Bliss and Grit

Latest Episodes:

Ep 51: The Awakening Nervous System Sep 19, 2017

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In this episode we're chatting about the glorious nervous system. Recently we heard a spiritual teacher named Matt Kahn say that "the Ego is the imagination of an overactive nervous system." As longtime mind-body practitioners we found this super interesting, especially because it coincided with our own exploration of the ways our limbic system was affecting our health. This got us thinking about the role the nervous system might play in our awakening to truth. We talk a lot about concepts like fear v love, or fear v clarity, but is there benefit to exploring fear through the lens of our nervous system and limbic brain? Does that exploration create more softness in us or does it trigger a shame spiral that births more fear? All this and more as we explore the beauty that is our body.

Ep 50: Actually Loving What Arises Sep 12, 2017

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In today's episode we're talking about what actually loving what arises looks like in practice. We've all heard the trite spiritual phrases like "meet whatever arises with acceptance" and "Love everything in your experience" "do not judge yourself or others" and trite as they are, and as frequently repeated as they are, genuinely landing in the deep granular practice that these phrases point to is, well, not the most straightforward thing in the world. Certainly it is super duper foreign to everyone livin gin this time and place. Vanessa and I have a highly unprocessed talk about how that's showing up for each of us as a lived experience. How we are now seeing the million tiny no's that we say to ourselves all the time, and that we notice everyone saying to themselves and to the world. But what does saying yes to what we find really look like? What's the difference between tolerance, warmth, and really loving things?

Ep 49: The Need for Approval Sep 05, 2017

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In this episode we're talking about the need to be liked. Over the years of self exploration it's become clear how very much our own desires for approval can drive our choices and cloud out our clarity. Of course, it's pretty human to want to be accepted by others, but what happens when you do it at you're own expense? When the desire to be likable takes on a full fledge good girl/boy identity? Or when it keeps your past trauma re-circulating in a never ending loop of self-sacrifice or self-flagellation? These questions are just the surface of this conversation. As approval junkies in rehab we've got lots to share on the ever fascinating topic of needing to be liked.

Ep 48: Body as Object or Body as Self? Aug 29, 2017

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The last couple of weeks we talked a lot about living from truth, and about how the body is the most useful way to navigate truth. We got into that in our conversation with Kiran Trace last week, and in our talk about what we were learning as we spent some time with Adyashanti. We, kind of, could talk about the body and about navigating what is true for you from the body, forever... so we had a lot more to say on that! What came up for us is the way we separate ourselves into "me" and "my body"- and how that separation- that perception that we are NOT our bodies- is where we objectify ourselves and lose access to the wisdom of the body. We get into how we can have unconditional love for ourselves, how to make room for the body to just always be in a process instead of "getting it right, finally", and how to acknowledge the ways we see and treat the body as "other".

Ep 46: Trust Your Life Aug 15, 2017

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In today's episode we're talking about a recent weekend we spent together in Ithaca going to an event Adyashanti was having there. We do a general download on what it was like to be with him, but more specifically we point to his lens on what it means to trust your life- a truism that all of our teachers point us to. This is really the heart of this path. In so many ways you could say it IS the journey. Adyashanti also talked about how in many ways awakening is you becoming the most you. So on the path we wind up recognizing how often we are in conflict with both who we are and with what's showing up in life. What are some of the complexities of how we turn away from the truth? And, another one of my favorite topics of conversation, how is the body our most accurate truth sensing device?

Ep 45: Purpose Aug 08, 2017

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This week we're talking about our life's purpose. Recently Vanessa and I have been seeing this differently in our own lives- why do we frequently, in our culture anyway, chase our "purpose" as, some big identity-defining career goal? Part of why it's been so interesting for us to untie this is that the whole concept of our lives and who we are get woven into the idea of purpose. There is this way that we can create small boxes for ourselves to live in vs letting things have their own lives. Ultimately it leads us to figuring out how we let life come through us instead of grabbing at it and trying to mold it. Which can be surprisingly foreign!

Ep 44: The Subtle Edges of Relationship Aug 01, 2017

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This week is a Dear Bliss and Grit episode. We're exploring the subtle edges of relationships as we answer a listeners question on love. The major theme of the conversation being- how do we cope in a relationship when our partners difficult circumstances prevent our needs from being met? Do we wait things out and hope for improvement? Or do we give up on a relationship even though we value the person in our lives? Anytime we get into the topic of relationship and love we have lots to say about all those nuances that go into us learning to show up in intimacy.

Ep 43: Life as an Empath Jul 25, 2017

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In today's episode we're talking about life as an empath. It sprung out of our last episode about energy- we realized how helpful understanding the energetic underpinnings of patterns has helped us to be in our lives as empaths. So if you are an empath- or a highly sensitive person, or a sensey as we like to say- you've probably gotten really good at some management techniques for how to not get overwhelmed by the world. Maybe you've even encountered a number of well-intentioned people who teach techniques about how to shield yourself from feeling too much. But managing and shielding is hard work. It's fatiguing. What if instead your could learn how to land in yourself- I mean really inhabit yourself- so that you didn't feel at the whims of your environment and you didn't feel like you needed to be vigilant against your environment and your sensey self?

Ep 42: The Dynamics of Energy Jul 04, 2017

Show notes

This week's episode is all about energy. How can we experience energy within and around ourselves? Why is it important- or even interesting- to look at energy in relation to healing and wholeness? Could experiencing the subtle vibrational realms be the birthplace of our intuition? As Sensey people who've worked with energy throughout our careers and lives we've got a lot to say here about the vibrational reality of things.

Ep 41: The Realization Process Jun 27, 2017

Show notes

Today's episode is a little different! This episode is actually an interview with Judith Blackstone, the founder of The Realization Process- which Vanessa and I both became certified in this spring. I did this interview originally over on my other show, Liberated Body. If you haven't discovered her work, allow me to introduce Judith to you. She is the creator of The Realization Process, which is an integrated approach to embodiment, psychological, relational, physical healing, and spiritual awakening. Judith is a clinical psychologist and a meditation practitioner and student of contemplative traditions with more than 40 years of experience. She is the author of several books including Belonging Here and The Enlightenment Process, and she is also the co-founder of the Non-Duality Institute which is dedicated to the science and practice of non-duality. In this conversation we're talking about "the issues in the tissues", or how emotional pain gets bound in the body- and also how it can be released, what fundamental consciousness is and why it's useful to attune to it, how your experience of gravity and your fluidity of movement changes with this embodiment work, what happens when people bypass their stuck emotional pain, and how this work can help what I call the "senseys" of the world- the empaths- to do their work and to live fully without feeling overwhelmed much of the time.

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