeah, definitely. And my phone is like floors down from my bedroom. So I don't even see that. So you never have it in your bedroom? Never. Ever. No. I have an alarm clock. If that's people's excuse, you can just get an alarm clock. So then during the day, if I start to think something's on my mind that I'm worried about, then I've got quicker and quicker at remembering to do a gratitude practice in the moment to kind of like make my mindset more positive.

42:32I'd love to talk to you about neural pathways like how I've been talking quite a lot recently about fear and um the there are certain social media platforms that there feels like a lot of fear-mongering on there because it's more clickable and we are living in a time of great like there's so much kind of strife in the world and extreme political views yeah and just feels quite toxic the world and we don't get to see much beautiful and there's beautiful positivity happening everywhere but we don't see it what happens if we feel like we feel danger everywhere see it everywhere how do you can you unpick that yeah the greatest example i can give view related to that is that um so it's about 9 11 that those that imagery of the twin towers falling people who had no connection to new york didn't lose anyone no personal connection to it whatsoever who repeatedly watched that imagery because it was on the news a lot a lot yeah could get ptsd so i'm also very very careful about what i see on social media or television um so basically that would make you hyper vigilant it would make you anxious it would help your amygdala and hippocampus so that's the emotional centers and the memory centers of the brain to get together and forecast danger um which would you know probably prevent you from doing some things that you actually you know could enjoy um yeah i mean i was just actually talking to my hairdresser about the world is in a really bad state at the moment I mean it was bad enough after COVID it was you know bad enough during bad enough before but now it's really bad messed up yeah so even for someone like me who curates everything that you know gets to my brain really carefully I can't not know these major things that are going on in the world but let's just talk about how you create this because I've started trying to do this and I've deleted a social platform off my phone and I have deleted loads of accounts that I feel serve me anger negativity not things that I need to see things that feel bad for me and this is particularly since my operation okay where my brain felt vulnerable to imagery toxic imagery or messaging and it's made me feel much better yeah um are there any other ways that people can specifically try and change a memory can you talk yourself into changing a neural pathway if you feel that there's a pattern of thinking that's negative for you I mean I think if it's as bad as what you're describing then probably therapy would be you know would just make it easier than trying to do it yourself talking therapy yes but I want to add a couple of things here so you know journaling does help to offload things from our minds as well but um I had two sets of therapy um once Robin was ill um it was offered in the hospital so I took it up straight away it lasted for a year but then by the second anniversary I was in such a bad way that my GP was begging me to take antidepressants and I said but I'm not depressed I'm in grief and she said well I think you're totally burnt out you've got ptsd and you're in grief and this would just help to take the edge off things and she we're very close and she said i just can't watch you suffering like this um but i knew for me and i'm not saying this is for everyone that if i couldn't get through this by relying on myself i would never be able to trust myself again and i'm back at that place now where i trust my instincts so deeply that my friends are actually commenting on it at the moment um how does that feel it feels amazing it's like it's just it just makes life so easy to be able to trust yourself that much yeah um and you know whether sometimes it's good things sometimes it's bad things but i you know i'm okay with what i know to be you know right for me or wrong for me um we've got we've gone on such and i'm really enjoying this tara so yeah like i think for people watching um that have gone on a dark path um and in light of what is happening in the world like we just like we said some people really are frightened of life you know they watch the news too much or they get onto social media and they're following all the news platforms and or they follow something and they're so angry about the way that people are behaving about this.

47:30We don't have enough places where we see lambs and kittens. Exactly. And babies. I found this Bunny Spire account on a social platform and it's just so cute. Yeah. Like, if you looked at my explore page. Me too. It's babies. You like puppies? Bunnies. funny yeah but that's mushrooms that's where i've that's where i've got to now yeah where did you just say oh mushrooms yeah because you work with dirty don't you yeah god love simon yeah so much yeah so like what a guy yeah um but but like it is hilarious i mean beautiful mushrooms yes fungi are amazingly beautiful i mean let's there is science behind um trying to help us get to a place where our brains and I know you've talked before about the gut brain axis but that is really important like our gut microbiome and taking care of that is is phenomenally important for the state of our brain right yeah and I in this in the source I'd written about gut brain axis but here I've written about the gut gut microbiome and brain triangle right and um just gone into like another level of depth in terms of how looking after that helps with us accessing our intuition as well but just to segue back from what we were talking about um I came to learn thankfully I wish I'd come to it a bit earlier but um about trauma release from the body so um most people have heard of the book the body keeps a score by Bessel van der Kolk and that talks about trauma being trapped in the body um to a point where you can't articulate it through speech right so the answer to that is also very much spoken about in the book which is um that I I actually went and had body realignment therapy and craniosacral therapy but people can dance around the living room um you know sort of do some drumming um walk in nature do yoga do art you know all just things that kind of use your body not just your mind and particularly really articulated speech.

49:40I really liked, you just mentioned art, music, dancing, and in the book you talk about creativity and how important that is for de-stressing. But what I loved, because as I told you earlier, I'm a sort of black and white person. There's a right and a wrong answer. Maths, everything makes sense. But when you said it doesn't matter if you can draw, it's the just drawing don't don't get hung up yeah what is the science behind that like so that's my new favorite area of study which also connects back to what you were saying about how people access signs and how you can try to reverse this danger you know alert that we're that we're all on which is the field of study called neuroaesthetics which is about the arts and beauty and culture and the effect of those things on our mental health, our physical health and our longevity.

50:38And that splits the arts into making and beholding. So you can either do a drawing or you can go to an art gallery. So you can either sing in your shower or listen to music and you can dance around your living room or go to the ballet kind of thing. And there are different benefits from making and beholding. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah. So I thought maybe they'd be the same but they're not. No. And, you know, I would admit that I do a lot more beholding than making, although I consider my like chopping food and cooking is like art therapy for me. Oh, yes. Yes, definitely. Because that is creating something beautiful, isn't it?

51:18Yeah. And I kind of occasionally I'll listen to a podcast whilst I'm doing it, but mostly I actually do it as therapy. Like, you know, when I was writing, it was my first break from stopping writing and moving into like evening mode. and like when you know we were in the pandemic it was the signal to my brain that you finished work now and now it's time to be a wife and you know kind of um make it you know make everything homely and stuff like that and so there's a really like I find astounding statistic which is that people who indulge in the arts every two months have a 31 percent lower chance of dying and people who indulge only twice a year have a 14 % lower chance of dying.

52:00Really? I actually, in my research, looked at is art what makes us human? And there's quite a strong argument from archaeologists and anthropologists and stuff that it is. And so some other statistics that I really liked were that we know about cave paintings from 40 ,000 years ago, but 10 and 20 ,000 years before that we were in southern Africa people were making carvings into ostrich eggshells and we were making necklaces out of shells and 50 ,000 years before that we were finding ochre and crumbling it and putting it on our faces and bodies and we think there was a reproductive advantage to that because you would look more attractive and creative but 500 ,000 years ago we were making tools that were more beautiful and symmetrical than they had to be to do the job that was required.

52:49Yes. So art is, you know, like perhaps second only to nature, but nature is also an art form. Art is very integral to the human experience, let's put it that way. It just made me think about something about Michael. So Michael builds things. He makes things. So he builds coffee tables or kitchens or he'll build an outdoor shower the other day or he'll build a sink. He'll make taps. But sometimes he'll do something like he built a bench and he was a bit like, I don't know why I'm building this bench, but I'm building it. And then a month later, we will sit on the bench in the morning with a cup of tea and have a very big, deep and meaningful about something and he'll go, that's why I built a bench.

53:43You know, that there is a thing about sometimes you don't know why you're making something beautiful or creating something or painting something. It makes it suddenly makes sense months later. Yeah. The interesting thing about creating. So the other ways that we can open ourselves. We've talked about creativity. We've talked about nature. nature and then I think it is very directly asking for unmistakable signs and it's not going to happen on the same day for everyone right away and later you can become more specific about it like I asked for a sign of three first American symbols by 7pm the next day and so demanding they're probably going this is classic Tara how are we gonna get this pushing me yeah so funny um but at first i think for people either notice if there's something that keeps coming to you do do robins keep flying close to you do you find white feathers lying around are there numbers that you repeatedly see that's one way of starting the journey a more direct way particularly if you've lost a loved one is to think about that person think of a memory that you know you really cherish with them or an in joke that only you two would get um and then choose a symbol that would represent that to you and ask for them to send it um and then you know wait and see what happens I mean I've got so many now I should have written them all down but you know I haven't um can you tell me your most outrageous sign yeah I think I mean they get more and more outrageous but I'm going to start with one so it was um valentine's day and one of my girlfriends are taking me out for lunch and a walk and then i was actually doing a sort of like workshop with simon and it got to about six and