Hey everyone, my name is Rosie and I'm one of the new hosts of Radio Headspace.

I'm an author and a yoga meditation teacher and my new episodes are debuting February of next year.

I can't wait to share them with you.

In the meantime, I'd like to let you know about a new show from Headspace Studios called Dear Headspace.

It's a call and advice show where Headspace teachers answer questions each week about anything and everything.

We talk about family, relationships, mindfulness and so much more.

You can find your Headspace on the Headspace app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

That's based here.

Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace and a Thursday morning.

Now, not everyone is a big fan of talking about death and I understand why there are many flavours of it.

It can make us feel so many different ways and for many people. It is a genuine source of anxiety.

It may not be our own death that necessarily brings us that sense of anxiety. It may be the death of those around us, the death of loved ones.

I may have shared this with you before, I don't know, but when I left the monastery, one of my teachers gave me a piece of advice.

It's a piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since.

He said to always keep death by your side.

By that was not meant in a dark or morbid way.

In fact, I would say that that single sentence, that single idea has given me a greater sense of freedom in my life than perhaps any other advice I've ever been given.

But it was more a sense of one to appreciate every single moment, but also to realise in accepting that the inevitability of that, not just for ourselves, but for all sentient life, there's a greater sense of freedom in the mind.

Because fear makes the world feel very small. It makes us feel trapped. And if we feel trapped by life, then we're never really going to be able to experience life. In its full context. And I say this not as someone who never fears death or as someone who never feels sad about it.

I have the experience of both. And the reason I decided to make today about this was I found myself the other day laughing actually about just the preposterousness of our life, our life where we assume that we are going to be around forever.

And as a consequence, we get so involved and we hold on so tightly to particular things that are happening in our life.

And yet I know that's not the only flavour of death in my mind. I know that sometimes absolutely if I look at my children, you know, and I contemplate perhaps either my own end or their end, for sure, I would experience a sense of fear around that.

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