Ep 113 Ram Dass Learning How to Write a New Song with Grief
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Ram Dass Khalsa is a singer-songwriter who, through the loss of his newborn son to Trisomy-18, learned how to write a new song as he learned how to grieve healthily.
It would take Ram Dass several years to learn what it means to grieve healthily, and growing up with “yogi” parents, taught him the importance of being in his body. However, he never learned how to be with his feelings.
Ram Dass and his partner knew they were expecting challenges ahead. At twenty weeks pregnant, they learned their baby boy would not thrive very long once he was born. Going against the recommendation of abortion, they felt it was important that they go through the process of his birth and his death.
They weren’t expecting their son to live a full day. Instead, they got to experience his life for three. After his death, everyone had their individual grief experiences, and it became emotionally too much for Ram Dass and his partner, and ultimately, they parted ways.
And thus, a new chapter of Ram Dass’s life and music began.
Even when we expect a loss to occur, there are no words or actions that can fully prepare a heart to say goodbye to another. The finality of death isn’t felt until the moment it happens. And for some, including Ram Dass, grief and loss become a pivotal experience that changes one’s life — for the better.
RESOURCES:
- EP | And Now He Has Wings
- Song | “Elegy for a Yellow Bird”
- Song | “The Water Poem”
- Medicine Path
- Rachel Kaplan | Emotional Potty Training Program
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk 0:00
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today my guest is rom das Khalsa, known professionally as rom das creates music that is spiritually and emotionally restorative. His music opens the heart and stirs the soul. As a producer, multi instrumentalist, and songwriter. He inspires a unique potency through collaboration and improvisation that creates art greater than the sum of its parts. His constant dedication to render the beauty of human experience triumph, tragedy and beyond has led him to the world stage. He performed at the 2019 Grammy Awards, has played at Carnegie Hall, and continues to perform at venues around the world every year, ROM Das is at the forefront of a movement of musicians aiming to bring healing and solace to the world. In 2021, he recorded and produced a series of musical projects born from his own deeply personal human experience of joy and sorrow, collaborating with the duo, while ray to create the EP, and now he has wings a musical journey through his recovery and healing after the death of his newborn son. born into a family of professional musicians rom Das was raised to appreciate all musical genres and find the unique nuances of every song and composition he heard. He developed a near encyclopedic knowledge of wide swaths of the musical landscape, which he calls upon to create novel and moving approaches to music production and songwriting. Thank you so much for being my guest.
Ram Dass 1:32
Thanks for having me.
Victoria Volk 1:33
I listened to some of the new album, and now he has wings. And I just imagined myself, I would consider myself an old soul. Even as a young child and teenager. I pictured myself as those listening, especially my favorite was, Elegy for a yellow bird. Oh, cool. And I found myself listening. And thinking of myself, picturing myself laying on my lip laying on my bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling, and it’s a rainy day. Like, that’s kind of the feeling that it brought for me. And it’s, I would say, Your music is easy listening. Like it’s, it’s something that you can put on in the background, but it’s something that you can really just lay on your floor and stare at the ceiling and just let it move you. And so I appreciate that was my favorite, just wanted to share that.
Ram Dass 2:26
That makes me so happy to hear. And I I really appreciate the the feelings that you get when you’re listening to it. I mean, the the most important thing for me is that one you can put it on at any time, if you want to listen to it actively. There’s so much subtlety in it. But you can also put it on in the background and it doesn’t get distracting. And that’s really cool. So I guess it redefines what easy listening is rather than being sort of cheesy elevator music, it’s this idea that it really, it’s easy to listen to, and it’s easy to listen to for a reason. But also that it evokes some sort of feeling for you. That’s, that’s my goal.
Victoria Volk 3:06
Yeah. And can you explain just a little bit because I’m curious. So the cover art is like this yellow bird, right? So can you just kind of my own curiosity, tie the title of that song and that cover art together? Yeah,
Ram Dass 3:22
Yeah so the whole EP is about my journey, through finding out that my son had a fatal genetic condition called Trisomy 18. And then, his birth, his passing and recovery after that, after he passed, my partner and I, my wife and I, at the time, found a little baby Yellow Bird on the ground that could not fly. And we saw its mom in a tree nearby, and we took it upon ourselves to help it not get eaten, to recover and get back to its family. That song to me is is sort of like the feeling is is about trying to be able to help something when you haven’t been able to before. I mean, there was nothing we could do to help my son live, it was just the reality was the reality and he wasn’t going to survive. But then the care that loss brings to other things, the the wanting to help, both from a genuine place and also a genuine like, just wanting to help because it’s meaningful, because life is meaningful. But also the reality that part of that comes from a certain sense of desperation, because I couldn’t do anything about my son. So there’s like this hope and grief in it all the same time. So rainy day is kind of perfect.
Victoria Volk 4:56
Yeah, I guess and I think it just what You describe is like this compassion with wanting a place to go, like compat like to share that love with nowhere to go?
Ram Dass 5:10
Yeah, death and loss changes the fabric of how one relates to the outside world, for better or for worse for me. Ultimately, it’s been for the better. But not without a whole lot of grief and trauma along the way, too. So yeah, I agree,
Victoria Volk 5:31
Can you speak to what has been the most what was because I get a sense that you feel like you’re on the other side of it.
Ram Dass 5:40
Yeah, if there is another side, my life is totally different now than how it was, during that process, both my partner at the time and I have, you know, we separated and we have new relationships. And so we’re no longer together in that way. But we’re still very much family. And I think I went through quite a rebirth process of my own, trying to figure out what really is important to me. And the immediacy, the the PTSD aspects of my son’s passing, are no longer so immediate, I can still have moments where it comes up, where all wake up one day, and today is a perfect example, because we’re getting, um, we’re almost exactly a month right now from the anniversary of his passing and birth, both. And I remember the air being this way, you know, in the days before he was born. So it’s it’s bittersweet, but it doesn’t bring in the same adrenaline, the same fight or flight, the same need to try to change my feelings. And that’s maybe the biggest thing is that I’ve learned quite a bit about how to be with my feelings, how to have my feelings in real time. And that has been maybe the biggest thing in helping me cope and thrive in my life, rather than trying to avoid having hard feelings.
Victoria Volk 7:18
Did you have support? And how to do that? Or was it just you found naturally your own way? And what does that look like? Or what did that look like?
Ram Dass 7:27
Yeah, I got quite a bit of support, I don’t know that it was easy to find, like shirred, conventional therapy wasn’t very helpful for me, it’s very easy for me to talk about something intellectually and not feel it, essentially. And talking became a really easy way to actually avoid going through what I was feeling. Eventually, I got involved with an organization here in the Bay Area called medicine path. And they have been taught in Indigenous ways and work with plant medicines. And that, basically, through those ceremonies, through counseling through a bunch of activities, through through their organization, I really was able to relax, I was really able to step back and see that the pain was the worst thing I was going to experience from it, I wasn’t going to die from my feelings, and that I was able to have my feelings and that it wouldn’t hurt me further, and it wasn’t going to hurt anyone else. And in fact, the ability to have those feelings in real time would help me actually be happy. So the support was manifold, I would say because I was getting one on one counseling. I was sitting in the medicine ceremonies, I was spending time with people who are trauma informed. One of my best friends now as is basically counselor to the entire San Francisco Fire Department. And you know, just the ability to interact with people who are used to what it’s like to experience trauma helped me relax, you know, I gained a community of empathetic people who also were not going to pit in, pity me for what I went through, and we’re just going to keep loving me no matter what. So yeah, I got a lot of support. But I don’t I don’t even know that I was I didn’t know I was looking for that.
Victoria Volk 9:30
I want to differentiator that I hear and what you were saying initially was that, like talk therapy didn’t really resonate with you work for you. And I’m very much a thinker, and I’m in my own head too. And so that’s where logic like we try to logic our way out of grief. And, you know, we’ll say things like, I’m fine. It’s just, you know, I’ll get over it and it is what it is. It’s what happens you know, we try to bypass a lot and then just put it in a box and put it On the shelf and tuck it away and not really addressing it. Although you ask anybody who approaches their grief in that way, they’ll say, Well, I’m addressing it, I’ve addressed it. Right, but in a box and put it on the shelf, and I put it away. Absolutely not addressing it, though, right? Right. So what you’re telling me and what changed for you is that you took action, like there was action within, combined with that therapy, there was you were taking, you know, you were making steps forward, you were moving forward, you were suffering, but yet you were moving forward. And that’s what I say in grief. Like when I work with clients, it’s you’re already suffering, you might as well suffer and move your feet. And I that’s what I hear you were doing.
Ram Dass 10:41
Exactly, exactly. And in fact, some of the progress created more suffering, and some of the suffering instigated the progress. You know, my life was basically falling apart. What I was trying to do was take care of my family, put food on the table, basically do anything but take care of myself. And I thought that taking care of them was taking care of myself, but it’s very different. I don’t know that there was another way out. And this is the thing is, is logic says I was doing the right things. I was doing the things that felt appropriate for the circumstance. But my family members were going through their own version of grief. And we all go through it in a different way. We all need different things. And when you’re in that recently traumatized state, when you’ve faced a loss that big, I don’t know that you can take care of other people functionally, I don’t know that it would have been possible to make it through happily, I think we did the best we could. And it was really messy. And sometimes it’s that falling apart that actually creates the openings for new life and progress.
Victoria Volk 11:49
Did you have a knowing that your son wouldn’t be around very long after he was born? Did you did you know this?
Ram Dass 11:57
Yeah. 20 weeks, I was actually at Niagara Falls when I got the call that one of the screens came back very poorly. And I was in the middle of a tour. And then the last night of tour was when the ultrasound happened, we thought that my son was actually a girl, because I guess the test had said, had we didn’t do a genetic screening first. So we thought it was a girl. And then after the ultrasound, we found out that it was a boy and he had water on his on his brain. And his feet were kind of clubfoot and basically, then were referred to genetic testing found out that he had Trisomy 18. And we didn’t know that he’d be born alive. You know, that was definitely something that we were facing. And ultimately, we got three days, and we didn’t know if we’d get one. So we had a an awareness of what the reality was for sure.
Victoria Volk 13:01
Not at five months. So you had several months to go knowing this. Yeah. Yeah, I can’t imagine.
Ram Dass 13:10
I can’t remember much of how I felt except just kind of numb and scared. Basically, not a whole lot of room to feel sad, because it was like the trauma had already started by that time, essentially. And we’re all very heavily willed people, I guess we each had a conviction of doing this thing very well, which ultimately didn’t work, as I said, but we were already processing months before he actually was born. Talking about it being scared of it. We weren’t I don’t think we were really making much of it, except to be there in that situation.
Victoria Volk 13:56
Did you hear a lot of unhelpful things during that time?
Ram Dass 14:00
Yeah. I mean, the the doctors consider Trisomy 18. To be, they call it incompatible with life, which is a really intense diagnosis, a really intense thing to say, there are kids who have Trisomy 18, who live longer. And then there’s what’s called Mosaic Trisomy 18, where half of the chromosomes are a part of the crumb or part of the body has this triplicate of the of the chromosome. And those kids live even longer, often. But what we got was they were basically saying we should abort. And I respect everyone’s choice on what they want to do. In that circumstance, and for us with this baby, that didn’t feel like the thing to do it actually felt like we needed to have him and lose him, which is very interesting looking back on it.
Victoria Volk 14:58
For those that may be listening Not sure. I don’t I don’t necessarily know the answer myself. Is that genetic?
Ram Dass 15:05
Yeah, I mean, it’s basically like Down syndrome is triplicate of one of the chromosomes, trisomy 18, is triplicate of a different chromosome. And when certain chromosomes are three, rather than two, it can cause greater problems, or lesser problems, each chromosome codes for different things. And in this case, the 18th chromosome is not great for, you know, healthy adult people, essentially,
Victoria Volk 15:35
May I ask, is this something that you have to keep in mind moving forward having a family?
Ram Dass 15:42
Nope it was totally random. And that’s, that’s great and sad, all at the same time? No, I don’t, I don’t have to worry about that. We actually think that it’s possible that there were pesticides in the water where we were living, and that may have affected it. I’m not a scientist. So I don’t know if that’s actually true. But these things happen, unfortunately.
Victoria Volk 16:05
What was the biggest aside from, you know, finding the support that you didn’t know you needed and finding it and working through and transforming that sorrow and grief into something positive? What were you doing, then? What did you learn about self care in that process? And what does that look like today?
Ram Dass 16:24
Oh, that’s a really great question.
Victoria Volk 16:28
Especially as you face, you know, an anniversary and things like that.
Ram Dass 16:33
Yeah I suppose what I’ve learned is essentially that there’s very little, that’s really a crisis in my life, I have the ability now to step back and actually take time to do something, I don’t feel the impulse to try to make something happen out of response to a body feeling that I’m having the idea that our thoughts happen, and then body feelings happen in response to those thoughts. And that we don’t then need to create stories on top of those feelings, like being able to break that loop has been one of the biggest things for me. And that’s what I’m thinking about. And coming up on his anniversary in April is, I know, I’m going to have feelings, I don’t know what they are. But I want to give myself space and permission to have those feelings. And also not to feel compelled to do something for someone else. Or basically, I’m not going to be codependent to someone else. Or to myself, I’m just going to try and give myself space to have those feelings. And it may be that I go through the day actually feeling really happy. And you know, that’s cool. That’s totally fine. I’m essentially unattached to what feeling states I’m going to have. And I try to go into each moment each day, not trying to control how I’m going to feel, I’m just going to do what I can to take care of myself, eat well sleep, well keep my room clean, keep things feeling good around me. And then how I feel is how I feel. And I know that I’m not going to be a jerk to anyone in response to my feelings. So I don’t have to worry about that. I know that the people around me are not going to criticize me for having the feelings that I’m having everyone understands what I’ve been through, as best as they can. And it’s taken time, I would say the first couple of years. That definitely was not the case. It was It was rough.
Victoria Volk 18:41
What I hear you saying too, is that you created an environment that would support your internal environment and internal healing. Exactly. Yeah. What and you bring up a good point, like clutter and messiness around us like that is really a reflection of what’s going on in our minds, right?
Ram Dass 19:01
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, for neurodivergent people, making mess can be the thing that feels safe. But as I’ve gotten older, I’m 34 Now, I have a desire to actually keep things clean, I have a desire to organize things. Whereas in the past, it was just like, Whatever, I’m just gonna keep doing what I’m doing. The thing that I’m working on is the most important thing. And my environment, I’ll just be flexible to that, whatever. But now I actually care about how I’m sleeping. I care about how the room feels, I care about my surroundings a lot more. And I think when my son was born, it would be what it was. 2014 So when I was 20 I can’t do the math 26 Something like that. Something didn’t shift for me until I was like 30 where or actually cared about doing the dishes, that type of stuff became important biologically at some point, whereas it wasn’t then. So I think also just I suffered the consequences of having a young brain. And now I’m older.
Victoria Volk 20:15
My kids all the time they, you know, when it comes to decision making and doing things, it’s like your frontal lobe isn’t developed until you’re like, 25. And so you’re just on the cusp of that, you know, and that’s a lot of change and loss to experience at that age, when you’re really just coming into yourself.
Ram Dass 20:33
Yeah, exactly, exactly. The executive function was barely there. And it was much more my behavior was, I would say, driven by consequence, rather than by inspiration. So it was doing things out of the fear of something else rather than doing things because that’s what I wanted to do. And it’s taken time to shift my life into a way where it’s like, the things that I’m doing in my day are actually things that I want to do. And that’s I have great privilege in saying that, and it’s taken a lot of work, but but that’s the reality, now,
Victoria Volk 21:08
You found the flow of life to go with the flow of life, it sounds like,
Ram Dass 21:13
Yeah, and it’s not perfect, you know, I still the idea that I could control my setting so as to minimize hard feelings, that’s again intellectualizing and trying to posture around something that doesn’t exist, basically. So I still deal with grief on a daily basis, anger on a daily basis, everything that I was trying to escape before, is still here. But I’m in a much better position and have a have more resilience, and more of a friendship with those feelings, in a way that I just wanted to pretend that they weren’t there before, or really didn’t want to face them.
Victoria Volk 21:58
Was the loss of your son, your first loss?
Ram Dass 22:00
No. I remember, my grandmother died when I was three, I still remember her funeral. My grandfather died when I was in fourth grade, I still remember his funeral. My mom’s sister who I loved dearly, she died in the year 2000. There have been there have been a few big losses in my life before him. But his made me change how I experienced death, I don’t, I experience it as being a teacher now, in a way. And it gave me a lot of perspective, I think being there for a passing being there for a death, and especially so close to a birth, it’s so easy to see that they’re just kind of two sides of the same coin. I’ve seen now multiple times, that it takes work to die for a lot of people, and that there’s a sacredness to it. It’s not it’s not this traumatic thing, the body’s doing what it does. And the scariest part is just the absence of that person. But that has brought so much perspective to the life that I get to live. And the sacredness that I can have in my day, the amount of fun I can have in a day, the amount of beauty I want to experience in my life. Like, I want to pay attention to those things now in a way that I didn’t have time I didn’t have the mental or neurological bandwidth to to appreciate before he passed.
Victoria Volk 23:46
what would you say to someone who has just lost a child that is listening to you, because you can’t rush that right? You can’t rush that evolution of grief is now my teacher and embracing that that’s really difficult to you know, I’m sure if someone would have said that to you. Within a short period of time of him passing you would have wanted to probably punch them in the face. So what would you say to someone who has maybe experienced the loss of a child and are just struggling with that?
Ram Dass 24:21
Yeah, I It’s, even though I’ve been on the on the receiving side of people giving condolences. It’s still not easy. It’s it’s no no easier to talk to people who are experiencing them that themselves because it is so personal, it’s so vulnerable. At times it feels so hopeless. I would just want them to know that they have people that love them, you know that they’re not alone, and that there are people who who want to be there for them and if they can just take as much time as they as they need. And I know that’s really hard. because we’ve got to work and make money and feed our families and take care of other children and parents, and you know, there’s, there’s all sorts of demands in life. But just to give permission to let it all out. Honestly, if there could be a bucket that all of our feelings go into, I would encourage people to whether they’ve experienced loss or not, like life is just hard enough, like, let your feelings into the bucket, let it move, that’s the best advice I could give for anyone, honestly, is just like you’re carrying a lot. And it’s really understandable. And you have every right to empty it from now. And now. And again, I have a friend named Rachel Kaplan who has a program that’s basically called Emotional potty training. And it’s the idea that just like needing to go to the bathroom, you have to do that with your feelings, too. Otherwise, you get constipated, you get backed up. And that is definitely a philosophy that I subscribe to, and would encourage people to look into. But gosh, if if you’ve lost a child, just my heart goes out to you. It’s That’s the hardest thing. It really is. And the present moment that you’re in is what matters. And just take care of yourself. Just just try to surround yourself with a lot of really, really good loving people. And if you need to be alone to No problem, just do, do what you need to do in your own time. And that’s good. That’s good enough.
Victoria Volk 26:39
That’s good enough like that. Actually, that’s brilliant, too. Emotional potty training. It’s actually really brilliant. You know, one thing too, I was thinking about when, you know, like, what does that actually look like when you know, we say, give space for yourself. And you know, it’s hard to find the time to you know, if you’ve got busy demands of family and work and things like that. So like, one idea that I thought of just listening to you talking is going in parking somewhere and just screaming in your car, like just screaming? Or do you live out in the hills or somewhere just you know, have a pasture or something, just go walk in the pan, just scream yourself, you know, something like that? Do you have other ideas,
Ram Dass 27:21
I love that the pillow method is great. You know, pillows can take a lot of abuse, loving abuse, they can you can scream into them, you can pound them, that’s really helpful. Moving your body, the walking is really helpful. Because you know, one of the problems with PTSD, one of the things about fight or flight is that you’re not in your body anymore, you’re actually disconnected from feeling your body. So if you can go take a hike, go take a walk, go swim, go, whatever that helps you feel your body that will help reregulate, and that may actually mean being able to feel like these are all ways of trying to get you to feel your feelings again, because the numbing is so easy to do. And there are so many ways, especially with cell phones, and Netflix, and you know, there’s so many ways we can distract ourselves from the feelings that we’re having the light is really helpful. Just try to try to move, try to vocalize if you have access to talk therapy, like it didn’t work for me. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not helpful. And I don’t know that I could bypass that step either. Like I think if you have options, just do something. That’s that’s really helpful. That’s progress. And you don’t need complete healing from every single visit, every single modality that you do a walk is not supposed to make you suddenly feel like the worlds Okay, again, it’s just like, it’s a way to maybe get 30 seconds of peace in your day. And hey, if you can get 30 seconds, that’s a can feel like great relief. Yeah, I just encourage anything that gets you out of here and into your body out into the world, talking to someone, that’s, that’s all helpful.
Victoria Volk 29:16
I look at healing like, kind of like compound interest. You know, it builds on itself and I look at healing you know, just as it took years and years to build the sorrow and the pain and you know, accumulation of losses that have happened over the years and and all of that grief that has stacked on itself. That didn’t happen overnight. It it accumulates, right. And so I look at healing the same way is that every little thing that you do, can lead to the next thing, right? You may try talk therapy doesn’t work for you, but it leads to something else that does exactly and so I think whatever is a part of that path. It’s just listening into your own intuition and those nudges when you when they come across your way and just listening to those nudges, doing something about it.
Ram Dass 30:11
I love that I totally love that. It’s, it’s, there’s no end goal with healing. And let’s be honest, someone else is going to die. Like, you know, the, the losses in our lives are not going to stop until we do. Like, that’s, that’s the truth. So with the understanding that we’re going to face more grief, we might as well get better at facing it. And time does help. But then there’s another thing and there are more things to be sad about, there are more things to be happy about. And so I agree build that, build that compound interest of, of healing and, and you’re, I feel like that’s what I’m calling resilience. It’s the baseline that you have to deal with what’s coming up. And it does fit, it’s hard at first and it does build over time.
Victoria Volk 31:09
Well, and with that comes awareness, because as you get a little bit further along in your path, you can look at something might come up, right, you might feel this is familiar. Well, this is what I used to do. And this happened. Oh, but this is how I this is how I’m addressing it now and you see the progress, right, you can see your own progress. Yeah. And that builds confidence to and how prepared and emotionally sound that you can be when crisis strikes or life becomes chaotic and, but sometimes to when those moments happen, like everything just goes out the window and you kind of you know, might feel crazy for a time and that’s okay, too.
Ram Dass 31:56
Exactly. I I love that and think that permission to not be okay, is important. No one is holding us to a higher standard than we are to ourselves. So if you just can’t do it for a day or longer, it’s really not the end of the world like it’s okay. So permission to fall apart, I think is really important. And then you have maybe a little less pressure on yourself to perform. Like, I feel like so much of recovery, especially in a capitalistic society is, well how soon can you go back to being normal? Like, there is no normal anymore. And the expectation that you should be anything other than how you are is bogus to me. So yeah, space space and a lot of self compassion. And not in a I’m doing so great sort of way. But just in a It’s okay, it’s totally fine. Do what you need to do. Like, if there were I sometimes imagined that there was this like, mystical beings sitting on my shoulder who’s just like a very wise jolly person. Who whenever I felt like I wasn’t doing something, right, was just there going doing great. Doing great. Don’t worry, you’re doing great. And kind of going back to that and checking in with that feeling like, oh, this is okay, too. This is fine. Okay, that that really helped.
Victoria Volk 33:37
What has your grief taught you? Now that you are, you know, ROM das 2.0 After this devastating loss, what has grief taught you that you can reflect on now?
Ram Dass 33:52
I think that there’s the opportunity for beauty and basically any moment of my life. I feel very rich, having holding hands with grief. I feel like I experience the world in a way that a lot of people might not get to, which is that interactions with other people are really precious, because it all might go away in an instant, the wind, the feeling of water sunsets, sunrises. I feel like it’s all less of an inconvenience or something that’s just happening and more of a blessing and something to pay attention to. So ultimately, I think grief has taught me to pay attention to what’s going on around me and what’s going on inside of me because of the limitation of time. fact that it is also temporary. It taught me a new perspective on how to interact with the world.
Victoria Volk 35:00
How do you remind yourself of those things? You know, I, what it sounds like to me is this this gratitude, right? to immerse yourself in gratitude and I, it’s so easy to get caught up in day to day tasks and just to live right every day doing things that require us to work or like even just taking a shower, like just the appreciation, how do you hold on to that perspective? Like, what? Do you have a trick for that? Or?
Ram Dass 35:29
That’s a great question. Sometimes I need to cry, honestly. Because if I’m not feeling like, in a way, the gratefulness for the world around me, the noticing of the beauty is now baseline for me, that’s, that’s me functioning well. If that’s not happening, then I need to check in and see what’s going on. And often, what that means is, I’m working too hard, I’m not taking care of myself in some way, I’m not feeding myself, I’m not sleeping well, or I’m overly anxious about something, and being able to admit that I’m scared or sad or angry, and then have that feeling, then turns it flips the switch. And it’s like, being able to fully cry, being able to be fully angry, not saying at someone, but just like, express the feeling, or just feel the fear. It’s like, that’s part of the formula of happiness. And I think there’s an easy or a misconception intellectually, that being sad, fearful or angry means that you’re not happy. But to me, there’s a happiness includes all of having all of the other feelings. Because the happiness for me feels like a holistic understanding of being human, it is the appreciation of being human. So if I can cry, if I can feel those feelings, it’s like the switch goes on. And suddenly the worlds in Technicolor again. And then I think about what can I do with that would make this day this activity is whatever’s right in front of me feel good. And it’s often quite simple. And then there’s a way to be creative about that experience. So say, I have zoom calls for work, like, you know, that’s all it becomes fun, it becomes a a, an a special interaction, put on music that I really like, I get to make music. So thinking about what I want to express in that music, all of these things suddenly become more apparent, as I’m less bogged down by my own anxiety or cynicism.
Victoria Volk 37:47
I love now something that I need to apply in my own life.
Ram Dass 37:52
This is regular regular for me, too.
Victoria Volk 37:54
Yeah, I mean, you get so tied up and wrapped up around the axle of life itself, like the to dues and the obligations. And, you know, we often do forget just to really, truly check in. And if I’m not appreciating this, that is because my attention is somewhere else. That probably won’t matter. Three months from now, five years.
Ram Dass 38:16
Probably not probably not. Right, with a few exceptions. Probably not. Yeah. Yeah. And
Victoria Volk 38:23
A lot of weight, and stock in a lot of things that really just don’t matter.
Ram Dass 38:30
Right. Right. And it’s fun to like, I think there’s a certain level of entertainment, in getting emotional about things that should not necessarily be so weighty. But then having that perspective and just go, oh my god, I love what I’m doing. I’m so wrapped up in this thing, and it doesn’t matter, even that relief can be massive. And then being able to not put pressure on ourselves about those things. It’s just like, okay, so all I actually need to do is show up and be kind, like, that’s a really simple job. And then the risk, all the other responsibilities that we’ve put on ourselves can be a lot, a lot less.
Victoria Volk 39:17
And it’s to be kind to ourselves first. Now, if I’m not going to do this thing, or if I’m doing if I’m sacrificing this to do list for following my curiosity, or following my inspiration, or following my flow, and this other thing, or following my desire to spend time with this person, you know, it’s Yeah, yeah. I’m just reflecting out loud. Yeah. Based on what your shared so it’s, that’s good. Yeah. So how has I mean, I kind of alluded to at the beginning, but your music has changed because of this experience. You’ve had and how I imagined, you know, because grief changes everything in our lives and it impacts everything in our lives. It impacts our music, music. I didn’t mean I mean didn’t mean to say music, but I’m sure it did. But yeah, well, yeah, it does. I mean, every, whatever our work is, right, whatever our career is, it affects that it affects our money and reflects our relationships or reflects how we see ourselves. Like, it just blows up everything in our lives. Someone said to me earlier in a podcast interview, it’s like, when you have these waves that come up, he’s was recounting how he found some keepsakes of his mother’s. And she’s been gone for almost 40 years. But he had never seen these things before. And so now all of a sudden, you know, she was a child when she died. And he’s seen these things. And if he says, feels like a shipwreck, and stuff is just coming onto the shore, and I’m just having to look at these things. I just thought that’s a beautiful analogy. But that’s, that’s how grief is it can feel like a shipwreck, time and time and time again.
Ram Dass 41:09
Yeah. And it’s fluid like that. It really is. For me, grief is very watery. And I’ve actually incorporated that into my music. There’s a song on the on that EP, and now he has wings, that’s called the water poem. And it’s, it’s grief. It’s all the feelings, it’s and also the fact that, you know, I found out about my son’s condition at Niagara Falls, it felt like the water was carrying the message. And there’s water, we are water and all of that. So water is a big theme that I play with, with music.
Victoria Volk 41:48
Well. And we are made up of mostly water, right, exactly energy, we are energy, there’s a commercial for a car and electric car. And it talks to talks about how we are electric, like we are made of electricity, just like these electric cars, right. And just as like an electric car needs to be recharged and the battery and needs juice and all of that, like we are no different. Totally no different ingredient we can deplete, deplete our energetic battery, and just everything goes haywire. And I’m a Reiki Master too. And so I deal with energy and yeah, and, and all of that. But how, like, how do you feel? Would you not that you would go back to rom das one point? No, right. But do you look back and just think like, what are the biggest takeaways of how life was before and how you were living your life before and what you believed maybe about grief? Versus Now what was the understanding that you had about grief? Like what were you raised to believe about grief.
Ram Dass 42:55
We didn’t really talk about our feelings much I was raised in, in a spiritual community that basically had the idea that if you do enough Yoga, you basically don’t have to deal with your life’s problems, that yoga was the way through anything that you’re dealing with in your life, whether it’s your feelings, or relationship problems, or whatever. So you name it, there was a, an exercise for it a meditation for it. And to me, it’s just not true. The biggest takeaway is that I did know that I needed to actually grieve and I didn’t want to do it. And ultimately, the only way to do it is to do it. The only way through it is to go through it. And I don’t know that I could have done it any differently. To be honest, I don’t know that knowing it. Any deeper would have changed a thing about what happened then. Because I needed whatever I needed to get out of my own stubbornness and learn that I’m okay. And not necessarily in the sense of like, a self aggrandizing I’m okay. Or I’m fine. I don’t need to do anything. But like, Who I am is good. I am okay. And having all my feelings is also okay. And acceptable and needed. So yeah, I mean, I don’t know that. I could have done it any differently. Because I just had to have those feelings in those life experiences. And it was painful and messy. And especially when you’re a smart person raised very intellectually, you know, you know how to think your way out of problem solve your way out of so many situations. We’re just going to find the next way to avoid and come up with some clever way through, but it’s like, the cleverness was actually the problem. The way through was actually very simple. And it was basically softening to myself and allowing myself to be who I am, and have the feelings that I have as a biological being not as a spiritual person, like, This, to me is very not woowoo in any way. It’s just like, I have biology, my life circumstances were traumatic, there is a certain thing that needs to happen to help regulate. And it comes in with a spiritual component and an intellectual component of validation. And understanding that this is good at this, that I’m, I’m good for having that, that I’m human for having that and appreciating it.
Victoria Volk 45:44
It’s very interesting that you brought up how you were raised in how yoga was such an integral part of your upbringing, because I almost brought up yoga when you mentioned about being inside your body. And it just really brings up for me that, you know, what we talked about in Grief Recovery? I’m a grief recovery specialist is that, you know, we have these stirrups that we often short term energy relieving behaviors that we resort to when we’re not when we don’t want to feel what we’re feeling, right. And just based on what you told me like it just as an example of how exercise, right, like exercise can be a sturb. But yoga is an exercise, it’s an exercise of being in your body. Yep, it can be a sturb it can be a way that people believe that there be like that by being in my body. I’m somehow healing myself, right? But if you’re, you know, focused on your breath, and you’re in the moment, you’re, you’re in your body. But are you allowing yourself to feel exactly in that moment? That doesn’t mean you’re feeling?
Ram Dass 46:54
Nope, no. And that’s, that’s what’s so funny about all of this. And what’s like, maybe ironic about the whole process is I could have chosen to feel with any activity that I was doing. And maybe that’s the takeaway is, the allowing of having feelings can happen in any activity, and the denial of feelings can happen in in any activity, it’s the way you do it, not the activity itself. So while a lot of things on the outside and performatively are the right thing to do, there, the truth is, you could be completely absent while doing those performative things, you could still be doing these stirpes, as you’re talking about, you can still not have your feelings while doing everything that you’ve been prescribed to do. So yoga can be super helpful. If you can be there with yourself and your breathing and your having your feelings to walking, running, even just sitting and reading a book like that can either be distracting or can inspire feeling within you. So hard to prescribe activities when it’s like, you know, pick any of a million off of the list. But with the caveat, you have to take a dose of having your feelings to.
Victoria Volk 48:17
I have not thought about STURMS in this way, that if you are allowing yourself to feel while you’re doing them, even if they’re healthy, right? That’s the thing like people think, well, it’s healthy, it’s good for me, it’s self care. Yeah. But maximize it then. Right? Exactly, is that healthy thing?
Ram Dass 48:40
Exactly. And ultimately, if you can get to being able to have a good cry, and a release the full emotional release. For me, I go back to regulating way faster. It’s like the amount of time that it takes to actually get there is a lot shorter and a lot less tiring, then perpetuating not having the feeling. So in a lot of ways, I think one of the most fatiguing things about grief is the fact that we’re not really having it, in the sense that we’re not moving it in a lot of cultures. There’s a an understanding that grief needs to be witnessed in order to be fully processed. And they do that through ceremony in a lot of places where it’s actually they’ve created a ritual that is like, Look, our ancestors can’t have feelings. They don’t have grief, your grief feeds them. So give them like go to the altar and give them your grief. And then you will be rewarded and I you know you feel it biologically, if you let it go. Suddenly your body goes oh, I’m okay. You know, you might be exhausted, of course. But there’s a settling. There’s a regulation and a soothing that can happen. Tangential way of saying that What we’ve been saying you gotta gotta do it, to get through.
Victoria Volk 50:05
Got to feel it to heal it. Exactly. So what gives you the most hope for your future?
Ram Dass 50:11
That’s a great question. I don’t think about my future a lot. That gives me a lot of hope. I don’t feel very preoccupied with what’s going to happen in the next day. I don’t feel preoccupied and what’s going to happen in the next five years, I’m really quite focused on what’s happening in the moment. And in that given day, and yeah, I plan the week I plan the month. I know what’s I know what’s happening, hypothetically, from now until July, and I have projects booked up for the rest of the year, but like I’m actually paying attention to today. And that, to me, is the most hopeful thing, because that’s where everything’s happening. The future is undetermined. And I would just be posturing about something that I know nothing about. So I just, I just try to stay in the present moment, and appreciate what’s here.
Victoria Volk 51:02
I had heard once and never even occurred to me, but how you spell present is a present that you give to someone a gift, right?
Ram Dass 51:13
Yeah, they said, Kung Fu Panda. Yeah, it’s brilliant. It’s totally wrong. It’s true. It is the gift. It’s the gift that’s here. And again, like, because I was raised in a spiritual community, I am very anti woowoo. In my own self, like, it’s just my childhood, like, you know, your parents feeding you steamed broccoli, there’s a certain like, but the truth is the my own happiness, my own good feelings come in thinking of not really thinking about the future or the past and more just what there is in front of me, that feels very satisfying to me.
Victoria Volk 51:50
You bring up a question that came to me in what you said. So do you feel like that relationship with your son has continued? Do you feel? Do you feel this connection to your son? Still?
Ram Dass 52:07
Yeah, I think my relationship is maybe through what I do. And through my experiences, I don’t feel like I’m communicating with him. I don’t feel like he’s necessarily sending me messages. But I’m also not looking for them anymore. Like that was something that I felt like I needed to do it was the instinctive thing after he passed for a while was just like, look out for the signs. At this point, my life is sort of a reflection of what I’ve learned and recovered from. And I feel like that’s the biggest gift. And so what I get to do, who I get to be around who I get to talk to, that all feels like him living on in me. And the fact that I’m getting to make music now that is about him. That’s dedicated to him. That’s, that’s what I got, basically, and I think it’s big. And I also feel a sense of a certain sense of closure, in a way because I didn’t have the space to have my feelings about his passing. I didn’t have the space to grieve until years later, until the last couple years, honestly. And now being able to make something beautiful that is touching other people too. It’s it’s so beautiful and rewarding. So I feel like the music is him living on it’s, it’s not Yeah, I really feel like that’s him living on in me.
Victoria Volk 53:33
That’s beautiful. Thanks. Where can people listen to your music and find you if they’d love to connect with you?
Ram Dass 53:40
It is everywhere. So Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, you name it, it’s there. I’m on Spotify as Ram Dass R A M D A S S there is one other very famous Ram Dass. I’m the other one. And my EP is called and now he has wings. I can also go to ramdassmusic.com And all of it is there. And I’m on Instagram as @ramdassmusic Twitter @ramdass I’m around.
And I will link to the show notes. Awesome. Oh, that is there anything else you’d like to share?
I just I’m really grateful that that there’s a space to get to talk about these things, to talk about grief to talk about death and loss in a positive light. Maybe positive isn’t the right word in a productive way, and an appreciative way because for me it it really is not an existential tragedy. Like it’s it’s the truth about living is that there is loss and I’m always grateful when there’s someone like you who’s not only willing but eager to have these conversations and try to give a little solace and hope for people who are not feeling that right now, because of what they’re going through.
Victoria Volk 55:06
That’s perfect. And thank you so much for being my guest.
Ram Dass 55:11
Thanks so much for having me.
Victoria Volk 55:13
You remember when you unleash your hearts, you unleash your life. Much love.