#97 Pamela Rathbun on practicing death and letting go
“It’s resistance that causes suffering in life, resistance to flow, holding on, not trusting in the flow.
Practicing death is just knowing that everything dies. Relationships die, jobs change, you move. It’s okay to treat every one of those things as a death because it’s a transition. That’s what death is, it’s a transition to a different state of being. We just don’t know what it is but being able to practice death just allows us to build resilience. ”
During childhood, we move through the world with curiosity and fearlessness of the unknown and near-endings. As we become more institutionalised within the dominant culture, we begin to embody harmful anti-ageing values which are rooted in a crippling fear of the inevitable - death. How then can practicing death in our lives help us re-experience endings and letting go as crucial pathways to living more freely within the wider death-positive ecosystem?
In this episode, we are in conversation with Pamela Rathbun, a Death Doula and Quantum Healing Practitioner, and the creator of Reunion Tour: Making Peace with Your Life. With a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and over 25 years of experience in education, elder care, and integrative healing, she supports people through life’s most meaningful transitions—helping them reconnect with themselves and make peace with their lives.
In this episode, Pamela walks us through the expansiveness of death doula work, more as a spiritual journey through the various endings in our lives rather than the physical transition, and the many ways we can experience and practice death in our living lives, regardless of age or stage in life.
What will be covered:
Death doula work as relationship-building, particularly with yourself
Addressing shame and guilt around death and letting go to transform it into curiosity and radical acceptance of the inevitable
Acceptance that there is no age to start exploring and learning from death
Shame around ageing and death taking away reverence from elders
Quantum healing as modality for death work —> moving beyond body to address energetic blockages e.g. trauma
Becoming the person your younger self would have needed guidance from (stepping into becoming a good elder for yourself)
Art of practicing death :
Embracing change and transition as death of a phase/era
Letting go of the fear of the unknown - meditating on the inevitable to ground ourselves in reality
Reframing death as love and acceptance
Breath work as death ritual - feeling comfortable with physical releases and coming back to the body with love
Episode resources:
Find out more about Pamela’s work at https://www.pamelarathbun.com
Connect to Pamela on Instagram (@iampamelarathbun)
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Mind Full of Everything is a podcast calling for the radical healing of the self and community to outgrow the broken dominant culture of radical individualism and disconnection from our place as interdependent beings, so that we can collectively re-envision a safer, healthier and equitable world. Each episode takes a healing-centric approach to explore the embodied ways in which we can collectively restore and transform our journeys as stewards of community and earth through conversations with writers, researchers, coaches and educators, as well as reflection episodes with the host Agrita Dandriyal on her journey navigating the world as a deeply conscious, culturally-rooted and relational being. Learn more here.
