Day 300: Denys Cope

July 27, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

”You know, one of the things about being with people who are dying … when we are dying, people are in their deepest authenticity, and you get to hear some beautiful things from them, and there’s no time for anything but authenticity.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Denys, for agreeing to be part of this Project, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Denys Cope: I am Denys Cope, my name is pronounced Da-nee, like the elbow and “da knee.”

Toni: Thank you for that.  I am hoping to get that right through this interview.  Denys, what do you do?

Denys: I am a hospice nurse and end-of-life care coach, author, and lecturer.  I do presentations throughout the nation and hopefully internationally someday to teach people about the dying process, and my purpose is to reframe how we hold dying in the Western world.

Toni: Well, you have an international platform with the Get Inspired! Project, so that’s fantastic; you’re close to meeting that goal.  When you think of the word inspiration, who do you inspire, and how does that happen?

Denys: I think I inspire most people I interact with, because I get that feedback from people, and I especially inspire people when I talk and present on the dying process.  The timing of this is amazing.  I gave a presentation yesterday to a retirement community here, to the staff, and I had given this same presentation several months ago and thought “Oh my God, I’m going to sound like a stuck record.  These people will have heard what I have to say; they will be so bored.”  They were mesmerized, and they came up to me and said “We could listen to you over and over again.”

So there’s something in the way that I present about the dying process that people are almost enchanted by, and they come out of it going like “I guess dying’s not so bad.”

Toni: It’s interesting, the whole topic and the inspiration behind it, actually.  When you are giving these talks or you said you have also written a book about this …

Denys: I have written a book about it, yes – Dying:  A Natural Passage.

Toni: Okay.  Can you give me an example of how you might inspire someone’s thinking around this topic?

Denys: Well, I talk about the fact that dying is not just a physical process, that I have learned from my patients and their families that it is also – of course it’s a mental/emotional experience – but it’s also a spiritual experience, and that when we are dying, things aren’t going wrong, they’re going right.  That it’s a very natural unfolding of the body, that everything that happens supports the spiritual experiences that we have at the end of life, including the fact that we don’t eat and that our appetite drops off, and so we eventually essentially go into a fasting state.

If people think about it, and that’s what I invite them to do, think about why do people fast?  People fast to detox, to do clearing of their body, but they also go into fast when they’re doing spiritual retreats because the physiology of the body alters so that you can have enhanced spiritual experiences.  Isn’t it amazing that the human body puts itself into a fasting state because it’s moving into a spiritual, nonphysical realm?

And what I was going to say is, people go “I don’t know if I believe in things that are spiritual and not of this world.”  I always tell the story of a botanist who didn’t believe in anything outside the physical realm.  He told me “I am a scientist.  If you can’t see it, touch it, measure it, feel it, it doesn’t exist.”

As he got close to the end of his life, and we were all going like “Oh, he looks like he is suffering, he’s 52 years old, he’s dying of bladder cancer.”  He looked miserable.  We were trying to figure out how to help him die because we were seeing suffering, and it turned out … one of the nurses went to him and said “Bill, is there anything holding you here?” and he said “Oh no.  I’ve been given the gift of seeing where I’m going, and it’s so warm and it’s so beautiful.”

Toni: You know, Denys, I don’t know how … I’m really interested to ask you this second question because with this topic, it’s really … it’s just a different view on inspiration and exploration of potential.  So the second question of the Project is, how do you help other people to explore their potential?  How does that happen?

Denys: Well, I learned to listen to people deeply.  You know, one of the things about being with people who are dying … when we are dying, people are in their deepest authenticity, and you get to hear some beautiful things from them, and there’s no time for anything but authenticity.

So I’ve learned to listen deeply to what they have to say, and as I do that, I listen to others.  I had breakfast with a dear friend today, and when I’m listening deeply, then I get intuitive thoughts to share with them about what they’re saying, and that invites them to think about things a little differently or a little deeper or a little bigger.  So it’s about listening.

Toni: So really you are learning from those that you are in their presence when they’re dying.

Denys: Oh, absolutely.  They’re our greatest teachers.  They are our greatest teachers, and I’ve learned to really listen to my intuition and then reflect it back to others.  So if they’re feeling stuck or they’re feeling … the other thing I do is a lot of times people get into a place of duality – either/or, or againstness – and I don’t live from that place.  And so when I hear people in those positions, I listen to my inspired thoughts about what they’re saying and then invite them to maybe think about holding it in a different way.

Toni: What inspires you?

Denys: What inspires me are people who really live in the excitement of their lives, like my friend this morning.  I mean, she’s a hospice nurse and she’s wanting to go to Bali, and she’s wanting to do this and she’s … it’s people who are active in embracing life as a great adventure and challenge.  I really love people who are open in their heart to being the most they can be in their life.

Toni: Does that inspire you to be the same?  Do you do similar things?

Denys: I do.  I do, and I have always been interested in growing and opening and all my friends … I look at the friends I have, and that tells me the values in my life.  And the closest friends to me are all people who love life and have a joyous approach to what’s happening in their life and my life.

Toni: Have you always been that way?

Denys: You know, no, I don’t think so.  As I was growing and in my 20s and 30s and going through all my growing, I was going through self-doubt.  Here I am a public speaker.  I was terrified of public speaking – terrified!  And I wasn’t comfortable being verbal.  I hid my thoughts.  And somewhere along the line with all the growing that I’ve done, I’m just excited about life and excited about sharing with people, and I’m amazed that I’m so comfortable with public speaking.  It’s like “What am I doing up here!?”

It’s because I’m coming from my authenticity, not from things that I’ve learned from other people to parrot out to the world, but what I’ve learned through my heart to share with the world.  That’s interesting to know about myself.  I had not realized that.

Toni: For me, what that does for me is I was going to ask you the next question, which is, you know, about courage and how did you get the courage to step out of that fear in order to do the work that you’re doing, and I think you just answered that, that your fear goes away the more authentic you come from.

Denys: I think … yeah … by being in my authenticity.  And I have to say, the first time I was supposed to be public … I had somehow gotten into this community educator position, and my dear friend who was my boss set me up to teach infant CPR.  I was panicked!  Then she didn’t show up, and here was this roomful of people, and I was an absolute … but she saw the potential in me, and she put me in that position because she knew that I could do it.  I had no idea.  I had always frozen up in my mind.  I had always … the minute I started talking, my mind would go into brain lock.

So I think if other people see my potential and inviting me to be more, and as I became more and more and became authentic, I reflect back to others their potential, my authenticity, and invite them to their full potential.

Toni: So it’s almost a validation process, isn’t it, that someone had a belief.  You may not have had the self-belief, but somebody else had that belief in you, and so that really seemed to move you to action.

Denys: Exactly.  And writing my book.  I thought “Oh, I’m not an author.  I don’t write books.”  But I kept getting supported by the Universe.  Over the course of writing my book – and I was quite the procrastinator – I received unsolicited $28,000 by people who believed in what I had to say and what they had read and wanted to see it out on a larger scale.  That’s why it’s out there, because people believed in me, and I couldn’t let them down.

Toni: That’s amazing.  I can really relate to that statement.  That is really awesome.  What do you do now to explore your own potential?

Denys: Well, I keep showing up for invitations from the Universe, and one of them just happened to me.  It was the strangest thing.  I have this very dear friend who I think would be great for this Project, Rebecca, and she had been inspired … she’s a phenomenal teacher.  Her whole purpose is to invite people into their soul’s efforts and to become co-creators in their life, and she got this idea that she wanted to go to England and see the crop circles and do a workshop at the same time, and she said “You’re coming!”

We have a deep enough friendship, I thought “I don’t care about crop circles, but if you say I need to be there, I’ll show up.”  I could care less about crop circles!  It was one of the best things I’ve ever done!

Toni: Did you go already?

Denys: Oh, yeah, we just got back, and it was the most amazing workshop.  I cleared stuff from generations.  We carry generations of pain and stuff through us; that’s one of the things I’ve learned in my growing time.  So there was a lot of clearing that happened for me.  Doing the crop circles was magical.

Going to St. Christopher’s Hospice … I decided to add in my work at the beginning, because St. Christopher’s in London is where hospice first started, and I went there and got all inspired that I want to come back here and set up a teaching center in the U.S. like they have in London.  You know, seeing things outside me that are bigger and more than me inspire me to do that.

Toni: It really … listening to you has come full circle for me now with the final question, because the lessons that you’re learning from the dying, and gosh, I think anyone who is in that position – a family, the patient, the people that are with you – if they are fortunate enough to have you be part of that process with them, what a gift that they are being given.  The fact that you consider that a gift that’s received as well, I think that’s amazing.  So the learning that you are acquiring through that process to then pay that forward to us and having us learn from that – that is an amazing, amazing process.

Denys: Well, you know, I have to say I feel very humbled.  I feel like I’ve been given a  gift by the Universe.  I’ve been kind of commissioned to do this work of teaching about the dying process, and I get reflections back all the time, and I go like “I am so honored to have been given the gift to give others, the gift to understand that dying is nothing to be afraid of.”

And I’m constantly getting answers back from people who order my book on Amazon or wherever they get it, “Oh my God, this has changed how I’m holding my loved ones dying.”  Or the man who bought 20 to give away as going away presents.  He was dying of cancer, and he said “I want to give these as going away presents to let people know dying is not so bad.”

Toni: Oh my goodness.

Denys: I mean, I get God-bumps just thinking about that.  It is full circle.

Toni: It truly is.  This is a 15-minute interview that has gone so far in such a short amount of time, and I cannot thank you enough for being part of the Get Inspired! Project.

Denys: Well thank you for doing this Project and providing this opportunity for all of us.

Toni: You’re quite welcome, and thank you for the work that you do.  It’s been a pleasure.

Denys: You’re very, very welcome.

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For more information about Denys Cope:  www.denyscope.com

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