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What We Long For
Becca Piastrelli is a writer, speaker, ancestral folk medicine keeper, and women’s group facilitator. She is a leader in women’s empowerment and earth wisdom, teaching women how to cultivate a greater sense of belonging. With Sounds True, she has authored the book Root and Ritual. In this podcast, Becca joins Tami Simon to discuss the lifelong journey of reclaiming our sense of belonging, with a particular focus on four areas: land, lineage, community, and self. Becca and Tami also explore the concept of loneliness as both a personal and a systemic challenge, humbling ourselves to the natural world, confronting the pain and grief of colonization, listening to the soul of your home, healing the “great severing” of our root systems, the Indigenous concept of the “ever happening” and receiving the support of our ancestors, the somatic experience of ritual, the importance of being witnessed in our journey of transformation, and much more.
Becoming an Active Operator of Your Nervous System
Deb Dana, LCSW, is a clinician and consultant specializing in using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma and create ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system. Her clinical publications include The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation and The Polyvagal Flip Chart: Understanding the Science of Safety, and her Sounds True publications include the audio program, Befriending Your Nervous System: Looking Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory, and her new book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.
In this podcast, Tami Simon converses with Deb Dana to offer listeners a practical understanding of Polyvagal Theory and how we can begin to decode the language of our body for better health and better relationships. Tami and Deb also discuss the dorsal, sympathetic, and ventral states of our nervous system; the gifts of becoming “anchored in ventral”; neuroception, your nervous system’s way of taking in information to assess your safety; curiosity and the capacity for self-reflection; the importance of self-care; co-regulation as a biological imperative; why self-regulation is especially critical for therapists and other helping professionals; music and nature as healing resources; the practice of self-compassion as a means of “getting our anchor back”; and more.
Embracing Pleasure, Fractal Responsibility, and the Po...
adrienne maree brown is a social justice facilitator and the bestselling author of Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good; Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds; and We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice. She cohosts the How to Survive the End of the World and Octavia’s Parables podcasts. In this episode of Insights at the Edge (which first aired as part of our Walking Together series), Tami Simon speaks with adrienne about the concept of “fractal responsibility” and how the world changes as we change ourselves; engaging in “critical relationships” and finding the courage to hold ourselves accountable; cultivating 1,000 percent honesty and trust; figuring out your right work—or what adrienne calls “your most elegant next step”; pleasure activism and “reclaiming your erotic yes”; holding the grief and suffering that seem beyond our capacity; and imagining a future that works for the majority of us.
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In Conversation: Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker
What happens when a beloved spiritual teacher and a brilliant author come together to talk about the most tender, compelling aspects of our human experience? The following exchange, excerpted from Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker in Conversation, offers some unexpected answers—and an introduction to the healing practice that has transformed both women’s hearts and lives.
Alice Walker: About four years ago I was having a very difficult time. I had lost someone I loved deeply and nothing seemed to help. Then a friend sent me a tape set by Pema Chödrön called Awakening Compassion. I stayed in the country and I listened to you, Pema ,every night for the next year. I studied lojong mind training, and I practicedtonglen. It was tonglen, the practice of taking in people’s pain and sending out whatever you have that is positive that helped me through this difficult passage.
I want to thank you so much and to ask you a question. In my experience suffering is perennial; there is always suffering. But does suffering really have a use? I used to think there was no use to it, but now I think that there is.
Pema Chödrön: Is there any use in suffering? I think the reason I am so taken by these teachings is that they are based on using suffering as good medicine. It’s as if there’s a moment of suffering that occurs over and over and over again in every human life. What usually happens in that moment is that it hardens us; it hardens the heart because we don’t want any more pain.
But the lojong teachings say we can take that very moment and flip it. The very thing that causes us to harden and our suffering to intensify can soften us and make us more decent and kinder people. That takes a lot of courage. This is a teaching for people who are willing to cultivate their courage.
What’s wonderful about it is that you have plenty of material to work with. If you’re waiting for only the high points to work with, you might give up, but there’s an endless succession of suffering.
Alice Walker: I was surprised how the heart literally responds to this practice. You can feel it responding physically. As you breathe in what is difficult to bear, there is initial resistance, which is the fear, the constriction. That’s the time when you really have to be brave. But if you keep going and doing the practice, the heart actually relaxes. That is quite amazing to feel.
Pema Chödrön: When we start out on a spiritual path, we often have ideals we think we’re supposed to live up to. We feel we’re supposed to be better than we are in some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain—breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are—heightens your awareness of exactly where you’re stuck. Instead of feeling you need some magic makeover so you can suddenly become some great person, there’s much more emotional honesty about where you’re stuck.
Alice Walker: I remember the day I really got it that we’re not connected as human beings because of our perfection, but because of our flaws. That was such a relief.
Pema Chödrön: Rumi wrote a poem called “Night Travelers.” It’s about how all the darkness of human beings is a shared thing from the beginning of time, and how understanding that opens up your heart and opens up your world. You begin to think bigger. Rather than depressing you, it makes you feel part of the whole.
Alice Walker: … Everybody is in that boat sooner or later, in one form or other. It’s good to feel that you’re not alone.
Pema Chödrön: I want to ask you about joy. It’s all very well to talk about breathing in the suffering and sending out relief and so forth, but did you find any joy coming out of this practice?
Alice Walker: Oh, yes! Even just not being so miserable. Part of the joyousness was knowing we have help. It was great to know that this wisdom is so old. That means people have had this pain for a long time; they’ve been dealing with it, and they had the foresight to leave these practices for us to use. I’m always supported by spirits and ancestors and people in my tribe, whomever they’ve been and however long ago they lived. So it was like having another tribe of people, of ancestors, come to the rescue with this wisdom that came through you and your way of teaching.
Pema Chödrön: I think the times are ripe for this kind of teaching.
Alice Walker: Oh, I think it’s just the right medicine for today. You know, the other really joyous thing is that I feel more open, I feel more openness toward people in my world. It’s what you have said about feeling more at home in your world. I think this is the result of going the distance in your own heart—really being disciplined about opening your heart as much as you can.
Carley Hauck: Being Brave and Loving at Work
Carley Hauck is a learning architect, leadership development consultant, author, speaker, and coach who serves as adjunct faculty at Stanford University and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. She has worked with hundreds of leaders in Fortune 100 companies and high-growth startups such as LinkedIn, Genentech, Pixar, Clif Bar, Intuit, and Bank of the West. With Sounds True, Carley has published the book Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and in the World. In this podcast, Carley meets with Sounds True founder Tami Simon to discuss leading in a more conscious and inclusive way, cultivating a new operating model for how we go about conducting ourselves in business, leading change when you’re not the company’s leader, maintaining well-being and the ability to flourish at work, and more.
A.H. Almaas: Endless Enlightenment
A.H. Almaas is the pen name of of Hameed Ali, the author of more than 14 books, founder of The Ridhwan School, and creator of the “the Diamond Approach” of spiritual inquiry and development. With Sounds True, Hameed has created a new online course called Endless Enlightenment: The view of totality in the Diamond Approach. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and Hameed converse on the markers one can recognize on the path to enlightenment—and beyond. They talk about how nondual realization isn’t the endpoint of the spiritual path, and how setting goals for that journey may do more harm than good. Finally, Hameed explains his teaching of the view of totality, its development over a span of 20 years, and why he’s decided to share it now with the world.
(67 minutes)