Sherrie Laryse · 70 min
After infertility, lung surgery, and a lifetime of unanswered questions, emotional intelligence consultant Sherrie Laryse discovered that the path to freedom runs straight through the emotions we most want to avoid.
Hear this story
Sherrie Laryse learned time management from Stephen Covey's Seven Habits, but her real education came through living. After seven years of trying to conceive and then facing lung surgery for a condition doctors couldn't explain, she discovered something more valuable than the outcomes she'd hoped for: a way to move through hard things without being destroyed by them.
When her lung kept collapsing without any clear reason, Sherrie resisted surgery. She had always trusted her body to heal itself. But that resistance mirrored an earlier decision not to pursue IVF, and it forced her to ask a harder question: was trusting her body actually serving her, or was it just another way of avoiding what she needed to do? Before surgery, she did something unconventional. She meditated with her lung, giving it a voice and preparing it for what was coming. It wasn't magical thinking. It was a way of meeting her own resistance with curiosity instead of denial.
What changed everything was a surgeon's blunt words: hope does nothing. Sherrie realized he was right. When she stopped hoping for a particular surgical outcome and accepted that whatever her body needed was what it would get, she found instant peace. That shift from hoping things will work out to accepting what is turned out to be more nourishing than any temporary relief. Through meditation, she also found grief sitting underneath everything, and learned to have actual conversations with it. Now she teaches emotional intelligence and writes books designed to help readers find meaning in their own obstacles by getting lost in someone else's story first.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
“I now refer to lung surgery, my experience of lung surgery as the most beautiful and fulfilling experience that I have had yet in my life and I just wouldn't change anything.”
“I used meditation to inquire and that's when I found grief.”
“I don't want to say neutralize the emotion but neutralize the detrimental effect of feeling that emotion.”
The hero, today
When Sherrie stopped hoping for a particular surgical outcome and accepted that whatever operation her body needed was what it would get, she found instant peace instead of setting herself up for disappointment. Sherrie learned from her failed attempt to conceive that writing down the pros and cons of both options, rather than treating one as wholly good and one as wholly bad, helped her find peace with an unplanned life path. Sherrie uses meditation to have actual conversations with her emotions and body parts, and they tell her things she didn't plan for them to say, which is how she knows it's a real dialogue and not just her filling in gaps. Sherrie believes that moving beyond the short-term relief of hope to acceptance gives you more emotional stamina and stability, like moving from hot chips to vegetables because they actually nourish you better. When Sherrie learned neuroscience at university, it didn't contradict her spiritual beliefs but instead showed her that science and spirituality use different language to describe the same reality.
Yes. Sherrie Laryse is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
When Sherrie stopped hoping for a particular surgical outcome and accepted that whatever operation her body needed was what it would get, she found instant peace instead of setting herself up for disappointment.
Sherrie learned from her failed attempt to conceive that writing down the pros and cons of both options, rather than treating one as wholly good and one as wholly bad, helped her find peace with an unplanned life path.
Sherrie uses meditation to have actual conversations with her emotions and body parts, and they tell her things she didn't plan for them to say, which is how she knows it's a real dialogue and not just her filling in gaps.
John Milham (Host) · 00:05
Welcome back to Kintsugi Heroes, helping people tell the stories they need to share so you can find the stories that you need to hear.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 00:16
In this episode, John Milham is joined by Sherrie Lurie. Sherrie talks about how she faced the deep pain of losing someone close to her and how this loss made her question many parts of her life. She explains feeling stuck with grief and searching for answers. Through support, self-reflection, and study, Sherri found a path forward and chose to become a mentor and emotional intelligence teacher. Her story shows how meeting loss head-on led her to help others work through their own challenges. Enjoy this episode with Sherri.
John Milham (Host) · 00:55
Thank you for coming on. I know I've been, um, Looking forward to our chat today. Um, are, are you, are you a very busy person? In a word, you have got an excellent— like, if I was to say, uh, look at a, um, bio of a busy person, I would suspect yours would be that.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 01:17
Yes, I learned a long time ago when I was in the corporate world how to manage my time to be more efficient. And even while I'm not in the corporate world at a desk and I'm doing a million different types of things and different businesses and all at the same time, I use all of the tools that I learned in corporate and it just saves my bacon. It allows me to get so much more done in my day than I think the average Joe does. So yes, my day is jam-packed. Hour to hour, uh, and I get through everything that I want to get through, so I'm happy.
John Milham (Host) · 01:57
More stories
This site is part of Kintsugi Heroes. Visit the main site for the full podcast. If any of these stories hit close to home, support is out there, you don't have to sit with it alone.
Read how we handle these stories ↗
Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗
Sherrie believes that moving beyond the short-term relief of hope to acceptance gives you more emotional stamina and stability, like moving from hot chips to vegetables because they actually nourish you better.
This conversation includes a packed calendar and the tools that make it work, talking to emotions like they're separate people, the pattern that repeats at every level, a lung that keeps collapsing for no clear reason, the tug of war between trusting her body and accepting intervention and having a meditation with her lung before surgery.
Did you do a course for that?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 02:00
I listened to Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I listened to that as an audiobook on my way to and from work because at the time I was so overwhelmed in how busy I was at work. I was an operations manager and it was just It was chaotic. Uh, so I listened to that to and from work and work was only 15 minutes from home. So I only had little snippets at a time, which was actually, it was good because it allowed me to, okay, what you just said, I'm going to apply that today. And I, so I applied little things at the time. So it was never some big, okay, now you need to change the way you do everything. I did it one step at a time and it became, it was much It solidified each thing as a habit. So I feel like I owe Stephen Covey my productivity.
John Milham (Host) · 02:52
So many of us do, you know, I owe him, you know, much like he was an early shaping force. So he was, I think In Search of Excellence was like 1979 or '77 or something. So we were all shaped by that and and Deming, you know, Total Quality Management, which isn't even heard of these days. But, but, uh, it, you know, it, it is an absolute ripper, Total Quality Management.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 03:22
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And it does, it changes your world, it changes the way you work.
John Milham (Host) · 03:25
And yeah, yeah, well, Deming changed the world anyway, right? Because he was the man, like, in Japan, he advised Japanese, he, he transformed Toyota, right, as an America, and like they introduced things like JIT, right? So which changed the landscape of the world, right? So I've launched into tangents already. I'll try to respect your busyness.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 03:50
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, you're in my calendar so we can do whatever we want within this time period. It's yours, it's ours.
John Milham (Host) · 03:59
Wow, ladies and gentlemen and friends of the Kintsugi Heroes Podcast, welcome to another Stories That Matter podcast. And as always, I have a tendency to say it, but today especially, especially true is my excitement to talk to a person who is, who has the dream bio, right? Like, so let me read it because this is, this is awesome. Cherie is an emotional intelligence consultant with a degree in cognitive neuroscience. That is my favorite thing, right? And a background in human behavior, trauma, psychosomatics, mental illness, yoga, and meditation. If you added rugby, you would cover everything I love. She has authored two books about overcoming challenges, On Path and The Body Talks Back. Uh, and I have just— I, I'm sick of hearing from my body, so I'll, I'll— that'll be a place of chat. And you're currently working on your master's in psychological anthropology, which, like, just as a phrase, as a heading, is already super exciting. And then you have lived experience of so many interesting things that we want to talk about. I particularly loved— I— and we're chatting because I caught you talking at a Story Room event event recently, and, um, and you were just fascinating about how you had a process, a personal process, to engage your emotions, right? So, and it was like, you know, a conversation. You were anthropomorphizing your emotions in some way, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 05:49
That's right.
John Milham (Host) · 05:49
And it was interesting because another girl there was talking about her, uh, a, her eating disorder. And I know in treatment of eating disorders, you know, it's an important step to, you know, to give your eating disorder a persona that is separate from yourself. So there's stuff we need to— I'm going to try and remember to talk about.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 06:12
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 06:12
So, Cherie, such a huge kintsugi welcome to my— to the podcast today. Thank you.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 06:19
Thank you very much, John. Nice to be here.
John Milham (Host) · 06:22
How on earth do you— like, an old empiricist like myself kind of has a love-hate relationship with the clinical model of the world, right? So the research and what I now know to be a part of my world, which is the kind of meta world, you know, the spirituality meta cognition, meta-performance, right? And there's a conflict in some ways between them, or at least a perceived conflict, and yet you embrace both in your expertise. How does that work? Does that make sense?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 07:10
So I say, oh, absolutely it does. And I used to think there was a giant conflict Now I realize for me, they are exactly the same thing using different language. It's just semantics. And what I did find when I went to do my neuroscience degree and started learning about the microactivity in the middle of one brain cell, it's so incredible. It's so awe-inspiring that, you know, I was sitting there, I was the one in class the mature age student that was just, wow, slapping the person next to me saying, did you just get that? And I was the one that was amazed by the whole thing.
John Milham (Host) · 07:53
And did you have a Gen Z next to you going, oh, really? Shut up, exa, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 07:58
Yeah, totally. They were all 19. Is that Gen Z? Is that millennial?
John Milham (Host) · 08:02
I don't know. Yeah, yeah, 19. Yeah, millennial.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 08:05
No, they're Gen Z. Gen Z. Yeah, they just didn't understand why I was so excited. And I think they were just there to pass. You know, is this going to be an exam? Do I need to know this? And I was, hang on, but did you just hear that? That's going on in your head right now. And learning all of that, a couple of things. Firstly, it made me appreciate the wisdom and intelligence in our body. So the intelligence of nature that put this together. Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 08:34
Wow.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 08:34
So far beyond what our little brains can conceive of. You know, we could never design something like this. So there is an intelligence that is greater than our brain. So that was the first thing that made me start to blend the two and realize that, okay, maybe that they don't have to be mutually exclusive from each other, spirituality and science. And then I think the big thing for me was starting to look at inside a cell. In the nucleus of a cell, there are— and I'm going to get a little scientific here, but don't worry, I'm going to pan out.
John Milham (Host) · 09:12
Yeah, yeah, good.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 09:14
So inside the nucleus of a cell are tiny little— they're called organelles, but they're like organs of the cell in the same way we've got organs in the body. So you've got these little organs in the cell, and all of them have their own roles in life. They are distinct from each other. They know what they do do, and they know what they don't do because that other role is for that other organelle. So they all see themselves, you know, they're all quite distinct and individual. But then from the level of the cell, the cell is saying, well, hang on, you think you're all individual and doing your own thing, but actually you're all just part of me. So don't get excited thinking you are individual. But I'm individual because I've got a membrane around the cell and I'm different from other cells and I've got my own jobs in life and my own things that I do and they're different. And then the liver is saying, aren't you cute, little cell? You think you're different from the other cell? You're not. You're all part of me. You're all one. We're all actually doing the same job. But I'm doing something different from all the other organs. I'm unique and individual. And then from the body perspective, our body is saying, no, you're not separate. You're all just part of the same thing. You're all part of the whole. So this pattern repeats throughout every level. So then we get to our level of awareness. And I think that I'm different from you, John, because I've got my own job. I've got my own things that I do in life. I've got my own relationships with different groups of cells. And then why would the pattern stop at us just because this is our awareness? Or does it continue? And there is something bigger than us saying, aren't you cute, John and Cherie, thinking you're both individual from each other and separate and distinct. You're not. You're all part of the same. So I just, in looking at neuroscience, in learning about how we work on a micro level and understanding the nature of being, I felt like I had a much greater appreciation of the nature of being.
John Milham (Host) · 11:10
That is so fascinating. I, I love that. Um, like Spinoza, who was Einstein's favorite sort of, um, you know, scientist, he talks about the illusion of free will. There is nothing in, in the world, in the pattern that has free will, right? You know, um, although, you know, like, you know, the idea of an illusion of will is enough for me, right? I, I, you know, I only need to think I'm making a, a choice, right? But, um, yeah, you know, so that kind of thing, um, repeats. I, I love that it also repeats in the, you know, in the non-physical, you know. Do you— is that true? Like, so a pattern. Like, we're looking at, say, you know, there's a lot of talk about, um, you know, psychological health and behavior and so on. Um, and yet, like, you know, say, Internal Family Systems is just capturing that sense of the organs of a cell, right? And we can bring out consciousness.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 12:14
Yeah. And the different personalities of our emotions that are all trying to look after us and help us to move forward in life. And I think that is where a lot of my meditation came from, to anthropomorphize my own emotions. And even— I didn't talk about this, uh, a couple of weeks ago when I was on stage, but I also anthropomorphized my body parts. Wow. When I was heading into lung surgery, And I had never had a general anaesthetic before. I'd never had surgery, and I cut my teeth on lung surgery, you know, just a vital organ, nothing big, just quietly, no big deal.
John Milham (Host) · 12:54
The lead-up in, in terms of context, right, you're— you were dealing with, with what, uh, condition?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 13:03
Uh, so it's called a spontaneous pneumothorax, which in plain speak is we don't know why, but your lung keeps collapsing.
John Milham (Host) · 13:12
Had you been diving? Were you—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 13:14
that's the first question. I was, uh, have you been diving? Has somebody slapped you on the back really enthusiastically? Have you been coughing too much? Have you— they went through a whole range of questions. Are you a smoker? Are you a vaper? And for anybody who vapes, according to the surgeons, vaping is way worse than smoking for your lungs.
John Milham (Host) · 13:32
Wow.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 13:33
As a little side note. Um, but anyway, I hadn't done any of those things, which is why they then call it spontaneous, that it happens without cause, which to me, I argued with them a lot.
John Milham (Host) · 13:45
You're saying, okay, yeah, we'll treat me first, but let's have a philosophical discussion of whether it—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 13:52
Right.
John Milham (Host) · 13:53
Yeah, whether anything is spontaneous, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 13:56
I wanted to put that in the suggestion box that they rename it to, we don't know why, as opposed to spontaneous, because really it's just, just admit it, you don't know. And I was the stubborn patient that was having all these arguments with the surgeons that knew way more about my condition than I did, and I was there saying, "No, that doesn't make sense." So I'm sure I was quite a punish, but we ended up with a laugh each time.
John Milham (Host) · 14:21
Yeah, it's one of those things where sometimes I wonder, you know, sure, I get my rights, but do they actually take it out on me by slipping a little less of the painkiller in where I need it?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 14:36
I know, you wonder. You wonder, like when you order food and it's terrible and you send it back and you get a new one and you think, oh, should I eat it? They were fantastic. And I know that there's a lot of different experiences of the hospital system and the waiting system, uh, in ER. And I, I guess they're so busy and understaffed that some people will have a good experience and some people won't. I cannot speak highly enough about what they managed to do under the pressure that they are under. Just, I was so impressed with the doctors, the surgeons, the, the nursing staff are incredible. So I'm now one of those people on the bandwagon of they need better conditions and more money.
John Milham (Host) · 15:19
Yeah, well, I'm, you know, I think we all do.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 15:21
Yeah, yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 15:22
No, no, it's, it's, it's, it's a good point. So you're, um, you, you've walked in with this You know, once you've agreed to disagree on the fundamental causes of your pneumothorax. Yes. So you're going in and they're going to— I think that they glue the pleura, right? Just to bore our listeners, they glue the pleura back. So you look like a fit and sort of healthy person. Was this a challenge for you, like to have something just go wrong?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 15:53
Massively. I don't even take Panadol, John. So to be told that I needed surgery, and I argued over that as well, because the first time my lung collapsed, I went to the doctor and said, I feel like I've torn a muscle in between my ribs. Uh, and I told her about the symptoms, and she said to me, go away, it will fix itself.
John Milham (Host) · 16:15
Right.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 16:16
So I went away, and over a week it did fix itself, so I didn't worry about it. And then a few weeks later it happened again, so I went back and I thought, I'll see a different doctor. And I saw the doctor that specialized in sports medicine. And she, you know, bent me this way and that. Does it hurt here? And does it hurt there? And ended up suggesting that maybe it's stress-related and suggested I try meditation. I didn't tell her that I was a meditation teacher.
John Milham (Host) · 16:39
Oh, wow.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 16:41
So I just said, okay, thanks very much. And the third time it happened, I— and sorry, it did heal itself again. And then the third time it happened, I went to a different doctor she sent me for blood tests and an X-ray. And that's when the doctor called me and said, your results have just come back. You need to go to emergency right now. So when I went there and they were suggesting surgery, I was saying, no, no, no, but this is the third time this has happened. And I know that it reinflates itself. And sure, it didn't stay up, but it didn't stay up the last two times, but maybe it will stay up this time. So I don't think I need surgery. So I kept arguing with them, and it was a massive challenge for me to accept that as a really healthy person, other than that, that I needed to have lung surgery. And I just— it took me a while to accept that my body couldn't heal itself.
John Milham (Host) · 17:35
Yeah.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 17:35
Um, and it was only when I ended up— they sent me away and said, uh, okay, you don't need to have surgery right now, but 'You need to make an appointment with a surgeon to at least have a conversation with them and understand what's going on, understand the risks. It's always your decision, but you need to understand what decision you're making.' So I thought, that's fair enough, and I made a decision with this. I made an appointment for the surgeon, and it was a month away or 6 weeks away. And within that time, my lung collapsed again, but this time it collapsed so much that there was more air pressure on the outside of the lung than the inside of the lung. Which means it kept making it go further and further and further down. And the problem with that is if the lung gets too small, it puts pressure on the heart. And if you move your heart just a little bit, you're out, game over. So I did consent to surgery at that point.
John Milham (Host) · 18:30
Yeah, which is, you know, fair enough. It gets to the existential point and you go, okay, I'll probably go there.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 18:36
Fair, fair.
John Milham (Host) · 18:38
Taking that leap, you know, that, that sense of, well, we, we hit a bottom, you know, we, you know, we get to a point, right, a Rubicon, right, we, we have to cross it and we make a new decision. What did that do? What did that change in you? Like, you know, like as a student of behavior, what did you learn? Was it— was that an individual lesson, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 19:00
There were a few things going on there. Because if I rewind, um, about 7 years earlier, I— my husband and I were trying to conceive. We wanted to start a family, and that wasn't working for us. And that was a, a 7-year journey in itself of trying to become pregnant and it not working. And I Again, because I was really healthy, my husband was really healthy. We got an A+ on all of our health tests. You know, it didn't matter who we saw. They said, great, you're in perfect condition. This should be fine. You know, you should be pregnant within a couple of months. And then it didn't matter who I saw. You know, it was disappointment after disappointment that that never happened. And the one— although I tried a lot of different natural modalities to help my body come into the right environment to fall pregnant, I didn't want to do IVF. I just had it in my head that I didn't want to become a science project, not just from the doctors but from myself. I didn't want our intimate life to become a science project or have, you know, some sort of objective. There was something in me that said, if I'm not falling pregnant naturally, I do— I like believing in nature, you know. Is there something here that is a good reason for me not falling pregnant. And it might have been within my own body. It might have been within our relationship. Who— I don't know. Anyway, I decided that I didn't want to do IVF and I just wanted to trust my body. So that resulted in not having any children at all. So fast forward to me not wanting to have surgery. And it occurred to me one day while I was teaching a yoga class actually, and I got this massive insight and it just made me freeze. And I thought, quick, keep talking, tell them something. You're the one leading a class here. While I was having this big epiphany that I'm in this position of wanting to trust my body to reinflate the lung itself, and I don't want to have intervention. I want to trust my body. But then I'm thinking, hang on, I remember now the last time I trusted my body, I ended up without a baby. Yeah. Do you take intervention?
John Milham (Host) · 21:21
Yeah. Yeah.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 21:22
So it was this tug of war. The whole, the whole experience was me constantly coming to terms with, um, I'm going to have to do this if I want to survive. And you know, when they glue your pleura, it's, it's a brutal process. But I also got to the point of, okay, well, it's either go through something brutal and who knows what will come of that later because there's always, um, side effects or potential longer-term problems that could come out of having a surgery and intervening with the body. But it's either that or die now. So suddenly it seemed like a really good option, but it was a massive hill of acceptance that I needed to climb. Massive. And I had to include my lung in that journey. So this is where I turned to meditation a lot. And anthropomorphize my lung, give it a voice and an opinion and have a conversation with it in meditation and say, this is what's going on. We, we are having surgery. This is it. And prepare everybody. And in my mind, and you know, we make the meaning we want to, to feel better in the moment. So in my mind, having a chat with my lung and telling it what was going on was going to make the recovery a little bit easier.
John Milham (Host) · 22:42
That is an amazing, uh, you know, like, I get a sense of gift out of that, right? They're going through those life— how do you, how do you set up to, to, to go through that? Like, it sounds very intentional, your, your process of dealing with those life challenges. Is that, is that from your training, or is that, you know, who you are? Is that—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 23:09
did that come from childhood, or I'm doing a master's on that very question because, yeah, I, what I want to work out is, do some people have a natural innate disposition to move through obstacles with a bit more ease, or is it a skill that you're taught? I feel in my case, it was a little bit of both, but what I question is, Did I learn the skills easier and adopt them because of my innate disposition? So that's my master's thesis that I'll be working on. So I'll get back to you with that answer.
John Milham (Host) · 23:50
Can we reschedule in a year or so? I find that question incredibly important. Like the nurture-nature discussion has been going on forever, right? Yeah. But, you know, having a propensity to solve a problem doesn't mean the, you know, the situation will allow you to, to, to apply either that talent or opportunity, right? So it's very, it's very strange. It's one of those things, it comes from— I, I have, you know, ADHD, and I, I'm constantly sort of trying to mitigate the consequence of that as a child, right? Which is that, you know, incredible amount of negative reinforcement and, and, um, and, uh, you know, being an outlier and, and being misunderstood and, um, yeah, and, uh, misused in some ways with what I gained from being in that position, right? So, you know, one of the challenges, you know, being a counselor coach, uh, having had to pay very close attention to things first up to manage them because I know I won't have the opportunity later to, you know, to review, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 25:07
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 25:08
Meant that I developed an acuity for connecting with people and things, right? Very quickly. So I, I feel like I was given the gift of being able to read people, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 25:20
Right. Interesting. So one of the skills that I was taught early on were— or not skills, one of the theories that I was taught early on was that there are pros and cons to everything. There is no— it's not that ADHD is a bad thing, it's not that it's a good thing. There are pros and cons to it. And it was— I applied that very much to me trying to fall pregnant, not being able to. And I said, okay, well, there are pros and cons to having children. It's not just a good thing, it's not just a bad thing if I can't. There are pros and cons to both. And I had to sit down, literally pen and paper, and write down what were the pros of not having children, what were the cons of having children. And it wasn't to try and change my mind and convert me into a, I don't want children person. It was to find peace with, okay, this could happen either way. And both options have pros and cons. So I'll just see where the wind takes me. We're going to keep trying because that is our current preference. But now we're going into it not with an obsession of it has to be that way or life is over, but rather, um, there are a whole lot of cons to that situation of becoming parents. And if we go down that path, we embrace all of that as well. And if we don't go down that path, then I still call it biological, but I still have this deep need to mother. So, okay, how am I going to do that? I'm gonna need to find some other way to mother, which is why, John, it doesn't matter how busy I am. We were having that chat before, I think it was before the recording started, but it doesn't matter how busy I am. I will always make time for things like this where I get to mother other people through sharing my experiences because that is how I fill my greatest need, which is also my greatest void. So as long as I can do things like this, I keep topping up my void. I feel fulfilled and I am a mother, but just in my way, not for the brochure.
John Milham (Host) · 27:26
Yeah. Wow. It's a, it's a beautiful, like I say, reframe, not in, um, yeah, it is dismissive way, right? Reframe is one of the greatest, um, self-management skills we can have, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 27:41
Absolutely.
John Milham (Host) · 27:41
And in that reframe, when we're able, we find forward momentum. I'm pretty sure moving forward is the result of your doing the pros and cons, right? So, you know.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 27:53
My whole life now is set up because of doing that exercise. And now I look back and I wouldn't change anything. If I could go back and do, you know, magic wand, yes, she fell pregnant, I wouldn't. Because that would have meant that I couldn't go to uni as a mature age student. I couldn't have studied neuroscience. I couldn't have advanced my own understanding in who I am spiritually as a result of neuroscience. And I wouldn't have had the, the understanding of how to take myself through lung surgery. And I would have been on way more drugs than I needed to just to cope with going through that situation. As opposed to— I now, looking back at my lung surgery experience and what I got out of it because of meeting my body in a whole new way and understanding myself. And then also, and I know we haven't touched on this yet, but meeting my emotions that also that I was searching for and looking to bring peace to as a part of that lung experience, the fact that I now know myself on such a deeper level that I honestly didn't know was possible to know myself on. I now refer to lung surgery, my experience of lung surgery, as the most beautiful and fulfilling experience that I have had yet in my life, and I just wouldn't change anything.
John Milham (Host) · 29:23
That rings true in my, uh, you know, as I think on circumstances of great stress, physical challenges, right, in my own life, right, I'd have to say I'm, you know, I'm basically grateful for the pain.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 29:39
Right, right, right. And if I think if other people, I mean, I hear you, I understand exactly what you're saying. I think if other people haven't yet found the gratitude in their experiences and looked and intentionally looked for what they learned and what they gained from it and which doors opened because of that experience and realize that there were pros to what they currently only perceive as cons. Once you do find them and you can feel the gratitude, then that allows you to move forward loving your life. You find so much peace, you let go of resentment, you judge yourself less, therefore you judge others less. You're generally a happy person, so that spreads. To other people. It's just a— it's a more comfortable way to live, right?
John Milham (Host) · 30:30
Absolutely. I, you know, I, I, I, I agree completely with you. It's interesting because as a cognitive neuroscientist, right, and behaviorist, right, you're talking a lot about feeling and, say, energetic connection to others, right? Is that that, um, acceptance that Beyond us is the membrane that we don't know yet that connects us all.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 30:58
Pretty much, pretty much. And also if you look to the physics of everything that exists, you know, we, we used to only be able to go down to the atom.
John Milham (Host) · 31:09
Yeah.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 31:10
Which, you know, it was very cutely named atom for the, because it was indivisible. Yeah. And now we just, we go down so many more levels. Right down to Planck level, which is just energy. It's just space, and that is in everything. So when you get right down to the, the most basic level of everything that exists, it's all the same.
John Milham (Host) · 31:33
I know. And ever since Ant-Man, I'm convinced that that's the, the way.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 31:37
What's Ant-Man?
John Milham (Host) · 31:38
Right, a Marvel movie where he goes down.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 31:43
Oh, see, It's— yeah, I, I got into science, some people got into movies, but we're all getting the same messages.
John Milham (Host) · 31:51
It's all— everything, everything comes from the same source, right? I, I love the idea of, uh, well, you, you know, you talk about, um, and you talked about, uh, trauma and your unlocking of your own trauma, right? And the process you use to do that. And, and does that play now into your world? You know, you're doing a master's on, you know, nurture or nature or something simp— you know, more complicated than I can remember. But, um, um, does it— is that unlocking stuff for the world or is this a personal journey? Are you like, you know, is the value—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 32:31
it depends if you see the difference in that.
John Milham (Host) · 32:34
Uh, yeah, of course. Yeah, like, right. You know, everything I know, everyone knows, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 32:40
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm doing it for me. Uh, I personally on a spiritual level have a, a belief, a feeling of oneness. So if I'm doing it for me, it's, it's affecting us all. Um, but I also very much do it for myself because the more I can, the more I can understand, the more I can share and offer to other people. And because that's how I mother, uh, I'm very selfish with my education and I will go and study everything that I'm interested in because I'm going to apply myself a lot more and take it in a lot more and, um, understand it more efficiently if it is in my field of interest. So, you know, you just, that goes for anything that you're learning. If you're interested in it, you're going to learn it faster. It's just more efficient for the brain. So, um, if I can learn more about our emotions, how we move around in the world and how we feel about that, how we feel about ourselves, how we find peace in situations. And like you said something before about, uh, upskilling. And we can't always find a solution to the situations that we're in. So in my mind, it's not even about finding a solution. It's about managing the way we feel about moving through a situation. When we change the way we feel about it, we will see it differently and we may then see a solution. But even if we don't see a solution, even if there is no solution to that situation, We still can make— can manage the way we feel in ourselves about it, which is why it was really important for me to embrace lung surgery. And I just needed to find peace with— can I tell you a story about finding peace?
John Milham (Host) · 34:40
Yeah, yeah.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 34:41
This was— this came from the, this, the surgeon who I said to him that I hoped for one particular style of operation over the other because one was way more brutal. And I said, okay, well, I hope my lung is in a situation where I, I need option A, not option B. And he slapped me down verbally and said, Cherie, hope does nothing around here.
John Milham (Host) · 35:06
What?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 35:08
Like, oh man, that is so harsh. I am in such a vulnerable state right now.
John Milham (Host) · 35:14
Wow.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 35:14
But I thought about it afterwards And I thought, he's right. If I hope that my lung is in a situation that I get, you know, this particular operation, and I find out after the CT scan that it's not, then it is going to make me plummet emotionally. And then I'm going to have to work really hard to bring myself up to neutral again to accept that different style of operation. But if I don't hope for any particular outcome, and I just say, okay, it is what it is. I'm here, I'm being looked after, I'll get the operation that my lung needs. And then I don't have to wait until the results and hope that they're the one I want to feel at peace. I can just feel at peace now. Okay, that's a counter thought, like it's a counterculture kind of sort of, sort of. It's, it, it's actually in line with Buddhism's version of acceptance. They're not hoping for one way or another. In Buddhism, it's, this is what is, accept what is. And it's not to say that you don't take any action, that you just accept and you just lie down and let the world walk over you. It's not that at all. It is, okay, I'm not going to get emotional about which way, which option it is. I'm going to accept that these are my two options and I'm going to take one of them. Yeah, period. And then I had instant peace at that point. And I, it's, I know it is, it does seem, um, uh, a go against counter, it's counterculture because we all love to hope. And what I have realized, we're all raised on hope.
John Milham (Host) · 36:57
Yeah.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 36:57
You know, I hope you have a good day. I hope you have a good weekend. I hope you feel better soon. I, I hope you Everything. I hope it goes well.
John Milham (Host) · 37:05
I hope your future is good. You know, like, I hope it's bright.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 37:07
I hope everything for you. And we just, we are brought up with these semantics get into our brain and make us think that hoping is what you've got to hang on to. And it just throws us into emotional turmoil because we don't always get what we hope for. And, you know, let's say on average, we only get it 50% of the time, which means 50% of the time, we are setting ourselves up to be upset.
John Milham (Host) · 37:33
It's the— it's, you know, building the win and a loss into the life equation, of which, you know, winning and losing is a— is an irrelevant measure.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 37:45
It just throws you from emotional pole to emotional pole, and that's exhausting. Or you can just sail through the middle. And it's not saying that we need to cancel all of the positive emotions and, you know, all of the up times. It's saying in this smoothness of going through the middle, and I mean, I also think that's impossible. That's what I'm aiming for, to stay as close to the middle as possible. But I don't, as a human, we all have emotions. So we're all going to be thrown around, but the closer we can come back to the center, the more contentment we have. And if we can reframe to instead of obsessing on on the, uh, happiness. What's— yeah, I was trying to find something that was even more like being elated all the time and having to be up all the time. Like, if we can actually find satisfaction and enjoyment in just moving through life, and if I could take it to the other extreme, if we can bring ourselves to the point where we are able to enjoy feeling anything at all, then we enjoy life no matter where it goes.
John Milham (Host) · 38:54
Absolutely.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 38:55
Purely as a gift of life. And this is a really rich, heavy emotion. And isn't that a beautiful thing to experience?
John Milham (Host) · 39:04
100%. 100%. And I love that idea because it's so inclusive and validating, right? So I was listening to, uh, uh, um, the former Australian of the Year who's blind. And he, like, understanding the world with the loss of a sense, for me it was, oh, how terrible. But it's not that at all for him, right? It's like what other senses are, you know, are filling his time and space and creating contentment and fulfillment, right? So yeah, love that idea. It's interesting because You mentioned hope in, in, uh, in context of negative emotions, right? So, um, when you, you know, it's almost like becoming attached— hope is capable of steering you down the dark side as well as the light, right? When you're—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 40:02
yeah, it can if you don't get what you were hoping for. Absolutely. That's, that's so disappointing. And you were the one that actually set yourself up to feel disappointment by hoping.
John Milham (Host) · 40:11
Uh, I was just going to say, what, what, like the mechanism of hope? Where, you know, what purpose does that serve? As a cognitive neuroscientist, uh, and behaviorist, what, what, what do you think? Um, why do we have this incredible propensity for hope?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 40:26
I don't know. I, I wonder if it has something to do with survival instincts and that we are looking for We're looking for the positive. Just for, you know, we're looking to be safe. We're looking to procreate. We're looking to make sure we have enough food. We're looking to make sure it all happens to ensure our survival. And I don't know. I don't know. I've thought about this before. And right now, even as I'm saying it, I'm pulling my argument apart. Therefore, I'm not speaking in whole sentences. But I don't know that it serves much of a functional purpose other than giving us a short-term bit of relief, which I would relate that to eating hot chips. I love hot chips. I actually love salty and deep fried food. Right. But all it does is give you some carbs and some fat for some energy. It's a short-term win to keep you feeling good and keep going. It offers no other nutrition whatsoever. And I feel like hope does that. It doesn't give you anything long-term. It just gives you a, a little spike of happiness because I can hope for something beyond where I am. But, you know, I even think about, uh, somebody— I've had a lot of people challenge me on giving up hope.. And somebody said that in dire times, sometimes hope is all we have to hold onto. And they, you know, we've got enough wars to choose from at the moment with examples. And they said people in the frontline, sometimes hope is all they have. That is the only thing that they get up for.
John Milham (Host) · 42:22
Yeah.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 42:22
And I had to think about that for a while to try and imagine what it might be. In that position. And I also then wondered if hope might be the very thing that gets them up each day, but that is not sustainable because we are years into these wars and they cannot keep getting up each day and hoping, expecting that to get them through for years and years. They are going to burn out. They are going to be that upset and disappointed in humanity fair enough, and have to, have to leave, have to do something else. And then we lose people on the front line that are, you know, helping try to resolve these things. And I wonder if they woke up and just said, this is what it is. This is what I have to do. This is the aim. It is what it is. Let's just meet reality where it's at. And I wonder if they might have had more stamina and they might have been less disheartened and emotional by the reality of the world.
John Milham (Host) · 43:23
It strikes me as the way you've described it, as moving beyond hope, is about, you know, reaching a new level of kind of psycho-emotional fitness, right? You—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 43:36
that's a really good way of putting it.
John Milham (Host) · 43:38
You know, like, like, you get— when you can move beyond the, the kind of anticipatory or, or the aspirational to the acceptance level, you've kind of added another, you know, layer of You know, when we say in the, you know, do the work, maybe that's what we're talking about. Move, move to another layer of motivation, if you will.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 43:59
And you've moved on from the hot chips to actual vegetables.
John Milham (Host) · 44:03
Well, and not just because it's worthy, but because you love vegetables.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 44:08
I do. I really do, actually. But yes, because it is more nourishing for your psychology and your well-being, and you actually feel better. And once you feel better, you don't go back to the short-term hopes because they don't make you feel better. They do not give you emotional stability. They give you a little short-term high, that's all.
John Milham (Host) · 44:30
Yeah, yeah, they're not sustainable. I, I think that might like come into like— I remember, uh, Dr. Amy Cuddy, uh, did a TED Talk on, um, um, she's the power stance lady, but Um, she, she talked about faking it till you become it.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 44:47
Yes.
John Milham (Host) · 44:48
And, uh, which is like, you know, you know, sort of more sustainable than just faking it to your, to your make it until you make it.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 44:54
Yeah. That's a, I like that. I like the way she says that.
John Milham (Host) · 44:57
Why on earth did you, uh, like you, you've got a situation where you, where you, you are a, you know, yoga teacher, you understand like emotions and metaphysical elements. Of life, right? Why did you want to challenge your worldview, like, with, um, diving into the physical, you know, unlocking the physical? What, what motivated you to go down that path?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 45:26
It was a little of the same reason of why I walked away from religion. It was— you ask— sorry, I don't mean to generalize that. I asked specific questions that I didn't get answers to that satisfied me. So I went elsewhere. Yeah, that was the reason why I walked away from Christianity in my teens. Um, and then when I started opening my mind to the spiritual world, because I certainly didn't grow up with that, I grew up with, you know, math, science, and English. Um, so when I started delving into that and I started asking specific questions and the answers that I got weren't satisfying, and then I met a few teachers who, you know, one teacher led to the next. I ended up with, uh, Dr. John Demartini. I don't know if you're aware. Yeah. Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 46:24
I'm, I'm, uh, I've got, uh, my values card on the wall. So, you know, correct. Good.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 46:30
Excellent. Um, so I ended up with him. Now, you knowing him, you would know that he also bridges spirituality and science. So I went to him not really knowing what I was in for, but what he gave me was all of the answers to the questions that I was asking that people in the spiritual world couldn't give me anything. And what I realized is in the world of spirituality, there's a lot of beliefs. There's a, it's very similar to religion that no, sorry, we can't prove it, but we feel it to be true. And when that works for people, I think that's fantastic because as long as you feel certainty, there's a lot of comfort in that. So that was wonderful. I didn't have any certainty around it. And it was science that gave me a lot more certainty and allowed me to understand my version of spirituality a lot more concretely. So it was, it was incremental that I went there one teacher at a time and ended up with John Demartini, who just ticked all of the boxes that I needed ticked. Uh, and then that was, that led me quite naturally into, okay, I need to do a neuroscience degree. I want to know what he's talking about in much greater detail. So I needed to let go of those teachers and just go and do a degree for myself, which was a big thing because I, I left school at year 10. I was not into academia whatsoever.
John Milham (Host) · 48:04
That's inspiring, right? So yeah, um, yeah, what I, I love that idea, like the, that, um, you can go on and, and, you know, rebuild, you know, a view the community's already wiped you out, right, at a certain point.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 48:21
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess that's the sign of modern times though. It's not that you get into a job and you stay there until retirement and then that's it, and then you kind of just start deteriorating in your armchair. Um, these days you can reinvent yourself at whatever age you want to do whatever you would like. It's all acceptable. And In my view, if you're doing what you love, you don't ever need to retire. Just keep doing it. If you want to do that in your spare time, you'll keep doing it. And I quite frankly want to keep studying in my spare time. So I'd say I'll just keep being a university junkie and do degree after degree.
John Milham (Host) · 49:00
I love it. I fantasize about the ADHD degree, which is like every—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 49:08
Yeah, tell me, what is that?
John Milham (Host) · 49:09
Well, every time I go down a rabbit hole on YouTube, I get a certificate, right? So they, you know, I can gain a degree by being, you know, way too hyperfocused on esoteric data from a million different subjects, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 49:25
So I love that.
John Milham (Host) · 49:27
So they, you know, they add them all up and say, oh, you've now got 300 credit points, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 49:31
And we'll give you an honorary doctorate.
John Milham (Host) · 49:33
It will give you a degree, an undergraduate Highly distracted, hyperfocused, down the rabbit hole. Wouldn't that be wonderful? So it becomes fascinating, right? So you've driven this, you've ridden this drive, right? And driven it to unlocking a lot of not just answers but questions.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 50:00
Yes.
John Milham (Host) · 50:02
So, and then like, so you I hear you on stage and you share an exploratory process where you, um, you know, you met your own trauma and you spoke to it and you gained some understanding and some commission with it, you know, like, um, so how, how do you think that is going to— like, I believe you're sharing that is like the, you know, the role of connecting to the community and passing on the wisdom. Is that the job of a researcher? Is that where we gain from the work of people like yourself?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 50:42
Yes, being a researcher is— it only has any use if you're sharing it with the public and making it, giving it a practical application. To, I mean, to know things just for the sake of knowing things is wonderful. It's probably more philosophy. Um, but you still need to share that. That's the whole, that's the whole point of it. So yes. Um, the idea of me getting up on stage to share it, to inspire other people to, and to normalize meditation for starters. And I think it is becoming a little bit more mainstream. It's not, um, it's not on the fringes for spiritual or woo woo or new age people anymore. I think where I go with my meditation is probably still very much on the fringes because I'm talking to my body parts, my emotions, and they're talking back.
John Milham (Host) · 51:37
We do this, like, you know, the pre— the language of self-addressing, like the inner dialogue is there regardless of whether you're a, you know, uh, uh, you know, a, a tradie or a, a corporate executive or a res— or a, a university researcher. Yes.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 51:55
Yeah. It's just an awareness of its power or it's like, and utilizing that power, like really, uh, taking advantage of the fact that we have all these voices in our heads and instead of getting them to all yell at the same time, meditation really is just focused attention.
John Milham (Host) · 52:15
Yeah.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 52:16
So I was focusing my attention on my lung and because it was a spontaneous pneumothorax, AKA No idea. I thought that maybe there might be an emotion there because emotions have an effect in our body. And I, I wondered if so, and actually just going back to neuroscience, in neuroscience terms, a feeling is our perception of our mood. An emotion is the physiological aspect. It's what happens in the body. So I wondered if there might be an emotion that was causing a little bit of havoc in my lung and that was explaining the spontaneous factor. Uh, and then, so I used meditation to inquire and that's when I found grief. So using this focused attention of meditation, I was able to quieten down all of the other voices in my head. And just give grief a voice and then have conversations with her. And, you know, she was grieving and she was sobbing and I did have to comfort her. And it did take a long time for her to stop crying and then to actually lift her head and look at me and for us to have a conversation. But multiple meditations later, we have this beautiful relationship. And in one meditation, and because because my meditations are quite vivid. There was one meditation and Grief and I went over and we sat on a bench seat and it looked out to the mountains and we could see the, you know, the different, um, the mountain lines going back into the sunset. And it was just gorgeous. And in that moment, I felt the, the joy of just being alive. And the joy of sharing that moment with grief, and that we were both there together. And at the exact same moment, there was grief very much present, you know, literally next to me, and I could feel the grief of never being able to share that view with a child of my own. And they were both present. And that is the other thing that I have come to know about life, is that emotions come together in complementary opposites. So, you know, joy and, and I had the, the relief was there as well. So the relief of being in the company of grief, as well as the grief of not being able to share this with my own child, the joy of being able to experience any of this at all. It was all there. It was such a rich moment.. And it all happened within my meditation. Yet when that meditation ended, I am on top of the world because I have just connected with a part of myself. I have fallen in love with the emotion of grief. I have acknowledged my own grief that will always be with me. And at the same time, fallen in love with this, um, anthropomorphized concept of grief and have a solid relationship with it and find comfort it in hanging out with her. Wow.
John Milham (Host) · 55:32
Which, yeah, like, it sounds so rich, but of course it sounds so imp— you know, like, really effective way of, of, of, of allowing us to be our natural selves, right? That sense of, you know, we call them negative emotions, like they're uninvited or unwelcome, right? But of course everything that happens in us is a— has a You know, is a cog that turns for a reason, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 56:01
Right, right, right.
John Milham (Host) · 56:02
There must be something like the light and dark of emotion, right? It's—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 56:06
they're just, they're all emotions and we learn so much from all of them. And I used to think when I used to, when I got into emotional intelligence consulting initially, I was helping people who felt one particular emotion about a situation. I was helping them to find the pros to the cons. So they could feel differently about it. What I wasn't doing was helping them process that emotion. I was just helping them to feel both and acknowledge that they were both there. And like we were saying earlier, therefore find that gratitude for that situation and it automatically changes the way you feel.
John Milham (Host) · 56:43
Yeah.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 56:44
And I still love that as a process. This is completely different. This allows you to actually meet your emotions And I don't want to say neutralize the emotion, but neutralize the detrimental effect of feeling that emotion.
John Milham (Host) · 57:00
Wow.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 57:00
And there's a really big difference in that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's why I go to the stage talking about it, realizing that half the people in the audience are thinking, wow, okay, I either, I've got some experience in that. I know what you mean. I'm going to try it. I really like that. And the other half of the audience thinking, What the hell is she talking about? What a weirdo. Get off stage. And I'm okay with that because I wanna share this for the people who are ready to hear it and who might wanna try it and who it does help. And if it does help people, then you know, this is, this is me mothering. So I'm okay with looking like a dickhead to half the crowd if it helps the other half.
John Milham (Host) · 57:40
We take that chance everywhere, right? So yeah, I love that. We're throwing the seed out there and the fertile ground will grow it. Um, I saw the impact of your words on a person I knew at the event, right, who had, um, lost their wife, uh, recently. So they were, you know, in the middle of a grief process. You know, it really— what you, uh, shared really dug into their fertile ground, right? So, you know, they, they bought, you know, bought your book and, um, and, uh, you know, they've immersed themselves in what you're sharing. And I think, you know, like, you know, that's a, that's the process. That's the, the aid on our hero's journey that you need to grow.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 58:27
Yeah, very much so. I love, I love that you said hero's journey as well. It's, um, it is, it is the hero's journey when you go through the, the turmoil, the obstacles, when you want to reject it and say, I am not going down that path, I did not want to be that hero. And it's, you're in too far, you can't get out. Um, reality is reality and you have to keep going. And then you come out of it with new skills, new feelings, there with your lived experience to then help other people heal.
John Milham (Host) · 59:01
That really is. I, I, I love how you talked about the micro early on, right? And in some ways I've looked at the, you know, the, the, you know, the cell, right? The neurons Right. In many ways, and, and I, I've often thought, you know, you talked about science and spirituality, right? I, I think they get to the same place. Yes. You know, and beyond that is the sort of leap of faith. And of course, the definition of faith is, uh, belief without evidence, right? So, and I, and I love how that kind of looks a little bit like the end of a synapse, right? Because, you know, to, to—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 59:38
oh, Wow.
John Milham (Host) · 59:40
Yes, to transport an idea, then, you know, a chemical and electrical— every— like, I'm sure you understand, most of us don't. And then of course they leap over that gap.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 59:52
Well, most people don't realize that, that a synaptic connection— there is no connection. One neuron does not touch the next one. There is a gap. I love that you just compared that to Faith.
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:06
That's, you know, when we step, you know, when we get to that point, right, stepping out.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:00:11
Yeah, you have to step into the abyss.
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:14
Yeah, whether it's science or religion or—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:00:17
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, same, same—
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:19
or love, right, or, you know, grief, right? We're stepping into the unknown, and that's, that's literally our brain, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:00:30
So, and there you go, there's the pattern. Being repeated on different levels.
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:34
So, um, you've excited me, right? So good, those little neurons are all buzzing, which is, you know, it's so, um, it's so exciting to see, uh, what you're sharing, the, um, uh, the stuff you're unlocking in yourself and then offering it to the world. What do you think's next for, you know, like, what are we going to unlock soon?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:00:57
My third book.
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:59
So yeah, body talks back. I love that because, you know, you mentioned talking to grief and to your lung.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:01:04
Yeah. Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:05
And then they actually talk back, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:01:08
Yes.
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:08
So they're sharing information, aren't they?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:01:10
Yeah. Yeah. It's an actual dialogue. It's not just, uh, an imagined, and, and the way I explain it is like a dream. It all happens in your head and you are, you are creating the person, your voice. And the voice of any other person in your dream. It's all obviously happening within you, but within your dream, it does seem like it's their opinion and it's their voice, and it does feel like a conversation between two or more people. And that's the same as the meditation process of talking to grief, talking to my lung, that sure, it's all happening within me, but it is a dialogue where when they say something, I didn't plan for them to say that. And sometimes it shocks me what they say. So I know it's not me. It's not a premeditated comment that I'm filling in the gaps and pretending it's a two-way conversation. They're telling me things I didn't think of. So that is the magic and the power of it.
John Milham (Host) · 1:02:12
I don't know what we know internally, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:02:14
No. And we've got no idea scientifically. We've got no idea about consciousness. So who's to say that my lung doesn't have a consciousness of its own? We, you know, we don't know that. Even to me, who had a conversation with my lung and has normalized that, I still hear myself saying, we don't know if a lung has consciousness. And I, I think I sound like an idiot, but it's true. We don't know.
John Milham (Host) · 1:02:39
And the—
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:02:41
I do want to normalize these conversations because it's, um, It's helpful. It is hugely helpful.
John Milham (Host) · 1:02:48
I love that idea because you're like, that wu fu has constantly been a companion in my self-assessment, right? Like, oh, are you really that silly, John? So, but I am, right? So, you know, I am that silly and I love that. And I take a lot of solace from the smartest man in the, you know, currently in the world or the highest IQ, I forget his name. It's just, you know, I've senior moment, but he came up with the concept of biocentricity.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:03:20
You're a boomer now, John.
John Milham (Host) · 1:03:23
Yeah, yeah, well, it's obvious, right? You can forget my senior moment, right? Um, the biocentricity, the fact that big C consciousness is actually necessary to describe the reality of the universe, right? So say it's a variable in the equation of reality, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:03:44
Yeah, absolutely.
John Milham (Host) · 1:03:45
That our, yeah, that our combined consciousness creates is a necessary component to reality, right?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:03:51
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 1:03:52
And of course, on a smaller scale, you know, again, that same pattern that you mentioned, on a smaller scale, our own kind of universe, our, you know, extension of our sort of electromagnetic field is, you know, we create the reality on an individual basis before we roll it up.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:04:12
We do. And I love understanding this. And as far as where I'm going next, all of this stuff comes into my books. So my books very much blend spirituality with science and everything that I've learned in my degrees along the way. And it's, um, I heard of a term recently, brilliant. Bibliotherapy.
John Milham (Host) · 1:04:33
Ah, right.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:04:34
So my books fall into the category of bibliotherapy, which is not a genre of writing, it's a genre of reading. So it is where you can pick up a book and read about somebody else's obstacles and life challenges, and they might be completely unrelated to your own situation, but you get engaged and lost in the story. And while your conscious mind is so busily engaged in the story of what happened to— what happens next in this story, you are subconsciously applying everything that is being talked about to your own situation, and it makes you think differently about your own situation. And importantly, it makes you feel differently about it. So my— both of my books very much fall into bibliotherapy because the first book is about where do you go when your life was headed down this particular track and then you got pushed off the tracks going somewhere completely different, unplanned, unwanted, but you've got to keep going anyway? And that's the one that's called On Path, because I realized in my own experiences that we're never off path. Everything just shifts and changes us to where we're meant to be going, and we can always Humans are meaning-making things, right? So we can always find meaning to create purpose and find the gratitude in what our— what happened in our life so we can move forward with gratitude and peace and joy and enjoyment of life. So that's very much on path. And then the second one, The Body Talks Back, which was spoken most about, was just about how to use meditation to make peace with physical ailments and also emotions that are feeling like they're weighing you down. And it's how to build a relationship with your emotions.
John Milham (Host) · 1:06:30
And the third book?
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:06:31
Well, that is going to be off the back of my thesis. So as soon as I've done my master's thesis on emotional intelligence techniques, that will be the third book. So we're a couple of years off yet.
John Milham (Host) · 1:06:44
Beautiful. I love bibliotherapy. I hadn't heard it before. I'm gonna take that away.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:06:49
Great, isn't it?
John Milham (Host) · 1:06:49
Yeah. And of course the list of bibliotherapeutic books that have been, you know, in, in my world, you know, everything from The Brain That Changes Itself, you know, totally, you know, um, parabola, you know, um, uh, you know, The Dance of Connection, right, with Harriet Lerner and, oh, you know, book after book, right? I think I want to now— do you know the word for— because what you talked about in that, in that, that it's a process of the reader and what happens to that reader, right, really describes how I feel about podcasting, right? So what is the— what's— is there a podcasto therapy or Audio therapy. Audio therapy.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:07:38
Yeah, naratology therapy. There, we can make it up. We'll make it a thing.
John Milham (Host) · 1:07:46
I think, I think there's a, um, you know, there's a, you know, you trademarking that for you.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:07:52
There is. Yeah, there is a podcast genre for you.
John Milham (Host) · 1:07:55
Wow. All right, so many questions unanswered at this point, right? So I'm not sure whether I really want to thank you or claim compensation for really ruining my equilibrium for the rest of the day. It's been my personal— look, I apologize to the readers, listeners, and anyone else out there because I've enjoyed this. And if you didn't get much out of it, I'm sure you did. But if you didn't, well, I don't care. Right, because it was a great deal of fun talking to Sheree today. Thank you so much. I, I feel like I'd like to do a full, a 2-hour one, but you are a busy person. We've established that. Um, I am so grateful to have the chance to, to chat away with, with you. Thank you for humoring me through, uh, today's questions. And, um, I just love, uh, what you're doing. I love— I look forward to reading the next books, and thank you for putting the hard yards in on your hero's journey to bring back such wonderful insights back to the community. Thank you so much.
Sherrie Laryse (Guest) · 1:09:08
Thank you, John.
John Milham (Host) · 1:09:14
Thank you for listening to this episode of Kintsugi Heroes. Thank you to Colin Lilley for permission to use "Broken" as our theme music for this series. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support Kintsugi Heroes and the stories we share, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
Subscribe
Spotify
Apple