Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve Indig at Sport Law. Leave me a message, I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Hey Steve, it's Dina. You aren't going to believe what just came across my desk. We need to chat. Give me a call.
Welcome to the latest episode of Sportopia. We're so excited to share our knowledge and have conversations about healthy human sport today. We're so pleased to welcome Megan Sheldon and Elaine Hing and I'll share a little bit more about their background. But we're just so excited to be able to have a important conversation about healthy human sport and the many ways we can bring ritual and ceremony for the benefit of everyone, I'm going to invite Megan to say a little bit more about herself. She is the co founder and CEO of BE Ceremonial, the world's first guided ritual and ceremony app. And I can say firsthand that I use it so much in the work that I do as a grief doula. She's also a cultural mythologist, a humanist celebrant, an end of life doula. Living and working in North Vancouver, bc, She's created hundreds of ceremonies for people around the world, focusing on what she calls the seemingly invisible moments of change such as pregnancy loss, organ transplantation, menopause living, funerals and death anniversaries. She offers online workshops, virtual courses and seasonal retreats in British Columbia, Canada. When she's not crafting ceremonies, you can find her swimming in the sea or meandering in the rainforest with her husband Johan and two daughters. And what's not here is she's also also a teacher. And she was my teacher. I had the privilege of learning from her, being witnessed by her and others as we engaged in deep ritual and ceremony and learning about how to cultivate that in a really beautiful way so that we can be vessels of ceremony for others. So Megan, maybe share a little bit more about what's coming across your desk and then we'll turn it over to Elaine to learn a little bit more about her.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Beautiful. Thank you, Dina. It's so wonderful to be here and I love how organically this conversation between the three of us has been woven together. Elaine and I go way back. We went to university together in Edinburgh in Scotland, where she was studying sports psychology and myself in cultural mythology. And we lived in the same building and became friends. And I think back to that time, I didn't know it yet, but the seeds were being planted for what would become my own kind of deepening into ritual and ceremony.
During that time in Scotland.
We lost a friend that was there and we learned how to mourn and grieve as a community.
I learned how to tap into my ancestral lineage, my Celtic roots, and so spent a lot of time traveling through Scotland and Ireland.
And I think that looking back, that, that really kind of changed something for me in this looking at creating meaning in our lives and not wanting this life to pass us by, but to really slow down and appreciate these little micro moments that can kind of come and go. So, yeah, my, my story continues to unfold and I. It's interesting hearing myself referred to as a teacher. It's not something that I identify with. I'm trained in something called the Circle Way and the art of hosting. And so I come at teaching as we all show up with knowledge to learn and share from each. And so that's been a real, I don't know, a real interesting aspect to kind of step into this role of teacher.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Yeah, well, as one of your students, I think there's, there's deep wisdom. Right when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And I was really taken by just your way of being. And that's probably a beautiful bridge to Elaine, who's another beautiful human who I had the privilege of connecting with several years ago when the Canadian Olympic Committee was hosting these peer to peer gatherings online with different groups. And so there were groups for coaches, groups for athletes, groups for leaders, and group for mental performance consultants. And so joining both Megan and I is Elaine Hing. She's a certified mental performance consultant and for nearly two decades, I can't believe it, looking at you, she's been at the forefront of performance excellence, working with Olympians, Paralympians and professional athletes to help them dominate on the biggest stage in the world when it matters most. A sought after speaker and prominent leader in Canada's high performance sport community, Elaine plays key roles on several national committees shaping a sport culture that's healthier, safer and more inclusive, creating environments for athletes to push their boundaries and achieve greatness. And I would offer, as someone who's listened to Elaine and had the benefit of just watching how she interacts with her peers, you have such a beautiful way of speaking truth and doing so in a really compassionate and skillful way. And that's not always easy. So Elaine, just welcome. And you know, maybe I love the fact that the three of us knew each other and then knew each other through different circles. So bringing the three of us together to have a deliberate conversation around healing and ritual and the power of compassion just, just sparked you Know, and so I'd love to know a little bit more, Elaine, about you and, you know, what's sparking for you in this moment.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: And thanks for having me and for bringing us together. Anytime. I get to see my girl Megan, or Mexi, as we like to call her. It's so fun to be able to connect in a new way. And coming at this from two extremely different angles, but finding the connections and sort of the little ties that maybe. Maybe the constant red string through it all that sort of weaves us together in a way where we can recognize ceremony and maybe maybe pieces of rituals or routines along with that and how we can be more intentional with it. So. So thanks so much for bringing me here today.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. And I thought I would start our conversation by modeling a certain way of being a way in to a deliberate conversation. So, one. In my book, Grief Unleashed, I had the permission by this beautiful poet. Her name is Carolyn Myskinuk, and she published a book of poetry called Shaping Pearls. And what's special about Carolyn? There's many things.
But she ended up publishing this. This book of poetry three days before her husband died.
As he was dying, he said to her, carolyn, I want you to publish this book of poetry. I want to see it before I take my last breath.
And so when I found out about her story and started reading her book of poetry, it really spoke to me. And so I thought I would begin our conversation today by one of my favorite poems of hers. It's called Healing.
So here's what she says about healing.
Healing does not happen with force. Healing is intuitive and deeply wise, as if it follows her own noetic rhythm.
Healing takes the shape of a flower's patient opening and the surrender of leaves to the turn of season.
Healing chose us to trust the process, only to sense when the time is right for her infinite compassion to move through dark places, to turn pain into light.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Thanks for sharing that with us, Dina. Yeah.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: There's something so magical sometimes about the right words in the right way, spoken with the right people. People.
And her last sentence of turning pain into life has been breathing life into my own vocation of supporting people when life goes sideways. And in sport, which is really the ecosystem that we're inviting you into, Megan, because as you've shared with us, you don't do a lot of work in sport, but as a ritualist, you know, you get to. To bring meaning into maybe these traditions that we've inherited.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: So maybe we'll start with you, because I think understanding the context in which we're in. And using the right language to be able to describe any one thing can feel cathartic. So maybe help us, you know, bring us into your world as a ritualist, as someone who, you know, is deeply honoring people during life transitions. Maybe give our listeners a little bit more, you know, knowledge of how you hold ritual and ceremony.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Thank you.
I think the. The place that I always start with people that come to me, whether through the app or through my work as a celebrant and ceremonialist or through my teachings, the workshops and courses that I offer, is almost always. We have to start by unpacking our baggage when it comes to the words ritual and ceremony, because we have. We all come at these words with different experiences, different stereotypes, different understandings.
I know that for many years ago, as I started to seek out ritual and ceremony in my life, I would, you know, google the definition, and the Wikipedia version had words like religious repeated, rigid.
And so for a long time, I felt like I didn't get to have ritual in my life because I am. I'm secular. I'm a humanist. And so for me, you know, I wasn't raised with religion. I wasn't raised with cultural traditions that I knew to be ritual. I now look back, and my childhood was rich with ritual. Sunday morning waffles always involved the same fixings, and it was a chance for our family to come together and have important conversations and spend quality time. So much so that when the pandemic happened, my dad would drop off the waffle mix and the berries and the whipped cream at my brother's and my homes on our doorsteps, and then we would all zoom together on Sunday mornings with our waffles as this connector.
So, for me, a big part of this work is redefining what ritual and ceremony means to you. And I'll offer my definition not as a prescriptive answer for you to follow, but as an invitation to really get clear on what ritual and what ceremony is for you. And a lot of people use them interchangeably.
But you're right, Dina. I think language is so important, and if we use these words inappropriately, there's a lot of cultural appropriation that happens. There's a lot of misunderstandings. There's a lot of kind of witchy woo language in it.
And quite honestly, I think if that's, you know, you get to take it where you want to go.
So my definitions, first, of ritual. A ritual can be a standalone experience. It can involve one person. It can involve 50 people. It can be done virtually.
But the four key ingredients for me, in a ritual are it's intentional. You don't fumble into it. Like you step into ritual with awareness, attention, and intention. You're doing the ritual for a purpose. There's something that you hope to gain from that experience or from this action.
So it is intentional first and foremost. I often try to encourage people to land on one word that really captures that intention so that it doesn't get blurred.
We often try to have our rituals do too many things, and then they end up not doing them any. Any of them very well.
So landing on the intention is where we start. The second part is symbolism. So it's an intentional, symbolic thing that we're doing, where we're drawing on not only symbolism that exists in our culture universally. Symbolism, like water, is a source of healing. Fire is a source of transformation. You know, looking at the elements, looking at our senses, but also bringing out personal symbols.
So today I have these beautiful peonies behind me, and they remind me of my dear old friend Elaine. And so, in thinking about having them here with me, I'm bringing in the symbolism of friendship. I'm also bringing in the symbolism that the shifting seasons is happening. These peonies are on their way out. I can look out to my garden, and I see them starting to droop and drop their petals. So symbolically, I feel like there's a bit of a shift in the season right now, and there's both beautiful gratitude for that and a bit of grief.
So symbolism can show up in a lot of different ways.
And the third part is it's an action, so it's intentional, symbolic action. So we can think about doing a ritual that's all well and good, but until we actually do it is when we activate the emotional capacity, the connection that we're looking for.
An action can be holding a moment of silence. It can be pausing and just feeling the sun on our face. It can be taking a rock and throwing it into the water to release some kind of, you know, weight that you're holding and carrying.
The actions look different depending on the ritual. And then the fourth part, I think, is where we give ourselves grace. I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves for these rituals to transform our lives and to rid ourselves of whatever we're carrying. And rituals are meant to be kind of done over and over in different ways. And the fourth part, for me is the hope of creating meaning. So it's an intentional symbolic action that hopes to create meaning in our lives.
And sometimes you might try a Ritual, and it doesn't really land. It doesn't work. It doesn't give you what you wanted. So you go back to the beginning and you get clear on the intention and the symbols that you chose and the action that you did.
And then we keep trying, I think, getting out of that performative mentality of having a ritual be something that other people are watching and other people are judging and criticizing and going deep into ourselves and thinking, what is the meaning that I hope this symbolic, intentional action is going to bring to my life? That's where we have to really get creative. So, yeah, that's the ritual for me. And then if we take a series of rituals and string them together, that becomes the ceremony. So for me, a ceremony is to mark kind of big rites of passage like birth, marriage, death. It can also be creating a morning ceremony. Maybe you want to take a couple of different rituals to acknowledge the start of your day or the end of your day, and that, again, that ceremony can be done on your own with others, it can be done at any point in time.
So, yeah, that's some of the language to kind of get us started to think about ritual and ceremony. Not as these big things that are only reserved for huge moments of change. But as I like to say, we're building our ritual muscles. We're bringing ritual into our everyday life. And then when big things happen, we have these tools at the ready.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: I love how you've weaved through beautiful language, a relationship with ritual that feels sacred. In a way, I feel myself stepping into that. And as someone who's supported people through some really difficult times, I'm thinking, Elaine, some of the teams that have lost a mission staff person or an athlete or a coach prior to leaving, for instance, for world championships, you know, they bring me in to help them hold space, honor the person who's died, and then also create this intentional experience, shared experience that allows them to process their loss, to witness others, which we know is a part of the healing process, is just being witnessed and receiving.
And how through these intentional acts of. Of being in service self and self of others during these painful moments, how that can help us then focus on the task at hand, which is to compete at the highest level.
So maybe over to you, Elaine, as you were taking in Megan's beautiful offering, a way of describing ritual, just maybe, you know, what was arising in you, and in what ways do you help your clients kind of either curate their own ritual or in what ways are you inspired to kind of relate to what Megan was saying? As we're discovering a little bit more about how ritual, the way that Megan's defining it, is actually alive in sport.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that we see ceremony and rituals all over sport. We can't separate sport from ceremony ritual. And at those higher levels of the Olympics and Paralympic Games, we have an opening ceremonies, we have medal ceremonies, we have closing ceremonies, but we have all these little ritual rituals or even routines throughout that. And so it's certainly, you know, very well known that most athletes have quite what some people would consider ritualized pre performance routines or things that they go through. And really what, what we do that for is because it acts as a security blanket. Right when you're about to, whether it's a basketball player having a couple bounces and a spin before they do their free throw, it's comforting. It's. It acts as the security blanket for the brain to just go, okay, I know what's coming next. I feel a little bit more prepared because I've done that one thing. But also, as Megan talks about ritual, it also gives permission too. And I think that sometimes it's a permission of, I've done this and now I'm allowing myself to go through with it. So, Dina, when a team brings you in, you know, after, particularly after a loss, I think it's important to allow space and time for that and allow someone to, to bring up those emotions and those fears that they might be feeling before they go into one of these major events. And we plan as much as we can right now. We're planning for Milana Cortina in February for Olympics and in March for our Paralympics. And we're starting to go over those plans of if this happens, what would you like this to look like? And so that might be okay. If grandma passes away when you're on the road, how would we want to honor that and what do we want this to look like? So we go through all the logistics of communication practices and what that would be.
But then again, how do you want to sit with that and how do you want to absorb that, and how would you like to move through that, too? So it's not just about putting something in a box and setting it aside. It's what are we doing with that? And so when Megan's first point there about intention, that's really what it's about on my end in sport is being as intentional as we can with it.
We talk about intentional practice all the time. You've probably heard of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rules to be an expert, which is Obviously was not really, perhaps well described in a way, or maybe not well taken, because I think people go, great, 10,000 hours. I can be an expert, but it's really about deliberate practice or intentional practice. So what are we really doing? And when we're intentional with something, we're struggling, we're failing, we're working through it. It's not an easy piece.
So when we talk about that trusting the process, like in that poem you read us at the beginning, one of those lines was to trust that process.
That's sport in a nutshell. What have we done to this point? How can we trust in not just the yearly training plan, but ourselves and what we've put into this so that we can be comfortable and confident with the outcome, whatever that may be.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Comfortable and confident in the outcome. There is a letting go. Right. Because I can plan, I can prepare for all these scenarios. But the three of us know no amount of planning will actually really describe the experience of going through a heartbreak or really fully describe when I did win the medal. You know, I've had the privilege of being with people when they won, you know, Olympic medal. I think of Mark Tewksbury, 1992, and that smile, the shock and awe of, look what I just did, mom. Who was in the stands at the. At the time.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: So this. How.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Elaine, maybe I'll.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: I'll go.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: I'll go stay with you for a moment. When you are companioning, you are acknowledging the importance of preparation, do you notice any resistance, I'm wondering, to some of the ways in which you're offering the importance of practice and deliberate, intentional practice, like maybe share a little bit more about what is your secret sauce in getting athletes and coaches to be more open to the power of this, the intentionality of being with, you know, ritual or deliberate practice as you described it?
[00:20:52] Speaker C: Yeah. If we're thinking of that deliberate practice piece, without it, we're not getting much improvement. So coaches do really want that. But sometimes we hold back, or we see coaches or athletes hold back because of the mistakes that will be made on the way. And so if we're pushing ourselves, I like to think of our comfort as like a bubble around us that we're kind of pushing. We're not popping and going too far inside of it, but it's more of, like, stretching that bubble of comfort. And so it should be difficult, it should be hard.
We should feel that discomfort, and that's okay.
But working through that in a really intentional way, where as long as we've had that foundation of psychological safety, around us that we know we're not going to be punished in some way for making those errors. That is the secret sauce of making sure that we can create that culture within a team, then we can move forward and be really deliberate because we know we're going to mess it up. But that's just one of the steps on the way to being able to be successful with it. So I think that's kind of the most important piece is creating or fostering that psychological safety which often when people hear the term, they think of bubble wrapping kids. And that's not what it is. Right. It's just allowing people to work through and to have those errors without fear of repercussion.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: So permission to fail. Well, and to normalize how failing, learning, experiencing is actually at the point.
[00:22:09] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. It's the point. And it's all part of that process. And if we, you know, I think of focus sometimes of where are we flashing our flashlight? And if it's just at the end of the race or just on the podium or whatever it might be, we're not doing ourself. We're not really setting ourselves up for that success. Right. We need to have it in front of us with that process, like you mentioned.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: So, Megan, turning to you as someone who. Who has shared, you know, sport is not a.
A landscape that you spend a lot of time, you know, in or supporting. What I'd love to know from you is based on what you've just heard from Elaine and then some of the things that I've shared with you, you can't have sport without ceremony. There's elements baked into it from. Or the ritual, the practice of, like, doing the way you tie your cleats, I'm thinking, or how you, you know, you engage in a ritual of the chant before stepping onto the battlefield. So sport is full of metaphor and.
And maybe we wouldn't call it ritual the way that you've described it here today.
What is missing for me is I'm not sure people really pause to bring the same kind of intention, symbolic, you know, action that derives a form of meaning that might be different, let's say, for me than it would be for you if we were teammates.
I'm wondering, you know, if we brought more intentionality, if there was a deepened understanding, respect, reverence, maybe for the power of ritual to bring us together and to allow our individual way of being on a team and then to be able to complete an experience using and guided by ritual. I wonder, you know, what do you think might happen if Sport was a little bit more intentional with its relationship with ritual and ceremony.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: Such a great question, and I love listening to Elaine kind of dive into that experience because I was an athlete growing up, and I'm raising two daughters who are in sport. So while I might not be in sport at the level that both of you are, sport has always been an important part of my life. And I'll also share that I'm a disruptor. Elaine knows this to be true. I look at good company, and so I look at, you know, scenarios like the funeral world and what is working with funerals and what is not. And during the pandemic, I think we were really forced to shake things up a little bit.
I look at weddings, I look at graduation ceremonies, I look at, you know, gold medal ceremonies, and I think, where. What are we missing? What needs to be disrupted and what needs to be kind of shaken a little bit so that we.
We get rid of the performativeness of doing it. Well, we do it this way because it's always been done this way. That's not always a good enough answer. And I am a huge fan of tradition, especially cultural traditions, sport traditions that have been passed down over time.
And I also think sometimes we lose connection with the meaning behind them.
And so while there most likely is a lot of ritual woven into sport, sometimes we might confuse ritual with routine.
So one of my favorite sayings is that we fall into routine, but we step into ritual. So if you're doing something just because this is the way you've always done it and you're just falling into this habit, that's kind of in that realm of routine, which is powerful. Routines are very important in life, and they help us thrive.
But is it ritual? And I think I'm not the one to judge yes or no. But for me, the intentionality of stepping into this with eyes wide open, of what you hope this action, this thing that you're doing is going to give you, that starts to kind of connect us a little bit more with our emotional being. And I think, you know, for me, ritual lives in our mental health space and our emotional health, our. Our spiritual health for many people.
So how do we kind of get out of the performativeness and get really clear on not only the group's intention or the, you know, the body, the larger body, the intention of a gold medal ceremony, but also our personal connection to that.
And where I'm really pushing people to think about ritual and ceremony is you don't have to just have it done. Once there's Wonderful things that I'll do with people around. Retroactive ritual. So say you won a medal and, you know, 10 years ago, and you kind of have been holding on to this moment. It didn't quite go as you thought it would, or somebody wasn't there that you really wished you had, and you're stuck. You're kind of, you know, looking back on that moment and just recognizing you wished you could have done it differently. What's stopping you? What's stopping you from recreating that or creating a new ceremony to honor what you wished had happened or what you want to happen? Now? We can do as many ceremonies as we need to. We can do them personally, on our own before a big ceremony, so that we're stepping into that space having already received what we needed, and now we get to be part of a larger group, group collective, and kind of step into a different space.
So this realm of kind of retroactive rituals do overs. I do a lot of ceremony do overs for people, and I think about things like graduation ceremonies and how little it actually means to a lot of people. It might mean a lot to the parents kind of watching, but kids might miss out on making their own mark. And so I think that's, for me, the really important part of ceremony is making it personal.
What is going to be meaningful to you in this moment? Maybe it means tucking in a photograph or a special gift that somebody's given you in your pocket and holding that at the moment of, you know, this big procession.
Maybe it's going for a walk that morning and giving yourself what you need, shedding any expectations or, you know, grieving what you need to grieve after, so that when you're in that moment, you're not putting all this pressure on this one moment to get it all right. Because I think that's, for me, the challenge of sport as an outsider looking in is there's just so much pressure and finding ways to. If we think about that bubble, like, how do we let some air out of that bubble? How do we start to kind of think about rituals as an ongoing practice?
That, for me, is where I get.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: Really excited, I'm really touched. And it's. There's a reclamation to enter into right relationships with self and other nature, the world around us, the territory upon which, you know, we're joining, the territory upon which is holding the gathering space for athletes and fans. And so I think we're seeing now in sport the capacity to be in right relationship and to honor and not to perform in the honoring. There's a lot of harm that's been done to land and to indigenous peoples who were here long before it was colonized. And the, the restoration I find of harm that's been done to others. When there's an intentional kind of healing and we let go of the am I going to do this right? And the fear of causing harm and preventing that, you know, from us entering into right relationship, more harm is caused. So I have found that when we, we make the attempts for me, for instance, it's becoming more aware of, you know, the unceded territories upon which I'm joining you today. The Algonquin Anishinaabe people finding small, sometimes more significant ways to enter into right relationship with indigenous people. Also other people who've been harmed and being able to use the right language of the privilege I carry by being a white bodied woman, you know, who was the descendant of people who were shipped over here. And by virtue of their privilege it continues. So the rippling out can continue. And when we, what you're teaching us here Megan is when we use, use ritual and enter into ceremony with honesty and authenticity and love, we can let go of the fear that kind of keeps us stuck right from entering into that space.
And you know, Elaine, when I think of sport and how sport right now, there's, there's such a division and tension in the system that is a natural part of athletes having voice and choice and leaders who are walking alongside them to ensure that there is right relationship, that there is psychological safety, that sport is a safer experience. I'm wondering, as you took in Megan's words, Elaine, is there anything that's sparking for you that would help to make sport to ease this transition from a, a different relationship, you know, with.
I'm thinking of like the power dimensions. I'm thinking of the many ways in sport was very singularly focused. Is there anything that, that you think through ceremony and ritual that that could help ease some of the tensions that are alive in the system right now?
[00:31:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that you know, we talk about ceremony being everywhere in sport and, and the rituals that we see are what we would typically call routines. And Megan gave a really great distinc between what is maybe routines and rituals. So I think when we're intentional about it, maybe we should be changing our language to kind of align with that a bit. Because you know, when I work with an athlete on creating a pre performance routine, we're very intentional that it's, that it's impactful. It might even be connecting themselves to themselves in that moment of being able to kind of clear everything else too. So hearing that language of connection and seeing that that's such an important piece, I think we need to pair it with autonomy and athletes being able to have some of that autonomy now and being able to have their voice in some instances and not others.
But I think some teams do it well and some don't. And I think that when we consider what that connection looks like, I often, you know, talk to coaches about how are they even starting practice.
So having some connection before content, we would say, what does that look like before you start? Because we're kind of always going from one thing to the next next. And then you jump in and you're running in the door and you're warming up and you're getting on ice or whatever it might be.
What is the connection that we're having before the content we're going through? So sometimes I'll call that a mindful moment. Can we just be together for one minute? I've got this big sand timer in my office that sometimes I'll flip over and someone comes in and they're having a hard time just being able to articulate what they need. We'll just spend one minute together just taking a breath and no words and just connecting to the room and each other and themselves before they're able to articulate. So I like doing a mindful minute.
How a coach might start a practice. I think a debrief is one of the most intentional pieces of it all. So an Olympic debrief, I might use what worked, what didn't and what now. There's a forward looking piece of what are we going to be working on next week or maybe your next bout at the Olympic Games is in, you know, an hour and a half. What are we doing in this moment? So we're constantly bringing it back to where we are and what we need in that moment. I think it's so important for that. But the connection piece, I think some teams do it well and some aren't quite there yet. I think it's really important to make sure that there's examples all around us and there's some great conversations and starting points on Mental Health Commission of Canada, things like that that we can look at for making sport healthier and safer in those different ways. But I think it's about what are our individual groups doing? Are we able to be able to bring that into your gym or your ring or wherever you are instead of just the overarching idea of what that looks like?
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's so, so powerful. Connection before content.
And. And you've just illustrated one minute. Let's just breathe. Take three deep breaths before we begin our session together. And I love it because Elaine, it's the great disruptor. People say we don't have time to connect. And what we're saying here is you don't have time not to.
[00:34:13] Speaker C: Yeah, I often think it's literally just a couple minutes because a coach says, well, I only have ice for, you know, 55 minutes. And then we're off saying, take 60 seconds.
Take. Take a minute, take three minutes, whatever it might be, just to have some kind of human connection with it. And for those that are really uncomfortable with it, are really unsure about that, maybe they don't want to start it in a group setting. And they can do that one on one. So we'll have, like, old school, like, attendance boards, and they just have to. And it's just for them to kind of check it off, but it's just for them to go, have I made sure that I've. I've had that touch point with every single athlete individually throughout these few days, and they get to track that on their own just to get used to it before they open up. But because I think it's important to recognize that our. A lot of our coaches haven't had that positive experience either. We can't just expect people to be perfect at it. We need to. We need to start growing that from the bottom up.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: Exactly. So you've heard from Elaine, you know, conscious connection and the impact that that can have. And we know the impact that it has when we don't do that.
One of my favorite practices is conscious completion, and it could be. So it's kind of like bookends here. How do we end a practice? How do we end a session? What are ways in which we can prepare our bodies, our hearts, our mind for what's coming next, especially when the topic is heavy. So a lot of the work I engage in, whether it's crisis management or, you know, rituals around grieving the death of someone, these are heavier topics. And people need a moment to be able to integrate what they've experienced and then before they get ready to do something else. So conscious completion for me can be. As Megan was sharing earlier, sometimes it's one word. How are you describing what you're experiencing now and sharing that with the community? Because that. That often helps people feel, oh, I'm not alone. If Megan is saying the word connected and I'm saying the word together now, we're having a shared experience.
So I find conscious completion, whether it's writing a letter or it's giving ourselves moment, heading outside to have that, you know, breath when people say they there's a resistance. You don't understand my world, Dina. I don't have time. Again, I come to well, would you be willing to try it deliberately for the next five days and then notice how you feel, notice how you feel after you consciously complete.
So as we get ready as a tree, we're a triad here.
Megan, are there any practices that you feel you know would be really that you've engaged in these rituals, ceremonies, or what we might say more deliberate practices that you might invite people who are listening just to try something that you think would be like a nice little gift for our listeners here today.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: Thank you. I've been previously taking notes as you're both talking because there's so many points that I get excited about just because there's synchronicity and parallels between so many fields that I work in. I think about working with healthcare providers and how much we've kind of encouraged people to compartmentalize parts of their life. And I imagine the same to be true with athletes. And maybe there's an assumption or a judgment on my part.
But for me, I think coming back to living ceremonially, which is the, the premise of the app that my husband and I have built is how do we start to live this life, you know, ceremonially? So we're noticing things, we're being attuned to the changing seasons, you know, the, the changes that are going on within our families, within our friend groups, within our neighborhoods.
I am a huge believer in community care. I think that self care is important and it's almost impossible to keep up with self care these days if we don't have a community of connection in thinking about what you've been sharing is the rituals for me are around holding multiples and I think about the two sided coin ritual that I have in the app which invites people to tune into two emotions, two experiences, two words, two feelings that they might be holding right now in this very moment that feel, feel in contrast with each other. And I often imagine putting two magnets together and having them kind of push, push apart.
And I think we're not always taught that it's okay to feel two things at once. I remember when my father in law died and of course I was sad, of course I was grieving.
I was also angry. I was also relieved. He had had a long drawn out illness. I felt you Know all these different things, and I didn't quite know how to hold these multiple things that were competing with each other at once.
So one of my favorite daily rituals that I do, and I. My kids do it with me. I've got all these little kind of coins around, and you can take a piece of paper and cut it into a circle. You can pick up a rock.
I do find the. The idea of writing the words down onto this object are helpful because, again, getting back to that intentional symbolic action that hopes to create meaning, you're. You're pausing. You're thinking about what are two things that I'm holding right now that are in tension with each other, that are polar opposites. And you write one on one side of the coin, the paper, the rock, and one on the other. And then you sit with one one side, and you notice where it's showing up in your body. If it's heavy, if it's light, if it has a color, a smell, a scent to it.
And quite often, people are kind of like, oh, I don't know about this. And then they hold the rock, and then they just kind of. You can feel it in their body, where they're just like. There's a lot of, like, frustration and anger right now in me, and it's living right in my throat, and I can just. Just taste it and feel it and smell it.
And you. You. You're not there to solve it. You're not there to fix it. The ritual isn't the. The antidote or the solution. It's just bringing awareness to what's there.
And then you take the coin or the rock and you flip it over the other hand, and you notice that other feeling. Maybe you're feeling hope and excitement, anticipation.
And you notice where that is in your body and where you're holding it and what that feels like, what that tastes like and smells like.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: Like.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: And then eventually, you bring your hands together and you hold both of those at once. And it might be something as simple as taking three breaths. I always say, like, create room for both of these things to be in your body at the same time. Don't have them feel like. There's a hierarchy where one is a good emotion and one is a bad.
Allow them to coexist, breathe space into them. I love Elaine's vision of that bubble. Like, stretch that bubble a little bit. Allow both of these things to be here, because that's the human experience. And I think the more that we try to encourage people to compartmentalize and have, like, you Know, it's not business, it's. It's not personal, it's business. You know, keep this at home. Once you're here on the ice, like all of that, the rest of the world fades away.
I think that's done a lot of harm in our world. I think this idea of, you know, I look at the AHRQ healthcare providers and how they were in med school and nursing school kind of drilled it out not to take on that empathy for others because they wouldn't be able to continue their work. I think that's led to extreme cases of burnout and compassion fatigue because we haven't been taught how to hold the experience of being human in our bodies. And as Dina said at the beginning, like I, I believe that we are naturally ceremonial. I don't believe we need to be taught this. We simply need to remember, look back, look forward.
The rituals are in our bones. And the more that we can create capacity to experience the full throttle of this, this thing that it is to be human, the experience of being human, how do we start to create more space for all of the messiness and, and all of that. That, that world excites me for us all to kind of show up as our whole selves in different ways.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: I love the invitation to show up as our full self in many beautiful ways and how ritual, a shared ritual, can help us get to know each other, you know, in a really beautiful way. We don't have to speak it out loud, but we can experience. And I have done the two sided coin several times with different sport teams. And it's amazing, you know, what we hold as these binary constructs. When we give ourselves permission, we're like, oh, they're actually mutually reinforcing. I don't have to choose. I can hold both. I can hold all of it. You know, as Rumi says, right. The house of belonging. Welcome it all in.
So for you, Elaine, any final comments or sharings that you'd like to offer Megan, myself and the listeners?
[00:42:54] Speaker C: Yes, Megan, sharing that is just so perfectly paired with sport because we so often have what we would consider transitional periods. But not only that, even the big moments and the little moments, the highlights and the low lights of retirement, injury, loss, even wins or new teammates or a big shift in culture. When new people come in, new coaches, we often have these two sides. We're thinking. And so you might have someone up on the podium at what they might consider the biggest, most important and exciting moment of their life, thinking, I'm really frustrated that, you know, my mom Was too ill to travel and be here or whatever it might be, or thinking. I'm so excited. But this is my last competition ever. I know I'm retiring after this moment, and that's okay. To have those two seemingly opposing ideas at the same time. I think sometimes we're so. We think things need to be in these perfect columns, right? And so I really love of Megan sharing that, you know, the stone or the coin of being able to say we can hold this together. And we often say that, but I haven't used it in that language before, so thanks for that. I'm going to take that with me as well.
Just to recognize that we do want role clarity. We do want to ensure we're having autonomy. We do want to create psychological safety. We need all those things. But as long as we're being intentional with our connections in sport, making sure we're speaking to people like humans, not athletes, not numbers, I think that really is the foundation of being able to be more intentional. And, you know, clarity is kindness. You spoke at the beginning about, well, you're really truthful, but, you know, you have this compassion. I think that's because I really believe that clarity is kind. And so if we can. We can allow people to be themselves and to be free, to stretch that bubble or, you know, feel free to make those mistakes, we're really. We're really allowing people to space to be able to learn and grow, but also to kind of feel and be present with themselves at the same time.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: I love these little sound bites that each of you are offering. Being present with ourselves at the same time. And look, I'm just. I love this because it's.
Look what can happen when we show up, you know, feeling safe to just be me.
Look what can happen.
So I. I want to express such sincere gratitude to the two of you. I'm wondering if we can step into a conscious completion and maybe just offer a word, you know, something that we want to offer to each other to recognize the investment of each other's time and beautiful presence today.
And so when you're ready, maybe just share a word or two that's arising.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: I'd share.
[00:45:34] Speaker C: You know, I. I love that I get to do this with some other groups I work with. We often, instead of just our action items, we do end with the word and. And how we're feeling as we take the. The next step. And so I would say connection. It's. I. I never get to connect with Megan in this style, and it's really beautiful to me. So I would offer a connection.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: Yeah, and the friendship was the first word because I feel like I've grown into friendship with both of you, but I just feel really seen the word seen showing up for me.
[00:46:07] Speaker C: What about you, Dina?
[00:46:09] Speaker A: Well, I. I began today with this little beautiful stone and on it was gratitude.
So I was so grateful that the two of you said yes. And I'm even more grateful now that we had this shared experience together. So thank you so much for that.
[00:46:25] Speaker C: Thanks for having us.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. It's been wonderful.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: So in the episode notes below, you'll find some sport law blogs where you can find more information related to our conversation today. We'll also link link to Megan's website which is beautiful. The app is really spectacular. I use it and have found solace for me both personally and professionally. Thank you so much to our listeners. We're ever so grateful to share our vision of Sportopia with you as we all look to elevate sport. As always to have your say in Sportopia. Email us@helloportlaw CA to let us know what you want to hear about next. Stay tuned for the next next episode and until then, be well.
