00:00:00 Kevin

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00:00:24 Rosemary
This is the Gifts of Trauma podcast stories of transformation and healing through compassionate inquiry. 

Welcome to the Gifts of Trauma podcast presented by Compassionate Inquiry Irina Sadakova. I’m delighted to be speaking with you today.

00:00:53 Irina
Thank you very much.

00:00:54 Rosemary
Thank you. Now, as we do in Compassionate Inquiry sessions, I’d love to invite you to share your intention for this conversation for yourself and for our listeners.

00:01:07 Irina
Now, my intention for this conversation is to share my experience from where I was before, and now. And also for listeners, it’s probably that my story will help other people to handle how to start to love themselves more and to be more regulated, and trust more in your life.

00:01:39 Rosemary
That’s beautiful. Trust more in life. I love that. Thank you so much, Irina. Now, you said in our initial communication that you have a strong calling to share your own gift of trauma, what you’ve gained through your personal trauma journey and I’m looking forward to getting into that. But first, I’d like to share a few key points about you with our listeners to frame up this conversation. Now you are a QiGong practitioner, a Compassionate Inquiry practitioner and energy therapist. I notice that you’re certified in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and you are an IFS Internal Family Systems Informed Therapist, and you’re also an educator. And in addition to all this, you’ve got a deep passion for supporting personal transformation, which was reflected in your intention. You were born in Soviet Russia, you speak 3 languages, English, Russian, Swedish, and you currently live in Sweden in Stockholm. So can you share a bit more with our audience about who you are as a person, the human behind those credentials?

00:02:51 Irina
OK. Thank you very much. I thought about it before the interview and I understand that I am a very positive person. It’s probably like characteristics is in front of me and it can be very strange if someone knows my story because I went through a lot of things in my life that I realized recently, being in the Compassionate Inquiry. But it’s also like evidence for this sentence that the child have very good in being seen home, loved in first few years of life. So what’s happened then can be dramatic, but the resilience is on the place and probably it is my case and otherwise I’m the person who loves presence to be present.

00:03:47 Rosemary
We need more of you in this world. Most people love being in their head, not present in the here and now, and I’m sure that positivity as you get into your story of your resilience, they will play a key role. Thank you. Anything else you’d like to share?

00:04:04 Irina
I’m not shy but sometimes when someone asks me to share something about yourself, what I should share but breathing life, being in the presence, being for myself and others, is how I feel right now.

00:04:19 Rosemary
OK, thank you. So being positive, being present for yourself and for others. That’s lovely. Now I’d like to hear about how life shaped you, if I can put it that way, into the woman you are today. And I’d like to, if we can do this in chronological order, can you take me back to your childhood in Soviet Russia? I’d love to hear about that. Where did you live? What was your early family life like? What was happening around you societally, politically, economically… whatever you’d like to share?

00:04:52 Irina
That’s exactly what I thought about before the interview, that probably I need to take you several generations back in order to understand everything that happened with me, and,  if it’s OK.

00:05:06 Rosemary
Yes, absolutely. Please.

00:05:09 Irina
And I try to find this point that they think that all our traumas are culturally coloured. And I can say for all Russians, but for myself, OK, let’s start with the generations.

00:05:26 Rosemary
Yes, please go back. Go back as far as you wish.

00:05:30 Irina
Exactly. I was born in the Soviet Russia, in the final in the city called Hangers at the White Sea. And we start with my grandmother. My grandmother was born in a rich family, in a famous family before the Russian Revolution. And the tragedy of the whole family experienced when the revolution came and the whole family has been destroyed, destroyed, property, confiscation, disposal. And my grandma was very young and at certain points she found herself in the big city. It’s not so big a city, but for her it’s probably was a very big city. And then surely her destiny was printed by everything that happened in Russia in that moment. I actually don’t know a lot because in Russian families, is like taboo to tell about what’s happened with previous generations. But I know a little bit. I need myself to puzzle it together and actually Compassionate Inquiry helped me to do it. 

She suddenly found herself in the middle of the Second World War with 3 children, and alone working at the bread factory That one of her children died and with 2 girls, 1 of them was my mother and another was my aunt. And then at the end of the war, she suddenly became the people’s friend. It was some kind of, you know, some kind of… in Soviet Russia when the people was the beat get this status. And she found herself in prison. And the two small girls was one at the orphanage and another one in some kind of labour community worked to make food for people. I’m still very emotional even I walked up at the lot and I’m talking about it and these puzzles with I recently put together and I don’t know exactly but something happened with my mom in orphanage.

00:07:55 Rosemary
Yeah. Was your mother the younger one?

00:07:57 Irina
Yeah, it was. Yes, the younger one.

00:08:00 Rosemary
Her sister was older and she sent to the Labour place.

00:08:03 Irina
And yeah.

00:08:05 Rosemary
Your mom was in the orphanage.

00:08:07 Irina
Yes, yes, I need to breathe.

00:08:09 Rosemary
Yes, take a moment please. This is your family you’re talking about.

00:08:15 Irina
There, yes, it was her. Something happened there because she died 13 years after.

00:08:21 Rosemary
Your mom?

00:08:23 Irina
Yes, from systemic lupus.

00:08:27 Rosemary
And it began in the orphanage?

00:08:29 Irina
I didn’t know exactly through this knowledge that I got in Compassionate Inquiry and Gabor. I can imagine that it was set up there. Yeah, but then my grandma came back and took the girls back, and so I didn’t know what happened with them, they just grew up at the point that I came to life. My mom and my father had a relationship. But again, it’s like a cultural and it’s a political thing. They couldn’t marry each other just because my grandma was in the prison and my father walked in the internationalship and if we would marry, he would lose his job. That I know. It’s something that I know.

00:09:20 Rosemary
It was very political, yes?

00:09:23 Irina
It was very political and at the moment I came, he left my mom, and I came to the world with a huge abandonment trauma. But my grandma and my mom became my family, of me, cared about me. They had a very difficult time, I know it, but they gave me something in the early years that I could sustain myself through everything. And probably this story was a bit long, but I feel, I feel in my body the grief, their sadness and their struggle. Yeah, yes, and I just carried it through my life.

00:10:15 Rosemary
Well you can, just in these short generations you shared with us, you can see the pattern. You grandmother was raising your mother and your aunt on her own, and then your mother ended up raising you with the support of her mom, your grandmother. But it’s a repeating pattern, women raising children on their own.

00:10:34 Irina
Yeah, and it was quite common in the Soviet Union. It’s after the war and or other things.

00:10:44 Rosemary
Yeah, so how long did you stay? How long did you live in Russia? Were you grown when you left to take us forward a little bit from where you stopped.

00:10:55 Irina

No, I moved from Russian when I was grown up, but well before that… it’s that my mom died. Then I was 12 years old and I was raised by my grandmother and she died when I was 18.

00:11:12 Rosemary
Yeah, take a moment whenever you need. You can feel how emotional this is for you still. These are your people, people who raised you. Yeah. So at 18, you were in charge of your life.

00:11:28 Irina
Yeah, that’s it. It was like when my mom died, I just went to this beautiful… I can say, beautiful world of shutdown.

00:11:42 Rosemary
Yeah.

00:11:43 Irina
And this beautiful world shut down completely numb, actually helped me to survive.

00:11:49 Rosemary
It’s a very good coping mechanism, absolutely.

00:11:54 Irina
Yes, now I understand that.

00:11:56 Rosemary
Yeah, so tell us the story. Like, how did you leave Russia? How did you choose where to go? What unfolded next?

00:12:04 Irina

What unfolded next was that I lived like 10 years in my beautiful world of shut down and I don’t remember exactly this. There was quite a lot of disconnection which actually saved me. But then suddenly life came online and I already had this belief that I’m not good enough to have a father and I’m very small because I have no relatives at all, and I should be small because otherwise people can hurt me. And also that life is something to be controlled because I’m alone. Yeah, I don’t know how to live life.

00:12:51 Rosemary
The third generation in your family to be on your own.

00:12:56 Irina
And then it happened, I started to learn how to live life. I started to go through shutdown. I created my own family and then it was better. I left my own family, we separated with my husband and I raised my son on my own.

00:13:14 Rosemary
Again. Wow.

00:13:15 Irina
Again, yes, it’s a huge multi generational pattern. Then I start to work. I started going between Sweden and Russia and something inside of me, something inside of me. It’s like feeling that I need to leave Russia in order to survive, in order to survive. And then things just started unfolding this way. I’m good, I get to study my masters in Sweden, I start to work in Sweden and I am so grateful to this country because I really get my second life here.

00:13:59 Rosemary
And it was instinct that took you there. You didn’t know anybody. It was just this instinct. Your heart was saying Sweden… it probably could have been anywhere, but it was Sweden for you.

00:14:12 Irina
Yeah, it’s probably also generational, probably my initial family centuries ago again came from Scandinavian.

00:14:22 Rosemary
Ah, OK. Yeah. So there was something in you just calling you home.

00:14:28 Irina
Yeah, yeah, something just calling me home.

00:14:31 Rosemary
Well, you said earlier I carried the weight of multigenerational trauma and spent decades in a Free State. So thank you for sharing how that unfolded. And you also said it was a long road to finding my way out and you’ve shared some of that journey with us.

00:14:51 Rosemary
You also mentioned before we started talking that overcoming the trauma of abandonment has shaped your compassionate and intuitive approach. I wonder if it’s your trauma or if that’s also a generational trauma, that abandonment, because it certainly plays out in your grandmother’s life, your mother’s life and your life. And your father did leave, and your mom did pass away, and your grandma ended up dying. Is there anything else you’d like to add to what you’ve shared?

00:15:26 Irina
Yeah, I agree with you. Because really the gift of my trauma is intuition, and I probably still can be quite disconnected socially, but at the same time, I can be connected in the felt sense, in the felt sense with the people and with the person who’s sitting in front of me and in any work I do for the people and with the people, it’s not understanding that I feel.  And I feel before the people speak. And I think that it’s also generational gift because I can see these qualities in me and I could see when I was a child, this qualities in my grandmother. She could do it too.

00:16:31 Rosemary
She would have needed it to survive the revolution. A girl as you described, she was in a wealthy family. She wouldn’t have had knowledge or tools. So she had to trust her instinct, her intuition. Like if someone was maybe from a more working class background, they would at least have more tools. They’d have more knowledge, more skills, but someone from the wealthy family, as they used to talk about the aristocracy. It’s amazing what can happen to a human being when they are facing what your grandmother faced. Yeah. I wonder if you could share a little bit for our listeners how that abandonment trauma showed up in you. You talked about going into a freeze state and you mentioned briefly, in social settings it could be difficult for you. I have to imagine there would be a lot of trust issues. Because someone who’s been abandoned and has an abandonment trauma, you’ve trusted someone who let you down, even if it wasn’t intentional like your mom did not intend to leave you. But she did, yeah.

00:17:46 Irina
And actually I can say that for a certain amount of time after she left me I was angry with her.

00:17:56 Rosemary
Absolutely. That’s normal. Absolutely.

00:18:00 Irina
I was very angry. That is not logical reaction. It’s as you say.

00:18:08 Rosemary
Very human.

00:18:10 Irina
Yeah, and thank you for mentioning this trust issues with abandonment. Trust. It was actually a little bit different because my coping mechanism is to be small, and to be small and a little bit naive, and probably this naivety… trust somewhere inside of me. Yes, I didn’t trust, but in front, this naivety helped me to show people that I trust everyone. No boundaries, I trust everyone.

00:18:48 Rosemary
Wow, and that also makes sense because when you come from a background like yours, not that it’s a common background, but as we know as we go through the Compassionate Inquiry  raining, there is this neural wiring, this neuroception. So you would probably never felt safe anywhere. So you did not know what safe and not safe was. So you trusted everybody coming from a place. That naivety and that naivety plus intuition, that gift, and that seems to have worked for you, which is quite amazing given what you went through.

00:19:29 Irina
Yeah. What it is… Thank you to mention it. And it’s like a little bit inside the realization for me right now. Revelation. Yes, it worked for me. You know what? I never took drugs, I’ve never been on alcohol, I never smoke. I just didn’t understand why people do it. Even if we are going to just lose our mother at a young age and then actually be responsible for my life, from a very early age, it could be normal. But I was so comfortably numbed, I didn’t need it.

00:20:11 Rosemary
Yeah. And there was something in you with that intuition. There was a certainty that it would all work out. Wow, thank you. So, you also said that you see a lot of other people struggling with the same survival patterns. So is that the freeze, is that the functional freeze? Are you seeing lots of people walking around frozen, or is it something else?

00:20:33 Irina
It’s yes, I see people in freeze and I see this pattern that I actually observed in myself, to go to the shell to, to be comfortably numbed. And also I see another pattern, that if we’re talking about abandonment trauma, we’re talking about also the belief that I’m not good enough.

00:20:59 Rosemary
Right, because why else would you be abandoned?

00:21:02 Irina
Yeah, Why should I be abandoned? Why my father abandoned me? I’m not good enough to have my father. And there is another side of this. I’m not good enough. If I’m not good enough, I would like to be perfect.

00:21:18 Rosemary
I know it well Irina, I was adopted as an infant, so I got gifted with that as well. That duality. It’s if I can just be good enough, then I can prove my worth. So I can’t be good, I have to be the best. So thank you for bringing that out, and a lot of people you work with. Please tell us a little bit more about how that shows up for people.

00:21:41 Irina
Yeah, but it’s also how this shows up for me, and I have, I think 12 years of education at the high level. So I’m very educated person.

00:21:52 Rosemary
Yes, that’s a lot of education. 

00:21:56 Irina
It’s a lot of education. I think it’s actually that drive of the belief that I’m not good enough iron, then I see in the people they are not good enough. I need to be perfect. I see how much energy and how much energy I put it in there to just to boost being so small and just boost boost boost in myself to be bigger. But this is the wrong way.

00:22:29 Rosemary
It’s exhausting.

00:22:31 Irina
It’s very exhausting.

00:22:32 Rosemary
Yeah, and like 12 years of higher education, that’s two PhDs.

00:22:37 Irina
Yes. So some kind of my intuition said stop on the master level.

00:22:41 Rosemary
Yes, that’s interesting too, because you need to be the best, but maybe you didn’t want to get too big when you got there.

00:22:50 Irina
Yes, but probably in this point of life I start to not understand. So understanding it’s not so much, but just feel that there is something else in the world. There is some kind of qualities I didn’t learn that I didn’t know, but they are very amazing, because you can be yourself and you don’t need to put in it a lot of effort. And that was probably the change point for me in my life. Then I stopped boosting myself such a way. Even if I boost myself, I still inside of myself was a very small child. And then I start to see this way and I start to step in this way that something else opens for me. Yeah, it’s, it took years, Yeah.

00:23:56 Rosemary
Just as it did when you had that intuition to go to Sweden.

00:24:00 Irina
It is it. Yeah, you’re right. Thank you to mention it. Yeah, absolutely. It was really intuitive.

00:24:08 Rosemary
Yeah, so it’s so many conflicting motivations to stay small, stay safe, be perfect, boost yourself, prove your worth. I wonder if I could just carry on here. How did you come to be an educator? Did you always want to teach? I know often teachers are great students and you clearly are a great student, but how did you decide to go into education?

00:24:36 Irina
By chance.

00:24:37 Rosemary
Intuition?

00:24:39 Irina
No life. I could say life.

00:24:40 Rosemary
Life.

00:24:41 Irina
OK, you know what that I think in right now I just thankful for my guide. I can say that the most un-logical things that I did in my life were the best things that I did. And there’s also just un-logical, just OK, I’m go to the pedagogical university and I didn’t want to teach just because it’s a pedagogical university, just because it’s a languages, it’s a technology, but I didn’t want to teach and I teach with a whole life almost.

00:25:22 Rosemary
When you say your guides, is it ancestral presence? Can you tell us a bit more about that?

00:25:28 Irina
Yeah, sure, it’s ancestral, I can’t say for sure, but I feel this presence. I feel that someone is helping me, otherwise, how? Otherwise how could I without knowing what life is… How could I make these choices in my life? But there’s something else that helps me.

00:25:54 Rosemary
Thank you for sharing that. I don’t know this for sure, but I believe it’s a presence that shows up for many of us. But so many of us are to a certain degree checked out of life and we don’t notice. We just think it’s a synchronicity, or a chance or maybe we’re lucky. But interesting that it could all be guided for us by those who love us and have walked this path before. Thank you. So the next question, you were a teacher for your most of your life, how did you come to be a therapist? How did that unfold from your teaching role?

00:26:38 Irina
I still teach. I think it’s also like internal, and I think it’s also like this gift that I carry through through from the generations. So I give a lot of grief, but I carry a lot of talents, and these gifts just start to unfold inside of me. Then I was in the situation that I didn’t know what life is, and it was OK. It was a lot of struggle it was it was a struggle to live in Russia in the 90’s. It’s a lot of struggle there, just with the ordinary things, but then inside of me something started to push me, and I started to struggle more. I started to struggle more because I couldn’t see that even… I am a positive person but I couldn’t see the positive sides in my life. I start to feel very clearly – I’m missing something. And at that point I start to do yoga and I start to heal my body a little bit more, because to feel the body when you’re numb is not the case. So I start to feel my body and then I practiced yoga for probably more than 10 years and suddenly I tried QiGong and fell in love with this and start to develop myself in QiGong and tingling is the way of living and QiGongis just open this gift. I start to feel my body. I start to being in my body. I start to feel all the feels and I start to work with energy for myself and it real life and life became bigger without I boosted it, it just became bigger.

00:28:40 Rosemary
You didn’t have to do anything.

00:28:42 Irina
I didn’t have to do anything. I just get a lot of perspectives out of things. I start to feel more, I start to feel people more, I start to feel myself more and that was amazing and it was really amazing.

00:29:00 Rosemary
It sounds like the experience where you were living in black and white and all of a sudden the colour started coming back in.

00:29:10 Irina
Yeah, exactly. Thank you. It’s really so… the colours come in and yeah….

00:29:16 Rosemary
Yeah, the colours and the sounds would have come louder and clearer. Wow, what an experience.

00:29:24 Irina
Yeah, I’m so grateful for it.

00:29:28 Rosemary
I’m sure there are many people that are grateful you found it too. Now I’m wondering in your shift into this experience and opening up more to therapeutic approaches, obviously yoga, then Qigong, how did you find the other approaches? Compassionate Inquiry? Ericksonian Hypnotherapy? Was there an order? Like you found one first and then the next? Or I’m going to guess that your intuition led you to these. Your life presented them… a book, you happened to hear about a book or a teacher?

00:30:06 Irina
Yeah, it’s both. It’s was intuition and also it was like a kick to my bum.

00:30:17 Rosemary
That’s OK, life gave you a kick in the bum, I love it.

00:30:20 Irina
Life gave me a very big kick in my bum. Yeah. And if you’re talking about Compassionate Inquiry, it was it. I start to listen to Gabor Maté videos. Someone is many people in the world. Someone told me, listen to him and I start to listen and then some difficult thing happened in my life and valuables, like in despair. Despair. Ah, what is the world? It’s a despair situation in myself. No, it’s a despair, Yeah. In a state of dysregulation and guides intuition. But can they save this world? The universe sent to my computer advertising about the retreat with Garber Maté, and it was the Corona time. It was the online retreat and I was very desperate, so that I was lucky to talk with him on this retreat. And I can say that Gabor Maté changed my life in 15 minutes, literally.

00:31:38 Rosemary
Yeah. So you shared what was happening and he gave you a different perspective perhaps?

00:31:44 Irina
Yep, he gave me a very different perspective and I experienced the shift.

00:31:52 Rosemary
Yeah, he has this beautiful way of framing things up. It’s not your fault. Yes. How could you have responded any other way given your background?

00:32:02 Irina
So it’s not my fault and it’s also about my controlling in life. And it was a dramatic shift in me. And then afterwards, after these, I start to learn, myself, about the Compassionate Inquiry. And then the Compassionate Inquiry was open for the educators and I jumped in.

00:32:28 Rosemary
Wonderful. And when was that? If you can put a date on that?

00:32:31 Irina
I jumped in the May 2022, yeah.

00:32:35 Rosemary
Yeah, actually I’m just going to ask you about the year long program, which is the first step. What shifted for you when you went through the training?

00:32:45 Irina
Yeah, it’s a lot. It’s shifted a lot. I understand right now that I was quite prepared by yoga and Qigong, but Compassionate Inquiry became the big puzzle in this world that have been unfolded and still unfolding for me. So it gives me a lot of understanding about the generational trauma, about what I’m clearing and it started to clear up my drama. It started to give me a lot of other perspectives and yes, the first year of the compulsion to increase is for sure to get these perspectives. I didn’t know it’s so much wider. It’s so much space, It’s so less opportunity just to go to the smell and let go of something that you probably need to let go.

00:33:44 Rosemary
Yeah, so it’s if I can go back to that metaphor that I came up with. You went from the black and white picture to the full colour with surround sound and now with Compassion Inquiry you’ve got a panoramic view. It’s just, it’s just keeps expanding out. And I wonder for those who are listening, who haven’t experienced the Compassionate Inquiry training, how did that show up in your everyday life? What changed? Could you give some, like, concrete examples, like before you would do this and then after, you did that.

00:34:23 Irina
It showed up mostly in my reactions and something’s still showing up, but the beauty in it, that you probably have some kind of yes, I’m not good enough. I’m not belong, people don’t see me, and so on. And it’s following you in everyday life. But probably you do something good and people do not react. SOS don’t say to you, oh you did something good. They can’t see me, they can’t see me and went through this first year of Compassion Inquiry. I suddenly start to realize, I’m not reacting anymore. I see the people, I’m not reacting anymore, and I see why people do it. It’s really the way to be compassionate to yourself and compassionate to all the people. Not to see the and now the person would like to do something bad to you, but to see what is underneath peoples reactions, peoples words, people’s action.

00:35:39 Rosemary
You see what’s driving them.

00:35:42 Irina
Yeah.

00:35:43 Rosemary
You can see the mechanics of why they behave the way they behave.

00:35:47 Irina
Yes, Yeah. Why they behave the way they behave. And it gives a lot of compassion. It gives a lot of compassion.

00:35:57 Rosemary
Yeah, so you can see maybe someone gets angry, and you see this scared child through that anger. And rather than responding with anger, you can respond with compassion, now. Beautiful.Thank you. Thank you. Now I wonder if we could speak a little bit about your work as a therapist. What do you specialize in and who tends to show up in your therapeutic practice? What types of people do you work with?

00:36:26 Irina
Thank you for the question, and I can say that the people who probably has the same struggle, but I had, I’m working with right now and the people with eating disorder that people with abandonment trauma, some youngsters with… who are confused in their life and it is reflected in my early years too. So that people who are searching for transformation in life, who are searching for transformation to be more resilient, to be more emotionally balanced to the people who is in the movement, do not be in movement physically, but the movement towards these discovery that life is a little bit wider.

00:37:22 Rosemary
People who are opening, who are in their own version of their transformation from black and white to coloured surround sound to panorama view, beautiful that makes perfect sense. That and they would relate so strongly to you because you’re that much further ahead on a similar path to what they’re walking.

00:37:42 Irina

Yeah, and I see them, some person coming to me. I can see myself in this person, and I can see that it’s like a collaboration between us and the training, the Compassion Inquiry. I had trained by life and I hope they can help from higher potential. But it’s a little bit like collaboration, working with the people and help them on the path.

00:38:08 Rosemary
Yes, thank you. Something that I came across that I’d like to ask you about, you are dedicated to raising awareness about the effects of trauma, particularly within the field of education. I’m curious, how do you do that? How does that play out.

00:38:26 Irina
Thank you for this question, because it’s like my patient because I’m still teaching, I’m in education, I teach adult people who’s coming to the Sweden with different kinds of trauma. It’s a refugees, it’s a people who just being extracted from them from their countries, dramatic circumstances and action, seeing different colours of trauma. I can see different colours of trauma that culture put on it, and by Compassionate Inquiry I can have language with these people who struggled inside of themselves because they carried trauma of leaving their countries. Whatever reason it is, it’s all time. It’s all time. Big change in their life. It’s all time stress. It’s all time something that contracted inside and by compassionate inquiry I have a language to talk to them and to talk to their drama to ease the situation that they can learn because this is Polyvagal theory. If someone is stressed, if someone in shut down mode or fight or flight, it’s very difficult to learn. That my passion to help them on their learning path to regulate to go to these learning possibilities for them or possibilities through their life in another country.

00:40:11 Rosemary
Thank you  We had a guest on a few weeks ago, Irma, and she was a refugee in the Bosnian war, and she was talking about her experience as a refugee, and I can’t imagine  – she was a child at the time – but being in school, I know you’re not just talking about children, but being in school, not knowing how long you stay in a particular community, being an outsider, not speaking quite right, having to learn a new language maybe, and having to do your studies, so much, it’s such a burden. So I’m very glad that you are addressing this. And you’re also an advocate for trauma informed education. And you offer international training for educators on self-care, emotional regulation, and one thing I’m going to ask you to define sustainable pedagogical practices. So tell me a little bit about that.

00:41:08 Irina
Yeah, it’s connected actually, to we have been talking about helping people to just relax and their education. It’s relational, it’s the relational between the teacher and students, with relational between the students. It’s relational between teachers, students and the school and its relational much more bigger to the culture and for sure, for example, if you’re talking about the educators and if the educators probably not so much aware that the people is coming with the trauma like you talked about it. I can understand her because I see these people who are displaced and can’t find the ground under their feet.

00:42:00 Rosemary
Yes, especially if it’s like her, and they keep moving. They have to go here, then there. It’s got to be very, not only dysregulating, but disorienting. What day is it? Where am I?

00:42:13 Irina
Yeah. And you don’t know what is OK to say in this country, what is OK to do, what is not OK to do. It’s creates a lot of frictions in the educational system, in this part of the educational system. But I know very well, and what I’m patient about to work with the educators and to work with the students and to work with this process is actually education. It’s a big process. This process can be sustainable because in other side we are talking about the burnout of teachers and another side they’re talking about the stressed and distressed students and it’s not sustainable and it’s again, coming to Polyvegal theory. Then if you’re numbed, if you’re in a fight ot flight, this is very difficult to learn for educators and students.

00:43:11 Rosemary
Yes, for everybody. And it’s so important that you are doing this work because I’m thinking back several years ago, there was a massive influx of Syrian refugees into Canada, which is where I was born. And I can imagine these non-trauma informed Canadian teachers, they’ve got the challenge of new students coming into their classroom already disoriented and dysregulated from a culture that they’re not familiar with, trying to integrate, trying to learn in a language that is new to them. And then not understanding the trauma aspect. Not knowing how many camps or how many stops these refugees have made on this journey to be welcomed into Canada, I can see why both sides need support and understanding and compassion, for sure.

00:44:05 Irina
Yeah, sure. Compassion is really a keyword, and it’s really, yeah. And I can relate to what you say right now. Yes. We also, in Sweden, had a lot of immigration. And really, it’s so, even painful to think about their way to Sweden, what they went through to come here..

00:44:37 Rosemary
Yeah. And I remember Paul Sunderland had a quote about adoption where every aspect of the adoption. Triangle if you think of just the birth parents, the adoptive parents and the adopted child. It’s all born of grief. The birth mother didn’t want to give up her child, but she had no choice. The adoptive parents oftentimes couldn’t have a child. So there’s grief there. And the adopted child doesn’t have their background, their roots. So in a similar way, people who are experiencing life as a refugee, they didn’t want this war to start. They weren’t involved. It wasn’t, again, it wasn’t their fault. They didn’t want to have to go to a different country. They didn’t want to have to move through so many different waypoints on their way to their new country. They don’t really want to be in their new country. They’d rather go home. They don’t want to have to learn a new language. They don’t want to have to adapt to a new culture, but they didn’t choose it. They didn’t choose it, but they have to deal with it. So compassion. I think goes a long way in those circumstances. Thank you, Irina. We’re coming to the end of our time. together, we’ve covered a lot of ground, is there something? That you’d like to address. That I haven’t asked you about.

00:46:02 Irina
You mentioned grief and surely, I was born in grief, but I want to be positive. I worked with my grief, a lot, and that’s why I can actually tell you the story about my grandmamma and my own story, another side of the grief that the grief is the most accelerator of the growth.

00:46:28 Rosemary
So if I may I’m just going to repeat that back. The grief is the accelerator of growth?. So it’s like fertilizer?

00:46:37 Irina
It’s like fertilizer. It probably doesn’t feel so on the spot, in the feeling.

00:46:44 Rosemary
But I love that fertilizer doesn’t smell very good most of the time.

00:46:48 Irina
I know grieve doesn’t smell good.

00:46:52 Rosemary
I’m only laughing because it’s better than the alternative. I think a sense of humor goes a long way. But yes, if you think about stinky grief, it might be a little more palatable. Yes, that’s beautiful. And those may be your final words. But just as we close, if you could leave a thought with the listeners, out of all these wonderful points of your life that you’ve shared, what would you like to leave them with? Something to consider, something maybe to just try on in their life. A perspective.

00:47:26 Irina
I would leave listeners with Gabor’s words that he told me in these 15 minutes. Trust life, 

00:47:40 Rosemary
That’s beautiful. Trust more in life, Irina said. Akova, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for sharing your story, your very hard to share story, your insights, your perspectives. It’s been an absolute delight to have you on the Gifts of Trauma podcast.

00:47:57 Irina
Thank you, Rosemary. Thank you for this work with you too.

00:48:01 Rosemary
Thank you so much.

00:48:03 Irina
Thank you.

00:48:09 Rosemary
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