Episodes
Sept. 5, 2022
Ep 85 Compassion in Today’s World
Send us a text Today, Marv Baldwin joins us to talk about the experience of engaging the spiritual journey to discover the pull on our hearts towards love and compassion, the struggles we tend to encounter once we become aware of that internal desire, and what we can do to stay grounded and centere…
Aug. 29, 2022
Ep 84 What We Learn from Kids
Send us a text It can be easy to get caught up in feeling like kids need things from us and that our job is to teach them. And this is true. But it’s also true that kids have the ability to teach us. Today we talk about what has surprised us and mesmerized us in our work with kids. We talk about ho…
Aug. 22, 2022
Ep 83 The Art of Hospitality
Send us a text There’s something special about enjoying connection and abundance in the context of hospitality. Across time and culture, it would seem that each of us is hard-wired to give and receive from one another. And yet, for some, we may find we feel more comfortable in the giving role. Or w…
Aug. 15, 2022
Ep 82 The Importance of Play
Send us a text Many times, when we think of contemplative practices, what comes to mind is stillness and silence. But it turns out that there are so many ways to engage with the contemplative – art, movement, and even play! Both rest and play are important to our lives. And for each of us, there ar…
Aug. 8, 2022
Ep 81 Living into Uncertainty
Send us a text For many of us, being an adult can sometimes look like trying to have all the answers. We can easily feel foolish to have to say, “I don’t know.” But what if the thing that lies on the other side of “struggle and not knowing” is possibility? What if choosing to live with “the questio…
Aug. 1, 2022
Ep 80 The Practice of Transformation
Send us a text Transformation can happen in both big and small ways. It may come as we intentionally nourish our souls, or it may come quite by surprise. We may find ourselves feeling the sting of impatience or the burden of rigidity, both of which can feel unsettling to our souls. But the contempl…
July 25, 2022
Ep 79 Brain Chemicals + the Contemplative
Send us a text Today, we’re talking about the benefits of our contemplative practices as it relates to the brain. It turns out there are four main brain chemicals playing a role in how we experience happiness and wellness in our lives. But no two people are exactly alike. What helps one may not at …
July 18, 2022
Ep 78 Are Our Personalities Fixed
Send us a text Today we’re talking about the possibility for evolution in our personalities as we grow and mature. For many of us, we tend to notice personal internal variances. Maybe we behave one way at home, one way at work, and another way in social situations. Maybe spiritual practices that us…
July 11, 2022
Ep 77 Making Space for One Another in Our Ordinary Lives
Send us a text Today we talk about the spiritual practice of paying attention to the people around us, making space in our days for each other, and being willing to be interrupted. For some of us, this comes naturally while for others, we may need to schedule it in to our days. But the delight and …
July 4, 2022
Ep 76 Calming the Nervous System
Send us a text Today we’re talking about how contemplative practices can help us when our bodies and nervous systems are feeling unsettled due to stress or trauma. Many of us have heard about the body’s ability to access fight, flight, or freeze at the turn of a dime. When that happens, the thing t…
June 27, 2022
Ep 75 Grief
Send us a text Grief is a universal experience. And yet, how it manifests, what we need in that time, and how long it takes to work out our grief will vary from situation to situation and from person to person. We’ll also talk today about how residual grief can affect our present griefs. We’ll embr…
June 20, 2022
Ep 74 Summer Solstice
Send us a text The Summer Solstice is a time to relish the abundance of light, beauty, and life, soaking it all in with great joy. Today we talk about accepting the invitations that come at this time of year, to take a more leisurely pace, shift our schedules, and celebrate by paying attention to t…
June 13, 2022
Ep 73 Finding Our Outdoor Personality
Send us a text We often talk about nature as a pathway to the contemplative here on the podcast. But what if we don’t consider ourselves outdoorsy? As it turns out, how we engage the outdoors seems to involve both our personalities and the evolution of our personalities. Today we take some time to …
June 6, 2022
Ep 72 Aging and the Contemplative
Send us a text Many of us have hopes for what life will look like as we age. The question is: What will it take for us to live well, and even thrive, in our later years? It turns out that those who are in that stage of life often have helpful words of advice – lived experience that we can soak up a…
May 30, 2022
Ep 71 Stress
Send us a text Stress is an unavoidable part of our lives. And fortunately, there’s a certain kind of stress that’s really good for us! But when we find ourselves in distress, the question becomes, “What resources do we already have – and what resources do we still need – to carry us through this m…
May 23, 2022
Ep 70 Poetry and the Contemplative Life
Send us a text Poetry can sometimes feel like an acquired taste, like maybe you either love it or you don’t. But what many of us find as we pursue a contemplative life is that poetry can become a helpful way to slow down and take a nice, long look. We sometimes find that poetry becomes a doorway to…
May 16, 2022
Ep 69 Spirituality Today
Send us a text In recent years, many of us have watched stores and spiritual communities alike, places that embodied the fabric of our childhood, disappear. The American landscape is changing. Many people today are opting to take a mosaic approach to meeting their spiritual needs. And at the same t…
May 9, 2022
Ep 68 Technology, Screens and The Contemplative Life
Send us a text Technology has done wonders for our lives. We use it. We need it. And we’re thankful for it. At the same time, sometimes it creates unhelpful patterns in our lives that affect us negatively. We feel it. We know it. And we want something different for ourselves. And so today we talk a…
May 2, 2022
Ep 67 Parent-Child Dynamics
Send us a text Each of us, regardless of the relationship we currently have with our parents, is someone’s child. And throughout our lives, how we relate with our parents tends to evolve as both us and our parents enter into new seasons and experiences. Today, we talk about how Contemplative Practi…
April 25, 2022
Ep 66 Inner Wisdom
Send us a text As we engage in deep listening, we discover the inner wisdom of the spirit. In this episode, we talk about the benefits of having companions to help us notice the deep well that lies within. When we begin to listen to our bodies, our intuitions, and the quickening of the Spirit, a wo…
April 18, 2022
Ep 65 Non-Duality
Send us a text Today we’re talking about the expansiveness that non-duality can bring to our awareness and thinking. Feeling like things are either/or can be comforting to us at times. But it can also cause us to feel stressed out, limited, and disconnected from the Divine. What do we do with suffe…
April 11, 2022
Ep 64 Lifelong Learners
Send us a text Today we talk about how being a lifelong learner connects to the contemplative life. For many of us, adulthood brings with it the pressures of feeling like we need to know the answers. And over the course of months and years, we can begin to lose track of what can emerge when we see …
April 4, 2022
Ep 63 Spiritual Journey
Send us a text In many ways, the spiritual journey is about putting language to what is hidden in our souls. And in order to do this, many of us benefit from companions and mentors along the way. We need someone to help us ask ourselves: How do I leave “this” and move into “that?” And when we’ve re…
March 28, 2022
Ep 62 Evolving Faith
Send us a text Evolution is defined as the gradual changing of something from a simpler form to a more complex one. And what we’ve noticed in our spiritual lives is that faith, like all of life is evolving. How we experience the Divine in our lives, what that means to us…our understanding and exper…