Tankespjärn with Helena Roth

Tankespjärn with Helena Roth

By Helena RothEducationSelf-Improvement
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Tankespjärn with Helena Roth episodes

  • 12. What’s made possible when seeing beyond what is | with Frank Ebbert

    In mine and Franks third conversation I cannot help myself but indulge in a bit of cathedral musings. I’d just read The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett, also known as the cathedral or Kingsbridge series, where there are cathedrals being built.


    What these books point to is what’s made possible when seeing beyond what is. And somehow, through ingenuity, skill, effort and a lot of imagination, making what lies beyond what is, a reality.

    I shouldn’t have been surprised, given that Frank is an architect, but… still, oh the thrill of simply mentioning these books, and what I took from them, and hear Frank inhale sharply and invite me down his memory lane, as a young kid, visiting some of the cathedrals of Europe.

    As I state some buildings are designed to get you to fly, Frank goes into a spiel that I just love:
    One of the mini breakthroughs of the early Renaissance, was to understand what was termed the spiritual dimension of man. It was addressing this emotional experience and being able to walk into a location that was a man-made version of that epic experience you get in certain forests and promenades overlooking things. If you could replicate that under a roof that was really bringing the human spirit to a certain place. The cathedral was one of the highest expressions of the kind of emotional rush or this sort of lofting of who you were. It was epic.

    But this was but a brief passage in our meandering conversation, a lot of which centered on the unknown and how play is a great way to edge closer to it. Given the right context, play can make the unknown less scary. If the context isn’t right though, or not well-defined, play, at least for me, pushes me even further into the perceived scariness of residing in the unknown.

    In hind-sight, looking back at instances of role-playing at leadership trainings and the likes, the uncertainty as to potential emotional impact of the situation held me back. Made me not want to fully take on the role of whoever I was supposed to inhabit, feeling very insecure. Now, perhaps I wouldn’t let myself be held back, but in my twenties, for sure I gave the bare minimum of myself.

    Circling back and forth, we come back to uncertainty and the unknown from another angle, this time inspired by Brené Brown. Frank explains that in order to lean into vulnerability, you need to have a sense of safety, a sense of significance, and you need to feel situated. To be able to do this leaning you have to be willing to risk. You have to be able to tolerate emotional exposure. And you need to have a level of comfort around uncertainty.

    So.
    One question to provide you with some tankespjärn, is when and where are you able and willing to lean into vulnerability?

    Links:
    The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
    World Without End, Ken Follett
    Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
    TEDxTalk The power of vulnerability with Brené Brown

    2 hr 34 min
  • 11. The ability to think for yourself is all but easy | with Beverly Delidow

    In the third conversation with Beverly Delidow of Here’s a Quarter we drop a lot of recommendations, all available at the bottom of this episode description, in case you get curious and wanna find out more.

    Diving into the difference between the laws of tribal and modern societies, the distinctive difference in their rally cries for redemption versus retribution reminded me of an amazing Moth-story by Hector Black, that I blogged about in April of 2014. Hectors tells a horrible story of his daughter (in love, if not by birth), and shows an absolutely astonishing ability to forgive.

    I mention (yet another book) by Daniel Quinn. Not called WHEN but IF they give you lined paper, write sideways. But honestly… it’s not a matter of IF, it is a matter of WHEN, as we are all given lined paper, that is, lulled into believing the norm-driving stories of the culture(s) we live in.

    Immersing myself in Daniel Quinns writings as well as spending a lot of time with my Buddha-friend Dominic, has gotten me to a place where I finally (I’ve said it before and will say it again, sometimes it takes a long time for the penny to drop) have started to see the importance of context. Who says what, based on what hidden, underlying assumptions? When a question is asked, try to get under the skin of it, finding out what’s implied by the question.

    That’s what Quinn means when he says write sideways.

    Don’t. Just. Swallow. It.

    Or, stated in another way:

    Think. For. Yourself.

    Honestly, I find that a lot harder than it sounds. Especially as I choose to trust (in me, in you, in the world), and will remain in trust until proven wrong.

    Now there’s some tankespjärn for you!

    Links:

    Hector Black on The Moth

    If they give you lined paper, write sideways, by Daniel Quinn

    I mention attachment theory, speaking about Ross Green but honestly, who I meant to refer to is Gordon Neufeld. Sorry about that! But hey, two for the price of one, Green is worth a look too!

    There’s The children’s fire and The Imitation Game too.

    1 hr 32 min
  • 10. Creating the world through light | with Gary Breads

    Oops… Intro forgotten, remembered, only to be lost in space somewhere, somehow. So here’s an episode without my usual short introduction. If you want the brief version (yeah, right. When have I ever managed to be brief?) it’s about lessons learned through, or thanks to, online dating. Now for the musings of which there were plenty in this my second conversation with Gary Breads.

    Have you ever been ghosted?
    Duck-duck-go informs me:” Ghosting is when someone who used to be friendly or even romantic with you suddenly cuts off all communication without explanation.” That’s precisely what happened to me as I waited for half an hour for an agreed upon walk n talk. He did not show up, and I didn’t get a word on Badoo, or by phone. Gone. Ghosting me.

    The interesting thing is, I learned so much from this. And I wasn’t angry. Felt a sense of relief, a bullet dodged quite literally, but more than that, I got to witness myself go through this experience, doing the most gentle I ever could have done towards myself. If I hadn’t spent the past 1,5 decade learning to do gentle, I would surely have acted (or more like it, reacted) very differently.

    (If I had been angry? Just as welcome! Anger, along with everything that I feel, carries a message. Listen. Just don’t take it as Truth. But a signal, most definitely!)

    Being active on Badoo (or any dating app of your choice), is a great opportunity for learning. How to be human. Vulnerable. Honest. Humorous, cheeky and teasing. Being interested, and being interesting. In short, I’m learning (here as well as in many other arenas!) how to be human on Badoo.

    Which just might be a really odd thing to say? Possibly not a lot of Badooers would agree with me. But for me, this is what it is, and that’s why I can look at myself as well as the man who ghosted me with such compassion.

    I did not hold back.
    I did not diminish myself in any way, neither during the 24 hours of intense conversation we had, as I was being ghosted, nor afterwards. In the words of Gary, there was, from my part, a radical acceptance of the tendrils of worthlessness that did show up, throughout all of this. Because of course they do. They are part of being human, and human I am, we are. All of us.

    I got into a conversation with myself for the rest of that day, open, curious, loving and above all, treating myself very gently. It was amazing to experience, and I feel I’ve cracked a code for living, I just love living life, as me! You see, I don’t need to punish myself for being an idiot, for falling for a ruse, for being ignorant or naive or an easily duped person. None of that.
    Instead… my experience holds a willingness to see. A willingness to be seen.

    To which Gary said ”More of that please!”.
    Or, in the words of Thomas Hübl:
    ”To be present you have to be able to see.”

    To which I would add, seeing is not done solely using our eyes. We see with all of us, every sense, every organ, every cell. Or. We don’t. Closed down, desensitized or even numbed. And there’s a scale, is there not? There’s likely part of me I am not that connected to, where signals might be firing but they are not reaching me, on any conscious level at least, and other parts where all systems are go.

    I just realized Badoo is like a playground where I get to see with more of me (while I am also being seen). It’s like coaching, therapy or attending an online course, I tell you. Now there’s some tankespjärn for you!

    1 hr 20 min
  • 9. Questioning the shortage of housing | with Alison Coates

    As we start to meander, before long we come to talk about gardens, houses, and housing as a human right, no less.


    My brother lives in the UK, and I remember him house-hunting, being fascinated by the different facts presented in the house listings, when compared to Sweden. But this was basically just a warm-up for the first real doozie: Is there a housing shortage (in the UK)?

    That’s the story everyone is being told, at least, and it rubs Alison the wrong way, let me tell you. Or, rather, listen and you’ll hear for yourself, in her very own voice. With the number of houses standing empty, bought for speculation?!, and the number of second homes people have that are possibly rented out short-term via AirBnB and the likes, is there really a shortage?

    Push the film, shows, painfully clear, how the human right to housing is severely compromised all over, including in the UK. (And Sweden.) If you haven’t watched it, do!

    Question is, if we ask enough high-level questions? I say we don’t. We don’t question how come there’s ”a housing shortage” even though there’s plenty of empty buildings all over. We don’t question the purpose of the penitentiary system, but rather just let out a rallying cry for law and order! Last time we asked what the purpose of schools are was mid nineteenth century, and since then, all the school systems of the world has been modified, tweaked, nipped a bit here, a bit there, but actually looked at from a zoomed-out perspective, nah. It’s not happened so far, even though there’s plenty of voices asking Why school?

    On that note, the school system sure gets the job done, with impressive effectiveness. We fill it with small kids, bursting at the seams with life, curiosity and energy, and within a few years those aren’t words that describe a majority of school children. We say ”childlike curiosity”, don’t we, and I wonder if we say that because this is a trait the school system systematically dampens?

    Perhaps I am just touting the same-old-same-old, complaining about the school system killing creativity to paraphrase Sir Ken Robinson, but… I honestly think there’s a difference. Questioning the details, the nitty-gritty, will never, ever, get to the root of it. Whatever the it is. Be it housing, schooling, the justice or medical system. If we don’t zoom out enough to a point where it’s possible to ask the high-level why, nothing will ever really change. Or? Am I naive? Am I ignorant?

    Or are these the questions more of us should be asking? How many do? How many are even aware that these are questions that both could and should be asked? And not once. Over and over, again. Not necessarily constantly. But going 170 years without asking why school sure seems like too seldom.
    Alison comes clean. Wishing that she didn’t even know there’s a question to be asked. And I know what she means. We both agree it’s just not possible. It’s like when you’ve learned to read.You cannot look at a word without seeing what it says. The ability to not take things at face value, but peek underneath, behind, to the side, to see if there isn’t more to it than what is first conveyed. And. There. Always. Is.

    If nothing else, try to spot the underlying assumptions that make a statement (of whatever) possible. Have you thought about that? Ponder what the underlying assumption/s are that makes it possible to produce enough food to feed everyone on earth, and still have people dying of starvation. Now there’s some tankespjärn for you!

    1 hr 29 min
  • 8. What gives you vision if your eyes can’t? | With Mayke Vullings

    Mayke has recently gone through eye surgery. Curious as I am (a biologist at that, with a GP for a mom, who was in med-school for most of my childhood, which meant there were loads of creepy and enticing medical textbooks lying around to look at, oh how exciting!) I couldn’t help but ask a question that’s been on my mind… Does eyes have pain receptors?

    As I read the transcript from our conversation, I duck-duck-go ”pain receptors eye” and am met by the suggested question: are there pain receptors in the eye. Turns out, I’m not the first person to search for that answer, and I’ll simply point you to this potential rabbit hole, one I suspect I could spend a lot of times diving deeper and deeper into!

    Mayke is amazed at the clarity of vision she’s gained back thanks to eye surgery, and it is absolutely fantastic what we are able to do today with modern technology, I must say. And… I actually had an appointment scheduled for eye surgery myself, many years ago, to perform eye-sight-enhancing surgery (laser?) so I’d no longer need glasses… but I chickened out! There’s something to messing with stuff that doesn’t really need to be messed with, that… I don’t know…

    However, I’ve made good use of my glasses, and not just the physical ones. I’m great at using what I call mental glasses too, which is when I set my mind to something, writing it on my glasses, in my imagination that is, and then… everything I look at I look through those glasses. It’s actually turned into one of my super-powers, that I first spotted, for real, a few years after Alan Seale, Master coach, gave me the gift of a life time. He asked, in his gentle kind way, how does this serve? That’s a question that spent many years written across my mental glasses!

    Alan Seale is actually the connector between me and Mayke, so he’s give me more gifts than one! We met up in Vught in the Netherlands in… the spring of 2013, at the first (I think?) Transformational Presence global summit (yeah. Sure sounds fancy!) he organized. I have a lot to thank that summit for, as that was whereas of my Campfire Sisters first met (me and Mayke constitute 50% of the quartet).

    Using glasses is one of the best ways I know of (for me, not saying it’s a magic bullet) to create new habits that serve me. And creating new habits can take a lot of effort and time. However, have you ever thought about that fact that if, for some reason you’d want to ditch this new hard-earned benefitting habit of yours, or if you fear you’d revert to the old one, it would take you as long, and as much effort, to replace the new habit it with another one, regardless if it new or old? If you’re gonna do that, you are likely to make sure it’s a habit that will serve you even more!

    But regardless how great my eye-sight is, there are things about me, that I cannot see, that are apparent and obvious to you. And there’s that within you that I can see, that you cannot. One (more) reason why great friends are so valuable, as they can remind you of all that you are, even if you forget now and again. Now there’s some tankespjärn for you!

    (And. 
Guess what, everything I write about here –with the exception of the Campfire-sisterhood–, and in all these episode descriptions, is stuff we talk about. But I’d need ten times the number of words to be able to tell it all. ’Cuz there’s more. Much more. Rest assured!)

    1 hr 23 min
  • 7. We learn about our beliefs in practice, not in theory | with Frank Ebbert

    Now, Frank is an architect, and it just so happens, I’ve worked a lot with facilities in the pharma industry. At the moment, I’m busy with a project building a facility, and I get to do that what I both love doing and am really good at: design the layout of a plant.


    I. Love. It.

    I cannot say that I understand why but perhaps it satisfies the same part of me that enjoys a good puzzle? There’s the constraint of a plot or existing facility, within which you have to fit desired functions. But there’s a lot of freedom too, which tickles the creative within me, wanting to make the best possible layout fulfilling the requirements of the facility.

    Frank knew I worked with pharma, but didn’t know we have such a huge overlap concerning facilities. So… honestly, this is a meandering conversation about buildings, the building code, energy-efficient buildings, the man in the wool suit that many buildings are designed for, and passive houses.

    Great fun!

    And I can just see you shaking your head, saying ”Great fun? She must be crazy, it sounds superboring!”.

    But I promise, it’s worth giving this episode a chance, even if you aren’t as enamored in making buildings optimal and resource efficient. If nothing else, due to the fact that of course we also meander past all sorts of other things!

    Like beliefs. Asked ”What beliefs do you hold about yourself?” I would go blank… Especially if you add what Frank told me is one, if not the, definition of beliefs is knowledge without evidence. So, it’s not a belief that I rock at keeping run streaks going, because I have evidence to back that fact up. It’s not a belief that I have great capacity for both zooming in and out, taking in the totality and overview of a major project before diving headfirst into details, because this is what I’ve been doing for the better part of the past two decades, and my clients keep coming back for more. Again, I know this, it’s fact.

    So what beliefs do I hold about myself? I’ve been reflecting quite a lot on this these past months, helped along doing process-oriented therapy where this comes up over and over again. So I’ve started to be on the lookout for beliefs I hold about myself, giving the example when a Badoo-match told me I was so petite. ”Oh no, I am most definitely not petite” was my very automatic reaction to this statement. As I observed my own reaction, I could see the belief:
    I am not petite. I am ”farmers stock”, heavier and sturdier than what anyone dubbed petite would be.
    This is a belief. It’s not fact.
    That I don’t believe I am petite didn’t matter to the man who told me I was, his belief remained.

    So… where does this belief come from? Where do beliefs come from?
    Which beliefs that I hold about me serve me, making me do more, be more, live more, and which beliefs hold me back, keep me small, hiding, shying away from life?

    Reorganizations at work is another thing where beliefs play a big part. My belief is that reorganizations will make us more productive, efficient, resourceful. I believe that about 80 % of reorganizations doesn’t work, but that number concerned mergers and acquisitions, which perhaps, can be called re-organizations? Regardless, I duckduckgo:ed ”reorganizations efficiency”. The top link pointed to McKinsey stating: ”only about 23 percent of reorganizations are deemed successful by the companies as they look back on them”.

    Given that, why are there so many reorganizations? Strong belief at play, or what?
    Now there’s some tankespjärn for you!

    2 hr 24 min
  • 6. What do you deem unlovable about yourself? | with Gary Breads

    Gary Breads and I have been having frequent Zoom-get togethers since The Creative’s Workshop ended in July of 2020. There’s a special story to this, as I was a late joiner of a weekly Open Mic-session within the workshop. The very first meeting I attended, I had a few different blog posts chosen to read, one a bit racy, to say the least (Bliss). I wasn’t sure it would be appropriate, but then I heard Gary read a lovely poem about a volcano and I knew, without a doubt, that I would read Bliss.


    Something about Gary draws me to him, and luckily, the feeling is reciprocated. Gary is the founder of the newly emerging Wisdom Sailing School, an organization mentoring self and relational presence as the most direct and integrated way to foster Well-Being across the human dimensions of soul, heart, body, mind, self, relationship, and the environment. He enjoys meeting with clients from his farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, US, where he also shares his improvisational piano and vocals, gardening, and the ever-renewing inspiration of open fields and skies. Also an interfaith hospital chaplain, he finds another deep calling in assisting patients in the spiritual care of their health.

    For various reasons, we haven’t Zoomed for a long time, and when we did, I’d just come out of having a bout of Covid-19.

    On day eight of covid, having had a fairly easy run of it, my fever suddenly spiked and I definitely had a different experience with inhaling/exhaling than normal, feeling as if my lungs were only available for the first upper third or so. That sent me down an anxious spin of fearing death. Fear is a powerful emotion, and as I jotted down the passwords to my computer and my password manager for the kids, ”just in case”, I texted my friend D, The way he responded was amazing. Being held in love and compassion in such a way, was just what the doctor ordered, and I slept throughout the night without issues, waking up with less fever. When it started to spike again in the afternoon, I was chill, because I knew (!) that all would be well.

    In parallel with me battling Covid-19, Gary experienced the dark night of the soul, where he felt his psyche, emotionality, spirituality all be foreclosed. Not one, not two, but all three of them. Gary says ’I basically went back to God or source or love and said, I need to come home.’ only to be met with ’the gates of heaven aren’t open for you right now’. Ouch!


    That sent us down a rabbit hole of our common experience of judging parts of ourselves as unlovable. Have you ever felt there are aspects of yourself you deem unlovable? In my ongoing deep dive into shame, with the process-oriented therapy I am attending on a weekly basis, I am getting to know a lot of those previously deemed unlovable aspects of myself.

    The inner judge within me has a lot less work to do nowadays, and as I judge myself less harshly, I also judge others less harshly. The more gentle and loving I am with me, the more gentle and loving I am with you. And even though we all have (I think) inner tyrants, we don’t have to take their word for it. Gary shares how he has started to call it when he sees other people dis themselves in front of him. Imagine a world where more people would do that. Gently, with love, say, don’t treat yourself like that. Now there’s some tankespjärn for you!

    (And yes, we touch on all of this, and much more, in this rich meandering conversation!)

    1 hr 15 min
  • 5. Everyone needs a guide to their Tankespjärn | with Beverly Delidow

    The very day the first episode (with Beverly) was released I had a walk and talk with an acquaintance, and as she asked me what the pod ”was about”, I could only giggle before I tried to explain it: ”It’s a meandering conversation, that is not ”about” anything really. It’s a recording of what happens when two people meet up, start somewhere, and have no clue where they'll end up.”


    That is, truly, what all these conversations are, and I am very aware that this is not a podcast series for everyone. Now, I didn’t properly introduce Beverly in the first episode description, so here goes:
    Beverly Delidow is a writer in multiple genres documenting life and work in the Ohio River Valley on her blog, Here's a Quarter (https://heresaquarter.com). She is the author of a collection of short stories about life with dogs (Dog Days, 2017). She continues to gather material on canine antics, courtesy of Chiquita and Olive, under the strict supervision of the feline heads of household, Elijah and Felix. She has published poetry in the journal ABZ and has a poetry chapbook (Stepping Stones) coming out in the spring of 2021.

    When we got started I blurted out how I have a hard time grasping Shakespeare (and I’ve never really grasped the difference between poetry and prose even). Surprise surprise, it turns out Shakespeare is one of Beverlys favorite authors, and hearing her recite this passage from Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17–28) by heart was quite fantastic:

    ”She should have died hereafter;
    There would have been a time for such a word.
    — To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
    Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
    To the last syllable of recorded time;
    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
    The way to dusty death.
    Out, out, brief candle!
    Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player
    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
    And then is heard no more. It is a tale
    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
    Signifying nothing.”

    Hearing her intonation as she read, and then giving me a few in’s and out’s as to what this is all about, made me a little bit more keen to pick up a copy of Hamlet, or MacBeth, or Julius Caesar. It also reminded me of how in a few episodes of Buddhas by the roadside, another pod I am a part of, we’ve touched on the importance of having a guide to aid in understanding, making sense of, grasping poetry and literature, as well as paintings and theater and modern dance and…

    Some things I grasp, straight up, and others… when I am taken by the hand and helped to see what is there, beyond my superficial understanding, whole new worlds and universes can open and it’s amazing to experience. Have you ever experienced it? Do you know what I mean? What type of cultural expression would be tankespjärn for you?

    1 hr 43 min
  • 4. Being open to something being different | with Alison Coates

    Time and attention is a gift I’ve gotten from Alison Coates ever since we met up in the very first cohort of The Creative’s Workshop by AKIMBO in the spring of 2020. Time and attention is what Alison does, or rather, gives to people. And if that doesn’t make any sense to you, check out https://www.timeandattention.uk/.

    Alison is one of those people without whom –even though we’ve not met (yet) in the flesh– my week simply doesn’t feel quite right. Luckily the feeling is mutual, so we do meet up (at least once) weekly, in a variety of constellations. More than once I’ve left a Zoom-meeting with her thinking ”Damn, we should have recorded this conversation!” because there’s been so much wisdom and richness shared between us. Naturally, when the idea for this podcast was born, Alison was the first person I asked to join, and this first of our recorded conversations wasn’t one to let me down.

    I came scurrying home when we were supposed to start our conversation, having just spent a lovely time in the open-air bathing house/sauna so… we dove straight into being naked. And bodies. Body hair. And on account of me fairly recently having opened a profile on the online dating-app/forum Badoo, I’ve been musing quite a lot about what attracts versus repels me. A bunch of my prejudices are here for the taking in other words, but Alison jumped off that cliff too, so I’ve got great company.

    Opening up about this causes us to meander past inclusion, exclusion and the horrible word ’tolerance’. (Think about it. Tolerance. ”I tolerate you.” Like. Really?) How do personal boundaries play a part in all of this? And do they?

    The messy part in the middle, the conversations where I am neither Black nor White, not Pro nor Con, Red or Blue, or whatever polarity have you. Those conversations. We’re missing out on a lot of those, but why? Fear? Wanting to have it my way? Taking things to personally (I know I’ve been guilty of this in the past, for sure! Probably still am, however much ”in the past” I’d want it to be.)?

    In the middle of a global pandemic with COVID-19 vaccine roll-out just about picking up speed, what if you are neither For the vaccine nor Against it? What if you find yourself in the middle, in the gray zone in-between Black and White? Another area where we hook arms, and as lovely as it is not to be alone there, it’s quite frustrating to observe the lack of conversation generally made possible in this no-man’s-land, the land of being able to see the pro’s and con’s of both sides.

    Which brings us to the topic of prophets and Ishmael (the book by Daniel Quinn). If you divide the world into two main cultures, the Takers (us, sorry. But yeah. I’m there. And so are you. 99,9% likely.) and the Leavers (remnants of indigenous people spread across the globe), prophets are found amongst the former and not the latter. Can you think of a reason why?

    Daniel Quinn did. He points to the fact that Taker culture is on the look out for someone to tell them the one right way to live. And once we’ve found that one-size-fit’s-all-way, we work hard as hell to make everyone around us comply. Whereas Leaver-culture is based on finding out, and sharing amongst themselves, what works. For them. Not for everyone. So you have a Leaver-culture living in the jungle, another in the desert, a third in the Arctics. All of them have a set of rules for what works, for them. But neither of them would try to make anyone else live accordingly.

    Now there’s some potential tankespjärn!

    1 hr 50 min
  • Reflection: The prayer of your soul

    First published on my blog on February 11th, 2021: https://tankespjarn.com/the-prayer-of-your-soul/

    Website: https://helenaroth.com/

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/helenaroth

    FB: https://www.facebook.com/HelenaRothChangeAgent

    Audio production: Caspian Almerud

    Photography: Anders Roos http://www.andersroos.nu/

    Soundtrack: Olof Jennfors Ljudtjänst http://jennforsljud.se/

    4 min

About Tankespjärn with Helena Roth

From the publisher's feed

Learning how to do gentle towards yourself can be, for you, the key to loving living life. At least, that's what doing gentle did to me, Helena Roth, once I understood that it was actually an option.