If you've ever moved abroad and felt that low-level unease that's hard to name, this episode is going to resonate. Kym sits down with Sarah Grosso to explore what it actually feels like to arrive somewhere new and the small, practical ways wild nesting can help you start to feel at home there.
In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, Sarah brings a completely unique lens to this conversation. She's an anthropologist turned therapist who has lived and worked across multiple countries and now supports expats and international couples navigating relocation, identity shifts, and the search for belonging. She shares her concept of wild nesting, practical somatic tools you can use on your next walk, and what it actually looks like to put down roots when you know you might move again.
In This Episode, We Explore…
Connect with Sarah:
Website https://www.sarahjgrosso.com/
Newsletter https://sarahjgrosso.substack.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/p/Sarah-Grosso-Counselling-61550610913306/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sarahjgrosso/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahgrosso
Linktree https://linktr.ee/sjgrosso
Connect with me:
Instagram: @thetravelingtherapist_kym
The Traveling Therapist Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/onlineandtraveling/
Signup to learn more about life as a Traveling Therapist: https://www.portablepracticemethod.com/free-training
Revolutionize Your Private Practice with AI Course: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/ai
Bill Like A Boss Insurance Billing Community: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/blab
Subscribe to the Podcast:
Apple iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcast | Stitcher | Amazon | Castbox
______________________________
Sponsored by Berries: Say goodbye to the burden of mental health notes with automated note and treatment plan creation! https://heyberries.com/therapists
Sponsored by Alma: Managing a private practice can be challenging. There are obstacles at every turn — from navigating the credentialing process, to managing finances, to finding new clients. That’s where Alma can help. Alma is on a mission to simplify access to mental health care by focusing first and foremost on supporting clinicians. https://helloalma.com/kym
Sponsored by Auralink Pro: Give clients a private AI-guided space to reflect before sessions so they can arrive ready to go deeper. Start your free trial at https://www.auralink.com/pro and use code KYMTOLSON for 20% off.
______________________________
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Kym: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast. We have a very interesting guest today. I cannot wait to have this conversation. We have Sarah Grosso here
[00:00:10] I always start out and I just say like, how'd you go from being a typical therapist to a traveling therapist? And you have a super interesting story, so I'd love to just hear a little bit about you and let the listeners know a little bit about you, and then I want to dive into everything that you're doing.
[00:00:22] Sarah: I guess I was never a typical therapist. I've always been outside my home country being a therapist. It's a long story, but I guess that's also why we're here to tell a long story. So
[00:00:33] I had a long experience working in different ways with people and with culture before being a traveling therapist. So I came to it through my background is I'm an anthropologist which is all about studying people and culture. And that took me to been teaching that at a university in Geneva and during my time there.
[00:00:54] 'Cause I love the contact with the students. I found that very often students would approach me after class to share things with me and I wanted to be better prepared to support them with the things they were approaching me with. So I, got to know the head of Counseling program at that time to ask her advice on how to support these students.
[00:01:13] And little by little we talked more and more. And afterwards she said, you know, why are you not doing the counseling program? And so I had the great fortune of being able to do that, and then I could combine. I'm still an anthropologist with now my private practice that I've been growing in these last years, working with some wonderful, nomadic, expat individuals and also some lovely international couples who I get to work with in different places.
[00:01:39] Kym: Amazing. So you're still are, so you're still a professor in teaching anthropology. Then you went to school, became a counselor. So you've got both, both degrees and started your own private practice. That's amazing that you wanted to do that just because the students were, you know, coming in and sharing with you.
[00:01:57] It's like, how can I help them better? I just love that. And it's like, how about I just get a whole new degree and help? It's amazing.
[00:02:05] Sarah: There's such an inspiration to me and they always have been like encouraging me to do different things. And I think actually another piece of inspiration came from being an anthropologist, which involves, I mean, it's a particular way of studying people that really involves going somewhere like traveling, right?
[00:02:22] Like the thing we do, and spending a longer amount of time in a place speaking the language. And from my field work, I went to North Africa. I went to Tunisia, and we lived there for like four and a half years. During that time, because I was studying marriage and divorce, which is also interesting, now I work with couples.
[00:02:43] During that time I spent six months living with the family. I spent around two years regularly observing in a divorce court to understand what marriage and divorce were like for people who lived there. And part of that work involved doing interviews with people. And I found at that time, which surprised me, it doesn't surprise me anymore because we know the things we know.
[00:03:06] I found that at that time people would talk to me about including difficult topics like they're divorced or sometimes, you know, even things like domestic violence. And they would open up because they had a sense that I was not from their culture and I would not judge them.
[00:03:21] Kym: Hmm.
[00:03:22] Sarah: So I learned the power of listening to people with an open mind without judgment, with some, you know, genuine curiosity, gen, genuine care, and affection and compassion for them.
[00:03:34] And to my surprise, people would leave the interview more often. Several, you know, on more than one occasion thanking me for having this experience that helped them to feel good about what they were going through. And kind of, you know, I really needed to be able to talk about that.
[00:03:50] Kym: Yeah.
[00:03:51] Sarah: so that also showed me like the power of listening and the way that, you know, we are then obviously trained a lot more to do that and how that could be healing for people.
[00:04:00] Kym: Yeah. So what is your home country? I'm just curious 'cause you mentioned that in the beginning, like not in your home country. I'm just curious where you're from and where you are now and just all of that part of
[00:04:09] Sarah: Yeah. So I'm British. I grew up in the uk. I studied languages, actually. I studied French and German as my undergraduate. And that took me also to spend a year abroad. So I, quite quickly, when I was quite young, started spending periods of time living in other countries which at the time was Paris.
[00:04:26] And then the Black Forest in Germany followed by Paris again. And the second time in Paris, I met my husband, who's French. And since then, so we obviously he's become my husband. we've lived in various places, either with independently doing a long distance thing or together. Since that time, I then went actually to Paris to study business.
[00:04:51] That's another thing I did. Which gives me an extra peace to understanding some of my clients who were in those lines of work. So I spent time in Paris, Madrid, Argentina, which is really interesting. I didn't worked in an internship there. And then we spent a few months in Singapore. We traveled from Singapore to France by land.
[00:05:12] That was an amazing trip. No therapy involved in that. It was just good. And then we lived in Paris region for a while, Genesio, then 10 years in Geneva, Switzerland which was an amazing experience. And now we are down in the south of France with the flamingos in Montpelier, which is a beautiful city on the Mediterranean.
[00:05:33] Kym: Oh my gosh. I wanna go there. Sounds amazing.
[00:05:37] Sarah: for actually many Americans coming to retire over here. It's really lovely.
[00:05:41] Kym: Oh my gosh, that is amazing. Oh my gosh. I just have so many questions. Okay, so, so right now with the anthropology, like professor job that you have, or is that remote so you're able to do that remotely or, or do you have to like go in and teach and come back out?
[00:05:58] Sarah: So I'm, I'm laughing because it's remote. I actually teach for an American university that has different campuses and I teach for their campus in Tashkent, Uzbeki. So I have a hundred wonderful, gorgeous Uzbek and our assaulted students in my, in my anthropology classes every week, and it's, it's wonderful.
[00:06:19] I love
[00:06:20] Kym: is amazing. Oh my gosh. Just you're like the epitome of like the traveling therapist, you know, just you know, 'cause even, you know, us with just maybe our like, like a social work degree or something like that. There, there's so many different things you can do and I just love hearing, like, okay, I am an anthropologist, I'm a therapist.
[00:06:37] I'm actually living in the south of France, but I teach, I mean, it's just. I just love stuff like this. It just is so inspirational to let the listeners know that you can literally, you can just do anything like the, the possibilities are endless with these careers that we're in, you know? So it's just super inspirational to me.
[00:06:53] So thank you for sharing that part. So the, the anthropology lens, maybe we could talk about that a little bit. Like how does that influence your work with clients? Like maybe somebody's listening and they're like, wow, I love anthropology. I wanna know how to incorporate that more into the work that I'm doing with my clients.
[00:07:09] How does that all come together?
[00:07:12] Sarah: Well, I suspect some of our colleagues are doing it already, right? Because I think for me the, some of the key things I learned in anthropology is actually being curious, right? Being driven by being curious, which supposes having an open mind, which suppose is not judging. People or cultures, right?
[00:07:31] Either of them. And that opens doors to a lot of compassion, I find, right? If we're kind of avoiding the judgment, right? So how do I use that word, clients Well, all the time because my clients come from different cultures. And even if they come from the same culture, of course it's never the same culture.
[00:07:48] I mean, the gottman say, right, that every marriage is an international, in a, sorry, is an intercultural relationship, right? Even if we come from the same culture, right? To Americans, to French people. So trying to kind of listen, be curious, and then maybe ask questions as well to understand really what things mean to people.
[00:08:07] Anthropology is great at unpicking assumptions. To make us completely explode. Any assumptions we think that we might have about what something means? Like say marriage. I'm sure I went to unis ear quite young thinking, oh, marriage, like so romantic people fall in love, they get marriage. No, but sometimes yes,
[00:08:27] Kym: to, I wanna hear more about
[00:08:28] Sarah: sometimes yes, obviously.
[00:08:30] But also no. Right. So in anthropology you see like them. Marriage is an institution, right? Marriage is something structural and cultural that unites not just to individuals, but to families. And therefore, depending on the kinship system that you're in, which has a huge influence is often too important a thing because it's, you know, a pillar of economic life of also morality.
[00:08:56] So there's a religious side too. We can't just leave that to chance. So no wonder families often play a role in organizing a marriage and making sure that it's gonna last. It's, it's too important to be left to, you know, affairs of the heart or our whims or, you know, passions. Not that that doesn't have a place as well.
[00:09:16] So I think I had loads of, it's kind of breaking down those assumptions that are often things that seem so obvious and natural to us that we don't even think to question them. And then kind of, you know, being curious and looking really, what does it mean? So what, and I think in couples work, right?
[00:09:34] What's the relationship? What is the contract between two individuals? If they're mar what does marriage mean to you? Or increasingly we have, you know, we see a range of types of relationship that it moves so quickly, right? So for me, anthropology helps me to be prepared for that because I almost don't need to know.
[00:09:53] I do do my homework, but I almost don't need to know. 'cause the clients are gonna guide me and say, okay, what does that mean to you? What does Polly. Amorous mean for you? What are the, you know, boundaries of your relationship? How do you see that? Do you both have the same vision of that, right? Or is there some actually confusion coming up there?
[00:10:11] So this is kind of super useful and also kind of like broad strokes about what the world looks like from different cultural perspectives. So having lived a long time in Tunisia, which is a Muslim country, and you know Muslim, it can be very different, right? There's a strong cultural piece, but that gives me some insight into maybe what to expect from my lovely Uzbek students who are not all but majority Muslim.
[00:10:41] It gives me some common language but I've also been fascinated to learn from them. Okay. So how is Islam practice then in, in Ashcan? Tell me about that. You know, tell me more. So kind of drawing on some hypotheses, right? Maybe it's a bit like that because I have some insight into that kind of culture, but I don't know everything I need to ask, you know, and find out about it.
[00:11:06] And to encourage also, I mean, clients to do that if they move to a new place, right? I, I call it puppy energy,
[00:11:15] Kym: Ah,
[00:11:16] Sarah: You know, if you ever have a puppy, you go to the beach, right? And the puppy's like. Okay. What,
[00:11:21] Kym: yeah. Yeah. What are we gonna do now? Let's do this. This
[00:11:23] Sarah: what is it? Let me have a look. Right. So this kind of like curiosity, which is without judgment, right?
[00:11:28] This kind of attitude to the new culture we're in. Because we can notice sometimes that. I mean, I find, you know, there are many retiree Americans coming to the South of France down here to relax in the sun and write historical novels. Whatever it is they do is wonderful, but it's, it's, you know, you have that bit of culture shock arriving in a new place. And sometimes that can land with somebody. It can, you can take it personally, right? So if you go to do some bureaucratic procedure, which happens a lot by the way, in France, we have a lot of that. And if in the US maybe I've never lived in the US but I, my imagination is very kind of, like service culture.
[00:12:10] I dunno, that's, maybe it's a stereotype, right? Maybe it's not true, but the kind of, you know, have a nice day welcome. Right? It's kind of that, and in France, that's not gonna how you, that's not how you're gonna be received probably in a bureaucratic office where people are doing their job. And if that lands is, you know, you've just arrived here and people are not welcoming.
[00:12:30] Oh right. That can really land emotionally in a difficult way with some people.
[00:12:35] Kym: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:36] Sarah: So trying to remember that you're being an anthropologist and you're going to get curious about, ah, okay, puppy, how is bureaucratic life in France? Isn't that interesting? Isn't more formal. Right? Can help create that little, almost like what we'd think of maybe as being a jewel awareness.
[00:12:55] So you keep a little space between you and your emotional reaction to hang on am I really not welcome here? Like, how is one of, how am I perceiving this and maybe how is it intended by this person who's just like trying to do their job or whatever it is they're trying to get their paperwork done for you?
[00:13:14] So I find, you know, finding your, like inner anthropologist, you know, finding that. And taking that curiosity with you and then going to explore the environment that you're in in the kind of, oh, I want to discover this with that playful energy can be quite fun.
[00:13:29] Kym: Yeah, that's so, is so true. I mean, I could think of so many countries I've been in and I'm like, wait, what's happening here? Or like, why aren't they bringing my check? Like that was a big one. I, you know, in Europe anyway, it's like why aren't they bringing my check? It's like you have to ask for it, you know, in a lot of countries and just little things like that, like learning that over time and like you said, just being super curious about it.
[00:13:49] I think so helpful for even traveling therapists that might be listening to this and thinking about becoming an expat or moving to a country that's different. A amazing so with the, with the anthropology part and the couples and the marriages and all the research that you've done and figured out different types, I just, I'm curious, like from a marketing perspective, like for your own private practice, do you tend to get you know, I, this probably is not even culturally accurate, like less, I was gonna say less traditional, like, oh, we fell in love and got married, but just like more like.
[00:14:21] You know, maybe arranged marriages, I call 'em arranged. I don't even know if that's the right term. But these, you know, these marriages that are like family dynamics involved and that sort of thing. Do you tend to get more like that or, or do you tend, like with your marketing to sort of search out more traditional type marriages and help with those dynamics?
[00:14:40] I'm just so curious, like your perspective, like. Like, what type of client do you like to work with? I guess based on all of these different places you've been to, like, especially when you're dealing with expats in different countries and that sort of thing. I'm just curious about that.
[00:14:53] Sarah: I think, I wouldn't say a word necessarily with whatever you want to call, like arranged marriage, something like that. Probably because my clients are more Western or sometimes like in com, you know, people coming from different cultures who are married. That's really interesting, right? When that, when that's the case.
[00:15:10] And I think my client base is quite diverse. Possibly also because as well as anthropology, gender. So that I think resonates with certain clients who feel like, and I hope they really feel like I will be welcoming of, you know, like LGBTQ plus, you know, any kind of relationship form is really welcome in my practice.
[00:15:31] Or just kind of international couples, right? Often kind of, kind of more intellectual because Geneva was full of international organizations, right? This kind of profile of person. What do I target? I find, so I think it's an interesting question for all of us, right? How we find our like our professional identity
[00:15:51] Kym: Hmm.
[00:15:52] Sarah: and how you weave together the different thread.
[00:15:56] And it's taken me time to get to this place actually of knowing how to weave anthropology with with counseling. Exactly. And really how to draw on that. Which is why I came up with this idea of wild nesting. That's
[00:16:10] Kym: I wanna talk about
[00:16:11] Sarah: that was my concept.
[00:16:13] Kym: I'm like, what is this?
[00:16:16] Sarah: also because I love a metaphor, I think most people who know me know that I love a good metaphor, love nature, lovebirds.
[00:16:22] So I really have this, you know, kind of, I want to invite welcome people into this little nest of my practice, because it's hard sometimes when we move abroad. And people often feel overwhelmed and lonely and lost and like, just like, okay, we need a place, right? We need a place like we can come in. And feel understood and seen and have some support whilst we're going through that transition.
[00:16:44] And I often find people are going through multiple layers of transition. Right. That they have a, you know, they're suffering a loss of a parent and illness of, of a parent. Or they have a child or they've just got married and they've changing job and like, at the same time, at the same time. Oof. It's a lot.
[00:16:58] Right. And, and we just move to a new culture. Wow. Right. We need a nest. But I think for, for those of us who do move from place to place. There's a kind of a skill and a process to nesting, to nesting where you are Westing in the wild, right? That we are gonna move to a new environment, like both in terms of like the physical environment, right?
[00:17:21] Like I'm a girl of forest and rivers, right? Husband is a boy of sea. Like, so how are you gonna start to orient to the new environment and feel at home there?
[00:17:32] Kym: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:33] Sarah: And little things like how do you set up your house? Like I've now moved my office where we are. When we first got here, I'd set up, my bookcases were behind me had they been in Geneva, and people were like, did you move right?
[00:17:44] No, I just created, I created my nest, right? I created my familiar environment and since then, you know, I've shifted it, I've changed it, and I've gone out with my camera and I love to take pictures, you know, take discovering the area around me. To try and find that kind of groundedness, right? Find your roots, find your feet.
[00:18:05] Again, one of my favorite an image that somebody used with me knowing I love a good image. You know those, do you ever make those like herbs in the supermarket? Have you ever done that?
[00:18:16] Kym: Uhhuh.
[00:18:16] Sarah: And you never have like, really shallow roots and honestly, you gimme one of those things, it's probably going to die, right?
[00:18:21] It's probably not gonna survive very long. Because the roots are shallow, right? So somebody likened it to that, you know, you're an expat, you arrive and you're like one of these like poor little herbs with the little roots in the pot.
[00:18:34] Kym: Aw.
[00:18:34] Sarah: But maybe you get planted in the soil and maybe there's water and the sunlight.
[00:18:39] And then the roots slowly start to grow, right? And you start to feel, you know, firmer and more grounded in the place that you are. And the, so the wild nesting is layers of. What I've learned from anthropology in my own experience in moving places. And sometimes actually just that compassion with people of like, you know, okay, I'm not going crazy.
[00:19:01] You also found it hard. Yes. We also find it hard, don't we? But I've also layered into that the kind of what's going on inside us, right? From having done these last years and additional training in somatic experiencing. So for me that's a lot about sort of discovering outside and orienting to our environment.
[00:19:22] We can also orient to inside. Right? I think of it almost as like the inner landscape, right? Getting into the felt sense and what's going on inside the body, which is of course very linked to how we feel in our environment. And if you're a girl of the forest and then you just move to the sea and you got to, it's beautiful and you have to get used to that, right?
[00:19:43] And you feel it in different ways. So that's been very rich for me, weaving together these layers increasingly between like somatic orientation inside and then. You know, anthropological, if you like, orientation to the outside. And I actually encourage people then to become an anthropologist of themselves as well.
[00:20:04] So to use the same qualities like curiosity and then hopefully compassion to, you know, track, you know, to the felt sense tracking that, you know, we associate with somatic psychology, right? So we're going inside to track what's happening to us. So also then we feel less kind of at sea, right? We feel more anchored where we are, hopefully.
[00:20:27] So I've been trying to layer this together. I started offering workshops doing this as well because piecing together the things that I've learned over time, the things I noticed, I was saying like on repeat to different clients, I feel, well I can do a group right? I can do, I can offer a short course or a workshop to offer that to
[00:20:47] Kym: I love that. That's, I mean, we talk about that all the time on this podcast. It's like, how can you, like, not necessarily monetize, but this thing that you do over and over and over again. Like, how can you, like, put it out there into the world for other people to benefit from and not have to like trade time for money all the time.
[00:21:01] You know, one client. You know, one client, one session is, is the only, like, is, is a limitation for a lot of people. So to be able to do it like that is amazing. And I, I just love what you're saying because I mean, every day in the traveling therapist Facebook group, almost every day, somebody's like. Ask a question sort of around like, what am I gonna do with all my stuff?
[00:21:23] Like, how am I gonna be without my stuff? Or, you know, you know, how long should I stay in a certain place? You know, questions around this, this idea of what you're talking about really is like how when you figure out your pace, like be curious with your own anthropological sort of study. Like figure out your pace, but then how are you gonna like, help yourself feel like nested and grounded or, you know, whatever word we wanna use.
[00:21:45] Once you get to that place, and how long are you gonna stay there and what you know, are you gonna bring your pillow with you? You know, there's all, like all these different things for each person. Yeah. So I just love what you're talking about with that.
[00:21:57] Sarah: Yeah, and it is those little things sometimes as well, isn't it? There's one of my clients and she, she gave me permission to share this example with people that in her she's from an eastern European country where there are traditionally many kind of nomadic people. There are kind of the gypsies.
[00:22:12] There's a Roman many people who bring with them a kind of like cloths that they would hang. Right? So it's literally a portable nest. And my client, who comes from that culture, she's, she, I, hopefully it's not the the wrong word, it's the word she used was. She feels like a gypsy moving around and she brings her own decor.
[00:22:31] Decor so she has like these flower gars that she will bring with her and hang wherever she is. And that's particularly, you know, grounding for her where wherever she goes. So I loved that. I think it's a great technique. You know, do you bring your pillow? What do you bring
[00:22:47] Kym: Yeah,
[00:22:48] Sarah: certain photos? What, what's important to us?
[00:22:51] Kym: Exactly. 'cause even now, like we, when we first did, did this four, four and a half years ago now, you know, we got a storage unit 'cause we're like, one, we don't know if we're gonna like the lifestyle and what if we need our, you know, just want our house back essentially. And you know, it was just all this stuff we put in and now when we think back it's like, it, it, it's so irrelevant.
[00:23:11] Like you really get to this place. I don't know if everybody does, but where it's just like. If I could just take a bulldozer in there and just like, just like the important thing, like our birth certificate and maybe a couple things like that, and just get rid of all of that, it would just be fine. But in the beginning it's like, like scary, you know, to let go of all that stuff and just kind of like the backpack on my back is like, all I need to take with me kind of thing.
[00:23:33] And like you said, I mean, I found along the way, I've, I've had to just, there's certain things that I do everywhere I go that just makes it feel like that's where I live, you know? Kind of thing. Yeah.
[00:23:44] Sarah: Yeah. And sometimes it's also noticing that, right, that people be kind of doing the thing without realizing that they're doing it so. Sometimes I find my job is to go, yeah, do that. More like one, one of, I dunno, un unusual or whatever therapeutic intervention was one person described loving the smell of toast.
[00:24:07] Right. You know, toast. Golden toast. It's so good. Right? And she hadn't bought a toaster and she kept thinking of all these reasons why she couldn't buy a toaster. And sometimes like, can you afford a toaster? Can you, think I could. It wouldn't be, so maybe you could actually just buy a toaster. It's like, maybe I could buy a, and she bought the toaster and she's like, I made toast so good.
[00:24:30] Like smelling. So it's just small things that are actually accessible, right? If it's accessible to people that we can do to make life just a little bit more comfortable.
[00:24:42] Kym: Yeah, it's like if you have a single slice toaster and you wanna put it in your carry on, 'cause that makes you really happy, do that.
[00:24:50] Sarah: People are gonna be going through an airport, like the thing with toasters and donut, why these toasters? But yeah, simple but effective, right? Why wouldn't we offer that to ourselves?
[00:24:59] Kym: Yeah. Yeah. So could you tell us about your workshops? I would love to hear more about it, the workshops that you put together around the wild dusting for somebody listening, and maybe even, how would we find those if we wanted to take one of your workshops and learn more about it?
[00:25:14] Sarah: I'm gonna run it again actually quite soon, in April. So if anyone wanted to join, it would be a great moment to join. And the first I wanted to, I believe in bite-size and accessible. So it's four weeks. An hour and a half per week like 90 minutes Tuesday nights on online live only small group. So it's kind of intimate, so I'm not recording it.
[00:25:37] So you do actually have to like be there in CET? I think about like, maybe in the future I doing it in a slightly different way, but for now it's small, it's intimate. And the, the first year is called, is called Earth.
[00:25:49] Kym: Mm.
[00:25:49] Sarah: So it was basically a combination of those different levels of drawing on the somatic work I've been learning to orient to ground, like to get into the body again a little bit.
[00:26:00] 'cause often we are not right. People are here somewhere, right? This doesn't exist all too often. Right. So this has been, you know, some of the things I have found personally most useful as well, right? That's what I wanna share with people. And also bringing in the lens of the anthropologist as well. Like thinking about, it's really that it's playing between orienting inside felt sense and then orienting outside thinking a bit about the culture and the environment that we're living in.
[00:26:30] And also bringing in a little piece of community and relationships too, because that's also really important. And these actually, you know, a bit like those flowers my other client has. You can also bring them in your backpack a little bit, right.
[00:26:42] Kym: Hmm. Hmm.
[00:26:44] Sarah: it doesn't have to be just, you know, hopefully we do build those networks locally.
[00:26:49] But we can also bring people with us vicariously. So, yeah, so Earth is a little, it's kind of like homecoming, right? That's what I want. I wanted it to be soft and gentle and accessible. So I want to really offer people things that they can do every day that are actually manageable to do every day. That's I think my philosophy for self care.
[00:27:14] Because, you know, many of, we're all busy. Whatever we're doing, we're maybe parenting, we're working, maybe all of that or something else, right? But we're busy people, so kind of, you know, find an hour and a half to go to the spa every single week without, that's not gonna be happening, right? It's not gonna happen.
[00:27:32] But that little sematic exercise, and you can do it for 30 seconds whilst you're brushing your teeth. Or once the past is boiling, you know, you've got the pan and then at the same time you're, you're doing a thing. Yeah, that we can probably manage that. Right? Or when you're on your walk, maybe doing it anyway, let's add an extra piece to the walk that's gonna do, make you more conscious of how that feels.
[00:27:55] And then, so it can do, you can really drink in the nourishment of your work a little bit more, right? So. I believe in accessible and, you know, compassionate practices for people that they can actually meet. Hopefully then choose their favorites and integrate them into their lives. It's the kind of things I do myself on a regular basis.
[00:28:16] Kym: I love that. Could you give us one, just one for somebody listening that they could
[00:28:20] Sarah: Oh, what would be a good one? There's many,
[00:28:23] Kym: I'm sure
[00:28:24] Sarah: there's many, there's
[00:28:25] Kym: you're talking about it, I'm like, I need that.
[00:28:29] Sarah: Oh, which, what could we do? I'm gonna have to think about that. Something more. Something more grounding, something more orienting.
[00:28:39] Kym: Yeah, I love that one about just on a walk, like what's an added layer you could put in when you're on a walk? 'cause I try to take a walk every day at least.
[00:28:48] Sarah: I think there's a kind of leaning into the felt sense of that, right? Really making it embodied. Can you feel your feet against the ground? Right? Because often, especially when we're most stressed, we can't even feel our feet. They're not there. So if we can notice our feet on the floor, I mean, I'm doing this right, we can notice the rhythm of our feet against the floor, right?
[00:29:13] And the strength of our legs. And we actually take time to look around, right? So something that we can do either on a walk. Or if we are just sitting here which is from, you know, Peter Levine, that's a matter experiencing how, you know, animals orient to their environment. And so we can take in some, some kind of cues from of safety, because hopefully we're like, in my office right now, we're safe.
[00:29:37] Right? So actually just sitting you know, finding a comfortable seat and then. It's so simple, right? Allowing our eyes to get curious like a puppy if you want, and explore the environment around. And then if it feels right, you can also allow your head and your neck to follow. So like super simple, right?
[00:29:59] And allow us to explore all, all around the space we're in. And for some people it can be quite nice to, you know, also take a chance to have a look at, for example, my door, which is over here. And just slowly take in like the place that we're in at the moment. And that actually helps to send, you know, there's cues of safety to our nervous system basically
[00:30:25] Kym: Hmm.
[00:30:26] Sarah: that's always sending like a lot of information or back up to the brain that actually no, I'm here.
[00:30:32] It's okay. I'm here right now. It's safe. So it is like super simple, super simple, but actually, and then noticing if we have a time, how do I feel now? I've just had a chance to orient into my space. How am I feeling? Do I notice anything? Did anything change perhaps to how I was feeling before? Maybe yes, maybe no, it's okay.
[00:30:58] And like the anthropologist, we're not trying to. Tell any story about that or judge that, right. Just noticing. Ah, okay. There's a, yeah, it's slight easing. So I might notice like my, my weight is down more in my hips and my pelvis, right? Compared to before.
[00:31:15] Kym: Hmm.
[00:31:17] Sarah: There's a slightly more opening at the back of my shoulders. So little shifts that might have happened for us or not, and it's okay, right? We're just
[00:31:28] Kym: Yeah. You're like calming me down. I'm like taking deep breaths over here, standing a little straighter.
[00:31:33] Sarah: Super. Yeah, I noticed that. The posture, right?
[00:31:35] Kym: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. That's amazing. Such a good reminder. I mean, I think we know this stuff as therapists, but we don't, and just our busy lives. Like I, you know, thinking about the walks I take, I mean, I've got my earbuds in, I've got an audiobook playing.
[00:31:50] I'm usually like checking. You know, emails or so, you know, like doing multiple things on this walk. I'm definitely not paying attention to my body. I'm just like getting in my walk and enjoying being outside. But then I'm also trying to like multitask and do all this other stuff and that's super stressful.
[00:32:06] You know, it's like not the way I should be taking a walk. So I like the reminder.
[00:32:12] Sarah: if I can offer you one more thing to do in your walk
[00:32:14] Kym: Yeah, sure.
[00:32:16] Sarah: it's one of my favorite things ever. I'm sure people would know this because it's, you know, a Deb Dana Classic glimmers. Do you know about glimmers?
[00:32:23] Kym: yeah. Just like noticing something beautiful. Is that, that's probably a reductive way to think about it, but maybe you could tell us.
[00:32:30] Sarah: Ba, ba. Basically that, right? Noticing something that brings us like a wow.
[00:32:35] Right.
[00:32:36] Kym: Hmm.
[00:32:36] Sarah: Oh, so nice. And even like I'm sitting, I'm sitting here at my desk, I can see out a window and there's a little fence. Sometimes I see a squirrel going across, or I see a bird in the tree outside, and you're like, wow. And savoring it, right? Because it can just go right again. We're all indeed. We've got our AirPods, we're doing a million things.
[00:32:56] We're making the shopping list for later. Right. And just to squirrel.
[00:33:02] Kym: Yeah.
[00:33:03] Sarah: for a few seconds. Right. To notice how that feels. Right. What happened,
[00:33:07] Kym: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:08] Sarah: what happens for us when we see our squirrel or whatever that looks like for you could be the, the sun, the warmth of the sunlight that you're feeling, right?
[00:33:16] Could be many things. Even down in here in Montpelier, we have so much sunlight. It's okay. And allowing that to land, right? It's like we're putting pennies in the piggy bank knowing that felt sense of when there's a cue of like something juicy and delicious out there, right? Something that's, you know, giving us pleasure.
[00:33:39] Don't be only more of that,
[00:33:41] Kym: We do. Yes.
[00:33:43] Sarah: just the, it just sends the message as well that whatever else is happening for us.
[00:33:48] Kym: Hmm
[00:33:48] Sarah: There will be some glimmers somewhere in our day, and we all have that natural negativity bias that's trying to keep us alive over here. Right? It's doing its job, but it probably means that we miss the glimmers that are there.
[00:34:04] Or for other various reasons, like, do we deserve it? Do we, you know, there's all stories we tell ourselves, but they're there for us, right? Whatever's happening, they're always there for us and we can access them if we just. Keep our eyes on a little bit.
[00:34:18] Kym: Yeah. Oh, I love that so much. It's such a good reminder. Absolutely. I'm recording this and I, my computer is looking out literally over the ocean right now,
[00:34:27] Sarah: Oh wow. It's beautiful. It's so
[00:34:29] Kym: You know, but you, my boyfriend and I talk about this a lot. We kind of get desensitized to it a little bit. You know, we just go about our day and even forget sometimes to look up and look out at the ocean and be like, oh my gosh, we, we are living on the ocean right now.
[00:34:41] It's beautiful. Yeah. So I just, I love that reminder. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you. So how do people find you and take your workshop and do you call it a workshop or a program? Yeah.
[00:34:56] Sarah: I, and jury's still out on that one. I called it a mini course. I used to call it workshops. People can write in with their suggestions or what, what makes the most sense to people. But my hope is that Earth is also gonna be the first in the series because I wanna move from earth to fire, right.
[00:35:13] Kym: Nice.
[00:35:13] Sarah: so there will be more elements created to add to the series eventually, and fire will fire.
[00:35:19] I want people, once we've got the found, earth is the ground, earth is the foundation. And then my hope is that fire will then tune us in with more of that life, sympathetic life force, you know, where we're trying to find that. Like healthy, healthy aggression, right? The reaching for what we want, right? And wanna build that in fire.
[00:35:38] There's a whole story ahead. It's exciting. But yeah, so people can absolutely find me on well you can follow me on Instagram, Facebook I'm sure that will be in the show notes, right? Just thanks. And on my website, so just sarah j grosso.com and there's like a little workshop page. And like there's one in April, but also like if people wanna like, join my mailing list and then I'll let people know as and when I decide to run another section of Earth which may might be in the fall.
[00:36:08] I haven't decided. I haven't decided yet.
[00:36:10] Kym: Yeah, and
[00:36:11] Sarah: You guys
[00:36:12] Kym: of it. You don't have to.
[00:36:13] Sarah: exact Exactly. It's flexible and it is, it's also nice to be able to respond to people, right. And what might be needed.
[00:36:21] Kym: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that so much. What an amazing conversation. Thank you for taking the time today.
[00:36:27] Sarah: Thank you so much, Kim. It's been a real pleasure.
[00:36:29] Kym: Yeah, thanks.