"How you live is how you die," Dr. Scott Eberle — a physician specializing in end-of-life care — tells us in today's interview. Having spent many years at the bedside of the dying, Scott has learned some important lessons from those participating in their final rite of passage, and he's here to impart a bit of that wisdom with us today, inspiring us to live and die more consciously.

Dr. Scott Eberle is a medical director of Hospice of Petaluma in Petaluma, California, as well as an experienced teacher and author, and a wilderness guide. Together with Meredith Little of the School of Lost Borders, he co-created “The Practice of Living and Dying,” an innovative wilderness curriculum exploring the human experience of being a mortal animal.

In this interview, we explore the practice of living and dying and what it means to be a mortal animal. Consciously approaching life and death calls for us to "confront the difficult questions" and "have the difficult conversations" right now, and Scott shares how he has integrated these practices into his own life. We discuss Scott's experiences working in hospice, thoughts on death acceptance, the common regrets of the dying and much more. If you’re a mortal animal, you’ll want to hear this conversation!

EPISODE BREAKDOWN:

Show Introduction:
- Hunt + Gather updates: Transitioning to autumn, wild cherries & trout fishing
- Reflecting on the Moon Dance
- Q&A: Beard-scaping
Introducing Dr. Scott Eberle
What is hospice and how Scott came to work in this field
What it’s like to interact with people in their dying time
Denial of death
Lessons learned from the bedside of the dying
The top five regrets of the dying
What led Scott back to the natural world
Experiencing the AIDS epidemic
The practice of living and dying
Blending holistic wellness with our modern healthcare system
Being a mortal animal
Confronting the difficult questions and conversations now
Thoughts on the soul and life’s purpose
What Scott has come to hope for his own dying time
Scott’s prognosis for the future of the human species

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Meet Scott

Dr. Scott Eberle is a physician specializing in end-of-life care, medical director of Hospice of Petaluma in Petaluma, California, an experienced teacher and author, and a wilderness guide. Together with Meredith Little, he co-created “The Practice of Living and Dying,” an innovative wilderness curriculum exploring the human experience of being a mortal animal. More recently Scott co-created another new kind of School program with Cazeaux Nordstrum, these ones combining time alone in nature with meditation. To learn more about this new work, read his article, “The Red Thread.” Scott also has a book out called “The Final Crossing: Learning to Die in Order to Live.” In it he writes, “So now I am a physician who specializes in supporting life transitions. I am a hospice doctor who sits with the dying in their homes, and I am a rite-of-passage guide who sits with ‘the dying’ out in the desert.