Grief As A Beginning

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Most of us have been taught in one way or another that grief is something you get through, something to survive. But what if grief was not just an ending? What if the hardest moments of a person's life could become the very thing that shapes their deepest sense of purpose. The show where we have real, honest conversations about what it actually takes to look after your mental and emotional well-being. Not the polished version, but the truth. I'm your host Yosef, and today I'm joined by Perli Muntagl, a health and wellness advocate whose personal journey through grief and healing has led her to support others in transforming their own pain into meaning and purpose. Today, we are exploring what back journey really looks like and what it can teach all of us about resilience, healing, and the quiet courage it takes to begin again. With that, I welcome Purley to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Ah, what a kind introduction. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real privilege and a pleasure to be with you today.

From Loss To Surrender

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Perfect. Before we step into the bigger conversations, I'd love to ask you something simple.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

When you think about the version of yourself before the hardest chapter of your life and the version of yourself now, what is the most unexpected thing that changed I think I even say is that if someone had said to me five, six years ago that I would be doing what I do now working in the areas and with the people that I work um and just having this very unusual gift that comes through me, I would absolutely burst out laughing. It's been such a wild, surreal, surreal surrender experiment, really. Um and yeah, I continue to follow the path of trusting and keep showing up and just praying every day for the things that I'm I'm calling in that feel aligned and that feel important to me. And then surrendering to the flow of life and just trusting what comes forward, trusting how things unfold. And yeah, I think that's really um, yeah, I think that's I think that's for me. There's a there's a book that I love so much called The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer. And it's such a fascinating story of a guy who was essentially just a hippie in the woods at like meditating in in a community. And he went through this, he went through this journey of being a professor, and then ended up building homes. And then every company that he did, um, he then built a different, which I think was like a software company, but he did it with no attachment to the material. And every Sunday without fail, he would always meditate in the woods, but the community around him was growing. But at the same time, he ended up building what turned out to be a billion-dollar business, but it was all with just sort of such a humble soft walking so softly on the earth. And um, yeah, it's just such a it's it's it's uh and then and then the company blew up because there was this huge fraud accusation, and he just ultimately, um, it wasn't him, but he ultimately sort of let go. And the I think in the end he got the final part or the penultimate final part was that he got convicted and then he prayed for a divine intervention, and actually the judge ended up overturning so that he was he was free, but uh and he just stepped back and but it it's such an amazing true story. Um, I would encourage anyone to read this around or experiment, but yeah, so it's it's very much how I live my life of just being incredibly lucky to go on this journey and have yeah, some really extraordinary things come to me and happen to me in my work and in different projects that I'm doing in a temple space that I'm building um on geometry and symbolism. And so, yeah, I don't know if that might resonate with your audience, but I I find it fascinating.

Why Time Alone Fails

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah, it it is, and and you know, I'm curious about something that comes up a lot in conversation about grief and healing. There's the side that time heals everything, that if you just wait long enough, the pain will fade away and life will go back to normal. What do you think that narrative gets wrong?

SPEAKER_01 5:35

I think in my experience, when we go through uh a chemical toxicity, so we're living in cities or an emotional trauma or a physical trauma or a mental trauma, what happens is biologically it gets stored in the body, but energetically it also gets stored. And whilst the biology of the body will always work to return to its original designs, the energetic trauma also needs its pathway to heal and repair. And what's happened is in a lot of our cultures today, we have lost those daily rituals, things like fireside song, dancing, ceremony, ritual, and the like. And so what happens is this trauma gets stored. Um, but it's stored in the body, but it's it's yeah, it's uh can be stored over generations. And so what you can get, which I see regularly, is generational trauma. And so I think um time can be a healer, but I've also lived my life by doing the work and as when things come up to continue to support my body to release the stories that we're holding. And so um, yeah, for me, I would I would challenge that. I think I think there's so many different modalities and types of therapies that you that one can do um to support because you can be dealing with someone who is in their 30s or their 40s or their 50s or something like that. But actually, once you understand the pain that they're in and the kind of the sorrow, you can track it back to when they were a child. And so time can be a healer in some respects, but also there needs to be other sort of layers of support to fundamentally support people to come forward to heal. I don't know if that resonates in you.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Yeah, it does, and you know what you are describing is something I think a lot of people carry quietly. This gap between the comfort others offer and the reality of what is actually hap happening in and that gap makes the person lonely in some ways because they

Loneliness Inside Loving Families

SPEAKER_00 7:59

are surrounded by people who love love you, but they they don't really get you.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah, I mean, I think um it it obviously depends on the level of emotional intelligence around you. Um and I'm I mean I'm pretty tuned in, and my beloved is highly emotionally intelligent, but then I love there's that um expression from Ramdas, um the kind of great spiritual uh leader that some people make with. And he said, uh if you think it can profan be. And for me, it's like I think um, especially our parents, for example, can have such different experiences than we've had, because children should always be an evolution of our of our parents, um, and so like the different runes and traumas, and like I think our generation are now because of iPhones, there's so much more access to information and therefore more awareness. So I think ignorance becomes more of a choice. And when I say ignorance, I mean by ignorance I mean not knowing. And so it's really about how perhaps our parents um it's more about working with their limitations and also that thing comes to table all wisdom towards serenity. Does God give me the strength to change the things that I can? Does it accept the things that cannot and the wisdom to know the difference? And so if you can try and perhaps meet people around you, and especially with like, you know, there's nothing sometimes more challenging than with one's family. Every family has its kings. Um, and how yeah, do they kind of um just take agency and we are our own being? We can't really change other people, but we can take a ownership for our sovereign health, if like, and also like our mental health. And always think the um there was such a wonderful expression from the Buddha, which was excessive self-inquiry and focusing on the self is is the doorway to misery. And I think also just to like another expression I love, which is happening goal. It's the byproduct

Food Agency And Community Healing

SPEAKER_01 10:44

of what we do every day, especially at times when I really had to fight for my health. Um, it's I I have so many tools that can help bring me back. Like I'm in a pretty good space most of the time, and I'm I always wake up in a good mood and I'm just mentally in a very, very strong place. But it's it's taken a lot of work, um, and just little things that I do every day. And things like I was listening to a nutritionist talk a while ago, and she was saying how over, I think it was almost 60% of how we feel is based on what we eat in terms of our gut. And obviously they're discovering more and more and more about the gut. So it's like, what are you with anyone who's perhaps got something like anorexia builema, which fundamentally is a lot of it is about a sense of control, but it's also like, what are you eating? Um, and rather like we are what we eat, and rather like Bok Chi said, um the great sort of Greek um academic who said, Let food be thy medicine, a medicine thy food. And I've used food to heal my body. I used to be really sick in my twenties, had sort of seven things wrong with me. And so it's just like really, I think for me, just having a real curiosity of my mind, of just realizing that food made me sick, and then I use food to make me well. So it's been, yeah, I think that's something I would encourage anyone that feels the call or perhaps feels not good in their body, of just like just start to take agency of like we live in a capitalist world, and the food that you eat is made by people that have a responsibility to their shareholders and it's not a responsibility to the consumers. And so they have a bottom line, and that's the structure, especially in America, that I think um I think maybe post-COVID people are a little bit more aware that the governments aren't just always looking out for our for our good, and that there's some funky stuff that happens, and there's probably a level of corruption to some degree in every government. So, and not pointing a finger at one country or at another, but I think there's just a little bit more of a wake-up call because of that COVID, which was a fairly extraordinary social experiment. Um, that I think my mom is a teacher, and I think community is everything, um, and we need to be in communities to heal. And I think it's it was my mom certainly saw it just how how difficult it was for children to be separated from their peers for so long. Um and so yeah, I think it's just to also have a healthy approach to just questioning, questioning, and just like, you know, just just making sure that you really take that agency to support obviously ultimately your sovereign health.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

I see.

Healing Is Not Linear

SPEAKER_00 13:52

But really, healing is not a state line. There are days when everything feels clear, and then days when grief comes back, when the old weight returns, and it feels like you've lost the ground. So for someone who is in the middle of that and is worried that they are doing it wrong or they are not up to the mark and they'll never get through it. So, what do you want them to know?

SPEAKER_01 14:25

I mean, I would say there are things that you can do to change your life, which doesn't include any money. And one of those things that I would say is, uh, and I've read this again and again when I went down such a rabbit hole in terms of a passion for mental health and tools that one could use. And one of the things that just came up again and again is there's two. One is exercise. If you're feeling totally awful, just go and do some exercise for 30 minutes and you'll change your state um physiologically. But the other thing is gratitude and the power of gratitude. And the um, yeah, so when we when we wake up, that thing or last thing, we're in a different brainwave. It's called a theta brainwave. It's it's how Dr. Joe Dispander does quite a lot of his work. But it's about uh the fact that you do when you wake up, that I always do, um, and you can do a little wrist down on your phone, uh say it outside as a little prayer. But you would um you would say in terms of the things that you're grateful for that are um yeah, that have uh that are like bigger picture things in your life, and then um, so for example, for me it would be I'm grateful for my health, I'm grateful to have um you know a place that that is home for you, that's a safe space, which is given what's going on in the world. And then also um I please say that when sometimes perhaps I'm in pain. And then um at the end of the day, just before going to sleep, the last thing I'll say to you, my beloved, is what are you grateful that's happened today? Um and it's really um yeah, and and so but it there was some really interesting um neuroscience that came out, which Andrew Schuberman champions and talks about in a really interesting way, which is how if you not only like if you're in a relationship, how if you actually honor the other person by saying you're grateful for what they have done and just kind of the qualities and the characteristics behind that, and just how it's been shown in neuroscience, how it really affects the frontal cortex in a positive way. And so that's just like beautiful tool. So, and other tools, if someone's in feeling a little spun out, is like cold water um to have a shower that's like warm, and then you have for 10 seconds will have cold water and then maybe work your way up in 10 second increments to two minutes. But it's like it's so good for the body. Um, and those are just yeah, and you can also just like shake out your whole body for 30 seconds, and those are all three tools that anyone can use, but it's just like it's rather like the power of compounding interests, it's all these little things that we do every day that can ultimately uh really support us to um to see how we can show up in the world in a positive, meaningful way.

Simple Tools That Shift Your State

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Pully for people who want to connect with you or want to learn more about your work, where can they do that?

SPEAKER_01 18:15

That's um that's a great question. So you can find me if you go to Perlin Montague on um on Instagram, and then if you go to Mandalay, it's M-A-N-T-E-R-L-E-Y.org. And then um, yeah, those would be the two ways. And I'm also I offer a free uh introductory call to anyone that people can connect to to me at any time, and then I'll ask any questions, and I also have been doing a limited offer of um my sessions of just supporting people to work through their trauma and their pain um or anxiety or back problems, things like that. Um, and my sessions of two hours and then normally $400, but I'm happy to offer um $100 off so that it would be $300 in total. And I'll um yeah, we can share that in the show notes. I'll get my team to sort that out.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Perfect. And to everyone listening, all these links are in the show notes, so just go and check those out. Oli, any last messages that you want to leave us with?

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Um, I think you're just really in terms of that that uh KISS method, and KISS stands for keep it simple, stupid. And I think it's really um just some of the tools that I gave gave earlier. Like if there's one thing to do, it's like just gratitude. I think it's just so important just to keep it simple and it doesn't have to be yeah, it doesn't have to be complicated and doesn't have to have to cost any money, but it's ways that you can really change your life and yeah, it's um it's something that's accessible to everyone, which I think is so important.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Perfect. Thank you so much for your openness, for your honesty, and for bringing so much heart to this conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate it.

Where To Find Perli

SPEAKER_00 20:35

And to everyone listening, thank you for being here on Healthy Mind Help. If this episode reached something in you, appreciate it. Because someone in your life might need these words today more than you know. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast, and we'll see you very soon.