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Episodes

Ep 80 The Practice of Transformation
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…
Ep 79 Brain Chemicals + the Contemplative
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 …
Ep 78 Are Our Personalities Fixed
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…
Ep 77 Making Space for One Another in Our Ordinary Lives
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 …
Ep 76 Calming the Nervous System
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…
Ep 75 Grief
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…
Ep 74 Summer Solstice
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…
Ep 73 Finding Our Outdoor Personality
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 …
Ep 72 Aging and the Contemplative
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…
Ep 71 Stress
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…
Ep 70 Poetry and the Contemplative Life
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…
Ep 69 Spirituality Today
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…
Ep 68 Technology, Screens and The Contemplative Life
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…
Ep 67 Parent-Child Dynamics
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…
Ep 66 Inner Wisdom
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…
Ep 65 Non-Duality
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…
Ep 64 Lifelong Learners
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 …
Ep 63 Spiritual Journey
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…
Ep 62 Evolving Faith
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…
Ep 61 What’s All the Hype about Gratitude
March 21, 2022

Ep 61 What’s All the Hype about Gratitude

Send us a text “I’ve been on a gratitude journey for many years. And I’m still not where I want to be. But I see change…” “I was up in the middle of the night, and I realized my brain was still working. I had to breathe. I had to slow down…” Life is a mix of good and challenging. Join us as we expl…
Ep 59 Legacies
March 7, 2022

Ep 59 Legacies

Send us a text Today we’re talking about what it looks like to live a life that continues to offer meaning and impact for future generations. Certainly, our culture seems to indicate that, collectively, we’re developing an increasing interest in this notion of legacy. But for many of us, this is al…
Ep 58 Learning from Indigenous Wisdom
Feb. 28, 2022

Ep 58 Learning from Indigenous Wisdom

Send us a text Today we’re digging deeper into the wisdom of Indigenous populations from all over the world. And, in particular, we’re drawing inspiration from leaning into the power, meaning, and beauty of circles. The circle, for many of us, can represent a helpful decentralizing of power and a s…
Ep 57 The Spiritual Practice of Staying Steady
Feb. 21, 2022

Ep 57 The Spiritual Practice of Staying Steady

Send us a text For most of us, it’s easy to get tossed around by our circumstances. Conversations we’re in can throw us for a loop, and before we know it, we’re drowning in the emotion and struggle of it all. But today we talk about ways to get this thing that Scripture calls “Transcendent Peace” –…
Ep 56 Limiting Mindsets
Feb. 14, 2022

Ep 56 Limiting Mindsets

Send us a text Limiting mindsets can show themselves in so many ways: The Inner Critic, Imposter Syndrome, Feeling Stuck…and they tend to show up even more profoundly when we’re growing and changing. But that said, they can also occur in smaller ways, impacting our joy for entire seasons at a time.…