We have a whiteboard connection.

And I've got lots of small ones.

So now they're getting to be put around everywhere.

I've even got one next to the bed if thoughts come up, you know, it's getting a bit obsessed.

And I've got like little whiteboards for shopping lists and little whiteboards for helping other people to get organized, which is not appreciated.

but anyway i think practically and i think in boxes i think visually um i have columns i have generally four things also that is on my mind at the moment it's like a book chapter intro abstract conclusion and then i keep going down the lines um i am planning one day to go in a torah brabazon's um soiree i haven't entered one yet i don't think i'm that posh yet i'll have to work i'll work my way up to it and so i keep revisiting them because and that's a way of keeping it like fresh for me because my mind in itself can't understand where i am in the process unless i'm writing things down and then i need to like tick them Um, when I've completed not wiped them out, I have to take them.

So my brain can see that I've done it.

So tell me a little bit, and again, we may return to this one too, what the three months, six months after the thesis is completion looks like.

We've always got to be careful about the power differential between a supervisor and a student and the student can be exploited.

I mean, I think it gets complicated when there's different or when there's misunderstandings of what's considered okay and what's considered normal.

And there's no discussions of that or any way you can go if problems do arise.

And there's unchallenged assumptions as well of this is what we do without knowing, is that what we do, you know? And, you know, she said it can leave students vulnerable.

And, you know, I think about like the really young, if I'm thinking about my own children going out to university, I would not want them to be in an exploitative relationship.

Or if I think of the people that have flown to another country to do their doctoral away from family, meeting people, living with new people, they're vulnerable.

And Sometimes we think of disability where you can see it, but there's a lot of hidden disabilities as well.

What new skills do I need to give you for the next stage? So what do we need to work on to keep this research career and this writing and publishing career going for you?

What, what you've captured there is this, uh, this is making so much more sense to me, these delicate conversations you've had with humans through your adult life through multiple roles, your duties of care, respecting the human where they are, and pondering where they could be and who they could be.

Yeah, that, that's actually been quite a fascination, um, of mine.

Um, yeah.

And actually even going to an even earlier, younger version of myself when I was doing my bachelor, um, and I did end up doing my dissertation in men with eating disorders, which is funny 'cause I ended up working as a therapist for eating disorders.

So I think a lot of the times if we look back through our lives, you realize that these things have been building up.

You've probably just forgotten them or haven't realized or, you know, a change in family, country, partner, you know, [laughs] and then you forget who it was you, you were [laughs] when you started.

Um, and you know, I probab- actually, I don't know that I ever did tell my mum, so if she listens to this podcast she'll probably get gray hair, or more gray hair, but I did have a couple of unruly boyfriends during that- ... uh, time.

Yeah.

Wow

...

I mean, yeah, uh, I was with my partner.

We were talking about a business concept and, you know, I had moved to the country.

I'd refurbished, um, like a shed into a yoga hall.

And, you know, it was going well, but it was like, well, how do we take it to the next level? And it doesn't mean in terms of business and money, but how do I make n- things more, you know, appealing to people? How can I give more of the same things at the same standard? And we just couldn't get there.

And then looking at the, the best version of, of what I could see, um, it just didn't feel good enough.

Wow.

It's very interesting.

Um, yeah, actually, yeah, we start with the three breaths.

Like, my research is based on looking at the experiences, the lift experiences of people who've gone through this intervention with yoga, breath work and meditation.

And as we know, it's a very embodied intervention that maybe not everyone has the language for we're not used to working with these parts of the bodies with these type of techniques.

So when i start the interview i start it with three breaths and it actually it links them back to their experience so that's the intention of linking them back to their experience of when they've been doing the breath work um what i've been discovering is it sort of lets us land in the interview in a way um i always have like an observer with me that's part of the ethical um part of the ethics so all three of us actually start with three breaths and it just brings a calmness in it from what i feel it expands the space before we start the interview and you can see in the eyes of the people i sit across from that they land a different place in their body um And with some people, I actually end the interview as well with the three breaths.

And I have had one person where we actually did three breaths in the middle of the interview as well.

That's

So what is the value of tracking the layers of sound and indeed the layering of sound? What's the value of it to research? So it's a hard question, probably a thesis transforming question, but let's have a go.

i love that autonomy and control for other social subjects other human beings i think that's brilliant you also conducted focus groups before the interviews and they were very interesting on it on themselves really and of themselves Why did you make that decision and then how did the focus groups shape what then happened in the interviews?

Well, I conducted, well, I did some informal sessions with family and friends beforehand just to figure out, you know, how I would set up in a room because I was so novice at it, you know, I don't mind admitting that.

And then I had these focus groups, two of them, one where we shape through the clay, like it's knowing what to do with it.

How do you like just pull it out of your bag? Is it there? How do you, do you have to wash your hands afterwards? What do you do if people don't like it? You know, all those sort of different things, the aspects that can play into it.

And then I had a session where they went through the questions.

I went through the questions I wanted to ask the participants.

And luckily for me, one of the people from the focus group was ill on one of the days.

So do you have a definitive interpretation of the interview or all three different renderings of the same experience?

as we're bringing the pieces together but therefore tell us about this sock and how indeed methodology is part of it

well i'm looking at an intervention if we go with that word that's involving yoga embodied experiences meditation and breath work and and that can be an umbrella for a lot of a lot of things really and people throw the words around um and And it'd be quite arrogant of me to think that I can not only sit across from a person and hear their story, but also have an expectation that they'll be able to formulate and verbalize their embodied experiences because we don't have the language for that naturally.

So it became apparent to me that there were other there was a need for other ways, other methods, other ways of gathering this information, capturing the information.

And also being open to understanding what it is they're communicating because we all communicate differently and a lot of unexpected things have occurred during the interviews.

But also observing the breath, the space, the way their body moves.

And for me, introducing from the pottery is an element of clay.

How do they engage with that? So it's needing more things so they can open up their um vocabulary and through that i'm also opening up what it is i received from them um and this is actually goes back to all the things i've been doing like in denmark i mean i did do the academic things in england but then after i um stopped at the hospital i threw myself into my own business um and started doing lots of different alternative trainings as well.

What did you mean by that?